51. After Trump: How To Save The Democrats From Oblivion

0:06Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Hi, Caddy. Hi, I hope you had a very nice Christmas, although we're going to be totally transparent with everybody. We are recording this before the Christmas holiday, but this is a little episode that is going to run for you around New Year's just to keep us abreast of what is happening in American politics. Are you that kind of a person? I mean, let's learn a little bit more about you. Are you the type of person that can't tell a white lie? Coming from a broadcasting background where we set a lot of store by being transparent, I always think pretending to people that you're recording when you're not.

0:42Like if I said to you, oh my God, I love that incredible Porsche my husband bought me for Christmas and actually Tom bought me a pair of earrings and a sweater. I mean, that would just be a little disingenuous, wouldn't it? I mean, but that's a wide chasm. I mean, telling somebody that we're recording after Christmas, I mean, a Porsche and some earrings could be very expensive. I think on Wall Street, we're the king of the white lie. Honey, I'm going through the tunnel. I can't hear you. Don't worry. Bitcoin is going to be solid for the next 20 years, God has told me. I've lost cell reception.

1:15I can't hear you. I mean, we're the king of white lies, but look at you. So honest and true, Katty Kay. I think our audience will appreciate the fact that we are being transparent. I agree. You're keeping me honest, Katty Kay, and I appreciate that. Okay, so what are we talking about this first half? So we're going to kind of look forward big picture to what happens to the Republicans in the future, how the party shapes itself now that Donald Trump has been reelected, what happens with some of the more moderate members having retired and ideologically. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to flip the switch and look at what the Democrats are planning and kind of the various proposals that are out there for fighting back.

1:52I've got a little bit of a list and some other Democrats have kind of come up with proposals of their own. They've been quiet recently, but we're going to look at how the Democratic Party pulls itself out of this end of year gloom. Let's start with your party, Anthony. How are you feeling about the future of the Republican Party? Now that we have people like Mitt Romney, the centrist senator from Utah, retiring from the Senate, Is there still a Republican Party that you would recognize, or for the foreseeable future, is there just the Trump Party? Okay. So before I answer that question, let me ask you a question, because I think you're perhaps more objective than me on this issue.

2:30Is this current thing going on in the Republican Party a cult of personality, or is this thing a transformation of the Republican Party, where now the DNA of the Republican Party is totally different than it was, let's say, 10 years ago. As the nine-year advent of Donald Trump led to a complete DNA transformation, or is he a cult of personality when he expires as a politician, there's a reversion? Am I allowed to answer both? Yeah, please. Because I think in some ways, yes, there is something about Donald Trump's personality that has spread fear among members of the Republican Party in such a way that they are very anxious not to deviate from his wishes.

3:15And we've seen that play out over the last couple of weeks at the end of this year here in Washington. So there is something about Donald Trump that people love and also people hate, but drives Republicans to the polls, mobilizes the base in a way that kind of terrorizes other Republicans. He, by force of personality and by his fame, and I think we should never forget that, and his kind of incredible instinct for political communication has created something of a cult of personality. This is very much about love of Donald Trump. But there is also a way in which the ideology of the post-Second World War Republican Party seems to have fundamentally shifted.

3:53So you've got a party that is more isolationist, more protectionist, less keen on free markets, very interestingly, less keen on deficit reduction. Whatever members of Congress might say, Donald Trump is clearly not interested in cutting the welfare state because he's realized that Republican voters like their healthcare and they like their retirement benefits. So in some ways, economically and in terms of global policy, I don't see the Republican Party going back to what it has been for the last 30, 40 years. But I do think that it is worth looking at a Republican Party beyond Donald Trump because as you and I have said, anyone in Washington knows once you are elected to a second term in office as a president, you're pretty much a lame duck from the moment you walk into the White House.

