189. Trump’s Secret Slush Fund: His Most Corrupt Act Yet

15:03Anthony Scaramucci:Just on the IRS side of this, because there are two bits to this story. One is the slush fund and the rewarding of the Jan Sixers, which already you've got the police officers from that day. People like Dan Hodges, the family of Brian Sisnik who died, Aquilina Gonel, who was, you know, one of the people who was dragged out into the crowd and still, by the way, has injuries to his shoulder and his foot because of what happened to him that day. they are speaking up they are trying to say this is not what happened and trying to remind the American public but I've interviewed some of those police officers from that day and they say to me Anthony look the injury was twofold it was what happened to us on that day and the lack of preparation and equipment that we didn't have that day but subsequently it was exactly this ignoring by the Republicans in the Senate and the House of Representatives who they were risking their lives to defend.

15:54Anthony Scaramucci:The plaque honoring those police officers has been made, but we don't know where it is. It hasn't been brought out and put up. So they say that is as injurious to them as what happened on that day, that these people they were fighting to defend have now basically washed their hands of them. And you've got a few mutterings from Capitol Hill. You've got John Thune saying this is already getting backlash. I don't love the idea of this slush fund. You've got Susan Collins. And she is very concerned, Anthony. She's very concerned about this. She is very concerned about the slush one. You'll be relieved to hear that Susan Collins is not happy about it.

16:28Katty Kay:She's very concerned about Bill Cassidy getting ousted is what she's really concerned about. But go ahead.

16:32Anthony Scaramucci:So you've got, you know, a little bit of mutterings, but this will probably run its course. But the other side of this, and I want you to put back on, grab that hat again, because you're going to be law professor again. The IRS side of this and the dropping the settlement. But in that document that was sent to me by from the DOJ, how can the IRS say or the Justice Department say it's dropping all suits against Trump and his kids? And it looks like this is there's some debate about it, but it looks like it's in perpetuity. How is that possible? Can't I get that deal? Can I just never be investigated by the tax authorities in perpetuity?

17:11Anthony Scaramucci:I want a deal like that. Is there a deal for them and a different deal for us?

17:15Katty Kay:So the DOJ did issue a clarification. It basically said that this is with respect to existing audit.

17:24Anthony Scaramucci:Existing. But there's been questions about that already, about whether that's really the case.

17:28Katty Kay:Yeah. So the DOJ, Cady, did issue a clarification. They basically said, and I'll read the quote, this is only with respect to existing audits, not future. you know it does sound like a guardrail until you remember what was actually pending right they've got audits related to their charity expenses they took a 100 million dollar what the irs said was an improper depreciation deduction on the chicago tower uh there's a lot of different things in there many millions of dollars uh hundred plus millions of dollars that would, you know, the IRS is basically ceding to the Trump family. Now, I think the existing audits only, in my opinion, is a dodge, by the way.

18:15Katty Kay:I think it's a meaningless clarification. I think these people are going to be more or less barred from auditing the Trump family.

18:24Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, that's what it said. That's what the addendum signed by Todd Blanche said, the government would be forever barred and precluded.

18:31Katty Kay:After everybody in the media protested that, the DOJ issued that statement. But if you actually read the language, the language from the IRS looks like this is a permanent preclusion. And, you know, I don't even know if that's constitutional, by the way, because that would really separate. rate, remember, under the due process of law, we're all to be treated equally. And so that would create a monarchical status from the 1600s, frankly, for the Trump family. And so we're there above the law. So I think this is incredibly dangerous. But listen, audit immunity. I want you to imagine that because when I was looking through the Putin or ban corruption book, I didn't see audit immunity in there.

19:21Katty Kay:I think this is something Trump has got to call his buddies and say, hey, you gave me some great ideas and how to rip off the government and rip off the American people. But let me give you another one. But let me give you one. I got audit immunity going for me. He's like an innovator on the side of corruption. He's like in the corruption laboratory, you know?

19:40Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, that's very good. Anyway, look, here's what a lawyer sent me this morning. It's horrifying. It's corrupt to the core. This is from a lawyer, a conservative lawyer who sent me this. It might be one of these things where Trump is exploiting legal loopholes to do something no one thought any president would do, and it might be illegal. I think it's again, no one really thinks that he has the shamelessness to do this stuff, and then he does it. Okay. I think this is a very important moment. I think it's one of those moments we're going to look back at and think this redefined the nature of the Trump presidency and what Trump tried to do to government and why how he tried to rewrite history.

