Anthony Scaramucci claims he was victim of 'racial profiling' during White House stint

Exclusive: Donald Trump's former communications director, who has Italian heritage, claims media tried to portray him as a mafia boss

Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci addresses students at the Cambridge Union (Chris Williamson/Getty )

Anthony Scaramucci has claimed he was the victim of “racial profiling” during his time as Donald Trump’s communications director.

The former Goldman Sachs banker, who is of Italian heritage, said the US media had tried to “stereotype” him as a mafia boss. He lasted just 11 days in the White House before being sacked when Mr Trump appointed a new Chief of Staff.

Speaking at the Cambridge Union during a visit to the UK, Mr Scaramucci said: “There are a lot of movies about the mafia, there are a lot of mini-series about the mafia and unfortunately with my community – because I’m from the Italian-American community – you get stereotyped.

“What they were really trying to do was to stereotype me.”

Mr Scaramucci said journalists and commentators had compared him to fictional mobster Tony Soprano and written about him using the term “goombah”, which is slang for people of Italian descent and is often used in relation to the mafia.

Recalling the response to his first White House press conference, he said: “I’m coming off of the stage and the first headline is ‘Tony Goombah takes over the White House Press shop’. Then [NBC Late Night host] Seth Myers says that I’m a walking pinky ring.

“The disfiguring and the process of racial profiling started on me straight away.”

Mr Scaramucci accused the US media of ignoring his education and the fact he had sold businesses “for nine figures” before he began working for Mr Trump, claiming his career achievements had been cast “by the wayside”.

He said: “They wanted to forget the fact that I went to Harvard Law School, they wanted to forget the fact that I started two businesses in the United States that I sold for over nine figures each, they wanted to forget the fact that I was a trained economist at Tufts University, that I hosted a television show called Wall Street Week before I joined the administration.

“All of that had to go by the wayside and they had to find a way to disfigure me.”

During a bullish performance in which he repeatedly defended Mr Trump, Mr Scaramucci claimed the US President uses his Twitter account as a “Molotov cocktail” in order to troll journalists.

Recalling how he used to watch television stations CNN and MSNBC with Mr Trump aboard Air Force One, he said: “You’re literally sitting there 36,000 or 40,000 feet above the Earth and he’s tweeting from the plane, he’s got the Wi-Fi hook-up, it’s hitting the satellite and within two minutes there it is on MSNBC or CNN."

Calling Mr Trump’s social media use a ““disruptive voice” he added: “Most of those tweets were designed to literally set the hair on fire of the journalists. He literally used that device as a Molotov cocktail.

“If journalists were tweeting him or being critical of him, he would light the match and throw the Molotov cocktail through the little tweeting thing and we would watch their hair catch on fire as we were flying round America.”

Revealing that he remains in contact with Mr Trump, Mr Scaramucci said the US President is unlikely to go to war with North Korea and instead expressed confidence that a diplomatic solution will be reached.

He said: “The President is by nature a war avoider, not a war starter or a warmonger. By nature he has a general reluctance to deploying troops in situations.

“That’s my experience with him in private conversations and policy conversations and my experience of him as a human being, as a father and as a grandfather.”

Mr Scaramucci also told audience members who believe climate change is entirely caused by humans that they need to do “more research”.

He said: “I am not a climate change denier. I think it is 60 per cent caused by human beings and 40 per cent about where we are relative to the sun and what kind of activity is going on the sun... You’ve gotta do more research.”