172. Why Trump Will Keep Escalating The Iran War

14:07Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, we're in a very interesting moment. I had an interesting conversation with somebody who has ties with the Gulf states over the weekend, who said we're in this interesting moment where some of America's allies who were saying no to the president, who were fulfilling that role, saying, listen, this is going to be difficult. You know, be careful what you wish for. We don't want you to go in, are now saying they cannot afford to have any daylight between them and the president. So they're now saying yes to the president. In fact, they're pushing America to stay there because they're terrified that America, having started this, is going to leave all of those Gulf states in a weaker position with a wounded Iran.

14:49Anthony Scaramucci:And however much the president says there's been regime change, there has not been regime change, and that we'll be back bombing every six months. And that will have a long term damaging effect for the reputation of these Gulf states. So even some of the allies who might have been there saying no to people like Jared Kushner, because they had this very good relationship with him, are now saying, please, you know, full steam ahead, Mr. President, don't stop where you are. So I don't know. I don't know where the brakes are on this at the moment. I don't know. We are in this extraordinary moment a month in where, remember when we first started this, we were both being told by people that this was a two to four week operation.

15:27Anthony Scaramucci:I remember being told that. That's a bit like Don Rumsfeld said when he went around Europe saying this is going to be just weeks.

15:32Katty Kay:It will be in and out of Iraq in six weeks.

15:34Anthony Scaramucci:And now we're in a position where I think this could potentially be going on much longer than that. And the straits, economists are saying to me, they're not counting on the straits being open for at least another two to three weeks. And what's the impact of that?

15:46Katty Kay:Listen, if the strait is open in the next two to three weeks, I will personally be surprised by that. I don't think the markets think that. You know, like my buddies that are allocating capital in the energy markets, they don't think that. If that's the case, I mean, that would be a win. I think things have gotten so bad that we're going to be wishing that we were here eight weeks from now. Because, Cady, you have to understand something. When I was in Afghanistan and traveling on a troop support mission in 2015 or way back in 2011 when I went to Iraq on a troop support mission, and you talk to people in an unplugged way in those areas, people think differently than the Western cultures.

16:29Katty Kay:The Iranian soldier, the IRGC, they think differently. They have a different cause. And they're looking at us as an imperialistic invader that their ancestors have dealt with for a thousand years, if not longer. And they have a different attitude and they have a different approach to going about what they're willing to sacrifice, i.e. their lives, if necessary. So to me, it's not well thought out. There's nobody sitting in the room with the president where the president is actually asking the questions. If you go to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the thing that came out of that, and Richard Neustadt wrote about this.

17:13Katty Kay:In 1960, the professor from Harvard wrote a book on presidential power, but then he followed up in 1963. He said that the president, Kennedy, sat at the table. he didn't know everything, but he asked the right questions. And the right questions led to effectively a decent resolution for everybody. That's not happening right now. So to me, I'm super worried about that. And the other thing I'm super worried about, if I were a DEIA analyst for the Russians or for China, I'd be looking at this guy saying, this guy's lost it. He can't think. He's not focused. He's in a war cabinet meeting and he's talking five minutes about a Sharpie conversation that never happened, Caddy.

18:02Katty Kay:And so I'd be looking around the room and saying, okay, these sycophants, this is right out of a first grade book with the emperor has no clothes. And the guy that they're leaning on is 80 and he's befuddled and he has lost it, Caddy. So what's your reaction to all that? Because I'm personally, as an American, I'm super worried about not only how badly we're doing in the eyes of the world, but what the hell are you guys doing in terms of understanding what it means actually to be an American? Because what it means to be an American is to build a consensus among each other and not go in this buffoonery direction.

18:42Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, that's a great question. And you know, who's got the number of Donald Trump and America right now? It's the Iranians. You and I have been sending us each other backwards and forwards all of these videos that the Iranians are making, these little Lego videos. I mean, they are unbelievably sophisticated. They understand Donald Trump and his weak points. They understand America's weak points. I know that there's a whole machine producing them and that they are being amplified online by the Russians and by the Chinese. But you have to think to yourselves, it's worth watching guys take it. If you haven't seen them, just Google them.

