201. Trump’s A Crypto Billionaire While Americans Are Getting Poorer

0:08Welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci. Katty is away. She's enjoying the 4th of July up in Maine with her children. But I've got the friend of friends, Kara Swisher. She's coming in live, coming in hot to substitute. And of course, Kara is the host of podcast On and Pivot. She's also an incredible journalist. And Cara, we've become very good friends. You used to troll me when I was in the White House. I did. But you and I have bonded.

0:39Kara Swisher:Yes. That's because you've changed for the better. Okay. Well, I appreciate you saying that. I don't really necessarily think I changed as much as I got my ass kicked. And you're right. I've changed. Who's kidding? In a good way. You're like Scott. You're like Scott. It's like from Wicked, you know. We changed each other. How about that? You've changed me for the better. All right, so we're going to talk about Trump's crypto billions, what happened there. I've heard you talk about it. I'd like to get your commentary. And then after the break, we're going to talk about birthright citizenship and what I would say is a loss for the conservatives or at least the Trumpists in the Republican Party.

1:16Right. Not necessarily the conservatives because I think it's an originalist idea when you read the decision. But let's go to Trump for a second. The most remarkable thing for me when I looked at the Trump situation, and I'm just going to give you these numbers, 927 pages, Carl. President Barack Obama, 11. President Joe Biden, seven pages of disclosure. 927 pages. So what does it speak to you about what we're allowing for? It's obviously gross violations. You could ask any law professor, any lawyer, gross violations of the Stock Act. God only knows he's going to pay any taxes, by the way, on any of that because he has tax immunity now.

2:03What does it say to you?

2:05Kara Swisher:I'm surprised he didn't steal more. You know what I mean? The enormous amount of grift here. And we don't see all of it because there's all these side deals with his sons when they go to other countries before Trump gets there. I don't think we even plumb the depth of this. This is the very best it could be. Right. I think probably it's much more. I think it's just one massive, you know, is it a mobster? Is it a con man? Is it just basic grift and corruption? What's really interesting is they spent so much time accusing Joe Biden's son of very minor corruption. And I believe that was corruption for sure.

2:41Kara Swisher:It's throughout Washington. There's always a son or a daughter that way back to Billy Beer. And, you know, it goes back and back and back for for centuries, essentially, in our country, at least. but this is like this is sort of institutionalized grift in a way that we haven't seen and I think when this family came back for the second time they realized they didn't steal enough the first time and then they came back for two reasons to stay out of prison and to uh to take advantage of of the you know the greatest platform in history to do grift in and they do it in plain sight which is really kind of amazing although I suspect there's all manner of stuff happening under the covers also at the same time.

3:22Yeah, well, we agree on that. I'm sure that the goal is 25 billion. They've told that to people. In my opinion, Karen, this is my opinion. I think he's probably hiding even more money in some of these offshore accounts. I'm sure he's got a funnel system that he's taking advantage of. But I want to talk about the American reaction to this. Trump has said something that really resonates with me. When they put the microphone in front of them, he says, well, everybody's making money. He's used the word, well, this is just peanuts compared to some of the multi-tech billionaires and so forth. And then the last thing he says, and this is the thing I really want you to respond to, Kara, nobody cares.

4:03Kara Swisher:Yeah. Nobody cares. I don't believe that to be true, but I see his point. Nobody among his ilk cares. That's the group. I think average citizens feel like they've been screwed, you know, and we're paying the bill for whatever it happens to be, whether he's building a golf course in our, for taxpayer money or the Kennedy Center or the East Wing. I think deep in the heart of most Americans, there is a sense of fairness in terms of like, I don't think people all want to be grifters, right? Like I want to get mine, like that kind of, there is that element of the United States, It's like, let's get while the getting's good kind of thing.

4:40Kara Swisher:But on the basic level, I think most people see this for what it is. It's a Putin-esque grab for money and power and influence. And everyone assumes Trump is a grifter, right? Like, I don't think it's a new, fresh idea on him. He feels like that for a lot of people. You know, I always used to say he was a poor person's idea of a rich person, right? This idea of smart deal-making, that is absolutely not true. but I do think people there's a basic feeling of lack of fairness here especially two things the kids right all the various kids and and the hangers-on like the Witkoffs and the Lutniks and then also when the tech billionaires are doing it right that feels I think people are very much reacting and you see that in the in the fig you know in the polling figures is that these guys put in 25 million into the into the machine and they get back 25 billion essentially So I think there is reaction.

