Foul-mouthed interview sparks White House turf war

Donald Trump's new communications director has ignited fresh conflict among senior White House officials after giving a profanity-laden interview.

Anthony Scaramucci told New Yorker journalist Ryan Lizza that chief of staff Reince Priebus was a "f***ing paranoid schizophrenic" and said he was not like White House chief strategist Steve Bannon because "I'm not trying to suck my own c**k".

Lizza said Scaramucci, who refers to himself as "The Mooch", called him wanting to know who had leaked the news that the communications director was having dinner with the President in the White House.

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He then accused Priebus of being the source and suggested the chief of staff, along with several other senior staff members, would be forced to resign.

"What I'm going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we'll start over," Scaramucci said. "They'll all be fired by me.

"I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow. I'll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus – if you want to leak something – he'll be asked to resign very shortly."

Scaramucci "has reportedly long blamed Priebus for keeping him out of the White House when Trump took office in January, despite his loyalty to the Trump campaign", The Guardian says.

The public rift leaves the White House with limited options. Firing Scaramucci so early in his tenure "would be tacit admission the President made a mistake in hiring him", writes Anthony Zurcher for the BBC. "The I-told-you-so's from the Priebus crowd would be deafening."

Nevertheless, he adds, the idea that Scaramucci "could find some unrelated excuse to bow out - business concerns, perhaps… doesn't seem the pugnacious New Yorker's style".