Wednesday, April 24, 2024

Anthony Scaramucci speaks July 15, 2016, at FreedomFest at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, Nev. (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

Anthony Scaramucci isn’t done embarrassing himself. With his 11 days in the White House, apocalyptically self-sabotaging appearance in the media, questionable family values and bewildering “Scaramucci Post” fading from memory, he’s decided to also flaunt his ignorance of the law by threatening the student newspaper at Tufts University.

The Tufts Daily and writer Camilo A. Caballero said Nov. 6 that the university’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy should drop Scaramucci from its advisory board because “Scaramucci has, in his career and actions, demonstrated nothing that would align his values with those of the Fletcher School. His presence on the board instead places the credibility of Fletcher at risk.”

Caballero gave a number of examples, including the reversal of views Scaramucci undertook when invited to work in President Donald Trump’s White House and a Twitter account dalliance with Holocaust denial.

Scaramucci took quasi-legal action and demanded an apology and retraction for “false and defamatory allegations of fact” and damage to his reputation.

There’s nothing to retract, of course. First of all, “The Mooch” has no reputation that can be damaged.

All that’s happened is that Caballero wrote, and The Tufts Daily published, an opinion piece relying on globally known stories of never-refuted behavior by a man who made himself a public figure and a laughingstock in virtually the same instant. He stepped into the spotlight, and its heat set him aflame. This is such an open-and-shut case of protected speech that it barely needs a response; if necessary, Caballero could go to court armed with nothing more than a laptop able to google Scaramucci’s name.

And Caballero’s correct: Tufts should drop Scaramucci from the advisory board immediately. His inclusion is shameful.