5:36Kara Swisher:It's just not necessarily around him because I think people think of this of him. I don't know. I just feel like it's calculated into his imagery. Well, I think you and I grew up pretty similarly in terms of our economic class. I just want you to respond to a couple of things. This is something that really worries me. We're telling the middle class in this country or the working class that there are two rule books. Okay, so if you're a nurse and you have a 401k and you got to make an early withdrawal, the bank is going to charge you a$50 fee for that early withdrawal. A teacher who misreports income to the IRS, a teacher, she's going to get audited.

6:17the president can have 21 ,000 trades if he's late on his filing he's going to pay a$200 fine you know this is the stock act fine if you don't file properly what is it what does it say about the cold this is now we're now in the differential of enforcement you use Putin that's sort of what goes on in Russia what does it say to people I mean to me yes I'm sure Richard Nixon was corrupt I'm sure we can talk about people. You and I grew up in the 70s and the 80s. I'm not saying there wasn't corruption, but we thought there was some level of merit-based fairness. What is the message culturally, Cara, that people are hearing from all this?

6:59Kara Swisher:Well, it's cynicism. It's like, hey, everyone's on the take, right? Every government official's on the take. He's trying to sort of sully everybody. Like, hey, it was sort of similar when he said, hey, we're brutal too, right? The United States is brutal, too. So why are we mad about Saudi Arabia? And that's not really the message you want to give to kids. It's not the message you want to give to the average person, which is like, hey, they're fucking everyone. Why don't we fuck people, too? Like, we do it, too. and I do think again at the heart of America there's there's sort of a twin America this has been around the Gilded Age you know people taking advantage of the monopolization I was just looking at oddly enough Thomas Nast cartoons he attacked you know the the oligopolies and the monopolies and the they used to use octopus if you remember he used to always do all those cartoons I do think at the heart of America this this lack of fairness is is is an anathema and it goes through cycles it goes through these weird cycles and he's just doing it so explicitly that it becomes um manifest if that makes sense and i i have said and i get a lot of pushback for this that i doubt he will pay a price for this i think he'll just die right on a pile of money and uh inflammation essentially um and and i but i do think the the kids and the hangers-on and the tech billionaires will be paying a price at some point.

8:23Kara Swisher:I don't know if he will. I honestly don't. I don't think there's any getting this guy, largely because of the actuarial tape, at least he's pretty old, right? Ultimately, it's just not going to catch up to him, unfortunately. It did with Eugene Carroll this week, which he's trying desperately to get out of, but eventually he lost that one. He lost a few cases. He lost a few cases this week. He won a few cases. He's able to fire people indiscriminately, just couldn't fire Lisa Cook. But I'm going to make a statement. I want you to say, is it true or false and react to the statement? Okay. I feel that Americans don't resent wealth.

8:57I think we still live in an aspirational society where people are like, God bless you, made your money, that's fine. But I do think they resent two sets of rules. Am I wrong in thinking that or are they apathetic to the two sets of rules?

9:11Kara Swisher:No, I think they aren't. I think what happens is you get apathetic if you think everyone's on the take. Like all the rich people are getting theirs and I don't get any. Two things it creates. One, it could create apathy where everyone's like, oh, this is the way it is. This is the world I live in. Maybe I should try to get some for me. Or it creates anger. And you do see it, whether it's, you know, Mr. Wonderful and the data centers. He's trying to blame everyone else. They just don't like him. Like, that's it. Like you see expressions of it in the data centers. You see expressions of it in all over the place.

9:42Kara Swisher:The data centers is a whole different group of people than the than the representative who sued the Kennedy Center like no we're not going to do this or it expresses itself in different ways sometimes it can express itself violently right that the rich people get everything and that's my fear is that it creates this sort of slow burning anger underneath the ground with people and you you will see you know as I think I told you this and I talk about it is when I was talking about income inequality and I think that's where it really like it's okay if everyone's moving upward, but it's not okay when just a certain group is, right?

