Anthony Scaramucci, known as “The Mooch” to friends and foes alike, holds a unique place in American politics. A baseball fanatic and Goldman Sachs alum, he was once a Donald Trump supporter, campaign advisor, and held an 11-day stint as Trump’s White House Communications Director in 2017. After Trump called him a “deep-stater” and fired him, Scaramucci did a lot of soul searching. And in 2019, he came to own what he openly calls his “mistake” of supporting the president, urging voters to learn from his lapse in judgement. In this episode, he and Nicolle muse about Republicans’ ability to remain in lock step, while the Democrats are in the midst of an inner-party civil war. But more importantly, Scaramucci shares his optimism for what’s next in our democratic experiment.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
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Anthony Scaramucci: There are always going to be people that believe an oligarchy or an aristocracy can run the country better. Right? Because they’re the elitist. They think they’re smarter than everybody else. But Lincoln, you know, Lincoln said to Douglas in the debates. He said, hey, you know, people think the American people are not smart, but let me tell you something. They have a very good nose. They can smell a rotting cadaver in their basement. That was literally the quote.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And we have a rotting cadaver in the basement right now.
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Nicolle Wallace: Hi, everyone. And welcome to “The Best People” podcast. This week’s guest is one of my favorite human beings, but he also happens to be a duration of time and someone so iconic at this moment that his name is preceded by a “the,” so without any further ado, welcome, Anthony Scaramucci, to The Best People.
Anthony Scaramucci: That was a pretty auspicious introduction, I mean.
Nicolle Wallace: What?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, look, you’re one of my favorites too. I mean, hopefully it’ll be a mutual love fest here, but I’m actually very flattered to be on your incredibly high-profile podcast, Nicolle. So, thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: You’re a much bigger podcaster than me.
Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, no. I don’t know about that. I mean, you got everything, don’t you?
Nicolle Wallace: I watch all of your clips. I watch everything that goes by.
Anthony Scaramucci: You’re a triple threat though. You’ve got the podcast, you got the show, you know how to write. You’re a sports fan. I don’t know, you got everything.
Nicolle Wallace: I, like you, today have nothing without my Mets. I don’t know what to do with myself.
Anthony Scaramucci: Nicolle (ph).
Nicolle Wallace: We didn’t have any life planned this month because we thought we’d be busy and the TVs are all black. What happened to our Mets?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I mean, listen, I mean, they didn’t have the pitching. At the end of the day, the pitching wins. If you saw the Red Sox Yankee game last night, two to one Red Sox.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: At the pitching, three to one Red Sox.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. You know why I loved that? I loved watching a game where I didn’t care who won. I mean, I root for the Yankees. I’m a New Yorker. But I wasn’t like, I felt like I needed something to get through it the way I started.
Anthony Scaramucci: You didn’t have to pitch by pitch anxiety, is what you’re talking about. Right. Which you experienced, you know, but you know, listen, I mean, that was a bad collapse, but I remember the 1998 season where Bobby Valentine, a good friend of mine, managing the Mets, they had to win one of the last five games, Nicolle. They lost all five games and missed the playoffs. So, the movie has been run before, but I don’t know. I think City Field is a Native American burial ground that’s been disturbed. And I think we, to shake the curse, we got to get in there, figure out what we did wrong there, because there’s something wrong with that field. They put great players on the field, great stats and it never gels for the Mets. And that’s been a big dilemma for them for the last 40 years.
Nicolle Wallace: But my understanding is it’s not them, like that as a unit that there’s not an asshole on the team, that they like each other. Lindor has got all the emotional intelligence to rally them when they’re down, like, what is wrong?
Anthony Scaramucci: I think that’s it though. You see, I think Lindor, to me, I’m probably going to get in trouble for this, because I love him as a player, and he’s a great guy, but you’re too lovey-dovey. Okay. When the Marlins are scoring and you’re elbow bumping people three nothing, Marlins. When you’re trying to get into playoffs, what are you doing? We got to win. I get the family and the lovey-dovey stuff, but I want some ass kicking out there actually. And I want to win games.
Nicolle Wallace: But the counterfactual, right, is Trea Turner, like once they fell in love with him and started cheering him on, he started performing for them. I know you talked to everybody, making the decisions. What’s your advice other than more tough love?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I mean, I would, I had a three-pronged approach. Number one, do not let Mendoza go, it was not his fault.
Nicolle Wallace: He’s great.
Anthony Scaramucci: He’s actually a very good strategist and a good coach.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And I think he’s going to be a phenomenal long-term manager. Number two, let’s play to win, guys. And I think we got to sharpen that attitude out there. And I think it starts with Lindor, enough lovey-dovey, let’s play to win. But the third thing, and this is probably going to get me in trouble with Steve, but I’ll say it, enough of the analytics and enough of the brainiacs. Let’s get some baseball people involved in making the decisions.
And one thing that Steve is doing a great job of, he’s delegating this to baseball people, but we need more baseball people and less analytical people in the mix at this point.
Nicolle Wallace: Less hedge fund people, less number crunch.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes. Less hedge fund people, less data analytics. These are real people, you know.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, look, my son plays travel baseball, and proud mama. They are, I think eight and two for the fall. But the two games they lost weren’t better teams. They just didn’t believe. I mean, the thing about too much science and data, and I’m not a sports reporter and I’m not a sports expert. I watch an inordinate amount of baseball innings, and the team that believes, and the team that is up at bat for each other, for the person ahead of them, who’s on base or the person behind them who, you know, is almost always the team that wins, whether they’re six or 16 or grown ass men making millions of dollars a year. Here’s my segue or my attempt at it.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes. You’re good.
