207. Is Trump Preparing for a Ground Invasion of Iran?

17:11Anthony Scaramucci:Oh, I went too. I loved it. Did you?

17:14Katty Kay:Yeah, I thought it was brilliant.

17:15Anthony Scaramucci:That Trojan horse scene is fantastic.

17:17Katty Kay:Yeah, and I read the book four times. And so I thought he followed the story and the critics can go scram because the movie's brilliant. But what I didn't remember, which I want to emphasize here, is Odysseus is now talking to us 3 ,000 years later because Odysseus was his own enemy. He had his pride and he had his ego. Caddy and I've often talked about this. When you say, well, we're going to do this or we're going to do that or bomb their bridges and tunnels, that's your pride and ego. And what we found in the Odyssey, he couldn't find his way home because he was cursed not by the gods caddy he was cursed by his own pride and he was cursed by his own ego okay even when he turned around and he shot the cyclops okay this was his ego speaking more than it was the gravitas that you need to be a real leader and we're you know i don't want to use the word but we're effed and i'm going to tell you why we're effed because we have nobody that is willing to call this out.

18:24Katty Kay:And we have nobody that's willing to look at the situation and redress the situation. So we're going to probably end up with people there. Well, you have lots of people.

18:36Anthony Scaramucci:They're just not the people around Trump. I mean, you know, the mystery of why Trump has such an iron grip on his party and his followers is still one that I think has not been fully explained. But you do have lots of Democrats, And you do have lots of former Trump people who you know, who you served within the administration, who have called this out very publicly.

18:55Katty Kay:Just remember, when you're escalating a war, the people that are making the decision to escalate the war never, and I want to repeat, never bear the cost of the escalation of the war. And so I just wonder if they could take a focus group of military families or a focus group of working poor in the country and sat them down in the East Wing. And so how do you guys feel about this? They would say, GFY, you sons of bitches. Okay, because you're going to put us in another problem that we actually don't need to have in this country.

19:33Anthony Scaramucci:I think there is a realization that you're right, Anthony, that this is looking increasingly like a forever war, which is exactly why Trump was voted into office, was to have America get out of forever wars. And that's why you have these Fox News hosts now, and it's coordinated. They don't do it just one by one. This is a coordinated effort by Fox News to get a message to Donald Trump. Be very careful because you are getting into something you will not be able to get out of. Okay, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about midterm politics and what the Democrats are doing.

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21:24Katty Kay:Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Katty Kay. Finally, Caddy, we've got a lot of midterm fears on both sides. And so we've got some election deniers and we've got the Democrats putting together their doomsday midterm scenario. And all the while, we're trying to get the Clarity Act passed for the Bitcoiners and the blockchain people. I predict that that won't pass, by the way. Not that this is a business show, but I just think they're mudslinging in a way where it won't happen. But Caddy, tell us about State Representative Alexander Kolodin. What is going on there?

22:00Anthony Scaramucci:Oh my God, what is in the water in Arizona? Why is it always Arizona, Anthony? I went down to Arizona in 2022 and spent like, oh God, it was hot as hell down there and spent a month talking to people before the midterm elections. They are full of crazy theories, some of the most crazy theories about what happened to 2020. And guess what? We're back there again because this week we've had a whole slate of election deniers, basically, who have been nominated in primary positions on the Republican side. State Representative Alexander Colliden, who I've educated lawyer, echoes all of Trump's 2020 election campaigns.

22:40Anthony Scaramucci:He's going to now be the nominee to become one of Arizona's top election officials, the Secretary of State. Hugely powerful positions, these Secretary of States, because they get to control how the elections are run. Then in the gubernatorial race, you've got another one, Andy Biggs, also an election denier who has the Republican nomination to go up against the sitting Democrat. I don't know. Arizona just, I don't know if it's the heat or something in the water, but it always seems to be ground zero of election denierism. And that's on the Republican side. But look, this is all stoking fears amongst Democrats, right?

23:13Anthony Scaramucci:There could really be some effort to interfere in the election in November. So Democrats are trying to come up with plans of their own. What are you hearing from the Democratic side about what they want to do to try to counter any election meddling?

23:29Katty Kay:I think the problem is something that Stalin said. It's not who's voting, it's who's counting the votes, Katty. And I think the Democrats are sitting around saying, okay, how do we war game this to make sure that we have a say in how the votes are getting counted? Because, you know, Trump is coming hard. And, Cady, Trump says, and I quote, there are 35 ,152 non-citizens that voted. Okay? And this is Trump numbers that always have a fake precision to them.

24:04Anthony Scaramucci:Why does he do that? Why does he make a number so precise? I'm so wrong, but also so precise.

24:10Katty Kay:He thinks that makes it sound more voracious to the unwitting, right? The more decimal places for Donald Trump, the bigger the lie.

24:18Anthony Scaramucci:Like I had 1 ,637 ,000 people at my first inauguration, something like that.

