Ryan Lizza Punches Back At Anthony Scaramucci Claims About Profane Interview
Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker reporter who published portions of his gobsmacking phone interview with new White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, dismissed entirely Scaramucci’s description of what happened.
Scaramucci has said he “made a mistake in trusting a reporter” and “it won’t happen again.”
“Of course not,” Lizza told CNN’s John Berman on Friday morning, when asked if that’s what transpired.
“When the Communications Director for the White House calls you and tells you, on the record, that he’s about to fire the entire communications staff, that he has called the FBI to investigate the Chief of Staff at the White House, and that the Chief Strategist is engaged in autofellatio, I think that is a fairly newsworthy set of comments,” Lizza asserted.
“My job as a reporter is not to keep things private and confidential when the Communications Director tells me things. My job is to report them, so the public understands what’s going on at the White House.”
Lizza said he has “always” had a good relationship with Scaramucci and suggested “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 he had a subsequent conversation with Scaramucci “where he and I both agreed the interview was on the record and was public.” In that conversation, Lizza said Scaramucci told him “he had second thoughts about what he said.”
“But it was on the record and extremely newsworthy. And my job is to put that in the public domain.”
Meanwhile, as TV news continues to feast on the sensational story this morning, and Lizza made several on-air appearances to discuss, Scaramucci has so far kept a low profile. He also pulled out of plans to appear this weekend at Politicon, the annual media and politics convention that is at the Pasadena Convention Center tomorrow and Sunday.
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