Scaramucci on Trump Charlottesville statement: The president “needed to be much harsher”

Impact

Fired former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci criticized President Donald Trump on Sunday for not clearly condemning the display of violence from white nationalists at a Saturday rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left at least three dead and 35 more injured.

In his first televised appearance since he was ousted from his White House post, Scaramucci told This Week host George Stephanopoulos that — were he still Trump’s communications director — he would not have written the fiercely criticized statement Trump gave on Saturday, shortly after the car attack that killed a 32-year-old woman and injured several more.

“I wouldn’t have given that statement,” Scaramucci told Stephanopoulos. “I think [Trump] needed to be much harsher as it related to white supremacists.”

Scaramucci then applauded national security adviser H.R. McMaster for acknowledging as terrorism the fatal attack at the “Unite the Right” rally.

The former White House communications director’s remarks refer to a controversial statement Trump gave Saturday condemning violence “on many sides” — rather than violence from white supremacists and neo-Nazis gathered at the rally.

“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides,” Trump said in a press conference at his New Jersey golf course. “This hate and division must stop, and it must stop now.”

The president’s failure to give a full-throated condemnation of white supremacy sparked an immediate firestorm of criticism from both sides of the political aisle. Scaramucci’s comments on Sunday mark the first criticism of Trump’s statement from a former Trump White House staffer.

Scaramucci was fired from his position in Trump’s White House following an embarrassing, expletive-filled interview with the New Yorker. His ouster came just ten days into his tenure.