Good evening, everyone. Welcome to this special edition of the lead. Im jake tapper. We begin tonight with breaking news in the politics lead. And just like that, poof, he was gone. Anthony scaramucci doing his best kaiser sose impression before he could begin. A weekend change after walking into the west wing. Scaramucci was asked today moments after general john kelly was sworn in as white house chief of staff. Officially scaramucci offered to resign. But sources tell cnn that general kelly wanted him out and scaramucci was escorted out of the white house. The retired marine general thought scaramucci undisciplined and without credibility after his profanitylaced tirade about since fired chief of staff Reince Priebus and steve bannon to the new yorker magazine on thursday. Today this is what the white house had to say about why he was ousted. The president certainly felt that anthonys comments were inappropriate for a person in that position. And he didnt want to burden general kelly also with that line of succession as i think weve made clear a few times. So President Trump thought that some vulgar comments were inappropriate. Grab him by the [ bleep ]. Do anything. This evening, a Senior Administration official told me that even before general kelly made his move this morning, President Trump had soured on scaramucci. The president loved him as a fighter in the first few des of his tenure, im told. But the president came to dislike how the son of long island in the president s view portrayed their relationship as closer than it was. The president didnt like how scaramucci loved the limelight, im told. After the new yorker imbroglio, the president was fielding calls all weekend recommending scaramucci do the fandango out the door. The president was happy when general kelly told him what he wanted to do because thats what the president wanted to do too. One of our Favorite Office games, there a tweet for that . Is there something in the at real donald Trump Twitter archives criticize as rival for something the president just did . And yes we have a winner from february 2016. Quote wow is ted cruz very disloyal to his very capable director of communication. He used him as a scapegoat, fired like a dog. Ted panicked. Scaramucci firmly holds the record for shortest tenure with a kardashian like marriage. But its not the first high profile exit from the white house. It took a few days before the Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post which on friday had depicted the Trump White House as the show survivor. They were forced to update its cover with two more now voted off the island, reince and mooch. The trump tribe has spoken. Jim, showing scaramucci the door was high on to do list for general john kelly as the newly minted chief of staff. Thats right. Its getting lonely on this island over here at the white house. Anthony scaramucci, ten days after he blew a kiss to reporters was essentially given the big kiss off by this white house, all part of another staff shakeup over here, something that has become a regular occurrence at this white house. But this time orchestrated by the new chief of staff john kelly, who apparently was brought in to bring in some order to a very disorderly white house. We just swore in general kelly. He will do a spectacular job, i have no doubt. Reporter a white house in chaos once again found itself spinning its way out of another round of staff turmoil just hours after a President Trump welcomed his new chief of staff, retired general john kelly to the white house, his recently hired and Embattled Communications director Anthony Scaramucci suddenly was out the door. General kelly has the full authority to operate within the white house, and all staff will report to him. I love the president. Reporter it was just 11 days ago when the man nicknamed the mooch pledged to improve white house messaging and praised outgoing press Secretary Sean Spicer and then chief of staff Reince Priebus. As it relates to shawn sean, it speaks volumes of him as a team player. His attitude is anthony is coming in. Let me clear the slate for anthony. And i appreciate that about sean and i love him for it. But i dont have any friction with sean. I dont have any friction with reince. The following week he went to war with priebus. Savaging the then chief of staff in a profanity laced to the new yorker. As you know from the italian expression, the fish stinks from the head down. Two fish that dont stink, okay, and thats me and the president. Reporter despite the president s own history of using questionable language, the white house said mr. Trump was bothered by scaramuccis comments. The president certainly felt that anthonys comments were inappropriate for a person in that position. And he didnt want to burden general kelly also with that line of succession. Reporter the white house said in a statement mr. Scaramucci felt it was best to give chief of staff john kelly a clean slate and the ability to build his own team. But sources told cnn new chief of staff john kelly had lost confidence in scaramucci. It was an immediate sign that kelly is aiming to bring order to a white house that has been rocked by near constant staff turmoil. The president had praised kelly as a miracle worker in his previous job with Homeland Security. You look at the border and the results weve had, and you look at the spirit. And with a very controversial situation, there has been very little controversy, which is Pretty Amazing by itself. So i want to congratulate