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Anthony. Hey, guys. How are you, brother? It's been a minute. It's been a minute, but it hasn't been a minute for me because I watch you almost every day, Rick. You give me confidence and you boost my morale. So it's been a minute for you, but it hasn't been a minute for me. But, you know, I got to be honest with you. My old boss, though,
With the statements, they really are funny. Did you read the statement he put out with Hunter? I mean, just as a moment before this podcast starts, you don't laugh out loud. I laugh out loud. No, listen, you have to because the guy, I mean, the thing about Trump, it's full on insanity. You know what I mean? And the guy's got severe mental illness. I mean, it's just when he was going off about the sharks, right? It's like, I was like, it's time for the, it's time for a home for grandpa here.
I mean, this was just – I was like, what, what, what? I almost felt bad for the guy for a second. I was like, what is wrong with his fucking brain? Why is this so close? How is this even close? I don't think – The economy is strong. Yeah. I'm sorry. Go ahead. You tell me. I don't think it's as close as people think it is. I think Biden's a little better off than that. I'm not –
I'm not like picking out curtains or anything, but I think we've got a good number of those Republicans that we talk to at Lincoln all the time who are like... In 2016, there were a lot of voters who would not tell you they were voting for Trump, Republicans. And now I think there are a lot of people who...
who will not tell you they're not voting for Trump. I think there's a good number of those people out there. I tell people, look, if there are two movies playing on election day, one of them is Weekend at Joe Biden's. But the other one is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I'll take the elderly, forgetful guy over the full-on crazy person who needs a lobotomy. I mean, come on. It is truly madness. Well, let's get into the show, man. Your task will not be an easy one.
Your enemy is well-trained, well-equipped, and battle-hardened. There is not a liberal America and a conservative America. United States of America. Good night and good luck. Welcome back to the Lincoln Project Podcast. I am your host today, Rick Wilson. I am joined by my friend Anthony Scaramucci today. You all know Anthony Scaramucci, one-time White House Communications Director who luckily...
And I think we're going to talk a lot about this today, who luckily got fired. I think it saved his life in a lot of fundamental ways. Anthony, welcome back to the program. I appreciate you coming on today. You have a great new book out called From Wall Street to the White House and Back. I want to talk a little bit about the book today. And I want to, because when it's going through it, there's a lesson in there that, you know, I'm sort of a failed Catholic practicing Stoic, as I like to say.
And you have a lot of that stoicism in this book about being persistent, about not letting failure define you, about getting back up every day, about getting back in the fight every day. And I think it's something people need to internalize a little bit in the country because
All of our politics and all this stuff, noise all around us all the time, makes people, I think, kind of depressed and they feel like nothing can be changed. But the thing that can be changed in humans is yourself. And so talk to us a little bit about how you came to write this book, and then we'll get into all the politics of the fun stuff. So first of all, thank you for having me on. And you know I'm a huge fan of everything you do, and I think I have that mug and that hat in my house. I drink from that mug.
Because it gives me a little bit of morale boost. But, you know, I'm the garden. I just want to start out, Rick. And I, you know, you work for Giuliani. I work for Giuliani. I am the garden variety center right Republican agnostic to social issues. And I'm sort of let's get we can just have some fiscal responsibility and perhaps a little bit of positive regulation to help businesses and growth. That's it. That's my whole game plan. So.
You know, I went off the rails with Donald Trump, if I'm just being totally candid with you, because I was a lifelong Republican. There were Republicans like Jeb Bush, who you know well, who said, no way, I can't support him and went this way. Mitt Romney gave a speech and went this way. I went the other way. And I went the other way because I thought I was being loyal to the Republican Party. And I had, and this is the
Weird thing about Donald Trump and people should be concerned about that. This he's a kaleidoscope and there are a lot of different facets to his personality. Literally in the same interview with Time magazine, he'll say two things.
In the interview and his detractors will say, oh, he said this. We hate him for it. And his supporters love that. And then his he'll say this other thing, which his supporters will point out. Well, he didn't really mean very fine people on both sides and this sort of thing. He does that all the time. Astrological sign is a Gemini. And so he's apparently able to say two things out of the mouth of the same person. And it seems like it's not attributed to him. So it's sort of a weird thing about him.
