181. Trump’s Dinner Shooting and Iran’s Desperate Deal

16:03Anthony Scaramucci:No, nor was the Butler shooting a setup. But I think we live in a world where people, the level of conspiracy theories fueled by social media and particularly the COVID pandemic has risen in the country recently. And in a tribal world that we're living in, people reach for conspiracy theories. I remember saying to you after the Butler shooting that I had been at an event with some very senior Democrats who had worked in the Biden administration or the Obama administration, smart, smart people who said, oh, we reckon that, you know, Trump orchestrated this whole thing in order to boost his approval ratings.

16:43Anthony Scaramucci:I just think that's what it would take to do that. The absolute uproar that there would be if that was ever uncovered. I mean, the idea that the president or anyone around the president kind of Watergate style hired this 31 year old from California and got him to check into the hotel and then launch this attack on the White House Correspondents Dinner, I find absurd. But it's interesting how many people i don't know whether you've heard the same thing anthony whether you heard people saying to you uh was this real on saturday that was the first reaction of a lot of

17:15Katty Kay:people who don't like president well i mean listen tucker carlson had an open question on his show yesterday about whether or not it was real listen i don't i'm with you i'm not a big believer in these conspiracies i think the butler thing was prima facie the charlie kirk thing even though there's questions about it, I still think is prima facie. And I think this is prima facie. But the one thing that would make people raise alarms is the way they capitalized on it. So they rush down to the White House briefing room, they get into the briefing room with their tuxedos, and they're answering questions of reporters and their tuxedos and evening gowns.

17:54Katty Kay:And they've got messaging coming out of the White House where lots of their MAGA supporters are on the same text thread, there's a communique that goes out from the White House that you need to now support the ballroom and the activity around the construction of the ballroom. And there's probably 100 MAGA influencers that almost within the same minute of each other are sending out messages that the ballroom needs to be promoted. And so when you step back from that, you can say, oh, see, this was all coordinated and blah, blah, blah. But -

18:25Anthony Scaramucci:Because it gets him off Iran. It gets the conversation away from Iran. It gets the conversation onto the ballroom. Correct.

18:30Katty Kay:But I think that that is a reaction to what happened. I don't think the event was planned. And I think this is, again, another big problem. And this is where our adversaries have won.

18:41Anthony Scaramucci:They've divided us. They've made us, pushed us into these camps. And we believe things that aren't true.

18:46Katty Kay:No question. They've made us believe things. Catherine Belton wrote about this in Putin's People six years ago, where she explained all the server farms that were set up outside of Moscow to drive public opinion away from each other and to create heated, bullyish tribalism on the net. But the president is the bully in chief, as we both know. I mean, he's a keyboard warrior. But tell us about his conversation with Nora O'Donnell, where he is saying to her that the Democrats in the press are almost the same, one and the same, is his exact quote.

19:23Anthony Scaramucci:Look, you and I were texting about that interview. So, Nora O'Donnell's a correspondent for CBS News and she did a long interview, a sit-down interview with President Trump for 60 Minutes program. On Sunday, this was his first sit-down interview. He's called into a lot of shows over the weekend, but this was his first sit-down interview. And at one moment, Nora O'Donnell points to Cole Allen's online manifesto in which he allegedly wrote, I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist, and traitor to cope my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? She asked the president. The president looking kind of slightly flustered and angry says, well, I was, here's his quote.

20:05Anthony Scaramucci:I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're horrible people, horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. At which point Nora, and this credit to her, this was a very good journalistic instinct, said, oh, do you think he was referring to you? She interrupted. And then Trump really got angry and said, I'm not a pedophile. You can read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones who are involved with it.

20:40Anthony Scaramucci:Let's see Epstein and other things. I listened to that and kudos to Nora for thinking of jumping in there. First of all, you never want to be in the position of saying I'm not a pedophile and I'm not a rapist, I would say. What do you reckon? You're the comms person here. If you were in the comms, director of comms, what would you have been thinking at that particular moment?

20:58Katty Kay:Well, I mean, listen, Trump can get away with anything. He can say anything, do anything. And so a normal person, certainly, no, you don't want to be in a situation where you're telling somebody that, no, I didn't beat my wife last night. You know, I mean, how are you going to get out of that one? You can't prove a negative. So, but Trump can get away with anything. I found the most interesting part of that, he's calling her despicable and all those different things. But he sat for the interview.

21:25Anthony Scaramucci:Yes. And he didn't get up. We were texting and saying, was he going to get up and leave? Did he want to get up and leave? It was great television, by the way. So, no, he didn't get up and leave.