10:18Kara Swisher:And so when you're, when you're, you can't keep up with inflation or you can't afford gas, it starts to build this anger. And one of the things I, many years ago, I was, you know, the income inequality is really rather vast at this point. It's at some critical alarm, five alarm fire level. And I said to this one person that, you know, you can either deal with income inequality and bring people up, or you're going to armor plate your Tesla. And I began to realize this person kind of wanted to armor plate their Tesla. And then, of course, the Cybertruck came out, which is a perfect sort of personification of that, or a visualization of that.

10:55Kara Swisher:And I do think there could be anger, right? It has popped up in this country many times, you know, of this inequity. And then it tends to equalize itself, right? it tends to equalize but the fact that we haven't raised the minimum wage nationally the fact that people can't buy how the housing numbers you know are going down and that means birth numbers go down but that's why we have a birth problem we have a housing problem at the that's why you know everyone's like homelessness what do we do about it i'm like homes you know it's very easy and so people feel they can't afford or that there's no future they get very dystopian and violent, absolutely violent.

11:33Kara Swisher:And it should be not a surprise when that happened. You know, we're in complete agreement. And I made some comments about this last week. And I had this very smug billionaire. And I love these billionaires because there's a few of these billionaires on Twitter. I'm not going to mention the guy's name because I don't want to out him or shame him. But this is a very smug billionaire who was deriding me. Remember, if you're a billionaire, you're an expert on everything everything so you know neurology you're an expert on vaccine culture everything you know smarter than you in every facet of life uh and he basically said to me that that i was suggesting that confiscation through taxation was a market-based strategy which of course i wasn't but then he says to me in his tweet back to my commentary about income inequality that I have no balls and that I'm calling for expropriation and mythical bullshit.

12:32So this is the tone deafness that is out there. I responded to the guy, I said, hey man, I got you down as a smug, not worried about it, but of all your traits, it is the arrogance that will leave you the most bitter and alone. So again, I'm just talking about a fair deal for people, giving people some education in a very rich country and some healthcare.

12:55Kara Swisher:Not some healthcare, full healthcare. Full healthcare. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know what I mean. To get them to the starting block, Cara, you know, I mean, that's all people want, you know. Right. But why do we even have to ask? Right. That's the whole thing. To me, you know, it was really interesting today because Mamdani was talking about just lowering your air conditioning. Right. Very normal thing for a politician to do. And immediately, both Ted Cruz and Nikki Haley, who literally hasn't met a thing she can't suck up to both of them said ah communism and literally two seconds later everyone found their own tweets or announcements of we're having an energy crisis lower your thing and i was like how first of all what is wrong with you you are you you have to take everything someone does and attack them that's one on a normal request by a politician and two how small do you have to be not to to have everything and not want to give like i've been thinking about this a lot, Anthony, a lot lately, is that they're so hateful towards everyone else.

13:58Kara Swisher:They're so like, I was watching this exchange between Nicholas Kristof and Elon about the cuts of USAID, which have led to deaths, period. There's no question. And of course, he always does this trick. He goes, name one person who died, right? And of course, Nicholas Kristof, who's an amazing reporter, named 20 and said there's millions more behind that. And of course, his response wasn't, oh, okay. He got what he asked for. And instead he goes, Nicholas Kristof is evil. That's their argument. They don't want to acknowledge the hatefulness towards other humans. The callous indifference is going to get them in trouble.

14:35Kara Swisher:100%. I will say this to you, though. The holy grail of American consumerism, and this is sort of like the Holy Trinity, is ice cubes, which I don't understand you guys in the UK. What's up with you guys? you give me one ice cube? They give you one? They give you one ice cube. Guys, when I'm asking for ice in the restaurant, I want like a bucket of ice. Okay. Number two, shower pressure. I mean, drip, drip, guys, what's going on? We are together with Trump on that one. We like it. We like shower pressure. I am. I want to be hosed down like I'm an elephant in the circus. And then the third thing is air conditioning.

