Donald Trump's new White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, is determined to stop leaks — as long as they aren't coming from him.
Scaramucci told Politico on Monday — on the record — that he planned to fire senior assistant press secretary Michael Short, without notifying him first. “No one has told me anything, and the entire premise is false,” Short told CNN soon after the Politico report was published.
But just hours after the report was released, Scaramucci called Short's alleged firing "an unfair thing for me to comment on," while speaking to reporters on the White House grounds, while complaining about leaks.
"Here's is the problem with the leaking," he said, according to a Yahoo News reporter. "why I have to figure out a way to get the leaking to stop. Because it hurts people. Does that make sense?"
Scaramucci, who is supposed to be starting his job next month, told Politico Tuesday morning that Short would be the first press aide to be fired if the White House could not get the leaks under control. “I’m committed to taking the comms shop down to Sarah [Huckabee Sanders] and me, if I can’t get the leaks to stop,” Scaramucci said.
Short announced his resignation just a few hours later.
But it's shocking to see Scaramucci blame "leaks" for information he freely gave on the record. Reporters, including the New York Times' Ken Vogel, said that Scaramucci is a big leaker, himself.
On Sunday, Scaramucci leaked to CNN's Jake Tapper that Donald Trump was his anonymous source for intelligence information. One of the biggest leakers, according to those who know the White House and Republicans, is Trump himself.
Scaramucci joins a cavalcade of leakers in the White House, but possibly should heed the advice that he, himself, gave in the form of a threatening question to White House staff: "Do you want to sell postcards to the tourists outside the gate or do you want to work in the West Wing?"
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