(Bloomberg) Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has set up a political action committee in a bid to prevent Donald Trump’s re-election, saying in a Financial Times editorial that he broke with the U.S. president to “save the liberal world order.”
Scaramucci expressed regret over his past support of Trump, explaining a reversal of his position earlier this year that he would back Trump in his 2020 re-election campaign. In past weeks, Scaramucci has stepped up his criticism of Trump, and said in the opinion piece on Saturday that his change of heart was partly related to the president’s treatment of NATO allies.
Earlier this week, Trump canceled a meeting with the prime minister of Denmark because she refused to discuss selling Greenland, a territory of the Scandinavian country, to the U.S.
“This petulant narcissist also believes that he alone can fix the treaty,” Scaramucci wrote, referring to NATO. “Now, depending on his mood swings, it almost seems as if he’s trying to destroy transatlantic understanding.”
Scaramucci, 55, said he is “contrite” over his past support of Trump and that he fell into “a trap of sycophancy,” attributing it to the “human impulse” to please people in charge. He now said his main concern is removing Trump from office.
The founder of investment management firm Skybridge Capital LLC has been in a Twitter scuffle with Trump for over two weeks. The FT editorial comes on top of multiple media interviews given during that time.
On CNN on Aug. 19 Scaramucci said Trump “wants to personally attack me and try to shame me,” and that the president’s entire cabinet “hates his guts.”
Trump has responded on Twitter to recent criticism by Scaramucci by calling him, among other things, “a disgruntled former employee who got fired for gross incompetence,” a “highly unstable ‘nut job’ ” and a “dope.”
Like a handful of others, Scaramucci has floated the idea of waging a Republican primary run against Trump in 2020, even though opinion polls have consistently shown the president highly rated by GOP voters.
