133. Has the Battle for Trump’s Successor Already Started?

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3:12Welcome to The Rest is Politics, US. I'm Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Happy Thanksgiving, Katty Kay. Happy Thanksgiving. And to all our American friends, we hope you have a wonderful day with family and friends. We are going to do something a little special today because it is Thanksgiving. And this is something we do for our founding members usually only, but it'll give all of you a taste of what happens in our little founding members club. This is a question and answer session. You've very kindly sent in your questions. They're great questions. And Anthony and I are going to answer them.

3:42Some of them are political, but some of them are also just kind of fun questions that you've sent us. So thanks for sending them in. Here we go. The first question, Anthony, is from Patrick Fuller. Who is Trump's natural successor on the populist right? Great question, Patrick. Well, you know, I mean, I think the conventional answer is that it's J.D. Vance, right? Everyone will say that. I predict that it won't be J.D. Vance. I think J.D. Vance is going to get shoved into the wood chipper by Donald Trump before this is over. And I often tell people, hey, if you think Vance is going to be successful, pick up the phone and call Mike Pence and you'll get a sense for what it's like to be that close to Donald Trump.

4:25I'm going to say some people that people are not going to expect, Glenn Youngkin. uh i think that elise stefanik she's running for governor in 2026 if she gets that nomination uh she'll be somebody that people will be talking about she's full-on maga uh what about donald trump jr even more remote than him what about eric trump so just throwing out names to you guys uh i don't think it's going to be vance or rubio what say you katie i think marjorie Taylor Greene is probably up there. She's having her run-ins with Trump at the moment, but she is populist in the sense that she's very tied into her constituents.

5:04And when she talks about healthcare, when she talks about the economy, she is more populist at the moment than Donald Trump is. And she's reflecting those attitudes. It's very hard to run for the president from the House. It's why I don't think AOC runs or runs successfully necessarily. It's very rarely done to be able to run from the House like that. But she's definitely a figure there. You know, it's worth looking at all of these figures in the media ecosystem. Somebody like Tucker Carlson, who's also part of the kind of MAGA splits at the moment, but is very America first, is very tied into kind of the MAGA movement.

5:40He has been talked about as somebody who might try and run for the presidency from the kind of media platform base. I don't know that that would be successful. But there are certainly voices out there. And I agree with you that Vance doesn't have the grip on the MAGA movement and he doesn't have the charisma, as you would say, Anthony. He doesn't have the riz, which is your new favorite expression. Kind of embarrassing, probably to your kids. Okay. Okay. Let's go to the next question. I'll start. M. Menzies, Caddy, what political advice do you have for Canadians on how we should think about the US?

6:14That's one of your former colonies, Caddy. I'll let you take that question. This is an interesting question. It's a question I keep getting asked, actually, from America's allies at the moment. I feel sometimes like I'm a bit of a therapist going around mopping people's brows and saying, there, there, it's going to be okay. I think that you have to try and sort out what is permanent, what are the permanent shifts in the United States, and what are specific to Donald Trump in this particular moment. I think some of the kind of up and down on the tariffs, the volatility that we see around trade policy, that's specific to Donald Trump and it will pass.

6:47But I think it's worth Canadians and Europeans understanding that America is heading in a different direction. It's probably going to be a bit more protectionist, whoever is elected president next. I think there is a push for allies to be more self-reliant, whether they are Canadians or Europeans. And that probably means thinking more about your own security and your own defense spending. I think that certainly in the case of Europe, America is going to be less automatically transatlanticist than it has been. I think that would have been the case, whether it was Kamala Harris or Donald Trump, she was less transatlanticist than Joe Biden.

7:24So there are some permanent shifts, try and figure out what are the permanent shifts in the American political body and try and figure out what is specific to Donald Trump. And then I think also I would just say, you know, take a deep breath, realize that America is always a little bit transactional. This is just a lot more transactional. But do take a deep breath and remember that American politics changes. I'm old enough to remember the time when we assumed that a massive amount of anti-Americanism around the world, including in Canada, would mean that John Kerry was going to be elected president in 2004.

7:58It didn't happen. Anti-Americanism kind of then faded and you got Barack Obama in 2008 and everybody loved America again and thought the country was so cool. So American politics swings and it swings from left to right. And sometimes it swings back to the center, but it moves fast. Okay. Anthony, this is from Jerome Grazioli. In what ways have you been impressed by Trump's second term? Great question, Jerome. I like that. Well, I mean, I'm going to say three things, the border, the border, and the border. Those are the three things. And I think you got to give him credit for that. He's closed down the border.

8:35I think that's alleviated some of the working class anxiety in the country. Listen, I'm for legal immigration and I'm for solving the legal immigration issues and for naturalizing people that are already here. I think that's frankly inevitable despite all the rhetoric, Caddy. But I give Trump credit for that. What do you say? I'm going to say a couple of things. One is I think there was a shift in institutions, whether it was the media or universities or some of the other institutions of democracy, the federal government workforce, to an extent where it was illiberal liberalism, if that's a phrase that's possible.

