Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - September 25th, 2026

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. 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.

0:36So 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. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.

1:18The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC.

1:29Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, radio, news. This is Bloomberg Business Week Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead. With insight on the people, companies and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week Weekend Podcast. Our backdrop this week, the 81st annual U.N. General Assembly in session in New York City. President Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly, saying that he expects the U.S.

2:13will reach an agreement with Iran after the midterms. He also said that the U.S. rejects the globalist scheme to control AI. He reiterated that he believes Cuba will fall and that the U.S. will start building two, quote, very major military bases in Greenland that will give the U.S. permanent control over security and all other needs on that territory. The address was President Trump's second before the United Nations since returning to the Oval Office in early 2025 and comes at a very different moment of his presidency, one where his approval rating is at or near record lows, according to polls, and warning signs continue to flash for Republicans ahead of November's midterm election that could see them lose control of Congress.

2:57It also comes at a time when President Trump's approach globally has faced pushback from other world leaders. So lots to think about around the world and our global news team converging here in New York City to talk with leaders in town for the U.N. gathering. You can check out all of our coverage on the Bloomberg Terminal and at Bloomberg.com. As for us this hour, we wanted to focus on the U.S., the politics of the country, the economy. We catch up with someone who knows President Trump well, having served as the White House communications director for 10 or 11 days, depending on who you ask, before becoming one of his most outspoken critics.

3:35Anthony Scaramucci is here with his new book and on his front row seat in a Trump White House. But remember, he was also someone who knew the president before he came to the White House. Plus the two economists from Princeton and the University of Chicago who are behind the new book about who really is rich in America, how they got there and the power that they have. It turns out we may be living in the age of millionaires. All of that to come. But first, you may know him from Wall Street. It's someone we've covered a fair amount here at Bloomberg. You may also know him from his flash in the pan time in the Trump White House during his first term or his unfiltered take on modern politics.

4:15Anthony Scaramucci is founder and managing partner of the hedge fund at Skybridge. He's the co-host of the podcast The Rest is Politics, and he's the author of the new book All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of 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. I 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.

4:52So I would say that they were graduating in exponentially bigger mistakes. 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 Jarrett. They were not on your side. No, no, they hated my guts. 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.

5:22Well, you talk about being like, I'm out there in front and like, I lay it out. No, 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. Yeah, you guys know you're in New York. 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. So I have to remember, I had friends of mine that worked for President Clinton.

5:50I 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 is when I worked in the White House for President Trump. but 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 is 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 Historical Association, which I did get familiar with in that short period of time.

6:33and 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. And 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.

7:06You'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 to me, very human. He said, you know, first time I got here, I was very unnerved by it. I 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.

7:36Yeah. It 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. Yeah. In that book, you wrote that I believe we have a real opportunity in 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.

8:10I 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. We'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 % of the people now that feel economically desperational.

8:47And 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. So 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 Maher show 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.

9:24She 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. Three 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 show, 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.

9:57It 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. I 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.

10:27So 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. Thank 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'd supported him. And you're going after my wife. You know, I've got a problem at home that I'm trying to repair.

11:03It's just a bridge too far for me. And I said, OK, this guy's not the type of leader that should be the president of the 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. There 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. 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.

11:36I'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. We'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.

12:17I think that hurt his standing with the Democrats, frankly. And then, if you remember, he said S-H-I-T, whole countries, and 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. Traditional Republicans in Trump, one, probably protected the country and the world from the tariffs. Bill O 'Kossey of rhetoric against NATO, potential trade war with Canada. The guardrails, right? Yeah, all those things were things that were likely to have had happened in Trump 1 had he had this level of personnel.

12:58The 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. 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— 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. This was a—you want to talk about a decapitation. You know, 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.

13:45This was an M &A, and he installed MAGA and the Heritage Foundation. They call themselves Republicans, but they're not the Republicans I grew up with. Who are these Americans? Who are these leaders? 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. It is a gold-plated hot tub. Okay, I 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.

14:21But there's a whole big atomic blast there. That was Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communications Director, founder and managing partner of the hedge fund SkyBridge, and the co-host of the podcast, The Rest is Politics. He's also author of the new book, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. And we're going to continue with Anthony Scaramucci, including getting his thoughts on the relationship between the United States and China. You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek. This is Bloomberg.

