183. Trump Wants Out - But Iran Won’t Let Him

12:16Katty Kay:at 15 seconds all right we're gonna try though do we have any cartoons or pictures remember remember what i said if you're gonna show the president pictures yeah it's got to be pictures of himself and it has to be frontally you can't show the president from the side because i have been with him where he complains he looks too fat well look at me from this angle no no looks too fat but for

12:39Anthony Scaramucci:some reason he likes the way he looks straight on he's been putting pictures of himself uh on True Social floating in the new reflecting pool in a swimming trunk. So he's clearly feeling good about how he looks at the moment.

12:52Katty Kay:Yeah. Well, I mean, look, this part of the mania.

12:54Anthony Scaramucci:Nothing like AI to get you down a few pounds.

12:57Katty Kay:Guys got a little bit of mania going, but here's the pitch. Okay. You got to start out with the praise. So no other president in the last 40 years would have ordered this strike. Obama wouldn't, Biden wouldn't, you did. You took out most of their hardware.

13:13Anthony Scaramucci:They were weak. I'm strong.

13:15Katty Kay:They were weak. You're a military genius. Okay.

13:18Anthony Scaramucci:Kind of liking this role.

13:20Katty Kay:But Mr. President, listen to me. We can't leave it here because you don't want the headline to be Trump bombed Iran and it didn't work. Okay. And now here comes the story. All right. Because you got to tell them a story, caddy can't just be pedantic so you got to tell them about the tanker war in 1987 through 1988

13:42Anthony Scaramucci:do you remember the tanker war caddy i remember the tanker war so what basically happened quickly

13:47Katty Kay:in the tanker war is that we started reflagging tankers and when the iranians went to strike those tankers we started decimating and annihilating their military and their navy to the point where the original Khomeini, he surrendered and he ended the war, which also contemporaneously ended the Iran-Iraq war. They called it drinking from a poison chalice, okay? So staying in the region got the deal. And so -

14:18Anthony Scaramucci:You've already lost my attention. This has gone on for too long and it's been too historical. Sorry, Mr. Advisor, I need you to say a little bit more about me.

14:26Katty Kay:You probably are right about that, okay? So let's cut right to the chase, okay? Mr. President, I want you to leave because he likes the word holes. I want you to leave the holes in the Gulf. Okay. This is like one of their buzzwords in the Navy, like war fighters. You know, instead of saying ships, they like the word holes. Okay. So holes in the Gulf. Okay. And I want there to be forces adjacent to the enrichment sites, which is a polite way of saying, I want to put troops in. Because Mr. President, you like toys. And I know you like this idea because they're already there. The Marine Expeditionary Force is there.

15:02Katty Kay:Let's put 100 ,000 troops in the area and let's own the choke point for the next 15 years. And now everybody, China, Japan, Korea, India, everybody has to call you to get their oil. And you say what, Katty?

15:18Anthony Scaramucci:No boots on the ground.

15:19Katty Kay:Tell me why.

15:20Anthony Scaramucci:Because I don't want any more shooting. I don't want any more fighting. I'm done. I want to talk about the arc to Trump. I want to talk about the ballroom. I'm bored of Iran, never want to hear you say the word again. And I want to claim victory, whatever. And I don't want troops there forever because then you know what the newspapers will say? The lamestream media is going to say that this is a forever war. And I campaigned on not having a forever war.

15:45Katty Kay:You're going back to option one.

15:47Anthony Scaramucci:I'm going back to option one. He declares victory somehow.

15:50Katty Kay:And how does he handle Netanyahu, his lone ally now.

15:54Anthony Scaramucci:If he was serious about wanting to use force again, every time the Iranians present him, why, how many deadlines has he pushed back now? Five times he's pushed back deadlines. He's had multiple attempts when you'd think he would have given up at peace negotiations. He's trying this because he wants to choke them economically. He can just about handle them choking them economically, but I think he really doesn't want to escalate with boots on the ground. I may be wrong. I think we're in this position where he's weighing this up. And if there is some kind of an incident in the Gulf because of this blockade against a blockade, then I think he may be forced into taking some sort of action.

