MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle just deftly grilled Anthony Scaramucci about his weird Stephen Bannon auto-fellatio comments

Shortly after President Trump released an official statement Wednesday saying that former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon had "lost his mind," former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci took to Twitter to pat himself on the back for an infamous and rather crude assessment he made of Bannon last summer.

On Thursday, as the war between Trump and Bannon waged on, "The Mooch" appeared on several TV news networks for a few victory laps, but he still had to parry some tough questions. During an appearance on MSNBC, Scaramucci tried to strike a more conciliatory tone towards Bannon and implored him "to knock it off" and come back under the Trump tent. An incredulous Stephanie Ruhle considered Scaramucci's olive branch, then asked the question that everyone was thinking:

Scaramucci defended his previous smear of Bannon — which ended up getting him fired after just 10 days on the job — by saying that, vulgarity aside, he and Trump seem to agree that Bannon was "only in it for himself," as Trump said in his official statement. Scaramucci also argued that Bannon couldn't have been more wrong about Donald Trump Jr., whom he called treasonous, and claimed that the president's son was "an American patriot."

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Scaramucci may have his own reasons for defending the president and his family with such vigor — The Daily Beast reported Monday that he has told several confidantes that he expects to return to the White House. Scaramucci adamantly denied the report.