21:33Katty Kay:Yeah. He's not getting up because he's got David Ellison and Larry Ellison in his pocket. They did an event at the White House prior to the White House Correspondents Dinner where CBS was there. Obviously, Nora O'Donnell was at that event as well. And so remember, some of that is a little stage two. Is a little performative. So let me give you my, not conspiracy theory, but this is my surmise, and you can push back if you don't agree. But the president's looking at the new CBS, the new, new CBS, and he says, okay, I got this under control. I've silenced ABC. They got Stephanopoulos to pay$16 million.

22:11Katty Kay:We've put a little bit of a lid on CNN. It's now going to be owned by the Ellisons. And CBS, you just come at me all the time. You got Barry Weiss over there that has sort of curbed that. And so, you know what? Let's let her say something vicious to me so that it doesn't look like I've got this thing completely under control. And by the way, the FT over the weekend wrote a great piece on this. I think the reason why the podcast industry, Goldhanger, etc., is doing well is that these podcasts are unfiltered. These podcasts are not censored by the corporate media. And so I almost feel like that Trump was doing that.

22:50Katty Kay:It was a little bit of cosplaying, Caddy, so that Trump could say, oh, look at the way they attack me. They're no better than the Democrats, where he is basically saying to himself, they are a lot better than the Democrats. I got this thing under control now.

23:06Anthony Scaramucci:I think you're right. But I think also Trump likes to have somebody to fight against. I mean, I think the message of the last year and a half is that Trump does better and he does better in the polls and he does better in public opinion when he is in a position of opposition. And his problem slightly at the moment is that he controls everything. He hasn't got anyone to fight against. So having the press as a which has very low approval ratings as a sparring partner is a much more useful position for him to be. And he likes to be able to say you're a disgrace to Nora O'Donnell rather than pretend that they're all buddy-buddy because they've all gone through a shooting together at the White House.

23:43Anthony Scaramucci:One other thought quickly on security, and then we'll take a break and come back and talk about Iran. Pop quiz for you. President Trump, J.D. Vance, and Mike Johnson were all at the White House correspondence dinner. I think this is going to prompt some security reviews around how many senior members of the cabinet and the line of succession are in a room at the same time, because if all three of those figures had been taken out, who would be the president today of the United States?

24:14Katty Kay:So are you saying that RFK's raccoon penis is not in the line of succession? Is that what you just said?

24:23Anthony Scaramucci:How did you come up with that?

24:25Katty Kay:No, I just was thinking about the various things that could be in the line of presidential succession.

24:32Anthony Scaramucci:No.

24:33Katty Kay:I'm just checking on you. You know, I have to keep it real here, Katty.

24:37Anthony Scaramucci:The president, for all of our, just to clarify for our dear listeners, RFK's raccoon penis would not today be the 48th president of the United States. It would be Chuck Grassley, who is the president pro tempore of the US Senate. And how old is Chuck Grassley? Like 583. And if he was not available because he's 583, it would be Marco Rubio, who is the Secretary of State, who is the fourth in line of succession, were the president to die. If you want to find out more about Marco Rubio, this would make him very happy because we are doing a series for our founding members on Marco Rubio and his enormous ambition.

25:20Katty Kay:I did say that for a reason. And the reason I said that is that -

25:24Anthony Scaramucci:As opposed to a gratuitous Monday morning thing.

25:25Katty Kay:No, I said that for a reason. I mean, it was not just a shock value. I just think that we've lost our way. When you and I were growing up and you started in journalism or even when we were in college, even if we had people mudslinging at politicians, which they've done for 5 ,000 years, there was some level of respect and decorum. But the president has stripped all of that out of the United States now to the point where he's getting shot at and we're not even really responding to it anymore. The stuff that he puts out on the social media, we're numb to ending civilizations, open the F and straight.

26:05Katty Kay:And so, you know, I think the raccoon fits into all of that in terms of the insanity of it. And, you know, whoever came up with the word sane washing to me, you know, needs an award in the Oxford Dictionary because we're we're doing too much sane washing of all this stuff. But I did also do it for your reaction, Kat. I just want you to make sure you know that as well.

26:26Anthony Scaramucci:I need it. We're going to take a break.

26:31Katty Kay:Fox News is now streaming live on Fox One. When news breaks, we don't just report it. We go beyond the headlines to get the full story. Get live coverage, in-depth analysis and perspectives from the voices you trust, all in one place. Whether you're at home or on the go, stay connected to the stories shaping our world. Stream Fox News on Fox One. Download today.

27:05Katty Kay:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Caddy Kay.

27:11Anthony Scaramucci:Caddy Kay was still trying to figure out what to wear to the Royal Garden Party to which I've been invited at the British Embassy this afternoon. So if I'm a little distracted today, I'm focusing on dresses.

27:21Katty Kay:How many times have you met the king, Caddy?

27:23Anthony Scaramucci:I have not met the king before, So this will be a great pleasure for me.

27:26Katty Kay:You never met him when he was Prince Charles as well?