16:35Anthony Scaramucci:If American warships are fired on, and God forbid, if any American sailors were hurt, even worse, then I think he has no choice but to escalate. Then he'll have to do it. But he's going to try everything he can not to in the meantime. And he wants out of there.

16:49Katty Kay:Let's go to that decision tree. I had that as the number one choice, if you remember, right? So they have a 14 point plan from Iran. I think these are non-negotiable, Caddy, but tell me if you disagree. The 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium has to leave Iranian soil. Maybe Trump will even accept Putin having it. Okay, it could be physically removed to Russia. The strait reopens before the sanctions lift, not simultaneously. We don't trust you guys, so we've got to keep the sanctions on. And there's a 20-year nuclear freeze, not 15. So you take all 14 of those points. The three that I just mentioned, I believe that the Iranians would take.

17:33Katty Kay:It gives Iran what they actually need. The end of the war lifts the blockade. It unfreezes some assets, okay? And it drops the demand, at least for now, to dismantle the nuclear infrastructure. So again, this is the worst version of the JCPOA and said differently, please answer the following question. Had the Obama deal just stayed in place, would that have been better for the United States and better for the world economy and better for all parties there too.

18:07Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, so it wouldn't have cost$125 billion in fighting, which the Secretary of Defense said, told Congress that it cost at the end of last week. So you'd have saved that money. It wouldn't have depleted America's stock of munitions, which has been seriously depleted. You wouldn't have had American army bases in the region hit. And apparently the reporting is coming out at the moment that they'd be much worse hit than we were led to believe. So you wouldn't have had that. You obviously wouldn't have lost the lives of the Americans who have been involved in this. And we don't know how many injured because the Pentagon won't tell us how many injured.

18:44Anthony Scaramucci:You wouldn't have had the losses of life that you've had in Iran. You wouldn't have had a school being hit and children being killed in those strikes. You wouldn't have had the loss of American prestige around the world. You wouldn't have increased the rift between the Americans and the Europeans, which was bad and has now got a lot worse. And you would have been in the same position where Iran was not producing nuclear material. And actually, under the JCPOA, when it was still operating, the inspectors were going in regularly and saying, no, the Iranians were not in violation. They sped up their uranium production after America pulled out of the JCPOA.

19:25Anthony Scaramucci:So I don't know which of those sounds like it would have been worse than the situation we're in now. The counter argument that I have heard from Republicans on the Hill who are Trump aligned is, well, we've decimated their missile supplies. So we've made it harder for them to attack their neighbors. They weren't really attacking their neighbors at that point anyway. And they've still got half of their missile supply, according to intelligence sources, which they're keeping underground. So we haven't decimated their missile supply, but we've set them back economically. We may have increased the clout of the hardliners in the regime and given the regime an extended lease of life.

20:02Anthony Scaramucci:So you tell me, Anthony, is there anything that I've just ticked off that sounds to you like it would have been worse?

20:09Katty Kay:There's nothing that you said, but I guess my follow-up question, Cady, is how does he get away with this? Meaning, how does uh the fox news uh echo chamber and still all of these people beating the drum for him how do they look at you with a straight face and say yeah well this is better than the obama deal so in other words we hate obama everything obama stands for so that's fine he's out we have the great white supremacists in and so anything he says is okay how does he get away with it katie

20:41Anthony Scaramucci:Trump, who has now taken to posting truth social photographs from the Obama era, which don't even say Barack Hussein Obama, now just say Hussein Obama, photographs of his bits of Washington under his time. So I don't think he does get away with it in the sense that there's going to be a massive rejection of this, it looks like, in the midterm elections and when voters go to the polls. The reason voters are pissed off with this, I think they would tolerate what's happening in the Gulf if they felt the president had been laser focused on the job description that they gave him when they voted for him.

21:17Anthony Scaramucci:And the job description he was given was very clear from the American public, bring down prices, make our economic situation better, and then you can do your other stuff. But the problem he's getting is that he's not focused on the job description he was given. So I was talking to a Republican strategist this morning who said this is going to be like the 2006 midterms were, George W. Bush's second term, he's caught up in the Middle East, he's not doing enough to focus on what people want at home, and you get a change election in 2008, and you get something very different. I think that's where we are.