But I got sucked into the thing. OK, and I've owned that in the book that I know you did. And I explained what I did wrong, how I did it wrong. And it was a mistake of ego. And then I got fired. OK. And by the way, being fired from the White House, as rough as that was.
I tried to stay loyal to Donald Trump because I thought, okay, I'm a loyal Republican. He's the American president. I don't want him to fail. What American president do you want to fail? I wasn't a supporter of certain presidents, but you don't want them... You're a U.S. citizen. You don't want them to fail. Right. If they fail, the country fails at some level. Exactly. So he goes totally off the rails. My liberal friends say, well, he was off the rails when you started working with him. They're right about that. I have to own that for the rest of my life. But when he...
Goes to the point of no return for me. I start to speak out about him in August of 2019. He's lighting me up on Twitter. I think I called him the fattest president since William Howard Taft because I know how to troll like him. We fight with each other. He loses the election and a good part for the help of the Lincoln Project. And we're all very grateful to you for that.
And I think it's over at that point. I think, OK, we're going to have some national healing and we're going to all go back to work. Hopefully we'll get back to a system and hopefully we'll get to a center right candidate that has some rationality and some normalcy and lack of mental illness. But here we are again today. And so my book is about.
You cannot control what is happening sometimes in life. You could have a health issue. You could have a marital breakup, God forbid. You could have a career change that you didn't foresee. You could get theoretically fired from the White House and lit up by every late night comedian and roasted by everybody on cable news. That could theoretically happen to you. It may not have happened to you, but it did happen to me. OK, and so how do you then handle it?
And I think the biggest thing about stoicism, which I think you appreciate, is that everything that's happening to you is inside your own mind. And you can control that. You can control how you feel about yourself. And maybe what your grandmother said is true. Maybe what other people think of you is none of your business, Rick. Maybe that is actually true. And I just want to make one last point. Your optic nerve is just under...
two millimeters wide. If you, God forbid, have to go through an autopsy and they measure the optic nerve. And so you have two of them. You've got two eyes you can see out of. So I just want to imagine every observation that you're making is coming through a portal that is approximately two millimeters in width. And so it's possible that you may not be seeing everything. Okay. It's possible that your perception of the world and everything around you
You may not be understanding it the way it's really happening. You may have your version of the facts versus somebody else's version. Again, two plus two is four. I'm not talking about alternative facts. I'm just talking about the way we grew up, the way we see the world, the way we see a political issue. And I try to explain that in the book. And I try to say, listen, this is an amazing country.
And maybe we've got to figure out a way to dial back some of the rancor, which is algorithmically designed by the social media. It is propagated on TV to keep you interested and glued to it. It's infotainment now as opposed to news. And maybe we've got to just take a step back, Rick. And if we do that, maybe we'll be.
Way better as a group. I think your, I think your point is there are a lot of negative incentives in our society to keep people ratcheted and riled up and angry about stuff all the time. And not as many to have people say, Oh,
Hold up, take a deep breath. Let me recalibrate here. Let me think this through. And we have become this very rapid fire society. I'm as guilty of it as anybody of, you know, you get in the fight and it's run and gun all the time, all the time, all the time. So the lessons that you talk about in the book are,
you know, about, you know, how do you overcome a failure? How do you overcome, you know, public shaming and exposure? And believe me, I've had plenty of, of, of, you know, stuff on television, people saying shit about me, just as you have a million times. And that idea of like, how do you in this environment that we live in, whether we like it or not, what are some of the lessons for people today?
in this social media era, in this media era that you think people should have like in their brains, especially when they're in something, you know, as you and I are for better or for worse in a publicly facing part of the world.
Yeah, well, number one, that's exactly right. And this is something I love about you because you're such a happy warrior. And I'll give you this metaphor. If I told you you're going into the NFL, you're going to be a wide receiver. Here's a helmet. You're going to catch passes from Tom Brady in an official NFL game.
It's 100%, Rick. Let me just rephrase that. 100%, you're going to get a concussion. 100%. There's not one wide receiver in the NFL that plays in a game, if he plays 18, 17 games, doesn't end up with a concussion. Okay. So you can't expect to go into American politics and not get concussed by the verbiage and not get attacked and not get slammed to the ground. You've had it happen to you. I've had it happen to me.