19:20Anthony Scaramucci:They're all over the internet. The idea that people who in Washington are dismissed as the mullahs in the desert are producing something this sophisticated has to make you rethink their intelligence understanding and their psychoanalysis of Donald Trump and the leadership of this war and where America is right now, because I think they've got his number and they're doing it in a way that I would not have expected from them. Worth all of you watching, because they are a good window into the Iranian psychology and the Iranian communications.

19:58Katty Kay:Who's winning right now?

19:59Anthony Scaramucci:I think it's impossible to say that America is winning this. I mean, Donald, the only argument you would make is that the American military has done a very good job of degrading Iran's military and that we're not getting access to images from Iran because the internet is out. Everybody's trying to get onto what little Starlink availability there is. And so we are not seeing the full amount of degradation within Iran at the moment. But then Reuters has a story that says that the US can only confirm with certainty that it's only destroyed a third of Iran's missile arsenal so far. So even on that ground of how much we've destroyed.

20:39Anthony Scaramucci:There are questions about that at the moment. But I don't see how you can make the case that America is in a better position than it was before February the 28th. In fact, it's in a worse position because we're sort of in the same position. They've got fewer missiles, but we've got the Straits of Hormuz shut and the American economy is about to face a whole load of damage. The world economy is about to face a whole load of damage coming from that. I think you have to say It's asymmetric and they're with a very bad hand. They're playing an extraordinary asymmetric war. Right now, the Iranians are winning.

21:12Anthony Scaramucci:Congressman Smith said something interesting. To your point about in eight weeks, we're going to be in a worse position. We're going to look back and think, I wish this were where we are now at the beginning of April. And he said that he doesn't believe in the sunk cost theory and that actually what America should do is sit down, say to Jared, negotiate the best possible deal you can right now. We're getting out of there. By the end of next week, come what may, we're done.

21:39Katty Kay:Yeah, but Trump's ego's not going to allow that.

21:40Anthony Scaramucci:But it was an interesting argument.

21:42Katty Kay:I think you made a point that really requires emphasis here. The Iranians have traded military hardware and the destruction of their military hardware for economic leverage over the strait. And that trade is working because I can tell you who is losing, Caddy. The American consumer is losing. The global Western consumer is losing. Trump's approval numbers are losing. And I think this is the stuff that causes somebody like Trump in that vacuum of yes people, a team of yes men is the name of the book, Caddy. And I think it causes people like Trump to escalate at a time when smarter people would figure out a way to deescalate.

22:27Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, the fight for the leadership on the right, the fight for the leadership on the left. Is the left going MAGA? Join us for that.

22:47Anthony Scaramucci:welcome back to the rest is politics us it's been a quite a weekend for both sides of the political spectrum down in texas you had the annual meeting of cpac the conservative political action committee where all the great and the good from the conservative world come and discuss the fate of their party. And on the left, you had all of these No Kings marches. Some people from the No Kings organization saying as many as 8 million people, Antony, rallied at thousands of rallies all around the country to protest against Donald Trump over the course of this weekend. And you've seen the rise of some very prominent, very left-wing figures that we're going to talk about that too.

23:32Anthony Scaramucci:But how did you see politics playing out this weekend, Antony? It feels to me like Both the left and the right are kind of flirting with MAGA at the moment.

23:42Katty Kay:Flirting with MAGA in what way, Katty? What do you mean?

23:44Anthony Scaramucci:Well, you've got these figures on the left. Hassan Piker is one of them, who was very influential in the election of Mayor Mamdani. He's got three million followers on Twitch. He spends hours live streaming every day. He was part of a big online rally at the weekend. He appeared with Bernie Sanders at a Tax the Rich rally in New York. He was at the No Kings rallies as well. He's weighing into the Michigan Senate race, trying to get a very progressive candidate elected down in Michigan. But his style is kind of MAGA. His following is very male. He is sort of being called a manosphere body with a progressive mind, I think is how the New York Times described him.

24:27Anthony Scaramucci:He's been accused of being anti-Semitic in some of the things that he said about he's very anti-Israel, but he's also been accused of being anti-Semitic. Accusations he denies, but he has said that people in Israel are inbred, for example. He's been accused of being anti-women. He's just got this very assertive, aggressive style that some on the right say, this is our answer. If we can get more Hassan Paikas into the mainstream of democratic politics, then this is going to be a huge win for us because we can charge him with a whole load of things of being too extreme for American voters. But he's very popular online, very popular with young people and very popular with young men.

