Anthony Scaramucci's Resilience: Surviving Trump, FTX and Embracing Bitcoin

26:00Yeah, I did. I said, is your account frozen? Yes, it is. Okay. Well, how did you know then it was a fraud? If you had an account at FTX, why would you have an account with somebody that's a fraud? So in other words, let's stop lying to each other and tell the truth about things. I think That's where, you know, and I write this in the book and I tell this to my children. If you have integrity, James, you will always have opportunity. Also, if you're nice to people, you can get fired from the White House. You can make a mistake and allow Sam Bankman-Fried to invest in your business. And you will still survive that.

26:40You will have friends that come to your aid. That's an important insight that people should pay attention to. Because it's the cliche. Jay, be nice to the people on the way up because they're the same people you meet on the way down, right? Think about somebody like Elliot Spitzer as an example. He was mean and cruel and arrogant towards people. When he blew up, he blew out, okay? You can have mistakes in your life and you can do things that are misguided, but you can also benefit from your goodwill that you've created. You see what I mean? Yeah. This is very important. But on Sam, I don't revise history there.

27:20I liked him. He was a nice guy. Ask Mike Novogratz. He called me unsolicited through a third party. The third party called me and said, hey, there's a guy by the name of Sam Bankman-Fried. He'd like to talk to you. I said, okay, no problem. He said, yeah, it's got to be 9 p.m. on blah, blah day. I said, why 9 p.m.? Well, he's in Hong Kong. I said, okay, no problem. He had just signed a deal to name the arena in Miami after the company. So I said, okay, this is an up and coming cryptocurrency exchange. I had already been long Bitcoin and investor. We'll get to the Bitcoin story in a second. But when I got on the phone with Sam, he was this staccato talking, somewhat awkward young man that seemed absolutely brilliant.

28:10He explained to me what he was doing. He wanted to sponsor the SALT conference. He wanted to come to New York and he wanted to meet people in that sort of crossover between traditional finance and DeFi. I said, OK, I'll you know, I accepted his money. And by the way, he paid me very quickly. and you're a student of Wall Street, you know, fast pay makes fast friends. And so I said, okay, this guy seems like he's legit. He came to the conference. He had a great time. He then asked me if he could sponsor more conferences. We struck up a deal with him. And then he invited me, and this was a seminal moment for me, and it may not reflect well on me or whatever.

28:53I'll just tell you the truth. He invited me to a charity outing at the FTX Arena. that his 84-year-old aunt was coordinating. She was incredibly nice. And they had given$10 million of scholarship money to some of the poor public high schools in the Miami area. And we were going to do a mock shark tank for these students. And we had Senator Cory Booker there, Maxine Waters. Waters, I guess her name is. We had Kevin O 'Leary and I. We're going to do the mock judging for them. The parents were there. Sam was there. I thought this was like a great Jewish family where the kid had grown up in suburbia, but on the campus of Stanford University.

29:47So I bought hook, line, and sinker into Sam Bankman Freed. Now, if you want to think worse of me for that, there's nothing I can do about it because it happened. But I did learn something from it, James, and that is a crime like the Madoff crime or the Sam Bankman freed crime. It gets it gets created by a small group of people. So that crime can't happen at Skybridge because I've got 50 different checks and balances going on. I've got an outside administrator, an outside accountant, all blue chip, Pershing as the custodian of the assets, three people in control, one in compliance, one on the legal team.

30:30So when you have 50 or 60 people looking at something, there'll always be a person of conscience that raises their hand and says, hey, I'm sorry, this doesn't work for me. A financial crime gets caused or created by a closed net of people. and he had four people working on this with him and they all pled guilty. And I missed it. They did such a brilliant job of covering over what they did in terms of what they showed you from a due diligence perspective and what they were actually doing. And if you followed the case, it wasn't just me. It was 25 of the largest venture capitalists in the world, sovereign wealth funds, leading investors, I don't like amazing because like, like take Madoff as, as an example, he really didn't have institutional investors because he knew he wouldn't be able to get past due diligence, but you and, and these other VCs and so on, you're a professional due diligence person.

