44. Trump calls out the Mooch

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0:36Anthony Scaramucci is a major loser who was fired from the administration after only 11 days for his insane brother from another mother interview with Chris Cuomo, then with CNN. Great job by Joe Kay. Mr. Scaramucci, what have you done to annoy Donald Trump in the last few days? Because that's what he's tweeting about you. Yes, that was 48 hours ago on Truth Social from the president-elect of the United States. So just – I want you to imagine Dwight Eisenhower preparing for his administration and selecting his cabinet, but he thinks it's important to opine on the opinions of private citizens in the country.

1:17So yes. So I inflamed Mr. Trump. I went on CNBC. Joe K is Joe Kernan. And so Joe Kernan was lambasting me for my decision to be with Vice President Harris. Or even lambasting you. Lambasting, however you want to say it. But anyway, I'll make a long story short. There it is. The love affair continues, Katty Kay. Donald J. Trump, it's eight years later. I'm still inside his melon, rent-free in his brain. And he's got to come after me, calling me not just a loser, Katty, but a major loser. I'm quite glad that you were a major loser, though, because just being a loser would be a bit dull, right? I mean, better to be a major loser.

2:01So, Kat, I went on a website, and I'm having that tweet made into a needle-pointed pillow, which will be on my couch in my office for the duration of the administration. And I just want to point out, major loser. It's not that I'm just a loser. I'm a major loser, so it's nice to be loved by the president-elect of the United States. So that was Donald Trump and I'm Katty Kay. Welcome to The Rest is Politics US. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Katty, what do you want to talk about today? Is that great though that the president-elect still has me on his mind eight years later? And I also want to say this, okay, for all of you out there that say I was in the White House for 10 days, there are journalists listening to this, they do listen to this podcast.

2:48Hey, fellas, I think the president of the United States is the official scorer. And in a truth social tweet 48 hours ago, he said 11 days. So can we go with 11 days? Excuse me. No, because the president-elect this week also says he won the popular vote by 7 million votes, which he did not. So I'm not sure if you're taking Donald Trump as your reference for all facts. I thought you were my partner in all this. Oh, my God. Katty, happy birthday. It's your birthday today. God bless you. Okay. You look fantastic. And so maybe at some point we'll get like a skin sponsorship on this podcast because you look great.

3:26But it's your birthday. So what do you want to talk about? Well, first of all, I want to say thank you to you because the Lambo's parked outside and the keys I know are being dropped off later this morning. So I'm very happy about that. You really didn't have to, but I am touched. That was kind of you. The birthday gods have given me the most extraordinary set of appointments from Donald Trump for his cabinet. So we are going to in the first half of the program, let's talk a little bit about these cabinet appointments that Donald Trump has announced. Everybody thought it was going to be wacky around Donald Trump.

3:59I don't think anyone thought it was going to be quite this wacky. I've never seen almost unanimous disapproval like we have seen over the last 24 hours. So we're going to dig into some of those. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to have a think about Elon Musk and his new role in the White House and how much power he is actually going to have. But let's start with these appointments because I think I've mentioned on the program before, I've now covered six presidential elections, which means I've also covered six transitions. And I have never seen the whole of Washington go into uproar, both Republican and Democrat, in the way that they have in the last 24 hours.

4:40After Donald Trump won the election, whatever it is, 10 days ago, feels like a lifetime ago, there was a period where the markets were doing well. The first appointments were announced. Congressman Mike Waltz for National Security Advisor, Senator Marco Rubio for Secretary of State. And people thought things looked pretty normal. Susie Wiles, his campaign chair for Chief of Staff, low key appointment, efficient woman, ran the campaign very well. And then just in the last day, so on Wednesday, Donald Trump announced Matt Gaetz, the congressman for attorney general, and Tulsi Gabbard, the congresswoman from Hawaii for director of national intelligence.

5:25And then the day before that, he announced Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host for secretary of defense. And those three appointments together have completely changed the vibe in this city. Now the feeling is, particularly with Matt Gaetz, that Donald Trump has kind of gone off the deep end in terms of the kinds of people he might choose who are ultra MAGA, not with remotely the kind of qualifications you would normally assume for any of these incredibly important positions. And there are a lot of questions in this town from both Republicans and Democrats about what Donald Trump is doing and how this is actually going to work out.