25:09Anthony Scaramucci:And I think it's as indication that Trump, who did well with young men in 2024, is losing those voters. You've got a whole generation of, you've spoken about this with Scott Galloway so eloquently, you've got a whole generation of young men who are feeling they don't have a sense of purpose. They've slightly lost their way. Women are getting more jobs than they are in the kind of healthcare sector. They're losing their traditional jobs and they're looking for a political home. And they went to Trump for a little bit and now they're looking somewhere else. And they look to people like Joe Rogan and they look to people like Hassan Piker.

25:43Anthony Scaramucci:And yes, he calls himself a Marxist and is definitely on the left. But is there really much difference? What they want is more of a vibe and a style and an affirmation of what it is to be a young man. I know that in the media, sometimes we overestimate the influence of influencers, but I do think he's a very interesting figure because of this thing of, you've got a whole cohort of the population looking for a political home and they find them in the extremes.

26:11Katty Kay:It's interesting. So when you say MAGA, that caught me off guard a little bit, But now that you're explaining it, what I hear is populism. And what I hear is left-wing populism. And what I also hear is here's the formula for the provocateur. Ready? Anti-establishment. Bypass the mainstream media, right? This is what Rogan Bannon has done this. Piker's Twitch account is an example of that is doing it, okay? And then to your point, you're targeting economically anxious young men. and you're getting a reward with these people if you are unpolished and authentic. Okay, and so that's the Gravitron.

26:57Katty Kay:And what's interesting about this is that Mondani, to these people, he's polished and authentic. And so he goes into that sleeve. And, Cady, what I'm super worried about, and this could be a sign of my old age, frankly, I'm worried about the - Agent Anthony. I mean, you said it, not me. I mean, it's unbelievable. I knew you were going to do that. I knew.

27:21Anthony Scaramucci:You set yourself up. No, no. Put it on a plate. No, no. I left the opening. And you said, here you go.

27:27Katty Kay:No, no. I expressed that level of vulnerability. You left the opening to see how vicious you actually are. And you've now exposed yourself. You've exposed the viciousness.

27:37Anthony Scaramucci:Oh, I'm sorry. That was hard. It's 8, 10 on a Monday morning. That's a little rough.

27:43Katty Kay:Let me keep going. Keep going. The stinger, I'm pulling it out of my back right now. Let me pull it out. But what I'm trying to say is that the establishment has failed these people. And what I'm trying to say is that we have the TSA not getting paid. And we've got six-hour lines at the airport. And what I'm trying to say is that the Department of Justice is no longer the Department of Justice. It's the Department of Retribution. people have lost faith in what's going on so they're like okay burn it down yeah blow it up

28:19Anthony Scaramucci:you're right that's exactly the phrase it's like blow it up we tried everything else it didn't work and now they're even saying we tried trump and trump didn't work for us right and it turned out that trump was one of them imagine that was one of them trump hasn't made our lives better he's going and getting involved in the middle east i mean all these no kings rallies the number one issue that people were talking about now, he's replaced kind of, you know, immigration and anti ice and tax the rich is now the war. So he's got involved with that. And I think you're exactly right. They tried Trump.

28:54Anthony Scaramucci:Trump, they now think is one of them. And so you've got a whole load of people and they're, and the people in the middle of American politics, which I think is where you've come from all of your life, they're getting squeezed out. So you've got people like third way, which is the kind of reasonable third way centrist groups in America, they are horrified by what they see in Hassan Piker. But young people, they're super energized by it. They feel, okay, well, we don't care if he says things that are outrageous. Maybe he does. Maybe he's not very woke. Maybe he says stuff that, you know, they certainly don't care if he's anti-Israel.

29:31Anthony Scaramucci:And it's throwing the middle, these old establishment groups in American politics into a real spin because they don't know how to reach these people. They don't know how to reach these young voters. There is a desire to hear politicians be authentic. We've spoken about that a lot in American politics at the moment. But then it's when does that desire to hear authenticity flip into a desire to hear things that are socially taboo, that you can say things, you know, Donald Trump has done some of this. I can get away with saying things that other people can't say and it's the shock factor and they will love me for it.