Nicolle Wallace: Without the Mets, I’m now paying more attention than I should to our fucked up politics. And so I am feeling it more.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, that’s brutal.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s brutal. And I love everything you say about it. And I love, I mean, I talked to you on and off TV ahead of the election, and you had a lot of confidence that Kamala Harris would prevail. Why do you think she didn’t?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I got that wrong on a number of different reasons. You know, I guess the ultimate reason was the smell test and the name recognition. So, the number one thing you need to be president of the United States circa 2024 and possibly 2028 and beyond is name recognition.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And she was running against the most famous person in the world. When Hillary Clinton ran against Donald Trump in ‘16, he was one of three, 400 famous people. But he had gone through the presidency, did all of the different things that he does for attention. And by November of last year, Nicolle, he was the most famous person in the world.
And so you know this, and I know this the most searchable term on Google the night of the election, did Joe Biden drop out. That was the most searched. You have a lot of uninformed voters. And they were like, well, who the hell is he running against? And they didn’t know her. And so what we had in ‘20 is we had the mad, crazy uncle running against the stable grandfather. And so that was fine. And so we went with the stable grandfather, especially during COVID.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: But then the stable grandfather was obviously sun setting and we had this nostalgia for the mad, crazy uncle. We said, well, mad, crazy uncle the world didn’t blow up. The economy was okay prior to COVID and who’s this other, oh, this is our nice sister. And the middle, the independents that really matter voted for the mad, crazy uncle. The second thing was she took no risks, and she exposed herself in the 107 days because she said in the 107 days that my first pick was Buttigieg. Well, if you first pick was your Buttigieg, then you pick Buttigieg.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: So, you just played into Trump. Trump is telling you DEI, woke culture, litmus tests. Who’s your best athlete? Well, my best athlete is Pete Buttigieg, but I’m going with Tim Walz.
Nicolle Wallace: But I didn’t pick him.
Anthony Scaramucci: Because I can’t pick a gay guy because I’m a Black woman. What are you doing? Those are all the litmus tests in the culture war that Trump is beating your ass in. Remember, Donald Trump, hate the guy or not, you have to observe his talent. He’s the Napoleon of the culture war. And if you remember your biographies of Napoleon, he could see the entire battlefield, Nicolle. He anticipated the moves of the generals, and he stymied them. And Trump does that to the Democrats day and night in the culture war, and Vice President Harris wasn’t ready for that.
But you know, you got to, hey, you got to go on Nicolle’s show, no problem, but you got to go on Sean Hannity’s show 20 times. You got 107 days. You got to be on Fox News 108 of the 107 days. You got to go on Rogan. You got to go on all the tough places. You got to show up in places where they don’t expect you. And you got to use your personal charm and your class and your dignity to win the election.
Because Trump is not a well like guy, even the people that vote for Trump don’t like him, but she didn’t do that. And she played it too safely. You know, when I helped them prepare for the debate, I spent six hours with them on debate prep. I think you may remember this. I went to the spin room on her behalf with Gavin Newsom and others. And she did a great job at the debate.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I was expecting it to come out of the debate in a full sprint and she didn’t do that. So, and then she lost narrowly. I mean, yes, you know, Trump likes to tell you how big the win was and all of this stuff, but it wasn’t that big of a win.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: It was a couple hundred thousand votes, and it was a narrow election.
Nicolle Wallace: What are you surprised by having been inside his 1.0 White House and watching his 2.0 team?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, first of all, I don’t like the policies, but you want to talk about a full-on sprint. They went crazy in the first three months, took everybody off guard, which is surprising to me, because they just went down the list, the Project 2025, which is exactly what he was going to do. And you and I remember his rhetoric.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I don’t even know who these people are.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes, yes, yes. I never heard of that. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m not going to use it.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I have no idea what they’re doing and boom, boom, boom. We went right down the list.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: But I think the spirit animal for Trump two from the family is Don Junior. The spirit animal from Trump one from the family was Jared Kushner. So, whatever you think of Jared, Jared was a safer pair of hands. He was a lot more rational. We used to call him the gold tender, meaning he would block the insane shots on net from Donald Trump. And a lot of the policies that we’re seeing right now, Nicolle, were blocked by Jared or Gary Cohn or Steven Mnuchin or John Kelly in Trump one. But the litmus test that Don Junior wanted these guys to pass was, are you going to let Donald Trump be Donald Trump? And these guys want power more than they believe in their own principles. And so, they said, yes.
And so that to me is, should be surprising. I guess it’s not that surprising to me anymore, because I’ve been around the game long enough to know that these guys, I mean, look at Rubio, this guy, right? This guy is a real character.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: This guy is literally he’s so far up the lower intestinal track of Donald Trump, you can barely see the guy’s ankles. I mean, Marco, come out of there, Marco. Somebody grab his ankles before he dies.
Nicolle Wallace: Little Marco, yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, this poor guy, right? Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: But you know, Trump looks tired. He looks unwell. He’s obeying the courts, believe it or not. You know, they’ve ruled with him a lot. They’ve ruled against him, but he hasn’t gone up against them. I think he’s going to lose the tariff case, by the way. So that’s me, and not totally factored into the U.S. stock market. But when he loses the tariff case, what will happen, because, you know, we could have a constitutional crisis. He could be the reverse of Marbury v. Madison where he, you know, he gives the finger to the court, and he locks up against them. The Congress is very weak. The Democrats are out of control. They have no narrative, Nicolle. They have no oppositional narrative.
Nicolle Wallace: Why is that? Why is that?