And I would say in a different way for people that go into social media. The minute you open up a social media account, you post a picture of
You are now exposing yourself to the village idiot in the basement with the carbuncle zits and he's 450 pounds and he's sitting there in the basement. Okay. And now that social media organization has turned that village idiot into a global village idiot. For the first time in that person's life, they now have this anonymity where they can broadcast from their basement that
sewage and spewage about you or anybody else. And so you have to, in your brain, get your arms around that. You know, I have a daughter who's a beautiful singer. She sings with Andrea Bocelli. She's been in Phantom of the Opera for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. And if you read
her social media attacks, you would be appalled. You'd be like, why are people doing that to her? Well, there's all different psychological and ideological, all different types of reasons. So you go into the game. When I tell my daughter this, you are a public figure. You're in the game. You ignore that nonsense. You have to train your brain to ignore that nonsense.
But it's hard because we're social organisms, Rick, and we want people to like us and we want to associate with others. We want to feel good about each other. And so when we're getting attacked, it can damage our self-esteem and it could damage our self-worth and our self-image. This is why young children, Jonathan Haidt is out with that new book. Haidt is out with that new book about all the anxiety that social media is creating. But, you know, for me, I had to sit through this.
I think Steve Colbert called me when I was in the White House, a Jersey Shore cast member. I'm pretty sure he said that I was a cast member from the Sopranos. John Oliver called me Tony Soprano on the Potomac. Actually, I thought the shit was funny. I didn't. Right. I actually laughed at it. My family members were going crazy, you know, and they were super upset. Yeah. And I was like, okay, this is.
What happens when you go into policy? When Bill Hader, the American comedian, played me on Saturday Night Live. Mm-hmm.
I was groaning, okay, and I was like wincing. And then luck would have it about a week later, I'm at the Yankee Mets game at Yankee Stadium, and I've got my little legends tray, and I'm leaving the legends area to go to the legends seats. And there's Lorne Michaels and Paul Simon. And I bump into those two guys. And Lorne Michaels looks at me. He's got Colin Jost with him, who was also ripping me, you know, the anchor on Weekend Up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they look at me. I look at them. They smile. Mr. Scarlett Johansson. Right, right. Exactly. Mr. Scar Jo. Right. And I look at them. They look at me. And then Lorne looks at me because he goes, Mooch, how did we do? Was that a good rendition of you?
And I looked over at him. I said, actually, you know, I didn't think he had enough hairspray. And by the way, I don't tie my tie like that. I got a full Windsor knot going. Okay. I said, you got to admit, you're going to make these adjustments. If you're going to keep lampooning me. Well, he laughed. They both laughed. Right. I said, by the way, I know this is a ridiculous time for me to ask you this, but my kids are dying to go to Saturday Night Live. Is there any chance I can get tickets to the show? Okay. And,
And they gave me tickets, right? And then they, and of course they gave me tickets. They put me up in the balcony and they took a chainsaw to my forehead that night. It was the Christmas show. Oh. And Donald Trump had the tree of love and Alec Baldwin was putting ornaments of Ivanka Trump on the street. And then they said, we have the tree of hate. And they were calling for the Chris Christie ornament. And they were calling for the Jeff Sessions ornament. Right.
He said, well, what about that low life, the mooch? And then all of a sudden they panned to me in the audience and I was redder than the paint behind you on your bookcase. And my kids were just loving it. They thought it was fantastic. You know what I did? I took the ornament.
I took the ornament off the tree after the show was over. That's it. And it's hanging on my Christmas tree every year since then. That was 2007. So if you're taking yourself seriously, you have a miserable time. If you're able to roll with things and roll with life –
You're going to be like my friend Rick Wilson. You're going to be a happy warrior and you're going to be in the fight and you're going to recognize that, you know, it's not doesn't have to be that serious. It doesn't have it's your mind and it's your ability to control the situation, not others controlling you.
I think that's so right. I think it really is, you know, being present in your own head, not letting everything feel permanent and existential and fatal for everything. You know, because if you do get that way and you're in public life, you will not last.