20:19Anthony Scaramucci:And just remember that day on January the 7th when Lindsey Graham, now the president's most stalwart ally, said, I'm getting off the Trump train. It's been a great ride, but enough is enough. That was unforgivable. And then a few days later, Kevin McCarthy flies down to Mar-a-Lago and welcomes him back into the Republican family. History in the making.

20:42Katty Kay:So, Katie, one thing that happens to the Republicans is they grow spine and testicles after they get defeated. So, Bill Cassidy is out there hammering away on the slush fund, and he's also flipped to the other side on the vote related to the Iranian war. Okay, so the minute they get defeated or they get knocked out, we're going to go to Thomas Massey after the break, but you see they get their will and courage back.

21:07Anthony Scaramucci:And the question is whether we're going to see the same from Senator John Cornyn. We'll talk about him after the break.

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24:07Anthony Scaramucci:welcome back to the rest is politics us so anthony i felt very sorry for jd vance yesterday because jd vance had his starring moment in the white house press briefing room taking over from caroline levitt who is on maternity leave and trying to catch up with marco rubio who did the same role to great success a couple of weeks ago and there he is he's in the press briefing room And guess what happens? Just before it, Donald Trump gives a ballroom tour with all of the White House press corps, which actually turns into a long press conference and sucks all of the oxygen out of the room. And just after it, Donald Trump endorses Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state Senate Republican primary runoff, which was the big political news that everyone had been waiting for, thereby squeezing poor old JD out of his starring moment.

24:57Anthony Scaramucci:It was so Donald Trump. It was like, J.D.'s going to have a moment in the sun. I'm going to have two moments in the sun. But the snub to Senator John Cornyn, this has been a race. We've talked about this before. Texas is now a race that is potentially in play for the Senate. The Republican runoff was between sitting Senator John Cornyn, who has served for more than two decades, who is popular in his party, but who has had run ins with Donald Trump and Donald Trump does not like him. and between Ken Paxton, who is the attorney general, who is a man with about four or five different scandals and previous lawsuits against him, including accusations of adultery and financial misappropriations.

25:40Anthony Scaramucci:So Donald Trump has now endorsed Ken Paxton, saying entirely it's because he is loyal to me, not making any pretense that this is about the good of the party. We know it's not about the good of the party because this is a nightmare for Majority Leader John Thune, who wanted to have John Cornyn in there because he thinks John Cornyn can get elected. But for Trump, it's another chance to show he controls the Republican Party. And what do you reckon? Can Ken Paxton now beat James Tallarico in the runoff for the Senate?

26:09Katty Kay:I think he's going to, and I think James Tallarico is a formidable politician. He's more formidable than Beto O 'Rourke, and I think he has a broader coalition. But I think the machinery is in place that will prevent him from winning. Karen Daskatty, as an example, is going to win Los Angeles no matter what mistakes she made during the wildfires. She just has that machinery behind her. You could be failed policies, questionable policies. You could have issues, but the turnout machinery is what usually produces the victory. This is what happened to Thomas Massey in his home state. $32 million was spent on a Kentucky representative race.

26:55Katty Kay:Could you imagine that? I mean, it's just, it's ridiculous. And that just sends out a signal, we're going to pour money into these things. So yes, he's going to win. That's my prediction. But he then enters the Senate caddy, like I said earlier in the week, as a junior senator from the state of Texas, and all of that majority seniority rankings and all that other stuff go away. And so, and Trump doesn't care, of course, but that's what's going to happen ultimately. I want to ask you this question though, because you've been observing this for longer than me, frankly. Have you in your lifetime seen a president, a political leader, senior Senate majority leader, Speaker of the House, go this viciously after their own parties and have this level of a purity test related to the people that are in the party?

27:52Anthony Scaramucci:Look, you're talking about President Trump, right? And he made it very clear in the Truth Social post that he sent out that this was all about because John Cornyn had not been loyal enough to Trump. He didn't pretend that he was endorsing Ken Paxton for the good of the Republican Party. He didn't even try to pretend that. He just said this was about the fact that John Cornyn had not supported me. He had not been close enough to me. So it's very much about him personally. And I think that's the problem, Anthony, is that he's done this before when he endorsed candidates who were very loyal to him, but were totally unelectable.

28:35Anthony Scaramucci:Herschel Walker down in Georgia, Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, Mastriano also in Pennsylvania. and it came back to hurt the party, which is why the Republican operatives like John Thune are saying this is actually not helpful to us. And I don't know whether this is going to be a rerun of 2020. Maybe the party is more in line with Donald Trump now, but independent voters aren't and swing voters aren't. And his risk is that he's proposing these people. And Ken Paxton has been kind of a joke in mainstream Republican politics for the last 10 years because of this constant scandals against him and accusations of financial fraud against him and, you know, accusations of having affairs against him.