Anthony Scaramucci: Because they have a Civil War going on. They’re fighting with each other, and they don’t want to open their tent. The way you win elections, the way you win over the country, you say, you know, Anthony Scaramucci was once a Trumper. He’s not a Trumper anymore. Let’s bring him into the tent. They don’t want that. Let’s let Elon Musk out of the tent. Lyndon Johnson would’ve never done that, Nicolle. Lyndon Johnson had that great line that Robert Caro always talks about, I want all the elephants inside the tent in case they have to take a piss. They’ll piss outside the tent. Don’t let any elephant outside the tent that may pee into the tent.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: But you let Elon Musk and you let Bobby Kennedy Jr. out of the party. LBJ would’ve never done that. Even if he didn’t like them found them distasteful, he would’ve found roles for them. And the Democrats they want to shoot at each other. You know, I helped them on debate prep. They asked me to go on the plane. I said, okay, I’ll go on the plane. And then they called me back and said, oh, we can’t have you come on the plane, the hard left of our coalition, you were once a Trumper, a result of which you’re canceled to this hard left coalition. And we really can’t have anything to do with you beyond talking to you. I said, okay, no problem. It’s very honest. I appreciate that. But that’s why they can’t get it together. Because in a Civil War inside your own party, nobody wins. Ask Jimmy Carter if the Civil War with Ted Kennedy helped him win the election. Ask Gerald Ford if the Civil War in ‘76 with Ronald Reagan helped him win that election.
So when you have this inter-party fight going on, right, and this is something I always praise Secretary Clinton for, she lost to Barack Obama and she worked to get the crossover vote over to Obama. Bernie Sanders didn’t do that. We picked up, because I was working for Trump at that time, we picked up 20 percent of the Bernie Sanders voters, went to Donald Trump. And so, you can have inter party warfare. You have to have unity to win these elections. And they’re in complete disarray, and they fight with each other in the Congress. They don’t even have the narrative. You know, one guy is saying one thing, Schumer saying another thing.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: AOC is saying a third thing. So, guys, no narrative, no coalition. You’re not going to beat Trump. He’s laughing at you. He’s putting Trump 2028 (ph) signs in front of you just to trigger you and your base more.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, what’s the answer then? Because Trump doesn’t seem to be interested in sustaining a democracy.
Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, there’s an answer, but they don’t want to listen. The answer is there are more people that want the democracy than that don’t. Trump has a 37 percent approval rating.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: And you have to unify, you have to galvanize around a leader.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: Maybe you tell me who the leader is, but let’s galvanize. If you don’t like everything about Gavin Newsom, okay? Hold your nose and get in his coalition and build a broad base unified coalition. You don’t like Liz Chaney. You don’t like Chris Christie. Well, you know what? They’re pro-democracy people. Let’s rebrand the party as an open tent pro-democracy, pro-America party, in terms of the ideals of America. We can argue about the minutia later, but let’s get the themes right. Okay. We can fix the country later and we can debate the policies later, but we have to renew the system, and we have to explain to the American people how they are better off in a democracy. Because, Nicolle, there are always going to be people that believe an oligarchy or an aristocracy can run the country better. Right? Because they’re the elitist. They think they’re smarter than everybody else. But Lincoln, you know, Lincoln said to Douglas in the debates. He said, hey, you know, people think the American people are not smart, but let me tell you something. They have a very good nose. They can smell a rotting cadaver in their basement. That was literally the quote.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And we have a rotting cadaver in the basement right now. And there’s a hardcore group of cultists that are in the MAGA personality cult. Can’t get those people right now, but we can win those people over later. Moreover, when I talk to Democrats, they tell me, well, the 80 million people that voted for Donald Trump are racist, and they want to cancel them. Okay. Well, you can’t cancel them. They’re part of your country. How about reaching out to them and understanding their grievance and why they’re with Trump and how about figuring out a way to modify our policies to bring them back into the tent.
One last point, the Fox News right wing rhetoric about the inner cities and the state of California and stuff like that.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: Fight back.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: New York is doing just fine. Last time I checked the loop inside of Chicago is doing just fine.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: The fourth largest economy in the world is California.
Nicolle Wallace: California. Yes. Anthony Scaramucci: And I did Gavin’s podcast three months ago. I read out all these stats to Gavin about the state of California. Number one in aerospace, number one in tech, number one in entertainment. So many great things going on in California. And thank God he’s starting to rebut now, finally, the right wing narrative, he’s also explaining we’re putting $83 billion more into the federal government from California than California is taking from the federal government. That’s not true in Texas or other states. Moreover, we have crime, but in certain red states, the per capita crime rates are way higher. And, by the way, I don’t want to make it an us versus them, because that’s always bad for a country whose first name is united. I don’t want to split everybody.
Nicolle Wallace: But isn’t it already split? I mean, that Trump just said at Charlie Kirk’s funeral quote, “I hate my opponent.”
Anthony Scaramucci: It’s split, you’re right. And we have a leader that wants to split and divide the country, but I don’t accept that. And you honestly don’t accept that. And that is not where we want America to go.
You know, there’s different types of leaders. There’s the thermostat. And there’s the thermometer. Trump is the thermometer. He feels the heat in the country. He’s expressing back the heat to a certain base in the country.
Nicolle Wallace: You don’t think he creates it?
Anthony Scaramucci: He creates it. Yes. Well, he senses it. And then he says, okay, this is good. Let me throw another Duraflame log on and raise the temperature. Franklin Roosevelt was more of a thermostat. He said, okay, we got some heat in the country. I’m going to set the coordinates (ph) to 72 degrees. Let’s bring the temperature down.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. And Obama was like that.
Anthony Scaramucci: You see, we don’t have that right now.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And we don’t have a person who can articulate to the American people who they actually have been, who they actually are and who they actually could be. Trump is articulating it’s us versus them. We’re in a great culture war. The browning and darkening of the country from a color perspective demographically is hurting you as a white person. And so you need, I’m ringing the cowbell. You need to lock arms with me as we beat them back and we deport them and we crush them in the culture war. I don’t want that. The message is we are a beautiful, colorful mosaic of people. And we are exactly what Lincoln said. The last best hope for mankind. We are exactly what our founders wanted. We are an experiment. We are an international experiment of decentralized self-government where no one person can galvanize too much power to hurt the other people. Right? Because we know in tyrannies there’s a funnel at the top and the cronies around the tyrant make the money. And then there’s arbitrary capricious deliverance of the law. And everyone else hurts.