And you and I are both like, you know, for better or for worse, we pop up after adversity and keep fighting the fight because, you know, I think the fight is important. Hey, folks, we need to take a quick break, but we'll be back with Anthony Scaramucci after this message. Support for the Lincoln Project podcast comes from Odoo. If you feel like you're wasting time and money with your current business software or just want to know what you could be missing, then you need to join the millions of other users who've switched to Odoo.
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Hey, everybody. We're back with Anthony Scaramucci. So, Anthony, I don't think a lot of people know your whole story. So tell us, I mean, give us the arc of your life because you come out of finance, you go to politics, you go back into finance, and you've had good and bad in both cases. You've had highs and lows in both cases. So tell us your story, Anthony.
Because I think a lot of people go, oh, Anthony and Trump, that's all they know. So give us the whole rundown. I mean, that is interesting how I'm entwined with him. And it's interesting. I never expected that. And I'm going to tell you something that doesn't reflect well on me.
When I was 23 or 24, he wrote The Art of the Deal. I was a Long Island blue collar kid. We looked up to Donald Trump, Rick. I'm embarrassed to say that to you now, but I want to set the scene for you. 1987, 1988.
I was trying to make it in the world. And I thought, okay, let me read the order of the deal. This guy's got his name on a couple of fancy pants buildings. He's obviously successful. Let me learn how to be successful then. So weirdly, I actually looked up to the guy way back. But my career, I have lived an undeserved life and I've had this improbable career. I grew up in a blue collar family.
My guidance counselor from high school convinced my parents to send me to a private school. We didn't have the money for it. My father gave me a $10,000 check.
It was his life. And it was a cash value of his life insurance from his union. He cashed it in to help me get through school. I went to work. I took some loans. I went to Tufts and Harvard Law School. When I got to Harvard, I went to Goldman. I spent seven years at Goldman and I left at the age of 32 to start a registered investment advisor and a hedge fund with one other partner.
We got that business up to a billion dollars. We started that business in 1996. We sold it in 01 to a publicly traded firm at that time called Neuberger Berman.
Two years later, New Burger was bought by Lehman. And now I was working for Dick Fold, CEO of Lehman Brothers. I was there for two years. I asked Dick to help me get Skybridge started. And he did. He helped me fund Skybridge. But along the way, Rick, I had no connections to wealthy individuals in our society. I had never hit a golf ball, never swung a tennis racket. And I was at Goldman to build a high net worth practice.
And so in 1993, I wrote a check for $250 to young Republicans for Rudy Giuliani. Okay. There it is. Hats of Mamos. That's Anthony Carbonetti. That's Rick Wilson. That's John Apple. There's a big alumni network out there. Yeah. No, these are all guys that I love and respect. Okay. And particularly Carbonetti. I see him all the time, but I wrote the check.
Rudy goes on to win. He had lost the first election. And that was very good to me. And by the way, I never say bad stuff about Rudy, even though he's maladestra or the Italians say gabados. He's lost his mind at this point. But because he was very good to me when I was a kid. Listen, you and I have the same.
conflicted feeling about it. I'm angry with him for doing what he's done to himself. You know, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's heartbreaking. A guy. And I know a lot of our listeners are going to already ready this and Trump. Right. People who were not in New York in the nineties do not understand from 93 to 2001 that
The titanically large impact he had on the lives of people in that city. He changed the quality of life for the better. I mean, African-Americans, every ethnic walk of life, he did change the quality of life. We felt better about the city. Mike Bloomberg would tell you I was on Mike's New York City Financial Services Advisory Committee for five years.
Dan Doktorov and Mike Bloomberg, they've built a very good base that we built on. And this is something, though, Rick, that I think you'll agree with me on. If you have exemplary executive leadership,
leadership, executive political leadership, your quality of life goes up. You're paying these people, right? I mean, I'm giving half my money to the city and state of New York. Right. So I'm now a minority partner in my own life, right? 52 cents is going to Eric Adams, Kathy Hochul and Joe Biden. Right. And so, so you got to get involved with the hiring decisions. Anyway,
I want to lay this as a backdrop because I was never politically involved. I was a business person that wrote some political checks to get access to influential people who I befriended, who helped me with my business. Okay, so here we go. George Pataki.
