29. The Only State Trump Needs to Win

0:06Hello and welcome to this edition of The Rest is Politics US with me Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. How are you, Caddy? So I'm obviously going to tell everybody where you are. Why don't you tell everybody where you are? Why do I tell you anything? I mean, like anything. There's like a nice cone of discreet silence. It's not possible with an Italian. I know. It's not possible. I mean, come on. So tell everybody where you are, then we can get into politics. Some very nice friends a long time ago invited me to join them on a holiday in Ithaca, Greece. I was not going to go. But then every time I tried to take holiday in July, crazy shit would happen.

0:45Like, you know, the former president would get shot or the current president would drop out of the race. And then, of course, I come on holiday and what happens? There's another attempt against Donald Trump. So I clearly shouldn't try and take a break. But anyway, I'm taking a little break apart from doing this. And it's very nice sitting off the coast of Ithaca. And you're on a beautiful yacht is what you say. You could just say, listen, I got a bougie Wall Street guy that I do this podcast with and I'm now on a bougie yacht. I know. It's rubbing off. It is rubbing off on me. You would have been great on Wall Street, Caddy Kay.

1:17Anyway. So where are you? I'm in Singapore. I'm in Singapore slogging. You can see the beautiful art behind me in this hotel room. But what are we going to talk about? You run the show. So today we are going to talk about what's been happening in Springfield, Ohio, all the political turmoil that's been caused by Donald Trump and particularly J.D. Vance's claims that immigrants are eating cats. We mentioned this last week on the podcast, but I do think it's worth touching on this issue of immigration and whether Donald Trump has kind of lost a week and this has become a parody and may not be working for him the way he thought it was going to when he raised it in the debate.

1:55There's a couple of new polls out suggesting that Kamala Harris is pulling ahead on issues like the economy, which I think is interesting, particularly in the light of the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates this week. And we can talk about whether we think that is going to have an impact come November. then after the break, we are going to look at the one state that will likely decide the entire result of this election, and that is Pennsylvania, which is in a hair's breadth between them. How are Kamala Harris and Donald Trump throwing everything they have into what is known as the Keystone State?

2:33So we're going to talk about that after the break. But look, what's your take, Anthony, on what's happening in Springfield, because I think clearly J.D. Vance this week repeatedly has doubled down on these claims that Haitian immigrants in the town have been eating cats and dogs. The mayor of the town says it's not true. The manager of the town says it's not true. There seems to be journalists have flooded Springfield, Ohio, and have found absolutely no evidence this is true. But it's interesting that J.D. Vance has continued to kind of double down on this. Donald Trump as well doubling down on this.

3:14And yet I wonder whether the degree to which actually polling suggests that even a majority of Republicans don't think this is true might have lost them a week. I mean, this has become kind of a parody. I see what the play is. It's to gen up the base, talk about immigration. They don't have what they had in 2018, which is a caravan of immigrants heading towards the southern border. They no longer have pictures of people flooding across the southern border. So this seems to be an attempt to create, as J.D. Vance said on the Sunday shows, they are creating this story. It seems to be an attempt to kind of create an immigration event that they can point to.

3:50I just wonder whether it's working out the way that they think it is for them. What's your take? I want to digress a second because I want to give out the Trump decoder ring to everybody so they don't have to buy the cereal box. You can just take out the ring. And just let me explain to you. Does he sell those, by the way, along with his kind of digital cards? Yeah, well, if we suggest that he may end up selling it alongside Trump water and Trump steak and so forth. But I just want to explain what's going on with J.D. Vance right now. And so J.D. Vance has been seduced by the power and the notion that he could be the 39-year-old vice president.

4:25And this is, of course, Richard Nixon was 39 when Dwight Eisenhower took him. And so this is a young man to be vice president. And he's learning about Donald Trump. And so if he had gotten the decoder ring before he joined Donald Trump, things would have been a little bit easier for him, but still very problematic. And so let's go over a couple of things that are in the decoder ring. Number one, never speak for Donald Trump, ever, ever, never. Only Donald Trump speaks for himself. It is a team of one. You are not on his team. You're just an appendage. So you think Trump doesn't like Vance being so out there?

