Chris Cuomo confronts Scaramucci over White House turnover: ‘Who runs a business like this?’

CNN host Chris Cuomo confronted former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci over President Trump’s high staff turnover in a Monday interview, asking, “Who runs a business like this?”

In an appearance on CNN’s “New Day,” Scaramucci acknowledged that Trump has had a series of high level staff departures in recent weeks, but said they were all “strategic.”

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“If the president is making more changes, and he’s making more strategic changes in personnel, maybe that will smooth things out on a going-forward basis,” Scaramucci said.

“Who says it’s strategic?” responded Cuomo, a frequent critic of Trump.

“It’s been such a bloodletting of people. We’ve never seen this kind of turnover. He said he would bring in the best people. That’s one basis of criticism. But this doesn’t seem to be about strategic choices. It just seems to be like, ‘You’re out,’ and we don’t know what his vision is,” he said.

Trump has seen communications director Hope Hicks, national security adviser H.R. McMaster and economic adviser Gary Cohn leave the White House in recent weeks, along with John Dowd, a member of his legal team. Trump also fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“What happens in the first two years of every business is you have heavy turnover,” Scaramucci said. “He is an entrepreneur. The American people elected not a politician.”

“Who runs a business like this?” Cuomo interjected, before asking Scaramucci if he’s turned over 45 percent of his staff in a year at his own businesses. 

“That’s called a bankruptcy,” Cuomo added.

“This is a start-up,” Scaramucci said. “The way you’ve got to look at a start-up, he is trying to put personnel on the field that like him, like his personality.”

Cuomo responded by asking if the White House, “the highest echelon of executive activity in our democracy,” was a start-up organization.

Scaramucci said Trump’s economic policies were proof that his White House is functional.

Earlier this month, Scaramucci told Cuomo that the morale in the Trump White House was “terrible” under chief of staff John Kelly.