Scaramucci: A Man Out of His League

This past week to 10 days has been somewhat of a unique one at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, DC, with the continued onslaught of misguided tweets, a shift on policy involving transgendered soldiers, pressure being put on the attorney general he nominated, a failed vote to follow through on the campaign promise to immediately get rid of ObamaCare, and the replacement of the White House chief of staff.

And then there was the Anthony Scaramucci era, which ended less than two weeks after he was hired as the White House communications director.

While all these are major storylines on their own, this particular one intrigues me on several levels. As a former and current journalist and as a former and current PR professional, I am always interested and sometimes intrigued by who is tasked with working with the media in high-profile positions such as this one. For obvious reasons, this hire was particularly interesting, despite its short-lived tenure.

A financier by profession, Scaramucci was hired as the communications director on July 21^st with the intent of having him actually begin working officially in mid-August. His hiring led to the immediate resignation of press secretary Sean Spicer. After 11 tumultuous days, Scaramucci was relegated to nothing more than one of the selections on Trump’s “Apprentice” days. He was fired.

In between being hired and fired, Scaramucci may have actually done the primary thing he was brought in to do – get to the source of White House leaks to the media and eradicate that problem. Scaramucci focused in on WH chief of staff Reince Priebus as the leak and within days, Priebus was offering up his resignation. Ironically, it was Priebus’ replacement, John Kelly, who encouraged Trump to cut ties with the man known as “The Mooch” sooner rather than later.

I was embarrassed of how Scaramucci conducted business not only as a member of the media, but also as a PR flak. Despite what people outside the two industries may think, there is an expected level of ethics when it comes to how PR and media people interact. Scaramucci clearly had no clue how that relationship was expected to work.

Whether it was not knowing that calls to the press weren’t just assumed “off the record” or his calling in on a live show to confront a reporter, it was clear within days that The Mooch wasn’t used to working with the media. Entertaining, yes. Professional and ethical, no. Scaramucci was clearly out of his league in knowing how to work in this position and what was clear to Kelly in his first hours on the job was clear to most of us within minutes of the hire.

I do feel bad that Scaramucci had cut all ties to his apparently successful business in New York, and I feel even worse that his wife filed for divorce last week. But the truth is, this job wasn’t his to accept and he shouldn’t have been so arrogant as to believe he could handle it. For now, however, it appears that Scaramucci’s 15 minutes of fame lasted about 11 days.

My only hope is that we continue to have a leak in the White House so we can know what The Donald is up to when he isn’t tweeting. Because if what he is tweeting is dangerous, just imagine what is so “huge” that he isn’t willing to openly talk about it.