Trump adviser: Appointments are a blend of ‘insiders’ and ‘disrupters’

Anthony Scaramucci, a member of the executive committee of Donald Trump’s transition team, on Wednesday defended the president-elect’s promise to “drain the swamp” in the face of the finance bigwigs and D.C. veterans set to join the Trump administration.

Scaramucci, a financier and hedge fund investor, said Trump’s team is “superexcited” about the choice of former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as treasury secretary and billionaire Wilbur Ross as commerce secretary. Both nominees were officially announced earlier in the day.

“These guys are going to be the cornerstone of the economic and trade team working in conjunction with Mr. Trump and other pieces of the economic team,” Scaramucci told reporters in Trump Tower.

A reporter asked Scaramucci how those appointments fit with the president’s promise to be an outsider and to “drain the swamp” of corruption and cronyism in Washington.

“You have to remember, both these guys are — they do fit the outsider bill in the sense that they’ve never worked in Washington,” he said. “And so, what I would say to you is … we really want to put a great blend together in the sense that you want some people that are insiders and understand the system, and some outsiders that are creative thinkers, out-of-the-box thinkers and disrupters.

He added: “If you can get that blend right, then you’ll be able to affect change in Washington. I think if you put too many of one or the other, if you have status quo presiders, well nothing’s going to change. If you have too many status quo disrupters, Washington is a very healthy immunological system, you’ll see a full-blown organ rejection if you put too many status quo disrupters in Washington.”

Scaramucci pointed to Trump’s decision to name Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus his chief of staff and Steve Bannon, who was the executive chair of the far-right website Breitbart News, as a chief strategist. He argued this is proof the president-elect is “trying to get that blend right” and mixing outsiders with insiders.

“I think the picks of Stephen Bannon and Reince Priebus are an indication that we’re going to have the capability to do that. These guys are working terrifically well together. Reince knows the ropes in D.C. Steve really does have a sense for the American people and what’s going on in the heartland,” said Scaramucci.

Trump appealed to working-class voters throughout his campaign, and Yahoo News asked Scaramucci whether he thinks the administration would ultimately be a “populist” one.

“Well, it depends on how you define ‘populist.’ If you’re talking about an administration that’s focused on the potential for the United States and the potential for the American people, and where Mr. Trump wants to be president for everybody, which includes the working class and the middle class, then I guess by that definition,” Scaramucci said before trailing off.

Scaramucci went on to describe what he sees as populism.

“I don’t know. It depends on what your definition of ‘populist’ [is]. Sometimes there’s a misnomer to that definition that’s somewhat of a pejorative. I don’t see it that way,” Scaramucci said. “What I do see is that the people that I grew up with, which are basically the working-class people of the United States, they need a break. And we need to switch them from going from the working class into the working poor into what I call the aspirational working class, which my dad was a member of.”