197. Vance Vs Hegseth: Who Takes the Fall for Trump’s Iran Deal?

21:28Katty Kay:He's not going to do that, but I'm going to say this before we go to a break and talk about my fellow Catholic, J.D. Vance. We'll talk about the irony of that. But Cady's not going to do that. But I'll tell you what he should do, because he's tight with Susie Wiles. He should stage a glide path out of the administration, because Trump is going to fire him, and Trump is going to humiliate him. And if Rubio's smart, he'll be like, okay, Susie, I'm preparing for my 2028 presidential race. And so therefore, I've got to glide myself out of here. And I'm sure some rich guy will pay Trump 50,$100 million to be Secretary of State for the last couple of years here.

22:09Katty Kay:Let me and you figure out a plan to get me out of here before Trump decapitates me. He's not going to do the brave thing like saying, hey, dude, you're a crazy person. I resign. He's not going to do that. He's afraid of Trump's primary, the hold that Trump has on the primary caucus.

22:25Anthony Scaramucci:Trump has just put a millstone round the necks of J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. I agree with that. And it is going to take a heck of a lot of explaining because there are not many people who think this is going to serve America well. It's cost an awful amount of money. 13 Americans have died. 500 Americans have been injured. Countless Iranians have also died. And Iran ends up in a stronger position. So taking this defeat, which is what it was, America has just negotiated the terms of its surrender. And trying to explain that when you're running for president of the United States in only a year's time, which is when the primaries really kick off, Trump has just made it a heck of a lot harder for both J.D.

23:08Anthony Scaramucci:Vance and Marco Rubio. Worth reading, guys. We're going to go to a break and talk about J.D. Vance's book launch. But it is worth reading Senator Cassidy's tweet that he put out about Reagan rolling over in his grave. We now have the people who are actually who Donald Trump primaried. And guess what happens? the wounded bears. Now, saying what all of the rest of the Republican caucus is thinking.

23:31Katty Kay:I lost the election. So now I'm going to be an honest man. You know, I lost the election. So now I'm going to be principled.

23:39Anthony Scaramucci:I lost my balls, but now I found them. Okay, we're going to take a break.

23:47Anthony Scaramucci:Anthony, you have a few kids. I imagine you're looking forward to Father's Day.

23:51Katty Kay:It's a special day in the UK, also here in the US. And look, as a dad myself, I wanted to give our listeners a quick tip. This year, why not give your dad a membership to the Restless Politics US?

24:05Anthony Scaramucci:And because we love all the dads out there, those who send us questions who are in our founding members club, those who come to our shows and come up and speak to us afterwards, we are offering a 25 % discount on an annual gift membership.

24:16Katty Kay:I mean, come on, Caddy. What dad wouldn't want our exclusive founding members Q &A, our members only miniseries, ad free listening, early access to our live shows, ticketing and much, much more.

24:31Anthony Scaramucci:Just head to the rest is politics. U.S. dot com. You can click on gifts and the gift will land straight in your dad's inbox right on Father's Day.

24:39Katty Kay:It's an excellent Father's Day present. I would know. Go to the restispoliticsus.com and click on something to make your dad a founding member. Happy Father's Day, everybody.

24:52Anthony Scaramucci:Happy Father's Day.

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26:30Anthony Scaramucci:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics. J.D. Vance is out with a new memoir. He wrote Hillbilly Elegy 10 years ago, massively successful book, propelled him into the public spotlight, was the platform really from which he became the senator from Ohio and then went on to become the vice president. It was a book that was the story of the hardship of Appalachia growing up in this difficult town where there were a lot of drug issues. And it was wildly heralded by liberals when it came out in 2016, who were desperate to try to understand how they'd missed the rise of Donald Trump as the guidebook for MAGA and for white working class Americans and the hard times that they were going through in the heartland of the country.

27:20Anthony Scaramucci:And now J.D. Vance is out with a new memoir, Communion, Finding My Way Back to Faith. Tempted to say that J.D. Vance is out with a new memoir called The Art of the Deal, because he is the one out there selling the Iran deal, as we just spoke about. But anyway, no, this one is about his faith. And this is a sort of manifesto for the role of religion in public life. He talks about transitioning from Protestant Christianity to atheism, to Catholicism, talks about his faith giving him a sense of purpose, and about how his wife, Usha, who is a practicing Hindu, has actually encouraged him over the years to become a practicing Christian and to get to church every Sunday because she says it makes him a better man.

28:03Anthony Scaramucci:Full disclosure, I have not read the book. I know, Anthony, that you got an advanced copy of it and you've had a chance to read it. So I want you to talk about the book. I'll talk about the rollout of the book because he's done a slew of interviews this week on different networks on American television that I think have been very revealing of what he is trying to do to position himself to run for 2028. And we can talk about whether or not he did a good job on that. But you read the book, what did you think of it?