31:30Like skybridge is a fund of funds. You invest in other people and other funds. And what do you think? Like, so what I'm saying is I'm giving credit to him for, for, for fooling so many people this way. Like, how do you think, what was, how do you think he did that? So they created a software and it was pointed out during the case. So, so one of the things about crypto, James, it's perpetual, meaning that the market's open 24 seven. So when I get a statement from my brokerage people at the end of a month, like we just ended the month yesterday, uh, whatever the prices were at four o 'clock, they mail me a statement or they send me one electronically and they show me what I own.

32:15And it's priced as of the end of the day, 4 p.m. What Sam and the crypto world does is when you get that statement, it's priced at midnight on the last day of the month. But what Sam was doing is there were 10 seconds where your money looked like it was in your account. They printed you the statement. And then for the other 365, you know, sorry, the other 24 hours, if you will, or 23 hours and 59 minutes, it was in his account. So at midnight, they made it look like it was back in your account. So if you logged on to your app, you saw your money in your account, but it wasn't in your account. He also did something called Paper Bitcoin.

33:03And not to bore your listeners, but what is Paper Bitcoin? So let's say James wants to buy Bitcoin. He calls me. I'm the broker. I'm now making a book on Bitcoin, meaning I don't buy Bitcoin for you, James. I electronically pretend that it's in your account, but I now took the money that you gave me,$2 billion worth of it, I might add, and I put it in my own account. And so now I am short the price movement of Bitcoin. You think you own Bitcoin. No Bitcoin has ever been bought. That's paper Bitcoin. He did$2 billion worth of paper Bitcoin. Can you imagine that? So basically then as prices dropped in 2022, 2021, he basically couldn't return the money because he had none.

33:57Couldn't return the money and he couldn't catch up. He couldn't catch up. And so he also had an adversary in this man, Chen Pao Zhao, CZ, who was the CEO of Binance, who shoved it on him. He owned a lot of his FTT tokens, and he put those tokens up for sale and shoved that on Sam at the low point in the market. And so there's a combination of things that happened. But listen, you know, very bad story. What are the learning lessons? I just explained one of them. That's how a financial crime gets committed. Learning lesson number two, very important lesson. Something goes wrong. Tell the truth. Okay, I went right on the air.

34:47Just imagine the hero to goat move. September 7th, I sold a piece of my company to Sam. I was riding high thinking I was going to be working with the Mark Zuckerberg of crypto. by november the 8th i was back on television i had gone from hero to zero and i was not working with the mark zuckerberg of crypto but i was working with the bernie made off of crypto and i had to explain that on national television and then how much were you i faced the music james i faced the music i wanted i went and made you know made the interview yeah i mean and you were you You were kind of brutal about it all the way down.

35:30Like how much were you involved in kind of the court case and, you know, sort of the unraveling of what happened? You know, I had a, I had a, I was a, I was a, not a witness as well. I was called by the department of justice to testify behind closed doors for four and a half hours on what I learned. I also turned over my phones. So my WhatsApp, my signal, my text messages, my email traffic, I gave all of that to the Department of Justice. And I sat with them for four and a half hours and explained to them everything that I saw. And by the way, it wasn't just the Department of Justice. The IRS was there.

36:16The SEC was there. I mean, you want to talk about a non-fun time in life sitting by yourself with a lawyer under oath with the sec, the IRS, the FBI. It's like a dream comes true. And the department of justice. Okay. And that's what Sam put me and my family through. But as I said to those guys, here's what happened. And here's, here's the whole story. And, and, uh, you know, what's interesting is they offered me something called a proffer. And I don't know if you know what that is, but a proffer is. So they called me in as a voluntary witness. And so if they ever decided to quote unquote prosecute me, a proffer means they could exclude the testimony that I was giving them.

37:01And I looked at them and said, I don't need a proffer. If you want to, if you want to come after me for whatever happened, go ahead. I didn't do anything wrong. I, did I make a mistake in judgment? Yes, I did. But I told my attorney, we're not negotiating a proffer with the Department of Justice. I don't need a proffer. Do you think that's something they offer to see if you're willing to take it? Maybe. I don't know. That's a good point. I didn't think of that. Maybe. Maybe. But my attitude was I have nothing to hide. Here is everything. Here's what happened. I've been on Wall Street for 36 years.

