If you thought the downfall of Eric Swalwell couldn’t get messier, CNN just added a twist — a sympathy tour, courtesy of none other than Anthony Scaramucci.
During a segment on The Lead, stand-in host Anderson Cooper looked visibly caught off guard when the famously blunt former Trump aide decided to strike a surprisingly soft tone toward the embattled California Democrat — who just torched his own political career amid a storm of scandal.
Swalwell has been hit with a barrage of accusations this month, including claims from multiple women that he fired off explicit messages — unsolicited nude photos and videos among them. That alone would sink most careers. But it didn’t stop there. A former staffer has leveled a far more serious allegation, accusing him of sexual assault while she was intoxicated.
Swalwell has admitted to what he calls “mistakes in judgment,” but insists he never crossed into criminal territory. Meanwhile, his political world has collapsed at warp speed. Staffers have bolted from both his congressional office and his now-defunct gubernatorial campaign. A sizable bloc of current and former aides has publicly backed the accusers. And investigators aren’t sitting this one out — probes are underway by the Manhattan District Attorney and the House Ethics Committee. That’s not exactly a PR hiccup.
By Sunday night, Swalwell waved the white flag on his California governor ambitions. Less than 24 hours later, he went further — announcing he’d resign from Congress entirely as bipartisan pressure mounted to shove him out the door anyway.
Enter Scaramucci, offering what sounded less like political analysis and more like a Hallmark card. “I’m going to play to the human side,” he said, urging Swalwell to focus on his wife and kids. “Get this thing fixed up at home… my heart goes out to him.”
Scaramucci even drew from his own headline-grabbing past, referencing the rocky period in his marriage during his blink-and-you-missed-it White House stint. According to him, personal repair is possible, and that’s where Swalwell’s focus should be.
“Family first, and get it together,” he added.
Cooper, to his credit, tried to steer things back to reality, reminding viewers that these are “very serious allegations.”
Scaramucci didn’t exactly dispute that. Instead, he suggested politicians often struggle to come clean quickly, noting Swalwell’s public posture has shifted from outright denial to something a bit… more flexible.
“He was denying, denying,” Scaramucci said, before adding that Swalwell now appears to be “widening the level of truth.”