21:50Anthony Scaramucci:We've got a president who is caught up in the Middle East, who is caught up in his own vanity projects, and we can run through them. Because as I've been struck, Tony Pastor at Goldhanger sent us both a story from the FT about the number of things Trump is trying to name in his honour. I suddenly looked at it, the New York Times, The Atlantic, Politico have all done similar stories in the last week because we're getting to critical mass moment where the president's attempts to focus on his legacy in physical buildings is clashing up against what voters wanted from him. They're not going to forgive him for going to Iran because he's not dealing with prices.

22:24Anthony Scaramucci:They're not going to really forgive him for talking about the ballroom because he's not dealing with prices. If he was dealing prices, if people's pocketbooks were going well, I think he could get away with a lot of this other stuff.

22:33Katty Kay:Is Obama a popular figure among the Democrats right now?

22:37Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, I think he is a popular. Well, polls suggest amongst Democrats he's routinely the most popular Democrat.

22:43Katty Kay:Okay, so why aren't the Democrats saying the following then? That Obama may have gotten a flawed deal, but he did freeze the program. Trump is being offered a worse deal, and it doesn't even pretend to freeze the program. So why aren't they comparing and contrasting Obama's legacy and the ideas behind what he was doing to what Trump just did?

23:06Anthony Scaramucci:So I think you will hear that when Trump comes up with a deal. But at the moment, the deal situation, the 14-point plan being proposed by the Iranians, the 10-point plan being proposed by the Americans, the different plans is very confusing for people to understand. If you asked most Americans, where are we in the war? They wouldn't really know, are we in a war? Are we not in a war? Is there a peace plan on the table? What does that peace plan involve? Are we bombing? Is the Straits of Hormuz open? Is it not open? The situation is sufficiently murky that I think if I was a democratic strategist at this point, I would say leave this to the administration.

23:43Anthony Scaramucci:Literally, oil prices are going up. His approval ratings are going down. Let them swim in this one. And then if a deal is announced and it's on the front pages of the paper and it's clear what the deal is. At that point, you can point out the difference between the president's deal and the president's deal, 44's deal and 47's deal.

24:03Katty Kay:But the Republicans had impeached Barack Obama for a deal like the one that Trump is going to get?

24:09Anthony Scaramucci:No, because I don't think the one that Trump is going to get is going to be terribly different from the one that Obama got. So I don't think they'd have impeached him for it.

24:16Katty Kay:Okay. But I just think they would be raising, they would be raising, holy hell, Trump said it was the worst deal ever.

24:21Anthony Scaramucci:Trump talks in superlatives. People discount that.

24:24Katty Kay:There are two numbers that I think people should focus on. And one of them is$3.50. And the other one is$5. And let me tell you what those two numbers are. Those are the potential gas prices coming into the summer. So if you get a deal by Memorial Day, gas probably goes back under 350. Okay. Maybe it takes a little while, but Trump ended the war will be the narrative that runs through November in an effort to try to help the Republicans hold the house. If you get no deal, okay, and gas goes to$5 and stays there, I think you have a recession risk. And I think that, I think cable news is not going to react too friendly to Trump going into November.

25:12Katty Kay:and you could have that 30 seats that you and I always talk about being in play could shift to the Democrats. So, you know, he doesn't need a perfect deal, but he needs a deal that he can sell and call perfect because that's his personality. Okay. And so those are the things that I think are happening. And how long do you think the U.S. Navy, because that was another good trade that they made over the weekend. They said the U.S. Navy is going to escort the ships. It influenced oil prices. And of course, there were traders right there take advantage of the announcements that were coming again on the Sunday leading into the market activity on Monday.

25:52Katty Kay:But how long do you think that the U.S. Navy is going to be, quote unquote, escorting ships through the strait?

25:59Anthony Scaramucci:I don't think the U.S. Navy is going to be escorting ships through the strait. I think they're going to be telling ships which lanes are safe. But I don't think you're going to be seeing actual Navy ships doing an escort, which is what it would take to get the ships through. That's something, especially after this morning, where even if it was just warning shots that were fired, they're going to be very wary about that. Trump wanted that, but he seems to have been talked down from doing it. But I think this goes on beyond Memorial Day, which is the end of this month, three or four weeks' time, I think we could still be in this kind of Cold War standoff.