37:33I don't even have a personal trading again. I've never done a personal trade. So I'm not going to, all my money's in my fund. Here's everything that I have. I've been a registered investment advisor. I'm a broker dealer. I have a broker dealer license, a series 24, 7, and 63. Good luck to have never had a violation. I'm not going to spoil that at age 60. You know, I mean, come on. This is what happened. I made a mistake in judgment. And I invested in my fund, in my firm. I'm sorry. What happened to his investment in Skybridge? Like, how did that play out? Well, I mean, the bankruptcy estate still owns the investment.

38:15And I would imagine at some point when they get around to it, they'll contact us and we'll negotiate with them. We're the only buyer for that asset because Sam was trying to buy the whole business, James. So it was set up as a minority stake with a three-year option to buy the rest of the business. And so there's no minority rights there. There's no protective economic rights or preferences. It's really not valuable to anybody. I can run the business till the day I die exactly the way I'm running it without any interference from the bankruptcy estate or from Sam or whoever the legacy is of Sam.

38:55So we'll just let it run its course. And at the end of the day, we'll buy it back. But as I pointed out to people, he hurt us and he damaged us. He hurt the business. so we're not interested in buying it back at a premium i can assure you of that

39:27and like and so how did you um how did you first get and i feel like everybody got has a bitcoin origin story. Like there's somebody who was knowledgeable, who told you about Bitcoin and a light went off in your head and you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Well, I think I have to start with the misses. Okay. So 2012, I was introduced to Bitcoin. I was like, this is a bunch of malarkey. I put out a tweet that said, I don't understand Bitcoin and who cares? And caveat emptor. I think that's on the internet somewhere. And then 2014, the Winklevoss brothers, of the twins came to my conference.

40:03They explained Bitcoin to me and they were very passionate about Bitcoin. And I was like, all right, you guys are very smart guys. This will probably work, but I'm an institutional investor. I can't get anywhere near it. That was 2014. And then something seminal did happen. In 2017, I was in the White House and this happened on a Wednesday, James. The reason I know that I was only there for one Wednesday. So I do know that It happened on a Wednesday. And two guys from the Federal Reserve came in to talk about the white paper that they had, you know, written about the digitization of the U.S. dollar.

40:42And I asked the question in the meeting. I said, is this like the blockchain? Oh, yes, this would be over the blockchain. And then I said, so like Bitcoin? And they said, yes, well, you know, slightly different. We have our own blockchain, but it would be technically similar to Bitcoin. And then the light bulb went off in my head. I said, okay, I am really missing this. I can't be that stunod, which is like stupid in Italian slang. I got to get up to speed on Bitcoin. And so I got fired a couple days later. I went and bought the URL skybridgebitcoin.com. And then I did what I always recommend to people, do your homework.

41:22I don't know anybody that's done homework on Bitcoin, James, that's gone down the rabbit hole of Bitcoin and comes up with, I'm not buying any Bitcoin. I haven't found anybody yet. I usually find that the Bitcoin critics are like I was back in 2012. They don't understand it. And it's very superficial. And so anyway, make a long story short, I built a list of things that I would need to have happen for me to invest in Bitcoin. Those things started happening. What was on that list? So the three main things was, number one, we had to get to 100 million wallets. At the time of my first investment, it was at 80 million and going up.

42:05Number two, I had to get comfortable with the regulation. And this is back in 2020. You say, well, how did I get comfortable? Well, the IRS deemed Bitcoin intangible property. And the minute they did that, I knew that Bitcoin was going to be OK in the United States because property rights in this country are sacrosanct. They date back to the Magna Carta. It's traced through British common law, our property rights. And this is still a capitalist society and we protect people's property rights contractually. And when the IRS said it was intangible property, good luck to the likes of Gary Gensler and the czarina Elizabeth Warren.

42:47They may not like me owning Bitcoin, but it's too bad. The IRS already deemed it property, and therefore the court system is going to protect my property. And then the third thing, which I think was very important, is if I'm going to buy nine figures worth of Bitcoin, which I need to if it's going to have a meaningful impact on my clients, I have to have a place where I can store it. And there were really good service and storage options, including Fidelity Digital Assets, Coinbase Prime, or even New York Digital Investment Group. Those are three great places to store your Bitcoin. I do have some at Galaxy, by the way, as well.

43:24So for me, that was the decision. And what do you think is the next? I mean, we've had kind of these, some important catalysts, some not as important. I don't think the halving is that important, but the Bitcoin ETFs, it's very important catalyst because now finally, both Main Street and the institutions can feel comfortable buying Bitcoin. What ultimate effect do you think this is gonna have on Bitcoin? Well, I mean, here's the thing. We're in an instant gratification world and everybody wants to be, boom, instantly gratified and Bitcoin should shoot the 300 ,000 tonight and everyone should get rich immediately and so on and so forth.

44:03It doesn't work like that in the real world. So there are buyers and sellers and there are speculators and skeptics alongside of long-term investors. And so what ends up happening in a situation like this, most people don't understand the asset. There's a lot of people out there that are trading that asset as opposed to really understanding it. And so there's a huge volatility in an asset like Bitcoin because it's so early. And by the way, you can compare it to early assets like Amazon or Apple Computer back in the day. Until the businesses get matured in scale, they can oscillate and trade with a lot of volatility.

44:41And so the problem right now is Bitcoin is an 80 vol asset. So it went up. It started the year, I guess, at 40 something. It went to 73 ,000. I think it's trading at like$58 ,000 or$59 ,000 right now, somewhere in there,$57 ,000. And it's moving around a lot. Could it go back to$30 ,000? I think it's possible. I don't see it ever going to zero at this point. But what is happening while people are short-terming and trying to time Bitcoin is the network itself is growing. And it's growing exponentially. And so as that network grows, the network effect, Medcalf's law, will make that asset, that piece of digital property, way more valuable over time.

45:27And so, you know, I bought my first Bitcoin at$17 ,000 in 2020. It shot to$69 ,000. I was a genius. It then went from$69 ,000 to$17 ,000. I was a doofus. it's now gone from 17 ,000 to 73 ,000 now at 57 ,000 i guess i'm a dummy now because it went from 73 to 57 yeah why didn't you sell at the top yeah exactly so i'm you know you know depending on the time frame i'm either a dummy or a genius the truth of the matter is we're never as smart or as dumb as we look but if i am right about this asset it will trade to a market capitalization similar to gold, if I am right about the ask. I mean, you look at gold, it's very interesting, because the first gold ETF was introduced, I think, in 2004.

46:18And then it had seven straight up years from there, because now suddenly people could buy it. And now you have sovereign wealth funds, funds like Skybridge, funds like other hedge funds, mutual funds can finally buy it. This seems like a huge thing. Plus, you see more countries, like Switzerland has a referendum on the ballot now to include Bitcoin in their reserves. And this is just talking about Bitcoin, not even other crypto assets and uses. So one thing I always tell people is that it's not going to be this price. It's either going to be zero or millions. Like it's not going to kind of, it's on its way to where it's going to be.

46:57I agree with that. I just, and again, I could be wrong. Let me tell you something. As evidenced by my book, I've been humbled by life. I've been humbled by market. So what I'm about to say may or may not be right. I honestly have to hold myself humbly in that position. But I think it's going to be hard for it to be zero only because of the expansion of the network effect and that the asset is being supported by very large institutions that have ETFs. and you know this as well as anybody, Wall Street is a selling machine. And so if Wall Street has a product known as a Bitcoin ETF, they are out there selling that product to a very large group of individuals and institutional investors.

47:46So it may go to zero. I would say that's a very low probability. Could it get to a million dollars? You'd have to see Bitcoin be recognized as a digital piece of property akin to gold and then it could the one the one one of the valuable use cases which i've seen is actually in the human rights community so you can't how are you going to fund like a activist supporting the uyghurs in china through currency like how are you going to send the money you have to do it through crypto it's the only way i've been to conferences where activists are there and they're being trained on how to use crypto to raise crypto for you know the the revolutions in their countries and including you know a hundred million or has been sent to ukraine through crypto so it's the u.s is one of the biggest customers of crypto yes and i and i would point out that there's a very large professionalized gambling that's taking place in europe on these soccer teams there's no way that could happen without the crypto markets, moving this stuff relatively costless among the participants.

48:56So those are minor things that are happening. One major thing would be if you developed a wallet where we could have a wallet-to-wallet connectivity with each other, and you and I could go into a department store or a restaurant, and we could cross money to the restaurateur or cross money to the department store without paying the American Express fee. And I think that we're three to five years away from that. You think even that long? Well, I'm being conservative. I mean, it could happen more quickly. Look, the U.S. regulator, again, for whatever reason, rightly or wrongly, does not like the asset class.

49:41And so it's taking longer for its full adoption as a result of that. And that's really Elizabeth Warren was given a lot of latitude over financial services from Joe Biden as part of an agreement with her when she left the 2020 campaign and endorsed him. You know, I think it's going to be very interesting also when people start quote unquote tokenizing real assets. So let's say a college student graduates with$100 ,000 in student loans. Imagine if they quote unquote IPO 10 % of their future income streams by tokenizing it, making income coin or whatever that they kind of sell off. And now people who buy that coin, James coin can basically benefit as a former student's income growth changes over time.

50:31It gets 10 % of all the income flows. They could pay down their student loans. They have an opportunity to, you know, create additional wealth for themselves and not rely on the government system to pay their loans or pay their loans back or whatever. So I think tokenizing is going to be very interesting. Well, I mean, if you if you follow, you know, listen, great story, right? Larry Fink is negative on Bitcoin, tells people he's negative on it. And then lo and behold, he's orange pilled by a group of Bitcoiners. and he now has the most successful ETF in US history. Yeah. And, you know, he would tell you that what you just said is 100 % true.

51:15We're going to tokenize everything. You know what I mean? I think that's what's going to happen. So politically now, I feel like here we are again, Biden, Trump, you obviously have been, you've been involved as far as I know in every election since 2008 or 2012. I remember talking with you about Mitt Romney. I didn't know you in 2008 for Obama, but I know you donated to his campaign. You mentioned in the book. And then, of course, 2016, 2020. What's happening now? It's going to be Trump versus Biden again. So I, and again, this is probably why people hate me. I mean, I'm not glued necessarily to one party.

52:01I'm glued to what I think makes sense. You know, Barack Obama and I went to law school together. I didn't know him super well in law school. My friends knew him. I said, okay, I'm going to give him some money, you know, for his campaign. This is, you know, 2007. So how many years ago is that? 18, I guess. Or, you know, right? Yeah, 17 years ago, I guess. And I just looked around and said, okay, I'm never going to know anybody that's actually the president. I mean, that's what I was thinking at the time, you know? And I said, okay, so I'm Barack Obama, somebody I know, I'm going to give him some money.

52:37He won. I wasn't in love with his policies. I'm a lifelong Republican. And so I went back to my Republican, you know, stripes and supported Mitt Romney. But I've been involved. This is the irony of everything. You know, I've been involved in politics since 1993. 1993. How did I get involved in politics? I had no money, James. And I was working as a high net worth broker, financial advisor at Goldman. And I wasn't a member of a country club. I didn't know the hand signals that you needed to do in the world of the wealthy. And so I said, well, how how am I going to meet these people? And the way to meet these people was politics.

53:24I could go to these political fundraisers. I would meet the people and potentially I could do business with them. So I wrote the first check. This is the great irony of life. I wrote the first check, $250, Young Republicans for Rudy Giuliani. He had lost in 1989. He was now running again in 1993. And I was Young Republicans for Rudy. Do you love that? That's funny. Okay. And now I'm going to these fundraisers with him. He wins, which is like the greatest thing that could have ever happened to me at age 30, right? I've now got the parking placard and I can park my car on two wheels anywhere in the city and I'm working for the mayor.

54:13And lo and behold, I'm starting to meet clients. And then Rudy introduced me to Pataki. So I'm now young Republicans for Pataki. And then you may or may not remember this. Rudy switches. He endorses Chris and Andrew's father, Mario Cuomo in 94. You know what? I did not remember that. Yeah. Yeah. So I remember that. I remember it because me and George Pataki, what the hell is he doing? He was always Meshuggah. He was always a little nuts, you know? And, uh, so he went with, uh, he didn't, him and Pataki didn't talk for like a year after that. I mean, it was a very hard time to thaw that out. Okay.

54:49Uh, Alphonse D 'Amato had to get involved with that, the whole thing. But anyway, so now I've worked for the mayor and the governor. And so that's not big enough for me because I'm a little stew not. I got to go work on a presidential campaign. So I work for George W. Bush. You know, so I've been around the hoop of politics for, you know, 30 years. And my mistake among many, and I, you know, if I was going to write a book of mistakes, it would be longer than war and peace. And you wouldn't have enough time in your life to read all the mistakes that I've made. But if I want to talk about a mistake is I got full of myself, James.

55:27Okay. I let my ego get to me. So when Trump offered me the job, even though my wife hates Trump almost as much as Melania hates him, and that's like the highest standard of hatred, I took the job. And I was trying to put a round peg in a square hole to fit my ego, James. Okay. Yeah. I wanted my narrative. Blue collar kid, Tufts and Harvard, Goldman, two successful businesses. I'm now going to go work in the White House for the American president. Well, the American president's batshit crazy. No, that's okay. Because that doesn't fit my narrative. It doesn't fit and soothe my ego. You see what I mean?

56:08And so the book is about that cautionary tale. Don't put your ego and don't put your pride into your decision-making. When you do that, it can really blow you up. It can really hurt you badly. And that's what happen but i want to defend you against yourself a little bit here like you you don't believe in taxing unrealized gains for instance on investments okay biden is potentially proposing that to congress which is the most insane kind of law it would crash the entire economy so you don't believe in in bs like that you do believe in you know a lot of the economics of the republican party and you believed in Trump.

56:50Okay. You hadn't yet worked that closely with him. You took a job supporting your, your beliefs and principles. And like you said, you were working for the American people. You're not going to work for someone who's going to try to do a 44 % capital gains tax and 25 % taxing unrealized gains. Are they, do they just like make this stuff up because they think it'll get voters? Like nobody actually believes in that policy, do they? Well, I do think that actually, you know, Mark Cuban actually tweeted that it's, it's been on the docket for a while. And, you know, it's not a new thing that they've come up with.

57:23And they do write about this stuff because they think it's going to help them with the left or something like that. They know that that can't get passed. And thank God it can't get passed, because whether you're a Republican or a Democrat, there is right or wrong. I mean, The society now is flailing because we have left-leaning policies and we have right-leaning policies. We don't have right or wrong policies anymore. So if you're the SEC and you've got a kowtow to Elizabeth Warren, let's do stupid stuff at the SEC and lose case after case in the court system. Let's sue Coinbase, who's trying desperately to get everything right and to follow the rules.

58:07Let's sue them. you know and they look like horses asses when they do that flip side is you know you've got the republicans um you know i'm a catholic but i'm a pro-choice person if i choose life because i'm a catholic that's my choice can't impose that on other people that's a first amendment religious situation right there and so this notion that we're going to have a uh handmaid's tale for women in the society and that Trump is in Time magazine saying that, yeah, well, we'll police and monitor women during their pregnancies. What the hell is he talking about? All right. So we've got nuts on both sides.

58:49And so I'm not about left or right. James is probably why I get in so much trouble. I'm about right or wrong. I mean, you know the difference between right and wrong. It's not that hard. It's not that complicated. I mean, I agree. And sometimes my listeners criticize me. I've never voted in my life because I don't want to be on a team and I feel I'll be too, just the process of voting, I feel will influence me too much. I'd rather be able to express my opinion. That's my own personal opinion and not be just, you know, actions can often precede thoughts and feelings. And so I don't want to make the action of voting.

59:26And then suddenly now I'm a Democrat or I'm a Republican or whatever. Like I want to have my own opinions on things instead of belonging to a team. And I think, look, you've confronted this. You've joined teams and then they don't work out. Like sometimes some of these guys, they might have your beliefs or seem like they do, but then there's something different when you work for them or donate to them or they get elected and you donated and now they're no longer who they were. I mean, you know, that's what really goes on, isn't it? I mean, I know people are gonna be mad at me for saying this, but Trump was a moderate.

1:00:00He was pro-choice before he was pro-one. He was a Democrat in New York. He was a Democrat. You know that. He went to Elton John's wedding. He didn't care about transgenderism. He didn't act like a homophobe. You know, I mean, we can pretend that, I don't know. I mean, we could pretend that there's, you know, I mean, people yell at me, they say, oh, you knew Trump was an asshole. You lived in New York. Of course you knew he was an asshole. Okay. Yeah, he was an asshole, but he was our asshole. I thought he was going to do an okay job, actually. I thought at age 70, we had the opportunity to get a guy that wasn't really beholden to the lobbyists.

1:00:40And we had a guy that maybe he would be a post-partisan president. Maybe he would be transformative and help us. I didn't think he was going to turn into a nut, the full-on nut job that he became. So I got that wrong. So now this year, this election, it's like you can't vote for anybody. Who are you going to - Well, I'm voting for Biden. I mean, look, there are choices on the table. There's dementia and there's demented. I'm going with dementia. Okay. If there's movies, we're going to go to the movies. There's Weekend at Bernie's where the guy is half dead and he's forgetful and he's elderly, or there's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest where the guy's full on crazy and needs a lobotomy.

1:01:21Okay. I'm going with the least harmful of those two. Okay. Mr. Trump has said that he wants to effectively revoke the democracy. He wants to expand executive powers. He wants to come after his adversaries using the Department of Justice. He has said that he wants to shut down or take away FCC licenses for people that disagree with him in the media. He wants to change the standards associated with the freedom of the press. He's saying all this. I'm not saying it. He's saying it. When he's asked if you want to be a dictator, he told Sean Addy he wants to be a dictator for a day. He told the Time Magazine guy that people like dictators.

1:02:02Okay, your family and my family have been benefiting from the flat decentralized structure of the United States and the knowledge, the wisdom that our founders had to make it so we could be protected from an autocracy. And this guy is a nut job and we have no institutional memory of fascism in this country. because FDR put down the first America First movement. So we don't go on, they go on field trips in Germany. Say, this is what the Nazis did. They go on field trips in France. And they say, okay, here's where the blitz happened in London. Okay, so Europe has all of this hereditary and institutionalized memory of fascists and the plague of fascism.

1:02:52The United States, we don't. So weirdly, we think, okay, well, maybe that's a panacea. Maybe that's a cure-all for our ills. Okay, I'm not saying all of us, but there's a large enough group of us that think that. And Trump represents that. We can't have that. I'll go with Weekend at Bernie's over that. Well, you know, your book, From Wall Street to the White House and Back, there's also a lot of stuff that's really important that you don't see in a lot of books written by Wall Street or political guys, which is how to find purpose in life, how to find meaning in life and how connected that is to happiness.

1:03:29It's a very philosophical book based on all of these experiences. There's one piece of advice you give that's very important. And I really encourage young people to read this. Do a little, and it's gonna sound almost like a cliche when I say it, but do a little each day. If you write, for instance, five pages a day, then in two months, you're gonna have a pretty big novel. You're going to have a Game of Thrones-sized novel. So that's all. I don't want to say that's all it takes is for success. But like you say in the book, if you don't do anything, there's nothing for you to be happy or sad about you.

1:04:04There's just going to be nothing. So I really encourage that this philosophical aspect, okay, we can talk all day about Bitcoin and failures and successes and politics, but individually we need these nuts and bolts first. We need these, this, to lay this foundation for success. And you, we didn't talk much about it, but that's what a lot of the book is about from your own experience. And I really appreciate you writing that in this book. Well, it's very sweet of you to say, you know, I, again, I tried to make it real and I tried to talk about it openly. It's one of the things I admire about you.

1:04:40You have a lot of self-awareness in your writing. You have a lot of human observation. And so with human beings, there comes levels of fallibility. And whether it's you, James Altucher, Robert Greene, writing about the real stuff, if you will, the rights and wrongs. People try to pretend that they have no jealousy or envy. they do. People try to pretend that they're right or they don't have mean streaks in the personality. Well, guess what? They do because everybody does. And I'm trying to just make it as real as possible so that if a young person picks up this book and reads it, they're like, they have space there to make mistakes and they have space there to figure things out without being overly judged.

1:05:36Yeah. All very important stuff. So much more important than the things we tend to argue about all day long on social media. This is like the real stuff. But Anthony Scaramucci, once again, it's been great. I mean, it's 14 years since we first met. It's been great having you on the podcast. You're the man. I remember having breakfast with you at the Cork Club. Let's do that again. Yeah, we should definitely do that again. I appreciate you inviting me on. You got a very popular podcast and it's an honor to be on with you. Thank you. So from Wall Street to the White House and back by Anthony Scaramucci.

1:06:09Good luck on the book. congratulations and look let's talk again soon all right thanks brother that was great