24:25Katty Kay:I just think it's so bad. Okay. And I think that if the Democrats don't get their arms around this, the Republicans are going to surprise people with how well they do in the midterms, despite their approval ratings. This is a Victor Orban moment for the United States. This is a group of people that have corrupted the situation, and now we're going to see what the outcome is.

24:48Anthony Scaramucci:And the Democrats are, I think, trying now to do something that is more than just talking about this, because they had this secret meeting in the Senate just yesterday on Wednesday, a group of senators in a room right by the Senate floor, a dozen Democratic senators with a bunch of election officials did meet to start wargaming what they would do in anticipation of the White House trying to meddle in the elections. because what they don't want is to be caught like they were last time in 2020, where they had to kind of litigate it after the fact. So they want to have the lawyers there and the lawyers were there.

25:26Anthony Scaramucci:Mark Elias was at this meeting getting ready to say, how would we respond? But they've realized they've got to be proactive about this. So apparently what they were doing at this kind of tabletop meeting was looking at specific areas like what would they do if federal law enforcement were sent to polling places? How would they respond if the voter rolls are challenged? How would they deal with misinformation campaigns? How will they deal with the count? Because as you say, it's like, who does the count and how are they going to make sure that the count is free and fair? Apparently, they spent a lot of time focusing specifically on Texas.

25:59Anthony Scaramucci:They're very concerned about Texas, but they are clear the courts can't just keep being the last line of defense. We've spoken about this before, right, Anthony, how it is coming down to the courts time and time again. And because some of the things that have changed since 2024 in terms of regulation, they don't want this all to come down to the courts. What they really want is to make sure they get enough people out to the polls and enough of a margin of victory that this phrase, too big to rig, comes into play. So they're really focusing on trying to make sure that there isn't room, right, for people to actually meddle with this.

26:37Anthony Scaramucci:But they're doing this, they say, because they think what Trump has been saying recently about the elections and his refocus on the 2020 election is why they're worried that there could be something that happens in November.

26:49Katty Kay:Katty, I miss the hanging chads.

26:52Anthony Scaramucci:You remember the hanging chads? I do. Oh, I miss the pregnant chads.

26:56Katty Kay:You remember the pregnant chads?

26:58Anthony Scaramucci:The pregnant chads. I liked the idea of a pregnant chad.

27:00Katty Kay:We have AI deepfakes now. We have voter purges. We have ICE at the polls with their masks on.

27:06Anthony Scaramucci:Do you think we should remind people what the hanging and pregnant chads are?

27:10Katty Kay:Yeah. Well, why don't you tell people what the hanging and pregnant chads are? But I miss that world. I'm longing for the hanging chad, Katya.

27:17Anthony Scaramucci:It felt so innocent. I know the 2000 election, this is all about the 2000 election and the vote down in Florida and in Miami. And we all spent a long time talking about whether a chad, which is an election paper ballot had a dimple in it and therefore was marked for a Democrat or did not have a dimple and was it pregnant and was it hanging? Was the actual piece of paper hanging off because it'd been punched? We all got very au fait with those terms. But I don't know. I look at that world. You look at the world of misinformation now and what AI can do to election campaigns. Add to that foreign meddling from the Russians in 2016.

27:52Anthony Scaramucci:Chinese, I'm sure, would love to meddle, which is not to say that the Chinese actually changed any votes and went into the system and actually changed the voting machines, but I'm sure they would love to influence people. God, that 2000 era feels kind of nice and cozy and fuzzy, I have to say.

28:07Katty Kay:To me, it's going to get worse. And there's no transformative leader to stop the noise that's coming out of the system. And so if anything, they're reacting to each other in this lowbrow, lower level consciousness sort of a way based on fear and based on retribution and based on ego. So I'm not happy about it, but I'm hoping that the American people will look at this situation the way they did in Hungary, and they'll send a tsunami of voters into the mix that will destroy the corruptive forces that are going on right now.

28:42Anthony Scaramucci:What do you think, Anthony, is the fallout of this story that's come out of New Jersey about a few thousand non-citizens being added through a clerical error, it looks like, in a one-year window of time onto the voter rolls. It was people who were given driving licenses who were not citizens. I'm not a citizen. I have a US driving license. That's totally normal. I do not have the right to vote, so I'm not on any voter roll. But these people were put on the voter rolls as well as being given driving license. I think We're now looking at about 6 ,000 plus people. So, I mean, statistically makes no difference to the outcome of the election in New Jersey because New Jersey is an overwhelming or has been an overwhelming democratic state.

29:27Anthony Scaramucci:But it's going to be politically significant, I think, right? I'm waiting for Trump to come back with something big on this.

29:35Katty Kay:Yeah, this is the genius of Donald Trump. 6 ,000 people misregistered. Of those 6 ,000 though, Caddy, only 400 of them voted. Okay. I mean, that's like an Italian wedding in New Jersey. Okay. I mean, it's not even a decimal point, but Trump will make that into a big deal. The way he made the trans issue with the high school athletes, 10 of those out of 330 million people played high school sports, made it a big issue. I'm not sitting here telling people that there aren't mistakes and there aren't some people that voted that shouldn't vote and things like that. That does happen. I am saying what Homeland Security said prior to Trump's arrival, this stuff does happen, but it's very, very scant and it does not influence the integrity of the election.