26:37Anthony Scaramucci:Should we talk about what Trump wants to be talking about, Antony? Because this is not what Trump wants to be talking about. Trump actually wants to be talking about whether he is a great man of American history. And what do great men of American history do? They build stuff in their image. So he got rid of the king, but he's going to cover everything in gold. and I've just been struck by how many reporters have come up with this story recently. And the best one, which guys, if you haven't read it, is in The Atlantic, we'll post it in our newsletter, which is Trump quoting Hegel. I'm not sure that I don't buy the argument as they said that Trump has read Hegel, but that Trump has begun referring to himself as Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great and Napoleon, all men who disrupted their eras and have gone down in history.

27:30Anthony Scaramucci:What is Trump doing still focused on the ballroom, the reflecting pool, the Kennedy Center, the United States Institute of Peace, the arc to Trump, when he knows, Anthony, that that is not what voters elected him to do? And there is no indication that this is going down well with Republican voters.

27:51Katty Kay:Okay. So let's step back for a second. So we're in the final vestiges of Trump. Can we stipulate that? We've got two and a half years to go.

28:01Anthony Scaramucci:We've always said he's not running again. He's not going to be president again.

28:05Katty Kay:Okay. So we are in the final vestiges of Trump. And does Trump feel that he's better than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington?

28:15Anthony Scaramucci:Well, he says he's better than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington.

28:19Katty Kay:He thinks he's next level compared to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington, right? And so does he think that the people around him are smart enough to see how much better he is than Abraham Lincoln and George Washington?

28:33Anthony Scaramucci:No, that's the problem.

28:34Katty Kay:That's the problem.

28:35Anthony Scaramucci:That's the problem. So he has to make sure he has something there that reminds Americans in perpetuity of how great he was. And that's what this is about.

28:44Katty Kay:Here is the narrative and let me give it to everybody in Trump speak. I am the greatest living American and I am the greatest American that has ever lived. Now, some people are too febrile and some people have low IQs. And when you have a low IQ, you can't see how brilliant I am. And so what I'm going to do, because history is going to judge me so well, I am going to name everything in Washington after me. So when a young school student is coming off the bus and he's touring Washington, he sees my name everywhere and he does some research on me and he learns that, yes, Mr. Trump was right. While he was sometimes ridiculed by his contemporaries, he was the brilliant man that saved America.

29:32Anthony Scaramucci:I think that's right. The Hegel comparison is that specifically those great men of history were people who disrupted things and who maybe even their populations didn't appreciate in the moment. So they were disruptors and aggressive and sometimes obnoxious. And people didn't necessarily appreciate their greatness at the time. Simon, I'm not sure that Trump sees it quite that way, but Trump certainly likes the idea that you're going to smash things and then people will realize how great you are because you smashed a lot of stuff.

30:06Katty Kay:But, you know, he's going to paint the old executive office building. Why am I doing that? Because, you know, I'm trying to go after every single thing that's here in Washington. Washington uh I I am not convinced and I repeat this that he doesn't put his name on the Washington Monument that it's going to be called the Trump Washington Monument I'm not convinced of that I think that's still coming he's got two years to go I think that the National Garden of American Heroes he paved over the Rose Garden as we all know but he's also done something where he's putting his name, Victor Orban style, in the passports.

30:46Katty Kay:So if you lose your passport, you get a new passport, you're going to have a picture of him menacingly looking at you from your passport. He's got his name on the resident alien cards. There's a picture of him and George Washington together on the resident alien cards. He's trying to get his visage on currency, which is likely to be illegal. Probably would, you know, if someone really wanted to push it, would be challenged with the Supreme Court because it's supposed to only have dead presidents on the currency, not living ones. He wants to sign the U.S. dollar. He's upset that Scott Bessent and Steve Mnuchin gets their signature on the U.S.

31:25Katty Kay:dollar. And by the way, again, Donald Trump speak, I have the, it looks like a cardiac arrest. The one that he's never having is signature. You know, it looks like that, but he thinks it's the most famous signature in the history of the world and he wants it to grace the US dollar. So again, no pushback, no John Thune saying, hey, this is against all of our societal norms and you got to walk back from this stuff or we're going to start doing things to you that you're not really going to like. You tell me, Mao renovated Chandonment Square, right? Modi has the Vista project in India. Napoleon obviously changed Paris and Napoleon III went on and changed Paris.