28:31Katty Kay:I liked the book. And I like his writing style. And I believe he wrote the book because I read Hillbilly Elegy. And I actually took my copy of Hillbilly Elegy and I compare the writing style and I think it's him. And I think it's a very clear voice and there's a lot of ambiguity to J.D. Manson. There's a lot of hypocrisy, but this is really a man in search of something. He's trying to find himself. There's no question about that. I guess I would say about the book is that he talked about returning to Christianity. He chose Catholicism, explains why, but he says he was in the secular wilderness and the pursuit of material goods and ambition.

29:15Katty Kay:But he's lying to himself because he has changed his mind and he's morphed himself five or six times politically to pursue his ambition. And so if he was a straight up guy caddy, he would be like, hey man, this is how I grew up. This is what I learned at Yale Law School. I actually have a high IQ and I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. And so it's just like, I've said this to you off air caddy. I was at Harvard and I had these whiny boarding school types waxing and waning. And I'd look over at them and say, hey, dude, there are kids putting in sheet rock in my neighborhood that are smarter than you.

29:51Katty Kay:But you know what? The father puts in sheet rock and that's why they're putting in sheet rock. So why don't you take a breath here? And that's the part of the book that I like about J.D. Vance is a very, very smart guy. but he's lost his way he he's trying to tell you that his catholicism has re-anchored him into a less material position but the words that come out of his mouth and i'll let you address the book tour is really about the staging ground for his ambition and it's not it's very disingenuous caddy okay so if you just if you took the two books and you read them and jd vance was not pursuing this wild ambition and doing stuff in his political career that he knows is wrong, then you'd look at them and say, this is a guy that is on a journey of self-discovery, like a Joseph Campbell journey, rite of passage.

30:46Katty Kay:But what this really is, is a staging book for his ambition. And by the way, you know this, Caddy, he just hired one of Trump's deputy chiefs staff to replace his chief of staff. So he's telling you, first of all, I am running. Remember I said I wasn't sure if he was running? He's telling you, I am running and I'm running full MAGA with Trump's MAGA team. One last point, he got permission from the White House and Trump's inner circle. Of course, Trump himself didn't read the book, but they gave him the thumbs up on the book because he's going full MAGA. Okay. So that's all I have to say. But I would recommend to somebody that hates J.D.

31:25Katty Kay:Vance, by the way, actually read his book. Yeah.

31:28Anthony Scaramucci:No, I'm definitely going to get a copy now.

31:30Katty Kay:Because you need to understand him because this son of a bitch could end up as president of the United States. We have another nut as the president of the United States and you better get yourself at least some understanding of who he is.

31:42Anthony Scaramucci:We're going to do a series over the summer on J.D. Vance because, yes, he is running. And I think that the irony, the disconnect of somebody saying, as he does in the book, because I've read the reviews of the book, I've got my ambition in check. Where did he write the book from, Anthony? I'm just trying to think. Where was he living when he was writing the book? I mean, what was he doing? Hanging out with his family in Ohio? No. He was writing the book from the vice president's mansion. The Naval Observatory. I don't think you can, with a straight face, claim that you have your ambition in check and write a book from the Vice President's mansion.

32:28Anthony Scaramucci:But I think you're right. And this is one of the things I want to talk about on the book tour that I thought was interesting, because one of the things he writes about in the book is that in 2021, he goes out on one of the shows and says that liberal women without kids are a ruining America.

32:46Katty Kay:The cat lady comment.

33:16Anthony Scaramucci:But actually, this shift isn't moral growth. This is just responsiveness to whatever is politically expedient in that moment. In 2021, it was expedient for him to perform at full cat lady anti-woke Magary. In 2026, his numbers are underwater with female voters. So it's expedient for him to apologize. That isn't a man finding his values. That's a man finding his market. It's a very different proposition. I think that was my takeaway from even that incident. But you see him on these shows. He goes on The View, which is a left-leaning show. He comes out because he is so smart. This is an intelligent guy and super articulate, and he's kind of unflappable.

34:10Anthony Scaramucci:So he comes out onto the set of The View and he's looking tanned and he's looking relaxed. He starts off with a joke about how, so this is a show of MAGA Republicans, right? That's what my comms team told me. It sounds horribly awkward and canned, but he's trying to do the self-deprecating thing. He's trying to be J.D. Vance, who is accessible and wants to talk about his kids and can bat away because he's smart. He bats away their questions about policy and immigration and detention centers. He's clever enough to not say anything that's going to get him in trouble with the boss, but he's also got a real keen eye on trying to be the more personable, self-deprecating J.D.

