Donald Trump’s one-time communications director has sounded the alarm about his former boss with hours to go until the US election.
Anthony Scaramucci was responsible for the then-president’s media relations for 11 days in 2017, before he was fired following a profanity-laden conversation with a New Yorker journalist – which he didn’t realise was being recorded.
For a period afterwards, the brash New Yorker continued to sing Mr Trump’s praises. But after a bad-tempered Twitter fight, he changed his tune.
In recent years, Mr Scaramucci has joined several other former members of the Trump administration in vehemently criticising the Republican’s policies, attitudes, and temperament.
And with a little over 24 hours before polling stations open in an extraordinarily tense and unpredictable election, he has stepped up his warnings.
The ex-banker, now co-host of podcast The Rest is Politics US with Katty Kay, told the Sunday Times: ‘It’s incredible, but one of the people running for the most important job in the world is a fascist.
‘He’s talking about non-white immigrants the way the National Socialists talked about Jews. He’s dehumanising them.
‘So anybody that is standing with him is supporting a racist Nazi.’
He added that if he ever bumped into Mr Trump again, he would tell him: ‘You’re lucky you have secret service protection, because I’d smash the f∗∗∗ing caps right out of your mouth. You are a piece of s**t.’
In a separate interview with investment platform Saxo, Mr Scaramucci said he would be voting for Kamala Harris because ‘she’s a constitutionalist and she’s for our system’.
He continued: ‘[Trump]’s talking about shaking the system and going after his enemies.
‘Imagine a politician who wants to go after his enemies in a democracy that has free speech, versus if you were railing against her and she won, you would have zero worries about her coming against you.’
Mr Scaramucci is not the only former official in the Trump administration who has been warning about the implications of a second term.
John Kelly, who was Mr Trump’s longest-serving chief of staff, told the New York Times last month: ‘Certainly the former president is in the far-right area, he’s certainly an authoritarian, admires people who are dictators — he has said that.
‘So he certainly falls into the general definition of fascist, for sure.’
Journalist Bob Woodward reported that Mark Milley, who was chair of the joint chiefs of staff under both Mr Trump and his successor Joe Biden, described the Republican candidate in similar terms.
In his new book War, he quoted Milley saying: ‘He is the most dangerous person ever.
‘I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country.
‘A fascist to the core.’
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