5:02I think he likes him out there as long as it's 95 % on Donald Trump. After you threaten to smash my Lamborghini, when I'm out there, all I do is praise you, Katty Kay. I say how wonderful you are. Say you're an incredible journalist. I'm living in fear that something terrible could happen to my favorite toy. The Lambo meets a tree. Yeah, exactly. You say it with such a light, which is why it really bothers me. The Trumpster is all about himself. If you're going to go on TV, talk about him. Do not talk about yourself. Number two, don't put any words in his mouth. He rebuked J.D. Vance at the debate last Tuesday or 10 or so days ago.

5:47He said, he doesn't speak for me. Vance had to basically publicly apologize. That was part of his Sunday interview tour. Second thing that's happening is I'm going to disgrace you, J.D. Vance. OK, so I'm going to have Laura Loomer on the plane with me. It's a conservative influencer who he's been traveling with. She's like an alt-right conservative influencer. And she's going to ride around with me. I'm going to say praiseworthy things about her, and she's going to say very racist things about Indian Americans. She's going to suggest that the White House is going to smell like curry because the vice president is half Indian.

6:23He's going to have a failed cult center. All of these racist tropes are going to come out of her mouth. And this is also humiliating to you because you have an Indian American wife and you have Indian American children. And so this is disgraceful, and you're not going to be able to defend their honor. So I'm going to disrespect you and I'm going to emasculate you. Okay. Third thing I'm going to do is I am a big time liar and you are going to big time lie for me. Okay. And so Sean Spicer was Trump's first press secretary. Okay. Every Spice girl has a nickname, Caddy. And so my nickname for him was Liar Spice of the Spice girls.

7:01All he did was lie. And you, J.D. Vance, are going to also lie. Oh, and by the way, you represent this state. You represent the state of Ohio. And this town is in your state. And I am going to disrespect and dishonor this town in your state. And even though you represent this town and you should be out there advocating and defending its honor, you're not allowed to do that because I am going to emasculate you, JD. You got that? I'm going to floor you to the point someday you're going to get to a microphone like Mike Pence and say, hey, I'm really sorry. I cannot endorse this person anymore. So you're in the spin cycle now.

7:43Cycle one, I hate Donald Trump. We know everything JD Vance said about him, called him a Hitler, blah, blah, blah. Cycle two, he's going to give me power. I'm going to love Donald Trump, but he's going to emasculate me and disrespect me to the point where I start hating him again. So we're mid-cycle for JD, and he is out there doing reprehensible things that someday he's going to look back on and say, wow, why did I do that? He told a mutual friend of ours, Donna Bash, that he made up the story. So he's on national television saying lies. Now, before this show started, you said to me that he's on TV seven to one versus the vice president and versus the governor, Governor Waltz.

8:27And my response back is, is it a positive? And I would like to ask you that question. Is it a positive that he's on or is he creating net negatives for himself by emasculating himself in this way? One thing is that here I am in the home of Odysseus and what you've described sounds terribly Greek tragedy and very Oedipal. But anyway, that aside, it's certainly not positive for the people of Springfield, Ohio, who have had 33 bomb threats against them. Schools are shut, city offices are shut because of what Vance and Trump have been saying. And the governor has asked them, please, to stop spreading these lies because it doesn't help.

9:04And actually, there are these Haitian immigrants who have come in and have helped an economic regrowth. And we can talk more about immigration in a second. So it's not positive for the people of Springfield, Ohio. It's not positive for American voters because actually a lot of those bomb threats, according to city officials, are coming from overseas. So this is presumably America's adversaries who are deciding that this is, wow, this is all too easy, right? Here are these presidential candidate and his running mate who are stoking fears of immigrants in this town. And hey, we can use this super well to cause chaos and undermine people's confidence in the democratic process, which is exactly what they're doing by having these bomb threats in schools.

9:48They're making people stressed. They're exacerbating the divisions in American society. They found a wedge issue and they very neatly pushed themselves into it and pushed it even wider open. So it doesn't help America. And I don't think it helps American society. It doesn't help people's confidence in democracy. And then the question is, does it help Trump and Vance win the election? Well, does it win them over any wavering voters? I would suspect most people who buy the theory and the polls suggest not that many do, or even like the way that they're talking about this, we're already going to vote for Donald Trump.

