Only Common Sense Can Save Us! With Billionaire John Catsimatidis

0:00Americans told Washington what they want. Lower costs. Yet Brandon Carr's FCC is considering in a merger between TV station giants Nextstar and Tegna. If approved, millions of Americans will pay even more to watch TV. They'll pay more to watch the news, entertain their kids, or cheer on their favorite team. Thankfully, President Trump knows what Americans want, and President Trump can stop this. Spending car needs to reject the Nextstar-Tegna merger and protect Americans from higher TV bills. Paid for by Cupid Local Media.

0:34Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word, from authors and historians to figures in entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know I can roll with the punches, so let me know.

1:08Anyways, let's get to it.

1:16Well, as soon as I saw Common Sense and Billionaire in the same sentence I was sold, only someone like John Katsimatidis could teach us about both, as he does so in his brand new book, How Far Do You Want to Go? Lessons from a Common Sense Billionaire. John has tried his hand at pretty much everything from his famous New York supermarkets, his mayoral campaign to owning WABC radio, and now his fun with the Staten Island Ferryhawks. He's also been on both sides of the political spectrum and tells us how it was with Trump and the Common Sense Democrats.

1:57Joining us now on Open Book is John Katsimatidis. He is a dear friend. He's the CEO of the Red Apple Group. He has one of the best rags to riches American dream stories in American history, frankly. And he wrote an amazing book, which I would recommend to everybody. The title of the book is How Far Do You Want to Go? Lessons from a Common Sense Billionaire. John, congratulations on the book. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. You've lived the American dream. Take us back to young John arriving from Greece and growing up in West Harlem. Wow. Well, let me tell you, you know, we both grew up poor.

2:34My two grandfathers came to America in 1913. But leave that aside, my father came after World War II and I was six months old. So you got to go to the White House. I can never go to the White House. Okay. I can't be president. Me and Schwarzenegger can't be president. But I grew up on West Harlem by City College. And now I'm chairman of the Police Athletic League and take care of the kids of the inner city. And one of the things I want to do is I wrote the books for the kids of the inner city to let them know that you can grow up on the poor side of town, but you can make it. And I think we're losing so many young kids.

3:15Our education system isn't a crapper. And we got to save those kids because that's the future of America. And all those kids need somebody to have their arm around them. Like you said, they need to have hope. And we have to teach them, yes, have hope, but work hard. Get a good education. Keep your nose clean. And most of those people, I understand the latest number is 70 % of one-parent families. and they come out of school and what happens? They come out of school, they have no place to go to. And unless they have, like we have the police athletically centers, unless they have some place to go to, they end up hanging around in the pizza shop or the old days when me and you were growing up, used to be the candy store and they get in trouble.

4:01And how do we save these kids? So this book, if we give it to high school or college kids, maybe we could save some of them and give them hope that they could make it too. And that's what I usually do at the Police Athletic League. I point at them and said, I made it. I come from this neighborhood. You can make it too. And I think it's a big thing. And the other reason I wrote the book is for my kids and grandkids that I don't have yet to let them know where they came from and what's the story of who their grandfather was someday. And I thought I had to put it on paper. But right now, our country is in dire situations.

4:43Our city, our state, and our country are in deep crap. Let me stop you there, though, because I got so many questions for you. But I'm going to ask you about the country right now, because we're contemporaries. We're both born in the baby boomer generation. I thought our generation was going to fix things and make things better. We've gone wild, our generation. We're tribal. We're attacking each other viciously. The George Bush, W. Bush term ended with$7 trillion of debt. OK, that's only 15 years ago, John. We have$32 trillion of debt now. What are we doing wrong culturally? And how do we bring back that civic virtue and the civic unity that you love about America and I love about America?