14:52Bloomberg 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. 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.

15:29So 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. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is more than caring about the latest and greatest. It's also taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your dedicated financial advisor meets you where you are with personalized financial strategies that help protect what matters so you can preserve your progress while creating a path forward.

16:10The key to being rich is knowing what counts. Let's find your rich together. Edward Jones, member SIPC. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Listen on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Or watch us live on YouTube. I want to get right back to Anthony Scaramucci. He joins us now. He's founder and managing partner of Skybridge. He's the co-host of the podcast, The Rest is Politics. Of course, former White House Communications Director, too. His new book, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump.

16:49You know, it's interesting. We were talking about your previous book, your memoir, Trump, the Blue Collar President. And 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.

17:21Well, OK, so you have to step back and you have to see where America was at that time. The Berlin Walls 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.

17:56I 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. You'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. And we actually created a show, the Asian Wall Street Journal over in Hong Kong. Everybody was clamoring to push open. 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.

18:37I think they really thought the government was going to change. I write all about that in the book. And 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 that 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.

19:13And 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. Now, 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.

19:55We benefited lower costs, goods and services and things like that. Every 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. 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.

20:44Like 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. We had budgetary constraints. You know, Al Gore was cautioning about a reaction in the Gulf after the 9-11 crisis. I mean, you may remember this George Soros. I mean, he's a pariah to the conservatives. But he wrote an op-ed in The New York Times in November of 2001 to be careful. Don't overreact and play into Osama bin Laden's hands. If you go to the dark web or you read Lawrence Wright's book about 9-11, Osama bin Laden said, I'm going to hit America in the homeland.

21:23They're going to overreact and come to my land and spill their blood, spill their treasure. They will pull their civil liberties. And we did that with the Patriot Act. And we ended up spending$8 trillion on those two wars. And I'll just point out, we cut taxes in May, April of 2001. We went to war in October in Afghanistan. We cut taxes again in 03, early part of 03, at war in Iraq in March. And that blew a hole in the system. And so just hear me out because I threaded these things. Stagnant wages. Now you have this inflationary induction of deficit spending. And guys, you know this, but the U.S.

22:02dollar has lost 28 % of its value since December of 2019. And so that's a huge problem for wage earners. And then the last piece, oh, by the way, let's just bail out the fat cats. There's nothing in the allocation for poor or middle-class families or people that need credit card relief or rental relief. People say, hey, there's a two-tiered system. It's not fair. That's how you got to occupy Wall Street. My husband said we should have just paid everybody's mortgages off and we would have solved the problem. It's not about paying their mortgages off. It's much as about apportioning an assassination.

22:34If you're going to bail one group out without bailing the other group out, you're going to make that group feel that it was unfair and you're going to engender the Tea Party movement and you're going to engender Occupy Wall Street. Our thanks to Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing partner of Skybridge, and the author of the new book, All the Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. Now from the high stakes drama of Washington and political influence to what our next guests say is the real engine of economic influence in America. We're talking about the American multimillionaires.

23:06They are the people who are building extraordinary wealth. And according to our next guests are quietly rewriting the rules of money and power. We're talking about Eric Zwick, professor of economics and finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and Owen Zadar, professor of economics and public affairs at Princeton. It's all in their new book, The Everywhere Millionaire, who was really rich in America and how they got there. You know, if you look at the data, it's really amazing. There's this legion of millionaires who are ordinary Americans running pretty mundane businesses who are extraordinarily wealthy.

23:39And collectively, if you add up all of their wealth, it's 10 times that of the people you just named, the richest 400 people. Yeah, you got stuff like a chart at the beginning of the book that shows like here's the Forbes 400 and here are the other people we're focused on. And it's a remarkable delta. That's right. You went down that list, and it was tech, tech, tech, a little bit of finance, tech. And so we're told kind of the path to prosperity, path to the top is Silicon Valley, Sand Hill Road, Wall Street. And we're interested in Main Street and Metro Parkway. Or the car dealerships. Exactly.