White House communications director trashes Trump’s senior staff in profanity-filled phone call with journalist

Forget about the leaks coming out of the White House – the real problem is the battle raging inside it.

Anthony Scaramucci, a New York financier who last week became the White House communications chief, this week compared his relationship with Trump's chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to a pair of brothers from the Bible, one of whom killed the other.

Scaramucci said last week he and Priebus were friends and "a little bit like brothers, where we rough each other up once in a while, which is totally normal for brothers".

On Thursday, Scaramucci said in an interview with CNN: "When I said we were brothers from the podium, that's because we're rough on each other. Some brothers are like Cain and Abel.

"Other brothers can fight with each other and get along. I don't know if this is repairable or not. That will be up to the president."

Hours before his wild phone interview on CNN about the publication of his financial disclosures, the newly minted communications director Anthony Scaramucci called The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza to pursue the source of another leak.

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Before long their conversation quickly devolved into a vulgar tirade against Scaramucci’s colleagues, President Donald Trump's senior advisors.

Scaramucci demanded the reporter reveal who disclosed his dinner plans with Trump, the first lady, Sean Hannity and former Fox News executive Bill Shine before he continued his tirade against rampant administration leaks.

According to Lizza, Scaramucci imitated White House chief of staff Reince Priebus on their call, saying, “Oh, Bill Shine is coming in. Let me leak the f****** thing and see if I can c***-block these people the way I c***-blocked Scaramucci for six months.“

“Reince is a f****** paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac,” Scaramucci added.

Priebus and Scaramucci have had a long-standing feud that escalated in January when Priebus prevented Scaramucci from getting a senior administration position.

At the time, Scaramucci apparently believed that Priebus had revealed his financial disclosures to Politico reporter Lorraine Woellert even though the tweeted forms from the Export-Import Bank were publicly available.

Later in their call, according to Lizza, Scaramucci suggested that White House chief strategist Steve Bannon had damaged the president’s message by seeking too much media attention.

“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c***,” Scaramucci said.

“I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f****** strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country.”

Scaramucci also repeated his threat to fire every employee of the White House communications office if the leaks don’t stop.

“They’ll all be fired by me,” Scaramucci said.

“I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow.

“I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”

Scaramucci did not apologse for his vulgar remarks, but did pledge to cut back on his “colourful language” in the future.