5:26I think it happened in the last 10 years. It started, I believe, under President Obama. And what President Trump did not realize, and you were there a short period of time, was President Obama had put 2 ,000 of his people, his people, that are loyal to his way of life and what he wanted to do. And I have nothing against him. But the fact is he infiltrated every department where he had his own style of things. And I don't know where it's going, but right now our country is in trouble. Look, look what's happened with the Saudi Arabians. They don't trust President Biden. That's the first time in 50 years or 60 years that they don't trust an American president.

6:12And they're aligning themselves. China is creating a new axis of power. Russia, Saudi Arabia now, Turkey, India, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba. They're creating, like when we and you were growing up watching James Bond movies, spectra, the axis of evil. Well, right now they're lining up and choosing up sides and looking at the problems they have in Israel. I think Republicans and Democrats have to sit down together and say enough is enough. Let's fight for our country. I don't know how they come up with some of the crap on the border is out of control. The fentanyl killing our kids is out of control.

6:53What say you? up. Well, I think it's a lot of, I think everything that you just said, but I also think that it has to do with the way we set up the electoral process. So not to bore you, because I want to make this about you, but we allowed for these people now to gerrymander their enemies out of their districts, a result of which you create radical fat tails on both sides of the party. We haven't had a constitutional amendment, John, of material constitutional amendments since 1965. We had one in 93, which is procedural. But look at the amendments, 27 amendments, 245-year-old country. You should have an amendment every eight to nine years to renew the voice of the American people.

7:32But we don't do that anymore. We have a problem with campaign finance. Absolutely do. We have to address it. We have a problem with gerrymandering. Are we in a real democracy if the candidates themselves are actually picking the people that are voting for them? And so this has distorted the system. And we used to fight together. The American military at 35 % of the American families were involved with the military in World War II and the Korean War. It's down to 3%, a result of which our nation, the people in Wyoming don't know the people in New York as well as they did. You remember George McGovern and you remember Bob Dole.

8:05They didn't have the same ideology, but they served in the American military together. So they had some level of professional respect between themselves. But let's go back to you. It's super important for me to understand your personality because you have one of the most unique gifts. When I run into people and they say, are you friends with John Katsimatidis? I say, well, anybody that knows John Katsimatidis is friends with John Katsimatidis. You have this wonderful way of being loyal to people. You have this wonderful way of doing favors for people in this nonlinear way. You're never looking for anything in return.

8:38When I got fired from the White House, you reached out to me. You asked me to speak at the PAL League luncheon, which I graciously accepted. You brought me into your community. You put your arm around me. It's something I'll never forget for the rest of my life. Explain to me the temperament of John Katzmatidis and the person that you are and how you think about people. Well, when I try to teach kids and tell people that you're better off, my job and my inner heart is to make friends every day and make new friends every day. Not like a mutual friend that makes new enemies every day. And he would be a terrific president if he didn't make new enemies every day.

9:21I mean, there's no, and I don't understand that. But John, Trump is not a loyal guy. I mean, let's just be very clear. He's asymmetrically loyal. He'll run you over with a truck. Okay. He could care less about you or anybody in his field of vision, anybody that worked for him that had their own dough. Okay. Or had their own career, like a general did not like working for him and thought he was a, was a jackass and had no executive management skills. I mean, it's the facts. And we both look, you realized it, it happened to you. It happened to me. I mean, in different ways, But I believe in making new friends every day.

9:57I love people. And one of the reasons my success when I got into the supermarket business and the food business, all my vendors, I wasn't financed by banks. I didn't have a banking background. I didn't have a business school degree. So I had to do it the hard way. Well, my vendors, the people, the ice cream guy, the milk guy, the grocery guy, they all fell in love with me. And I loved them to back. And guess what? They financed me. John wants to build a new store. Give him more credit. Let him build a new store. And by the age of 23, 24, I had 10 stores that they financed and I was making a million dollars a year.

10:36In those days, a million dollars a year was a lot of money. And it's relationships, whether it's bankers, vendors, whatever, friends. People like people that they could love each other and have a good relationship with each other. They don't like arrogant son of a bitches. They don't like people that think they're God's gift to the world. And if the kids that read my book learn that by itself, then that's going to help them in life. And that's what it's all about. So me and you, Mooch, we have a mission to help the next generation. Yeah, I, you know, look, I love you. I mean, I love everything that you're saying.