30:23Katty Kay:Right.

30:23Anthony Scaramucci:Or the outcome. Yeah.

30:24Katty Kay:Donald Trump is reading off of Vladimir Putin's script and he's finding things to surface to make the American people, or at least 25 % of them that are clinging to him, believe that we have shoddy elections, to believe that the quote-unquote system is rigged. But again, when he's winning the elections, it's not rigged. When he's losing the elections, and he's running the elections that he's losing, apparently, then it is rigged.

30:54Anthony Scaramucci:Isn't that funny how it works like that?

30:55Katty Kay:I don't really get the whole thing 100%, but I understand him. And that lie is something he will bang on. We're mid-late July right now. He will take that lie into November about as aggressively as he can. I think you're right. And honestly, what he'll hope for, Kat, is a lot of people won't show up to vote because they'll be cynical about the voting.

31:19Anthony Scaramucci:And the Democrats are aware they have to be a little careful about that. They can't make people feel fatalistic. And that's why they're not making such a big thing about the elections are rigged, the elections are rigged or could be rigged because they don't want people to stay home. They're having that discussion as well. We are now, what are we, end of July, I think the framing of the battle lines are pretty much drawn. You've got Republicans are going to paint all Democrats as communists, and they'll point to the Democratic Socialists of America party and say the Democrats are too far out there, and this is not your father's Democratic party, and you can't vote for them without America risking becoming communist.

31:58Anthony Scaramucci:You heard Trump say that down in Georgia yesterday. And the Democrats are going to run on a very simple message, which is stop Trump. And in a midterm election, negative energy is probably more important than positive energy. It's a referendum on the party and the person in power, even though Trump's name is not on the ballot. Don't fool yourself, guys. This will all be about Donald Trump. And it's worked for them before in midterms. It's probably going to work for them again. They'll play that playbook one last time before Trump is out of office. and they will hope that the enthusiasm gap that is at about 11 % according to Fox News, new Fox News poll that's out, will drive them home in the midterm elections.

32:41Anthony Scaramucci:I don't think it helps them in the 2028 election. I think then they have to come up with a governing agenda, a theory of the case for Democrats. They've got to get over their own internal civil war. They've got to get over all of their own kind of culture war stuff. But for the midterms, that's probably enough that negative energy will get them through the House, at least, I reckon. That's what you're going to hear for the next three and a half months and all for the pleasure of a probably, what, a few hundred billion dollars.

33:08Katty Kay:We'll have to see. But the Democrats, guys, wake up. They want to control the certification. They want to control the vote count. Okay. And they've read Stalin. Okay. And they're taking Stalin seriously. So wake up.

33:22Anthony Scaramucci:Okay, guys, we're going to leave it there. Thank you very much for listening. Have a great weekend. We hope it is not a too busy one, despite what we're hearing here in Washington. Don't forget to grab your tickets for our live tour this October ahead of the midterms. Head to the restispoliticsus.com or scan the QR code on your screen right now.

33:39Katty Kay:Can I? I got to do a little shameless promotion. Hold on.

33:41Anthony Scaramucci:Oh, I like that. I like the t-shirt.

33:43Katty Kay:Patty, shameless promotion. The book is coming out, guys, September.

33:46Anthony Scaramucci:For all of you who can't see what Anthony is holding up, it says Anthony Scaramucci. There's a very fetching picture of Anthony's face. All the Wrong Moves is the name of the book you can pre-order now.

33:56Katty Kay:You can go to Amazon, Waterstone, any place. Please help your podcasting friend out and buy one of my books. Thank you, guys.

34:03Anthony Scaramucci:And we will be back next week.

34:08Anthony Scaramucci:Hello, everybody. We got some exciting news for you.

34:11Katty Kay:That's right, Katty. We are holding a summer sale on our founding member subscriptions.

34:17Anthony Scaramucci:From now until the end of August, you can get a year's membership to our show for a third off. I think that's a real bargain.

34:24Katty Kay:Okay, you just need to use the code SUMMER26 when you sign up for an annual membership and you'll unlock ad-free listening. You'll get our bonus episodes and of course our exclusive mini-series. We've got a series covering Marco Rubio, Elon Musk, Trump's health, and so much more, including these very popular caddy, these question and answer sessions.

34:47Anthony Scaramucci:So head to the rest is politics us.com to claim this discount. We'd love to have you with us in the club. We'll have plenty to talk about over the next few months. So make sure you don't miss out.

34:58Katty Kay:What more could our listeners want, Caddy Kay, than this uninterrupted sound of our voices? Maybe not my voice, but certainly your voice, Caddy. Okay, we want to accompany you on all your summer travels. So go to the code SUMMER26, rest is politics, us.com and sign up.