6:02Can I put people inside the melon of Donald Trump? Because obviously I'm living in there rent free with these truth social comments. So let me provide some melon insight. He is the crazy uncle that sits on the couch and opines about the government and says the whole thing is screwed up and I could handle the government with a bunch of amateurs better than the professionals could handle the government. It's the same thing in an English football league, same thing in American baseball. You're sitting there as an armchair pundit, and you're saying, I could do this better than these guys. These guys stink at their jobs.

6:44And so there is some of that catty-cat. Yeah. The disruption that he wants to be a disruptor, and he feels all these people are disruptors in the way that he wants to disrupt Yes, there is some of that. You guys all suck. And I tried to listen to you last time. I had Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan and establishment people in my ear. In preparation for this podcast, I listened to three different podcasts where the Trumpster was on there ranting and raving. And there was one where he said, well, you know, when I won the job, I think I had only been to Washington 17 times. And so I was relying on people to tell me who to pick.

7:25And I picked some good people, but I picked some really bad people, i.e. Mike Pompeo and Nikki Haley, right? Anthony Scaramucci, I would be in the really bad category. Some major losers, in other words. Major losers, major losers. John Kelly. Major loser. Major loser. John Kelly. Look at you laughing. Look at you laughing. You know, I would love to see the president-elect of the United States call you a major loser, Katty K. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. One tweet. Have you called your therapist? Have you discussed it? Is it triggering a new fresh round of little bit of insecurity? Not at all. If anything - You love it.

8:03You know what that is? That's like a dog poking you, okay, and asking you to throw the ball. He wants me to throw the ball with him, right? That's what he wants me to do. And I'm going to do that, of course. I'm going to throw the ball with him because I can't help myself. And if Donald Trump had sent out a tweet saying, Anthony Scaramucci, who I love dearly, and it is an incredible human being and a great supporter of MAGA, then you would have been unhappy. Yes, that would have been very horrifying. I mean, I think the point you're making is right, that there are certain reliable themes in Donald Trump's worldview.

8:35People say he's not ideological, but actually I think on some things he is. He thinks trade deficits are bad. He thinks other countries have taken advantage of the United States. He doesn't want America to get involved in foreign conflicts. And he thinks that the administrative deep state is corrupt, overly liberal, and opposed to his agenda. And that's what some of these appointments represent. Exactly. But there's a little bit more to it, right? I want total control. I want the sycophant of sycophants by my side, and I want them to do everything that I want to do. Whatever it may be, I want total control.

9:17And so this is the stuff I was trying to tell people before this thing started. He wants to take control of this. He wants to centralize this. And he is for some reason capable of bullying these guys. So he rolled McConnell. That's Mitch McConnell, former Senate majority leader. He rolled Kevin McCarthy, whose arch nemesis is Matthew Gates. McCarthy and McConnell could have knocked Trump into oblivion on the 7th of January, 2021, but their knees were knocking, Caddy. Their knees were knocking. They couldn't do it. And now John Thune, Senator Thune, do you kowtow and bow down to Donald Trump? Yes, I do, sir.

10:02Yes, I do. You'll have recess appointments for me? Yes, sir. Yes, I will. Roof, roof. I mean, give me a effing break. So Senator Thune, what you're referring to is the vote that took place in the Senate to choose the next Senate majority leader. The pick that Donald Trump and the people around him, or at least Elon Musk, who I guess is now a proxy for Donald Trump, wanted was Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who they felt was a real MAGA person. But the senators themselves, the Republican senators picked as their leader, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, well-known figure in Washington, much more of establishment type, less of a MAGA acolyte.

10:44And what's interesting about that appointment is that when they had to vote in secret, so nobody knew who was voting for who, the senators actually defied Donald Trump, did not pick his chosen person, but picked somebody who they felt was more in line with their values. Who was his chosen person, Katty Kay? Senator Rick Scott of Florida. Exactly. So Rick Scott was from Florida. Yes, it's all Florida. And what they did was they reviewed all the tapes of these people since Trump left the White House. Did anybody say something negative about Donald J. Trump? And Rick Scott, he didn't say anything negative, but Thune did.

