The Mooch Goes on the Record to Go Off His Rocker

District Productive
Jul 28, 2017 · 10 min read
Chip Somodevilla for Getty Images

Yes. I’ll get to the John McCain health care vote in a bit, but first…

You wouldn’t know it from the awful movie that was made about his life, but Lenny Bruce was a funny man, and don’t worry — you have the right podcast — but give me a moment. Bruce’s greatest routine was called the palladium. It was about a middling American comic who was making a good living playing clubs, but he wanted something bigger. He wanted to play the important room, the BIG room.

His agent told him he didn’t need that. He was doing fine, but the comic threatened to fire him, so the agent got him a gig playing the London Palladium. The kind of big theater where the Queen might come. And so he starts off, and it’s not a good start, because the previous act ends on a sentimental note that has the audience really weepy when he comes out.

But here he comes with a successful past and a shtick that is time tested…and he bombs. The audience doesn’t laugh. Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, Roosevelt. It’s like playing to Mt. Rushmore. The theater manager is about to can him, but he pleads and gets on for the second show. And it’s even worse. Finally, out of desperation and just to get a reaction, any reaction, he says, “screw the Irish.” A very British voice in the audience yells back, “that’s the first good thing you’ve said. Yeah, screw the Irish. They stole the holy grail,” and the next thing you know fistfights break out and the theater is reduced to shambles.

It’s not a ha-ha funny bit. In a way it’s a kind of tragedy, but it’s brilliantly put together and more than a half century ahead of its time because if there’s a story that brilliantly plots the future of the Trump administration, it’s the palladium.

Trump was doing fine. Better than fine. He’s a billionaire, but he did not feel he had played the BIG room, the OVAL room, so he fought for it and he got it, and like the guy in Bruce’s story, he finds himself out of his comfort zone and out of his depth and fistfights ensue.

Only here the fistfights are in the White House and the crazy, screaming people have nuclear weapons. Yesterday, I called Anthony Scaramucci an idiot several times. I have managed to go decades in this business without resorting to that sort of language, but we managed to get through a couple of centuries in this country without seeing what we’re seeing now.

When I called him an idiot yesterday, it was for a series of remarkable blunders in just his sixth day in office as head of White House communications. He attacked a reporter and supposed-leakers in the White House for releasing his financial disclosure form, but it wasn’t leaked. It was a document on public file when he went for a job at the Export-Import bank, which a POLITICO reporter was smart enough to get, legally and without a single leak.

He then attacked Reince Priebus, accusing him of being the leaker, though again, nothing was actually leaked, just as Trump goes on about classified information being leaked that isn’t actually classified.

Now Scaramucci who is shaking up the White House because he doesn’t think people like Sean Spicer communicated effectively, celebrated his first week in office with perhaps the most embarrassing interview given by a White House official ever. Now, true, that is a plateau we all thought we reached a thousand times in this administration as interviews with big floppy feet jump out of this clown car of a White House, but this…this was something special.

And no reporter tricked the Mooch into it. He’s trying to claim that now, but he called Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker and did this on purpose, and never once asked to be on the record. SF Chronicle arts reporter Peter Hartlaub said even the boy bands he interviews know to do that and this guy is supposedly head of communications at the White House. He called Lizza to demand knowing who leaked a story about who Trump was having dinner with. When Lizza said he could not answer that, Scaramucci threatened to fire the entire White House communications staff. He demanded Lizza tell him as an American patriot. Remember this was a tweet Lizza did about dinner, which Trump had with Sean Hannity and former Fox News executive Bill Shine. Nothing classified. Nothing secret. Not even that big a story unless you were really desperate to know where Bill Shine will land next.

Now something you need to know: this is personal. When Trump was elected he wanted Scaramucci on his team, but no one likes Scaramucci. They think he may know finance, but otherwise is a few bricks shy of a load. Actually, he may be a few bricks shy of a brick, but we’ll come back to that. Anyway, the Mooch sold his business before finding out that Reince Priebus, the man who may be finished just as everyone finally knew his name — kind of a reverse Cheers — that Reince vetoed him being in the White House and THAT, not policy, not effectiveness, THAT is why the Mooch has it in for Priebus.

Anyway, in this call to Lizza, Scaramucci keeps threatening to fire everybody so it will be on Lizza that they all got fired over a scoop on who had dinner, rather than on Scaramucci. And when Lizza said, ‘I can’t tell you,’ and what difference does this story make, instead of hanging up, Scaramucci goes full-on Jack Nicholson in The Shining.

Reince Priebus, he says..if you want to leak something…will be asked to resign very shortly said the Mooch as if HE were the President, adding Reince is “a f — ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” saying Preibus is trying to cockblock Shine the way he cockblocked Scaramucci for half of this year. The Mooch then complains that disclosing his financial forms was a felony — it was not — and he’s called the FBI…yeah, good luck calling the agency whose boss your boss fired and whose number two man he attacked this week on Twitter. I’m sure they’re just dying to help out here. Oh, and once again, it wasn’t a felony or a leak. It was public information, but Scaramucci says of the non-existent leakers, “they’re going to have to go F themselves.”