29:23Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, he really has been kind of a joke. So can Republican voters who are not diehard MAGA overlook his baggage and still vote for him because Donald Trump has endorsed him. I think there is a chance they will. I think you're right. I think the Republicans will still win. And one Republican strategist said to me last night that an endorsement by Trump moves you up in the rankings in your race by 50 points. He says there's nothing like it in Republican primary politics at the moment to boost your fortunes that compares remotely with an endorsement by Donald Trump. You can have all of these standard conservative moves and issues that will move you up by 20 points, but nothing's going to move you up like 50 points apart from Donald Trump.

30:09Anthony Scaramucci:So he still does have a huge amount of sway, but it is very much a test of loyalty to him. It's not about the party or about what you would call conservatism.

30:18Katty Kay:Yeah, I think this is the message. So if you want to go against Donald Trump, you're going to be in trouble because, one, to your point, he controls the primary voters. That's 15 % to 20 % of the registered Republicans. They're super trouble loyalists. They're the ones that are going to oust you. Number two, he's got the MAGA Inc. money infrastructure in place to make America great again PAC, the other aligned super PACs. On a moment's notice, Caddy, they can drop$20 to$30 million into a single house race with a phone call. Again,$32 million into the Massey race. So no incumbent can out-raise that.

30:59Katty Kay:They just don't have the facility in place to do that. This is the byproduct of Citizens United, right? And then he's got Fox News, Newsmax, and the podcast ecosystem that he works very hard. And, Caddy, there's no institutional resistance inside the conference. The Republican caucus is like, no problem. Do whatever you want. You read a quote before this half of the show started from Lindsey Graham, where he was done with Trump. Is he done with Trump? I mean, my God, you can't even see Lindsay so far inside Trump's, you know what. So, I mean, come on. And this is the most important thing, Caddy.

31:35Katty Kay:The base genuinely likes the scrum. They genuinely like the tax, Caddy.

31:44Anthony Scaramucci:They like seeing Trump take on the party. They like the way he attacks them. Yeah.

31:48Katty Kay:They do. They like it. They like it. Because remember, inherent in all this is anti-establishment, anti-incumbency, throw the bums out. Trump, please light those people up.

31:59Anthony Scaramucci:Here's what he said on Truth Social about John Cornyn, just to underscore that point. John was very late in backing me in what turned out to be a historic run for the Republican nomination and then the presidency itself, both of which were landslide victories. I mean, I don't think you need to read much further, right, to find out why he actually doesn't like John Cornyn. He was too late. Sorry, you were too late backing me. Anyway, it's going to be interesting now. My political scientist down in Texas who I spoke to late last night said, Texas is the Democrats' white whale. They keep hoping they're going to win it and they won't win it until they do.

32:35Anthony Scaramucci:And that will be having a very good Democratic candidate, a very weak Republican candidate and enough Democratic money and funds being invested in the state of Texas. This is their closest chance since Beto O 'Rourke came close to defeating Ted Cruz. Let's see. Let's see how well they do. It's going to be very interesting to see how well Democrats do in November in the state of Texas.

32:55Katty Kay:I want to make sure people know this. Paxson did out-hustle Cornyn, okay? And I want to explain to people what he actually did. One of the first things he did is he ran ads in the Mar-a-Lago media market on Fox News that were pro him and bashing the living daylights out of Cornyn, okay? And so it was right in Trump's ear. He met with him numerous times on the sidelines of galas. He appeared at Trump-aligned events that Cornyn skipped, including a Dallas CPAC gathering where Cornyn decided not to go to it. Paxson went, okay? And he wanted to rename the Texas Highway, ready? Interstate 47 in honor of Donald Trump.

33:40Katty Kay:And Cornyn didn't want anything to do with that, okay? And you have to understand Trump. So in addition to Korn in 35 years, I'm the incumbent, I should win. I'm going to be on my heels. Okay, this guy went to work. Okay, so I just don't want to just say, oh, Trump endorsed him. And so therefore he won. He fought for you. This guy put the knee pads on his elbows and he went to work. He worked on Trump and he was out there campaigning very, very aggressively for the spot that he's in.

34:10Anthony Scaramucci:And the way you campaign aggressively is you get in Trump's face with lots of flattery about him.

34:15Katty Kay:100%.

34:16Anthony Scaramucci:You propose changing the names of highways, which does slightly beg the question, how easy is it to play Donald Trump? Not just if you're an American politician, but if you're a leader around the world. They all know this now. Everybody watches what happens. Everybody watches who gets rewards. And they watch the playbook. And they've got enough experience now to look at the playbook and learn how to play it themselves. And I think we saw that play out, by the way, in China last week.