4:39And the jockeying for the future of the Republican Party and the Republican Party leadership will begin the moment that Donald Trump is sworn into office. Okay. So I could be wrong, and obviously I may be a little bit too emotional about this and less objective than you, and that's why I asked the question. I actually think it's a call to personality. I think when he leaves, the vacuum of that is going to be filled by more rational people. And I don't think the MAGA people can get away with what Donald Trump's doing. I think he is the one person that can pull this off. I don't see J.D. Vance tweeting the governor of the great state of Canada.

5:19I just don't see it. Now, maybe he'll be able to do that and he'll be able to pull it off in a way where people are going to ignore it and not condemn him. And maybe he'll be able to act with vicious cruelty towards people and he'll say outlandish things about other heads of state, but I don't see it because there's something about a 78-year-old orange visage that is absolutely shameless and notorious that can get away with that. I don't think that these other people will be able to do that. Now, maybe I'm wrong. I think Marco Rubio is coming for the top spot. He's going to be the secretary of state, which as you know, is arguably the most important cabinet position.

5:57DeSantis, I think, still has fire in him. He's going to want to come for the top spot. They're trying to keep him out of the cabinet because they don't want to empower him. Susie Wiles doesn't like him. J.D. Vance is afraid of him. So they're trying to keep him out of the top spot. They've told Trump, you got to get Hegsest, don't go to DeSantis. We got to get Pete Hegsest in that position. And so what I see for that party is a renewal of that party and a re-engineering of that party. And I do think there'll be some populism going forward. But the big thing about that party, it's always been influenced by this caddy, is big business and big money has always flowed into that party.

6:36And so you have to tell me in 2028, what does big business want and what does big billionaires want? Because they're going to be influencing that party. And to Donald Trump's credit, I always want to be objective with him. He's less influenced by that. You know, yes, give me the money and I'll say nice things about you. I'll say a 90-day pause on TikTok and things like that. But he's beating to his own drum, doing his own things. I don't think J.D. Vance has the muscle of personality or Marco Rubio, or you tell me. Now there's a question from our producers that I will answer. Are there any traditional Rockefeller Republicans left, which are these sort of centrists that are sort of socially moderate and somewhat fiscally conservative.

7:16There's a few, but they're waning. And I think they're too boring for this party now. I think these people have figured out that these elections are now marketing competitions. These elections are popularity and attention contests. So I think that's where it's going. I'm going to push back a little bit on two ideological things that I don't see going back. I don't see a return to the Republican Party of John McCain, or a return to the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, or even a return to the Republican Party of George W. Bush. And here's a couple of reasons why. I think the idea of fiscal conservatism, barring some massive fiscal crisis in America, kind of Liz Truss style in the UK, fiscal conservatism seems to be out the window.

7:58And that has a big impact on all of those traditional country cup Rockefeller Republicans, if you like to call them that, who were kind of focused on, even if they didn't do it, trying to balance the budget and reducing spending or at least keeping America's budget under control. I don't see that coming back. I think Donald Trump tapped into something very fundamental when he realized that this is not the party of Paul Ryan anymore, who wanted to focus on balancing budgets. Working class Americans, Donald Trump kind of brilliantly intuited, and he realized this in 2016 when he ran as well, we're really not that concerned about balancing budgets.

8:33That's somebody else's problem. Let's kick the can down the road. they wanted to hang on to their government programs. This is very different. And I don't see that coming back unless there is some kind of fiscal crisis in America. The other thing I think that has ended, and this gets to kind of more the John McCain, Ronald Reagan view of America, is the instinctive commitment to transatlanticism. I would say that Joe Biden is probably America's last real transatlanticist president. I mean, again, if there's a massive war that goes on and America decides it needs Europe, that could change. But as things stand at the moment, Barack Obama was not a transatlanticist.

9:08Kamala Harris was not a transatlanticist. Donald Trump is not a transatlanticist. So the Republican Party that came out of the Second World War, where America recognized that it had a leadership role in the world, I think that has gone. And then the knock-on implications of that for NATO, for American leadership, for Canada and the 51st state, as Donald Trump likes to call him. It was so interesting to me when I was speaking to a pollster recently who said that one of the most popular, and I think I mentioned this on a previous episode, one of the most popular policies that Donald Trump talked about was withdrawing America from NATO.