He then says, still talking to Ryan Lizza, a reporter from the New Yorker, that he has no interest in media attention. Then hang up the phone, you idiot, but no. He says you know who does want media attention? Here’s the sentence. Ready? Chase the kids away. After all, we’re quoting the White House here and that is R-rated even when it’s for the Boy Scouts. The Mooch says: “I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock.” OK, this is where Krusty the Clown says, ‘he’s kidding and I kid because I love.’ But this clown ain’t no Krusty so he goes on: “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f-ing strength of the president. I’m here to serve my country.”

I’m not sure what the country is. Mocchimania? Moochistan? Can we build a wall to keep any more people from his country from getting into ours? Can we make him pay for it?

You can read Lizza’s wonderful column for more details but the next thing you know Scaramucci is saying how he wants to f — ing kill all the leakers, which might trigger a Secret Service investigation into a crazy man who dreams of killing White House personnel. He then back to claim the disclosure of his financial form was a felony — it still isn’t — and talked about lie detectors.

He then says to Lizza, who may get a Pulitzer for just answering the phone, that — again — direct quote — “let me go, though, because I’ve got to start tweeting some shit to make this guy crazy.” Minutes later came the Priebus tweet I told you about yesterday

I said yesterday the Trump resignation countdown clock was ticking, and after this, the ticking gets louder. The military told him to take his transgender ban and shove it. The Senate won’t pass his Obamacare repeal. Conservative senators told him to lay off Sessions, and even Breitbart is giving him shit now. Drudge is featuring more anti-Trump stories and members of Congress of both parties have warned Trump if he fires Robert Mueller, they’ll just hire him themselves.

No one’s afraid of him anymore, and it’s getting harder for Trump to find real talent. His new communications chief has shown himself — in just a week — to be an insult to the good name of pond scum.

Like a comic who is bombing, this administration sounds desperate and the Oval stinks of flop sweat. This is winning like the ’62 Mets was winning.

This is a disaster no longer waiting to happen, and at least in that, it has apparently found its perfect spokesman.

Now, John McCain. After his vote late last night people are asking me if I’m ready to apologize for blasting him the other day for allowing these votes on stripping millions of their health care. In a word, no. Yes, I’m grateful and relieved for the people who would have been destroyed without his vote, but what was this week about? There are only two possible reasons he allowed this charade to go through in the first place: either he really was considering depriving people of their health care for one of three bills which had not gone through committee, been fully scored by the congressional budget office or fully debated, or this was all a show. If it was the first, I’m glad he came down on the side he did, but that doesn’t earn him a ton of points for considering such a thing. If it was the latter, which I now suspect it was, what’s the point, and the point seemed to have been a drama with John McCain at the center of it.

Given what he’s going through it might seem churlish to deny him being the star of the show instead of part of a cast of 51 players, or even three if you want to count just the Republicans, and if this were almost any other bill, I’d fully play along, but this wasn’t. This wasn’t about getting a week of dramatic coverage from the news media. It was about whether people suffering as McCain is suffering, though without McCain’s money to guarantee the best care possible, would be able to get that care. It was about whether husbands, wives, sons and daughters could go on living, or at least have a chance to do so, and I’m sorry, that’s just nothing to use as a stage for being a drama queen.

Two hours before the vote, McCain told reporters who asked how he would vote, “wait for the show,” which I think says it all. The highly-reported gasp last night when he voted did not come from fellow senators on the floor. It was from the gallery of spectators. Everyone on the floor knew what was going on. McCain had called Schumer earlier in the day and walked over to the Democratic side that night to assure them of his vote. Vice President Pence — there for what he hoped for would another tie-breaking vote — kept coming over to talk to McCain and going outside with him after getting at least one call from the White House, according to the Washington Post which also reported McCain spent most of his time huddled besides Senators Murkowski and Collins who were voting no.

So this was the John McCain show. OK, it was dramatic as he came back, and again, I’m glad for his vote, but again. I also don’t care whether reporters like myself or other politicians may have been led partly down a primrose path by his vote earlier in the week. But all those people who needed this vote in ways I hope you and your family cannot understand, deserved better than waiting for the show.

Yes, I’m happy about what McCain finally did, even if not how he did it, but the full on heroes of this vote are Murkowski and Collins who took it on the chin all week and held fast. The Trump White House even threatened that Alaska would lose out needed programs if Murkowski did not vote with it on just this one vote. While McCain was being courted, Collins and Murkowski were being vilified by their own party. Congressman Blake Farenthold of Texas, famous for being shot in outsized pajamas with Playboy models, said it was repugnant that these women were voting the way they were, adding if they were men he’d challenge them to a duel. It’s crap, of course. I don’t think Farenthold, a truly repugnant man, could get out of bed in time for a duel.

So am I happy about McCain? I feel completely manipulated, but, yeah, I’m happy. But the thing is I feel today it’s like a 19 inning ball game where two pitchers threw nine innings each of no-hit ball and the guy who came in and threw the one inning of relief got all the huzzahs because he was on the mound when the winning run scored.

So thank you John McCain, but bless you Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, the people who fought to make sure the GOP attempt to strip millions of health care was a shutout.


Subscribe to Gil Gross’ daily podcast The Gross National Podcast here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-gross-national-podcast-with-gil-gross/id1212496651?mt=2

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