27:29Anthony Scaramucci:No, he met my parents. He came to stay with them when my father was an ambassador. He and Diana actually came to stay with them. But I have not met the king himself.

27:38Katty Kay:Okay, well, I want to hear all about it. Photos will be forthcoming. Good. I want to hear all about it. So let's talk about what's going to be on the president's mind because he was in the Situation Room over the weekend, looking at the proposals that are coming in from the Iranians, none of which he likes, which is why he canceled the Whitcoff-Kushner flight to Islamabad. But where do you think things are right now with the peace talks?

28:07Anthony Scaramucci:So, Tehran has submitted a new proposal overnight to the White House through Pakistani the intermediaries. And the offer outlines a framework to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, but push any discussion of the nuclear question further down the road. There are some people in the White House who are reading that as a sign that the Iranians are desperate, that this American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is depriving them of oil revenue because they can't sell their oil. And so now they are finally coming to the table. That's what the White House is saying, President Trump said something odd on Fox News in an interview yesterday where he said that in three days' time, the Iranian pipelines would explode, he said, and therefore destroy Iran's oil infrastructure because they are being surged with oil that is not going anywhere and there's no release.

29:06Anthony Scaramucci:This is actually the scene from the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel, Red Storm Rising, exactly this, that a country's oil capacity explodes because they can't shut down production quickly enough. I don't know if that's where the president got this idea from, but I called up somebody who's an ex-CIA oil analyst on the Middle East who said, this is ridiculous. It's just silly. They know how to shut down production. The Saudis have shut down production. The Iraqis have shut down production. It is not going to explode. But the White House is trying to put out the message that this shows how well the blockade is going, that the Iranian regime is on its last legs, and so they are prepared to come to the table to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

29:46Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, I don't know how you read this latest offer or whether you think this gets us further to clarity on how this all ends. It's possible that President Trump still could bomb the Iranians. I'm being told that is not being ruled out, but clearly he doesn't want to and he wants to get out of this still. So I I don't know that this new offer goes anywhere.

30:08Katty Kay:There's been some discussion about the Russians becoming sort of one of the guarantors here where the Iranians, they're suggesting the Iranians to move the uranium to the Russian soil.

30:22Anthony Scaramucci:Is that why the Iranian foreign minister is going to Moscow?

30:25Katty Kay:Well, that's the speculation. The papers are reporting that. I guess the real question is, are we comfortable with that?

30:32Anthony Scaramucci:How do we feel about the Russians being the guarantors of Iran's highly enriched uranium? That sounds like an excellent idea.

30:40Katty Kay:So it's sort of like what Maitre Cane's once said about the stock market. He said, the stock market, I'm in a beauty pageant. It's not for me to pick which stocks are beautiful. I have to ascertain what my fellow judges think. And in this case, it's really up to Donald Trump, right? Because he has a love affair with Putin. Maybe he's comfortable with it. And if he is comfortable with it, would that change the peace negotiations? Obviously, I'm not comfortable with it. But for me, I think there's something else going on that the discussion about having cards and not having cards and the president constantly saying they can call us and constantly saying they're completely decimated.

31:18Katty Kay:We have all the cards. Well, it turns out that that's not really true, Katty. They still have, as you pointed out last week, missile inventory, drone inventory. speed boats all over the Strait of Hormuz that can wreak havoc, rocket-fired missiles that they can take into the strait to blow up tankers. And so for me, it's always going to come down to the economic chicken. Who's got enough money to hold out? And are we going to go to$9 gas prices at a 4th of July barbecue here in America? And so what are your thoughts there? Because I'll leave with mine, I don't think the Americans or Donald Trump himself have the toleration for that.

32:00Katty Kay:And I think if you understand the Iranian culture versus the American culture, I think they do. But what are your thoughts?

32:06Anthony Scaramucci:I think that Trump is hoping that he can squeeze the Iranians. And if he squeezes them enough economically, they will come to the table. We're in this kind of game of chicken in a way of the American economy versus the hold that the Iranians have over the global economy and how much the global economy is suffering. And of course, that affects the American economy. And there's all the conversation now about high jet fuel prices, which is much more of a problem at the moment in Europe, but will become a problem here in the US. So, I think if we're July the 4th, and this is not resolved, then the president has a serious problem, because I I think American people really won't like that.

32:46Anthony Scaramucci:That's why he's trying to say they only have three days. I'm told they have three to four months still, the Iranians, of economic viability. So this game of chicken could go on for quite a lot longer. I had an interesting conversation on Friday night with Congressman Mike Turner, who, of course, is very steeped in intelligence and foreign relations issues in the House. And he said that for Trump, the priorities are, and this is why I think this deal won't work, the priorities are the uranium, that he really does want to show that he is the president that sorted the uranium issue and pushed back Iran's ability to produce highly enriched uranium and potentially a nuclear weapon.

