Why Donald Trump could never tolerate someone who was more like Donald Trump than he was

Trumpland had no room for another grandstander

Was it all of 10 days? When historians of Donald Trump’s strange, bubbling brew of an administration look back to this summer, it will seem like a wonder that Anthony Scaramucci ever lasted so long.

When he was first rolled out back on 21 July – it already feels so long ago – he looked the deal. Aviator shades, plenty of hair gel, a dark suit stylish enough to be coveted by a Wall Street tycoon, and an obvious desire to please his new boss. He even had a silly nickname that the media loved.

And almost before he could be asked about it by reporters, he apologised for comments he had made two years ago about Trump being “anti-American”.

“I should have never said that about him, so Mr President if you’re watching, I apologise for the 50th time for saying that,” said Mooch. He then went on say how much he “loved” Trump.

And for those first few days, everything seemed to go well. Commentators pointed out that Trump clicked much more with Scaramucci, the loud, brash Italian-American, than he did with his ousted spokesman, Sean Spicer.

He thought Spicer was too soft on the press and didn’t like his suits; Scaramucci, meanwhile, was someone Trump could understand, a fellow New Yorker with a similar swagger and bravado.

It was even reported that when Scaramucci opened up to New Yorker reporter, Ryan Lizza, and called Trump’s then chief of staff Reince Priebus a “f**king paranoid schizophrenic”, the President admired his fighting talk and wished that Priebus had responded in kind.

When it was reported that Scaramucci had also suggested that Trump’s advisor, Steven Bannon, possessed such gymnastic flexibility he could perform certain sex acts upon himself – or at least, that he tried to – the White House said he was a “passionate guy” who had used colourful language.

But over the weekend, it seemed the Oval Office’s love for Scaramucci was evaporating as quickly as the early morning mist that can settle on the National Mall

In truth, two things almost certainly did in for him. One was the arrival of former general John Kelly as Trump’s new chief of staff, a military man who intends to enforce a chain of command and who would not tolerate a freelancing director of communications bragging about reporting directly to the President.

The other is that in his effort to emulate Trump – to be his “Mini-Me” – Scaramucci forgot the ultimate rule of Trumpland, namely that there can only be one Donald Trump. As CNN analyst Gloria Borger said, “there can can only one star in the constellation” and that is Trump. There simply wasn’t space for another grandstander.