11:14And I think I told you this years ago. You know, I started at the key food. The guy that owned the key food was a guy named Lou Campanelli. He was out here on Long Island. He couldn't have been a better boss than me. And he gave me a lot of values about hiring to share things and bringing people into the team. Let's talk about the fairy hawks for a second. What are the fairy hawks? And what's your involvement with them? My God. You know, when I hit 70 years old, I wanted to have fun. It wasn't about buying companies to make money. It was about buying or getting involved in companies to have a little bit of fun in life.

11:46And the first thing I did, I bought WABC Radio. And I just wrote a check. I just bought it. And believe me, I am having a lot of fun and getting the truth out. Getting the truth out is very important to me. I believe in Walter Cronkite. 92 % of the American people loved Walter Cronkite. But when you tell the kids Walter Cronkite, they don't know who he is. Right, that's true. Now, the Ferry Hawks, if the New York Yankees called you up and said, we want you to be our partner, what would you say? I'm in. I'm in. I'm in. So that's what I said. The New York Yankees called me. They were starting a new quasi minor league team from the Atlantic League in Staten Island.

12:22And I became a partner. And I'm having a lot of fun. And we finished the first season. We were a little bit rusty. But for the second season, we are ready to play ball. And I hope you throw out the first pitch when we throw out. Anytime you invite me, I'll be there. And I've been working on my arm, by the way, because the Mets need a closer. So I've been working on my arm. Hopefully, Steve Cohen will call me in. We can't get you to the Mets, but we can get you to be a pitcher in Yankee Stadium. There you go. How about your ownership group? You got Colin Jost, Michael Che, Pete Davidson. Of course, Pete's from Staten Island.

13:00What do you think of these SNL celebs that are part of your ownership team? Well, there's two main owners right now. It's me. We own 42.5%. And Eric Schiffler, who's a New Jersey guy, he owns 42.5%. The Yankees own 15%. So that group of SNL people are part of the Yankees' 15%. They were there to help promote the Ferry Hawks. And I'm taking over marketing this season. I think the Ferry Hawks Stadium is a beautiful stadium. It's in Staten Island. You can take the ferry, the Staten Island ferry, and be right behind the stadium. And of course, you're free from Manhattan to get to the stadium. It's a great stadium.

13:45The city just put in all brand new seats. I got to get there. Of course, the Staten Island Ferry is free. We got to get Michael Che also from Staten Island, Colin Jost also from Staten Island with Pete Davidson out to the stadium. I only have a couple more minutes with you. So I want to play the game that I play with all of my authors. OK, I'm going to give you five words and I'd like you to react to them in a quick fire fashion. Okay, ready? Let's start with President Clinton. I love the guy. I think he was a common sense guy. I used to work for him and he had common sense. And when I used to run those dinners for him in Washington, I had Democrats and Republicans, both.

14:26Nobody walked out of those dinners, 20 dinners, 25 ,000 apiece. Nobody walked out dissatisfied. They walked out loving the guy. That's the difference between him and others. Okay. Donald Trump. Smart guy, but personality-wise, he doesn't love people. He works hard, and he wants to do the right job, and I'll leave it at that. All right. Fair enough, because I know you still have a good relationship with him, as you should, but we know that there are some executive deficits there. Let's go with the word Democrats. Democrats. I was a Democrat under Bill Clinton. I worked very hard for his second term, and I worked very hard for Hillary to become U.S.

15:09Senator in the year, whatever it was, right after the presidency of Bill Clinton. Common sense Democrats are good people. The only problem with common sense Democrats, they haven't had the testicles to stand up against the bizarro Democrats. And the bizarro Democrats can take in the Democratic Party down the sewer, and I detest that. Republicans. Republicans. Extreme left or extreme right in our country is wrong. I believe that everybody should sit around a round table and work things out the old-fashioned way. And my 5 o 'clock WABC show would become number one why we have common-sense Democrats, common-sense Republicans.

