167. Trump vs MAGA: Has Trump Lost His Base?

10:37Anthony Scaramucci:You bomb the Middle East, the Straits of Hormuz get affected. I mean, it was such a no-brainer that it makes you wonder, you know, where is Doug Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota, who's now interior minister who understands oil markets? Why is the energy department sending out tweets saying that the tankers are being escorted by US military vessels when they're not? I mean, that level of incompetence makes you worry about not just the reasons for the war, but now, I think what is facing them is right now, the White House is having to think, what is our exit strategy? Because we can't sustain this level of discontent around gas prices much longer.

11:19Anthony Scaramucci:Isn't that what you're hearing too? I mean, apart from, and what you're hearing from the allies in the region.

11:23Katty Kay:I mean, that - Yeah, but I mean, this is, you know, bin Laden said this. Bin Laden said, we're going to hit you. You're going to overreact. You're going to spill your blood and treasure here. We're going to exhaust you like we've exhausted every other empire. You're going to evacuate. We're going to still be here.

11:38Anthony Scaramucci:And the Iranians have heard the word taco.

11:39Katty Kay:They went from Khomeini to Khomeini in less than a Scaramucci. And that's better than the 20 years the Taliban to the Taliban. But let me follow up with another question, if you don't mind, because it's somewhat Shakespearean. The man who built his brand on America First, and his coalition is a group of anti-conservative conservatives that are all about America first, may be remembered for a war that put America last. Okay, so where are we there, Katty? Yeah, so that's interesting. You think his group of supporters is super happy with the war and how it's going down?

12:15Anthony Scaramucci:A quick caveat on the polling before we get into this, because supporting the country for the war at the moment, 13 days in, about 50-50, the country is split. Most Democrats, 86 % say they don't like it. Interestingly, 6 in 10 independents also say they don't like it. But when you look at Republican polling on this, you've got 84 % either strongly supporting or generally supporting the American military involvement in the region. So what I think that you've got, I'm not sure that he's lost MAGA over this. I don't think I agree with you on that one. I think you've got a couple of very outspoken MAGA voices who have a lot of weight.

12:52Anthony Scaramucci:Joe Rogan, who has said on Tuesday on a podcast that the war in Iran is crazy. He says it's left America feeling betrayed. He said, Trump ran on no more wars, end these stupid senseless wars. And then we have one that we can't even really clearly define why we did it. So you've got Joe Rogan there saying that. You've got Tucker Carlson, obviously, being very close to people in the region, particularly for example, the Qataris being a strong critic of Israel, saying that he opposes this war. But if you look at that 84 % figure of Republicans, and this is what the White House is banking on, I am told, they think that the American public is still with them.

13:33Anthony Scaramucci:The thing they are really concerned about is gas prices, but they think they have another four to six weeks, I'm told, of this campaign and managing to keep the support of the American public. I think that may be pie in the sky. I I don't know what they're smoking in the White House. I don't think they've only had gas prices rising for a week and they're already panicked about it. And they're already looking around to see what they can do about it. But I don't know. I don't think yet that we can say he's lost all of MAGA over this. I still think Donald Trump's grip of MAGA is very powerful.

14:03Katty Kay:I want to restate. I think you've convinced me. And I would just go back to some of the polling because I looked at the different polls and the weighted average is north of 80%. percent so that's evidence to what you're saying in the republican party you mean yes in the republican party and MAGA so that's more evidence to what you're saying and it's interesting depending on how they ask the question caddy it goes from 88 to 68 you know because they they can finagle the question a little bit to rile people away from the president but in fairness i'm gonna i'm gonna see to you that 80 90 percent of MAGA still with the president guy's unbelievable shooting people on fifth avenue shooting people in the strait of hormuz no problem he can do anything that he wants to do with a very large group of people but what i think makes politics interesting in the united states is the differential and what happens with the independents who unfortunately yes what it's not going your way with the independents they decide the election and i think this split is hurting him because there are tens of millions of people that are listening to tucker candace i'll name the names you know the names yes ann coulter etc and none of them are happy right are any of them representing themselves as this is great let's jingoistically george bush george w bush too and by the way you know this because i have watched you for 20 years on shows like morning joe and the bbc uh you know that iran is a way more difficult terrain and a way more difficult country to attack than iraq you know this i know this and and so i don't know tell me caddy what's the planning tell me how he's doing and tell me and tell me who you know let's make the case for him look i i you know everyone says well i don't like him so that's my thing no i'm trying to be objective let's make the case for him push back on what i'm saying but i i think he's going to start losing big republicans ted cruz is going to split from home he wants to run for president jd vance who he put in the wood chipper as the chipper is going he said i told you i told you