32:11Katty Kay:Okay. So you tell me, Caddy, like, is there anybody going to stop him or are we going to have everything painted and gold gilded and named after Donald Trump in our universe here in America? And then what does that mean for America? Like, what does that mean exactly? Where is America? I mean, by the way, it's the greatest brand destruction that I've ever effing seen in 18 months. You know, like how to destroy a brand in 18 months. Let's go to the Harvard Business School and I'll take you through what Donald Trump did to United States of America and its brand internationally over 18 months. But go ahead, Katty.

32:54Anthony Scaramucci:I have American friends who go to Europe and they say they're Canadians because they don't want to admit that they're Americans at the moment. He's going to do a lot of what you said. Much of it may well be undone, but there's some of the stuff that can't be undone, which is literally remaking America. If he builds the Ark to Trump, no one's going to knock it down. He's already knocked the ballroom down, so he's going to have to build something in its place. He's already ripping up the reflecting pool and painting it a kind of brilliant swimming pool blue that he thinks looks like a great American blue.

33:24Anthony Scaramucci:If he paints the old executive building, which is where the vice president works from, it's going to be very difficult for somebody to rip all of that paint off and cost a lot of money. So some of this stuff, he's right. This is permanent and it will change the face of Washington, which is exactly the point of it. It does hurt America's brand around the world and it is Trump. And I think this is why you see in the polls that this isn't playing well with Republicans, partly because they want him to focus on the job he was meant to do a bit like when Barack Obama focused on healthcare reform in 2008.

33:55Anthony Scaramucci:And actually voters said, no, we wanted you to focus on the legacy of 2008 financial crash and make us feel better financially. Love healthcare idea, but this is not what we elected you to do. He's going to be in that position. Not that he cares. His name's not on the ballot. But people are also thinking this isn't how a president behaves. I mean, this has none of the decorum of a US president. The local airport in Washington, DC that you fly into in the center of the city when I lived here for the first 15 years of living in Washington, it was called National Airport. And then it was changed.

34:27Anthony Scaramucci:The name was changed under George W. Bush to Reagan Airport. That was like almost 20 years after Ronald Reagan had left office. That's the way presidents behave. They don't name things in their own time. Who names things in their own time? Emperors and kings and autocrats. I mean, Trump is literally on the 250th anniversary of America going to have a wrestling fight on the front lawn of the White House. This is like a gladiatorial competition. I mean, he's embodying Caesar with a gladiatorial competition. Of course, he's saying this is all for the 250th anniversary of America and that's how he's taking advantage of this moment in history to say, I'm doing all of this for the 250th anniversary of America, but actually a lot of it has been doing for him with his name on things, his name on the passports for this year.

35:19Anthony Scaramucci:I think voters won't thank him for it, but as he says, he's not on the ballot box in November, so I'm not sure he cares that much. But it is interesting that what he should be focused on and what he wants to be focused on in this particular moment, they're two very different things.

35:36Katty Kay:Katie, the only thing I want to say about the genius of the US brand, and this is something Reagan, Eisenhower understood is that it belonged to an idea. It didn't belong to an individual or an incumbent. And I think it's very important to understand that we were at our best when we used our defense apparatus and our military in restraint, as opposed to this forward, aggressive, unilateral approach. Bush used it unilaterally, didn't work for us. Trump is now using it unilaterally. We were always way better. And we were able to build the alliances that are very hard for superpowers to build because we exercise this level of the strength.

36:18Katty Kay:This is the reason why we were so respected. And we've lost that now. And by the way, it's going to take a long time to rebuild that. I don't see Gavin Newsom, Pete Buttigieg, somebody walking into the White House and saying, hey, sorry for that. And let's go back to whatever we were doing prior to this jackass. No, that's not going to happen.

