REUTERS/Joshua Roberts
Anthony Scaramucci had the shortest tenure of any White House communications director ever.
Anthony Scaramucci's expletive-ridden, late-night phone call to New Yorker reporter Ryan Lizza ultimately led to his quick ouster as White House communications director.
Just 10 days after President Donald Trump named him to the post, new chief of staff John Kelly asked Scaramucci to resign, largely because of the outcry from people inside and outside of the White House following the phone call.
On July 26, Scaramucci called the reporter, who he had spoken to before, from the car on the way to the airport.
In an episode of "The New Yorker Radio Hour" published on Thursday, Lizza said he was in his bedroom at home when his phone rang around 10:30 p.m. He named the file "insane Scaramucci interview."
The next day, The New Yorker published what Scaramucci said in that interview. Lizza said he talked to Scaramucci before they published, explaining that it was newsworthy because he was the White House communications director, which Scaramucci said he understood.
"What I want to do is I want to f------ kill all the leakers and I want to get the president's agenda on track so we can succeed for the American people," Scaramucci told Lizza that night.
And: "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own c---," he said, speaking of Trump's chief strategist. "I'm not trying to build my own brand off the f------ strength of the President. I'm here to serve the country."
While the text reads as if Scaramucci was furious and yelling, the audio reveals that the two were laughing, sometimes joking with each other. Lizza calls him "buddy" at one point. You can listen to the audio for the first time in the podcast. The expletives have been bleeped out.