Anthony Scaramucci has never exactly been subtle about Donald Trump. The former White House communications director, whose time inside Trump’s first administration was famously brief but politically unforgettable, appeared on Alex Wagner’s Runaway Country this week and delivered one of the more colourful summaries of the president’s latest chaos.
The Qatari jet problem
The subject was Trump’s retrofitted Qatari jet, the plane he has been using as a kind of replacement Air Force One, despite two new official presidential aircraft already being built to the security standards required for the job. Trump was reportedly forced to switch planes after leaving the NATO summit in Turkey, with the New York Times reporting the change was prompted by Secret Service security concerns amid renewed threats connected to Iran. Trump denied that security was the reason, claiming instead he wanted to show off the newly renovated plane to US troops stationed in the UK.
Wagner pointed out that reporters on Air Force One leaving Turkey were told to close their window blinds, something normally associated with war-zone precautions, and played a clip of Trump at NATO being asked about threats against him. “You should have told me that years ago, maybe I wouldn’t have run,” Trump said. “It’s a very dangerous profession. No, I’m number one on the kill list for Iran. I don’t really care because I’m doing my job and I’m doing it, I hope, better than anybody’s ever done it.”
Wagner suggested Trump seemed to think the danger sounded “kind of cool.” Scaramucci agreed: “Yes, he’s trying to make it sound cool. That is part of his brand, you know, the ‘fight, fight, fight’ when the shots were fired in Butler, are all part of his brand.”
‘If he touches it, it’s going to turn to dogshit’
Scaramucci argued the jet was not an isolated fiasco but part of a pattern. “All of it is tied into each other. And the plane is an example of that, right? It’s an unfinished plane. We have an unfinished, fractured East Wing. We have an unfinished, now, reflecting pool. And so this is Donald Trump. If he touches it, it’s going to turn to dogshit.”
Wagner noted that two new Air Force One jets are already under construction to proper security specifications, suggesting Trump had rushed the Qatari jet simply because it was more luxurious. “He just rushed the Qatari jet because I guess there’s like lie-flat seats and warm nuts available right after takeoff or whatever. But the reality is, it’s a security concern.”
That is the heart of the issue. Air Force One is not supposed to be a luxury branding exercise. It is a flying command centre for the president of the United States, built around national security needs rather than personal taste. The worry over the Qatari jet is not whether the seats are nice, but whether a plane gifted by a foreign government can ever be treated as a normal presidential aircraft without raising serious security, ethical and diplomatic questions. Scaramucci’s answer was simple: “It makes him look bad. It makes us look bad. This is the definition of Trump. This is unfinished business. The reflecting pool, the East Wing, the plane, the Iranian war, it’s all emblematic of the unfinished nature of Donald Trump.”
The Mark Rutte line
Scaramucci also took aim at NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, who has faced sustained criticism for his public praise of Trump. “The guy Mark Rutte, though, he’s the one that I love the most. He thinks he’s a Trump whisperer, but I think he’s a Trump suppository.” This is not the first time this specific criticism has been levelled at Rutte. A Danish reporter at the same NATO summit asked him directly whether sitting silently beside Trump’s threats against Greenland and Spain affected his self-respect, a question Rutte answered by pivoting to praise for Trump’s role in raising European defence spending. This despite Rutte having previously shown he is capable of pushing back directly on Trump, rebuking the president’s false claim that European allies would not defend the US.
Scaramucci went further, claiming Trump privately mocks the leaders who flatter him most. “He takes Rutte’s obsequious ‘call me daddy’ text messages and he shows them to people on Truth Social and he mocks Rutte. He mocks his cabinet members.” According to Scaramucci, Trump talks most often with Canadian prime minister Mark Carney, a leader he actually respects, while treating Rutte’s public deference as a private joke. “The people that stand up to him are the ones he respects.”
The decline question
Wagner pushed Scaramucci on whether there is a difference between Trump’s usual erratic behaviour and something suggesting genuine decline. Scaramucci said he can see changes: “There’s something also happening to him where you can see it in his posture, and you can see it in the decline of his muscularity. He’s shrinking. And he’s got an unsteady gait now. And you can see it in his phraseology. He’s down to a lot less words. He never was a big wordsmith, but he has contracted his vocabulary by several thousand words now.” This should be treated with appropriate caution, since Scaramucci is not Trump’s doctor, but his framing was as much political as medical: increasing reliance on repetition and spectacle rather than substance.
The gold signs and the autocrat aesthetic
Wagner described the White House as beginning to resemble a late-stage autocrat’s palace, citing new gold signage around the West Wing, Oval Office and Rose Garden, a “presidential walk of fame,” and talk of a golden eagle atop the Truman balcony. Scaramucci’s explanation was blunt: “Do not misunderestimate Donald Trump’s need to trigger liberals.” He argued Trump filters decisions through a narrow lens: will it get attention, will it make him money or glory, and will it upset liberals. The White House décor, in his telling, matters not because it’s the most important issue in the world, but because Trump wants people talking about it.
The World Cup row
The conversation turned to Trump’s intervention in the World Cup, after he pushed FIFA over the suspension of US striker Folarin Balogun ahead of the United States’ match against Belgium. FIFA allowed Balogun to play; the US lost anyway. Scaramucci agreed with Wagner’s framing that this damaged America’s global standing: “It just hurt our brand. Everything he does hurts our brand.” The US team had been a genuine underdog story people might naturally root for, he argued, “then Trump entered the story. So Trump took the air out of that.”
‘He owns the Democratic Party’
One of Scaramucci’s sharper points was aimed at Democrats rather than Republicans. “Donald J. Trump, he runs the Democratic Party. Because Donald Trump is a white cue ball on the billiard table of Democrats. He smashes into them, they break in pieces, they don’t have a fight together in a coordinated strategy.” His argument was that Trump thrives precisely because opponents make every political choice reactively rather than building a disciplined alternative.
The Republican cowardice point
Scaramucci was harsher still about Republicans, arguing many privately dislike Trump and privately know he is unstable but refuse to say so publicly. “They’re such cowards. That’s the thing long remembered will be the cowardly acts of the Republican Party.” He added: “Just so your viewers and listeners know, the people working for Trump know he’s nuts. They fake liking him. There’s very few people on planet Earth that like Donald Trump.”
Why the jet matters
The Qatari jet story could sound like just another odd Trump subplot. But Scaramucci’s argument was that it captures the whole thing: a foreign government gives Trump a luxury aircraft, he wants to use it because it looks and feels good, security concerns emerge, he denies the obvious issue, and the story becomes about his taste and image rather than national security. That is why he tied it to the White House renovations, Iran, his ongoing feud with Giorgia Meloni, NATO and the World Cup. In his telling, these are not separate scandals but expressions of the same governing instinct: unfinished, self-centred, performative and damaging. Or, in his less diplomatic phrasing, if Trump touches it, it turns to dogshit.
You can watch the clip below:
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