And our founders knew that they wrote about it in the Federalist papers. They said, okay, we don’t want that. And so a guy like me with no money coming from a blue-collar family can aspirationally rise in a country like this because they created this decentralized system. And by the way, Marbury v. Madison, Jefferson said, no problem. I set it up. No tyranny. I’m not going to flex on the Supreme Court. I’m going to obey the court. And it was a landmark case. And listen, look at what Washington did. Imagine Donald Trump in 1789, Mr. Trump, we just ratified the Constitution. Would you like to be the king? And Trump says, no, no. I’m going to go back to my farm.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m good.
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m going to go back to my farm.
Nicolle Wallace: Let me go back to my golf club.
Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, my God. Could you imagine, could you imagine the tweeting?
Nicolle Wallace: No.
Anthony Scaramucci: Could you imagine the tweeting?
Nicolle Wallace: No.
Anthony Scaramucci: So, you know, we lost our way, but we didn’t lose our way entirely. He’s not a well-liked guy, you just don’t have a galvanizing oppositional leader that can express in the right rhetoric with the right level of popularity. And remember this, one last point, you need somebody that’s a reality showman, a social media influencer contemporaneous of those two things, a policy wonk and a historian. And you need that person to come into the mix and help the Americans get to where they need to go not in the mired funk that we’re in right now.
Nicolle Wallace: Let’s pause for a moment right here. When we’re back, we’ll have much more of my conversation with entrepreneur and podcaster Anthony Scaramucci. Stay right here.
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Nicolle Wallace: Well, it’s hard to hear some of that. I mean, I think you’re absolutely right, but I think Harris did a lot of that. I feel like she took two of the four steps in that direction, but obviously, you got.
Anthony Scaramucci: But you got to take five of the four steps.
Nicolle Wallace: Correct. No.
Anthony Scaramucci: You got to take 10 of the four steps. You know?
Nicolle Wallace: I take all your points, but what I would say is I agree that that’s what the Democrats need, but why can the Republicans achieve everything they can achieve with a guy convicted of 34 felonies who can’t string together a sentence without a noun or a verb?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, we both used to be Republicans. So you actually internally intuitively know the answer to that. For whatever reasons, the Republicans, they lock step with each other once the nomination process is over. The George Herbert Walker Bush Republicans team up with Ronald Reagan. The John McCain Republicans, they teamed up with George Walker Bush. And so, you know, culturally.
Nicolle Wallace: They fall in line. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: Culturally, the Republicans have a fabric about them where, okay, I disagree with, Nicolle, but she’s going to be running the thing. And I’m going to team up with her because she’s better than the alternative. The Democrats are very righteous.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And they’re morally convicted.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s about winning though. It’s like, they’re more committed to winning and beating the other party.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, yes. Yes. Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: Than to working it all out.
Anthony Scaramucci: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, Ezra Klein, I feel like, is nibbling at this. He was talking on his podcast about trans rights, and he said we can’t do anything.
Anthony Scaramucci: Is that pod adultery (ph), Nicolle? Or are you like listening in on his podcast? I think a little bit of pod adultery (ph). That’s okay.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s a good one.
Anthony Scaramucci: You’re allowed. You’re allowed.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s a good one.
Anthony Scaramucci: You’re allowed.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, I am getting more —
Anthony Scaramucci: I want you to listen to my podcast too.
Nicolle Wallace: I do.
Anthony Scaramucci: So I want some pod adultery (ph). Okay. You’re allowed.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m getting more and more of my information from podcasts because I think people are a lot more candid.
Anthony Scaramucci: I like Ezra, and by the way, full confession, I listen to your podcast. I listen to Ezra’s podcast.
Nicolle Wallace: And I listen to Kara and Scott.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes. I listen to Kara and I’ve been a guest on their show.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Yes, I know. You’ve been great.
Anthony Scaramucci: Scott is not around.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Awesome.
Anthony Scaramucci: And I do listen, but you were making a point about Ezra. I’m sorry.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, no, but he was making —
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m just teasing about the pod adultery (ph).
Nicolle Wallace: No, no, no. He was making a similar, in his sort of cerebral analytic way, that name the issue that matters in a democracy, and you can’t do anything about it if you can’t win. And folks close to Obama have made the same point, whatever progressive value you hold, it’ll be trampled if you lose. And so I wonder why that isn’t more galvanizing or focusing for Democrats.
Anthony Scaramucci: I can’t explain that because I’m actually not a Democrat, but I want to give you three things to think about, okay? I want give you three things. Number one, after Ross Perot got 19.9 percent of the vote, they strengthened the duopoly. They made it much harder for third parties to enter the system.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: Number two, they both decided that we’re going to gerrymander a lot. They accuse each other of it, and they’re hypocritical about it because they both do it. And so I submit to you, are you in a real democracy where the politician is now picking the voter? The voter is no longer picking the politician. And this allows them to pass the big, beautiful spending bill where 35 percent of the country wants it. But they’re okay, because even though they have a low approval rating as a Congress, they have a 95 percent reelection rate.
And then the third thing that we did is Citizens United. So, we flooded the system with money.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: After that Supreme Court decision and now all the legislative agendas are skewed towards big business, the wealthy, big pharma, big food. And so, until you manage that and you expose that to the American people, and you tell the American people, by the way, we need systemic reform, the Constitution as Jill Lepore is recently writing about needs amendments. We’ve had 27 amendments in 1789, that’s 236 years. We were clipping an amendment once every seven or eight years, we stopped amending the Constitution in 1993. Moreover, that was a procedural amendment. The biggest amendment that we did was 59 years ago, the civil rights legislation. And I’m telling you without amendments, like fixing gerrymandering, campaign finance reform, allowing for some slackage or opening of other ideas in these parties, or at least cutting off the extremes, we’re going to continue to have these problems.