15:50We yell at each other, scream at each other, and guess what? At 6 o 'clock at the end of the show, we hug each other. And another example is Bill Clinton and Newt Greenwich hate each other. But they sat down as Americans and made a deal. The deficit was five and a half trillion dollars. And at the end of their term, they worked together. It went down to five trillion. Is that unbelievable? Yeah. No, listen, I tell people that all the time. We had a budget surplus in 2000 and the Congressional Budget Office had it targeted for a five trillion dollar surplus. You know, George Bush made a decision to go to war.

16:25I'm not saying that was a bad decision. We can debate it today. But at the time, it looked like it was an okay decision. He's the first U.S. president to go to war, John, without a tax increase. First U.S. president. Who were we talking about? The son or the father, the sinner, or the Holy Ghost? No, George W. Bush went to war. He cut taxes in March of 2001. Clinton told him not to cut the taxes. He won the election. He said to harvest the surplus, and he cut the taxes. And then he went to war. And instead of raising taxes going into the war, he left the taxes where they were. Anthony, George W.

17:01Bush was a loyal, patriotic, great American. No, I have a lot of respect for him. I got a butt. Is this my fifth question? You're welcome to have a butt. He listened to his guys. Who was the two main guys? Cheney? Cheney and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld. And they took him down the wrong road. And they took him Hussein, which was the balance factor of keeping Iran in checks and balances. Remember one of the most honest presidents we had, Eisenhower. And what did he say when he's leaving office? Beware of what? Beware of the industrial military complex. And Cheney and Rumsfeld, all they wanted to do, they didn't care who died.

17:49They didn't care what they did, is make sure all their military companies were making a ton of money. You know, use more missiles. Use more bullets. Use more this. And I thought it was wrong. I believe if there's a peaceful solution that it's better. So last word of the five words. And after reading your book, you can go a little long on this one. America. America, John. America. I love America. I'm an immigrant. I remember when I was six years old, I went down and swore allegiance to the flag and the United States of America and got my American citizenship papers when I was six years old. What the heck is going on with these borders right now?

18:28I believe in immigration. I believe in immigration. But right now, we've got open borders, which is horrible because there are terrorists coming in, drug dealers coming in, there are bad people coming in. I used to run with our old friend. Remember our old friend, Bill Fugazi? Yeah, sure. I love Bill. We ran the Ellis Island Foundation together. And Ellis Island was, was people came through and you were checked for diseases. You were checked. You were asked to pledge allegiance to the United States of America. You know what I said to all the U.S. senators that come through my office? I said to them, why don't we have four or five Ellis Islands along the Texas coast or along the Arizona or along New Mexico?

19:13Immigration, yes. But let's find out who's coming and going. I mean, it's horrible. And our borders are under attack. are people who are under attack with fentanyl and killing 100 ,000 citizens a year. And our universities, our universities are for sale. And it's horrible. So I had a U.S. entity last week in my office. And we had a long discussion. And you know what I was scared of? That 2076 is our United States of America 300th year. We're not going to make it if we don't take things under control. And me and you will survive because we're not going to be here in 2076. But our kids, our grandkids, and hopefully our great grandkids, we want them to have the same way of life as the United States of America.

19:57And the last word, there's 8 billion people in the world. 5.5 billion are under dictatorship rule, under communist rule, etc. 2.5 billion is part of the United States of America, Japan, Australia, most of South America, Europe, NATO. And they depend on President Joe Biden for leadership. Well, we're in deep crap. We're in deep crap. And if we lose the leadership in Washington, look at Saudi Arabia. If they start to lose the confidence in Washington, well, how was it in James Bond movies? Spectra will win. I'm with you, man. And I appreciate it. And I appreciate your honesty and your patriotism.

