Scaramucci says Trump aides are scared to confront him over tweets
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Cabinet members and White House staffers are privately concerned about President Trump’s racially divisive tweets but are afraid to confront him, according to Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director, in an interview for the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast.
Scaramucci said Trump needed to hear those points of view.
“If the president is now surrounded by people that are not going to tell him the truth, and they’re gonna confirm his biases, which may not be correct, that’s a recipe for disaster,” Scaramucci said. He called Republicans who won’t speak out against Trump’s tweets “fraidy cats.”
Democratic lawmakers have rebuked Trump for tweets telling four congresswomen of color to “go back” to their countries and describing Baltimore as a vermin-infested city unfit for people to live in. While Democrats forcefully called the statements racist, Republican leaders have largely been silent.
Scaramucci served a tumultuous 11 days as communications director in July 2017. Trump fired him after an expletive-laden interview with the New Yorker in which Scaramucci criticized other members of the Trump administration. Despite his unpleasant exit, he remains connected to members of the administration. He said he’s “shocked” that more Republicans haven’t spoken out.
“They know that it’s not the right thing,” he said. “The president likes to double down on stuff and he never likes to apologize, but down deep, he’s got to know too because he’s really not a racist.”
In 2019, the country should not be debating whether the “leader of the free world” is racist, Scaramucci said. He suggested that Trump should change his choice of words to avoid accusations of racism.
Scaramucci agrees with Trump’s assessment of Baltimore. He doesn’t see the tweets as racist but said he understands why people are upset about them. Trump first tweeted about Baltimore on Saturday in an attack on Rep. Elijah Cummings, who represents a majority-black district covering half of the city. Cummings has been a sharp critic of the Trump administration’s treatment of migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Trump tweeted Saturday that Cummings’s district is “FAR WORSE and more dangerous” than conditions at the border. The president continued his attacks throughout the week and joked on Friday about a recent break-in at the congressman’s home.
“These inner cities, which have been controlled by the left for 40 or 50 years, they’re not working,” Scaramucci said. “The educational system is flawed. The gun violence is through the roof. The rat infestation, all that sort of stuff is prevalent.”
He added: “It’s not racist to say that objectively and look at it for what it is.”
Cover thumbnail photo: Anthony Scaramucci. (Photo illustration: Yahoo News; photo: AP)
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