TIME'S UP FOR TRUMP

Why Trump’s About to Get a Surprise Reckoning: Scaramucci

It’s the end of the GOP as we know it, one former adviser claims.

Donald Trump’s own political party is closer to breaking ranks with him than it appears, one former adviser to the president alleged.

Anthony Scaramucci, who infamously only lasted 11 days as communications director in the first Trump administration, said on The Daily Beast Podcast that if the 80-year-old president follows through with a potential summit alongside Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, it would be his own party’s downfall.

“If that meeting were to happen, that would be then I would tell you that the Republican Party is completely dead,” Scaramucci told the Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles. “We’d probably have to get a tombstone out. And you tell me the date of that meeting, and I will chisel it into the tombstone.”

A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to questions from the Daily Beast.

Earlier this month, the president made waves for suggesting a Yalta-style superpower meeting in November without Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. If such a meeting takes place, the Wall Street Journal reported, Putin plans to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine that favors the Kremlin.

“Anything I can do to end the war, whether somebody’s there or not, whatever I can do to end the war,” Trump said this week of the conflict launched by Putin nearly five years ago.

During an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump, Putin proposed the summit as relations between the two leaders have grown warmer over the last few weeks—alarming Ukraine, as well as its allies in Europe and Washington.

Trump’s relationship with Putin appears to have deepened after the passing of Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, the GOP’s fiercest Russia hawk.

Just last week, Trump quietly signed an executive order late Friday night waiving key sanctions on Russia two days before they were set to take effect—under a law named after the late senator.

The move followed Trump’s widely criticized decision to import Russian diesel in a bid to ease the global oil crisis sparked by his war against Iran, signaling continued coziness with Moscow as he called on Ukrainians to “get a new president.”

But Scaramucci believes that Trump participating in the summit would be a next-level declaration of loyalty—one that Republicans could no longer ignore.

“The Cheney, Bush, Romney, Reagan, Eisenhower Party dead, stick a fork in it,” Scaramucci said. “And so Trump should be very careful with that because, you know, he would probably ... he’s gonna push the envelope where he may be asked to leave the presidency.”

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Laura EspositoBreaking News Reporter

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