Anthony Scaramucci, who served 11 days as President Donald Trump’s communications director, has cashed in on those eleven days rather extensively. Last year, he wrote a book Trump, the Blue-Collar President. On Sunday, however, he began to change his tune. Comparing Trump to a nuclear disaster that threatened to decimate Eastern Europe, Scaramucci called on the Republican Party to consider replacing Trump at the top of the ticket. On Monday, he blamed Trump for “hate” but insisted that he had become “neutral on the president.”
“He’s giving people a license to hate,” he told CNN’s John Berman on Monday. “I think you have to consider a change at the top of the ticket,” the former Trump staffer said, citing “the racially-charged comments, the divisive tweeting.”
Scaramucci insisted that he still supports Trump’s policies, but he doubled down on remarks he made to Axios over the weekend, comparing the president to a nuclear disaster.
“We are now in the early episodes of ‘Chernobyl’ on HBO, where the reactor is melting down and the apparatchiks are trying to figure out whether to cover it up or start the clean-up process,” he told Axios. “Right now, it’s an unspeakable thing. But if he keeps it up, it will no longer be unspeakable. The minute they start speaking of it, it will circulate and be socialized. We can’t afford a full nuclear contamination site post-2020.”
The riveting HBO mini-series covers the disaster at Chernobyl in April 1986. In that disaster, a nuclear reactor exploded, sending radioactive ash into the atmosphere. The series covers the efforts to contain the disaster, which could have wiped out the populations of most of Eastern Europe.
Trump’s divisive rhetoric may deserve some condemnation, but this comparison is absurd. The president’s tweets and statements are not setting off anything like the Chernobyl disaster.
It seems Scaramucci reached for the comparison in order to encourage Republicans to act against the president and support a serious primary challenge against him, fighting a “cover-up.” In Chernobyl, the Soviet apparatchiks rush to cover up the disaster, insisting it is not as bad as it truly is. Due to the massive destructive nature of the disaster, however, it cannot be covered up.
Trump’s rhetoric is nothing like Chernobyl. First off, there’s nothing to cover up: the president’s statements are public, too public for people like Scaramucci. Secondly, Scaramucci’s comparison seems to rely on the idea that Trump’s rhetoric inspires white nationalist terrorism like the mass shooting in El Paso, Texas. While the shooter’s manifesto echoed the president to some degree, the shooter claimed to have reached his conclusions before the president entered office.
Trump has condemned the Ku Klux Klan, white supremacy, and racism by name repeatedly and explicitly after the El Paso shooting.
Finally, Scaramucci suggested that Republicans should consider replacing Trump as the nominee for 2020, but he does not support any one candidate. He insisted that he does not support a Democrat, but due to the strengths of incumbency, it is likely Trump would stand the greatest chance of defeating a Democrat next November.
Despite his anti-Trump comments, the former White House communications director insisted that he does not oppose Trump but is “now neutral on the president.”
Scaramucci seems to be hedging his bets. He has defended Trump’s policies, but now attacks the president using absurd rhetoric. Yet he won’t actually call for Trump to be knocked from the top of the ticket — he’s only calling for the GOP to reconsider. This way, he can appeal to Democrats by condemning Trump and he can turn around and support the president’s reelection after Trump wins the Republican nomination again next year.
“Anthony, who would do anything to come back in, should remember the only reason he is on TV, and it’s not for being the Mooch!” the president tweeted. Whether or not the president should be attacking private citizens like this, he’s got a point.
…..other than the fact that this Administration has probably done more than any other Administration in its first 2 1/2 years of existence. Anthony, who would do anything to come back in, should remember the only reason he is on TV, and it’s not for being the Mooch!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 11, 2019
Watch Scaramucci’s virtue-signaling his Trump Derangement Syndrome below.
Follow Tyler O’Neil, the author of this article, on Twitter at @Tyler2ONeil.
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