34:44Katty Kay:Mark Cuban, who pummeling Trump during the 2024 election, he's standing at the podium with him for Trump Rx rapprochement. So what does that tell you? You can always, there's a revolving door, Caddy. You can always go through the turnstile back into Trump's orbit. and that is one of the insanity things about Trump because when you're peeing on him, he doesn't like it and he wants to be loved. And what, was that a bad metaphor? I think that was unnecessary.

35:19Anthony Scaramucci:I mean, some people might be listening to this over breakfast.

35:22Katty Kay:Okay, all right, I'll take it back.

35:24Anthony Scaramucci:Especially in the light of the pee-pee tape. No, too many images.

35:28Katty Kay:Okay, when you're lambasting Trump, he doesn't like it. Better. And you can go through the revolving door back in, which is a little bit more revolting than it seems on first glance.

35:38Anthony Scaramucci:In our bonus episode this week, we dived into the ballroom. I have a few theories about that for our founding members. Take a quick listen.

35:48Katty Kay:Katty, I don't live in Washington. You live in Washington. It doesn't look like a lot of work is getting done on the ballroom right now.

35:55Anthony Scaramucci:Well, that is a very good point.

35:58Katty Kay:So I guess my follow-up question to Tom's question, is it going to be built before Trump leaves office?

36:04Anthony Scaramucci:That's the question. So there's been I was just on set this morning with a whole bunch of people and we were raising the same question. Is the ballroom actually going to be built? Because the speculation around Washington at the moment is that it may not get done before Trump leaves office. And the Senate rulekeeper Elizabeth McDonough has actually ruled against the use of taxpayer funds in the bill on Saturday after Democrats argued that security money doesn't belong in it for this ballroom. So I think the financing is still up in the air. He's getting quite a lot of blowback, both for the amount of money that initially the ballroom was going to cost 200 million, then it was going to cost 300 million, then it was going to cost 400 million.

36:45Anthony Scaramucci:But now Republicans are proposing this$1 billion, as Anthony says, by layering and a whole load of other things. There's going to be an underground bunker and it's going to be for security provisions. Donald Trump did come back from China saying China has a ballroom and so we should have a ballroom too. It clearly clocked that China had a big ballroom. So two things are in question as we the financing is in question. Where is it actually going to come from? And I don't think anyone would argue that security provisions for government buildings, particularly for the White House, is something that everybody should look at and they should be financed, but they have to be appropriate security provisions.

37:21Anthony Scaramucci:But I think it's your question is the bigger one right now, Anthony. are we going to be there with some kind of great big hole in the ground until Trump leaves office? At the moment, Donald Trump seems as focused on the reflecting pool and painting that American flag blue. And there are already questions about that because some of the blue shades are different from some of the other blue shades and are workers getting kind of noxious fumes. That seems to be the focus of his attention. If you look at his feed, that is what he's sending out pictures of at the moment because I guess he thinks that's getting done.

37:52Anthony Scaramucci:But I wouldn't be totally surprised if this whole ballroom project gets so caught up in financing issues and legal issues because should he have actually pulled down the East Wing, which was a historic part of the White House. And then what happens? Let's do some role play. Mr. 48th President of the United States, Anthony Scaramucci, what would you like to do with the East Wing, the erstwhile East Wing, which is now actually a big hole in the ground.

38:19Katty Kay:Okay, so I'm president.

38:21Anthony Scaramucci:You're president. Deirdre has not been told about this, but you are now president.

38:25Katty Kay:So I'm rebuilding the East Wing, identical to what it was, and I'm adding a 20 ,000 square foot ballroom, because I do think he is right.

38:37Anthony Scaramucci:And you're putting what, the ballroom underneath the East Wing, or you're putting in the East Wing?

38:41Katty Kay:No, I'm adding the East Wing, but you could see the thing because he's got 90 ,000 square feet. The East Wing is exactly the way it was. And you attach a 20, 25 ,000 square foot ballroom to it, which is modest and looks like the rest of the White House. And if you want to put that underground facility together for the president and his staff in the event of an emergency, I'm actually okay with that.

39:05Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah, because actually the Oval Office area, the West Wing, is very cramped. And everybody knows that. Yeah.

39:11Katty Kay:And I lived in there for a very short period of time, but my office is like a phone booth.

39:16Anthony Scaramucci:You can become a founding member and get those bonus episodes every week if you'd like to, including our series and early access to all of our live shows. You can sign up at therestispoliticsus.com. We'd love to have you with us. Thanks for listening, guys. We will see you next week.

39:32Katty Kay:See you next week, guys.