| | | | "On Wednesday night, I received a phone call from Anthony Scaramucci, the new White House communications director...."
So begins Ryan Lizza's new must-read, wherein the Mooch says Reince Priebus will be asked to resign... and threatens to fire the entire White House comms team.
Welcome to Reliable Sources. This is Dylan Byers in for Brian Stelter, and this newsletter, like this crazy day, contains some very vulgar language... | | Mooch carpet-bombs Reince | | "They'll all be fired by me," Scaramucci told Lizza, referring to the White House communications team. "I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I'll fire tomorrow. I'll get to the person who leaked... to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he'll be asked to resign very shortly... Reince is a fucking paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac."
This is really something: Six months into the Trump presidency, the White House communications director is in open warfare with the White House chief of staff. Drudge Report is calling it a "West Wing Deathmatch."
But here's the kicker: Scaramucci is reportedly waging this war with Trump's blessing.
"President Trump has not only blessed efforts by his new communications director to wage a battle against [his] chief of staff, he's actively egging on the very public and painful feud," The Daily Beast reports.
"White House officials and outside allies say the president is reveling in Scaramucci's campaign against Priebus... and is thrilled to see a top staffer placing a publicly bombastic emphasis on White House leaks to the press, which consistently infuriate the president."
Meanwhile, sources sympathetic to Priebus tell Axios they're "hopeful that Scaramucci is being too out there even for this President," who "might come to believe Reince is being treated unfairly, and come out to belatedly defend him."
Mooch also targets Bannon...
Lizza: "Scaramucci also told me that, unlike other senior officials, he had no interest in media attention. 'I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock,' he said, speaking of Trump's chief strategist. 'I'm not trying to build my own brand off the fucking strength of the President. I'm here to serve the country.' (Bannon declined to comment.)"
The big picture...
This is a critical moment for President Trump's legislative agenda. The push to repeal and replace Obamacare, something he pledged to do, could come to a screeching halt tonight -- or take a major step forward. Congress has voted to place new sanctions on Russia. His approval rating remains below 40%...
So why is his communications director slamming the chief of staff and the chief strategist instead of pushing the agenda? Is there an end game here? Or is the Trump presidency all about spectacle?
Some perspective...
The Atlantic's McKay Coppins: "As I wrote back in July 2015, shortly after Trump launched his campaign, there tends to be a Hunger Games-like climate among Trump's various advisers and lieutenants....
"Perpetually uncertain of their place in the boss's orbit, and desperate to survive, they compete ruthlessly for status and approval, never hesitating to bludgeon each other to death when the time comes."
Basically, it's "The Apprentice" over and over again. | | White House won't back Priebus... | | ABC's Jonathan Karl: "Sarah, does the President have confidence in his Chief of Staff?"
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders: ... [Pause]... "Look, I think I've addressed this question when it comes to staffing and personnel many times, that if the President doesn't, then he'll make that decision. We all serve at the pleasure of the President, and if he gets to a place where that isn't the case, he'll let you know."
Karl: "So you can't say right now if the President has full confidence in Chief of Staff Reince Priebus?"
Sanders: "I think I just answered that. Look, I think what we have -- this is a White House that has a lot of different perspectives, because the President hires the very best people. They're not always going to agree...." | | ...but it will back Scaramucci | | Fox's Martha MacCallum: "The [Ryan Lizza] article... has language in it that is jaw-dropping and really shocked a lot of people.... What's your response to it?
Sanders: "This is a guy who uses colorful and sometimes not appropriate language. He's very passionate about the president and the president's agenda, and I think he may have let that get the best of him." | | Is Mooch gunning for the chief of staff position?
National Review's Rich Lowry thinks so: "It's always seemed possible that Scaramucci would end up as Trump's chief of staff. Certainly, this makes sense for Scaramucci. Besides it being a more powerful position... his current communications gig probably has a limited shelf life."
I polled a few high-level White House sources. One said yes, one said no, one said nothing. | | During their phone conversation, Lizza says Mooch repeatedly asked him to identify his sources, even appealing to his patriotism...
