192. Trump’s Online Meltdown: Method or Madness?

18:49Anthony Scaramucci:45 minutes? No, no, no. It'll be much longer.

18:51Katty Kay:Okay, much longer. Okay.

18:52Anthony Scaramucci:He'll be an hour and a half, I reckon.

18:54Katty Kay:Okay, that's prediction number one. We got two more to go, Caddy Kay.

18:57Anthony Scaramucci:Question, are you going to be there though, Anthony Scaramucci?

19:00Katty Kay:Am I going to be there? No, I'm not going to be there.

19:02Anthony Scaramucci:The 250th birthday of your country. Shouldn't you be there to show your patriotism?

19:06Katty Kay:I'm going to tell you where I was on the 200th anniversary though. My dad who's passed, who was a fisherman. We had a small 20-foot boat that he used to fish on, and he took us at 6 a.m. in the morning through the throg's neck on the 4th of July out into New York Harbor. And we had this Operation Sail going on, and all these tall ships sailed into New York Harbor from around the world to celebrate. We didn't stay for the fireworks that night, but they had this beautiful fireworks display. but he wanted us to see those tall ships. And there I was as a 12 year old, remembering that very, very fondly.

19:46Anthony Scaramucci:I was in the, I was living in Saudi Arabia, my parents were posted there, and we got invited to the American embassy. And it was, it was one of my early memories of America. I'd never really come across America very much growing up as a kid in England. And we went to the American embassy and there was Coca-Cola and know, hamburgers and hot dogs and flags and a band. And I just thought this was kind of Nirvana. I thought, you know, a country that had that kind of exquisite food, I had to go and live there one day. Betty Crocker's Devil's Food Cake, my first introduction, 200th anniversary. There you go, I still remember it.

20:24Anthony Scaramucci:And that was when everyone loved America and thought America could do no wrong as well, by the way.

20:29Katty Kay:Well, we're here now. And so we're, you know, somebody took a picture of the White House overhead with the demolition of the East Wing. And then they're building the structure for the UFC fight. And then the meme said, it looks like a crystal meth family has entered the White House. They've blown the place up. Okay. So, but Caddy, we got two more predictions to go. Yes. Okay. The Kennedy Center, formerly known as the Trump Kennedy Center, okay, is now going to be known as the Kennedy Center again. So what happens there? Will the Kennedy Center recover? As you and I both know, since he put his name on it, artists have dropped, ticket sales have dropped.

21:12Katty Kay:It's become a non-existent performing arts center to the point where the president, to spare the embarrassment of it, was closing it for renovation. But when does it rehabilitate, if ever?

21:23Anthony Scaramucci:Look, I feel really sad about the Kennedy Center because I've gone many times to this Kennedy Center, amazing ballet, great music, wonderful symphony orchestra, wonderful visiting productions. I've seen a lot of shows there. I've taken my kids there often. And at the moment, it's like The Walking Dead. You go in and there's nobody there. It's a shell of itself. And even if now Trump gives up this idea of shutting it for two years, they have no programming, Anthony. And you can't run a performing arts center with no programming. And you know how long it takes to get Hamilton or Katz to come and perform at your theater.

22:04Anthony Scaramucci:You've got to plan these things years in advance. You've got to book the slots. You've got to book the artists. You've got to book the companies. You've got to sell the tickets. They can't turn this around. So, this is a total mess up. He may have destroyed the Kennedy Center, at least for the short term, Even if he doesn't get his name on the front, and even if some judge says, no, it can't close for two years of renovations, it's going to be destroyed by the fact that it has no revenue. So, in many ways, I think the Kennedy Center is a metaphor for willful destruction of something that actually was doing just fine.

22:38Anthony Scaramucci:And I don't think that it recovers very easily. And meanwhile, other performing arts centers in Washington are picking up the audiences and picking up the donors grants that the Kennedy Center used to have. This is a real mess up.

22:51Katty Kay:Okay. So it would have to be a major renovation of the board, which would mean a major reinvigoration of the donations there. And then you would have to get some very high profile artists. Which he's not going to allow to happen for the two years that he's staying in office. Oh, no. So this is a post-Trump presidency then.

23:09Anthony Scaramucci:Yeah.

