(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump needs to do an about-face -- and quickly -- from his controversial embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin's denial that Moscow meddled in the 2016 elections, former White House adviser Anthony Scaramucci said.
"This is a glaring optical mistake. It's a glaring strategic mistake," Scaramucci said on CNN of Trump's equivocation yesterday over U.S. intelligence conclusions about Russian election meddling. "If you don't reverse course immediately, unnatural alliances are going to start to form both inside Washington and outside Washington."
Trump's conflating accusations that his campaign colluded with Russia with the intelligence community's assessment that Moscow interfered in the election, said Scaramucci, who served less than two weeks as the White House's communications director before being forced to resign. Scaramucci, who has remained close to Trump, said the president is getting “emotionally charged."
The episode could alienate Republicans who looked past Trump's other mistakes -- his recorded remarks about grabbing women and his refusal to denounce neo-Nazi protesters -- as well as undo goodwill Trump has amassed from a strong economy, Scaramucci said.
"If he doesn't switch course on this, what will happen is eventually he will lose people who want to support him," the hedge fund manager said.
What's required now is for someone in the White House to sit with the president and tell him the truth, Scaramucci said, comparing the situation to the children's story “The Emperor's New Clothes.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Terrence Dopp in Washington at tdopp@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Derek Wallbank at dwallbank@bloomberg.net, Elizabeth Wasserman, Kathleen Hunter
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