you on having done a fantastic job, general. And we look forward to if its possible an even better job as chief of staff. Reporter but earlier in the day, the president took to twitter to insist all is well, out thing the nations stock market and Unemployment Rate before insist nothing white house chaos, a message echoed by press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders. If you want to see chaos, come to my white house with three preschoolers. This doesnt hold a canned toll that. Rival factions still in place, even with scaramucci gone, there are sharp elbows thrown by steve bannon, counselor kellyanne conway, even the president s family, all competing for president s attention. Don or ivanka trump hailed kelly as a true american hero. And the president s cabinet turned boardroom, kelly was able to observe another source of white house tension, the damaged relationship with attorney general Jeff Sessions who has gone from being trashed publicly to mr. Trump last week to sitting across the room from him silently today. And the president apparently had more problems with Anthony Scaramucci than just his comments to the new yorker, jake. Im hearing the same thing youre hearing. I talked to a source close to this president earlier today who said that the president simply did not like Anthony Scaramucci getting more publicly than he was getting. Jake . Only one primary. Jim acosta, thank you so much. You bet. Sticking with our politics lead, im joined now by my panel. We have with us Mary Katharine ham, author of end of discussion freshly out in paper book. Jennifer palmieri under president obama. She also worked on the clinton campaign. Joshua green of blockberg business week, author of another great book, devils bargain about the trumpbannon relationship. And we also have with us the source of all this problem, ryan lizza, the washington correspondent at the new yorker who interviewed Anthony Scaramucci, and that was im told the tipping point. Let us remind our viewers of what mr. Scaramucci told mr. Lizza. Quote, im not steve bannon. Im not trying to suck my own [ bleep ]. Im not trying to build my own brand off the [ bleep ]ing strength of the president. Im here to serve the country. He called Reince Priebus a [ bleep ]ing paranoid schizophrenic, a paranoid. Did you think this would result in Anthony Scaramucci being shown the door or did you think he was going to be able the get away with it, i guess . You know, when people asked me that after the column came out, he said hell either get fired or promoted. You just never know with trump. And it seemed like he was on the promotion track when Reince Priebus, his archenemy was summarily dismissed. But like you reported, jake, i had also heard something very similar before i published that piece. I did actually have an understanding that he was on a little bit of thin ice with trump and was one of the reasons he was pushing back so strongly to me not to publish. So there was it was already before the piece came out a bit of friction between scaramucci and the president. But, you know, sort of complicated set of moving pieces here, right . Scaramucci wanted Reince Priebus out. Bannon wanted scaramucci out. Kelly comes in and pushes him out. So i think one of the things thats not being noted today as much is steve bannon right now is in a very interesting position where he has sort of gotten what he wanted, sort of the survivor at the top of that cast of characters in the west wing. And lets turn to our resident expert on bannonology, joshua green. It is remarkable that steve bannon i mean scaramucci came in very clearly gunning for priebus and gunning for bannon. Exactly. Priebus is gone. Bannon is still standing, scaramucci gone. He is a a much more effective infighter than scaramucci anticipated. I think thats right. I think in this case he didnt actually have to do a whole lot besides hold his tongue and keep quiet. I dont know any reporters that managed to get bannon on the phone. He is smart enough to step back, recognize that scaramucci is blowing himself up and setting a land speed record for political self selfemmollation. The white house itself could learn a few things from that message. It could. Im going support Anthony Scaramucci, okay. He comes in. He is passionate about the president. Right. He loves the president. Right. He says he is going to improve relationships with the press. He does. He actually does improve relationships with the press. And, you know, yes, he cursed. And yes, his elbows were sharp. Is that really something that you wouldnt think would be acceptable in a Trump White House . I will Say Something in support of him as well in terms of this white house. I thought he was a more sincere representation of donald trump than sean spicer was or mike dubke was. If you want a Communications Director to communicate what the president values and represent his personality, i thought scaramucci was very effective at that. And i thought he could actually be an effective street fighter for trump, and trump is going to need that as you go as mueller day by day closer to whatever his final report is going to say. So it is remarkable, though, the one person who always survives is steve bannon. He has been in this world for almost a year now, which is a record in and of itself. For a nonrelative. For a nonrelative, came in the late center, and we were very dismayed about the clinton campaign. Got the president relatively disciplined for the last two months of the campaign. And i