Liberal Forum

New White House comms chief caught on Russian TV saying he wants to lift US sanctions.

Donald Trump’s newly minted communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, wants to lift sanctions that were imposed on Russia in retaliation for its election meddling.

Scaramucci expressed this position in a pair of interactions with state-owned Russian media in January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, while he was serving on Trump’s transition team.

His comments echo recent actions from the Trump administration currently pushing for the sanctions imposed by the Obama administration to be eased.

Scaramucci told TASS, the state-run Russian newswire, that Trump “has an enormous respect for the Russian people and the legacy of the relationship that the US has with Russia” and that Trump was “signaling” that he hoped to improve the relationship in the coming year.

He said the sanctions put in place by President Barack Obama had “galvanized the nation” with Putin, and were having “an opposite effect because of Russian culture.”