9:41Because I think there is a feeling of we've been in these forever wars in the Middle East for too long. We're exhausted. Why should we lead? The world can go hang itself. It doesn't help American workers. I think in those two very important ways that were such important planks of American leadership and of the American Republican movement, I don't see that coming back. I mean, do you really think this could be the party of John McCain, the late great senator from Arizona again? I don't see that. The stuff that Donald Trump gets away with is because he is Donald Trump. I don't see J.D. Vance mimetically being the Donald Trump clone politician.

10:20He doesn't have the charisma or he doesn't have the apprentice background. Yeah, he doesn't have the brand. He doesn't have the name recognition. I'm going to say something to you and I want you to react to it. Okay. I think George W. Bush is the undertaker of the former Republican party. I think he killed the Republican party and he embalmed the Republican party and he incinerated the Republican party. He cremated it. With his helper, Dick Cheney. Oh yeah. With his helper, Dick Cheney. Let me just say three things, get you to react to him. Number one, he went to war without a tax increase. First time in history.

10:58We actually cut taxes in March. He said he was going to have a tax cut. The CBO was saying we're going to have a$5 trillion, 10-year surplus, the trajectory that Bill Clinton put us on. Bush said, no, no, we're going to return it to the American people, tax cut. We then go to war as a result of 9-11, first time in our history. We don't have a tax increase going into the war, so we blow a hole in our deficit. We then let up, regulatorily-wise, on the banks, and the banks blow up Caddy Kay, and we have the global financial crisis, which engenders the populism. The people say, what the hell are you doing?

11:34You're giving a trillion dollars to the banks. We're out here suffering. You get the Tea Party movement, Occupy Wall Street, the Bernie Sanders movement, the manifestation of MAGA. They all come from these decisions. And the last piece is the forever wars. This is something I agree with Pete Hegseth on. Hegseth fought in those wars. He came back from those wars and he said, hey man, these wars were stupid. They were ideologically stupid and they didn't help the United States in any way, shape or form. In fact, it may have hurt our standing in the world to prosecute these wars. This Cheney idea and this Bush idea of neocons flexing on the world and showing the world who is mighty in the world didn't work.

12:20And all of this now has transmuted into the current Republican Party. You buy that or do you think I'm totally off-paste? No, I think that the war in the Middle East, which many countries around the world, and particularly among America's allies, recognized at the time was a fool's venture, but that Dick Cheney really pushed and George W. Bush went along with has had enormous implications, not just on America's standing around the world. And we're seeing that play out right now in the Middle East, but also on Americans' attitude to global leadership. So here's a question for you. Can the Republican Party get out of the personality cult of Donald Trump and kind of Trumpism and restore itself to something of a kind of centrist governing party if it doesn't do something serious about income inequality?

13:09And I feel that's the biggest challenge in a way for the Republican Party at the moment. And I don't see much sign that the Trump administration is seriously planning to address that. I can see that, you know, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to cut government spending, but I'm not seeing a big governing philosophy around how do we actually address this thing that has kind of led us as well along the path of populism. And, you know, without what you do, you massively explode the deficit in a redistributive program. That's a kind of Bernie Sanders style approach to it. We talk more about the Democrats in the second half, but I don't see a Republican who's having serious, thoughtful ideas about what America really needs to do to stop this drift towards ever greater income inequality.

13:53I mean, it's spot on, Cady. I mean, you're right on the center of where we need to be. And I don't see the person, but if somebody called me and they said to me, hey, what do we need? What I would say is in my life experience and my observations, six presidential campaigns that I've worked on, people no longer feel aspirational. There's a good 25 % of the people when asked, are you going to do better than your parents? They say no. And they say that we're despairing that we don't have the opportunity that our parents or grandparents felt they had in America. And what I fear is the cognitive biases of the people that are in policy now.