10:23I mean, the degree to which this is an online parody can't be overstated. The memes are wild about cats and dogs and the ridiculousness of all of this. And I think people see it for what it is. And whilst J.D. Vance is trying to say, look, I've now actually finally got you talking about immigration. Actually, they've really only got people talking about how absurd this is and how there's no truth behind these stories. I think it's lost them a week. I mean, they don't have much time between now and election day. And maybe they've given up on trying to reach people in the middle. Maybe they've given up on trying to reach undecided voters.

10:58But this doesn't seem to me the best way to reach undecided voters. I mean, this is not what Chris Lasavita and Susie Wiles run, right? I mean, maybe this is a Corey Lewandowski play and a J.D. Vance play, and you go for the base and you go as low as you possibly can to get what they think worked for them in 2016. But I don't know. What's your sense? Does it help them electorally? I think they think it does. I think they think it does. I'm just not sure it really does. Yeah. So, you know, I don't think it does. And I think it's evidenced by the polling. They're slipping in the polls. The polls look tied after the debate.

11:33But I think this afterglow of the memes of the cats and dogs and the afterglow of the absurdity. And then what happens with human beings, at least my belief is this guy nuts, yes or no. And a lot of people look at him and say, he's nuts. Now there is a few people that say, well, he's nuts, but he's my nut. Okay. That's a group of people that say that. But the question is, are the majority of the American people going to say that? Okay. Now Trump does think that. Trump believes that he's got a three-legged stool of racism, misogyny, and anti-immigration. He thinks if he can run on that platform, he can bring enough of his base out who will equivocate on his behalf.

12:17And I watch it. As you know, I'm in the crypto industry. I'm here in Singapore speaking at a Bitcoin and a blockchain event. And Mr. Trump is bringing out his own meme coin. Him and his sons have decided to bring out this thing called the World Liberty Coin, which is a complete sham. And it's actually embarrassing. And the notion that an American president that wants to lead the United States in the free world six weeks before an election, six and a half weeks before the election is going to put out this sort of pump and dump meme coin scam is revolting to somebody like me. But there are people here in Singapore, Americans that I've talked to, that will give him a pass on that.

12:57They will equivocate for him. They'll say, OK, yeah, that's fine, but he's pro-crypto. And so that's OK with me, even though what he's doing is reprehensible and is going to tarnish us. And so what happens, there is a reason why 40 people that served in his cabinet or were part of his administration have said, no, I'm sorry, I can't get there for Donald Trump, despite my former status as a Republican, cannot get there because everything he touches gets tarnished by him. And so now Springfield, Ohio is tarnished by him. There's no evidence of this. Haitian Americans are tarnished by him. There's a feeling now that he does this, Caddy.

13:43He has said this. He could walk onto the campaign plane. You could look at him and say, why did you say that? That was a lie. And he would look you right in the face and say, well, if I say it enough, there's enough people that will believe it. It becomes real. That is his MO. And that's what he's trying to do here. Last night, I think it was, I texted you, I don't know what time it was in Singapore, but I texted you that poll. It's a new Scripps Ipsos poll. 54 % of respondents in this poll said they strongly or somewhat support the policy of mass deporting undocumented immigrants. So there are clearly, there are people in the country for whom this aggressive policy towards immigrants has some resonance.

14:23And there are certainly people who feel strongly that immigrants should be deported, not more should be allowed in. And I wonder whether he's just banking. I'm 54%. Mass deportations is a pretty harsh policy towards people who are in the country in an undocumented way. And it gets to this kind of constant tension that there is between economists and politicians, particularly politicians on the right, with economists saying, listen, we have aging populations. The only way we can support that aging population in the long run is by growing our tax base. And that either means taxing people, getting more tax revenue from the existing taxpayers, or bringing more people into the tax base, which means allowing more immigrants into the country.