36:40Anthony Scaramucci:Joe Biden tried to do that in 2020 and it worked to some extent. But allies, particularly European allies, are not going to trust whoever comes back in. They'll say, that's great. You want to be back. But how do we know that in four years time you're not out and J.D. Vance isn't back in again, which could well be the case anyway. OK, we'll take a break and come back and have a quick look at those Democrats.

37:06Katty Kay:This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. You know, Caddy, Alistair Campbell taught me how to use NordVPN on a train from Glasgow to London. I love this product. I want to be connected as soon as I sit down, but speed can come at a cost of security. Most of the time, cyber attacks are not Hollywood style. they're disguised as a fake link, a phishing email, or a public network that looks normal and NordVPN protects you from all of that.

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38:28Anthony Scaramucci:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics. We're going to take a quick look at the Democrats because Anthony and I are increasingly convinced that 2026 is going to be a good year for Democrats and potentially 2028 if things carry on as they are and brand MAGA is doing as badly as it is, we could be looking at a Democrat in the White House in 2028 as well. Before we get there, let's talk about these elections and the really important question at the moment. I think there's a widespread assumption that Democrats are going to take back the House, but the question is, are they going to take back the Senate?

38:57Anthony Scaramucci:And we just wanted to focus on two Senate races that might give us some indication of that. Here's the maths. Democrats need to add four seats to their total. Then they control the Senate as well. The seats that are in play are Iowa, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, and Michigan and Maine. And we're going to talk about Michigan and Maine today. Quickly, in Maine, something important happened last week, which is that in the primary, and we're still in the primary phase. In Maine, there is this guy, Graham Plattner, who we've spoken about, ex-vet, ex-oyster farmer, more on the populist wing of the Democratic Party, younger.

39:39Anthony Scaramucci:He was up against the sitting governor, Janet Mills, who was going to step down as governor and run for the Senate seat. And last week, in something pretty seismic in Maine politics, Janet Mills pulled out of the race saying she didn't have enough money and she didn't have enough support. It was very interesting because you have an establishment Democratic politician who normally would have been a shoo-in for the Senate race to be the nominee for the Democratic Party in Maine. And along comes this upstart with no political background, no machinery behind him, and somehow he takes fire. And Democratic voters in Maine think this is the guy we want because he is anti-establishment.

40:20Anthony Scaramucci:Young voters in particular like him. So I think Republicans are thrilled that Janet Mills has pulled out because they thought she was a harder opponent for them in Maine. Democrat activists are thrilled that she's pulled out because they like Graham Plattner. Graham Plattner is a super interesting character, Antony, because in some ways he's very progressive, economically very progressive against the oligarchy, against income inequality. But he's also pretty in line with Maine, which is a white, quite conservative state. So he opposes, for example, an assault weapons ban. He doesn't call for abolishing ICE.

41:02Anthony Scaramucci:He just wants some ICE reform. So although he's seen, I think, as being very populist, he's an interesting brand of populism in the Democratic Party. He's different from, say, Mamdani, and he's different from the guy in Michigan who we're going to talk about in a second, too. What do you think of him? Do you think he can win in Maine?

41:22Katty Kay:Well, listen, I think it's very hard going up against incumbents. She's a mid-70s person. She has health ailments, but she's got a tremendous amount of money.

41:32Anthony Scaramucci:Susan Collins, you're talking about, the sitting Republican senator.

41:35Katty Kay:Yep, Susan. Susan's always concerned, never does anything Collins. But I think the Plattner thing for me, I'm worried about it because he had a Nazi tattoo on his chest. He denies knowing that that was a Nazi symbol when he got the Nazi symbol. Okay. So I want to try to be fair to him as well, but I do think it is a problem. He's a weird guy and he has been generally unstable. He's portraying himself as way more stable today and attributing all that stuff to youth and maturity and all that other stuff.

42:11Anthony Scaramucci:And kind of PTSD from being a veteran.

42:14Katty Kay:Yeah, I was just going to say the PTSD, all that stuff. But I'm worried about him because let me give you the narrative. Okay. Trump is a Nazi. Elon Musk is a bad guy. Blah, blah, blah. You know, we're for the democracy. Oh, but we're now supporting a guy that has a Nazi symbol on his chest that he covered up for the campaign. So, you know, the hard right can beat a Cornyn and the hard right can beat, you know, the moderate Republicans, no problem. Dan Crenshaw blown out in the primary. But this guy represents that existential threat to the left, Caddy. So to me, I almost would like, you know, like in other words, if I was a Republican, I'd be like okay yeah let's run against this guy we're going to blow this guy into the North Atlantic.