11:24Thune said, 18, you damaged us. You damaged us in 20. You damaged us in 22. You're really hurting our party. And so Trump did not want Thune, but cocaine, cocaine Mitch McConnell. Cady's laughing because Mitch McConnell is the dullest human being that's ever arrived in Washington. I think that is slanderous. I don't know that you can say that. Maybe his wife likes him very much and finds him interesting. Okay. Well, I'm giving my opinion, okay? I like Mitch. I mean, I've been a supporter of Mitch's, but he's a extremely dull guy, very low key. He has no neck. If you Google him, he's got no neck.

12:04Also harsh. I'm just giving the facts here. It's my birthday. I'm feeling magnanimous. Okay. That's why I'm doing all the talking on this then. So this guy is one of the most effective senators in the history of the Senate. He's used the Senate in a way that's gotten Donald Trump three Supreme Court conservative justices. He's passed rules. He blocked Merrick Garland when Obama tried to put him on. And so his nickname is because he is motionless and humorless, his nickname is Cocaine Mitch, meaning he must be on a lot of cocaine in terms of his effectiveness. So we call him Cocaine Mitch. 82 years old.

12:48He got what he wanted. He got Thune in that position, but Thune did promise Trump recess appointments. You live in Washington. Let me get the vomit bag because I don't live in Washington. While you're explaining what recess appointments are, I'm to get the vomit bag out. Go ahead. So senators, part of the role of the Senate per the Constitution is to give advice and counsel to the president on appointments and on cabinet appointments. And this is what the Senate usually does. The president elect names all their cabinet appointments. The Senate goes away and deliberates, does its investigations and comes back with a vote on each of these cabinet appointments.

13:25But Donald Trump has posted out on Twitter or Truth Social that he would like the Senate to confirm these appointments during a recess, which would mean there would not be the usual deliberations and the Senate advice process, and he could get through whoever he wants. It's a way of him getting people in through the back door because the Senate is in recess. He urgently needs to get his people in. Sorry, we don't have time for the usual process. And so he can get them in like that. Now the question is whether John Thune will agree to that. And there are some senators saying, listen, if we agree to that this time around, a massive precedent in American politics has been broken and the Senate is basically redundant because we've given away all power.

14:08There's some speculation that that's exactly what Donald Trump wants. He's testing the Senate. He doesn't want the Senate, like you said about all the cabinet appointments. He doesn't want anyone against him and he certainly doesn't want the Senate against him. So we don't know yet whether the senators will agree to these recess appointments, but let's have a chat about some of them. So should we start with Matt Gaetz because he is the one that has all of Washington's hair on fire. I cannot find a single person who has anything nice to say about Matt Gaetz, the congressman from Florida who is currently being investigated by the Ethics Committee for Sexual Offences, which include having sex with a 17-year-old, which is illegal in the United States.

14:49The ethics committee was due to vote on Friday about whether to release its report into Matt Gaetz. Matt Gaetz, the moment he was announced as the nominee for attorney general, he resigned his seat in Congress. So that report won't be released because the congressional ethics committee has no jurisdiction against him. But I just want to read you something. This is the lovely Matt Gaetz, by the way, who has spectacular hair, almost as good a hair as yours, I would say. Terrible, terrible Botox, by the way. I mean, his head is - Worse than yours? Way worse than mine. I have light touch Botox on my forehead, okay?

15:26I mean, this guy's got, he's pinned back like Joan Rivers. He's only 42. Okay, I'm 142. I know you're picking on me, but I'm 142. This SOB is only 42, but he's pinned back. He looks like he's got saran wrap on his face. Can I just say that is the least of his problems? No, he's a walking disaster. I mean, unfathomable. He's an unethical human being. And he just resigned from the Congress to prevent that information from coming out. And now the question is, will the Speaker of the House put that information out? Will that information mysteriously leak out? Because there's no one in the House who wants him to be confirmed as Attorney General.