Bob Dole in 1996. Remember that campaign, Rick? Absolutely. You got killed. But Bob Dole was a great American. I mean, we all love Bob. OK. Then 2000, I worked for George W. Bush. I worked for Bush in 2004.
OK, in 2008, I didn't really have a relationship with John McCain. And one of my law school buddies, Barack Obama, was running for president. I was not super ideological. So I wrote him a check and I bundled some money for him. He won. I've been to more Obama Christmas parties at the White House than Donald Trump Christmas party. That's for sure. But then I told Obama, I'm a Republican. I'm going back to work for the Republicans. I work for Mitt Romney.
OK, and then I worked for Scott Walker and Jeb Bush. Donald Trump recruited me into the campaign. I remember you would you had made the rounds of of of candidates in the beginning. You couldn't find a home there or anybody. Well, you know what? Here's the thing. OK, Rice Priebus turned out to be like a very bad dude, but he asked me to work for Walker.
OK, I thought I had a good relationship with Reince Priebus. I didn't I didn't think he was going to hatchet me the way he did when I was in Washington. But that was my naivete. And that's that's how politics works. But but so I'm working now for Trump and he does something, Rick, that none of us think he's going to do. You know what that is? Wins. Win. He wins. He didn't think he was going to win. I was with him on election night.
On election night, I talked to three separate senior people in Trump world who were like, yeah, it's been fun. I got some crazy stories. I'll see you soon. Exactly. Well, that's what I said. I said, well, OK, this was an interesting campaign. Trump said to me at 6 p.m. on election night, what are you doing tomorrow?
I said, what am I doing? I don't know, sir. What are you doing tomorrow? Oh, I know what I'm doing. I'm moving my plane to JFK. You can't take off for Scotland from LaGuardia because it's not an international airport. And I'm going to I'm going to play golf on my new golf course. And this is Trump of Trump. Right. Let her have her day in the sun. I'm getting out of the way. I'm getting out of the media. That's what he said to me. 6 p.m. November the 8th, 2016.
And then by 1030, I'm sitting on a couch at the Hilton Hotel on 6th Avenue in the VIP donor area. Who am I sitting next to? Rudolph Giuliani. And Rudy looks at the screen and he says to me, Anthony, he's going to win Florida.
I said, what do you mean, Mayor? Why do you think he's going to win Florida? He said, well, those precincts vote late. They're all white collar precincts. They're going to report late. So they haven't tilted the state for him, but they're voting for him. It's going to move the state in his direction. And then, Rick, that New York Times needle that was going like this. OK, he won. And I'm going to tell you something, Rick. When he won, he was nervous.
Okay. Trump was unnerved by winning. He didn't think he was going to win. Right. And there was a 48 hour period where he was actually listening. You know, he was like, okay, I had the personnel files from the Romney Bush campaign. I went to Mnuchin with all these guys that I had known that could be staffed in the treasury. Sure. Pence was talking to him about what to do. And Trump was listening. And I would say for about 10 days, he,
I was like, OK, this is going to be OK. This guy is listening. He even said, and I know you're not going to believe this, but he did say it. It was the Wednesday after the election. None of us had slept. He says, why, you know, I'm not going to tweet. I'm not going to tweet. I'm going to be very presidential. I mean, honestly, say it. OK, of course, that lasted like five minutes. But right. But he was so worked up about it, you know.
And then it just evolved into the nightmare of nightmares and what every liberal would predict. And the sadness for me was,
is that he took a center-right coalition. I'm a big believer that you need two parties. 100%. You need a center-left and you need a center-right party, and you have to circulate. California and New York are hurting because they're one-party systems. That's just my personal view. And you need two parties. But we have now destroyed one of the parties. I don't even know how you come back. It's almost like the Whig Party in the 1850s that destroyed itself
And Abraham Lincoln had to take the mantle of leadership of a new party called the Republicans, you know? Hey, folks, we're back with Anthony Scaramucci on the Lincoln Project podcast. It is, and I, you know, you and I have complete agreement on this. And I've said this to my Democratic friends since 2015.
We are a better country when we have competing ideas from two parties that are competing about ideas. Yeah, the founders wanted that. That actually want us to have intellectual fights about what should the marginal tax rate be? What should we do with the carried interest deduction? How many parts per billion of carbon should be in the atmosphere? All of these things, it's now one party is who loves Trump more.