34:58Anthony Scaramucci:Vance. But then he goes on Fox and a different J.D. Vance appears. This is the J.D. Vance who is contemptuous and combative and dismisses congressional Republicans as, quote, it doesn't bother me that congressional Democrats disagree with our policies. It bothers me that they are just terrible people, so many of them. How does the terrible people, J.D. Vance, fit with the guy on The View who is talking about how he's been boneheaded and wants to appeal to everybody and is being self-deprecating?

35:36Katty Kay:It's not working for him, as you know. It's not working for him. It doesn't land because it's not authentic. That's the problem. But Katie, I want to give another piece of evidence to what you're saying right out of the book. I went back and compared communion to Hillbilly Elegy to see the comparable writing styles. He says in the book, and I quote, my family's problems were not created by governments or corporations or anyone else. he's now writing in communion no i got that wrong my family's problems were created by governments and corporations through free trade and offshoring okay it can't be both right so and he also talks about ann rand who wrote atlas shrugged she comes out of communism in russia and she becomes this wild free market libertarian and he and peter thiel are acolytes of hers and now he's transitioning from that into something that's more populist and protectionist, there's no core to the moral anchor.

36:41Katty Kay:Okay. And again, I'm not defending myself, I'm just explaining myself for a moment. I see what's going on in the country. I'm traveling with Trump. I'm like, all right, 69, 70 year old guy, he might be able to help create a post-partisan presidency and transform the country. Man, did I get that wrong. And I've had to eat crow for the last decade, But at least I'm honest about it. Vance is not doing that. Vance is like, hey, man, I want to be president so badly that I'm going to keep flipping my position. And when Hillary took the Chicago Cub hat, because she was in Chicago, and then she flew to New York and put the Yankee hat on, that was it.

37:18Katty Kay:You can't do that. Okay. I don't know. What's your British football team? Do you have a British football team?

37:24Anthony Scaramucci:Well, Tom supports Man City. So I guess that's, but Felix supports Arsenal. So I've got two. That's a problem when they play against each other. But there we go. Let's go with Man City. I can't be a Man United supporter.

37:35Katty Kay:If you're running for office and you were a Man City supporter as a kid and you moved, and now you're going to be a Man United or whatever, the people are going to look at you and say, they're going to give you that. Okay. Then they, no, right. This is what Vance is doing. Okay. So the title of the book should have been Weather Vane for My Ambition. Okay. But having said all that, it is a really good book. If you're a bookworm and you like good writing, this guy knows how to write, Caddy.

38:07Anthony Scaramucci:He knows how to write and he knows how to talk.

38:09Katty Kay:And he's a very good writer. He's a very smart guy. I would love to sit down with fans and say, hey, dude, knock it off. If you really want to be president at a time of your nation's peril, talk the truth to the people.

38:21Anthony Scaramucci:And I don't know that he is capable of that.

38:23Katty Kay:Definitely not.

38:24Anthony Scaramucci:Or rather, it's possible that if we were to say, will the real J.D. Vance stand up? The real J.D. Vance is the guy that goes to the Munich Security Conference and slams America's allies. Possibly. The real J.D. Vance is the guy that gets Zelensky into the Oval Office and berates a wartime leader in a way that is mortifying to Zelensky and actually to Vance himself. That's the real J.D. Vance. It's not the guy who is trying to be cuddly and self-deprecating. That's the show he puts on when the room wants to see it. But it's a show. And I think we are living in a time where audiences and voters will reward this weird commodity called authenticity.

39:16Anthony Scaramucci:And you can't play act at authenticity. It's a hard thing for you to put on as a coat of armor. You just have to have it. And Trump has it. Trump has authenticity. He doesn't give a shit. He'll say, oh yeah, give them missiles, having spent the last 10 years saying don't give them any missiles. Give them money, having spent the last 10 years. And he doesn't care.

39:37Katty Kay:That's his brand. That's his brand. He's got two things that come out of his mouth at the same time.

39:41Anthony Scaramucci:But JD's brand is inauthentic. And I think that makes it very hard for him to win over voters.

39:49Katty Kay:So before we go, from your journalistic eyes, as objective as possible, what do you think the generic opinion is of the american voter of jd vance like you said okay here's the tear sheet like you and i would let's say we had a british football player here's the scouting report what is the tear sheet on jd vance i actually don't think they have one very much at

40:14Anthony Scaramucci:the moment and that's why he's doing this book tour now because he knows he's got to get out there and he has to at least get people to have an opinion of him. But if they have an opinion at all, it's the opinion of the vice president. He hasn't said terribly much. He's a guy who, if you were going to start replaying the clips, what's the highlight reel that will inform people's opinion going into 28? The highlight reel has to include his dressing down of Zelensky in the Oval Office. It has to include the Munich Security Conference. And then you'll get a little bit of this view interview, which was a little shambolic and chaotic, thrown in where he's trying to be, I'm just a regular guy whose wife is having another baby and give me a onesie and I'll make a silly joke about myself.