"'Who leaked that to you?' he asked. I said I couldn't give him that information. ... He continued to press me and complain about the staff he's inherited in his new job. 'I ask these guys not to leak anything and they can't help themselves,' he said. 'You're an American citizen, this is a major catastrophe for the American country. So I'm asking you as an American patriot to give me a sense of who leaked it.'"
On "New Day" this morning, Scaramucci told Lizza, "When I was speaking to you last night, Ryan, I said it was unpatriotic that you weren't telling me who the leakers were.... I was teasing you. It was sarcastic. It was one Italian to another." | | Memo to Mooch: Leaks won't stop | | Republican strategist Alex Conant says the leaks won't stop:
"Trump's White House is not leaky because of a few bad apples. The No. 1 reason why it leaks is because his team lacks unity. It's not without irony that many of the leaks are about the very staff infighting that is causing the leaks.... Trump has failed to unite his team (let alone the American people) around an organizing principle that is larger than defending the president's own reputation....
"The leaks will stop only if President Trump instills a culture of unity, loyalty and self-discipline in his administration... If the current culture does not change, the leaks will continue no matter how many White House aides are sent to join the tourists on Pennsylvania Avenue."
To put a finer point on it: There are a lot of senior administration officials in this White House who leak. If Priebus is one of them, he's hardly alone. | | New episode: Will Trump wind up like Nixon?
Elizabeth Drew covered Watergate for the New Yorker and is now covering Trump for the New York Review of Books. She talks with Brian Stelter about why she is happy the Russia scandal didn't earn the '-gate' suffix, and about the differences and similarities between Nixon and Trump.
Listen here! | | Michiko Kakutani steps down | | End of an Era: "Michiko Kakutani, the New York Times chief book reviewer and Pulitzer Prize winner, who has been, by a wide margin, the most powerful book critic in the English-speaking world, is stepping down," Vanity Fair reports.
"My gratitude & thanks to the NYT," Kakutani tweeted after the news broke. "Moving on to focus on longer pieces about politics & culture, though i will always love & write about books."
Why it matters: Kakutani was the rare book reviewer with the power to make or break an author's reputation... She also may have been the only Times critic who could get away with comparing Trump to Hitler. | | Another one!: "Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter James Risen is leaving The New York Times after nearly two decades, a distinguished run that included standout reporting on the Sept. 11 attacks, the Iraq war, and rampant government surveillance," Huffington Post's Michael Calderone reports.
Speaking of a war on leaks... Risen "also successfully battled two Washington administrations trying to compel him to reveal a confidential source." | | MSNBC's Kasie Hunt gets show | | A little bird tells us that MSNBC's Kasie Hunt is getting her own weekend show.
The details are still being finalized but as of now the show is set to air on Sundays. Hunt is a campaign and congressional reporter who previously worked at the Associated Press, National Journal and Politico.
An MSNBC spokesperson declined to comment. | | Showtime gets Trump animation | | "Stephen Colbert will executive produce a new half-hour animated series about Trump and 'the most powerful family in the world,'" our colleague Frank Pallotta reports. "The series, which is currently untitled, will premiere this fall on the premium cable network, which has ordered ten episodes...
"The animated show will 'present the truish adventures of Trump's confidants and bon vivants -- family, top associates, heads of government, golf pros and anyone else straying into his orbit -- intrepidly exploring their histories and their psyches, revealing insights into what makes them so definitively Trumpian,' according to the network." | | -- Twitter struggles to add users: "Twitter revealed it failed to add any new monthly active users during the June quarter. Worse still, its user base in the U.S. actually declined to 68 million from 70 million in the prior quarter." (CNN Tech)
-- "Facebook wants to help news publishers sell subscriptions": "Facebook says it doesn't want a piece of the revenue those subscriptions generate, or any of the data involved in the transaction." (Recode)
-- "New York Times aims to satisfy a new kind of digital subscriber": "Those joining as subscribers the last nine months skew somewhat younger and include a slightly higher percentage of women than the existing base." (Poynter)
-- Fox News gives the Times more than $100,000 to poke fun at the newspaper: "Fox ran a full-page advertisement in the Times on Thursday, blurbing a recent review in the newspaper that called the 'Fox & Friends' morning show 'the most powerful TV show in America.'" (Associated Press) | | Bezos briefly tops Bill Gates | | The Verge: "Amazon CEO [and Washington Post owner] Jeff Bezos is once again the world's second richest person, after a brief stint earlier today as the wealthiest individual on Earth...