43:07Anthony Scaramucci:Republicans are thrilled about this but I think there is a question is there a mood in American politics at the moment and what's interesting about Plattner is I don't think you can say he's hard left I think you can say he's populist and he's anti-establishment but some of what he says is left and some of what he says has echoes of cultural conservatism So he's an interesting kind of very Maine specific candidate, specific to that kind of rural working class state, white state. And I think there's a chance that he wins because of the nature of the state that he's coming from and because he is tapping into something about income inequality and hard times that a lot of American voters are feeling at the moment.

43:54Anthony Scaramucci:So I think Maine is still in play. Republicans are thinking gleefully, that's it. Susan Collins gets back in again. The other thing that's happening in Maine is he's much younger. And Susan Collins is much older and has been around for decades. And there is a sort of generational shift taking place in American politics, which you're seeing in the Michigan race too, where you've got a whole group of younger people running and younger voters are fed up with old people hanging onto seats decade after decade and never stepping down and getting, you know, kind of corrupted by Washington and by power.

44:25Anthony Scaramucci:And you've got a lot of young voters in the country saying, and young candidates in the country saying, it's our turn now.

44:32Katty Kay:I think you are making all the right points, but let me just ask a question. If this was 10 years ago, this was 20 years ago, would he have been able to survive his biography?

44:43Anthony Scaramucci:No. I mean, it's remarkable. And we've unearthed social media posts that have been accused of being homophobic, of being misogynist. There's the Totenkopf skull image on his tattoo. He puts all that down to youthful indiscretions. And I think in this weird social media era where this idea of authenticity, which never has to be quite defined, and you've got other candidates as well saying you've got it in Michigan as well. One of the more centrist Democratic candidates, Mallory McMorrow, had these social media posts from when she first moved to Michigan from California saying, oh, this makes me miss California even more.

45:25Anthony Scaramucci:And now that, of course, that's got dragged up by her opponents saying, see, she's not really from Michigan. She just misses California. She wants to be a Californian. Her competitors are saying that. And what's her reply? Well, it shows that I'm authentic. So that's how candidates are getting around this. They're saying, well, whatever I said in the past, YOLO. I was being authentic in my youth and put that down to youth and indiscretion. And by the way, you, the voter, you recognize that we've all posted things on social media that we're embarrassed by and it just makes me human. I think you're going to see an awful lot of that, by the way, in this area of social media where people have to disavow things they've said in the past in social media.

46:07Anthony Scaramucci:But I think you're right. 10 years ago, you wouldn't have got away with this.

46:09Katty Kay:Katie, the real question though is, you know, we know that Trump can get away with anything and there's some leniency or tolerance for the Republicans on some of their past discretions. I'm just wondering, let's say he loses, let's say Susan Collins beats him, is the lesson that the new tolerance has limits for the Democrats? Specifically, they pay a price versus the other party doesn't. You know, it's just interesting about the there's a culture war going on, but there's also a cultural fight going on in between the two parties where one party may be more lenient than the other. And then the other question from a political perspective, is it even fair to say that because he's running against an incumbent?

46:53Katty Kay:And as you and I know, incumbents have a 90 plus percent rate of reelection. So it's an interesting thing. But last point, and I want you to react to it. He wins. It doesn't. 2028, the Republicans say, oh, my God, the Democrats have lost the plot. They support Nazis. And then everybody looks around and says, oh, yeah, look at the hypocrisy of the Democrats. They're Nazi supporters. What do they say?

47:19Anthony Scaramucci:I think it's going to be very interesting to see who wins. Who are the types of candidates who win from the Democratic Party in this midterm election? And is it more progressive left, which will give fodder to the Republican Party in a traditional way going into 2028? Is it candidates who are going to particularly appeal to younger voters? Are they going to get younger voters to turn out? I think we'll learn a lot about the direction of politics and it could be we're in a kind of a sea change moment where being an established candidate, being the incumbent candidate, may not be the guarantee of re-election if you're older and have been there for a long time in the way that it was 10 years ago because you do have a new generation of people coming into politics.

