Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci has a message for anyone who thinks Steve Bannon is just another political operative: think again. In a blistering post on X, Scaramucci called his former colleague "one of the most dangerous people in American politics" — and he didn't stop there.
"Steve Bannon is the worst human being you can meet," Scaramucci wrote, before offering a grudging acknowledgment of Bannon's talents. He conceded that Bannon is "charismatic, well read, conversant in history, and genuinely intelligent in certain ways." But then came the punchline: "But God made him so ugly in order to protect civilization from him."
The attack stemmed from Scaramucci's appearance on the podcast "We The Fifth," where he argued that Bannon's intelligence is a tool to legitimize isolationist and nationalist ideas in American politics. It's a theme Scaramucci has hit before — in a PBS Frontline interview, he admitted he hadn't fully grasped "how dangerous Steve Bannon actually is" during their time together in the White House.
The two men briefly overlapped during President Donald Trump's first administration, and their history is messy. Scaramucci's infamous 11-day tenure as communications director imploded in 2017 after a profanity-laced interview with The New Yorker, in which he vulgarized Bannon's efforts to build a personal media brand off the president. But while those earlier clashes were about West Wing infighting and media exposure, Scaramucci's latest critique is about ideology.
According to Scaramucci, Bannon's political playbook has three core goals: "dismantle free trade," "push black and brown people out," and "manufacture everything domestically behind walls." He described Bannon as someone "who wants to drag this country back to the 1890s."
Scaramucci warned that Bannon's intellectual aptitude makes his nationalist agenda especially potent. "He is one of the most dangerous people in American politics," Scaramucci wrote, "precisely because he's smart enough to make bad ideas sound serious."
It's a sharp reminder that in the world of political feuds, Scaramucci and Bannon are still going at it — and Scaramucci, at least, is framing it as a battle for the soul of American politics.
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