16:05And there is certainly no one in the Senate who wants him to be confirmed Attorney General. The thinking is that a whole bunch of names were put before Donald Trump with kind of little video montages, as you suggest, for Attorney General, which is a very important position for Donald Trump. Donald Trump sees the position of Attorney General, which is basically the nation's chief cop, as the person who is going to clean house of all of the anti-MAGA, deep state stuff. Anytime that there is a whiff of a lawsuit against Donald Trump, the Attorney General can weigh in on Donald Trump's side. By tradition, though not in the Constitution, the Attorney General is independent of the White House.

16:42Donald Trump is saying like, screw that. I want the Attorney General to be my Attorney General. He will defend MAGA. He will defend everything I do, whether it is legal or not legal. So that's why he wanted somebody like Matt Gaetz, who is also in under investigation for sex with a minor and was even under investigation for sex trafficking of minors, also feels aggrieved, feels that he's been wrongly persecuted, feels that the justice system has been up against him. And don't you think that's why? I think that might be why Donald Trump picked him because they're simpatico on this. We've been done in by the Justice Department.

17:17Yeah. They're simpatico on this, but also when he picked Jeff Sessions, who was a establishment name, Jeff Sessions allowed for a special prosecutor to review the - That's the first time around in 2016. Yeah, Russian collusion. And Trump was very upset about that. He wanted Sessions to leave. He knows that this man will block all special prosecutors related to any potential hassle that Donald Trump could have. And so this is something that he wants to do. He wants full power over the Justice Department without any of the systems in place to make the Justice Department as neutral or as reasonable as possible.

17:56He also wants the FBI taken out of the Justice Department and he wants it to report directly to him. And so that's a Gestapo-like thing. Wait, Donald Trump is getting these videos and montages of people for attorney general, and he doesn't like anyone. And then on Wednesday morning, Trump flies up from Mar-a-Lago to Washington, D.C. to visit President Biden and the Republicans on Capitol Hill. And on the plane with him is Congressman Matt Gaetz. And the reporting that I've heard is that Matt Gaetz just got in the president's ear and managed to persuade Donald Trump on the plane journey, which is only a two-hour plane journey up to Washington to nominate him as attorney general.

18:36And bang, a couple of hours later, Donald Trump announces it. Does that sound possible to you? Because we all had thought that Donald Trump was coming in, it was much more organized and was going to be way efficient and all normal. Listen, I tried it your way. This is Trump's now speaking. I tried it your way and your way sucked in 2017. Now we're going to do it my way, which is I'm going to cast this thing like I cast The Apprentice. That was a successful show for me. So I'm going to have a couple of misfits. I'm going to have a couple of your types of people like Rubio. Okay. And then the question really is though, is Susie Wiles, okay, who's his chief of staff, a late 60s year old woman, a veteran of Washington, a veteran of politics, and a very, very, very smart.

19:25And I would say, in my mind, my observation of her is she's smart and she's moderate. She's good with this, Katty Kay? Well, I think Susie Wiles' genius is to let Trump be Trump, but in a way that is vaguely manageable. And I think that's what she did in the campaign. So she's going to, I mean, the question is whether if this does not go to a recess appointment and the Senate does its normal job, will Matt Gaetz be confirmed? Let me read you something that Senator Mullen of Utah said about Matt Gaetz in 2023, just to give our lovely listeners a flavor of who America's next Attorney General could be.

20:04We had all seen the videos he was sharing on the House floor of the girls he had slept with. He'd brag about how he would crush ED, erectile dysfunction meds, so he could go all night. That gives you a flavor of the delightful character that is Matt Gaetz and some sense of why even this town, which is fairly unshockable, is a little bit appalled. So far, you've done two reads. You've called me a total loser and you're talking about erectile dysfunction drugs. Is there anything else you have to read? Because I'm interested in the next read. My God. Anyway, so that's Matt Gaetz. We could move on to the others or have you got more to say?

20:45I mean, tell you how many people have texted me saying, what the fuck? Okay, but let me throw this out at you, okay? I don't think he gets confirmed. Yeah. If he has to go through the normal process, he doesn't get confirmed. I agree with you. But is this like, hey, pal, I'm throwing you to the wolves because I want to get Hexeth and some of these other sort of controversial appointments through? We'll get to Pete with the good hair from Fox in a second. I don't buy from reporters I know who have spent much more time, and I want to hear what you say on this, I don't buy that Donald Trump is playing chess with this.

