‘If somebody walks into your office and says they’re friends with Donald Trump, they’re either exaggerating the relationship, or they don’t understand the relationship,” says Anthony Scaramucci. “Because nobody is friends with Donald. You’re a transaction in this guy’s field of vision.”
Scaramucci should know. He has been non-friends with Trump for more than 30 years, though these days he’s more an outright enemy. Just as the attention-devouring president once stalked Hillary Clinton on the debate stage, Trump looms large in Scaramucci’s story. The two men seem to haunt each other. When we meet in London during a stopover in his hectic schedule, the conversation rarely drifts away from Trump for more than a few minutes. Conversely, the 62-year-old financier and broadcaster has become one of Trump’s most vocal and penetrating critics. “We fight like New Yorkers,” Scaramucci says. “He doesn’t really come back at me, because he knows I’m going to come back at him.” Unlike Trump’s presumptive friends, Scaramucci does understand Trump, he claims. “There’s something called ‘Trump derangement syndrome’; I think I have ‘Trump reality syndrome’. I know what he is, I know what he does, I know what he’s capable of and I know the danger of him.”
