After months of being blocked by political rivals, Anthony Scaramucci had finally landed his coveted White House job.
Just 10 days later, the fast-talking Wall Street financier was unceremoniously fired, his wife had filed for divorce and he’d missed the birth of their child.
And if that wasn’t enough, Scaramucci no longer owned the company that made him a millionaire — he’d been forced to sell it to take on the role of White House communications director.
Scaramucci’s abrupt dismissal on Monday completed a saga that was strange even by the standards of a US presidency that is proving to be unorthodox in any number of ways.
Scaramucci burst onto the Washington scene on July 21 when President Donald Trump tapped the brash fellow New Yorker to craft the message for a White House seen by many to be in disarray.
“I love the president,” Scaramucci declared at an opening press conference during which he praised Trump as a “wonderful human being” who has “really good karma.”
He ended the event by blowing a kiss to the assembled reporters and television cameras.
In the following days, Scaramucci accompanied Trump on Air Force One, proudly posting a photo on Twitter of himself onboard the presidential jet giving the thumbs up sign.
While Scaramucci was reveling in his new dream job, however, things were apparently not doing so well on the home front.
The New York Post reported that his 38-year-old second wife had filed for divorce in early July and that Scaramucci had been travelling with the president when their second child, a son, was born.
Scaramucci responded by telling the media to “leave civilians out of this.”
– ‘I can take the hits’ –
“I can take the hits, but I would ask that you would put my family in your thoughts and prayers & nothing more,” he said on Twitter.
Scaramucci had indeed taken a few hits on his rocky road to the White House.
He sold his stake in his global investment firm, SkyBridge Capital, months ago to clear the way for a White House position only to be blocked by Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus.
Following his eventual appointment, Scaramucci sought to dispel reports of a feud saying he and Priebus were “a little bit like brothers where we rough each other up once in a while.”
But tensions were evident from the start.
White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who also opposed bringing Scaramucci on board, resigned the same day the 53-year-old former hedge fund investor joined the White House team.
And just days later, Scaramucci called a New Yorker reporter and went on an expletive-laden rant during which he called Priebus a “paranoid schizophrenic” and predicted he would resign.
Priebus was indeed out of a job later that week, replaced as Trump’s chief of staff by John Kelly, who had been heading up the Department of Homeland Security.
But the clock was also ticking on Scaramucci — Kelly, a no-nonsense retired Marine Corps general, fired him in one of his first acts as the new chief of staff.
Even before his firing, with his impeccably tailored suits, aviator sunglasses and slicked back hair, Scaramucci had become fodder for late night comedians.
He even came equipped with a memorable nickname, “the Mooch.”
But his tenure — while short at 10 days — is apparently not the shortest ever.
According to The Washington Post, president Ronald Reagan’s nominee for communications director resigned after less than a week in March 1987 when reports emerged he had been a member of a Nazi youth group as a boy.