Anthony Scaramucci has broken down Donald Trump’s mental state in blunt terms after serving just 11 days as White House communications director.
Scaramucci, 61, sat down with the outlet Stories for its Honesty Box series and fielded questions about the president’s health now that Trump has reached 80. The former financier turned political commentator did not hold back, delivering a verdict that mixed reassurance with a sharp personal jab.
“I think that’s completely exaggerated. He’s fine,” Scaramucci said of the persistent dementia rumors circulating online. “He doesn’t have dementia, all that nonsense on social media. I’m not buying any of that stuff.”
He added a prediction about Trump’s longevity that seemed designed to frustrate his critics: “And he’s going to live a long time.”
The assessment turned more pointed when Scaramucci described what working alongside Trump revealed about his cognitive pace. He noted the president has “slowed up a little” and is probably deploying fewer words than in years past. Yet Scaramucci pointed to Trump’s packed itinerary as counterevidence to any decline narrative, ticking off a schedule that jumped from UFC fights to England, then to a midterm Republican convention in Texas and on to Ireland. “He’s moving around,” he said.
The core of Scaramucci’s diagnosis landed harder. “He was nuts at 40. He’s as nutty, if not nuttier at 80. So he’s just older,” he said. The line echoed his long transformation from Trump ally to one of his most colorful antagonists.
That rupture came into focus as Scaramucci recounted the specific Trump attack that left him shaken. The turning point, he explained, arrived two years after his July 2017 firing, during a 2019 appearance on Bill Maher’s show. Journalist Catherine Rampell, then at the outlet, pressed him about Trump’s tweet telling four progressive House members to “go back” to their countries of origin.
Scaramucci said he responded live on air that the president should never speak that way, and he grounded his objection in family history. The same slur had been hurled at his Italian American grandmother during the 1920s. “I don’t like that. He should not talk like that,” he recalled telling Rampell. “That’s racism. It’s American nativism.”
Maher pulled him aside after the taping with a warning. “Trump is going to light you up like a Christmas tree tomorrow,” the host told him.
The prediction came true. Scaramucci said Trump unleashed “all kinds of nasty things” against him the following day, and the volume and vitriol caught him off guard. “The first time I looked at it, I was like a little unnerved by it,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend otherwise. I mean, it’s the American President.”
His response came fast and carried a hometown edge. “I am not Ted Cruz. I’m a New Yorker. So I light him up,” Scaramucci said. He remembered reading Trump’s broadsides and thinking the president “must be getting old.” He also observed that Trump becomes enraged when mocked about his age and weight, and that the counterattack soon expanded to include his wife. Six or seven years later, he noted, the feud remains active.
Scaramucci had initially continued defending Trump publicly after his dismissal, he explained, precisely to avoid looking like a bitter ex-employee. The Maher appearance blew up that strategy.
The White House did not let Scaramucci’s latest remarks pass unchallenged. Spokesperson Davis Ingle fired back with a dismissal that leaned on the brevity of his West Wing tenure: “Anthony Scaramucci lasted 11 short days in the White House. He makes lightweights look credible.”
Scaramucci was brought in as communications director on July 21, 2017, and fired on July 31, ending a stint that became a symbol of chaos in Trump’s early administration. His rapid evolution from insider to outspoken critic has made him a fixture of cable news and podcast circuits, where he regularly revisits his microscopic government service for maximum rhetorical effect.