And the other party is flailing around, frankly, not understanding how to get home on the fact that just talking about policy in a world where the other team is talking about chaos all the time, it's an impossibility for us to get the big things done in the country as long as we have one party that isn't about ideas anymore. It's just about one guy.
Well, it's very well said, Rick. And listen, you know, I know you have a lot of liberals that watch your podcast because you represent the white hope for our democracy, which is why I love you so much. But what I would say to my liberal friends, the hard left is not helping you win this election. I'm just sorry to tell you. No, you got to help Joe Biden get to the middle on certain issues.
He did sign the executive order on the border. I think that can help him. I don't know why he's decided to seat all these young people on cryptocurrency legislation by vetoing the cryptocurrency legislation. I don't. If you looked at a Venn diagram, you said for crypto, you probably don't lose any votes. You're against crypto when Trump is very good political. It's for crypto. You're probably going to lose some votes. I don't know why you guys want to do that.
I think you and I can agree. Trump doesn't know what crypto is. He doesn't care what it is. But you're right. He's got a feral sense. He's got animal cunning when he spots an issue that can divide a country.
And, you know, I was talking earlier today to Ro Khanna and, you know, he's a congressman from Silicon Valley. He's like, yeah, 25% of these people out there, when they talk about blockchain and crypto and it sounds like Biden is going to shut it down and Trump is going to just be Trump and say yes, they're going to be like, I'm out. And it really is. As much as, you know, as you know very well, as much as we've had
the growing pains of crypto and SBF and all this other stuff, it still fundamentally mathematically underpins an amazingly powerful tool in the economy when it's, when it's,
and ethically implemented, and it can be. But just reflexive hatred of it is... Look, I hate the scammers in the deal. I hate the Ponzi guys in the deal. They exist in every space. They exist in home mortgages, for God's sakes. Rick, they've hurt me, Rick. They've hurt me. Trust me. I agree with you. I want to win the election because...
It really is an existential threat. I have read through Project 2025. Oh, yes, my friend. I have read through the template for unitary executive power.
When the people around Trump saying they were looking forward to going to a post constitutional phase for America. And that is their words, not my words. Right. That's not us. You've got dimwits to say to me, well, Trump's not capable of that. And Trump's not. Listen, Trump is a disorganized guy. He's 78 years old. He is what he is.
but he's rallied a group of very organized people around him. You know, Susie. Yeah. I know Susie. Susie wild. Yeah. Jason is. Yep. Whatever our differences are me and Jason. He's another Rudy guy, by the way. The alumni network is everywhere. Yeah. So, so, so he, these are very talented, very organized guys. And many of them are quote unquote, right wing, uh,
intellectuals in their own minds, I should say. Right. And they want to pervert the court. They want to Leno Leonard Leo fire the court and they want to pervert the three articles of the constitution and liquidate two of those articles. When I say liquidate, I mean dilute them and they want to strengthen the executive branch. And anytime that that's ever happened sociologically do a government and to a country, uh,
It destroys the aspirational concepts of that country. Anytime that that's happened, an autocracy forms, you get kleptocracy, and then you get a lack of predictability on the laws. My billionaire buddies that are quote unquote supporting this,
Donald J. Trump, because he's pro-business. Guys, he's for a lack of predictability in the legal structure, which is how we all make money in this country. The capital is flowing into this country because people believe the judicial process in the country. And Donald Trump wants to take a orange wrecking ball to that process. And so you're sitting out there not understanding that.
what he's actually saying and doing. And you don't even understand how sophisticated and organized, Rick, that people are that are working with Donald Trump. But I do. I say this all the time, Anthony. I've been in this game for 30 years, Rick, going back to Giuliani. And so that's why you and I see it the same way. The question is,
How do we win and knock him out? And then what's the aftermath of that, right? That's the big complexity, man. It's like, let's say he drops dead tomorrow. Let's say we beat him in November by 40 electoral college votes. He can't even pretend it was stolen or whatever. I think we still have a lot of people who don't believe in the American system anymore inside the MAGA party. I think there are guys, as you point out,
People come to, capital comes to places where there's a rule of law because that means it can be protected. It can be deployed without risk. You don't have to wake up in the morning and go, hey, is Vladimir Putin pissed off at me today? Maybe I own all the aluminum smelters in Russia, or maybe I'm going to get thrown out a window. That's how they feel in a kleptocracy. Right.