"Amazon reported its second quarter earnings today, showing a profit of just $197 million on strong sales of $38 billion. The dip in profit, a drop of 77 percent from $857 million this time a year ago, is mainly due to Amazon's aggressive investments in its own business." | | Palin's lawyers want NYT emails | | | From our colleague Tom Kludt... "Attorneys for Sarah Palin want to get the private communications of more than 20 journalists at the New York Times as part of the former Republican vice presidential nominee's defamation lawsuit against the newspaper.... "Palin sued the New York Times last month over an editorial that inaccurately accused her of 'political incitement' prior to the 2011 shooting that killed six people and left former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords severely wounded. She is seeking at least $75,000 in damages." | | Were protests really to blame for NFL ratings drop? | | Our colleague Ahiza Garcia flags a new J.D Power study on NFL viewership and attendance that's been causing a stir online:
"News outlets reported that 26% of viewers cited last season's National Anthem protests as their reason for watching and attending fewer NFL games... But maybe we shouldn't come to that conclusion so quickly. As sites like The Big Lead pointed out, it wasn't actually 26% of fans – it was more like 3%."
"Of the over 9,200 people in the study, only 12% said they'd watched less," Garcia writes. "Of that 12%, only about 300 people (3%) blamed the protest.
"While the NFL did have lower ratings last season, there were several contributing factors, including the dramatic presidential election, lackluster matchups and oversaturation. During the playoffs, when the matchups were good, ratings rebounded." | | -- "Chris Cillizza reaches new heights": "CNN is banking on Cillizza... as a simulacrum of an 'everyman' who can reach out across the great American political rift, needling both Democrats and Republicans with relentless hot takes." (CJR)
-- "Radio made Dan Patrick powerful in Texas. And it's helping him stay that way": "Now that he's mostly off the airwaves and in the lieutenant governor's seat, Patrick's station continues to push his conservative agenda." (Texas Tribune)
-- Farhad Manjoo on BuzzFeed's Tasty: "Tasty is just two years old, but by several measures it is now producing some of the most popular digital content in the world." (NYT) | | NYT OK's Mooch's profanity | | Three tweets from New York Times deputy managing editor Clifford Levy regarding the paper's unusual decision to publish Scaramucci's profane language in full (just as we did):
"NYT published Scaramucci's profanity after top editors, including Dean Baquet, discussed whether it was proper. We concluded that it was newsworthy that a top Trump aide used such language. And we didn't want our readers to have to search elsewhere to find out what Scaramucci said." | | In light of Scaramucci's conversation with Lizza, we leave you with the Case for Cursing, by NYT's Kristin Wong:
"As children we're taught that cursing, even when we're in pain, is inappropriate, betrays a limited vocabulary or is somehow low class in that ambiguous way many cultural lessons suggest. But profanity serves a physiological, emotional and social purpose — and it's effective only because it's inappropriate...
"[S]wearing... can also offer catharsis. ... Curse words can help you more accurately communicate your emotions, which contradicts the folk belief that people use profanity because they lack vocabulary skills. ... Some research also finds a link between swearing and honesty. For example, a study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science concluded "profanity was associated with less lying and deception at the individual level." | | | What do you like about this newsletter? What do you dislike? Email us... we're at reliablesources@cnn.com... we appreciate every email. | | | Get Reliable Sources, a comprehensive summary of the most important media news, delivered to your inbox every afternoon. | | | | | |
