Late-night hosts on Scaramucci's rant: 'That’s what you do when you quit, not when you start'

Extract from The Guardian

Late-night TV roundup

Comics, including Stephen Colbert, Trevor Noah, and Seth Meyers, addressed the White House communications director’s foul-mouthed outburst

Trevor Noah on Scaramucci: ‘I don’t blame Reince. It’s like being Hannibal Lecter’s chef.’ Photograph: YouTube

Jake Nevins

Saturday 29 July 2017 02.08 AEST Last modified on Saturday 29 July 2017 02.28 AEST

Late-night hosts addressed White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci’s rant to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza on Thursday, poking fun at the string of profanities directed at colleagues Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon.
Stephen Colbert began: “I am feeling blessed tonight thanks to one man: White House communications director and guy-ordering-a martini-at-the-bowling-alley, Anthony Scaramucci.”

“I was worried when Sean Spicer left that the communications office at the White House would lose some flavor,” he joked. “Little did I know he was going to be a replaced by a guy who serves up some very spicy quotes.”
Colbert began with the a line from one of Scaramucci’s on-air interviews earlier this week, in which he explained he is a “front-stabber” rather than a back-stabber like other Washington politicans.
“Yeah, he would never stab someone the back. A gentleman stabs someone from the front so you can watch the life drain out of their eyes,” Colbert quipped. “As much as I’ve enjoyed the things that Scaramucci has said so far in his one week on the job, we got an incredible taste of unfiltered Mooch today when New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza published details of a conversation he had with Scaramucci last night.”

Colbert continued: “Lizza reported yesterday about Trump’s dinner with Scaramucci, Sean Hannity and some other guys. Now, the Mooch called up Lizza to try to get some news out of him about who leaked the dinner. But Lizza protected his source, so the Mooch said, ‘OK, I’m going to fire every one of them and then you haven’t protected anybody, so the entire place will be fired over the next two weeks.’”
“Mooch, you do realize he’s still not going to give you the names?” the host continued.
“The Mooch was pretty sure he knew who the leaker was: chief of staff Reince Priebus, who he described as a ‘paranoid schizophrenic’,” Colbert explained, before parsing Scaramucci’s vulgar comments about senior White House adviser Steve Bannon.
“The Mooch says he was doing this for all the right reasons,” Colbert said, going on to quote the portion of the conversation regarding Bannon. “’I’m not trying to build my own off the fucking strength of the president. I’m here to serve the country. I’m not Steve Bannon. I’m not trying to suck my own cock.’”
“Good for you, Steve,” Colbert joked.

Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah also weighed in on the man who’s dubbed himself ‘the Mooch’.
“The new communications director hasn’t even been here a week and already he has his own scandal,” Noah began. “Now, we can’t go through all of the interview because it will break our bleep machine.”
Noah began with Scaramucci’s comments about Priebus being a “paranoiac.”
“I don’t blame Reince,” the host said. “It’s like being Hannibal Lecter’s chef.”
“I love Scaramucci already,” Noah said. “He’s cussing out all his co-workers. That’s what you do when you quit, not when you start. You can’t get this big a shitshow at 3am in Berlin.”

Noah then moved on to discuss Donald Trump’s latest attacks on his attorney general Jeff Sessions, suggesting it’s not politically expedient to put the former Alabama senator on blast. The host aired a clip of Trump claiming he’d have never hired Sessions if he knew in advance he would recuse himself from the Russia probe.
“Ah, if you knew in advance what Sessions would do, you would’ve picked someone else,” Noah said. “Now you know how America feels about your presidency.”
He continued: “Donald Trump’s anger makes no sense. Sessions had to recuse himself from the investigation into the Trump campaign because he was part of the Trump campaign. You can’t investigate yourself; it’s one of those things that’s best done by another person, like surgery or haircuts.”
“So, because Sessions can’t protect Trump from Mueller,” Noah explained, “Trump now wants to get rid of Sessions. The only problem is the tiny man has big friends.”
He then showed footage of several GOP senators coming to Sessions’ defense this week including Lindsey Graham, who said that if the president fired Sessions there would be “holy hell to pay.”
“You see those Republicans supporting Sessions? They’re explaining what Donald Trump has forgotten. On a pure political level, Sessions is exactly the wrong guy for Trump to mess with. And not because he’s so powerful but because of what he represents,” Noah explained, adding that Sessions was the first GOP senator to formally endorse Trump last year. “Before Sessions joined his campaign, Trump was a joke in Washington. Sessions didn’t just bring his cookies to the campaign, he brought credibility.”
Finally, Seth Meyers, too, took aim at the communications director’s posturing towards the press.
“As we all know, Donald Trump has cast himself as a champion of the working class,” Meyers began. “But throughout his presidency, he’s actually done very little to improve the lives of those working people. He’s either done needlessly cruel things that nobody asked for, like banning transgender soldiers, or he’s actively trying to make their lives worse by taking away their healthcare. But Trump thinks he can get away with it because he’s billed himself as a crusader against the elite.”

“So when new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci did an interview with the BBC this week, he was asked why Donald Trump himself is not an elite and gave a less than convincing answer.”
Meyers then aired a clip of Scaramucci telling a BBC reporter that Trump is not an elite because he eats pizza and cheeseburgers, to which the reporter replied, “everyone eats cheeseburgers and pizza, what are you talking about?”
“The Trump administration is so insane even the British are getting flustered now,” Meyers joked. “It’s worth noting this interaction went a little differently than the last time Scaramucci spoke with the BBC, in 2015, before he took a job with Trump.”

Meyers then showed Scaramucci’s well-documented criticisms of the president during the campaign, including his statement that, should Trump win the presidency, he is “looking forward to the BBC helping me find a flat somewhere in London.”