23:09Katty Kay:Okay. Last one. The 1.8 billion, let me rephrase it, the 1776, the 1.776 billion weaponization, anti-weaponization fund. Is that going to go through, Katty Kay, or will that be blocked?

23:28Anthony Scaramucci:So I was talking to a Republican today who said to me, it gets pulled this week. That no, the judge has already blocked it. It's got, by Trump standards, an enormous amount of pushback from within the party. I think it quietly gets pulled this week.

23:46Katty Kay:You know, there is something called disloyal Republicans, Caddy, because I also read Trump's truth socials. And there are, believe it or not, disloyal Republicans. There are. And Trump posted a picture of him shooting rhinos, saying, no more rhinos. Republicans in name only. So, Caddy, I know I said three, but this is my last one. So, predict that. Is he going to go after those guys?

24:12Anthony Scaramucci:Of course he's going to. He's already gone after them. He's gone after Cassidy. He's gone after Tillis.

24:18Katty Kay:He's going to demolish those guys. Yep.

24:20Anthony Scaramucci:He's tried to demolish Mitch McConnell. But let me give you one. What is, Anthony, a YOLO Republican? These are no longer the rhinos. These are the YOLO Republicans. Have you heard of them?

24:32Katty Kay:I haven't heard of them. No. Who would be a YOLO Republican?

24:36Anthony Scaramucci:The YOLO caucus on Capitol Hill are the Republicans who are leaving. They're the you only live once Republicans who are out of there.

24:45Katty Kay:Oh, so this is like the Tillises and -

24:47Anthony Scaramucci:Who are retiring, the Cassidys. And even the good soldier, Senator John Cornyn, who put out, I don't know if you saw this, he put out, he tweeted out of nowhere, a lovely, what he called old, but apt fable of the frog and the scorpion. Do you know that fable, Anthony?

25:05Katty Kay:Yes, I do. Yeah, of course.

25:07Anthony Scaramucci:Where the scorpion asks the frog for a ride across the river and the frog says to the scorpion, why would I give you a ride? You're just going to sting me and kill me. And the scorpion says, yes, but if I do that, we'll both drown. And so, I have no interest in doing that. And so, the frog says, okay, hop aboard, Mr. Scorpion. They go across the river and halfway across the river. Guess what? The scorpion stings the frog and they both drown. And here is how Senator Cornyn ended his tweet of the old but apt fable, as he called it. I am sorry, but I couldn't help myself, Cornyn wrote. It's my character.

25:44Anthony Scaramucci:That tweet, Anthony, has had 4 million views so far. So John Cornyn is not actually necessarily a very outspoken person who's going to turn into a Tom Tillis, but he's finding a way to send a message to the Republican Party that Donald Trump is the scorpion who will sting them and they will both drown.

26:04Katty Kay:So, Caddy, what does it say about people and about politicians? I'm no longer running for re-election or I have been emasculated and eviscerated by Donald Trump. So, now I'm going to tell you what I really think.

26:20Anthony Scaramucci:There's a reason Profiles in Courage is a very slim volume. Why do they do that, Caddy? Because of the fear, because of look what happened in Indiana and look what happened in Louisiana and look what happened in Texas. I mean, I would think that at some point, and I'm talking to Tom Tillis, who I know you know well, who voted to confirm Pete Hegseth, even though he had all but said he wouldn't to somebody who had said that she had been abused by Pete Hegseth. And he voted to confirm Pete Hegseth even so, and didn't pull his nomination because they can't imagine not having power because they will tell themselves the body politic will be better with me in it, acting as some kind of bulwark against Donald Trump.

27:03Anthony Scaramucci:And in order to get into the body politic, I have to do a certain amount of sucking up. You've spoken to Tom Tillis, you know better than I do. That was a very painful episode that he went through.

27:12Katty Kay:Yeah, no, I've spoken to Tom. Tom was negative prior, in fairness to Tom. He was outspoken beforehand, which is why he decided to leave. This is sort of what Paul Ryan did. You know, Paul Ryan, the former speaker that said, okay, I can't really be with Trump. The party's moved towards Trump. So I'm going to leave and go back to the private sector.

27:33Anthony Scaramucci:He's not leaving before having endorsed Pete Hegseth, who he was vehemently opposed to.

