“The Mooch” was a character – and a name – made for late-night comedy.
In the days after Anthony Scaramucci’s appointment as White House communications director, late-night hosts introduced their mobster-like imitations of the fast-talking, brash New Yorker. They came up with a slew of puns, comparisons and words that rhymed with “mooch.”
Stephen Colbert said he looked like a “lawyer whose ad is above the urinal.” Seth Meyers called him the “human embodiment of a double-parked BMW.”
“I could go on and on . . . you know what, let’s! He definitely calls waitresses, ‘Sweetheart,’ ” Meyers said last week on NBC’s “Late Night With Seth Meyers.”
Indeed, late-night hosts could have gone on with the quips much longer. But their one-liners had a short shelf life. On Monday, after only 10 days with Scaramucci in the White House, President Trump fired him at the urging of new White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly.
So naturally, late-night hosts were in mourning. Sort of.
“The Late Show With Stephen Colbert”
“I come to you tonight as a broken man,” Stephen Colbert said on CBS’s “Late Show.” “Because just this afternoon I was shocked by this breaking nooch.”
The show staff had just finished creating a cartoon version of Scaramucci, Colbert said. (It was unclear if he was joking or not).
Just days earlier, Colbert welcomed Scaramucci to his post, singing a rendition “Bohemian Rhapsody” (“Scaramouche, Scaramouche, can you do the fandango?”).
But on Monday night, Colbert switched to the more somber part of Queen’s famous song, changing the lyrics to “Mama, I just got canned . . . barely got to the White House, said some dumb stuff now I’m out . . . Mama, my job had just begun, and now I’ve gone and thrown it all away.”
“Now I guess it’s time to say goodbye,” Colbert said. “We hardly knewcci.”
He joked that it was time for him to get rid of all of his mooch memorabilia – his “moochandise.”
Anthony Scaramucci blows a kiss to reporters after addressing the daily briefing at the White House on his first day as communications director July 21, 2017.
“Ten days,” Colbert said in reference to Scaramucci’s brief tenure, “That’s not even a whole pay period! His going away party can serve what’s left of his welcome cake.”
Colbert staged a going-away party for the exiting communications director, complete with re-purposed decorations from a welcome party. The word “Congratulations” on balloons was changed to the word “Congratulater.”
“He said he was gonna fire everybody,” Colbert said, “And I gotta admit, he delivered.”
“The Daily Show”
On Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” Trevor Noah also took a sarcastically melancholy approach to bidding the Trump-like New Yorker farewell, featuring an “in memoriam” tribute similar to those broadcast at the Academy Awards.
“The guy got fired before the job began!” Noah said, in reference to the fact that Scaramucci’s communications job was not supposed to start until Aug. 15.
“It’s like the song of the summer,” Noah said. “Scaramucci came into our lives, made everyone obsessed with him for like a week, and then left us with nothing but memories and a bunch of weird moves.” He showed a video clip of Scaramucci blowing a kiss during a news conference last week.
Noah discussed the decision to replace Reince Priebus with Kelly, a retired Marine general, comparing it to Trump sending himself to boarding school to get disciplined.
“Why do they keep bringing in new people as if we don’t all know what the real problem is?” Noah said. “It’s like Donald Trump is a tornado and the White House keeps hiring new maids” to clean up the mess, he said.
“Late Night With Seth Meyers”
On “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” the host noted that Scaramucci’s tenure was as long as his last name. He joked that Trump has fired so many members of his White House staff that “at this point getting fired is part of orientation.”
He talked about how Priebus was ousted shortly after Scaramucci’s public, vicious feud with Priebus.
“Scaramucci got Priebus fired, and then he got fired two days later,” Meyers said. “That’s like telling someone ‘see you in hell’ and then literally showing up in hell the next day.”
“The Tonight Show”
Jimmy Fallon, in recounting the news of the day, he added a make-believe twist: “This was a little awkward. When Scaramucci called an Uber to pick him up at the White House, Sean Spicer was driving. Imagine the odds of that happening.”
Spicer, of course, resigned as the White House press secretary on the day of Scaramucci’s hiring.
Fallon also mentioned the news last week that Scaramucci missed the birth of his son last week, when he was in West Virginia with Trump. Scaramucci reportedly sent his wife a text reading, “Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child.”
“Trump was like, you don’t text your wife after she has your baby,” Fallon quipped. “You tweet her.”
A lawyer representing Scaramucci’s wife told the New York Times Sunday the reports about the text message were false.
“Jimmy Kimmel Live”
Jimmy Kimmel, meanwhile, joked he landed the first “exclusive interview” with Scaramucci after his firing which, of course, wasn’t true. The fake audio played was almost entirely bleeped out because of profanity – spoofing Scaramucci’s vulgar rants in a New Yorker interview.
With all the shake-ups in the White House, Kimmel said, it’s only a matter of time before Trump replaced Ivanka Trump, his daughter and a White House adviser, with his other daughter, Tiffany.
Then, Kimmel summed up the night: “How did we lose the Mooch already?”
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