Anthony Scaramucci calls Donald Trump a 'political genius' in Oxford Union appearance

Donald Trump's former chief of communications has called the American president a "political genius" in a speech at Oxford University.

Anthony Scaramucci, who was fired in July after just ten days under Mr Trump, discussed last year's presidential election with students at the Oxford Union on Monday.

He said: "He's definitely not a sociopath...He's a political genius. He is way more thoughtful, more of a person who doesn't want to bring about wars than you would think."

Mr Scaramucci went on to describe how Trump went about defeating Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, despite a relative lack of financial backers, and his use of social media: "[He] was outspent by Clinton by 1.7 times, she had 2.4 times more personnel than us. It's not clear to me that the money is as important as ideas.

"I firmly believe that President Trump, without the tool of Twitter, likely would not have won.

"When the president feels he's well defended, his tweets are more focused on public policy.

"When he feels he's not well defended, you get things like Mika's face lift," he said, referring to Trump's personal attack on American news presenter Mika Brzezinski, in which he claimed to have once seen her "bleeding badly from a face lift" during a social gathering at his Florida resort.

On his limited period in office, he said: "The moment I was declared, the knives got longer and longer. I didn't think I'd last more than 30 to 60 days in the role."

Mr Scaramucci was infamously sacked following an expletive-filled phone call to a reporter at The New Yorker magazine, in which he threatened to fire every member of his communications team if they didn't tell him where they had received leaked information.

He went on to refer to then-chief of staff Reince Priebus as a "f****** paranoid schizophrenic" and said of former White House strategist Steve Bannon "I'm not [him]. I'm not trying to suck my own c***." Both Priebus and Bannon have been fired since.

A number of other major political figures are set to appear at the Oxford Union before Christmas, including Emily Thornberry, Vince Cable and Natalie Bennett.