think while everyone has been focused on russia and rightly so and on health care, and rightly so, bannon and his team have been diagnose a lot of damage when it comes to immigration, when it is getting ready to deport dreamers and that guy survives. I think he has learned to pick his battles aly little better than he did at the beginning of the administration where he tried to be in every meeting and enact the trump agenda at once. After he was sort of cast out there in march and april, he learned that to survive you need to fall back a little bit. Maybe get embarrassed by a scaramucci coming in, not be on the cover of time magazine, not be on the cover of a book. He seems to have learned his lesson. Let me just ask you, there is this notion that President Trump only values loyalty to him, and there actually is no loyalty two ways obviously other than to his children. And you look at that tweet that he, the president sent out in our daily gym of is there a tweet for it, and there was. President trump faulting ted cruz for getting rid of his Communications Director so quickly after an event. I cant even recall what it was. It certainly is nothing like what scaramucci did. But i mean, is he a disloyal man, President Trump . I think trump sees different rules for himself than he sees for everyone else. I think weve seen that throughout all of this. I wrote a column maybe a year and a half with the grizzly man metaphor. Look, you can go camping it was about the gop aligning with trump and trying to make this work. Look, you can go camping with a grizzly bear for a while. You can even think you understand the grizzly bear and that he likes you. Eventually that grizzly bear is going the maul you. And that is what we continue to see. And he remains the guy who is the grizzly bear at the top of this organization. And he is volatile. And he decides what he decides any given day. And the question is there a guy who can go up against the grizzly bear and is, for instance, general john kelly that guy . Is he the leo decapri of the revenant. Helping to draft his sons initial misestimate about the meeting with the russian attorney that story next. Stay with us. 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Remission can start with stelara®. Talk to your doctor today. Janssen wants to help you explore cost support options for stelara®. Iso being cool comes naturally. On car insurance, hmm. I cant decide if this place is swag or bling. Its pretzels. Word. Ladies, you know when you switch, you get my bombdiggity discounts automatically. No duh, right . [ chuckles ] sir, you forgot keep it. Youre gonna need it when i make it precipitate. What, what . What . Welcome back to our special edition of the lead. My conversation with governor christie is coming up. First, the Washington Post breaking the story tonight, reporting that President Trump himself personally dictated the initial misleading statement about his eldest sons meeting with a russian lawyer. The statement reportedly was worked out on air force one on the flight home from the g20 summit in germany. Youll recall revelation after revelation. At first donald trump jr. Said he had only discussed russian adoptions with the lawyer, and that the trump tower meeting was insignificant. Later, his own emails showed he accepted the meeting because he expected dirt on Hillary Clinton from the russian government. Joining me now, tom, from your reporting, senior advisers wanted to take on a different strategy to don jr. s meeting. Thats right. Senior advisers to white house advisers and advisers to the president s inner circle recommended in the early going what they described to us as a more fulsome disclosure of what that meeting was like. In other words, it wasnt just be described initially as a meeting about adoption of russian children in the United States. It would in fact be more of a disclosure of what that meeting was actually about. Early on, our reporting shows that advisers to the president and the president s inner circle recommended because there were documents, these emails that you just spoke about were coming out, that it made much more sense to be transparent, to be forthcoming. Because later on, if you issue a misleading statement, it could come back to hurt you. But the president overruled . Thats what were reporting tonight. We have from multiple sources that it was the president who in effect overruled the recommendations from these group of advisers and from his inner circle. And what don trump jr. s lawyer has told us is initially they were inclined toward this more fulsome statement, and that ultimately, he declined to confirm, in fact told us he had no evidence that the president was the one who dictated this statement. But he said it was group worked out by what he called a communal group of lawyers and communications advisers. Interesting. Now White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee sanders repeatedly responded to questions on the meeting. Take a listen. Has President Trump had any communication with his son donald trump jr. Over the last several days . And was he involved in helping donald trump jr. Craft his statement over the weekend on air force one as was reported in the New York Times . Im not sure about specific communications and the nature of those conversations. I know that theyve spoken at least some point over the last few days. But beyond that i dont have any other further details. Response . Not that im aware of. I dont know the answer that, phil. So is that t