20:41What's next for you? What are we doing next? You bought a sports team. You bought a radio station. What are we doing next? Maybe we should buy a movie studio. We'll make movies together. You want to do that? Yeah, why not? I got to be in some of these movies. I still got my hair, Kat Smatidis. I got most of my hair, but I'm short in the front. You got a bit of barber. Your hair is darker than me. You're going to want you and I to play mobsters, okay? I want to play moguls. I don't want to play mobsters, you know? All right. We'll make Wall Street 4. John, bestselling book, How Far Do You Want to Go?

21:11Lessons from a Common Sense Billionaire. It is a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and it is the open book graduation gift for this year. Thank you so much for being on, John. Thank you. We're in the Wall Street Journal in the top 10 right now. You know what I tell my friends? Buy it, give it to young people, give it to college people. Let them be a success too, like you and me. All right. God bless you, man.

21:39As John said, we're not going to make it to celebrate 300 years of the United States of America in 2076. At least the two of us are not going to make it. And the big question is, will the country itself make it? Are we splitting ourselves at the seams due to poor leadership, excessive tribalism, and a whole assortment of other problems that the U.S. is faced with? So my opinion of this, of course, is that we are. We need one, possibly two constitutional amendments. The country, of course, in order to ratify those amendments, it'd be very unlikely given the nature of the tribalism and the lack of unification.

22:17But let me give you two ideas to think about. Number one, we need to end gerrymandering. It is absolutely ridiculous in a country like ours, where we're supposed to be living in a democracy. Are we in a real democracy if the candidates themselves can pick their voters. I thought it was the voters that were supposed to pick their candidates. And so the gerrymandering has allowed these candidates to strain out their enemies and adversaries from their congressional districts. And it's distorted the way politics and the ability to make concessions to each other and compromise has taken place in the country over the last several hundred years.

22:53And so without that, I think we're in for very rough sledding. Number two, equally important is campaign finance. There was a case several years ago in the 1800s called Plessy versus Ferguson, where the court said, well, you know what? The blacks and whites don't have to be in the same facility. They can be in separate but equal facility. And of course, this was a code for separate and very unequal. And this led to deep rooted segregation throughout the United States, mostly in the South, but certainly in other parts of the country. It wasn't until Brown versus Board of Education that effectively repealed Plessy versus Ferguson that we started to see the full integration of our school systems.

23:32I'm not saying racism has ended in the country, but at least we made the step forward to treat each other equally. I think the same thing has to happen in campaign finance reform. The Citizens United situation where if you're a billionaire, you can pour billions of your dollars into somebody's campaign under the ruse of your First Amendment right, I think is absolute nonsense. Very similar to Plessy versus Ferguson. It's separate but equal democracy. And hopefully either through a constitutional amendment or a wiser and smarter Supreme Court, we'll get those things repealed. If we don't do that, unfortunately, we have some more dark days ahead for the United States.

24:11And in the immortal words of Winston Churchill, the U.S. always does the right thing after it exhausts every other possibility. And so we certainly don't want that to happen here, which is why we need the voices of common sense people like John Katzmatidis to be heard. And I hope that you will go out and buy his book, How Far Do You Want to Go? Lessons from a Common Sense billionaire ma i need you for the show you're gonna be ready what show the podcast you know what show i love this woman you know you listen to the radio or not really i can't remember do you like listening yeah so music and i inherited that from my mother i like music in my home all at times.

24:57What about the talk radio, though? You listen to that or not really? No, I like music. All right. What about John Katsimatidis? You recognize that name? He owns the big Apple stores and the Agostinos in New York City. I give him a lot of credit, though. You know him, right? So he grew up with nothing. He's a Greek immigrant. He made himself into a billionaire. He's a friend of mine. He's always been nice to me. You know, when I got fired from the White House. He was one of the first people to call me. Well, I think Trump was intimidated by you. That's why he didn't stick up for you and not have you fired because you speak better than him.