The Mooch, a.k.a., Anthony Scaramucci, wants to get a few things straight about those 11 days in the White House.<\/p>\n
Yes, he has regrets. He was, he says, seduced by it all — by the presidency, the Oval Office, Air Force One, the lot of it. He\u2019s a \u201cflawed\u201d person, a bit of a \u201cromantic.\u201d He\u2019s tried to atone for his \u201cmistake\u201d — his word — of serving Donald John Trump.<\/p>\n
Slick-haired, Windsor-knotted, the entire North Shore of Long Island in his accent, Scaramucci was always one of Wall Street\u2019s favorite characters on Trump Island. He is, after all, one of them, unabashedly promoting, packaging and monetizing the singular product that is the Mooch.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s also been the butt of a few jokes, too, as the Mooch is quick to admit<\/span>. His nickname has entered the lexicon: a \u201cScaramucci\u201d has come to mean a period of 11 days, the time he lasted as communications director before being defenestrated following that infamous remark about Steve Bannon.<\/p>\n \u201cJeez, I thought I\u2019m gonna last longer than a carton of milk in the refrigerator,\u201d Scaramucci says.<\/p>\n Now, with less than a Scaramucci left to go for the Trump administration, the Mooch is sitting behind the desk of his basement office in the upscale hamlet of Manhasset, 20 miles from Manhattan, musing on what it all meant. He\u2019s wearing a dark suit, his hair quaffed just so, a rendering of a 1976 Superboy comic book on the wall behind him.<\/p>\n Those 11 days nearly cost him his marriage, he says. And also nearly his stake in SkyBridge Capital. But the Mooch has endured, even prospered. He\u2019s got a new Bitcoin fund that\u2019s been getting press. He\u2019s got MoochFM, a weekly podcast. He was recently out in Iowa with the man who fired him, former Trump White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, whom he now calls a close friend.<\/p>\n \u201cYou cannot fully understand Donald Trump until you\u2019re inside that first-electron orbit around him,\u201d Scaramucci says of the only American president to be impeached twice. The Mooch says he was horrified watching the Capitol siege on Jan. 6 \u2013 his 57th birthday, as it happens.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I\u2019m sitting in my home watching this unfold and I\u2019m thinking, OK, Jesus Christ, my birthday is going to go down with 9\/11 and Dec. 7, because this is one of the more horrific days in American history,\u201d he says. He reconsiders. \u201cIt\u2019s certainly \u2013 I don\u2019t want to compare it to 9\/11,\u201d he says. Thousands died that day. \u201cBut in a very weird way, from an ideological perspective and from an ethereal perspective to the United States<\/span>, this was worse.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon the Mooch is on a tear, and he goes there: Nazis, Hitler, Goebbels, the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923, Trump-as-Russian-operative. He pauses mid-interview to tweet out a phrase that just came to him: \u201cTrump-Qaeda.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAt best, he\u2019s a useful idiot for the Russians,\u201d Scaramucci says of Trump. \u201cAt best, OK?\u201d He predicts Trump will be convicted by the Senate and possibly face other legal consequences.<\/p>\n Some in Trump\u2019s Washington will carry a taint from their time there; many others won\u2019t, Scaramucci predicts. Mick Mulvaney, for instance, has taken a page out of the Mooch\u2019s book and is opening a small hedge fund. Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, will probably land back in the world of finance, Scaramucci says.<\/p>\n The most troubling legacy of the Trump years is that the nation has normalized so much of it, Scaramucci says.<\/p>\n Only the day before the Capitol was stormed, he says, Scaramucci participated in a virtual CEOs forum and warned the executives, \u201cI have a very, very bad feeling about tomorrow,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd several of them said, \u2018Calm down, calm down!\u2019 You know, \u2018No way, no way!\u2019 OK, but I know the guy. And that\u2019s how I started our conversation. I know the guy because, unfortunately, I was close enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Scaramucci\u2019s unequivocal conclusion: Trump has been bad for America. \u201cAnd I regret working for the man, for sure, because he\u2019s a malignant person,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Then he adds: \u201cBut I don\u2019t regret the experience. You know, I flew on Air Force One. I was in the Oval Office. I got to read the intelligence briefings.\u201d He drops a few names; he also considers former Attorney General Bill Barr a personal friend.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know what, I changed,\u201d Scaramucci says. \u201cIt\u2019s made me more self-aware, it\u2019s made me more humble.\u201d<\/p>\n