Anthony Scaramucci blasted former President Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate Monday, calling the decision the “first obvious error” of the Trump campaign since securing the GOP nomination.
“First obvious error by Trump and team since he won nomination,” Scaramucci, who served briefly as Trump’s White House communications director and has emerged as a critic of the former president, wrote on the social platform X following news that Trump would select Vance.
“Trump didn’t want anyone who could take any credit for his electoral success. Or failure,” Scaramucci said in a subsequent post. “I look forward to the coming national debate on our democracy, electoral lies, and the future of this amazing country.”
Vance and Trump were both named officially to the GOP ticket Monday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Trump’s pick of Vance has been widely regarded as cementing the “MAGA” ticket for the GOP.
The 39-year-old first-term senator was elected in 2022 after winning a crowded primary with the help of Trump’s endorsement. Ideologically, Vance’s brand of conservatism has a more populist bent, and he has embraced Trump’s “America first” outlook on foreign policy, especially in his opposition to Ukraine aid.
A Marine veteran and Yale Law School graduate, Vance first gained fame for his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” which detailed his experience being raised surrounded by poverty and addiction and gained popularity as political observers sought to understand the rise of Trump in 2016.
Scaramucci has been critical of Vance in the past.
After Vance traveled to New York to support Trump in his criminal trial there, Scaramucci labeled the GOP senator a “spineless sycophant” and said Trump was “destroying the Republican Party.”
“So, there’s … very few people with any backbone left in that party,” Scaramucci said in a CNN interview in May. “And those people standing out there, they’re just spineless sycophants.”