(Bloomberg) -- Anthony Scaramucci, who had a brief but explosive stint as communications director under President Donald Trump, says the White House is “blowing the lead” it had built up over the last two years with the stalemate in negotiations over the U.S. government shutdown.
The hedge fund manager and political consultant, nicknamed ‘The Mooch,' said he would tell Trump's staff to “knock it off.” The president is currently understaffed and has been surrounded by “disloyal” people, said Scaramucci, who was fired after 10 days in the White House in July 2017 following what he called “a mistake.”
“You've got to cut a deal because what you're doing is you're disrupting the U.S. economy and you're disrupting the global economy due to your egos,” Scaramucci said in an interview with Bloomberg Television's Tom Keene and Francine Lacqua from Davos. “I think it's very, very stupid.”
The economy is going to slow down, said the founder of investment firm SkyBridge Capital. The record-long partial government shutdown has entered into its second month as Trump continues to demand $5.7 billion in funding for a border wall, which is opposed by Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi.
People are “going to start doing what the president does not want them to do, they're going to start conserving capital, slowing down their investments into capital infrastructure for their companies etc, and hoarding cash again,” Scaramucci said.
The problem is that both the White House and the Democrats “can't save face” anymore, Scaramucci said. “They're both sitting there and they can't come up with a strategy where one blinks. They can't do that because that hurts their fundraising, that hurts their base.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Chitra Somayaji in London at csomayaji@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam at sbhaktavatsa@bloomberg.net
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