27:38Katty Kay:Yeah. Well, he said he had death threats. He was worried for his family. And I appreciate that. I understand that. On December 4, 2021, and I'm going to ask our production staff have to throw this up on our YouTube channel and then I'll describe it to people. Thomas Massey posted a Christmas photo in front of the Christmas tree. He was sitting on a couch and they all had AR-15 rifles in their hands. Do you remember this Christmas photo, Katty? It was five years ago. Yeah, I do. And so Thomas Massey was gun ho for Donald Trump. Now they're hanging out together in an anti, They're in an interesting camp.

28:17Katty Kay:I don't know how you would describe these, but these are like YOLO, but still MAGA people, right? MOLO. MOLO. I'm still America first, but I'm also telling you the truth that Trump sucks, right? And so, but I just want to point out that they were heavily, heavily in the tank, okay? And Massey put this out literally a couple of weeks after a school killing.

28:41Anthony Scaramucci:It was pretty gross.

28:43Katty Kay:I'm going to be honest. And shot children, right? So, yeah, we just have to remember what's going on here in the country and how dysfunctional it really is.

28:52Anthony Scaramucci:Talking of the country being dysfunctional, Anthony and I are taking a tour of the country in October. We would love to see you. We're doing a live tour ahead of the midterm elections because these are clearly such critical elections that we're going to be in Minneapolis, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Boston, DC. And then we are also going up to Canada to see our friends in Toronto. So if you're in any of those cities, or you'd like to come and see us and ask us your questions, we'll discuss the news of the day, but we'll also take your questions as well. You can get tickets at therestispoliticsus.com.

29:23Anthony Scaramucci:We do hope you'll come and join us. It'll be a lot of fun. Okay, we're gonna take a break and come back and talk about California.

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31:03Katty Kay:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

31:08Anthony Scaramucci:And me, Katty Kay.

31:09Katty Kay:So Katty, we've got quite a primary going on. We have a governor's race and a LA mayor race. But these primaries are interesting because of the way the votes decide who's actually going to be the candidate. So take us through that, Katty. Take us through the procedures in California and tell us about this sort of jungle primary.

31:30Anthony Scaramucci:It is a very interesting race in California. It's wide open on the mayor's side and the governor's side. I was speaking to a Democrat who's a strategist who knows a lot about California just before we did the show, who's saying that there has never been a time when you've had a wide open race on both sides for the governor's mansion and the mayor's office. And there's so much apathy about the candidates. And this is the paradox of California. You've got enormous wealth and innovation. I was out in California last week. Every time I go, I'm reminded what an extraordinary state it is. And yet this is a state that also can't fix basic problems like housing.

32:11Anthony Scaramucci:There's huge homelessness in Los Angeles, has been in San Francisco as well. They can't get their disaster response right. They've got terrible fires as they had last year. That kind of makes it very difficult, I think, for Democrats to make the case, which is what they need to do in 2028, that, look, we have a model. California for Democrats should be the model. They control the state. They've controlled the state for years. They ought to be able to go and say, look, we've got this great state, great economy. Here's our proof of concept. You've had four years of chaos after Donald Trump. And now we can show you that we can govern and look at California.

32:51Anthony Scaramucci:That's our example. And that's what we're going to follow. And instead, they've got a state that has a huge number of problems. They've got a really lackluster crop of candidates, both for the governor's mansion and for the LA mayor's office. And because of this weird, as you said, the weird procedure of what's called a jungle primary, where basically anyone can run in the primary, Democrat or Republican, and the top two go on to run off against each other, whether they're both Democrats, both Republicans, one Republican, one Democrat, then they go to fight it out in the election. So in theory, you could have two Democrats running against each other or two Republicans running against each other.

33:31Anthony Scaramucci:And the Republicans are making a run of this. They've got a compelling figure in the governor's race, Steve Hilton, who's actually by birth a Brit, a Fox News commentator who's been endorsed by Donald Trump. And you've got a similarly sort of MAGA-ish populist, MAGA likes this character, Spencer Pratt, who's running for the LA mayor's office. But really, the story of the California primary, I think, is the disconnect between what the Democrats should be able to offer and what they are offering in the state and the low turnout that this election is producing. They've already had early voting on both sides, but particularly on the Democratic side because the Democrats are looking at their candidates for governor and candidates for mayor and saying, is that all you can offer us?