16:14Anthony Scaramucci:as he's going into the wood chipper and there's there is trump flying around the country telling

16:19Katty Kay:everybody how wonderful little marco is it's okay but it turns out that he's helping vance

16:26Anthony Scaramucci:Vance may be on the right side of this one.

16:28Katty Kay:But Cruz is going to have to get on that side if he wants to run for president.

16:32Anthony Scaramucci:Yes, because here's the other side of this that I'm hearing that's interesting from some Trump supporters, but who are the hawkish Trump supporters, because they're the ones who are now saying, listen, and actually even hearing some Democrats saying this, interestingly, having started this, having created this chaos in the region that this bombing campaign has created, he actually has to carry on. And one Trump supporter said to me, you know, he doesn't want to end up being George H.W. Bush after Gulf War One, where he started the job and never finished off Saddam Hussein. And so now what you're hearing, some Republicans pushing Trump, and I think Trump is kind of hearing these different voices.

17:11Anthony Scaramucci:Some of them are saying, listen, you've got to go for regime change at this point, because the worst thing would be to go in having spent, what is it we've spent? $12 billion, the numbers are just eye-popping, having spent$12 billion in 13 days, if you then leave in place and a regime that is anti-American, they're just going to start rebuilding their ballistic missile campaign as soon as you turn your back. And as Trump said yesterday, I mean, he said it in Kentucky, we don't want to be in a position where going back in there in two or three years' time. Well, that is the concern of some people in the hawkish world who are pushing him saying, okay, you've got to make sure that you actually finish the job that you've started having gone in there.

17:52Anthony Scaramucci:So I think he's hearing it from all sides. And I don't think he's hearing anyone saying actually, that this is going super well. I think he is hearing the message. They are worried in the White House about these gas prices, and this appearance that things are going chaotically.

18:06Katty Kay:How do you think they're doing with the Gulf state allies? And so this This would be people in Qatar. This would be people in Bahrain, UAE, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. How do you think we're doing with them?

18:20Anthony Scaramucci:Well, I think they don't like the disruption to the energy sector either, right? I mean, their whole economies are based on this. I mean, what's interesting is, first of all, the Saudis didn't really like this. MBS jumped on this one. My understanding is when the war started, because he realized it was going to start anyway, because Netanyahu had been, you know, Trump whispering. and had got Trump to a position where Trump felt, okay, let's go for it. MBS thought, okay, I better jump into this because I don't want to be left out of the table. I want to have some say in this, but I don't think he was ever a big fan of this.

18:52Anthony Scaramucci:And now they're in a position where their main sectors have been disrupted and will be disrupted for a long time. They can't rely on the Americans to pull this off efficiently, and they're still getting attacked in the region. Okay, yes, I understand the missile strikes have gone down in number a lot, but they haven't stopped. This has not been a one and done in and out mission. This was not Venezuela. This is not Cuba.

19:15Katty Kay:Well, I want to get you to react if you don't mind, because these numbers are staggering. And I just want to read them to our viewers and listeners briefly. $600 million of lost business per day. Airport is shut down. Trade is shut down. Remember, that's a big port. People coming through there to connect they can't land there the hotel bookings are down 60 percent 3 000 flights per day have been disrupted 80 of the flights have been canceled of course the dubai financial markets were suspended trading on march uh second and third okay it's the first wartime closure ua history they have branded themselves as a neutral place they're good with the russians they're good with the americans they're good with everybody uh thousands of years as a trading port they did something that's really going to hurt them.

20:03Katty Kay:They arrested a couple of Brits that were photographing bombs going into the airport and bombs going into the apartments.

20:11Anthony Scaramucci:The reputational hit all over is bad.