Oh my gosh, I may have to face a regulation. That's as bad as it gets, generally speaking. But they want to eliminate that. There's that movement they have on the right called the Red Caesar Movement, where they want a tough guy, strong man, authoritarian. That's not where you have a republic, capitalism, or free markets. So I'll say two quick things, and I'd like you to respond to these, actually. Sure. One thing is we have never experienced...
The legacy or the hereditary memory of dictatorship or tyranny. That's right. If you go to London, you visit the Blitz areas, you visit the war cabinets. Normandy for French schoolchildren. Yep. Auschwitz for German and Polish schoolchildren. So when they poll people, even Tories in the UK, they say 75% of them are not for Trump. They don't understand why Americans...
are willing to go with a red Caesar, but we don't have any intellectual memory of it. We have no hereditary memory of it because Franklin Roosevelt put it down. Second thing, though, the aftermath of Trump, I wanted to react to both. The second thing, the aftermath of Trump
There's the largest, most powerful voting bloc in this country. They vote the exact same way in every single election. It's 144 million people, Rick. It's the non-voter. They don't show up at the election. They don't show up. So therefore, they definitely vote the same by not voting. What if we went after some of those? Rick Wilson's an entrepreneur.
I'm an entrepreneur. What if we got 15 or 20 million people that are registered to vote back into the swimming pool with us? Let me answer that second question first. That is a...
Low risk, moderate cost, incredibly impactful idea. That could, I mean, I would put that on a Sequoia pitch deck and pitch it anywhere. That idea to scale out, to find those less likely lower propensity voters who are not, I mean, look, one of the secrets of 2016 was that Donald Trump activated a cohort of conservatives
conservative, not Republican, conservative voters who were not likely to go vote. He turned them on and it was partly the apprentice and partly, you know, Trump's celebrity and all those things, but finding low propensity voters or not low, but lower propensity voters and turning them into voters was,
It's a big project, but it's not as hard as you would think it is. I think it's a doable project with the resources and the team. You'd have to just go out and start talking to those people about, you want to change your life? You feel frustrated? This is how you start that process. So you tell me the Trump MAGA movement expires in,
You know, I don't know why Christie, I don't know why Haley, I don't know why DeSantis didn't do this. They got bad political consultants because they went right at this guy. OK, so Haley's a weakling. OK, and she's a coward. And it's OK that she is because that's just the way life is. A lot of people are sure. You could have taken that 20 percent coalition that she had and she could have said to Mr. Trump, I rebuke you.
You do not stand for the American system. You do not stand for the American democracy. And with this 20 percent of the people, I'm going to make sure you don't win reelection. And then I'm going to reform a center right party. And the current party in her lap right there in her lap. And the Whig Party of 2024 happens to be the MAGA party. You're dying. And I'm just gonna let you know, I'm going to re.
unite this wonderful, beautiful mosaic of a country under a different banner because you've destroyed the old banner. And she would have been gone into an exalted status. Now she's just another Trump lackey. Okay. I don't know why she did that, but the worst political figure
Donald Trump is certainly the worst, but the worst Republican, because you and I both know Trump is actually not a Republican. No. The worst figure in my mind, and I gave him a lot of money and I organized for him and I'm mad at myself for doing this, Kevin McCarthy. And just hear me out for a second. Kevin McCarthy is a spineless jellyfish.
He had Trump lights out on January 7th. He could put him right through the ropes. January 7th. He had McConnell. He had Pelosi. And he blinked. And he told people in the coalition, oh, Trump's going away. Let's not go after him. He's never going to come back. And then he got worried. And then he flew to Mar-a-Lago.
This should rule in Italian. OK, and your Italian listeners will know exactly what I mean. But you're a jellyfish, Kevin, and you could have reformed the republic. He'd still be the speaker of the House. Could have knocked Trump right through the ropes. He then could have been the the apex predator. He said, OK, I just knocked him through the ropes. If you guys don't play nice with me, I'm going to knock you through. You're all next. OK, you're all next. And by the way, fall in line.
