Anthony Scaramucci, the newly hired White House director of communications, is well-prepped in challenging US Presidents.
He once described his current boss, President Trump, as a “hack politician” during the Republican primaries, although the new comms chief now insists neither he nor Trump cares about what was said back then.
However Scaramucci was properly put in his place during a live TV Q&A on US network CNBC session back in 2010 with then-President Barack Obama.
Hedge fund manager Scaramucci, who went to Harvard Law school at the same time as Obama, spoke to the then-President about Wall Street reform following the global financial crisis some years prior in 2007-2008.
He told Obama: “I represent the Wall Street community, we have felt like a piñata.
“Maybe you don’t feel like you’re whacking us with a stick but we certainly feel like we’ve been whacked with a stick.
“I certainly think that Main Street and Wall Street are connected and if we’re going to heal the society and make the economy better, how are we going to work towards that, healing Wall Street and Main Street?”
Obama then responded by eloquently pointing out that the bankers were far from the only ones to have been affected by that crisis.
He replied: “I have been amused over the last couple of years, this sense of somehow me beating up on Wall Street. I think most people on Main Street feel they got beat up on.
“There’s a big chunk of the country that thinks that I have been too soft on Wall Street. That’s probably the majority, not the minority.”
He was met with rapturous applause from the studio audience back then and with even more approval online now as people on Twitter reminisce back to a different, perhaps simpler time.