But I can’t answer the question about the Civil War. I think they think that they would rather be puritanical than pragmatic. And I think a lot of them feel that way. And I get it. I understand the issues related to, and Republicans did as something masterful here. They went after Obamacare in 2017, McCain blocked them with the no vote. And they never brought up that they wanted to end Obamacare again, but they’re ending Obamacare. Okay? It’s like, they’re doing it, right. They’re pulling one string at a time in these different bills. And they’re going to take 20 plus million people off of the insurance roles, which I guess helps the big insurance lobby, but actually hurts the American people and actually fractures the morale for lower and middle income people. And the Democrats, are they explaining this to anybody? I would be out there. If I was a Democrat, I’d say, hey, big, beautiful spending, making it over a million dollars a year. We got a $7,000 benefit, $50,000 or less. We took $700 away from you. And I would be out there explaining to the people, hey, listen, you know, we got to change.
And here’s another thing Democrats could be doing. The most powerful voting bloc in the country, Nicolle, a hundred plus million people, they vote the exact same way in every single election, those are the non-voters, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: Every single election, they vote the exact same way.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: How about thinking like an entrepreneur and going into that marketplace and saying, hey, the country’s screwed up. You didn’t vote. Well, let me win you over with some really decent, common-sense policies and register to vote. And we don’t have entrepreneurial politicians. You got to go to the non-voters that lean Republicans and you got to get them to register to vote. That’s what Barack Obama did in ‘08. He went to the non-voters that were leaning Democrats. Clinton had all the establishment Democrats locked up, all the governors, you know, she thought he was going to be the HUD secretary. And he went to all of the non-voters, and he built this whole new coalition of voters as an entrepreneur. And he brought him into the game, and it carried him to the presidency.
Nicolle Wallace: Twice. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And so, guys, why have you lost that mojo?
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. Well, I mean —
Anthony Scaramucci: Nicolle, you’re going back to the well with the same people every year. The definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing over and over again, and think you’re going to get a different outcome.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, and it’s a mindset from outside of politics, right? I mean, you can solve most problems by making it bigger. It’s sort of a, you know, it’s a parenting thesis, it’s a business thesis.
Anthony Scaramucci: I believe that.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s not really —
Anthony Scaramucci: I believe they think like that. Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. But it’s like not really a political thesis and it’s not really where the political class economics lie, right. It’s a lot more profitable to sell yourself as someone who can persuade people who are active participants than to be out there saying I’m going to find gold in the West. And I wonder, I mean, that is sort of more suited to an entrepreneurial mindset. Why would you run for office?
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m running for reelection in my marriage. Okay. You’ve met my wife. I’m trying to stay married.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I mean, you know, my wife has like a, on her conventional platform is like castration. You know, Nicolle, I mean, this was such a bad thing for me. I mean, you know.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: You know, I mean, I just want to set the scene because people sometimes forget. I went to work for Trump. I was with Bush and then I went to work for Trump and then I did buy into it because I thought he was going to help the poor and middle class, which I came from. And then when he started acting crazy, I made the most colossal mistake in my life and I’m happy to admit it to you. And it doesn’t reflect well on me. I did what everybody else did in that party, cognitive dissonance. I accepted him moving the goal post on me. And then when I got into the White House and I took an oath, you know, people think I got fired for the New Yorker thing. I was fighting with Trump. Trump loved the New Yorker interview. If you know anything about Trump’s personality, he thought it was funny. I was fighting with him about stuff. He told me on Friday, and I remember this, Nicolle, because I was only there for two Fridays. So I do remember it was my second Friday. He told me that I was a deep stater and I laughed. I said, I’m a deep stater? I’ve been to Washington one time prior to this on like a field trip. I’m definitely not a deep stater, but what I am is a constitutionalist, I believe in the Constitution, and the institution of the presidency, not the man. And then Friday I got fired. I mean, Monday I got fired after that conversation. And I’m cool with it, but now think about it. I’m lit up by all the late-night comedians. I’m excoriated by all the cable news pundits. I’m like rolled in margarita salt by Saturday Night Live, I mean, it was brutal. Okay. And then my wife and I are fighting. I mean, she hates Trump almost as much as Melania hates him. So, we’re talking about like, and you know, we’re talking about, that’s like that Eastern European hatred. So, you know how bad it is, right. And she really hates him and she told me not to do it. And then, I mean, this is terrible for me to admit it. But then I missed the birth of my son, and you’ve met my son because you’ve come to the Mets games with me. He’s a beautiful eight-year-old boy now. He was born on Monday the 24th of July, 2017. I was at the Boy Scout soiree in West Virginia. Deidre gave birth early. I couldn’t get back to New York even if I chartered a plane because it was a 60-mile no-fly restriction.
So politics have been very bad for me and my family. Having said that, I love my country. So I am out there talking about what’s going on because I want people I grew up with especially, to know how dangerous Donald Trump is and know how dangerous this is for the society. But I can’t see myself running for office because of all the things that I just described to you. But if you said to me, somebody was running that I could help, who I thought believed in American renewal and the renewal of the democracy and getting a few amendments on the table that was going to help the country come together and dial down some of the tribalism, I’m up for that. And I’m a good check writer and I’m a good spokesman for somebody like that.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, there’s so much I want to ask you about there. I guess the first thing is what were you fighting with him about?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, specifically on that day he wanted to veto the Russian sanctions bill.
Nicolle Wallace: It passed like 98 to one.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: Right?
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes. And I said to him that if you go to do that, they’re going to go to Schumer and they’re going to get the 17 or 18 votes necessary to override the veto. And he didn’t like that. And what was happening, if I’m being brutally honest, when I was with him on the campaign, Jared once said to me, you know, the reason he calls you at 10 o’clock at night or 11 o’clock at night is you’re giving him the straight scoop. And he told me that you remind him of Fred, meaning Fred Trump. You made your own money. You don’t care. You’re talking to him, you know, Reince Priebus would never talk to him the way I was talking to him. You know, Reince would, woof, woof, like, woof. He would never do it, you know, but I’m a New Yorker. So I was talking to him in a real way. And I made the mistake, when I got into the White House, I brought that with me into the White House. And so I did it once or twice. And on that third time we were discussing the Russian bill. He ultimately on the 3rd of August signed the bill. But he didn’t like the pushback. And when he told me I was a deep stater, I knew I was in trouble. There were three things that Trump could do. And Pompeo and I once talked about this. If he said, hey, President Pompeo. I mean, it was time for Mike to like book a trip to like Antarctica to talk to the penguins. Right? Or if he said you’re getting more famous than me. So if Trump said, you’re President Kelly, you’re getting more famous than me or you’re a deep stater, you were getting in his crosshairs. And I think I got said all three of those things in 11 days.
Nicolle Wallace: I want to tell you my story about, you know, you came on my show once, because Jeb said you were one of his favorite humans. And I respect Jeb’s judgment a whole lot. I believed him. And I see why now he felt that way. But you were so glib about parroting talking points that the person that I knew that knew you —
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — assured me, you didn’t believe.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And I just want to understand what makes people say things they don’t believe because now it extends to the entire party I was, I helped put some of the Senate Republicans in office in the midterm elections of 2002. I know some of these people, and I know they don’t believe tariffs are good. I know they aren’t neutral in a war between Ukraine and Russia. And I do not understand the human trade.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: That makes people say and do things. I know they don’t believe.
Anthony Scaramucci: Okay. All right. So, this is a great question. And I’m actually going to answer the question, and it doesn’t reflect well on me, but I’m going to answer it honestly. Number one, Jeb told me not to work for Donald Trump. Okay. So, I made that mistake and then Jeb told me not to go into the administration. And I made that mistake.
And I’m going to tell you something about pride and ego that gets people in trouble. I grew up in a blue collar family, Nicolle. I went to Tufts and Harvard. I didn’t really fit into either of those two places. Then I went to Goldman. Then I built two successful businesses by being a lifelong Republican donor.
When Trump won, I had the opportunity to work for the American president, go from a blue-collar family to work in the White House. And my ego and my pride was talking to me. If I took my pride and my ego out of the decision making, I would’ve done something very different. You know, one of my mentors, and I won’t mention his name out of fairness to him, got offered a very big job. I helped him get the job. He spent some time with Trump and he withdrew his nomination. And he called me in December of 2016 and said, after spending five or six hours with President-elect Trump, I’ve decided it’s not going to be good for me and my family if I go war for him, we don’t see the world the same.
I thought he was crazy because I was equivocating, and I was doing the cognitive dissonance of talking myself into those talking points. And so, I have to own that for the rest of my life.
But I will say this to you that I talk about it openly. I’ve already apologized for that. And I talk about it openly with the younger people and I’m sharing it with you on this podcast so that maybe somebody could learn from the mistake I made and not make that mistake themselves.
Now we all like to think of ourselves as moral. We all like to think of ourselves as righteous. But if you read any of Robert Greene’s books about human nature, we do have proclivities in our personality that we need to restraint. But mine was, I’m going to go work for the American president. I’m going to go help the people I grew up with. And yes, he’s a little crazy, but so what, I’ve got it under control. So, the narrative from those senators are, yes, he’s crazy. I don’t believe in this but I got to stay in power because somebody further to the right to me could primary me. And now, you know, you know all of the equivocating language. But I think after 10 years, and Nicolle, listen, in August of 2019, I went on the public airways and said, I’m sorry, I have to denounce Donald Trump. He’s not the right guy to be president. He should not be president in 2021. And nobody was willing to do that at that time.
Nicolle Wallace: I remember, yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: And I took a major amount of incoming and a major amount of flack, but at least I had the guts and self-awareness to admit a mistake and to admit that I was wrong. But now if the Democrats want to cancel me for making that mistake, they’re entitled to do that, but they’re going to continue to lose elections. They’ve got to look at somebody like me and the other 80 million people and say, okay, wait a minute. These people actually love the country. Maybe they made a mistake or they did something misguided and we got to bring these people together again and to go forward.
And so if you haven’t ever sinned, throw a rock at me, hit me square in the head. But if you’ve done something wrong in your life or you made a mistake in a relationship or business or politics, have some empathy for what I did. And at least recognize that I was brave enough and self-aware enough to admit that I got something wrong.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes. But you’re the exception, right? I mean the 99 percent of Trump voters aren’t going to have that humility. They’re not evolved enough to just articulate what you did. And so, bringing them back, if getting part of them back is part of a winning coalition, at least the ones that don’t like the Medicaid cuts, don’t like the tariffs, thought it was a good idea when smart people worked inside the FBI, instead of being purged from it. I mean, there are a lot of people for whom Trump has betrayed, things he promised less than 12 months ago. He stood in front of melting food and promised quote, “everything in the grocery will be cheaper.” It is all more expensive. How do you, without finding the like needle in the haystack man with your humility and ability to admit you made a mistake, how do you bring men back around to the prodemocracy coalition?
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m going to channel a little Scott Galloway’s wisdom in his common sense. I think by talking about it, I think by having more communicators, I think Newsom is doing a very good job.
Nicolle Wallace: I do too.
Anthony Scaramucci: The right is catching their hair on fire, and he keeps tweeting at him. You obviously still don’t get it. I’m mocking the insanity of what you’re allowing.
Nicolle Wallace: I’m a mirror. Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I’m mocking the insanity. I’m not replicating Trump.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: I’m not trying to beat Donald Trump on the left. I’m trying to force a mirror, like you just said, to the mockery of it. Right? And so, I think when I talk to young people and I go to the colleges, or I talk to young people, I think you can get them.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: I think that there’s a vacuum that Andrew Tate is filling. And there’s a vacuum that some of this toxic masculinity, these toxic masculinity figures are filling, but I think you can talk to them. And I’m saying to you, the reason why you’re successful with your podcast or Scott is successful with his podcast is that it’s raw and it’s real. You know, we can’t do this on MSNBC because we don’t have 45 minutes on MSNBC unfiltered.
Nicolle Wallace: Well, we do.
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, you know what I mean? You know what I mean?
Nicolle Wallace: Yes, yes. Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: This is not a sound bite conversation.
Nicolle Wallace: Correct.
Anthony Scaramucci: This is not a six-minute a-block or a 12-minute a-block.
Nicolle Wallace: Correct.
Anthony Scaramucci: This is a 45-minute conversation.
Nicolle Wallace: My conversation with Anthony Scaramucci continues on the other side of the break. We’ll be right back.
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Nicolle Wallace: You know, if you take your thesis, right, that we shouldn’t be fighting over the same people that vote in every election, we should go find the ones that don’t understand why and bring them into the enterprise. Those people especially are not watching any television. You know, they’re getting all their news from their phones. They’re getting all their news from the podcast they self-select.
Anthony Scaramucci: No question.
Nicolle Wallace: And it, sort of, back to your other point about having to be everywhere. I started listening to Joe Rogan and flagrant and some of the manosphere podcasts, because I felt like it was as important to cover them as it used to be to cover. I don’t know the Evangelical church when I was working in Republican politics because of their import. They now all seem lamer (ph), like their association with the state seems to have taken away that, which was, you know, sort of seductive and subversive about them. And they all seem to sort of be parroting like, what government officials are saying. I wonder if you think there’s an opening there to sort of either build something or replicate something or learn from something they did to great effect in ‘24.
Anthony Scaramucci: I guess what I would say my initial reaction is that they see Trump rightly or wrongly as an avatar of anger against the establishment. So parroting him, being a Dana White or a Joe Rogan still in their minds fits that narrative.
Nicolle Wallace: But he is the establishment now.
Anthony Scaramucci: I understand that. That’s the irony. So, I think it does come across lamer (ph) but they still draw the people. And Rogan said something the other day about the immigration thing, which was so right. Good for Joe. I mean, Joe was like, well, dude, what are you guys doing? You’re raiding assembly. You just said you were going to go after the criminals. Now you got students cowering in their mom and dad’s apartment afraid to go to school because you have ICE agents waiting for them to deport them. You know? And so I think the menacing nature of what’s going on in my opinion, will change the Rogans and will change those rebellious podcasters away from Trump. I will say something very optimistic to you that I’ve noticed. Okay. And it’s three quick things. Number one, people are getting over Trump. They’ve got Trump fatigue.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: A very large portion of them. And certainly, the people that love immigrants. The second thing is the Trump movement is a personality cult. Trump said something after he bunker-busted the Iranians, they said, okay, well, what’s your policies. You know, no forever wars. And you keep flip flopping on the policies. And he said, well, the MAGA policies are whatever I want them to be.
That’s a very good sign for the opposition, because when he leaves the stage, there’ll be a personality void in a personality cult. And you don’t know what can happen to the Republican Party after that. So that’s the second thing I would say.
And then the third thing that I would say, and this is about something that James Carville would say to you, okay, it’s the economy stupid. And the economy is not doing well, Nicolle. Okay. And the numbers are showing you that we’re heading for a soft recession and that people don’t feel good about those prices that you just referenced. And they don’t feel good about their day-to-day life. Even if the Democrats have a faulty narrative, it’ll get pinned on the Republicans to the benefit of the Democrats.
So, to me, there’s a lot of green shoots of optimism happening right now where other people say, oh, I’m despairing. Here are the 20 reasons why I’m despairing. I’m like, yes, but in six months from now, it’s going to be a very big, different song being sung from this sheet music. And so we got to stay, you got to stay in touch for that.
Nicolle Wallace: I see all of that. I also think the sadistic nature of how they’re targeting people who are asylum seekers and people in mixed status families and people who are here illegally, but who are in process, is so disproportionate. Of course we should have a border. Of course we should have immigration laws. Ronald Reagan believed in amnesty. I think in his heart, George W. Bush did too. It’s actually Barack Obama who deported more people than any American president in history. I wonder if you think that he’s in danger of overplaying his hand.
Anthony Scaramucci: I think that. That always happens. That always happens. And the question is how much destruction is he going to do prior to overplaying his hand? And the question is, you know, are there going to be any guys, you know, some of these Republican senators that you’re talking about, believe it or not, I’ll embarrass myself further on your program. I’ve donated money to, and some of them have said to me privately, that there are red lines for them. And they tell me what the red lines are. Trump hasn’t crossed over any of them yet, but let’s say he crosses over and disavows a Supreme Court decision. Can he lose two or three of these guys? I think he might.
You know, the reason why he pays Ukraine lip service, you know this because you’re a great reporter. They go to the White House, and they say, enough, you got to help Ukraine. And he doesn’t want to because he’s got, you know, and he’s got a bee in his bonnet about Vladimir Putin. God only knows what Putin has on him. So, he is always playing lip service because he doesn’t want to lose these Republicans.
You know, like somebody said to me, I was in London last night giving a speech, somebody said to me, well, do you think he’s going to pull one of these elections? Well, let me tell you something. If he thought he was going to lose the House and the Senate, then I would have that up on the risk table because he’s going to get annihilated of that and he could end up getting impeached and convicted and tried for all these emoluments violations. So, who the hell knows? But I mean, if he loses the House and he wins the Senate, he’s probably not going to do it. But that, you know, that’s his nature.
But let me tell you what I notice about him. He’s lost a step. He is tired. His ankles are swollen. His hands are bruised. He’s trying to pretend that he hasn’t lost a step, but he’s lost a step. And he always projects it. He’s said to the generals, I don’t like Barack Obama, but how the hell did he run down the steps of Air Force One? Okay. And he’s letting you know that he’s grabbing the handrail because he could tumble down those steps and that would be a disaster for him. And we’re dealing with an 80, about to be 80-year-old Donald Trump, not a 50-year-old Donald Trump. And I’m telling you that’s another reason to be optimistic that this is going to end, it’ll end very ugly for these willing sycophants. History will treat them very poorly, but there will be a civil war in the party, not a Civil War in the country, but there’ll be a fight for the soul of that Republican Party over the next two to four years. And it may not end up being MAGA, because without Trump, there may or may not be a MAGA, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Are you generally, I mean, when you have kids, it’s hard to have any answer other than yes, but are you generally optimistic that we’ll get out of this?
Anthony Scaramucci: I am, but I’m not saying that in a pollyannish way, you know, you could also say I’m too short to see the glass anything other than half full, when, I’m like, looking at the glass, you know. You know I have to sit on phone books when I’m on your show. But I am because of every single thing that I just said. And also, there’s one weird thing about America that nobody fully understands. (Inaudible) addressed it a little bit. Lincoln, I think understood it the best. I have this great book on my desk here called life and liberty, which are the original writings of Lincoln. And I try to go through that book every once in a while, like, wow, he really understands this place. It is adaptive. It is risk taking. It is a neuroplastic country.And I think the vestiges of this populist experiment where the populace finally caught the car, you know, Williams Jennings Bryan was barking at the car. Charles Lindbergh barked at the car. Donald Trump caught the car, and it turns out that they don’t have the answers. They don’t have the policy solutions for the dilemma that we’re facing.
And so, the question is, can a Republican or a Democrat speak to the people with the right eloquence and the right charisma to get them to understand that there are viable solutions for them. And I don’t think that looks like MAGA. And I don’t think that looks like the populism. So, yes, I am.
Nicolle Wallace: You obviously are around people that support Donald Trump. I think there are a lot of people that we probably both know media circles, who don’t talk to Trump voters anymore. If you’re in a politically divided family, it’s just not how most Americans live, I don’t think.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I think most Americans have someone they love dearly, who they disagree with on what feels like it’s bigger than politics.
Anthony Scaramucci: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, you know, Archie Bunker is, you know, a generational divide and it’s a time of, you know, the last vestiges of racism and sexism. This feels existential like, what’s happening is they’re disappearing humans. It feels against the First Amendment against the Fourth Amendment against the 14th Amendment. I mean, this feels so big. And I guess I’m asking for myself personally, how do you hold your heart open for the people you love who are enthusiastic about the things that Trump is doing?
Anthony Scaramucci: Well, this is the problem, right? This is ultimately where you have to understand the way your brain works. You’re in a 100,000-year-old piece of machinery that hasn’t had a software upgrade in a hundred thousand years, when they were building the pyramids, that’s your brain. This phone went from iPhone 1 to 17 in 15 years.
So you got to understand how your brain works. Your brain is wired for survival, and your brain is wired to think linearly because that’s what helped you survive. But the world around you, Nicolle is moving exponentially. So, when Thomas Malthus said, we were going to starve in the 1840s, he missed out on all the great tech, fertilization, irrigation, vertical farming, all the different things we did. We have more people.
Nicolle Wallace: DoorDash.
Anthony Scaramucci: Right. DoorDash. Prior to, think about this, prior to Ozempic, we had more people dying from obesity related issues than we did starvation.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Anthony Scaramucci: When I was in college, I’m older than you. When I was in college, they said peak oil. We’re going to run out of oil. But they didn’t think about fracking or the new technologies or the better energy efficiency of the cars or the generators, the electrical generators.
So what I’m saying to you, be transformative, be sublime, be transcendental, make a decision in your heart that even though somebody is misguided, they could be making a mistake, it may not be so deep in them that they’re actually evil. Maybe they’re fearful of their job. Maybe there’s xenophobia comes from financial anxiety. Maybe their nativism comes from impulse towards nostalgia to a country that never really existed. I don’t know what it is, but make the bet that they can be convinced otherwise that it’s in their best interest to go in another direction.
Because one of the things about populist rhetoric, it burns itself out. You know, I can chant at you violently and you’ll be excited about that for a while. But the yolk of that starts to fall off of people over time. And I’m predicting that that’s going to happen over the next three to five years. Hopefully you’ll invite me back on your podcast. To say, wow, it’s 2030. Hopefully I’ll still have my hair. God, let me have my hair. Okay. I mean, this hairline has got me a long way, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: You’ve got great hair.
Anthony Scaramucci: God, let me have my hair.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s like, —
Anthony Scaramucci: Let me, I know it’s a little messy today, I put enough product in today, but I’m saying it’ll be 2030, please, God, let me have my hair. But we’ll be there in 2030 and you and I will be talking and you’ll be like, you know what? It got better.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Anthony Scaramucci: It got better, economic innovation, some clarity on what the right policies were. Some guardrails on the Congress, as it related to spending, maybe some reform as it relates to Citizens United or gerrymandering. And it got better. We made it better because we’ve been in periods of time in this country where it didn’t look like it was going to get better, killed 600,000 people 160 years ago trying to break apart the country and it got better.
And so we’re in it and we’ve had some establishment failures and some shortcomings where they didn’t listen well enough to a very large group of people that got angry at them. But I think that period of time is ending. And that’s why I’m optimistic.
Nicolle Wallace: Anthony Scaramucci, thank you so much for the time. Thank you so much for the Mets conversation. I really needed that.
Anthony Scaramucci: Pain, the pain, the pain of it.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much, my friend. Thank you for all your time.
Anthony Scaramucci: Hey, great to be on with you guys.
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