15:05And that's the kind of economist line, right? That immigrants, whether they are in America legally or illegally, the data shows increased growth in the areas they live in, which is exactly what's happened in Springfield, Ohio, right? So they have increased growth, but potentially they've increased growth at the expense of white working class men who are classic Trump supporters. And so how do politicians wrestle with these two things? How do they marry what economists say we have to do? We have to have more immigration in order to support our aging populations and grow our economies and increase our tax revenue.

15:40And people who feel they are getting squeezed by those immigrants, which is exactly what seems to have happened in Springfield, Ohio. And then politicians who take that fear of being squeezed, which is legitimate, and twist it, as we're seeing right now with J.D. Vance and Donald Trump, for their own political ends. I mean, I think they are onto something here. They're onto something. And I think that's the kind of challenge. I mean, not just in America. Ask President Macron of France, right? He has exactly the same problem. Ask most European political leaders. They have exactly the same problem, too.

16:14So these are Trump's instincts. Everything that you just described, if you're inside the orange maze inside of his brain, that's exactly where he's going for the cheese. He's looking at what you just said. He knows instinctively that people fear foreigners. He knows that America has always classically been a xenophobic country, which is great irony because it's also been an immigration country. But there's a large part of the people that are xenophobic. And we know that there's isolationism, always been an element of isolationism in the country. But I'm wondering out loud, though, if the polling questions were the right questions.

16:50Because if you say to somebody, are you for the mass deportation? And that means, okay, that means there's more jobs for me and my family, more opportunity, less quote unquote foreigners. And I'm a tribal person. Yes, I'm for the mass deportations. But if you said to the people that, look, this is what the mass deportations involve. Are you down for that? Are you down for the handmaid's tale? Are you down for the SWAT teams? How this would actually work? I was down in Miami and I had the opportunity to present at an event with Mayor Francis Suarez. And we were talking about the Elian Gonzalez story, which I think you will remember.

17:30This was a Cuban emigre. He was seven years old. There was a custody battle. There was a decision made by President Clinton that he had to be deported. He was pulled out of the house. He was sent to a deportation center and flown to Cuba. but he's now in his early 30s. And obviously, he was programmed by the Cuban government. But the point being, do you want to see that 11 million times? That polled very poorly for President Clinton. It looked horrific. It looked like a whole family tragedy. And so to me, I'm wondering if we're asking the question properly, but I get the answer. I understand the answer.

18:09And then the second thing is, is there a political leader out there that can explain to the American people what you just said? Is there a political leader that can say, hey, you know, even Elon Musk would tell you that we need population growth to support the welfare state, the safety net, the tax revenues? Are you sure you want to go in that direction? And so for me, I think that America is at its best, Caddy, when America has a love affair with immigration. We're at our best when we have the Statue of Liberty saying, give us everybody. The poem about the huddled masses. Give me your poor. Give me people that are despairing.

18:48Bring them to the shores of America and we'll sort things out. When I go on a public speech or I go to meet people or they all want to talk about you, by the way, that's just a whole other thing. I have to work that out with my therapist. But when I am out there, okay. I'll pay for the next session. Yeah, you can pay for the next session. But when I'm out there and I hear somebody say, hey, I came with nothing. My dad came with nothing. My mom started with nothing. And here in America, we did blank. And there's this beautiful aspirational narrative. I'm just wondering if we can switch that idea.

19:24And if maybe Vice President Harris, a political leader somewhere can spin that differently than the way the Trump and Vance people are spinning it. I think she's trying to. I mean, last week I mentioned Deborah Mattinson, who was the pollster for Keir Starmer. And very clearly, she said that center left politicians have to be tougher, not less tough on immigration. And they've got to resist the more progressive wings of their political parties when it comes to issues like amnesty or open borders. So, you know, maybe there is one. I don't know that any European politicians have found a way to do it yet.

20:02But, you know, maybe if I guess Harris is thinking if she gets into office, then some of this poison around the immigration debate, then they can deal with that. There seems to be a lot that the Harris campaign, by the way, is thinking if we get into office, we will deal with the policy details on all of this later. But one piece of good news that she's had, which I wanted to get your take on, was there have been two polls just in the last week, an FT poll and a morning consult poll that have come out showing that Kamala Harris has closed the gap on the economy and that as many voters now trust her on the economy as trust Donald Trump.