9:17And I think conservatives felt very squeezed out. And Donald Trump shone a spotlight on that and made it easier to be conservative in universities. There are now students with MAGA hats walking around Harvard. I happen to think that's a good You need a diversity of political thought in these centers of excellence. And I think that's a good thing. I also think the other thing that he's done on the international stage is made Europeans realize that they have to take care of their own security. I've been saying this for years. Europe can't keep calling 911 every time there's a crisis in Europe and expect America to jump into action and come to Europe's rescue.

9:52So I actually think that discussion about European security and taking it seriously for the first time really since the Second World War is something that needed to happen and it wouldn't have happened without Donald Trump. OK, now, since it is Thanksgiving, when we come back from this break, we are going to take a little break ourselves from politics. We are going to give ourselves and you that treat and we're going to answer some of your more personal questions that have come in.

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12:27Christmas, a time for family, friends and reflection. As the turkeys carved, one side of the table praises the portion sizes, the other demands a recount. If you're shopping for the politically obsessed this Christmas, give them something calmer than cable news. A founding membership to the rest is politics, U.S. What could be better than ad-free listening? Weekly bonuses, a question and answer session, early access to our live shows and our deep dive series on people reshaping modern America. We've already explored President Ronald Reagan and unelected President Elon Musk. And let's just say the casting calls keep coming.

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13:43Okay, we're back from the break, Katty. And we're going to start with Will Scott. How do you find your passion and confidence? Hmm. Wow, those are big questions, Will. First of all, I think there's a difference between passion and confidence. For me, I don't know what you think, Anthony. Passion is something that you really care about and you would like to make a difference in and contribute to. confidence is the feeling that you can succeed. I've written a lot about confidence and one academic described confidence to me brilliantly. He said, confidence is the stuff that turns thoughts into action.

14:20So in some ways, passion could be your thoughts. I think confidence is your action. There are many things that I feel passionate about. I think some of it is reminding yourself to find the sort of excitement in life. Sometimes I feel this news environment can get us down. There's so much news going on. There are so many problems around the world. And you have to kind of remind yourself that there are things that you feel committed to and that you can make a difference in and that it's not futile, that you're not out of control, that you can make a difference in the world. And for me, that is passion.

14:52It's where I feel I can make a difference. And confidence is sort of the ability to execute on that. I think there are things that you can do to build your confidence. When I wrote the confidence code, we looked into this a lot. And some of that is taking action. When you take action, you realize you can have an impact, you realize you can make a difference and you realize you can succeed. And the other way to build your confidence is to overcome hurdles. There is nothing for building your confidence like the odd failure and realizing that you're still standing at the end of it, which is the advice I've always given, particularly to women where there can be a confidence gap between men and women.

15:27But a lot of it is realizing that you're human, people fail at things. But when you do fail, overcoming hurdles is actually a very good way to build your confidence. How do you build your confidence and passion? I don't think you lack from confidence, Anthony. I'm going to say you are not somebody who needs to read the confidence code. My mother, Katty Kay. Come on. That's so nice. Yeah. Come on. I'm an Italian. I mean, come on. The doting Italian mother. This is probably the reason why you never dated any Italians. You're probably horrified by the mother-son relationship by these Italians. But anyway, my mother told me I was six foot four, which I'm still coming to grips with the fact Oh, I see.

16:05I'm coming to grips with the fact that I'm not. And listen, I think confidence actually, in a day of Thanksgiving, I owe my mom and my grandmother. My Nana once said, and you should really listen to this, Will Scott, what other people think of you is none of your business. And trust me, when you're getting your ass fired from the White House, never is that sentiment more important. And so drown out the noise. And then as Caddy says, focus on your passion. You know, I tell my kids, do something you really love. You know, Mel Brooks once said, relax, none of us are getting out of here alive, Caddy.

16:42And so I would rather have people in my family focus on things that they love doing as opposed to things that I want them to be doing. And so, well, that would be my message to you. I mean, it's like, you know, Oscar Wilde said as well, be yourself, everyone else is taken. Amen. Amen. So Jack is out here saying, how do I begin learning about crypto? Well, that is definitely a question for you. So I would say, Jack, first place to go is ChatGBT, by the way. It's very free. You say, hey, I need a course on crypto. ChatGBT will print out a summary for you. You could read some great books. I mean, I'm not going to promote my own book here, though I've written a book on Bitcoin.

17:21I would say The Bitcoin Standard by Safadan Amos, A-M-M-O-U-S. He's a Lebanese economist. I think that's probably the most brilliant book that I've read in terms of getting into the full understanding of what Bitcoin is and then the elements of the blockchain. But start reading, Jack. Remember something. Our life experiences are not enough for us to deal with the world. We have to read and we have to read about other people's lives and we have to read about other people's thoughts and experiences on planet Earth to bolster our own. So start reading, Jack. I'm actually going to promote your book.

