‘Kill the leakers’: Scaramucci fails with foul tirade

Trump’s new media boss explodes the tensions at the White House into a full-fledged conflagration.

‘A paranoid schizophrenic’: Reince Priebus at the White House yesterday.

Anthony Scaramucci’s new job as White House communications director was to sort out a dysfunctional West Wing. Instead he has deepened the dysfunction with a stunning attack on chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Steve Bannon.

In a miscalculation after only a week in the job, Scaramucci vented his feelings in a profanity-laden spiel to New Yorker journalist Ryan Lizza on Thursday without saying his comments were off the record. The resulting article did more to damage to the White House than was ever caused by the recently departed press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned in protest at Scaramucci’s appointment.

Scaramucci accused Priebus of being a leaker, saying the “fish stinks from the head down”.

“Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly,” he told the journalist. “Reince is a f..king paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”

“Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f..king thing and see if I can cock-block these people the way I cock-blocked Scaramucci for six months,” he said in a reference to Priebus stopping Scaramucci from getting a job at the White House immediately after Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

Scaramucci said Bannon was more interested in his own brand than working for his country.

“I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock,” he said. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f..king strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”

After reading the New Yorker story, Scaramucci tweeted: “I made a mistake in trusting a reporter, it won’t happen again.”

Anthony Scaramucci.

In another tweet, he said: “I sometimes use colourful language. I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for @RealDonaldTrump’s agenda.”

Scaramucci had telephoned Lizza to ask about the source of an article, believing that Priebus had leaked it to the journalist.

“You’re an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country,” Scaramucci told him. “So I’m asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.”

Scaramucci then threatened to fire everyone in the White House who might have leaked it.

“I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you,” he said.

“What I want to do is I want to f..king kill all the leakers and I want to get the President’s agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people.”

The rift between Scaramucci and Priebus first exploded into public view earlier on Thursday when Scaramucci called CNN to give an extraordinary interview in which he challenged the chief of staff to prove he was not a leaker.

“So if Reince wants to explain he’s not a leaker, let him do that,” he said.

The dispute between the two was provoked by Scaramucci after details of his business interests were reported by the website ­Politico. Scaramucci implied in a tweet that Priebus leaked them, although this was later proved to be incorrect because the information was obtained through official channels.

Steve Bannon.

“In light of the leak of my financial disclosure info which is a felony. I will be contacting @FBI and the @the Justice Dept #swamp @Reince45,” he wrote in a tweet that was later deleted.

Since his appointment, Scaramucci has vowed to uncover and sack those who leak information to the media, saying the flood of leaks was undermining the effectiveness of the administration.

“The President and I would like to tell everybody we have a very, very good idea of who the leakers are, who the senior leakers are in the White House,” he said.

“It’s absolutely, completely and totally reprehensible. And as you know from the Italian expression: The fish stinks from the head down. But I can tell you two fish that don’t stink, and that’s me and the President.

“I don’t like the activity going on in the White House ... I don’t like what they’re doing to the President of the United States or their fellow colleagues in the West Wing.”

When discussing his relationship with Priebus, Scaramucci referred to the biblical story where Cain kills his brother Abel.

“If you want to talk about the chief of staff, we have had odds, we have had differences,” he said.

“When I said we were brothers from the podium, that’s because we’re rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel. Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don’t know if this is reparable or not, that will be up to the President.”

Scaramucci owns property and businesses worth more than $US50 million ($62m), according to a financial disclosure report filed with the chief ethics agency. The biggest source of his wealth is an ownership stake in an investment fund he founded, SkyBridge Capital. The fund is in the process of being sold to a division of Chinese company HNA Group, a deal that has drawn scrutiny and helped dash his hopes to move to the White House in January.