34:19Anthony Scaramucci:I don't understand this, Anthony. California is such a dynamic state. Democrats rule the roost there. Why on earth don't they have better candidates for governor or for mayor?

34:32Katty Kay:There's a number of different reasons, but the main reason is that people feel in a one-party state that the system is sort of rigged. One of the questions I was going to ask you is if Vice President Harris ran, do you think she would be the front-runner here given the weakness of the candidates? I can tell by the expression on

34:52Anthony Scaramucci:your face by the way that no i don't think she would be she'd be in the muddle of mediocrity

34:57Katty Kay:she'd be in the muddle of mediocrity yeah so i think what happens here is if you're a big personality and a big business guy uh i'm talking way back uh al checke who was a brilliant guy brilliant entrepreneur uh spent gobs of money running the democratic machine took him out he He actually ran as a Democrat and they took him out and they went with the hoi polloi Democrat. And so what ends up happening in a state like California is you're into what I would call one party sclerosis. This is the same thing going on in New York. It's a one party state, 20 plus years without a governor as a Republican.

35:42Katty Kay:I think the last Republican governor for California, you could correct me if I'm wrong, was Arnold Schwarzenegger. And he was running as liberal as you could run as a California governor.

35:54Anthony Scaramucci:But New York City managed to produce, like his politics or not like them, you have to say that Mamdani is a very good political athlete and rises above the fray. He's certainly not mediocre. So New York could do that despite the fact that it's been one party rule in that state for even longer possibly. Why can't California do it?

36:13Katty Kay:Mondani is benefiting from the anti-incumbency mood. And this is something that Steve Hilton is going to try to benefit from, right? He's a different politician, of course. He's a right-leaning politician, considered to be somewhat MAGA, had his own Fox News show for a number of years. He's a fellow Brit. He actually worked for David Cameron many years ago.

36:36Anthony Scaramucci:And it always sounds weird hearing him campaigning in California. I don't know why it sounds weird, but it does sound kind of weird.

36:43Katty Kay:Well, I mean, that's the thing about America. You know, look at Arnold Schwarzenegger with his Austrian accent, you know.

36:48Anthony Scaramucci:You've interviewed Steve Hilton. What do you think of him?

36:50Katty Kay:Well, you know, look, I don't agree with Steve on a lot of political things that I've debated him on his show. And you could find the nasty tweet from Donald Trump one Saturday evening in the summer of 2020. I was on the show debating Steve about Trump and Trump was obviously watching and fired off. You know, I was a big loser or whatever he called me. He's never called me low IQ, though, Katty. I feel sort of disappointed that I haven't received that infective yet. But with Hilton and with Mondani, and Mondani's a very clever young man. He's done a very good job on social media. Hilton's more of our contemporary.

37:27Katty Kay:So I don't know if he has the same edge related to the social media. But they are riding this anti-incumbency wave. But, you know, here's the thing. Mandani ran as a Democrat. The Democratic governor, Hochul, supported him. And away you go. Hilton's going to have no support from that machinery.

37:47Anthony Scaramucci:And that's going to be his problem, that even if it's Hilton and Javier Becerra, who is the former head of HHS under Biden, those two are the most likely to get through. So, they'll be number one and number two, a Democrat and a Republican. But then California is a democratic state. Democrats will rally around Becerra and it'd be very hard, I think, don't you, to see Steve Hilton being elected. I mean, he could get through this round, but I don't see him becoming governor, realistically. The problem for Becerra is that there's a, I was being told this morning by this California strategist, that there is a campaign finance skeleton in his cupboard, which is being investigated at the moment.

38:28Anthony Scaramucci:There's a trial going on at the moment concerning some of his aides. And there is a chance some top Democrats in California are afraid that he could be the person who's elected governor and then get indicted after he's elected, which would be kind of a disaster for Democrats. This is an election that risks blowing up in the Democratic Party's face.

38:50Katty Kay:But again, you know, the Democrats control that state. You know, there's a woman by the name of Meg Whitman. Do you remember Meg Whitman?

38:58Anthony Scaramucci:Meg Whitman was the businesswoman, Hewlett Packard, right?

