In true Mooch fashion, Anthony Scaramucci has some colorful nicknames for his former White House colleagues
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Anthony Scaramucci will not go gentle into that good night.
It has been more than six months since his 11-day tenure as President Trump's communications director ended, but in a new interview/burn book recitation with Vanity Fair's William D. Cohan, he's as fired up as ever when it comes to "the two jamokes" he clashed with the most in D.C.: Former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and former White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon.
The Mooch dubbed Priebus "Rancid Penis," and says he's one of those guys who acts like "Richie Cunningham" and "Opie from The Andy Griffith Show, but they're the f—ing Sith Lord behind your back. They're hitting you with a lightsaber behind your back." He claims that Priebus was "just very jealous" and "can't believe I'm this close to Trump." Scaramucci also said Priebus joined forces with Bannon to take him out (a person close to Bannon called this "laughable"), and suggested that while Bannon may have been "railing against the swamp," he's "actually a cock of the swamp. He's the creature from the Black Lagoon."
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The interview contains Scaramucci's versions of his firing by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, his first press conference, the meeting where former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer found out Scaramucci had been hired, and his infamous, expletive-filled conversation with former New Yorker writer Ryan Lizza. While The Mooch may have nothing but bad things to say about Priebus and Bannon, he's still got a lot of love for Trump and doesn't regret his tumultuous time in the White House, calling it an "unbelievably phenomenal experience." Read the entire interview at Vanity Fair.
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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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