They come and go like Halley’s Comet, bursting across the scenery in a bright flash before fading out in a blaze of glory leaving a streaking tail across the heavens.
So swiftly did the rise and fall of Anthony Scaramucci as White House Communications Director begin and end.
“The Mooch” an investment banker with a law degree and no journalistic training was appointed White house Communications Director on July 21st and was gone ten days later.
He was Trump’s third Communications Director since last November’s election.
But what a ride he gave us during that brief tenure.
There were two things that leapt out at you during his first press conference.
He had mastered an impression of all of Donald Trump’s mannerisms, gestures and delivery.
He also sounded just like “Jimmy” in the Zyppah commercials.
It quickly became apparent that when dealing with Trump’s critics, he would be Trump’s id, maybe on steroids.
His arrival led to the resignation of Pres Secretary, Sean Spicer, who had no appetite for performing the duties of his position and Scaramucci’s and predicted it would simply add more chaos to the West Wing.
“The Mooch,” we learned, had been trying to secure a White House position since the inauguration.
He was so driven and focused in this quest that his wife filed for divorce a few days after the appointment, reportedly disgusted at his lust for power and position in the White House.
White House Chief of Staff, Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon had been united in their opposition to Scaramuccci’s hiring in any position in the White House.
Less than a week after his appointment, Scaramucci went before the press and characterized his relationship with Priebus as brotherly in the nature of Cain and Abel.
That Cain killed Abel, should have portended what was to come.
That night Scaramucci called a reporter and in a profane rant about Bannon and Priebus, predicted that Priebus would be gone soon.
By the following Monday, Priebus was gone.
Trump tweeted his resignation as they were returning from a speech on gang violence on Long Island. Priebus could be seen reading it on his phone.
Four days ago CNN obtained a copy of a seven page memo that Scramucci had prepared outlining his vision for the White House Communications staff.
The memo is interesting reading given Scaramuccci’s performance.
It opens with the observation that “Make it clear that horn tooting and denigrating colleagues is unacceptable.”
It proposes that “We need to improve the quality and quantity of interactions between [Communications Department employees] and its various constituents” and urges “treating colleagues professionally.”
Needless to say, those sentiments must have come as a surprise to Priebus and Bannon considering the observations Scaramucci made about them to Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker during his famous telephone rant.
Perhaps the most telling reveal about Scaramuccci’s unfitness for the job was that he thought that his remarks to Lizza were “off the record” despite never having told the reporter that they were.
The “Mooch” memo offers a couple of other observations designed to cause some head scratching to the reader.
The memo also urges that they “…should use Kellyanne Conway more. She has consistently been the President’s most effective spokesperson.”
Anyone who has listened to her various defenses of the Administration’s mishaps recognizes that she should be permanently attached to a polygraph machine.
It proposes humanizing Trump “the best golfer to serve as President…we embrace it with a national lottery to play a round of golf with him…” and urges the staff to ” …help POTUS convey a Reaganesque “happy warrior” image…”
Trump brings to mind a lot of images but the “happy warrior” is not one of them.
Now that the “Mooch” is free to do more Zyppah commercials, a new Communications Director must be found.
As we got closer to the end of the week, there was chatter that Bannon’s assistant, Steven Miller, might become the new Communications Director.
It was reported that Trump was impressed with Miller’s denigration of the inscription on the Statute of Liberty taken from the poem by Emma Lazarus “The New Colossus” which reads “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free…”
Miller has a long history in the alt-right world, shilling for various right wing dingbats like Michelle Bachmann, John Shadegg and former senator and current Attorney-General. Jeff Sessions.
He and his mentor Steve Bannon have found a kindred spirit in Vladimir Putin, whom they view as a “fellow nationalist and crusader against cosmopolitanism.”
In accusing a CNN reporter of being “cosmopolitan,” Miller embraced a term coined by Josef Stalin to justify his purges of cultural dissidents who did not share his nationalism.
If the Trump Communications job goes from Scaramucci to Miller, it will be the next chapter in an unfolding disaster.
The only one who will be able to straighten out that mess will be Mandrake the Magician.