20:37Now, that would be if it's true and it's only two polls, and I'm a little skeptical about these polls. But anyway, let's see. That would be huge news for her because poll after poll shows that the economy is the biggest issue for Americans. And maybe I don't know that the Fed cutting interest rates this week will have any direct impact on people's. Obviously, it won't impact people's mortgages yet, but it might impact how they feel about the economy between now and the election. Do you think it's possible that she's closing the gap? What's your sense of that, Anthony, and how significant that would be?

21:10If she is closing the gap, it's because he's doing a poor job of explaining his economic policies. If you're sitting out there saying that we're going to do tariffs, tariffs, tariffs, and the other governments around the world are going to pay those taxes and they're going to lower the cost of goods in the country, that's the trifecta of lies economically. The lower and middle class people will pay more of a percentage of their disposable income for those tariffs than the rich people. So it's a regressive tax. Prices will go up. If you're trying to combat inflation, you're going to send prices up.

21:50And you're also going to do something that people need to understand that the other countries will game the tariffs, Caddy. And so let me just give you an example of how they do it. The Chinese will make something. They'll get it to 49 % so that it's manufactured in China, 49%. They'll ship it to Vietnam where the remaining 51 % is completed. It's now a product that comes out of Vietnam into the United States, which is not tariffed. Does that mean the inflationary impact in the US would be less than if fewer goods were actually getting hit with these big tariffs? Of course. Of course, because remember, you're paying more at the counter and you therefore have less disposable income.

22:29So I don't think Trump is doing a great job of explaining this. There's another misnomer out there that Republicans are better for the economy. But if you look at the metrics over the last 30 years, the Democrats have actually had better stock market results, better employment results. Now, you know, I've said this to you repeatedly, that could just be cyclical. And we have a tendency to personalize cyclical economic activity on the candidate or the politician that's sitting in the chair while this cyclicality is happening. So I'm not going to overly say this, but she's also, if I could be critical of her because I want to be balanced, she's not putting a lot of flesh on the bones of her economic plan.

23:09She's offering some tax rebates for families. She's offering a first-time home purchase of$25 ,000 if it reaches a certain metric. She's got this thing on unrealized gains that nobody really understands. When you talk to her people, they poo-poo it and say that it's an old, outdated Joe Biden idea, never got out of committee in the Senate in the ways it means, never got out of the committee, so don't worry about it. But at some point, she's going to have to present where she stands on the economy. And by the way, I think she's got the chops on this. If I were her, I would say we're on shoring manufacturing.

23:48We have that reshoring act. We are making microprocessors and microprocessor foundries in the U.S. now. Through the Inflation Reduction Act, we have increased your wages. Real wages are up and bridges, roads and tunnels being repaired are very good for the reduction of costs of goods in transit around the country. And so we've done three or four amazing legislative things that if you stick with us, we're going to stick with that plan. and we're going to push those forward. And oh, by the way, the inflation is coming down. And since you mentioned the Fed, let me just give you my two cents there.

24:25The 50 basis point reduction is fabulous for the economy. People will poo-poo it and say, well, it doesn't filter through possibly, but it does. It's a psychological thing. It increases the risk appetite for capital allocators around the world to enter the US capital markets, more capital flowing into the system, higher asset prices, people feel richer, they have more ideas about their disposable income, and it creates this positive flywheel of economic activity. So even if it's just psychological, it's beneficial. Trust me, Trump is not happy that they went with a 50 basis point. Yeah. And he's already suggested that.

25:08Yeah. He's already crying about it. He's crying foul. But this is another thing. He wants to create Fed dependence on him. And so he's saying no more independent Fed with an independent board. Well, look at what happened in Turkey, a place you're not too far from, your luxurious boat. But Erdogan took over the central bank and he destroyed that currency. Right. And so you don't want Trump anywhere near that central banking decision making. I remember having a very interesting conversation with Larry Summers, who was obviously in the Clinton and in the Obama administrations. And he said that there is a real risk that if Trump gets in and tries to create Fed dependency, then America goes the way of Latin American countries.