Anthony Scaramucci Says Trump Lies 'Because He Thinks It's Fun'

The former White House communications director argued that the president's base loves it.
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Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci, who famously held his post for 10 days before being abruptly fired, has a theory on President Donald Trump’s penchant for lying.

“He does it because he thinks it’s fun,” he told CNN’s John Berman during a Friday appearance on the network, adding that “he also does it because he likes the fact that you guys are talking about it.”

No matter the reasons for Trump’s tenuous grasp on the truth, erroneous and deceptive statements have become a fixture of his presidency.

According to The Washington Post’s Fact Checker column, which last updated its tally on March 31, Trump has made more than 9,400 “false or misleading claims” since assuming office.

Among his favorite topics to spin are the U.S.-Mexico trade deficit, the southern border wall, which he routinely asserts is being constructed even though it is not, and claiming he passed the largest tax cut in U.S. history. In reality, the Reagan administration approved a far larger tax cut in 1981. Even the Obama administration was responsible for two cuts that surpass Trump’s.

However, Scaramucci believes the president’s problem with facts plays well with his base of supporters.

“At the end of the day, for him, he’s figured out that there’s a very large group of people inside of our population that, when he does it and the media talks about it, they laugh,” he said, admitting he’s told Trump, “Hey, you don’t need to do that.”

Scaramucci was ousted in July 2017 immediately following a profanity-laced rant to The New Yorker in which he slammed then-chief of staff Reince Priebus along with then-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon and threatened he would “fucking kill” leakers within the administration.

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