Nicholas: When you were in the White House, did you see any behavior from Trump that troubled you?

Scaramucci: There was only one specific conversation that I had with him directly, and that was over Russian sanctions. He didn’t want to sign those sanctions. That was back in July [of 2017]. And I told him, “You’re going to get overturned by the Senate. They’re going to override your veto, and that’s going to be emasculating. I think you should find a different fight.” He ended up signing them. I’m not saying he did it because of me.

Nicholas: What do you believe needs to happen now? Do you want to see the Cabinet invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment? Should Republicans defeat him in the primary?

Scaramucci: They’ve looked at the Twenty-Fifth Amendment—many of the Cabinet members have. And the big reluctance there is he has such an ardent base, he has such loyal, aggressive support, that I think they’re worried there could be some kind of social upheaval as a result of this. I think where it stands right now is he has to get beaten at the ballot box. There has to be a full-blown litigation of who he is, what he’s done, the damage he’s done to our society, and then you’ve got to hope and pray that the Democrats put up somebody that’s not a full-blown socialist.

Read: The lingering mystery of Anthony Scaramucci

What I’m hoping to do over the next three or four months is hit him so hard that we knock down his poll numbers. If we can knock them into the low 30s or high 20s [from his roughly 40 percent approval rating now, according to Gallup], it becomes a fait accompli, and like Lyndon Johnson [in 1968], he doesn’t run. That will make the field wide open. That’s the goal. I may have sucked as a communications director, but I’m a pretty organized entrepreneur.

Nicholas: When you went to work for him, you knew about the Access Hollywood tape, the insults of John McCain, the mocking of the disabled reporter, the Muslim ban, yet you were still willing to do it. Why?

Scaramucci: This is the dilemma. You can accuse me of being wrong, and misguided, and equivocating on the president’s behalf, and trying to rationalize that there were good policies, and so I would take the good with the bad. But I’m remorseful and contrite and regretful about all that. Now what I’m suggesting to people is, if you want to lambaste me for it, go ahead. But I’m encouraging people who want to defeat Trump not to do that to others. We have to create an off-ramp for people who made those same very bad decisions that I made, but also had the courage to admit they were wrong, and to come out in force against this man.

Nicholas: There are critics who say you’re doing this for publicity purposes. What is your response?

Scaramucci: I need this sort of publicity like a hole in my head. If I just stayed in the tank for Trump—I was getting a fairly requisite share of publicity—this is not the kind of publicity that people like. This takes a tremendous amount of gumption and courage to speak up and stand for the truth in a society right now where people are having a hard time and are confused by what the truth actually is. I’m taking tremendous incoming from both sides. If this was a move to create publicity, it was a fairly dumb move.