SHORT-LIVED WHITE House communications director Anthony Scaramucci says if it were up to him, top adviser Steve Bannon would be gone from President Donald Trump’s administration.

But, he notes, “it’s not up to me”.

“The Mooch”, a few weeks removed from his spectacular flameout following an expletive-laden conversation with a reporter, appeared last night on CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert has seen his ratings soar since Trump’s inauguration with his relentless comedic attacks.

Colbert showed a picture of Scaramucci and former White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus glaring at each other. Scaramucci said there was “no love lost” between the two.

He said he and Priebus got along well when he was writing cheques to the Republican National Committee, which Priebus once led. Scaramucci said he knows Trump “as a compassionate person”, while reiterating that he thought the president should have spoken more harshly than he did initially of the white supremacists involved in the violent protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Of Trump’s frequent off-the-cuff remarks, Scaramucci said, “That’s him wearing his heart on his sleeve.”

Opinion of Steve Bannon

Bannon’s critics label him a white supremacist. Scaramucci said that he and Bannon had not discussed his beliefs, but he believed the former Breitbart News CEO was a member of the “alt-right”.

“I’ve never sat with Steve Bannon and said, ‘Hey are you a white nationalist or a white supremacist?’ But I think the toleration of it by Steve Bannon is inexcusable.

“I find it disgusting and reprehensible and I will renounce it every day of my life.”

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that media mogul Rupert Murdoch recently urged President Donald Trump to sack Bannon.

Murdoch made his plea during a White House dinner before Trump left for a holiday in New Jersey on 4 August, the Times said.

The timing means it preceded the violence that broke out over the weekend at a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, leaving one dead and 19 wounded.

The dinner was also attended by Jared Kushner, one of Trump’s closest advisers and the husband of his daughter Ivanka, and Trump’s new chief of staff John Kelly, the paper said, quoting a person familiar with the conversation.

The paper quoted a dozen current and former Trump aides and associates who have knowledge of the situation.

Murdoch, a founder of Fox News, which Trump is said to watch assiduously and often praises as he criticises other mainstream media as sources of fake news, is close to Kushner, the Times said.

And Kushner does not get along well with Bannon, it added.

With AFP

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