'He derides sycophants privately': Ex-White House official puts Trump orbit on notice
A one-time White House communications director during President Donald Trump's first term appeared to put his closest allies and advisors on notice Friday evening: the president is no fan of sycophants, contrary to popular belief.
For his second term, Trump stuffed his Cabinet with MAGA loyalists, who critics warned won't put up as many guardrails against his more outlandish — and possibly illegal — whims.
Anthony Scaramucci joined CNN's "OutFront" on Friday evening and noted that while many have been called sycophantic in efforts to curry Trump's favor, behind closed doors, the president is secretly no fan of such people.
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Host Erin Burnett noted that Vice President J.D. Vance has gone through "great pains" to echo "almost word for word repeatedly."
She played a supercut of Vance repeating Trump's popular phrase "they just don't have the cards" and declaring the U.S. is "done being the piggybank of the entire world."
"He's even looking a lot like Trump." Burnett noted. "There was a night, Anthony, where they even had the exact same tie color. It was a very specific shade of maroon and it was as if it was the exact same tie. It was as if they were going to a wedding. Is this exactly what Trump wants to see and hear? Or at least what J.D. Vance perceives he wants to see and hear?"
Scaramucci said that while he understands Vance's "modeling and mimetic" nature, but thinks it's a "mistake."
"You'll see the full capitulation, Erin, when he shaves his beard and he goes the full George Steinbrenner route with Donald Trump, without having the full Boston Red Sox reliever beard," joked Scaramucci.
The ex-White House official repeated he thinks it's a mistake.
"Whether you like the president or dislike the president, he has the rizz for his team MAGA," said Scaramucci, using slang for charisma. "J.D. Vance hasn't proven that. I think it's probably annoying to the president that he's over modeling him. People mistake this about President Trump. I don't think he likes the obsequiousness stuff."
Scaramucci pointed to the now-infamous Signal group chat, in which top Cabinet members double- and triple-downed on each other with what they think Trump would want to hear and what they'd want to say to him.
"I don't think he likes that," said Scaramucci. "Look, I traveled with him and I was on that campaign for just under a year and was on the president's transition team for the first term — he used to deride the sycophants privately. I never saw him say, 'Oh wow, you know, J.D. Vance said exactly what I said. That's great.' That's just not his personality, Erin."
He concluded that Vance will "go the way of Mike Pence" — and Trump will make Vance "irrelevant."
"He'll do things to Vance that'll compromise his position. He doesn't like the attention that Vance is giving," Scarmucci said.