18:01You sent it to me and I found it super accessible. It was written in a way that I could understand it. I'm not sure I got all of the technology behind the blockchain because I need to do more reading on that. But The Little Book of Bitcoin is a great place to start by Anthony Scaramucci. All right. So we are being promotional. So I'm holding up the book here for the YouTube people. It's beautiful Hermes orange, aka Bitcoin orange. Not the orange Donald Trump, I might point out, but this is a more lustrous orange. And it is a little book. It's a quick read. You can read it in a day. Wanted to make it something that people could understand.

18:38But also, Jack, just so you know, I was a Bitcoin skeptic for about 10 years before I made my first Bitcoin investment. So, I do discuss that in the book. So, Katty, I'm going to take this one if you don't mind because I think it's for you. Emily Cartwright is asking, Katty, how did you get into journalism? I actually left. I was recently speaking at my college at Oxford University and I was being asked the same question. It got me back to thinking that when I was in university, the last thing I wanted to do was be a journalist. All of my friends were either going into finance, which probably would have been the wise path, make some money when you're young, or they were going into media.

19:16And I thought, I'm not going to do either of those things. I'm going to do something different. I'm going to go into international development. That's what I wanted to do. And I left Oxford and I went with my little degree in French and Italian and I went to the Bank of England. And I worked there for a year. I think they disliked me as much as I disliked them. And then I went out and lived in Zimbabwe and I was working for an aid agency out there. And a friend of mine came out to visit who was a journalist. And he said to me, this is crazy. There's so many great stories and you're interested in those stories.

19:44Why don't you become a reporter? And he brought out with him a little tape recorder and he literally said, this is the record button. And that's how I started just by talking to people. And I think what makes you a journalist is being curious. I always think people's stories are fascinating. I'm always interested in how policy and events affects people's lives. And that I haven't lost. My mom used to say I was a little bit nosy. I like to think that it's just curiosity, but that's how I got into it. It wasn't a conventional path. And then I just stuck with it somehow, carried on telling those stories for the last 30 years.

20:21Before we go to the next question, Caddy, I learned something about you last week when you and I did a photo shoot together for Goalhanger. Oh my God. You were once a model, Caddy Kay, living in Paris. So regale your fan base. Why do I ever tell you anything? Why? Because I'm a broadcast journalist as opposed to a journalist. There was a period. You're right. I was living in Paris. My dad was a diplomat. We were living in Paris. And actually, my little brother, who was super cute and had lots of blonde curls, was spotted by somebody from a modeling agency. And one day I went to pick him up from one of his shoots and somebody from the agency said, hold on a second, you should be doing this, too.

21:06And so I started modeling. I did it for about three or four years in France and Italy. And actually, it earned me enough money to put down a deposit for a flat in London. I paid for my boyfriend at the time for a year of his medical tuition. Was the boyfriend French? Inquiring minds want to know. The boyfriend was English. I'd met him at Oxford. Oh, we're just checking. Yeah, there we go. And so I traveled a lot with it. I actually kind of enjoyed it. I traveled all around Italy and I traveled around France. I went around Africa a little bit on shoots and it got me practicing my languages and it taught me patience.

21:44As a model, you spend a lot of time waiting. Anyway, that was a very, very long time ago, I have to say. um okay so reese quarrel is asking i just had acl surgery can i get some book recommendations to keep me busy while i'm stuck at home okay i'm going to give the drum roll here and i'm going to give you five books that i am simultaneously reading right now and some of these books will be on open book because i'm going to be interviewing these authors so here are the five books that I'm reading right now. I'm reading Q by Craig Brown, which is a biography of Queen Elizabeth, which is just a fascinating take on her because it talks lots about her travels and her interaction with her amazing public.

22:35I'm reading The Persian. I'm almost done with this. This is by David McCloskey. This is a fellow podcaster here at Goal Hanger. The rest is classified. Of course, you can check out me and David and Gordon arguing about the Kennedy assassination if you like that sort of stuff. And then the last two, When Caesar Was King, this is by David Margolic, and it's about the legendary comedian Sid Caesar. And it's about the first golden age of television in the 1950s, which is just a great cultural zeitgeist of America at that time. Last but not least, Gemini by Jeffrey Kluger. Now, why is Gemini so important?

23:13This was the precursor to the Apollo moon missions. This is the first time we had two men up in space traveling around the earth, doing experiments. Lots of things weirdly went wrong during those missions. I think it's important to bring up. And since I said five, Cady, I'll add one more. It's by the legendary George Packer and it's called The Emergency. It's a novel by him. He's a great nonfiction writer and a writer for The Atlantic. And he wrote a great book years ago called The Great Unwinding, which is really about the rise of American populism. But this book, Emergency, is a great novel.