15:10Okay. Guys, I hear Mondani and he's absolutely right but you know what i do like it at 64 degrees i'm sorry i know but it's not an issue of

15:18Kara Swisher:communism he's trying to manage the electrical grid that everyone doesn't lose it i think he's doing actually and i wasn't a supporter but i actually think he's doing a good job and i think he needs to be commended for it and by the way when i say that on this podcast i get 60 plus year old mostly italians like you and me lighting me up telling me that i'm loving communism and so forth. I'm not. Results will matter. Results are what matters, right? Exactly. I'm just trying to be objective. Even those people will be like, oh, I guess it's just fine. Like, go to New York. I mean, it's so funny. The Knicks, when the people climbed the Empire State Building, which I just loved yesterday, I was like, go for it, kids.

15:58Kara Swisher:And they're really hot people that did it. And then Taylor's just getting married mess. I was like, New York couldn't be better at this moment. No, New York is back. New York is back and New York is hot. And by the way, you know, I own a restaurant in New York. The street in front of my restaurant is clean. Right. Okay. So the mayor gets it and you can dislike me for saying that. I don't care. I want to go to something that really upsets me and I just want to read this to you. Okay. So we got the 2.2 billion that he made and that's the at least number. At least. But there's$86 million in here of settlements.

16:36Ready? Meta paid 24.5 million. Alphabet paid $22 million. CBS and ABC each paid$16 million to the quote-unquote Trump's library for, I guess, they said stuff about him that he didn't like, so he sued them, even though we have a First Amendment. But you know these prologarchs better than anybody, and you know the media better than anybody, and that's basically extortion money. And what's your reaction to that? Because that That was the numbers that really clared at me.

17:08Kara Swisher:Godfather too. Extortion money. You want to keep this restaurant going? You got a nice restaurant, Anthony. You don't want anything to happen to it, like a fire bomb or something. Someone was interesting, this guy Paul Graham, who I've tangled with a bunch of times, but recently he's actually been very truthful in a lot of ways. He used to run, or maybe he still does, a big entrepreneurial effort in Silicon Valley. And one of the things, there's a story that OpenAI is going to give a certain amount of its stock to this trust fund thing at 5%. And it's about 46, if it goes the way they hope it does, it's about$46 billion into this trust counts for kids, right?

17:47Kara Swisher:And so someone was like, oh, it's just a paper play. And then Graham said, actually, they're giving five so they don't get asked for 10, right? So it was really, I thought that was very canny response because it is this idea of we put this money in, whether you're Elon putting$250 million into the presidential race, and then you get out$5 billion in contracts. Like that's what it seemed, the whole thing seems like to me. And same thing with, you know, I talked to people at Disney and they're like, oh, we didn't want to go through Discovery. It's just now they're fighting. Disney's now had it, right?

18:21Kara Swisher:Especially with that idiot at the FCC, that moron, Brendan Carr. And so there's some fighting back, but in some level, it's like, oh, it's going to cost us$20 million to litigate this or, you know, let's just pay them. And to me, you don't pay them. You just don't pay them because, you know, they keep coming back for more. And that's the problem, especially, look, I can see Meta doing it in a second. Like, why not? Whatever. It's just it's like a it's like a parking fee for them or Google, whoever happens to pay these things. For those people to do it, they don't even think twice. for media companies to do it is really a bad precedent, especially the 60 Minutes one that they sell.

19:02Kara Swisher:They didn't do anything wrong, right? And in fact, they edited a Trump interview. So the one at ABC was a little more complex, I suspect. It was sort of been like the Fox case. Discovery wouldn't have been great of texts and stuff like that. That was my guess, is they probably said something in text that was problematic and would have looked bad. but it's just a payment it's just a vig right that means a vig well look at what the bbc did so the b trump suing the bbc it was at the 10 to 10 billion dollar number the bbc said you know that's great we would like all your text messages all the messaging and this is basically all the stuff that the special prosecutor was digging up on trump uh and we we know that there's substantial evidence that he was involved in that movement okay on the capitol on the 6th of january so He can't disclose all that.

19:55So that case likely gets dropped, don't you think, Carol? I thought that was a brilliant move by the BBC.

