WASHINGTON ¨C Short-lived White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said that Steve Bannon is hurting President Donald Trump¡¯s ability to move his agenda forward, and suggested the administration move toward the political ¡°mainstream.¡±
¡°You also got this sort of Bannon-bart influence in there, which I think is a snag on the president,¡± Scaramucci said Sunday on ABC¡¯s ¡°This Week.¡± ¡°If the president really wants to execute that legislative agenda that I think is so promising for the American people, the lower-middle class people and the middle class people, then he has to move away from that sort of Bannon-bart nonsense.¡±
Scaramucci blended the name of Bannon, chief strategist and senior counselor to the president, with Breitbart News, the far-right news and commentary website that Bannon ran before joining Trump¡¯s presidential campaign.
Scaramucci¡¯s eventful 10-day tenure at the White House ended Jul. 31, days after he made lewd comments about Bannon and others in an interview with the New Yorker. Sunday¡¯s appearance was his first television interview since then. On Monday, he¡¯s scheduled to appear on ¡°The Late Show¡± on CBS.
Asked if Bannon will also be shown the door at the White House, Scaramucci said, ¡°the president knows what he¡¯s going to do,¡± and ¡°has a very good idea of the people that are undermining his agenda.¡± Scaramucci said he recently ¡°had a very candid conversation¡± with Trump.
Bannon declined comment on Scaramucci¡¯s remarks.
¡°He¡¯s got to move more into the mainstream, he¡¯s got to be more into where the moderates are and the independents are,¡± Scaramucci said of Trump. ¡°If he doesn¡¯t do that, you¡¯re going to see inertia and you¡¯re going to see this resistance from more of the establishment senators that he needs to curry favor with.¡±
The former New York financier also linked the influence of Bannon to Trump¡¯s president¡¯s failure to forcibly denounce white supremacists who held a rally Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned deadly.
¡°I wouldn¡¯t have recommended that statement,¡± Scaramucci said. ¡°He needed to be much harsher as it related to the white supremacists and the nature of that.¡±
Scaramucci said of his firing by new White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, ¡°what happens was sort of meant to happen.
¡°Obviously, I wish they would have given me a bar of soap and told me to go wash my mouth out in the bathroom and move on,¡± he said.
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