The crazy Scaramucci vs. Priebus feud is just as ugly as the LBJ vs. RFK hatefest

These days, not a day passes without an eruption of hostility among high-ranking members of the  Trump administration. Whether it’s President Trump lashing out at Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci blaming Chief of Staff Reince Priebus for media leaks, the intra-White-House warfare seems relentless.

But internecine conflict has always been part of presidential administrations. During the Reagan years, Nancy Reagan and White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan loathed each other, and the first lady helped engineer his ouster in 1987. During the presidency of George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was famously at odds with Vice President Richard B. Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

But perhaps the most epic White House feud was the smackdown between Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. The two men’s hatred of each other began as soon as Johnson was selected as John F. Kennedy’s running mate in 1960, and never really ended — not even when Bobby was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in 1968.

Unlike today’s broadsides that instantly travel from the mouths or fingers of the attackers straight to everyone’s handheld devices, LBJ and RFK sniped at one another privately, with the most quotable insults appearing in books decades after the men wielded power.