This Is Not the Mooch I Know

But the Anthony Scaramucci I know and admire was not the Anthony Scaramucci who stepped up to the lectern in the White House briefing room on Friday afternoon. Dressed to the nines in a navy blue power suit, he was sycophantic. He professed his “love” for Mr. Trump over and over again — six times, by one count. It was painful and embarrassing to watch.

His blind ambition was on further display on the Sunday morning talk shows. He pledged to rout out White House leakers and threatened to fire anyone on the communications staff who doesn’t get with the program. At times, he seemed to be speaking only to Mr. Trump. “I’m going to be working for you,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And I’m going to serve the American people. And we’re going to get your agenda out into the heartland, where it belongs.”

.. In a further paean to his new boss, Anthony is furiously deleting his past tweets, in a sad attempt to airbrush away his enthusiasm for bipartisanship.

Full transparency: I’m deleting old tweets. Past views evolved & shouldn’t be a distraction. I serve agenda & that’s all that matters

 .. Say what you want about President Trump, he succeeds wildly at diminishing those who come in direct contact with him. It’s a phenomenon that was articulated beautifully by Thomas Ricks, the Pulitzer-prize winning journalist, in a June appearance on MSNBC when he said that Mr. Trump is “very good at borrowing other people’s credibility.” Specifically, he worried that the president had “strip-mined” the credibility of his friend, H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser.
.. I share Mr. Ricks’s concern for my friend Anthony Scaramucci, a good man who is rapidly being tarnished by his proximity to Mr. Trump. I get that an important part of Anthony’s new job is to be loyal to the president and to his agenda. But in the name of decency and self-preservation, he should really curb his enthusiasm. And he’d do well to keep in mind what one of his heroes, Warren Buffett, likes to say: “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.”