Anthony Scaramucci — the Trump team member who received a groveling apology from CNN for its false story about him — told Newsmax TV on Wednesday he hopes the explosive mistake will compel journalists to "tighten up" their standards and stop trying to tear down President Donald Trump.
"Hopefully, a message has been sent that we need to tighten up these standards and let's focus more on the president's agenda and less on the politics of personal destruction," Scaramucci told "America Talks Live" host Rita Cosby.
"Hopefully the pendulum will swing back a little bit — more fairness, more objectivity — and if those things come out this, then that's great."
Tune in to Newsmax TV beginning at 12 PM ET to see "America Talks Live" — on FiOS 615, YouTube Livestream, Newsmax TV App from any smartphone, NewsmaxTV.com, Roku, Amazon Fire — More Systems Here
The key Trump ally who was appointed chief strategy officer of the Export-Import Bank last week, was the subject of a June 22 CNN report saying he was linked to a $10 billion Russian investment fund managed by a Moscow-controlled bank and part of the federal investigation into election tampering.
A day later CNN retracted the story and apologized, and this week the three journalists responsible for it resigned from the cable news giant.
Scaramucci, who accepted CNN's apology Saturday via Twitter, told Cosby he was pleased with how quickly the network responded.
"I certainly don't want people losing their jobs or anything like that, but there has to be a fair process and some level of objectivity in journalism," he said. "I sort of applaud CNN for taking swift action once they figured out that they had gotten the story so wrong. My attitude is they did the right thing by issuing the retraction."
Scaramucci, who retained a lawyer to examine the debacle, denied reports he had threatened a $100 million libel lawsuit against CNN.
"In fairness of CNN, it never got to that point . . . I think they moved quickly, and they took the steps necessary to satisfy me that they were trying to inject some integrity into the process," he said.
"As far as I'm concerned, if they tighten up their standards, it hopefully sends a message to other news outlets that we sort of have to stop this nonsense."
Scaramucci said he believes CNN has been too negative in its coverage of Trump and "that may be an objective of theirs from a business point of view, but I don't think it's going to be successful for them in the long term if they maintain that."
The 53-year-old founder of SkyBridge Capital, a global investment fund based in New York City, called himself a "huge supporter" of Trump and his agenda.
"I want to see him succeed. I think he's got all of America's interest at heart — that's every American whether Democrat or Republican, race, color or creed," Scarmucci said.
"He'll do a good job for people, and it would be important if we can just get focused more on the agenda and less on the witch hunts and the 'gotcha's.'"
Scaramucci also has no hard feelings toward the media.
"I have empathy for the journalist community," he said. "I know the need to get these stories out and to beat the competition and to be a step ahead of the other people.
"But I do think what they have to do is just take a pause, get a second look at it, create some checks and balances in the system, which I think in the long term benefits them from an integrity perspective and a reputation perspective.
"And be more positive for the process of what's going on. As long as you dial back . . . on both sides and let it be less adversarial, I think it's just better for the American people.