When Anthony Scaramucci, the big-league hedge funder and Republican fund-raiser, signed on to join his fellow deep-pocketed New Yorker Donald Trump’s finance committee on Monday, it was a sign that the moderate, moneyed wing of the G.O.P. was finally coming to terms with their presumptive nominee.
Up until recently, there was not exactly a whole lot of love lost between the two. As Kevin Roose of Fusion points out, “the Mooch,” as he is affectionately known on Wall Street, called the Donald a “hack politician” on Fox Business Network last summer, telling viewers that he was “very divisive” and that his campaign would “eventually implode.”
“I’ll tell you who he’s going to be president of. You can tell Donald I said this: the Queens County Bullies Association,” he deadpanned to the camera. “You’re an inherited-money dude from Queens County. Bring it, Donald. Bring it.”
But as Trump brought his campaign closer and closer to the necessary delegate count, picking off the two candidates Scaramucci initially supported along the way (first Scott Walker_, followed by Jeb Bush), the Mooch began the slow process of deflating his puffed-out chest and eating his words.
He shared a piece of advice with a crowd lunching at the Hunt & Fish Club, according to Vanity Fair contributing editor William Cohan: don’t underestimate Trump, whom he now believes will be the next president. “Listen, I ran out of holidays. I said on TV he was going to be out on Labor Day. I said he was going to be out on Thanksgiving. I said he was going to be out on Christmas. I ran out of goddamned holidays!” In early May, on the eve of the Indiana primary that turned out to be death knell for both Ted Cruz and John Kasich, Scaramucci told NPR’s Steve Inskeep that while Trump wasn’t his first choice, it was just about time to “pull together on behalf of the party.”……..