33:30Anthony Scaramucci:And the measure for him is Obama's, of course, because he's Trump. He just wants to do better than the Obama deal. So he wants to be able to push back their ability to produce a weapon 20 years. And the other thing that Congressman Turner told me is that he really doesn't want any money to be transferred on pallets to the Iranians. And he keeps referring to this weakness in the original JCPOA, which was that the Iranians got some of their unfrozen assets. A lot of it actually was in Swiss francs that was transferred in hard cash. And he doesn't want that image. Trump wants to be able to say, I got a better deal than Obama did.

34:07Anthony Scaramucci:I don't know if he's going to manage to do that. But if he does, I think at that point he declares a victory and gets out.

34:13Katty Kay:So, Caddy, why does the president get a pass? And what I mean by that, he's sound asleep on camera in the Oval Office. He's dozing off and waking himself back up. If Joe Biden was doing that, there would be a national outcry of sleepy Joe Biden. If you look at the Obama deal now and you study the actual deal, the actual deal looks pretty good. And the actual deal comes without$60 billion spent in the Strait of Hormuz. Again, that's just the military expenditure by the United States to prosecute the war. It's not the economic damage that's taking place as a result of the war and the rising prices, the fertilizer shortage and all that other stuff.

34:59Katty Kay:Why does President Trump, what is it about his brand where he gets a pass for falling asleep in the Oval Office and on every metric, the way the thing is going right now, I'm going to stipulate and you can disagree that he's going to get a worse deal than the Obama deal because you have to add the 60 billion.

35:18Anthony Scaramucci:Well, he's already spent more, right? Because the Iranians got 55 billion. So it's already cost us more. And that's, as you say, just from the bombing. Right. So why does he get the pass then, Katya? I don't think he does get a pass. I honestly don't think he's getting a pass. Because if you were to take all of the approval ratings, there's been a slew of polls, including a recent Fox News polls. He's being decimated in the polls on this. If the American people were to vote tomorrow and Donald Trump's name was on the ticket, if they had the ability, they would boot him out of office tomorrow. There's no way he would be reelected.

35:49Anthony Scaramucci:So there's not much that he can't be removed instantaneously. He goes to the midterms. Maybe he doesn't care. His name's not on the ballot at the midterms. Maybe he just wants to have a Democrats running the House so he gets somebody to fight with again. That's quite possible. And he'd quite like the Democrats to win in the midterms. But he doesn't get a pass. I think everything you see in the country in terms of polling on how the people feel about his handling of the economy, which is why this White House Correspondents Associated dinner is like a two or three day story. In the end, yes, maybe people are focused on it for a couple of days.

36:23Anthony Scaramucci:Actually, what will matter for Donald Trump and the Republican Party is how they're doing on the economy. And this war is hurting them. So I actually don't think he is getting a pass.

36:33Katty Kay:Neil Ferguson has a team of researchers. They're estimating that three to 3.2 million barrels per day still being produced by the Iranians. The Americans are saying there's a blockade, but the Indian government has reported that 34 tankers that are Iranian oil supplied tankers have arrived in India through the blockade. And so the president, as we've pointed out, is letting certain tankers go through because he doesn't want to blow up the Indian or the Chinese economy while this war is going on. And so I guess, again, another question, that's good for the Iranians. That gives them more money. So your reporting is four to six months.

37:15Katty Kay:I said last week that I thought they had 45 days. And so I just want to go back and I want to say that your reporting is actually more accurate because what is happening is they're getting a lot of upfront payments from their oil partners.

37:31Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, the Chinese are giving them upfront payments.

37:33Katty Kay:Exactly. And so that's increasing the runway that they have. They may have had 45 to 50 days earlier in the month, but now it looks like they're going to go six months. Again, Neil Ferguson is saying six to 14 months now of usable reserves with over$30 billion in the Iranian central bank of hard currency. So again, caddy, the US is going to be tolerant. We're going to go 16 to 14 months,$9 a gallon of gas, no fertilizer in the farmland. That's what's going to happen.

38:10Anthony Scaramucci:That's politically unsustainable for the Republican Party. And if they do badly after the midterms and Donald Trump really is a lame duck, who knows, maybe you will actually get voices of dissent from the Republicans in the Senate and the House who find a spine and decide this is not actually doing them or their party any good. So no, I don't see America going that long. Okay, guys, we are going to wrap it up there. If you would like to listen to our series on Marco Rubio, which seems particularly relevant at the moment and his extraordinary ambition, unfortunately, poor old Marco Rubio, even though he's fourth in line to succession to the throne, as it were, is not at the moment king.

38:51Anthony Scaramucci:He's still only Secretary of State or, as he's known in Washington, Secretary of Everything. You can listen to that series by becoming a founding member. Join up at TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com. And we'll see you back here on Wednesday.

39:05Katty Kay:Thanks, guys. See you on Wednesday.

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