Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci slammed The New Yorker Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza on Monday, calling the reporter a “very bad actor.”
In a podcast interview with former New York morning talk show host Craig Carton, Scarmucci said he has known Lizza’s family for years and “made a mistake of trusting the guy.”
“The Lizza and Scaramucci families have lived on Long Island and have known each other for 50 years,” Scaramucci said. “And I made a mistake of trusting the guy, and I shouldn’t have.”
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“There are relationship people, and there are transactional people,” he added. “He got me on a phone. It was recorded. I didn’t realize it was being recorded.”
The comments from Scaramucci come more than four months after he went on a profanity-laced tirade during an interview with Lizza that resulted in Scaramucci’s resignation from his role as White House communications director after just ten days.
The former financier’s targets included then-White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon and then-chief of staff Reince Priebus.
“I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own c–k,” Scaramucci, 53, said of Bannon. “I’m not trying to build my own brand off the f—ing strength of the President. I’m here to serve the country.”
He also accused Priebus of leaking stories to the press while referring to him as “a f—ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoiac.”
After the interview went viral, Lizza said Scaramucci needed to learn how to better deal with the press.
“I think he needs to learn a little bit about what it means to be communications director and how to interact with reporters,” Lizza said July 28 on CNN, where he is also a contributor.
“This guy’s obviously a very bad actor,” Scaramucci told Carton on Monday. “Karma’s a bitch. It’ll come back and bite him. You’ll see.
“You’re a transactional guy,” he added, addressing Lizza. “And you’re gonna have a transactional, miserable life.”
Carton, 48, was arrested on federal fraud charges in September for allegedly running a Ponzi scheme involving tickets to big events and was fired soon thereafter from WFAN-AM, a popular sports talk radio station in New York.