Donald Trump's new communications chief attacks White House colleagues in sweary tirade

Anthony Scaramucci launched a foul-mouthed rant against Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and Chief Strategist Steve Bannon.

Anthony Scaramucci lasted just 10 days as White House communications director, with his spell ending before the end of July. His tenure was dominated by the fall-out from an expletive-laden rant to a Show more

The White House's new communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, has attacked two of his senior colleagues in a foul-mouthed rant with a journalist.

Scaramucci, who was appointed in his role by US President Donald Trump just last week, described chief of staff Reince Priebus as a "f***ing paranoid schizophrenic" and accused chief strategist Steve Bannon of being desperate for media attention.

Ryan Lizza, a correspondent for the New Yorker, said that he received a phone call from Scaramucci on Wednesday evening concerning a tweet he had posted earlier on that day.

Lizza had tweeted that the communications director had been having dinner with Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity and former Fox News executive Bill Shine, according to two sources.

Scaramucci was furious he had been told about the dinner and demanded to know the source of the information. When Lizza refused to say, he allegedly responded: “What I’m going to do is, I will eliminate everyone in the comms team and we’ll start over.”

Lizza, who is also a CNN contributor, wrote that Scaramucci became convinced that Priebus was responsible for the leak and vowed that he would be asked to leave the White House.

“They’ll all be fired by me,” he said, according to Lizza. “I fired one guy the other day. I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus—if you want to leak something—he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”

Using profanities, the 53-year-old remarked that Priebus had attempted to stop him from being appointed to the White House.

On Thursday Scaramucci made reference to the conversation in two Twitter posts but stopped short of apologising.

“I sometimes use colorful language,” he tweeted. “I will refrain in this arena but not give up the passionate fight for Donald Trump’s agenda.”

Two hours later he added: "I made a mistake in trusting in a reporter. It won't happen again."