In a July 24 appearance on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Anthony Scaramucci, the newly-minted White House communications director, promised he would go after leakers, “find other ways” beyond traditional media outlets to “deliver information,” and confirmed that he would combat the media’s “double-standard.” This strategy mirrors the rantings from Sean Hannity on his radio program and Fox News show.

Hunting and purging leakers in the government

Scaramucci promises to fire “leakers” on his staff.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Let's talk a little bit about the statement that you made here. “Any leakers are going to be shown the door,” does that also include deep state leakers? Because there was one report --



ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: So, let me -- let me rephrase that for your listeners, it's the leakers that I have control over, okay? So, I sit in the comms shop now, I report directly to the president, had a very crisp meeting with him this morning about some of the things I'd like to do, got his green light. I met with about 40 or so people in the Roosevelt Room, here in the West Wing shortly thereafter, and sort of laid out what i want to do culturally here to make people understand where I'm coming from. And so, very very binary, like I said to Jake Tapper, “You are going to leak, you are going to go outside on Pennsylvania Avenue, and you're going to sell postcards to the tourists.” It's just that simple.



HANNITY: Well, I --



SCARAMUCCI: If you're not going to leak, you can stay here and work. You gotta make a decision.



HANNITY: I think one of the harder things to find is gonna be the 125 leaks from within the intelligence community --



SCARAMUCCI: Yeah.



HANNITY: -- against the President. I mean, we had one late last week again, and this one was against Jeff Sessions, and it seems like it just never ends.



SCARAMUCCI: Yeah, so that's a -- totally separate topic, and so unfortunately it is outside of my authority. But what I will say there is that we are going to start a process of bolstering the exposure of those as well. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/24/17]

Hannity: Trump should fire everyone in the executive branch who Isn't loyal to him “because he’s got to end the leaks that are plaguing this administration.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Let's go back to 1861, President Abraham Lincoln he created a team of rivals, a so-called team of rivals, a cabinet of rivals including adversaries that he ran against the Republican primary. While President Lincoln sought to unify his party through cabinet selections, he also executed an extensive government purge. He fired over 75 percent, nearly 1200 people. Out of 1500 bureaucrats that worked in the executive branch that President Lincoln feared could be disloyal. It's time now for President Trump to follow Abraham Lincoln's example and fire anyone and everyone who was actively working against him in government.



[...]



Because he’s got to end the leaks that are plaguing this administration.[Fox News, Hannity, 3/9/17]

Circumventing traditional press to get better news coverage

Scaramucci: “If I can’t get the help from the mainstream media,” “we’ll find other ways” to “deliver information to the American people.”

ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: We’re going to try to keep this as transparent as we can, and as open. I don’t think we’re going to be able to fight through a lot of the mainstream media nonsense, I think they’re just going to go off the hook into the direction they’re going in, but we’ve got very sharp people here on the comms team. We’re going to reinvent the way we deliver information to the American people, and if I can’t get the help from the mainstream media, of giving the president a fair shake, we’ll find other ways to do that. On -- certainly, the president does that with his social media situation.



SEAN HANNITY (HOST): I honestly have seen a shift and a change just before you came onboard, and then we saw a lot of it this weekend, I mean -- I think the exchange we just played with you and Jake Tapper is a really good one, “Well Jake, I know you’re trying to come up with analogies on the fly, but good try, it doesn’t work here,” or Kellyanne was on CNN, and Doctor Gorka’s two appearances, Anderson Cooper and Alisyn Camerota went viral. I do think that they have gotten away with way too much, and I think there has been far too little pushback, in my humble opinion. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/24/17]

 

Hannity led the charge to get Trump to abandon traditional media. Sean Hannity has devoted himself to promoting the notion that Trump should not have a press office in his White House and should use other methods of reaching out to the American people outside of the mainstream media. [Media Matters, 12/14/16]

Scaramucci echoed Hannity’s claim that Trump’s communication strategy should combat the media’s “double standard”

“You and I were separated at birth”: Scaramucci tells Hannity he agrees completely with his comments on combating the media’s double standard.

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): How do you combat all of -- all of this double standard at one time? Are you going to -- are you going to take these issues to the media?



ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: Yeah, so you know you and I were separated at birth, you just happen to be Irish, right? You know that about yourself, right? So, everything you just said, you know, I 1000 percent agree with.



But what I said from the podium on Friday was that, you know, the Navy SEALs have a great line, that the only way that you can eat an entire elephant is to take one bite at a time. So, the first thing that I’ve got to do, Sean, is I’ve got to clean up the culture here in the comms shop, and I have to stop the internecine civil warfare among the personalities and the egomaniacs.



Once they stop shooting at each other, we can subordinate all of that to the president’s message. Once we get that under control, we can start dealing with the stuff that you’re referencing -- but I 1000 percent agree with you that we’ve got to start going in that direction. [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 7/24/17]