Anthony Scaramucci presented a new version of Donald Trump to America today: a tough negotiator with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in private, a “gracious” persona in public at the Helsinki press conference and someone with brotherly love for Germany, Great Britain and NATO.
During his 12 minutes on Fox News this morning, Scaramucci was full of ego-massaging words for Trump. There was the now-familiar pay-no-attention-to-what-Trump-says because “it’s very hard to be upset with this president as it relates to his policy” line. And the requisite “give Trump points for not being Obama” smooch from the Mooch: “You gotta give the president huge credit that he’s meeting with Vladimir Putin and he’s trying to de-escalate tension with Russia which has escalated since 2014 and the whole Crimea situation.”
But, reading between the lines, it was not hard to see that Scaramucci had some serious concerns. “If [Trump] could just marry the policy initiatives and the execution of those policies with great communication, a lot of this stuff would be dialed back,” Scaramucci said, knowing that the Fox Fan in Chief would probably be watching. And, “The press conference could have gone better.”
Nevertheless, Scaramucci put forth this pile of happy-talk BS with a straight face. And was that a Freudian slip about “my team?”
SCARAMUCCI: I think what happened is [Trump's] a gracious guy. He probably had a very tough meeting with him behind closed doors where he was letting him have it a little bit and when he got up to the podium, he wanted to be gracious and so he’s prone to do that.
And so, if he had calibrated – this is not his personality style but if he had calibrated three or four sound bites or three or four sentences, if he had said something like, “Hey, listen, I gotta go with my team on this. Your team’s telling you didn’t do it, my team’s telling me I did do it I mean that you guys did do it. And so listen, can’t do it again.” … Something like that, it would have been a lot easier.
He made a gamble. And let me tell you something: He’s traveling all over the world, he’s countless hours on aircraft, lots of intense meetings, you have to expect people to sometimes misstate things and so I’m very happy that he walked it back.
Co-anchor Bill Hemmer noted that Trump had been tough on our allies, Germany’s Angela Merkel, Great Britain’s Theresa May and NATO. But Scaramucci had a story about that, too. It was the “tough love” talk we heard from Fox News in the wake of Trump’s NATO meeting:
SCARAMUCCI: He’s tough on them because he thinks he has a great relationship with them. And so what happens in a situation like that is, I’m tough on my brother, David, because we have a great relationship and we know that we love each other and we’re gonna be together, OK? He knows he’s gonna have a great relationship with the German people and Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister May and so he’s tough on them because he’s trying to tell them, “Listen, the trading imbalances here are actually bad for the world. If we go to a … more parity reduced, trade tariff world, it’s way better for the American economy and way better for your economy.
And so these trade imbalances – he’s a negotiator, he’s a real estate developer by training and so he’s tough on them but people are taking that as a wrong sign that he’s trying to break up the alliance. He’s trying to strengthen the alliance. And sometimes, when you grow up in New York, you’re tough on the people that you love and you’re tough on the people that you know you’re the closest to and so I think that’s also being misinterpreted by the media.
Rather than challenge or follow up on that novel vision of Trump, Hemmer changed the subject to Trump’s attacks on the intelligence community.
Nobody mentioned the bombshell New York Times report last night that Trump was informed before his inauguration that Russia had meddled in the election and yet has repeatedly cast doubt on it.
Watch Fox News present a mythical version of Donald Trump below rather than deal with the real-life version below, from the July 19, 2018 America’s Newsroom.
Of course, the picture is a bit ambiguous as we can find instances on Fox News where even they’re exhibiting some doubts albeit generally more gently than the rest of the media. Even narcissist Trump has doubts about his own performance so we witness embarrassing episodes like him saying “would” is really “wouldn’t” or Sarah Sanders spinning “no” meant no more questions and wasn’t an answer to a question on Russian meddling.
So this survey might reflect the rare case of the #MAGA crowd being impervious to negative Trump coverage even if it appears on their favorite network: Fox News.
Scaramucci? He’s a sycophant (even as he struggles to spin gold from Trump’s turd). But so is the #MAGA crowd so I imagine they’re bobble heading with a big idiot’s grin watching this segment.