30:11Anthony Scaramucci:I can get away with saying I'm going to grab women by the pussy. And he did. He got elected after he said it. And that broke a wall of what was acceptable. And I think you've got now more and more of a push amongst young people for people just to say things that they feel they're thinking, however socially or politically unacceptable or out of the mainstream. Hassan Piker is getting Graham Plattner, the oyster farmer who is running up in Maine to be the Democratic candidate for the Senate and who may well win, has been endorsed by Hassan Piker. Gavin Newsom has said he'd go on Hassan Piker's show.

30:49Anthony Scaramucci:And all of these politicians now in the mainstream are having to figure out how do I deal with these influencers who may have said things that I don't like and I don't approve of, but also have big followings and reach with young men. And so they're trying to say, well, I think it's important to discuss with everybody. It's important to have open conversations with everybody. But it's putting the Democratic mainstream in a bit of a conundrum in the way that Joe Rogan, Nick Fuentes, Joe Rogan less so, but Nick Fuentes, Tucker Carlson, put the Republican mainstream in a similar conundrum. How far am I prepared to go along with these people on the lines of being authentic or being outrageous?

31:35Katty Kay:So a couple of things. Okay. The first one is institutional collapse. Let's just call it for what it is. The institutions that have held up the country successfully for some reason are collapsing either due to neglect or laziness or a lack of understanding how important that process was to getting us here. The second thing is the masculinity crisis. I think, as you pointed out, Scott Galloway and I have addressed this, but if you're spending time video gaming, and what does Scott say? Go to the bar. Try to meet people. No one's doing that. And then, Caddy, the attention economy cannot be overlooked here because everybody in that age group wants to be an influencer.

32:23Katty Kay:And the way you become an influencer is you create outrage, right? Outrage is actually the product.

32:30Anthony Scaramucci:Gets attention is the product. And you monetize outrage.

32:34Katty Kay:I can get Governor Newsom to come on, right, because he needs the attention if he's going to run for office. But here's the thing I would say to you that I'm worried about is, where does it stop? And then if it doesn't stop, Caddy, where does it go? I mean, who becomes leadership in a situation like this?

32:53Anthony Scaramucci:Well, I mean, you've got, you know, Mamdani, I think, in a way has harnessed some of this and the platforms of this. We're going to talk about this in our founding members Q &A this week, because we had a question come in for you, actually, Anthony, about how well you think Mamdani is doing a few months into his presidency, into his tenure as mayor. and a lot of people I think were very afraid of Mamdani and saw him as this kind of gung-ho socialist who was going to gut New York and was bound to fail and actually that doesn't seem to be the case at least so far. So you can get a populist type leader.

33:28Anthony Scaramucci:The question I think is everyone where you have to start drawing lines. You draw lines on misogyny, you draw lines on anti-Semitism, you draw lines on you know gratuitous cruelty to other people. There have to be certain lines that politicians in the middle draw and say, actually, you know what? I'm not going to have anything to do with people who I think fall into any of those buckets, that I'm not going to go that low just to pick up a few more votes. Because you know what they say, Anthony, don't wrestle with a pig because you might get dirty.

33:58Katty Kay:I'm with you. But I think the real question for people is who is the new political class, Right. You mentioned Mondani. Okay. He's part of it. Right.

34:10Anthony Scaramucci:I don't know. How much further does he go outside of New York City? We've always said, you know, that's very different.

34:16Katty Kay:Maybe the country's not ready culturally at this moment. Maybe it is.

34:20Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah. But could be heading there.

34:22Katty Kay:AOC is part of this movement. Right. So weirdly, Josh Shapiro is the other side of it. Right. Josh Shapiro is like the counter model. You know, he's like competent and centrist.

34:34Anthony Scaramucci:Get things done. Keep your head down.

34:36Katty Kay:Right, exactly. Get SHIT done. Right, exactly.

34:39Anthony Scaramucci:No outrage. Right. Dial down the outrage. Don't go trolling Trump on social media.

34:46Katty Kay:Right. So he's almost the counterdote to that, right?

34:48Anthony Scaramucci:Yes. I think that's right.