14:35So it's one thing to talk about populism. It's one thing to talk about these people. It's another thing to do something for these people. And the Democrats are not doing anything really of substance for these people. They could care less. They're focused on transgender bathrooms and pronoun designations, and we've got to be woke. Well, I think they've had a wake-up call on that, but we can get to that in a second. Well, hopefully. And the Republicans are like, we're going to talk about this stuff, but we really do want a tax cut extension. We really do want more corporate tax cuts. We're going to talk about this stuff, but we sort of want big food to bully the FDA because it helps us get reelected because the big food people send us money.

15:12And so I guess what I would say to the politician is if you can engender the empathy for those people, if you can somehow say, hey, I'm with you. Trump says he is, but he never does anything for them. And that's just the honest fact. Okay. It's why you were attracted to Donald Trump in the first place. And I've always respected your story about that, of realizing that he actually, he saw American workers. I mean, the problem is he hasn't followed through, right? you saw something. But I think he saw it as an electoral tool rather than as a governing philosophy. 100%. And so when I was out there with him, I was like, oh my God, he's talking to my dad.

15:47My dad was born in 1935. These people were born in 1965, 1975. But it's the same sort of people. They want to be hardworking. They want to do the right thing for their families, but they're not finding the job location. And so to me, it would be the trinity of education, healthcare, and whatever else you could come up with that means equal opportunity. Does that mean job training? Does that mean here's what we're going to do for you to retool yourself in a world of AI? And by the way, I am a Republican. I am not for equal outcomes. I think equal outcomes actually destroy a society. They take incentives away from people.

16:23A very small group of people at the top that are close to the government do well. Everyone else does less well, frankly, but it's equal opportunity, not equal outcomes. So that's where the Republicans need to go. And American voters have kind of grasped it. I mean, they look at how much money America spends on healthcare and they look at the poor outcomes they get. And we've seen that kind of explode over the last couple of weeks with the events around the United Healthcare CEO. And they realize America spends a lot of money on education and yet their education standards are falling behind. They see the problem.

16:53Maybe J.D. Vance has actually got some kind of intellectual cohesion around this. I'm not sure he has the ability to enact it or the political savvy to get it done. And I think there is a kind of streak of J.D. Vance that certainly some working class people in Ohio that I've interviewed don't feel he's really on their side. They feel a little used by him. But he has talked about it. He has talked about what to do about the American worker. Okay, that is the Republican Party for you. Clearly, lots of questions for the Republicans. But in the next half, we are going to look at the Democrats who face just as many challenges.

17:22We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be right back.

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18:37Welcome back. We spent the first half of this program talking about the Republicans. We are now going to shift the spotlight onto the, I think I'm going to call them the dismal Democrats because they are feeling pretty dismal at the moment, both about the outcome of the last election and about their own future. I mean, it's remarkable in this city, which is kind of full of Democrats, Washington DC votes like 90 % Democrat, how much people are. Every holiday event I've been to over the last few weeks, the gloom in the room is palpable. And it's partly about what happened, but it's also about what is going to happen to the party.

19:11And so I think that's how we should frame this discussion. Can I be a scold for a second? Do you mind? Go on, go on, go on. I don't like being one, but let me be a scold, okay? Number one, what the hell is wrong with you guys? Joe Biden was sunsetting. He was sunsetting. Nobody goes to Joe Biden in 2023 and says, hey man, you can't remember things. You got to come out of the race. Jill Biden, what are you doing? This is your husband. This is the most stressful, most important job in the world. He's got to tell people he's not running for re-election so that we can have a fair primary and we can run off of his legacy.

19:46He's actually done a good job. He's got a good legislative agenda. He actually got stuff done, which is pretty unusual in America. Why are you Shakespeareanly holding on to this foolishly? Very good questions. That's number one. Number two, hey guys, you're telling us that Donald Trump is the threat to democracy? In 2016, you don't let Biden run against Hillary Clinton. In 2020, you do have a primary, thank God. But by 2024, you don't let Bobby Kennedy run against Joe Biden. You don't even have a New Hampshire primary. What are you guys doing? And then of course, when Joe Biden is forced to drop out of the race because he's obviously in cognitive decline, you don't have a primary.

