dismissal, and has found himself drawn into an intense, cross-platform feud with the president that shows
no sign of ending.
Matters came to a head on Monday when Mr Trump responded to his former employee telling CNN’s New
Day he planned to assemble a coalition of former Trump cabinet officials to denounce the president ahead
of the 2020 election by lashing out at him in an angry two-part tweet, describing his fellow New Yorker as a
“highly unstable ‘nut job’ who was with other candidates in the primary who got shellacked, & then
unfortunately wheedled his way into my campaign”.
Mr Scaramucci, the president claimed, had “made a fool of himself, bad on TV. Abused staff, got fired” and
had been a “mental wreck” during his short tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue as a result of marital
troubles. Seemingly dismissing the tweets, Mr Scaramucci responded by quoting his wife Deidre as saying
“I don’t really like being tweeted at by [the president] on a Monday morning but at least I had my coffee!”
The exact words that had likely sparked the president’s ire? Mr Scaramucci calling him “unstable”.
“I’m in the process of putting together a team of people that feel the exact same way that I do,” Mr
Scaramucci told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota. “This is not a ‘Never Trump’ situation. This is not just screeching
rhetoric. This is – OK, the guy is unstable. Everyone inside knows it, everyone outside knows it. Let’s see if
we can find a viable alternative.”
He added: “Moreover, I have to get some former cabinet officials in unity to speak up about it. They know
it’s a crisis.” Mr Scaramucci did not provide any names of people associated with the coalition he said he is
assembling, but predicted that within a few months there will be a “trove” of people willing to speak out
against Mr Trump.
Weeks of the former aide’s persistent niggling criticism had finally gotten to the commander-in-chief but
what was it that had caused the worm to turn in the first place?
Previously respectful towards his old meal ticket in interviews, Mr Scaramucci’s first real act of dissent
came when he spoke out against the resignation of Sir Kim Darroch as British ambassador to the US
following the leaking of unflattering remarks made by the diplomat against the “uniquely dysfunctional”
administration in early July.
His measured defence of Sir Kim as a “champion of freedom” who deserved better than a forced resignation
under pressure from the White House was nothing compared to the much more forthright attack on
President Trump that followed a week later over his racist tweets.
The president had told Democratic congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib
and Ayanna Pressley to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they
came”, prompting an indignant response from Democrats on Capitol Hill, members of the press and the
handful of Republicans that reporters had managed to corner in the corridors of Congress.
“Would @realDonaldTrump ever tell a white immigrant – whether 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th+ generation – to “go
back to your country”? No. That’s why the comments were racist and unacceptable,” Mr Scaramucci
tweeted. “America is a nation of immigrants founded on the ideals of free thought and free speech.”
The Mooch appeared on Howard Kurtz’s Fox News show Media Buzz five days later to warn that “if
[President Trump] keeps going down this path, a Republican will primary him ... You cannot divide the
country as the president of the United States ... These are racist comments, period full stop. The fact that
we even have to debate this means that the president is in trouble on this.”
As Mr Trump lurched onwards from that scandal to the next, his former disciple emerged as a leading, if
highly unlikely, critic of the administration with all the zeal of a fresh convert.
The president managed to resist his provocations until 8 August when he finally snapped after catching Mr