Changes at SNL

Vanity Fair has an article by William D. Cohan about Anthony Scaramucci:

You’ve got to give Anthony Scaramucci some credit. The former hedge-fund manager and, yes, Goldman Sachs alumnus, is now Donald Trump’s new communications director, whatever that turns out to mean in this unconventional administration. Will he replace the departed Sean Spicer as the one delivering the overall message on the Sunday morning shows? Or is he angling to replace his nemesis Reince Priebus, who tried to thwart Scaramucci as chief of staff? Or, hell, is he going to just take over the entire cabinet? As one top White House official told Politico on Friday morning: “This was a murdering of Reince and Bannon. They said Anthony would get this job over their dead bodies.” And yet it happened nevertheless. Anyway, these are questions only he and Trump can answer.
In the meantime, as this is getting sorted out, you have got to acknowledge Scaramucci’s chutzpah and determination. It has now paid off big time, assuming that you think being in the white-hot center of the Trump administration is a just reward for someone who is a decent, honest, and hardworking guy. Some would say that saddling Scaramucci with Trump’s mishegas is more torture than one man deserves to endure. But not Anthony Scaramucci; he could not be more thrilled. According to a source with knowledge, he is said to be “pumped” about his new appointment.
This doesn’t surprise me. I’ve known The Mooch for years, interviewed him many times and enjoyed his company repeatedly at his annual SALT conference in Las Vegas, Nevada, which has become one of the premier hedge-fund conferences in the industry, at least if you want to see and be seen. After failed forays supporting Scott Walker and Jeb Bush, Scaramucci decided last year to go all in for Donald Trump, and now he’s finally got what he’s apparently been angling for since November: a seat at the big-boy table in the Trump administration.
It wasn’t easy. Early on, it appeared that Scaramucci was going to become the liaison between the White House and the business community. But, since his deal to sell his stake in SkyBridge Capital, his thirteen-billion-dollar hedge fund of funds, to HNA, a large Chinese conglomerate, had not closed, he was prevented from taking a significant job. So Scaramucci laid low, and remained a good soldier. He made numerous television appearances defending the president’s appalling behavior and questionable legislative decisions. He remained excruciatingly loyal.
As it looked like the SkyBridge deal was getting nearer to closing (it still hasn’t) Scaramucci took a temporary job at the Export-Import Bank, which Trump had once slated to close, but then had a change of heart. Scaramucci presumably knew it was a temporary job, but he showed up and did what he was asked to do. The idea was that when the SkyBridge deal closed, he would head to France as the Ambassador for the Organization of Economic Co-Operation and Development. The OECD job would present two nice perks. It would have given him a role, if minor, in the Trump administration. It also would have allowed him to defer the taxable gains he gets from the sale of SkyBridge. (This huge tax benefit is available to nearly anyone going from the private sector into government.) “Please visit,” he e-mailed me on 5 July.
This carefully crafted plan, however, appeared to change again recently in the wake of Scaramucci’s performance in calling out CNN, one of Trump’s least-favorite media outlets, for linking him to the Russia-related investigations. Three senior CNN journalists ended up resigning after Scaramucci’s pushback against the article, which reportedly included the threat of a hundred-million-dollar million lawsuit if the story was not retracted. CNN did as he wished, and he thanked the organization publicly. “CNN did the right thing,” he tweeted. “Classy move. Apology accepted. Everyone makes mistakes, moving on.”
Around this time, it seemed, another door was coincidentally opening up for The Mooch. On 30 May, White House communications director Michael Dubke resigned. Meanwhile, as Spicer’s shop never appeared to meet the level of street-fighting antagonism demanded by Trump and Jared Kushner, some seemed to rejoice in The Mooch’s defiance during the CNN episode. According to The New York Post, The Mooch was treated like a “star” at Steve Mnuchin’s wedding, shortly after the scrape transpired. Then, earlier this week, Scaramucci met with Trump in the White House to make it official. For Scaramucci, entering the White House was perhaps a dream come true. Despite attending Harvard, working at Goldman and launching SkyBridge, he remains at heart a working-class guy from the north shore of Long Island. His family owned a tough-guy motorcycle shop. He accepted.
Last year, as the race between Trump and Hillary Clinton was heating up, I sat down with Scaramucci for an interview at his office at SkyBridge, overlooking Madison Avenue. He was his usual charming, practical self. He explained that he really admired and liked Trump, that he just wanted to be helpful to him and, like Trump, he was trying to get things done that help the American people. He wondered why we can’t all just get along.