And we're rebuilding the Republican Party and the center right coalition. Every possible opportunity. Now he's on the speaker's tour, this Shadrall. And I got to tell you something. He is the most disappointing of all. Paul Ryan, different story. Paul said, self-awareness. I'm not up for this. OK, so therefore, I can't support him. He's speaking publicly that he would never vote for him. And he left.
Okay. Now you can say, all right, but I at least admire that. Kevin could have said, hey, I'm sorry. I'm not up for this. I don't have the stomach for it. I'm leaving. But to do what Kevin did at a time when the nation needed him.
Okay. It was very un-Lincoln-esque. I got to be honest. It was a revolting thing. Profiling cowardice. Profiling cowardice. I've known Kevin 25 years. He's always been the back-slapper, inside guy. You know, he's the kind of guy who may not know things, but you put him in a firm as a rainmaker. He doesn't know things, but he knows people. And you would think that at one point somebody would have said to him, you will be the historical figure one way or the other, good or bad. Which one do you choose?
He obviously did never got that advice and he never got the kind of advice that you get people in the book, uh,
about, you know, being honest with yourself about who you are and sticking with it once you make a call. Well, Anthony, we've got to wrap up the show. I cannot tell you how much I've enjoyed this conversation. I appreciate being on with you. You're a stud. Is Joe Biden going to win this before you wrap up this show? Let me just open up my vein. Okay, hold on. Let me just tap my vein, open my vein. All right. I got to get a little bit of Rick Wilson before I leave and tell me how
and why Joe Biden's going to win this. Go. In 2016, there were an awful lot of people who did not want to tell you they were going to vote for Trump, but they did.
In 2024, there are an awful lot of people who aren't going to vote for Donald Trump, but they don't want to tell you. And they're going to vote for Joe Biden or they're going to stay home. I'll take either one. I think that we are now starting to see a meaningful breakout in the polls. The criminal conviction hurts Trump a lot more than anybody in the media wants to tell you right now. We're seeing it in focus groups and polling. It is a corrosive thing. And his own behavior is,
about the entire trial has made it much worse for him politically. I think we're going to win it. It's going to take a tremendous amount of work. You know, the old Beastie Boys line, no sleep till Brooklyn. But we've got a, there's a clear path here to beat this guy. And look, I think one of the things that the president is doing right now that is really smart
is he's taking back the signs and symbols of American patriotism. He's the strong one on national defense. He's the guy who's out, you know, he's not hugging the flag in a weird way. He's talking about how valuable it is for all Americans. He's been, he's discovered the weakness Democrats had for a long time, which was they didn't want to show the flag on the stage. They didn't want to talk about the Constitution in American history. They wanted to sort of put in the background and talk about climate change or whatever it else.
Biden gets it. He's talking about this country. He's proud of the country. And Trump is talking down about the country all the time. That is a differential that makes a difference to voters. And I think that's our path to victory. And like I said, a ton of work. I don't get to get much sleep for the next 153 days, but it's a winnable race and we're going to win it. Before you go, man, I'm all in. So I'm here to help in any way I can because it's the democracy first thing.
It's the system that our forefathers gave us first. Everything else is last. Patriotism first. Part of the ship last. Patriotism first. Dead last. So I'm with you. All right. I'm going to drink from my Lincoln Project coffee mug tomorrow morning. There it is. All right. I'm going to tell people that Rick Wilson is telling me we're going to win. It's going to make me feel better. All right. All right. Anthony, where can people find you on social media?
Okay. Yeah. I'm at Scaramucci on Twitter and Instagram. Just my last name with an at sign in front of it.
And those are the best places to find me. I also have a podcast with Katty K. It's called The Rest in Politics U.S. It's a U.K.-based podcast, and we are broadcasting, though, all over the place. And it's off to a decent start. Those are two places you can find me. Fantastic. Well, folks, the book is –
From Wall Street to the White House and back by Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony, you are my friend as always, brother. I will see you again soon. God bless. And good luck. Support for the Lincoln Project podcast comes from Odoo. If you feel like you're wasting time and money with your current business software or just want to know what you could be missing, then you need to join the millions of other users who've switched to Odoo.
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