41:07Katty Kay:So it's a confused view. All right. Well, let me rephrase the question. Is it working for him, what he's trying to do?

41:13Anthony Scaramucci:All of the poly markets and the betting markets and the opinion polls show it's not working for him, Antony. He was ahead in the polling to be the 28 Republican nominee, but he is sinking fast and Marco Rubio is rising fast. So at the moment, I don't think it's working for him. What do you think? Let me throw the question back to you.

41:35Katty Kay:I don't think it's working for him. And I would also say that it could work for him. I would also say that it could work for him. It's not going to work for him. We did a special on Rubio. Our founding membership got to view that two-part special on Rubio. We're going to do it on Vance, as you said. But to understand Rubio, Rubio is way more cunning. And Rubio knows when to talk and when not to talk. And he got hammered by Trump after his Munich Security Conference speech. See, Vance played to the audience of one, Rubio played to the European audience. And when he came home, he got hammered and Trump literally said at an open mic, if he speaks like that again, I may fire him.

42:20Katty Kay:And ho, ho, ha, ha. And he was joking, but there's a lot of seriousness in that. But Rubio is more cunning than Vance. And so I think Vance is also, because he's unanchored, like Rubio is unanchored and he doesn't give a shit about being unanchored. Vance is unanchored, but he's trying to write in the book Communion that he's anchored. Do you see what I mean? And you're almost better off saying, you know what? My brand is I'm unanchored. I'm going to say whatever -

42:48Anthony Scaramucci:That at least is authentic.

42:49Katty Kay:Right. I'm unanchored, but I'm going to try to prove to you that I'm anchored. Do you see what I mean?

42:52Anthony Scaramucci:My brand is that I am super ambitious and I want to become president of the United States.

42:59Katty Kay:Exactly.

43:00Anthony Scaramucci:That's the authentic JD Vance.

43:02Katty Kay:Exactly.

43:02Anthony Scaramucci:But he doesn't want to say that. He wants to say, I'm hanging out with my family and finding God.

43:09Katty Kay:One last thing, which I think is important here, is that the Catholic vote, 70 million Catholics, a 2 % swing in the Catholics in the swing states could solve the election. And if you're not a New York Knick fan, you may have missed this, but Spike Lee, his personal friend of mine and the Oscar winning director, was wearing a Pope Leo jersey, New York Knick Pope Leo jersey, signed by Pope Leo. okay and if you didn't get the symbolism of that if you're marco rubio or jd vance and you're not paying close enough attention because we know that spike lee dislikes both those guys and we also know the pope dislikes both those guys as evidenced by that these guys are going to have trouble both of them with the catholic vote without the support of the pope so don't forget that in this whole equation.

44:13Katty Kay:So, you know, the book is not working, brother. I'm just letting you know the book is not working because people see through your malarkey.

44:20Anthony Scaramucci:We're going to leave it there, but do join us when we start that series for our founding members. You can become a founding member at therestispoliticsus.com. We're going to release that over the summer. So we'll let you know when that is coming out because J.D. Vance could be the next president of the United States and I'm excited to dig into his profile more and see if we can find some redeeming authentic qualities to the vice president of the united states wait a

44:46Katty Kay:minute i gotta sarah huckabee we're done now a little tissue box i'm gonna dig you out hold on a second 40 minutes of podcasting i've been fired again sarah go back to being governor of arkansas all right thank you guys we'll see you next week

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45:45Anthony Scaramucci:Anthony you have a few kids I imagine you're looking forward to Father's Day

45:49Katty Kay:it's a special day in the UK also here in the US and look as a dad myself I wanted to give our listeners a quick tip this year why not give your dad a membership to the rest of this politics US

46:02Anthony Scaramucci:and because we love all the dads out there those who send us questions who are in our founding members club those who come to our shows and come up and speak to us afterwards, we are offering a 25 % discount on an annual gift membership.

46:15Katty Kay:I mean, come on, Katty. What dad wouldn't want our exclusive founding members Q &A, our members-only miniseries, ad-free listening, early access to our live shows, ticketing, and much, much more?

46:29Anthony Scaramucci:Just head to therestispoliticsus.com. You can click on gifts, and the gift will land straight in your dad's inbox right on Father's Day.

46:37Katty Kay:It's an excellent Father's Day present. I would know. Go to the restispoliticsus.com and click on something to make your dad a founding member. Happy Father's Day, everybody.

46:50Anthony Scaramucci:Happy Father's Day.