48:06Anthony Scaramucci:Quickly on the Michigan race, this is a very interesting one. You've got the incumbent Democratic Senator Gary Peters, who doesn't want to seek a third term. Republicans think this means they have a chance of catching that up. You've got a primary race between three people, Haley Stevens, a local representative who is the establishment favorite. You've got Mallory McMorrow, also a local politician who's more of a centrist trying to kind of position herself as the every woman in the Democratic Party trying to appeal to progressives and people in the center. And then you have got the very progressive former Wayne County Health Director, Abdul El-Sayed, who is also being seen as in a way a bit like Graham Plattner.

48:51Anthony Scaramucci:But I think there are big differences between these two candidates. But he's very progressive on the left. He's very opposed to aid to Israel, very opposed to what Israel has done in Gaza. Israel is a huge issue in the state of Michigan because of the big Muslim population and a big Jewish population in Detroit as well. It's almost like Israeli politics is a proxy for Michigan politics at the moment. But I think if El-Sayed wins the primary there, which is in August, you're going to, again, Anthony, to your point, you're going to have Republicans saying, this is great. This means that we will take Michigan because El-Sayed is too progressive for Michigan voters.

49:31Anthony Scaramucci:We can defeat him. And I think if Democrats don't take Michigan, their chances of taking the Senate are very narrow. So they're putting out polls at the moment saying Ali Syed loses to the Republican candidate.

49:41Katty Kay:The benefit of being on a podcast, Caddy, is that you can say the quiet part out loud. So I'll say it, okay? So you don't have to, so you can maintain your classiness, Caddy. But I will say it, okay? His name is Muslim, and he's running against a Republican party that loves white supremacists. And let me just say this, if he were to win, those guys will have a field day on his name the same way that Mr. Trump, President Trump, says the words Barack Hussein Obama.

50:15Anthony Scaramucci:Now just calls him Hussein Obama, doesn't even call him Barack Hussein Obama.

50:19Katty Kay:See, that's a whistle, ladies and gentlemen. And I find it disgusting and reprehensible. Well, I can't speak to Abdel El-Sayed's policies. I got to look into him more and then I'll evaluate him on his policies, not his name or as Martin Luther King would say, we judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. I do find it, you know, the research on him that he's hanging out with Hassan Piker, who's a leftist streamer who once said that America deserved 9-11. I mean, I don't know. I mean, that could be a problem for people in the country, but I just think that the world is upside down and we're in a situation now where what used to matter, Caddy, on your resume doesn't matter anymore.

51:05Katty Kay:Okay. And what matters is how much punch do you have in social media? And all these guys, if they're smart, they're going to pick up the phone and call Mayor Mondani and get them on the phone and say, hey, dude, take a look at my social media. Let me know what you think and give me some suggestions. And that's where we are right now in American politics.

51:26Anthony Scaramucci:We're in a moment of flux where the electorate is changing. It is getting younger. And a lot of candidates are trying to wrestle with this new communications environment as well. And if you're not good at it and you're not authentic at it, you probably have a pretty slim chance of being elected or reelected. Incumbents, watch out. I think we're in for some change elections in this year's midterms and in 2028. Okay, guys, we'll be answering your questions in our episode for our founding members. We're going to be talking about Marco Rubio because we've had a ton of questions about Rubio after we did our mini series for members about him.

52:05Anthony Scaramucci:If you'd like to become a founding member to listen to that series or any of the other series that we've done, you can join us at the rest is politics us.com. We'll see you later this week. Bye, guys.

52:15Katty Kay:You're so good at that, Katty. See you guys later.

52:48Anthony Scaramucci:The Rest is Money

52:50Katty Kay:every single year. What's really striking is that his numbers are now the numbers being used by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she talks about the advantages of getting closer to the EU. So if you want to know how damaging Brexit has been

53:11Anthony Scaramucci:and whether that 8 % number is robust, whether it's real, join me for the latest episode of The Rest is Money. And that's very iSteEL oyun executed okay and it happened again. I gave the Rapport that simply worked not theerman and Mr. Thank you.