39:02Katty Kay:Meg Whitman went to Harvard Business School. She became the CEO of eBay. She did the transaction with Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and bought PayPal. She then left eBay, became the CEO of Hewlett Packard, very close friend of Governor Mitt Romney, an incredibly accomplished businesswoman. She spent$142 ,02010, so that's like almost$200 million today, given inflation, on her campaign. And she lost to Jerry Brown, who had been governor once before and returned to the governorship in California. But she had a whole set of reforms she wanted to put in place in California that never materialized. But to Jerry Brown's credit, okay, he did take some of those reforms.

39:52Katty Kay:He embedded them in his policies and he ran a budget surplus. You know, Newsom, Governor Newsom did inherit from Jerry Brown a budget surplus, which unfortunately, because of COVID, many other issues got squandered. But, you know, California is in a rough spot. Tom Steyer, we know him from the presidential campaigns. I know him way back from Goldman Sachs when he worked there. Very successful hedge fund manager. He has spent so far$213 million on his campaign. And he's running on progressive policy. He's going to tax the wealthy and the corporations. He wants a billionaire wealth tax, going to tax big tech, and he's going nowhere, Caddy.

40:36Katty Kay:$213 million spent going nowhere, vanity project for Tom Steyer. So to me, I don't know where you're going to reform this state of California unless you're going to have constitutional structural form at the federal level, meaning we're going to allow for demographic proportionality in districts. We're going to end gerrymandering. Because let me tell you what happens. You end gerrymandering, you'll get more Republicans in the House. You get more Republicans in the House, you'll have more Republican power in the state of California. It'll help prop up a candidate. So again, it's a domino effect.

41:16Katty Kay:They're all, you got to hit one domino to click into the other dominoes to make it fairer. But we know about one party systems and you can ask President Xi about this, the president of China, one party systems develop lots of corruption because you don't have the turnover of the elites. And so you've got lots of corruption going on in California as well.

41:37Anthony Scaramucci:And you've got exactly that in the three biggest voting states, Texas, California, New York. In the country, you've basically got one party rule. California is interesting. It has been, you know, like you said, it's been Republican. Obviously, it's produced very famous Republican governors, Reagan, Schwarzenegger. It's had more moderation at the top. It just needs some very good, strong leadership. And unfortunately, in neither the LA race nor the governor's race, are you seeing particularly stellar candidates. So the kinds of reforms that you're talking about would take somebody who is a very good leader.

42:12Anthony Scaramucci:And I don't see that in any of those candidates. Okay, we'll be watching that race, though, because that's going to be an important one when it comes back in November.

42:18Katty Kay:But your prediction is what, Caddy, before we leave?

42:21Anthony Scaramucci:My prediction is that Javier Becerra becomes the governor of California and Karen Bass becomes mayor.

42:29Katty Kay:Yeah, she gets reelected as mayor. Okay. All right. So we're in sync on both of those. We'll have to see what happens. But man, we're in major need of governmental reform, not only the federal level, but the state and local elections as well.

42:41Anthony Scaramucci:Guys, we haven't had much time to talk about it on the program, but we are going to talk about it more in our founding members episode, because one of the things that Donald Trump tweeted about in that tweet storm we mentioned in the first half of the show was the medical exam showing that he was in excellent health. He also tweeted about his cognitive tests too. The fact that the president keeps needing to bring this up is something in and of itself. So we have decided, and we are getting asked about it constantly, both his physical and his mental health and capacity. So we've decided to do a two-part miniseries exploring the truth about Trump's health and making sense of the claims that are flying around on this subject.

43:24Anthony Scaramucci:Is his health actually in serious decline? And another episode on what can and should be done about it, not perhaps just for Trump, but for future presidents as well. If you want to hear the first episode, it's going to be released on Wednesday. Sign up at TheRestIsPoliticsUS.com and become a founding member.

43:40Katty Kay:And Donald Trump is not the first president to hide his health, Katika.

43:44Anthony Scaramucci:Clearly not. Nope. Nope. We're going to talk about that too. And perhaps unless they can change the age of their presidency, he won't be the last either. We'll see you here later this week.

43:54Katty Kay:Okay. We'll see you later in the week.