20:25Obama wants one. You don't have a primary. and you put Vice President Harris in an impossible situation. And by the way, hello. Can you hear me? I'm knocking on the TV here. Hey guys, what the hell are you doing? Okay. And by the way, you almost won the damn thing. It wasn't really that far away. It was. It was. 170 ,000 votes. What the hell are you guys doing? What's the defensive crouch? I mean, maybe if the Democrats had got the final result the day after the election, they would be in less of a defensive crouch. But I think the narrative that came out of election night, you were on air and I was on air, was that, wow, this was a hammering.

21:03And of course, Donald Trump ran with that narrative and Republicans ran with that narrative. Although I think at the end of this year with the events on Capitol Hill and the chaos up there, they may be realizing that their massive mandate that they're claiming is not as massive as they thought it was. But it has pushed Democrats back on their heels. And I think, yes, the revision around Joe Biden, and you and I said this at the time, that if Joe Biden had got out earlier, his legacy and history would be different. My understanding from people who have had conversations with the president, he is actually still the president.

21:32You may not believe that because you have not seen much of him recently, although he's off to see the Pope, I see in January, is that he kind of does realize that now. I mean, I think he is leaving office bitter and angry and upset, but a part of him realizes that this is a problem of his own making And that if he had got out in 2023, or even in March of 2024, even if he had done a kind of, you know, 1968 and got out earlier, he would have given Kamala Harris that much more time to run the campaign. Interestingly, there is not a lot of criticism of Kamala Harris. There is criticism around the communication of the campaign.

22:07Why didn't they repudiate the attacks on them for transgender things quicker? Why didn't they laser focus on prices and inflation. And you and I said this repeatedly during the campaign that there needed to be a stronger focus on economics. And as you pointed out, that's not her kind of bailiwick. She doesn't love that. But actually for her, I'm not picking up as much anger amongst Democrats for her as I am for him. So you're going to learn, and you know this already, but I'm saying it's going to be written about in one of these campaign books, that that campaign was Joe Biden's campaign to the end.

22:41They inserted Kamala Harris, but it was his campaign people, his campaign team. Many of those people were leaking on her two years ago, get her off the ticket. Now they're running with her. And you'll find out that they blocked her from doing certain things. They didn't trust her. So they blocked her from doing certain podcasts. They changed her schedule around. They took her off the Alfred E. Smith dinner, can't do that dinner. Donald Trump hurt Hillary Clinton's feelings at that dinner in 2016. You could get your feelings hurt in 2024. Don't do the dinner. Joe Rogan, scram on Joe Rogan. I think that's all the kind of communications tool the problem was and the problem for the Democratic Party is they did not have a message to working class Americans that convincingly sounded like they were laser focused on fixing the problems that American workers are facing.

23:35Whether she goes on a podcast or doesn't, you've got to fix that message. You got to fix that policy. I like when I put you in the communications director role, Caddy. God knows why, because no one has ever paid me a cent in my whole life to run anything or do any kind of communications. I like it because I failed at it. And I think you, with your British accent and so on and so forth, that you could be a great - So it's just the accent. No, it's the accent. It's the insight. It's the experience. I was fishing. It's the sobriety. It's the maturity, all the things that I don't have. So maturity, all this great stuff that you have.

24:06Okay. So let me just throw this at you. Okay. Do you think that the Democrats know why they lost? And if they don't, or they do, you please, as the comms director, articulate why they lost and articulate what they should do as a result of their losing. I think they do understand that the focus on identity politics that the Democratic party has become associated with, particularly over the last 10 to 20 years, has turned off a lot of middle-class, centrist American voters. I think they understand that intellectually. I don't think they have understood how to not alienate some of their democratic base that is progressive and cares about those issues, whilst also not losing the votes of working class Hispanic men, for example, to use the kind of identity politics they need to focus on.