Give it to the scriptwriters of the epic comedy that is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, they know how to keep an audience going. The blockbuster farce starring Donald J Trump – ‘the greatest show on earth’, even to its harshest critics – had begun to tire a little, of late. The Russia stuff goes on and on, but in our age of non-existent attention spans, the twists and turn are getting a bit exhausting. We all know that American health reform is important, but, let’s face it, the fate of Obamacare legislation and talk of ‘skinny bills’ doesn’t get the juices flowing. It’s not good for ratings, as Trump himself would say.
Enter, then, Anthony Scaramucci, the Mooch, a preposterous-looking Hedge-Fund Wise Guy with an almost Mafioso approach to dealing with enemies. Having wowed the rather-too-easily-impressed DC press corps in recent days with some self-deprecating jokes, the new White House director of comms has just gone and blown it all by ringing up New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza, and shouting obscenities about the people he doesn’t like in the White House. He also threatened to kill the leakers in the White House. Read the whole thing, but here’s a flavour:
‘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.’
Fake News! Fake News! Except he said it, and it’s so terrible it is hilarious. It’s like a brilliant pastiche of Goodfellas. Scaramouche (literally a ‘little skirmisher’), as clever people have noted, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell’arte. He is meant to entertain the crowd with his silly face and his affectations. The no doubt divine authors of the Trump saga know that people start to drift off in the summer months, and so have introduced this Mooch to keep us all laughing. Brace yourselves for the fandango.
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