The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza just published details of his phone call with Anthony Scaramucci. They are absolutely insane.


Newly minted White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci directed some very interesting communications at The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza during a phone conversation Wednesday night. On Thursday afternoon, Lizza published details of his conversation with Scaramucci, after Scaramucci had called into CNN earlier in the day to interrupt an interview Lizza was giving.
Lizza said Scaramucci initiated their Wednesday night phone call and never requested it take place off the record, and said the bombastic new White House employee called to ask Lizza to reveal a source. Lizza had tweeted that Scaramucci was dining with President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity, and former Fox News co-president Bill Shine, and Scaramucci was apparently convinced White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus had given Lizza the information.
The details Lizza published of their conversation are ... colorful:
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"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." The issue, he said, was that he believed Priebus had been worried about the dinner because he hadn't been invited. "Reince is a f--king paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac," Scaramucci said. He channelled Priebus as he spoke: "'Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f--king thing and see if I can c--k-block these people the way I c--k-blocked Scaramucci for six months.'"
[...] Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own c--k," he said, speaking of Trump's chief strategist.
[...] "Okay, the Mooch showed up a week ago," he said. "This is going to get cleaned up very shortly, okay?" [The New Yorker]
Scaramucci also told Lizza that he had to end their call so he could "start tweeting some sh-t to make this guy crazy," referring to Priebus, Lizza said. Minutes later, Scaramucci sent the tweet about leaks in which he cryptically tagged Priebus.
Read Lizza's entire recounting at The New Yorker.
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Kimberly Alters is the news editor at TheWeek.com. She is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
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