34:50Katty Kay:But then like who's the who on the right though?

34:52Anthony Scaramucci:Well, let's talk about that because we had this CPAC meeting, right? Last week down in Texas that ended over the weekend and they had a poll, as they always do, of who their favorite leader is going to be. And who wins the CPAC poll every year is a kind of deal for a moment in Washington. And J.D. Vance won that by 53 % this year. Marco Rubio came in at 35%. But if I'm J.D., first of all, the CPAC poll doesn't always prove very reliable. Rand Paul won it for three years in a row before 2016. And we have never had a president Rand Paul as far as I remember. And J.D. won it by 61 % last year. So he's actually dropped eight points in the CPAC crowd.

35:43Anthony Scaramucci:These are the kind of insider conservatives. They're very MAGA down at CPAC. They still love Donald Trump. He didn't actually show up this year. But is JD in that field of being able to be populist enough, have enough outrage? He's tried it on a few times. He's trying on the mantle of going and torching Europe when he goes to the Munich Security Conference. He's trying it on online. He seems to spend an awful lot of time, the vice president, on Twitter. Has he got enough of that populism? Because I think the problem with J.D. is he's a bit of a weathervane. He's the guy that said Trump was cultural heroine.

36:26Anthony Scaramucci:And he doesn't have the charm. He doesn't have the charisma. He's a believer. He's an ideologue. But he hasn't quite got that authentic charisma that some of these influencers and people like Trump have. I don't know. I think JD, even though he won the straw poll, he's going to be watching out for other people.

36:47Katty Kay:If JD Vance was a podcast host, would you listen to him?

36:50Anthony Scaramucci:No. Okay, there you go. Too supercilious.

36:53Katty Kay:She wouldn't listen to him, right?

36:54Anthony Scaramucci:No, I don't think I would. But on the other hand, do I want a podcast host to be my president? I mean, no aspersions to you or me, but.

37:01Katty Kay:You may not, but I'm talking about this young, new group of people that are enthralled with this type of stuff. And I think we've established that the presidency is not a hiring decision anymore for the American people. It's a popularity contest.

37:15Anthony Scaramucci:It used to be who you wanted to have a beer with. Now it's who do you want to listen to for six hours?

37:20Katty Kay:Who do you want to listen to? Who's going to be in the media? Who's going to be on the top of the Drudge Report? Who's going to be in my face for the next four years? Can I or can I not tolerate them? And are they entertaining? So you weirdly need somebody in that role that offers charisma and entertainment, but is also a policy wonk and a student of history, right? So it's a very tough thing to find if you're looking for that, right? Maybe Josh Shapiro is that, I don't know, or maybe Gavin is that. But here's the thing I would say to you about this whole movement that, again, has me worried, Caddy, is that no one has a vision.

38:00Katty Kay:You know, Clinton, Democratic Leadership Council, here's my vision. Newt Gingrich, Contract for America, here's my vision. I don't hear a vision from anybody. No one's sitting down and saying, okay, it's 2050. It's 2056. six. It's 30 years later here in America. What do we want America to look like? Where is America going? How do we right size our deficits, expenditures? How do we fix our infrastructure? How do we fix our K through 12 environment? Hey, but by the way, Anthony, let me give you the heads up. That doesn't play on a podcast and that doesn't play in the attention economy. So I guess my question to you, Cady, is if you really wanted to fix the country, but you had to fit it into the juggernaut of the attention economy, what would you do?

38:56Anthony Scaramucci:You've got to find the person that, and Rahm Emanuel has been writing about this, who's also a former chief of staff to Barack Obama, mayor of Chicago, running for president in 2028 on the democratic side. He has been talking about exactly this. You've got to come up with ideas. He's been doing a kind of ideas a week fest around exactly that kind of thing, education, immigration, around spending and taxation. But you've got to be able to present it in a way that sings on TikTok. I mean, it's an incredibly hard thing for anyone. And somehow, I think in the communications environment that we're in, the person who wins the Republican primary and who wins the Democratic primary is going to be the person who masters the communications medium of today.