20:14Katty Kay:They may have served two to three years in jail for a quote-unquote cyber crime of displaying the violence that's happening in the area. But again, that hurts their reputation as this place of great freedom and great hospitality, you're seeing the ugly side of the situation, right? Lastly, you got 6.7 million barrels a day, can't get through the strait. So if you were the Dubai head of tourism, let's say you were Minister Al-Tuk, he's a friend of mine, they spent 30 years building this brand. And it was a brand of stable, tax-free wealth, magnetized the whole expat community here, get away from the volatility outside of your traditional markets, come into our market.

21:04Katty Kay:And it turns out we're in the last scene of Westworld.

21:07Anthony Scaramucci:Turns out geography matters after all.

21:09Katty Kay:Yeah. So, you know, Trump is not just an arsonist. He has set fire to the entire region. And so again, caddy you're well sourced in washington so go ahead tell me with the administration saying what to that you know we war gamed all this trump was playing 19d chess with bb and all of this was

21:33Anthony Scaramucci:in our plan or what do you think is going on here i mean clearly not and clearly that has pissed people off and the reputational damage could take years to overcome i mean people we live in a world where people have amazingly short-term memory so i don't know maybe in six months time people are going back on holiday to Dubai for their winter holidays, and the expats are all moving back there and they think everything is fine. We live in a kind of weird, topsy-turvy world, and I don't discount that that's a possibility. But set that against, okay, the seriousness of the impact on this to the people in the region, not to discount the fact that we've had, I think, more than a thousand children who have been killed in these strikes as well, and the acknowledgement, begrudging acknowledgement from the Americans that yes, they did actually bomb that school and 150 kids and teachers were killed because they had the coordinates out of date.

22:24Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, having said, we don't do that kind of thing. The least you can do at that point is show some empathy and take responsibility for it, which they're still really loathe to do as far as I can see in the White House and the Pentagon. But set that seriousness against, here is Donald Trump. Do you want to know what he said last night when he was out? He's been out in Kentucky and Ohio supporting candidates out there for the midterm elections. Here is what he said. They gave me a list of names to choose. Sir, you can pick the name you'd like, sir. I said, the name of what? The name of the attack on Iran, sir.

22:54Anthony Scaramucci:And they gave me like 20 names. I'm like falling asleep. I didn't like any of them. Then I see epic fury and I said, I like that name. I like that name. This is how Donald Trump is talking about this campaign in the heartland of America right now. This campaign that is causing a huge amount of disruption. He's dancing to YMCA, talking about the gamification of the name. How reassuring is that going to be to people both in the region and to Americans as they watch their prices go up? And at the same time, he's saying, we're done. We won on day one. We've got to stay until we finish. We don't want to have to go back in two years time.

23:31Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, in the space of the last 24 hours. He's both said that they've won already, that it's almost over, there are no more targets, and said, we've got to stay to make sure that we don't have to go back again and we finish the job. I mean, it's not surprising that people, it's surprising perhaps that 80 % of Republicans think this is a good idea, but it's not surprising that you've got a rising number of Americans who are worried both about petrol prices and the strikes generally, because this is what happens when you don't have a clear strategy and a clear communication of the strategy. But I thought that whole section in his long speech, over an hour long speech in Ohio, where he talks about the name and I mean, it's classic Trump.

24:11Anthony Scaramucci:It doesn't surprise you, but it's that's what he's focused on is that it has a great name. Mr.

24:16Katty Kay:President, I voted for you. I'm pro MAGA. I'm America first. You campaigned on ending forever wars. I'm now upset with you. Nick Fuentes is telling me to vote Democrat. so I'm not going to vote for you Mr. President I'm going to look for a solution Trump's response to those people is well you were never really MAGA anyway that's Trump's response

24:37Anthony Scaramucci:he's saying that flat out that's what he's saying out on these campaign rallies okay so then who's

24:41Katty Kay:MAGA that's one question and then the other question Callie like if I was advising these people I'd be like hey man your most dangerous critic isn't the one that hates you because everyone knows that that person hates you and so they build in the hate factor your most dangerous critic is the one that who endorsed you katie k and now feels betrayed by you aka joe rogan so how would you play that amazing communication strategist that you are and let's channel some maga be in the white house what would you say to the president these guys are breaking from you it's going to really hurt us in the midterms what would your recommendations be to these people

25:22Anthony Scaramucci:I think there is only one person in the White House who can have a conversation with Donald Trump at the moment and say, we have a problem and we need to do something about that. And that's probably Scott Besant. The Trump president still does listen to the Treasury Secretary, and they can speak the same language. And he feels that Besant is on his side. A bunch of other people who ought to be able to talk to him and give him a clear message, he's not listening to. But I think this is the problem of a president to whom nobody is saying, these are the pitfalls. My understanding is that when they went to him before the strikes began and said, these are the second and third consequences, he didn't want to listen.

26:04Anthony Scaramucci:And we said this right at the very beginning. There's a reason you need a clear articulation of the strategy, because when you start getting into trouble, you need to be able to go to your public, you need to be able to go to your voters and Joe Rogan and say, here is the message. We could not let the Iranians have nuclear weapons. We could not let the Iranians have ballistic missile programs. We could not let them carry on sponsor terrorism around the region. The regime was very weak. This was the best shot we had. They never articulated the message like that. It was all over the place. It was regime change.

26:41Anthony Scaramucci:It was, we're going to send in ground troops. It was not regime change. It was, we're going to help the Kurds. We're going to promote a civil, foment a civil war. The message was all over the place. And that is the problem. And what is Joe Rogan saying? Joe Rogan was saying, we don't understand why we're there because the message has been all over the place. I don't think he's suddenly going to start changing that now. I don't think he's suddenly going to get up just based on the last 24 hours when he's talking about the confusion around the exit strategy. I don't know that he's suddenly going to start coming up with a message that's going to satisfy Joe Rogan.

27:13Katty Kay:Yeah, I think Joe Rogan is a huge problem for Trump. You and I have said it many times. He speaks to alpha male, independents, conservatively street in one way, socially agnostic. And he's giving them space now to also break from Trump. And again, these politics are one in inches and differentials.

27:33Anthony Scaramucci:Maybe, Anthony, you know, people like Joe Rogan shouldn't be surprised that Donald Trump runs on one thing and then offers something else. Because you and I have been doing this series for our founding members on the early years of Donald Trump. And what was one of the things we found that when he ran for politics, this week's episode is all about his very early runs for politics in the Reform Party. And even back then, he says one thing at one point in his career and then runs on something else. He has multiple different positions throughout his political career on multiple different subjects.

28:07Anthony Scaramucci:So maybe America first and no stupid wars is just another one of those things he has different positions on.

28:13Katty Kay:Well, or maybe he has no positions, Gaddy, and that's the most interesting thing about him. He's just going with the breeze, going with the wind. He's figured out that he's a grievance-based guy. He's collected a lot of grievance-based people. And so he's just, it's like a rotisserie of what could potentially happen. But I think it's important for people. If you really want to understand this guy, tune into this message. I think we have a clip, right?

28:39Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, I mean, just take a listen to how his positions changed even back when he first ran for politics in 2000.

28:47Katty Kay:So he's a one-time tax on the wealthy. That's a wealth tax. That's very controversial in California right now, but that's a Trump idea from this book. He talks about health care being run as universal health care, as an entitlement. These are socially left-leaning issues, right?

29:06Anthony Scaramucci:Sounds like a Democrat.

29:07Katty Kay:He's talking about a supporter of gay rights. He says that there was a gay man murdered by the name of Matthew Shepard. He says it's a hate crime. He was pro-choice, Caddy. Again, I just want people to know where Trump was. So when I'm working with him, I'm like, well, he's not super far to the right. He's always been a New York-based sort of socially inclusive person. He's always talked about that, at least. He didn't eventually go in that direction.

29:36Anthony Scaramucci:Can I just say one thing, Anthony, before we go on? This is so important because I think also Donald Trump is not totally out of step with Republican voters at this point. So it's not just that Donald Trump has changed. The Republican Party has become far more conservative than it was back in 2000.

29:56Katty Kay:It has. It is the last white hope. That's how they look at it. You know, this is the last gasp of culture that never really existed in the country that they think they want to bring back. You know, this is the stupid culture war. I think this is important. At that time, he's not an extremist. You know, he's decrying people like Pat Buchanan or David Duke.

30:17Anthony Scaramucci:If you'd like to hear the rest of that series, do become a founding member and sign up at therestispoliticsus.com and you can find the whole series there.

30:26Katty Kay:Have you ever heard of a woman by the name of Carrie Prejean-Bowler? Have you ever heard of her?

30:32Anthony Scaramucci:No.

30:32Katty Kay:Okay, so she was a woman that was appointed. She's a Roman Catholic and she was appointed to the Religious Liberty Commission. okay and this is you know she's a big donor to the campaign and they're giving her this plaudit of being on the religious liberty commission she got a message from the white house yesterday dear mrs bowler on behalf of president donald j trump i am acting to inform you that your position as a member of the religious liberty commission is terminated effective immediately thank you for service mary sprouse personnel director now what happened was she's a catholic i guess who doesn't support the war katie that'll be pope right yeah you have to remember this okay because i'm coming at this because vance is tied to this okay so the bishops have spoke out about it the pope has spoke out about it this woman who's exercising her religious liberty who happens to be on the religious liberty commission spoke out against the war and the white house immediately terminated her and again the only reason why i'm bringing this up is that you're now killing your own these are people that gave you money these are people that work for you these are people that advocated for you and voted for you but you're all over the place some of them are anchored and at principles and you're strafing them okay and so he by the way he does it to everybody he did it to me and he does it to everybody so the good news is misery loves company uh you know miss pre-jean bowler i'm sorry he did it to you but i responded to her this morning on x and said hey he does it to everybody and she wrote a four-page open letter to the president i said listen he's not reading that because he's not reading though he's not reading the war plans Why are you laughing?

32:22Anthony Scaramucci:Well, because four pages, the chances of Donald Trump reading a four-page letter that's been sent to him on X, no.

32:28Katty Kay:Even if Miriam Adelson, who gave him$250 million, sent him a four-page letter.

32:33Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, he's still not reading a four-page letter, no.

32:35Katty Kay:You got a better chance that he eats the letter with ketchup than he would read the letter. But I'm bringing her up as an obscure person, but I'm bringing her up for a reason. He's going to take out everybody, Katty. Okay, he's going to keep shooting and keep shooting and keep shooting. And the 80 % number that you're referencing, which is, you know, bolsters your point of view, is going to degrade. And he can't afford a lot of degradation. He can't afford it.

33:03Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, we're going to take a quick break here and we'll come back with more in a second. This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society. And it's Tabby and Dominic here from The Book Club, Goalhanger's latest show.

33:16Katty Kay:Now, Tabby, as you know, there are some books that you read once, but there are others you especially return to again and again. And those second kind of books, they really deserve to last, don't they?

33:27Anthony Scaramucci:That's what the Folio Society does. They are an independent, employee-owned publisher based in London.

33:33Katty Kay:Every book is produced with specially commissioned, beautiful artwork and a specially commissioned introduction that puts the story in its context.

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35:02Anthony Scaramucci:Well, he can't afford it given the midterms and given how the polls are looking, because they're not looking good right now for him. There's a new Economist YouGov poll that's finding that Latinos favor Democratic candidates over Republicans by 43 to 27. If you remember, it was Latinos, of course, who helped put Donald Trump in the White House in 2024. The prediction markets now have the odds of Democrats flipping the House, and they've gone up from 69 % likelihood to 85 % likelihood. The prediction markets clearly think that they're going to lose the House. So a question for you. If Donald Trump is seriously worried about losing the House and all of his tours, there he is going out around the country trying to shore up MAGA candidates or Donald Trump friendly candidates in the midterm elections and his poll, he knows what the polls are telling him.

35:52Anthony Scaramucci:He's even talking now in the kind of language that is saying it's normal for a president to lose seats in the midterm election. So he knows that and the White House knows that there's a very good chance that they lose the House of Representatives. what are they doing? What are they doing to try and make Americans feel better? Because I think they know that Americans don't like this. I think they know this comes with great peril. I've heard one plausible scenario, which he thinks is that he has four weeks, then the gas prices go down again, and you just in time for summer when Americans are traveling, and you get a bit of a spending and kind of sugar high from the gas prices coming back down again.

36:33Anthony Scaramucci:That sounds way too well thought out and planned and the chances of it all going to that kind of plan seem that's a big gamble to me but anyway that's the only plausible scenario that i've heard but what do you think they're doing to try and turn around those midterm numbers well i think the first

36:47Katty Kay:thing you said is the most true because i'm still on their fundraising uh form letter dissemination and so what they said this morning was hey we need your money since 1938 uh of the 22 midterms or whatever the number was, the income and president has lost 20 of the 22 midterms. And so this is to be expected. They're trying to build in the midterm loss, but send us your money so to see if we can not do that. But the big thing is they care. The House cares. The Senate cares. Trump is acting like he doesn't care. And again, I want to stipulate. I know this may sound repetitive.

37:30Anthony Scaramucci:Maybe and accept that he's going to be.

37:31Katty Kay:That's the point. Thank you, Katty. Because I have been saying to people, he doesn't care. You're not getting his money. You may get his tepid endorsement. He doesn't care.

37:43Anthony Scaramucci:He's fundraising for himself. I mean, he's fundraising off the war in Iran. He's making a lot of money already out of that. But I don't think he's going to necessarily spend it on beleaguered candidates, right? So here's the best chance then for Republicans is the Democrats, because there's this new NBC News poll just came out this week showing that 30 % of registered voters have a positive view of the Democratic Party, 52 % see it negatively. Even in other polls, Democrats don't see the Democratic Party well. And you sent me something which I thought was super interesting and I wanted to talk to you about, which was Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, the legendary civil rights leader whose funeral was earlier this week.

38:27Anthony Scaramucci:And Barack Obama spoke at the funeral. And most of it, this 20 minute eulogy was about Jesse Jackson and the civil rights movement. But at the very end, he talks about living in a time where it's difficult to hope. And we have people in power who don't think that you count very much, or maybe they think you don't count at all, and they aren't looking out for you. And this was picked up in kind of conservative circles as, you know, there's Barack Obama trying to divide the nation again. And you sent me that and I went back and listened to the whole speech. I thought, well, it was only a minute, but actually I think you were really onto something.

39:08Anthony Scaramucci:And I had a conversation with a couple of Democrats about this who said to me that they were concerned that this just distracts from the message, that that made it about Obama. It didn't make it about the question of economics and affordability, and that's what Democrats should only be speaking about. Was that what you were thinking? Why was it that you thought Barack Obama shouldn't have been talking like that at Jesse Jackson's funeral?

39:32Katty Kay:Well, because he is a statesman. I like the president. I like President Obama, but he is playing off of Trump's sheet music.

39:41Anthony Scaramucci:He's been dragged down into the fray.

39:43Katty Kay:That's what I'm saying. He's in the fight with the pig, and the pig likes the mud, and you're not supposed to be in the mud with the pig, and you're getting muddy. You follow what I'm saying?

39:52Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. And usually he doesn't. He's pretty careful.

39:55Katty Kay:I think it's distracting, and I think it hurts them further. Get on message. affordability process the constitution uh let's end these wars americans it turns out likes immigration uh your friends at axios did that whole bill of consensus rights this morning which is very well done you know they turns out the americans like immigration they want uh fairness in their society they want the government off the back of businesses they don't want them intervening in the businesses the way Trump is doing it. But listen, I mean, Caddy, Wall Street is pricing because I'm on Wall Street. I'm telling you what Wall Street is pricing.

40:36Katty Kay:They're looking around and saying, we now control Venezuela. They still see a positive outcome or potential near-term ceasefire. And Wall Street is now pricing, as of this afternoon, five rate cuts, Gadike. That's 125 basis points. Now, let me just remind everybody listening in, interest rates are the physical gravity of financial assets. As interest rates go down, asset values go up because it has to do with the net present value of the cash flow that comes from those assets. If that's too complicated, it just means that people are willing to pay more for your assets if they're producing in a lower interest rate environment.

41:18Katty Kay:And so Wall Street was down today because the news is showing tankers on fire. And the news is showing, unfortunately, despicable anti-Semitism where there's a shooter in Michigan going after people at a synagogue. So Wall Street doesn't like that, doesn't like that uncertainty. But generally, Wall Street is looking at this thing like it's going to end well. Do you think the markets are right, Anthony? So I think that...

42:14Katty Kay:carrier is not going to do it but how are you going to get it out of there you know well it turns out we don't have the capability to do that we just have this very big ponderous navy okay so do you have to put ground troops in to the area do you have to do you have to control the whole port around where where the iranians are where the american troops put the 101st airborne in by parachute and start shooting everybody in the area to control the port to then go in and take the minds out because if you have to do that wall street's not ready for that one okay and the golf is not ready for that one but the iranians you know you got a guy where you killed his father his wife i think he killed his sister and his mother and a couple of his kids and the reports that he's wounded he may have lost a leg or a limb i don't know if any of that's true but do you think he might be pissed off and you think he might be a radical i don't know he might be okay so you're playing with people on the other side that don't care about death and so to me there's a mispricing so wall street's probably not right but they're probably right on where donald trump is you know there there are reports on arab television okay there's reports in the gulf that the administration has reached out to the iranians twice and asked for a ceasefire and a return to the negotiating table.

