“Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci shared Thursday what he believes is Donald Trump’s three-pronged strategy in the last days of his presidency. “The president’s got three pieces to his endgame right now,” Scaramucci, often known as “The Mooch,” told CNN’s Don Lemon. “Raise money ― they’ve got to continue to pay down debt and they need money for their forward operations. … Number two: He wants to see if he can flex and exert power in the Republican Party. … He wants to see if he has any political legs after Jan. 20.” “And then,” Scaramucci concluded, “the third reason is he’s paralyzed with fear because he’s got a whole host of investigations coming and he’s got a ton of debt that he’s got outstanding.” Scaramucci speculated that Trump might not be able to use the money he has made during his time in office to pay off this debt, which was estimated by The New York Times in September at around $421 million. An ongoing Internal Revenue Service audit could cost the president more than $100 million, and Scaramucci said that possible legal issues were a “variable that Trump] cannot control.” The former communications director also dismissed Trump’s lawsuits and allegations of voter fraud in various states, claiming they had “no real standing,” and said that Republicans who were humoring the president and not urging him to concede his loss to President-elect Joe Biden needed to “wake up.” “He’s only as powerful as his willing accomplices,” Scaramucci said. “Because the way demagogues are, they gotta have people like Sen.] Lindsey Graham R-S.C.] around that will do anything and kowtow to them. … I’ve been on the plane with him where he has sycophants around him, and he gives a big smirk like, ‘Can you believe that this guy is doing this, can you believe that this guy is my lap dog?’ He actually has disdain for these people.” Coincidentally, Scaramucci’s projections are similar to those expressed by actor Edward Norton, who in a viral Twitter thread Friday compared the president to a poker player who was making a wild series of bluffs in order to guarantee a safe exit. Scaramucci has frequently condemned Trump since departing the Oval Office in 2017, and was called a “loser” by the president in August. More recently, following Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis in October, Scaramucci compared Trump to a “bully at the middle school lunch table” who had strong-armed members of his administration into doing what he wanted them to do despite threats to their personal health. See Scaramucci’s full remarks on CNN below:
