Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, Wall Street and America’s Economic Anger

0:00Bloomberg Businessweek Daily is brought to you by HPE, bringing you the self-driving network, a network that's self-optimizing, self-healing, and self-protecting, and only continues to get smarter. Learn more at hpe.com slash networking.

0:14Carol Massar:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

0:56Carol Massar:This is Robert Smith from Business History. If you're listening to this, there's a good chance you're a small business owner. And like every small business owner, you started with a dream to do what you love and watch it grow. What you probably didn't dream about? Keeping up with cyber threats. That's where MasterCard can help with access to tools that help identify cyber threats to better protect your business. Building your dream business? Priceless. For cybersecurity in a changing world, there's MasterCard. Learn more at MasterCard.com slash small business. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts.

1:32Carol Massar:Radio. News. You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. We're already having fun with Anthony Scaramucci. He's the founder and managing partner of Skybridge. He's the co-host of the podcast The Rest of Politics. He also briefly served, OK, 10 days or 11 days? There's a little debate there. There's some serious debate here. Your book says 11. You say 11. You're hurting my feelings. Okay. I mean, I got fired on the 11th day. It's a big day for me. Okay. Don't chip me at a 9.1 % of my federal career. So it's 11? Yeah. And by the way, when Trump is trolling me on Twitter and calling me a total loser and all that type of stuff, he says 11.

2:14I think he should be the official scorer on that, don't you? If you start on the 21st and you work a full day on the 31st, count the days.

2:22Carol Massar:Yeah. Okay. It's 11 days. You don't go 31 minus 21. I did that. I said 11. I'm just telling you. You guys work at Bloomberg. Tell the BBC, okay? That's all I'm going to say. No, no, the BBC's locked in at the 10-day mark. I mean, I actually went to them and tried to make a forcible appeal. And they insist that I'm only there for 10 days. And it hurts my feelings. Your book is called All the Wrong Moves, and it really gets into why we saw the rise of Donald Trump. Was being in the White House for you a wrong move? Do you consider it a wrong move as you look back? Well, I would say campaigning for Donald Trump.

2:58I was with Jeb Bush, Jeb dropping out of the race, and me accepting the offer from then-candidate Trump to go work for him was a colossal mistake, probably the biggest mistake, until I made the bigger mistake of going to work inside the White House. So I would say that they were graduating in exponentially bigger mistakes.

3:17Carol Massar:But didn't feel like a mistake at the time, or did it? Well, by 24 hours into it, it started to feel like a mistake. Because, you know, it was a crazy situation. And there was heavy levels of dysfunctionality. And, you know, I'm taking you back nine years now. But Priebus and Bannon and Jabber. They were not on your side. No, no. They hated my guts. Yeah. Yeah, but, you know, the funny thing about Priebus, he should just tell you that he hates your guts. You know, he doesn't have to, like, act like Richie Cunningham from Happy Days. Well, you talk about being like, I'm out there in front and, like, I lay it out.

3:46No, I said I'm a front stabber. I'm not a back stabber. You know, I'll tell you to your face. Come on, I'm a New Yorker. You guys are here in New York.

3:52Carol Massar:Listen, we all have visited the White House. We have a feel. We see it. We see the pictures. We see the president coming out and making. Take us inside the White House your first day, your second day, and what that was like. And I understand under President Trump and his administration, they were different. You have to remember, I had friends of mine that worked for President Clinton. I had a relationship with President Obama. So I had been out of the White House for 30 years. and in the Oval Office, the Roosevelt Room, I had been in the Navy mess. I had never been to the residence. So the first time I was in the residence was when I worked in the White House for President Trump.

4:26But it's a small place. You know that. It's not that big. The West Room building isn't that big. The West Wing offices are not big. The Oval itself is not that big. Moreover, the president's study is probably smaller than anything that was at Trump Tower for Donald Trump. But it is a magisterial historic place. and it's very well preserved, and there's a White House Historical Association, which I did get familiar with in that short period of time. And the Truman renovation prior to the recent Trump renovations was unbelievably necessary. People don't remember that, but the entire White House was gutted, and a steel frame was put in, and the place was rebuilt.

5:07And thank God for that, because it was really falling apart. But listen, I'll tell you a human story about the president, though, because I know I'm at odds with him, but this is a human story. first day I was with him after I did my press conference, we were sitting in the Oval Office together alone. It was just the two of us. And I said to him, I laugh, and I said to him, you know, we're two New Yorkers. You're from Queens. I'm from Nassau County. Can you believe you're behind the Resolute desk and I'm sitting here? And he said, I'm very human. He said, you know, first time I got here, I was very unnerved by it.

5:37I was sitting here saying, okay, I'm actually the president. And then the phone was ringing. He picked up the phone. It was White House protocol. and he said, Mr. President, you've got a head of state coming and you're going to meet Prime Minister Theresa May at the North Portico. And the president looked at me and said, I had no idea where the North Portico was. You know, I mean, he was a very honest and very human moment, which you don't often see with the president. You know, the last time you and I spoke was, I believe, when your memoir came out, 2018. It was called Trump, the Blue Collar President.

6:10In that book, you wrote that I believe we have a real opportunity and a Trump presidency to change things dramatically for the good. We might never have a president again who can move intractable barriers the way he does. It was a very complimentary portrait of the president. It was written after your time at the White House. Yeah, I certainly didn't want to be that baby or play the victim after I got fired. I was very supportive of the president up until about August of 2019. That book, if you go back and read it, I think it stands the test of time, and it's a good corollary to this book, because what I explained in the book is that we have a crisis of wages for a very large group of people in the United States.

6:49We've sort of left a large group of people, blue collar workers, et cetera, out. You know, we have an economically aspirational society for many. And certainly for my blue collar family, we felt economically aspirational. But if you look at the data, there's about 20 to 25 percent of the people now that feel economically desperational. And so the message of blue collar president was he has the ability to cross over. He could be a postpartisan president. He could be a transformative president. He could help get deals done to bring that community back into the social contract of America. But that didn't happen.

7:25So what happened? He had the potential to do that. What happened for you that changed your view on him? What was it? Well, I mean, there was a number of different things, but the main one, I was on the Bill Marshall actually defending him. I thought I was defending him. Catherine Rampell, I don't know if you ever interviewed her, but she was on the show with me. She turned to me and said, well, what about the squad? And so for your listeners and viewers, what is the squad? It's four women that are in the House of Representatives. They're pretty much hard left-leaning. He said that they should go back to the countries they originally came from.

8:00Three of them are born in the United States. One is a naturalized citizen. That's American nativism. That's a form of racism. So Catherine asked me on a live television, she said, well, you're defending the president. What do you think of the remarks about the squad? I said, listen, I don't like them. My Italian American grandmother was told that in the 1920s. It broke her heart. She used to talk about it to us in the 1960s and 70s. And I wish he wouldn't talk like that. That's a form of nativism. It's a form of racism. He's the American president. Well, Bill Maher said to me, he's going to attack you tomorrow.

8:32I said, there's no way. I was defending him. He said, ah, you were seven for eight for him. You got to go 13 for 10. I said, he's not watching your show. He goes, what are you an idiot? Stormy Daniels was on the show tonight. That was his first guest. He was watching. And so he was watching and he started blasting me the next day. I'm a New Yorker. So I started blasting back and then he blasted me again and I blasted him. Then he started attacking my wife. And so he knew that Deirdre and I were going through a personal relationship crisis when I was in the White House. We had a divorce paperwork put together.

9:05Thank God we reconciled our marriage because we love each other. But it was a bridge too far for me. You know, he's capable of doing things that are way outside the standard deviation of what's normal for an American president. And I had given him millions of dollars. I had supported him. And you're going after my wife. If you know I've got a problem at home that I'm trying to repair, it's just a bridge too far for me. And I said, okay, this guy's not the type of leader that should be the president of the United States. And so I spoke out against him. I was probably one of the first people that was an aide or an assistant to the president.

9:36There are many now, not just me, that try to tell people how dangerous he is. But that's what happened. That's the origin of me saying, hey, no mas. That's not cool.

9:46Carol Massar:What happened, though, to the contract, in your view, that Donald Trump made while on the campaign trail, certainly the first time around, in saying, I'm going to bring more of you people into the economy. I'm going to help those of you who feel like both Democrats and Republicans maybe have left you behind in some ways. That was the blueprint for blue-collar presidents. So there were so many different things he could have done to do that. But why didn't he? That's my question. I understand the promises that he made. I think he's a distracted guy. He'll stay on a thing, and then he moves to another thing very quickly.

10:18We're supposedly having infrastructure a week in the first term every week. It never materialized. I think the tax cuts that got put through in 2017, which the conservative, more traditional Republicans like Paul Ryan wanted those tax cuts, and also the SALT deduction, which hurt places like New York and blue states, I think that hurt his standing with the Democrats, frankly. And then, if you remember, he said S-H-I-T, whole countries, as he was trying to put together the immigration package, and these things started to unwind on him. And you had traditional Republicans in there that were indifferent to that cause, if we're being honest.

11:00Traditional Republicans in Trump, one, probably protected the country and the world from the tariffs, belicasse of rhetoric against NATO, potential trade war with Canada. The guardrails, right? All those things were things that were likely to have had happened in Trump 1 had he had this level of personnel. The Trump 2 personnel in Trump 1, you would see that. But the Republicans also prevented some of the stuff that we're talking about in terms of bringing those people back into the integration of the economy.

11:32Carol Massar:You talk Republicans. A lot of the Republicans are the personnel that are allowing things to happen. And I think it's fair to say— In this— In this— They're not traditional Republicans, though. The Republicans of Mitt Romney and John McCain and the Republicans of Adam Kissinger and Paul Ryan and General John Kelly, they're long gone from the party. You want to talk about a decapitation. We have a decapitation strike in Iran, but the first decapitation strike for Donald Trump was removing senior Republican establishment leadership from the Republican Party. This was an M &A, and he installed MAGA and the Heritage Foundation.

12:11They call themselves Republicans, but they're not the Republicans I grew up with.

12:15Carol Massar:I guess my question, we only have a minute. We're going to come back and talk some more, Anthony. But, like, who are these Americans? Who are these leaders that I think it's safe to say, and we've done a lot of reporting about, you know, various individuals who are in this administration and the money that they're making based on policies. And it just feels like we didn't drain the swamp. Well, you know, let me tell you this. Under Donald Trump, it's not a swamp. And we've got 30 seconds and we're going to bring you back. Under Donald Trump, it's not a swamp. It is a gold-plated hot tub. Okay?

12:46I mean, think about it. It's very high-level, open-faced, shameless activity to self-enrich people. And I think it's disgusting. And I do think they'll be held accountable, though. I don't think they can get away with it. I mean, he can pardon his family members and pardon himself. But there's a whole big atomic blast there.

13:03Carol Massar:We're going to come back with Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge. His book, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. We'll get into that and also the way forward. We might even squeeze in a little talk about markets, maybe even some crypto. We're coming back on Bloomberg Business Week Daily.

13:33to get smarter. Learn more at hpe.com slash networking.

13:37Carol Massar:Some people treat ChatGPT like some kind of smart search engine, and some use it to get work done. ChatGPT Work is a new way of working in ChatGPT that can take action across your apps and files, stay with a project for hours if needed, and turn a goal into finished work. It's designed to help you move from a chaotic starting point to a reviewable first version. So all the source materials, briefs, and scattered information that you have to grind through to turn into something useful can just become something useful. Put ChatGPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting Work Mode, available on Plus and Pro plans.

14:20If you listen to financial news, you know a lot of time is spent thinking about what's next, the next opportunity, the next investment, the next move. But sometimes what matters most is being ready for what you never saw coming. A storm damages a second home. A pipe bursts above a collection you spent decades building. An unexpected loss puts a growing business on pause. Those are the days no one sees coming. But for more than 75 years, Cincinnati Insurance has been ready when they do. With deep expertise, coverage for businesses, homes, valuables, and more, Cincinnati Insurance works with independent agents who take the time to understand what matters to you.

14:59Together, they help protect more than what you own. They help protect what you're building toward. And when a bad day does come, Cincinnati Insurance has real people there to help make things right. Because planning for the future isn't only about knowing what's next, it's about making sure you're ready for what you can't predict. Let Cincinnati Insurance make your bad day better. Find an independent agent at CINFIN.com. you're listening to bloomberg business week with carol masser and tim stenevac on bloomberg radio i want to get right back to anthony scaramucci he joins us now he's founder and managing partner skybridge he's the coast of the podcast the rest is politics of course former white house communications director to his new book all the wrong moves how three catastrophic decisions led to the rise of trump you know it's interesting we were talking about your your previous book your memoir, Trump, the Blue Collar President.

15:56And I know as preparing for this after reading this, I did go back and look at that book. And you're right, there's a lot of connection to what you talk about growing up on Long Island, your working class background. And then you get into more detail in the first part of your book here, the catastrophic, what you call the three catastrophic decisions that led to the rise of Trump. I want to talk about some of those decisions now. Let's talk a little bit about China and the World Trade Organization, because you say a lot of it comes from that. Well, okay, so you have to step back and you have to see where America was at that time.

16:27The Berlin Wall has fallen down. Francis Fukuyama said the end of history. We put budgetary guardrails together between Bush, one and Clinton that are leading America to a budget surplus. Everybody knows we printed a 200 plus billion dollar surplus at the end of 2000. But now we're in November of 1999. China wants permanent status in the World Trade Organization. American business leaders want to give it to them. We see at that time, and I write the first chapter, I got this wrong. I saw a Chinese market opening. I saw an opportunity for us to sell goods and services to 1.3 billion people, as did the Fortune 100 CEOs, as did Wall Street.

17:06You're not the only one who got this wrong. I'm just going to say, I was at the Wall Street Journal and kind of the lead up to it.

17:12Carol Massar:We actually created a show, the Asian Wall Street Journal over in Hong Kong. Everybody was clamoring to push open And everybody wanted access to that market. I mean, I don't think there was any way to stop that. But that market didn't open. That market didn't open. And that's what we got wrong. But I think the concept was that people thought, okay, if we have a presence, if you have the Western presence and all these multinational companies over in China, they will change. I think they really thought the government was going to change. No question. I write all about that in the book. There was one person.

17:43And that was the belief. Because I looked through tons of interviews, tons of Wall Street Journal articles and research for the book. There was one person who said it's not going to work. And I give her a lot of credit for that. That was Nancy Pelosi. And she got on C-SPAN. There was more than one C-SPAN speech. She was warning about it's a one-party system. We're taking a leap that they're going to open their system politically. They had just had the Tiananmen Square crisis in 1989. and they had a lot of anti-libertarian crackdowns in the country. And so we got it wrong because we were projecting what we wanted them to do based on our perspective and our pride in our own system.

18:23Now, I think China should be in the World Trade Organization, if you read the book. And I think we should have globalism. And I believe in the David Ricardo principles of global trade, seeking the lowest cost provider. However, when China, okay, is coming in as an emerging market, like El Salvador or Dominican Republic, and they get to the size of the UK or the size of Germany, they needed to be treated like Germany or the UK. And they weren't. And they were clipping off 11%, 10 % growth, had their market closed, flooded our markets. We benefited lower costs, goods and services and things like that.

19:00Every American, yeah. But we lost a lot of our manufacturing and we flatlined our wages for a very large group of people. And we have to accept that. And China was part of it. It wasn't the whole story, but it was a big enough symbolic part of it that it weighs heavy on those people.

19:17Carol Massar:You also talk about President Obama, the bailout of Wall Street. You also talk about George W., the war without tax. So we didn't pay for it basically without raising taxes. There were a lot of things at play. I feel like, Anthony, as you lay it out, and we talk about it a lot, and we are, you know, capitalism, this is what we report on all the time, that greed in many ways, too much money in politics, too much concerns about, you know, the bottom line, which is why we pushed everything offshore. Like that in many ways ultimately led to kind of where we are. I think so. But I think under President Clinton's leadership, we put guardrails on the Congress.