43:39Katty Kay:And they're launching statements saying that they don't want that. They don't have an interest in that. And they want compensation caddy for the damage that's been inflicted on them by Israel and the United States. So does that sound like a war to you that's going to end very quickly?

43:55Anthony Scaramucci:I see a world in which Donald Trump gets spooked by the oil prices and the Straits of Hormuz and, you know, kind of right done and dusted, I'm gone. But I don't see a world in which that ends well.

44:08Katty Kay:So, Cady, a lot of Americans don't know this. So I want to share it with people. The U.S. decommissioned four dedicated minesweepers from the Persian Gulf last September. So this is four months before the war started. We sent them home. And we don't have anything in the area that can really sweep the mines. and by the way we're blowing up their miners the pentagon has reported that that they they blew up 16 of their miners the the boats that actually lay down the mines but there hasn't been one report from the united states or the pentagon that we've taken any mines out of the water okay and this is the main reason caddy why the navy doesn't want to go in there and escort the boats because caddy could you imagine if one of our destroyers hits a mine while it's trying to protect a non-american flag tanker coming through the strait of hormuz so so so again i just want to point out to everybody that there was no mr president yes well we're going to hit them they have a 20-year plan to react they're going to shoot at our allies and they're going to close the straight and they're going to mine the straight and we decommissioned our mine sweepers okay well you know that that was probably longer than four pages and so president trump

45:33Anthony Scaramucci:can't give that to him i mean it's a bit like the targeting of the school i mean it's not the obviously it's not the same activity but it it gets to weaknesses in the system and in the decision making process there are reports that the types of people who were meant to be there in the Pentagon whose job it was to make sure that you didn't target things where there were civilian casualties, some of those departments have been downgraded and the personnel numbers have been shrunk under this administration because, as Pete Hegseth likes to say, we're fighting without concerns about rules and we're not fighting with kind of woke principles anymore.

46:13Anthony Scaramucci:Well, if that turns out to be the reason that they had outdated data and targeted a building that was a school and they killed a whole bunch of school kids because they had not paid enough attention to civilian casualties. Well, again, it gets to a bit like the decommissioned minesweepers. It gets to this great military, which we are being told can do no wrong and achieves the best results of any military in the world. It makes you start to wonder, does it actually, or is it actually flawed and fallible in the way that every organization in the world in all of history has always been because organizations have flaws.

46:55Katty Kay:Give us something optimistic before we depart catty cake.

46:58Anthony Scaramucci:Look, it's going to get warm again here. That has to have been the last snow we had. That was it. I'm done with the snow. I'm done with winter. Otherwise, I'm joining you in Los Angeles. You are off to not only are you in Los Angeles, you're about to go to Hawaii as well. I mean, are you just doing this to rub my nose in the fact that I'm still sitting here with half an inch of snow?

47:18Katty Kay:I must have got jinx on Hawaii because there's a four, there's a category four storm there. So we're going to stay in LA. I'm not going to be able to make it to Hawaii. But, but Katie, I'm going to be, I'm going to be optimistic for a second. Okay. I'm going to say something optimistic. This has exposed a very dangerous miscomprehension of a very small group of people about how the world works. and it turns out that the systems and the processes that the americans alongside of their allies had in place for 80 years was generally a good system and i'm going to make the bet that there's very smart people in america that are going to come together and so weirdly what these mostly men, some women, but mostly men have done here is they've exposed that the way we were doing things and thinking about these things actually generally worked.

48:17Katty Kay:Again, granted, not without mistakes and certainly with levels of imperfection, but the processes generally work. And maybe with God's good grace, we'll get back to those processes. And so that's my optimistic signal before we end.

48:33Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there. We will be back next week with more, of course, and the latest on Iran as well next week. Thanks for listening.

48:41Katty Kay:Have a great week, guys. We'll see you next week.

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