21:21I mean, that's too convoluted, sophisticated an interpretation of this. I just don't think that's what's going on. I think he wants Matt Gaetz. I think that's who he'd like to be as attorney general. I don't know. Do you? Do you think this is a sort of double bluff? No, I think he wants them. And I think if they do a Senate recess, they'll get them. Yeah, me too. And so the question before everybody is, how did one man, a 250-year-old institution that has systems in place, checks and balances, how did one man hijack that system? And what does it say about the leadership in that system? Right. And what does it say about America today that there's nobody inside the system?

22:08And I just want to read something to you, okay? It's not an erectile dysfunction read or calling me a major loser, but this is from Alexander Hamilton. And I want to read it to you, okay? The Senate's power to approve or reject a president's top nominees would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters, including those who had no merit other than that of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them obsequious instruments of the president's pleasure. God, how much we love Hamilton. Such a good writer. How did I do with that read? Was that all right? That was very good.

22:54It's the pliancy and the obsequiousness is just delicious. Yeah. And those are his words, but his point is, hey man, you can't put ass kissers in the cabinet who are going to do whatever the president wants. We have to have this flat decentralized system. That is Hamilton translated by Mr. Scaramucci. Yes. That's my Long Island translation of Hamilton. Look, I think what we've learned, and I really do want to get onto quickly a couple of the other appointments. But I think what we've learned is that democracy is partly laws and partly traditions and norms. And if you have somebody that is shameless, they can throw out the traditions and norms, which is chucking out a big part of what holds up democracies.

23:32No question about that. I do have one question for Trump, which is he has nominated in Pete Hegseth for the defense department, who has also, by the way, very good hair and has been a real advocate of the MAGA view and really anti-interventionist, has said he doesn't want women serving in combat positions in the military has said that a third of America's top generals are woke, as he calls them, and need to be fired. So die-hard Trumpist, his only qualification for this job is that he has served in combat. He's got two bronze stars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but his main qualification is that he defends Donald Trump on television.

24:09I do have questions about the competency of some of these people. And even from Donald Trump's own point of view, if he wants to get his agenda through, Pete Hegseth is not necessarily the most competent. Matt Gaetz is not necessarily the most competent, she says with a chuckle. And Tulsi Gabbard, who has now been proposed for director of national intelligence, the congresswoman from Hawaii, I have had my phone again, kind of full of people from the intelligence community saying, she's never run an intelligence operation. She has no idea about intelligence. And by the way, she doesn't keep secrets.

24:46so our allies will not be sharing their secrets with us. So I'm just not sure this is the most effective group that Donald Trump, I'm trying to put this as charitably as possible, the most effective group that Donald Trump could have chosen. What do you think about Tulsi Gabbard, by the way? I've had one conservative saying he likes her, that she's going to disrupt the intelligence community. Let's go over each of these people because I actually know a lot of these people personally. You would find me in 2019 on Tulsi Gabbard's donor list. She was running for president as a Democrat, and she's a moderate Democrat.

25:26She came to speak at one of my conferences. She asked me to make a donation to her. I did. I find her to be very smart. I find her to be very capable, but there's a difference between being smart and capable in one thing, but not smart and capable in something else. And this is the problem with these billionaires, Caddy. They think, well, I'm a billionaire, so I'm smart about everything, but you're actually not. There's blind spots. And you've heard me talk about the remains of the day because that book is seminal for me in terms of elites thinking that they're smarter than the common person when in fact that they're not.

26:03And whether it's Churchill or Hamilton, they would always tell you there might be madness in the crowds, which is why we have to have minority protections for the people that don't win the election. But there's also wisdom in the crowds. There is wisdom in the crowd. The crowd is telling you that the woke culture in the United States sucks and you better knock it off because we don't like it. That's what the crowd's telling you. But you got to be very careful now because she's not qualified for that job. Okay. Pete Hegseth is a lovely guy. I've sat on the Fox News couch with him. He's the weekend anchor at Fox News.