19:59Kara Swisher:Oh, absolutely. I think any time you push back at this guy, look at, E.T. and Carol is like, you know, they just tried to get her to say, can you put off the five? She's like, no, give me my fucking money. Like, I've fought you enough. And she's owed another 80-some that she may or may not get. 83 million, yeah. 83. I think she's going to ultimately get it and then like give it to like you know women's rights organizations is my guess is what she'll do but um I mean she's older I mean she said that she's like she's going to take a little bit go to Italy and then use the rest for whatever she's she's just been the whole amount I say um it's just vig after vig and I just I think people are tired of it and ultimately when you push back like Murdoch did around this lawsuit with the Wall Street he's come back again.

20:43Kara Swisher:It's a terrible lawsuit. They've got, as long as you're sort of buttoned down on your own behavior, fight back. Like, go for it. Come on. Because your discovery is going to suck. The Trump discovery is going to be terrible. He'll try to hide immunity, President this and that. We're going to take a break, but I want you to explain this to me. Rupert Murdoch being sued by President Trump, but there he is at the state dinner with King Charles. Okay. Jamie Dimon being sued by donald trump he is but there he is at versailles at the signing of the mou so tell me well they're pretending he's a normal person he you got to show up for some things like there's they're trying to pretend normalcy when this is just a grifter right and so ultimately when they're really coming for something good they don't let it happen like no you can't have my you know gold you may not have my gold but i'll show up at your stupid thing and just like smile at you but the Behind the scenes, they're like, fuck you, you asshole.

21:41Kara Swisher:And Diamond, let me just say, Diamond's been an interesting case because he's been quite critical appropriately, right? Especially on the ballroom. Yeah, he's been, he's really, I thought, I think he and Murdoch have played it well. And you know Murdoch, he's like, I fucking hate this guy, but I'll give him, I'll throw him a this and that. I'll go to his thing. But you notice, he pushes back when it comes to the real deal. I think Jamie, for me, you know, Jamie is probably the smartest person in our community, in my opinion. I would agree. And I think he has the right touch on these things. And I'm sure he's very frustrated by the stupid lawsuit, which is specious and, again, one that will likely get dropped.

22:23All right, we're going to take a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about birthright citizenship and the anchor babies in the Trump family when we come right back.

22:39Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci, joined by Kara Swisher. Kara, I want to talk about birthright citizenship. It looks like it was a win for the Constitution and the 14th Amendment this week. Of course, the president congratulated China. He's got this whole theory in his head that people are running over here to have babies, to create citizens, which is a bunch of nonsense. Nonsense. But I want you to go first. Give me your opinion on the case and give me your opinion on this very partisan court citing against the president. What do you think that means?

23:14Kara Swisher:I thought it was rather close. I thought it was disturbing. I thought it would be a much different, I think the one, I guess it was Kavanaugh. They said it was because of the federal law and the government can change the law. A couple of them are like, look, this is in the constitution it's pretty clear right and let's not let's not quibble over that but there was one that said it was just the law and the others said just let's change the constitution and it sort of was eye-opening to me that this many people would would go with that i mean it's not you know look this again speaking historically america loves immigrants and hates immigrants you know that right you know my my grandparents and your grandparents came from italy uh my some a pair my grandparents were here since the dawn of time, the original immigrants.

24:02Kara Swisher:And the others came from Italy in the early in the century, in the 1900s. And my grandfather in particular was born in Italy and then came over here. And my grandmother was born here to Italian immigrants who may or may not have been, I don't know, like I assume they eventually became, you know, whatever was in place at the time. But there's always been sort of a hatred of whatever immigrants came through. And it sort of reached a ridiculous, again, this is another thing that comes and goes, right? And it's sickening, actually, because immigrants built this country. We both know this. And one, you know, this guy that just kicked this goal in the World Cup was his parents were here.

24:47Kara Swisher:She couldn't fly back to London. He was born in the United States. He was able to play for the United States. I don't think there was any nefarious scheme happening. She couldn't fly as a pregnant person back to London to have her child. And so he's an American citizen. What's really gross is that there's one person in particular that's sort of egging Trump. Trump by nature is a racist and a misogynist and probably, you know, hates all people of color. And also, in my opinion, he's a white supremacist on top of all those things. He's certainly adjacent, that's for sure. He certainly doesn't mind them in any way.