On Wednesday, former Donald Trump staffer Anthony Scaramucci appeared on Stephanie Ruhle’s MSNBC show. To defend the character of his former boss. This is not surprising, but what is surprising is that Scaramucci spoke about it.
In perhaps the most perfect example in recent memory of failing to understand even the basics of a piece of popular culture, Scaramucci – known to have worked for Trump before being fired after only 2 weeks – compared Trump to the fictional Portrayed by Brian Cox in HBO’s “Succession” from media titan Logan Roy.
and to be clear, he thought this comparison was a Appreciation,
The weirdest bit of TV analysis came right after Scaramucci described Trump as a “family man” — which, well — and things only got weirder from here.
“This is a family man whether you like Mr. Trump or not. He’s like the Logan Roy of American politics, you have a love/hate relationship with his family,” Scaramucci said.
At this point Ruhle interrupted to clarify a few things about “succession.”
“Come on a minute. Logan Roy is not a family man,” Ruhle rightly said. “Ward Cleaver is a family man.”
“No no,” said a confused-looking Scaramucci. “You have to watch the show very carefully, he really loves those kids. It’s just this complete self-absorbed trap he’s put those kids in.”
Shortly after, Scaramucci continued this, uh, novel description of Trump and his family in the context of how the impending trial could affect his presidential race in 2024.
“Mr. Trump ran the Trump Organization with his kids, he ran the reality show, with the kids. Frankly, he ran the White House with the kids. Gone,” Scaramucci said shortly afterwards. “I don’t think he’ll make it into the Iowa primary.”
Ruhle said, “The way you describe a child’s love and the way I describe a child’s love are two very different things.”
“It’s uh, we have a lot of inactive people, Stephanie, I’m just analyzing it for you. You know, she, you can like her or dislike her, but there’s something that connects her to those kids is, no matter how useless it is. Scaramucci replied
Ruhle said, “Because they share his lineage and potentially, one could say he is an ultimate narcissist.”
“Although Steph, they hang out with her all the time,” Scaramucci said.
After a few seconds of Ruhle looking completely baffled, she dropped the subject and moved on.
You can watch the first part of this segment (via @Acyn on Twitter) at the top of the page, and see the continuation below:
Suffice to say, as seen on “Succession,” Logan Roy is many things — a womanizer, a man who abused and neglected his children while they were growing up, a powerful wealthy jerk. A greedy sociopath whose actions cause direct harm to the American political system – but two things he definitely is not are 1) a “family man” and 2) someone who loves, or has been loved by, his children.
Meanwhile, Trump faces 24 counts of felony business fraud stemming from using his campaign money to buy the silence of a woman who cheated on his current wife. He also did that whole January 6th thing. And according to a 2022 documentary that included interviews with Trump’s children, He pitted them against each other as they grew up, and played favorites,
So yeah, obviously it makes sense that Scaramucci would watch “Succession” and be reminded of Trump. But, perhaps he could have watched the show very carefully and understood that it is not the defense it seems to be.