39:48Anthony Scaramucci:They're not going to win without that. But then here's the real question, because Marco Rubio, who only got 35 % at CPAC and does low, I was reading a Manhattan Institute poll that was super interesting, ranking all of the Republicans and I had a chat with him about it. Marco Rubio ranks lower than J.D. Vance in every single demographic except one. He ranks about 20 points higher than J.D. Vance amongst independents. And who actually decides American elections? Once you've got through the partisan nature of the primaries, which are more left-wing and more right-wing than the actual American electorate, you've still got to end up with that candidate who can win independence, who can win the middle of America.

40:35Anthony Scaramucci:And if you look at that poll, the only Republican who can do that at the moment is Marco Rubio, who can get those suburban, college-educated, white women. He's a bit more like McCain. He's a bit more like Mitt Romney. If he can get over his MAGA years with Donald Trump, and it all depends on how Donald Trump is doing in two years' time. Marco Rubio in the polls is the only person that can get independent voters. So that's why the political system is even more screwed because you've got to get one thing for the primaries, which is high octane, high outrage, high populism, but you've got to have somebody else who can run to lead the country and actually win over the middle of the country.

41:16Anthony Scaramucci:So I don't know. Antony calling Antony Scaramucci. If you don't have enough jobs, do you want to take this one on?

41:24Katty Kay:What job is that, Katty?

41:25Anthony Scaramucci:Run through the primaries, run through the general. And that would be good.

41:29Katty Kay:Yeah, that would be good. Yeah. I don't

41:31Anthony Scaramucci:know.

41:31Katty Kay:I don't know. I don't know. My wife's political platform is castration. We probably should start there.

41:36Anthony Scaramucci:But do you see what I mean? That it's an impossible situation that somebody's in.

41:41Katty Kay:But you're saying something that people should hear before we go. And that is Rahm Emanuel's right. It is jump ball. Emmanuel said, hey, I'm getting in the race. It's jump ball. It's anybody's race right now. The other thing is, which I think is really true here, none of the people that you're mentioning are hooks. I don't hear the hook yet. Now, weirdly, someone like Shapiro or Newsom could be a hook because they're not a hook and they're not trying to be hooks. I feel like if you're trying to be a hook, like a Vance or a Rubio, and you're not a hook, then it almost disqualifies you. There's an inauthenticity to your personality, is that like you've got an overbite and you're like trying too hard.

42:28Katty Kay:We'll see, but both parties right now are simultaneously having an identity crisis. And so far, you've read me the list, you've done a very good scouting report. And who knows caddy it could be deus ex machina it could be somebody could come up it could be a military leader it could be an admiral mcraven like figure let's see where we are in two years time if we're

42:50Anthony Scaramucci:still at war in iran then we might be wondering for something totally different the field is open caddy field is open yeah jd may think he came out of c-pack with this one in his pocket but i wouldn't be measuring the drapes in the brand new ballroom quite yet i just want to challenge

43:05Katty Kay:you before we leave, you said that they're still very MAGA, but yet they cheered when Schlapp was talking and he mentioned impeachment, people cheered. And then he said, okay, let's go back to that. And they cheered again. I think the CPAC people generally are very upset with Trump over this war. Generally, that's just my impression.

43:27Anthony Scaramucci:So it was interesting. There was more disquiet over the war and a lot of questions over the war. But I think I'm right that there was only one candidate that was up on stage who actually criticized Trump and didn't criticize Trump by name. He did it by saying, you can criticize the president and still be a patriot. And that was as far as anyone went on the stage in criticizing Trump. Let's see. Hey, listen, if they're voting for JD, they're voting for Trump's little guy. So then that makes you think they like him still.

43:58Katty Kay:I just want small things right now from our government domestically. I'd like them to open things. I'd like him to open the airport, Caddy. That's all.

44:04Anthony Scaramucci:It would be so nice to be able to go to the airport and not have to queue for six hours. And listen, if we can't open airports in America right now, what are we doing trying to open airports in Venezuela and Iran and Cuba?

44:17Katty Kay:Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

44:19Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, guys, we'll leave it there. Join us for our founding members episode. We'll get into Mamdani more during that. You can sign up and become a founding member at The Rest is Politics US dot com. I'm sure you know where to find us. We would love to have you with us. And we will see you later this week.

44:34Katty Kay:Thanks, guys. See you later this week.