This is some of what he told me about Trump and why he likes and admires him: “When you go back over a thirty-year continuum of him being in public life, I think what you see is a very pragmatic, very adaptive entrepreneurial personality,” he said. “I think you see somebody that’s also, somebody yelled at me for saying this, but I think he’s white boarding a little bit where he’s putting ideas up on the wall and he’s trying to say ‘Listen, I’m going to go in a lot of different directions.’ Someone says, ‘Oh, he wants out of NATO. He’s rejecting NATO.’ Okay, I didn’t hear that. What I heard was ‘Hey, listen, I would like the NATO nations to abide by what’s in the treaty. There’s a certain percentage of GDP that they have to contribute to their national defense. If they’re not going to do that, and therefore they’re going back on their bargain inside of NATO, we need to readdress NATO.’ People hear a big screech on that. When he’s talking about the immigration issue, people say okay, he hates Hispanics. Well, clearly he does not hate Hispanics, and clearly he’s got a lot of Hispanics working for him, and he’s got a lot of Hispanics that like him. But the messaging around it gets soured by the media.”
He told me that he thinks Trump is “a very fun guy” who has “great analytical depth”. He said Trump has “very good instincts” and is a “naturally talented” politician. He then recounted a story of how he flew back with Trump, when he was still a candidate, on his private jet from a rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There were 25,000 people in the audience. “He cuffed his speech,” Scaramucci recounted. “The crowd was roused.” They made their way through the security and back on to the Trump jet. “He’s eating Wendy’s, which I guess is part of his blue-collar billionaire status,” he continued. “Chomping down the Wendy’s. The plane’s taking off. I look over to him. I say, ‘I’ve got to just ask you this. Is there anything about this process that you dislike?’ Meaning running for President. He looks at me, he’s got a big grin on his face, he says ‘I can’t think of anything.’”
Scaramucci continued: “Now imagine asking Secretary Clinton that or some of these other politicians, okay? So here’s a guy that likes what he’s doing. Has he made mistakes? I’ll let him judge that or I’ll let you judge that. Believe me, there’s enough critics out there that are judging every one of his mistakes.” He then explained how he saw his potential role working for Trump. “I’d like to introduce him to newer donors, entrepreneurs,” he said. “I’d like to expand the base of the Republican Party. I would like the Republican Party to be more inclusive, not less inclusive. I’m a gay rights supporter. I’m a human-rights campaign initiative person. You know that from the SALT conference. I’ve had transgender people speak at the SALT conference. I had Chad Griffin, who brought the Supreme Court case. I gave money to the human-rights campaign to help further that. I interviewed Joe Biden, then-Vice President Biden, at the World Economic Forum. But I’m also a Republican. I’ve also given to the America Unity PAC that gay rights activist Margaret Hoover, who was at the SALT conference, is involved with, which is helping Republican candidates be open to the idea of social progress or social equality. I’m a Republican. I’m probably not the cookie cutter Republican that fits the litmus test of Republican Party politics. But I don’t want to be that. I want to be a representative of what I hope will be a future bigger and broader Republican party.”
I have no idea if Scaramucci will be able to change Trump’s behavior in the White House. I suspect he’s smart enough not to even try, because he knows it can’t be done. You don’t change the behavior of a seventy-one-year-old man who has never listened to anyone and yet figured out a way to reach inconceivable levels of success. Nor am I particularly sanguine about my friend’s ability to cross the divide and bring people together in ways he has long talked about. I hope he can do it. But I am rooting for him. As Trump has repeatedly proven, he is an expert at stealing other peoples’ credibility. I hope The Mooch is not just his latest victim.

Rico says that Saturday Night Live will have to get someone else to do Melissa McCarthy's gig as Spicer:, now that  Scaramucci has replaced him.

NBC’s Saturday Night Live bid farewell to outgoing White House press secretary Sean Spicer on Friday night with a compilation of Melissa McCarthy’s most memorable moments impersonating the spokesman. "Spicey out," the show tweeted, along with a video showing clips of McCarthy running into reporters with her mobile press lectern and using props during her exaggerated impersonations.
The piece wrapped with McCarthy leaving the White House briefing room while clutching the mobile lectern, and with Aidy Bryant portraying incoming press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.
President Trump noted in a statement that Spicer’s briefings were widely-watched cable television events.
The high-profile and often combative briefings inspired McCarthy’s portrayal of Spicer in the show's most recent season. She was even seen filming for the show on the streets of Manhattan on the mobile lectern while impersonating Spicer.
However, Spicer did not find all of the skits amusing, telling Sean Hannity they were at times “malicious”. “I think that there were some parts of it that were funny, but there’s a lot of it that was over the line,” Spicer said. "It wasn’t funny. It was stupid, or silly, or malicious," he said.
Spicer resigned from his White House post on Friday after Trump appointed Anthony Scaramucci (photo, below) to be his new communications director: