58. Trump’s Imperial Presidency: What Happens Next

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1:23Welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Katty Kay. And I am Anthony Scaramucci in an undisclosed location. You're in London with the techno music. I can hear it in the background. I'm glad to hear you're having so much fun. We have a jam-packed show because you may have noticed there's just been a little bit of news here in Washington this week. But before we get to the program, we have some very exciting news. We asked you if you wanted extra content, and the response has been fantastic. Fantastic. So since things are moving so quickly here in America, we are planning to release extra episodes at the start of every week.

2:01For our founding members, we're going to be broadcasting these episodes live on YouTube. And our first live stream is going to actually be at 8 p.m. UK time next Monday. So keep an eye on your inbox for that link. And of course, if you want to become a founding member and watch these episodes live, sign up at the rest is politics US dot com. For everybody else, we love you too. The episode is going to be available on Tuesday morning, wherever you get your podcasts. So with that out of the way, the news is wild here at the moment. I feel like, Anthony, I am in the middle of Hurricane Elon is sweeping through my city as I speak to you from Washington, D.C.

2:42So this week we're going to talk about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the extraordinary way in which he's pushing the boundaries of executive power all around this city and changing the face of the American government as we speak, alongside a group of very young software engineers. And then we're going to talk about the news from Gaza, or President Trump's plan to build the Riviera of Gaza. And we will also talk about some of the roadblocks that Donald Trump is already hitting amidst this chaos. So where to start with Elon Musk? But I think what's worth pointing out. I had a conversation, Anthony, last night with somebody who is a big supporter of Donald Trump's, has been close to the president, is close to very senior people in the administration and has been in contact with them.

3:38And he said, listen, the disruption that is happening in the American government had to happen. He pointed out that the US government spent$4 trillion in 2019 and nearly$7 trillion in 2024. He says America's government has to stop spending money. It has to make cuts, that it's dangerous for America to carry on spending the way that it is. And he was very supportive of this disruption. He says the only way you can really trim government is to do what Elon Musk is doing throughout the U.S. government. And he's literally going into government departments, getting access to their communications and computer systems and figuring out what to cut and what not to cut.

4:26That is not a view that many people here in this city have, because of course, Washington is government central. So I know lots of people who are in a complete tizzy about this, people who have lost their jobs because of this, people think they're going to lost their jobs because of this, people who make a very valid argument that America is undermining its national security by cutting foreign aid programs. But for Donald Trump, I think it is a sign that he is kind of, you know, he's acting like a quasi king at the moment. And Elon Musk is his general out there with his army of engineers and his army of Twitter followers executing on Donald Trump's agenda.

5:01Is that what it looks like to you? I guess the real question, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, has anybody left the government? They've said, you can get eight months of pay. Please leave the government. Which is not even clear if that's legal, right? It's not clear that Elon Musk has the authority to do that, to give people eight months of pay, because there's a$25 ,000 cap actually on what they're allowed to have. So I don't know, maybe he's rich enough or he could pay him the other seven months or something. But my question though to you is that like, has anybody left? Has anybody said, you know what, I'm taking a powder here for Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

5:37I've worked for the federal government, 10, 20, 30 years. I'm done. I'll take eight months of pay and go find myself a private sector job. So what I've heard is the reporting is that some 20 ,000 people, according to Elon Musk's team. Now, this is what Elon Musk is saying. And Elon Musk, I have to say, is operating with a very large degree of secrecy. So we don't really know all of the details of what he's doing. But his team at Doge is saying that some 20 ,000 people have taken this offer to leave the federal government, ABC News reported that a woman who agreed to take this deal, Elon Musk phrased it as you can Netflix and chill or just take that vacation you've always wanted.

6:17She said, yes, I'll take the deal and then has heard nothing since. And her line manager, she says, has told her, look, you shouldn't have taken that deal because it's not even clear the deal is legal. For me, the big question is how much of what Donald Trump is doing with Elon Musk executing it is real and will change the face of American government, how much of it is a show to his MAGA crowd that he's doing dramatic things? How much of it is legal? And does Donald Trump even care if it's legal or not? At the moment, it's hard to know, right? Because we don't exactly know what Trump is doing.

6:56We don't know whether Congress or the courts are going to push back. Okay, so I'm going to make a couple of statements, and then I'd like you to react to these statements. I've been thinking about this all morning. So statement number one, there are no smart people that have ever been in the United States government until Elon Musk and Donald Trump arrived in the government. So everybody else that was there, whether it was Lincoln or Roosevelt or George Washington, you know, the country, according to Donald Trump, while he was campaigning was an open sewer pipe and everyone was, it's a nest of incompetency.

7:33Him and Elon Musk represent the only two smart people in the government. So therefore, even though this system has made America prosperous, the most prosperous economic nation in the world, and obviously has the most powerful military, there's no smart people around. So, okay, react to that. Is that how they think, Hattie, or do I have that wrong? I think that's exactly how they think. And even And more than that, they think that, as Elon has said, it's a nest of vipers. And in the case of USAID, it's a criminal organization is what he's called it. It's not just that they think these people are incompetent and they are the smartest people, including these young kids.

8:12I mean, one of these guys is 19 years old who is going into these agencies and getting into their software systems. It's that they think that they are all politically motivated against Donald Trump. So they think these people have an agenda, which is to thwart MAGA. And in some cases, I think they think these people are traitors, which is what Elon Musk has said, particularly anyone on the kind of humanitarian, non-profit side, they seem to believe are there with the sole objective of opposing Donald Trump. And maybe in the first administration, they found some of those people who were thwarting Donald Trump's agenda.

8:51But this time around, I think they are seeing treachery where actually there is just the functioning of government. One person gave me an example, which is that Elon Musk thinks that all of this money that was paid out between the election and the inauguration by USAID, actually, according to somebody I spoke to who's well versed in U.S. government, says, actually, that's what happens towards the end of the year. You disperse the rest of your payments. This was perfectly legal. It wasn't treacherous. It's just what government officials are there to do. So, yes, I think that's what they feel. Number two, there have been systems in place in the American government for multiple decades.

9:28And so these systems interlock with each other, meaning Treasury needs justice if they want to transact on certain things. Justice would potentially need, I don't know, could meet the Department of Defense on something. It might need the State Department on something. There could be something going on. And so there's a system and a web of these governmental agencies that communicate with each other and operate with each other. Moreover, there are inspector generals in these places, which are supposed to be nonpartisan and are supposed to observe the process to make sure that there's no illegal activity going on and there's no self-dealing going on.

10:08And, of course, if there is, the inspector general makes a report and penalizes or fires or does whatever is necessary. Elon Musk and Donald Trump believe that is also terrible. And so therefore, those people should be fired. And whatever Musk wants to do in terms of the information that he is downloading from the Treasury Department, he's entitled to it. So if it's your Social Security number or mine, he's entitled to it. If it's line item disbursements going through the government, the$7 trillion that you just referenced, he's entitled to do a line-by-line observation of each of those things and then, I guess, opine on those through his X feed.

10:54And so there's probably 50 or 60 different laws that are being broken in terms of doing that, Caddy, in terms of rights to privacy, all different types of stuff. But Elon Musk and Donald Trump say, too bad. This is not a micro transgression. This is a macro transgression. And go sue us if you want. But we're going to do this. Yeah, I think that you're right about the web that exists between the government agencies. And I have little doubt when you look at the jump in spending that is taking place in America since before COVID. I mean,$3 trillion is an awful lot of extra money to be spending. And I imagine that you could go through every single government agency on that line by line basis and find elements of waste or duplication or fraud or expenditure that is not aligned with your political position, particularly in the case, for example, of humanitarian aid, which is what they keep referring to.

11:55But you're also going to find an awful lot of things that are happening that need to happen. So when those software engineers are on the behalf of Doge are now going in and reading those line by line items from treasury payments, some of those treasury payments might be payments to contractors who are getting old people to their medical appointments, for example. Is that the kind of thing that now one of those software engineers is going to see, you know, help to old people in disadvantaged communities? Right. We're going to rewrite the code and that payment is no longer going to be made. And I think that is why there is so much disquiet in Washington.

12:35We don't know whether they're just reading the code or writing the code. We don't know if these people have security clearances. We don't know what their intention is. It's very easy to say, as one kind of former official said, this is like telling the plane to stop its flight in mid-flight. You just turn the engines off. That's kind of what Elon Musk is doing. It's what he did with Twitter, fired 80 % of the employees, and you build it from the ground up. The question for a government is, let's say that contractor who takes old people to their medical appointments isn't getting paid next week.

13:11The old people don't go to their medical appointments. How does that actually work? You don't get your tax rebate. Your mom doesn't get her social security payment. We don't know what is going to happen in this breaking process. Statement number three. And again, I agree with you, but I see the outrage of what is going on. I don't see any outrage. I mean, Hakeem Jeffries got out yesterday. He said something that was nonsensical. He said that there's a plot to steal your tax dollars through the U.S. Treasury. That's what Hakeem Jeffries said. And so that was incredibly disingenuous. The Democrats then said that the Elise Stefanik situation, she's going to be the U.N.

13:52ambassador and we're going to delay that election to weaken Mike Johnson and weaken the Republicans in the House. We're going to delay our election. But they're supposedly for the democracy, but they're going to not have a democratic process to have an election because they're as hypocritical and as devious and maniacal as the Republicans. And so the Democrats are caught flat-footed. Elon Musk and Trump are doing a blitzkrieg. They thought about this for three or four years. This is a lightning strike on the bureaucracy. I don't speak German, so I don't know. It's blitz bureaucracy. I don't know what it would be called, but they're coming in hard, and they're coming in fast, and they're doing hundreds of things at the same time so that you can't respond to all hundreds of things.

14:42What are we going to do? You're going to have 200 lawsuits in the administrative court, in the federal courts, to try to stop us from what we're doing. And so they're laughing, Katty K. They're laughing. And they're saying to themselves, these people are weak. These people are flat-footed. And we're going to crush these people. Yeah, and I think, look, what the White House wants to do is test the system. I think Donald Trump is testing the American system. Will Congress push back on this? And how they are doing this, the speed with which they are doing it, the extreme way they are doing this. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing far more to disrupt the American government than any president has any ever done in a four-year term or in an eight-year term.

15:33And we're only two weeks into the administration. But the way they are doing this is the point of it. It's a test case. So for example, shutting down USAID is a test case. Can they then go down and shut other federal agencies? If Congress doesn't push back, and we don't see any signs certainly of the Republican Party pushing back, if the courts take too long to push back, then why not the Department of education? Why not a whole load of other government departments? And I think what we have no idea of is what will be necessary efficiencies that might be made in this process, and what will be total disruption and chaos and harm to the American people in this process.

16:21And Congress at the moment seems to be saying, and Mike Johnson has given a very mealy-mouthed answer when he was asked, you know, is Congress just going to roll over and let the White House shut down a government department? And he said, well, it's more complicated than that. We'll have to look into it. I don't know. I don't want to piss off Donald Trump effectively, is what he said. Donald Trump is acting as an imperial president at the moment, and no one's stopping him. So lest anybody think this isn't planned, because of course it is planned, and you can just look at Project 2025 and you can go down the list and see the plan.

16:57Which they swore they were not had anything to do with, by the way. So while this is going on, though, we're going from crony capitalism to crony imperialism in 16 days. While this is going on, Donald Trump campaigned on being a non-interventionist. He campaigned on getting us out of forever wars. He's effectively declared that he's going to own Greenland, potentially by military force. retake the Panama Canal, rename the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. But now he's talking about being a true neocon. He's Dick Cheney. He's going to move the American military into Gaza, and he's going to ethnically cleanse the 1.8 million people that live in Gaza.

17:47And by the way, I'm embarrassed for Benjamin Netanyahu. I'm embarrassed for him because for Trump to say that and to Netanyahu to be a sophisticated person and somebody that has to live in that neighborhood with the Sunni Arab governments that are surrounding him and to him say that and to him almost have like a smirk or a smile on his face. I'm actually embarrassed for Benjamin Netanyahu because when somebody is acting like that and you're sitting there allowing it, it doesn't make you look good. You can pretend it does. You can pretend you're catering to your right-wing conservative base in Israel, but it doesn't make you look good.

18:27And the problem I'm having with all of this, Caddy, is that we're allowing it to happen. I said this morning to the Atlantic Partnership here in London that Homer tried to tell us 3 ,000 years ago that we can't handle the truth. He had the figure, Cassandra, she was the metaphor that represented this about our nature. Cassandra was trying to tell her dad, who was the king of Troy, the Greeks are coming. They're going to destroy the city. And she was blessed with clairvoyance, but she was also cursed with nobody believing her because it was the truth. And of course, Aaron Sorkin took that Cassandra and placed it in the Jack Nicholson figure and a few good men 32 years ago, where he very famously stands up in the courtroom and says, you want the truth, but you cannot handle the truth.

19:23So we now have Republicans that know what Donald Trump is doing. It's actually insane. They know he's not well mentally or psychologically to be doing every single thing that he's doing simultaneously. There's not a 4D chess game going down. He's sitting there like a buffoon eating the chess pieces, but no one's going to say anything to him. Okay. So now what, Caddy? You live in Washington. Right. I have an allergic reaction to Washington. So go ahead. Tell me what's going to happen. The Gaza thing is very interesting. And I agree with you. The most extraordinary thing watching that press conference was watching Benjamin Netanyahu's face.

20:02You should be embarrassed. And by the way, if you're a supporter of Israel, you should call Netanyahu and say, you know, you should be embarrassed by the way you handled yourself in front of that buffoon. The smirk he had on his face. I mean, maybe he's just imagining that this gets him out of trouble with the right wing of his coalition, because this is exactly what they would like to see happen. And maybe they're going to think, right, we're going to stick around in this coalition government for phase two or phase three of this peace deal, because maybe this crazy plan of Donald Trump's, which even Lindsey Graham is saying is a nonstarter, who is one of the more hawkish Republican senators.

20:44I mean, the lineup of Republican senators who have already come out and said, this is a crazy idea, is striking in this environment where they seem happy to say, OK, RFK can be head of health care and Tulsi Gabbard can be head of intelligence. But even they who have rolled over and had their bellies patted by Donald Trump, even they are saying, OK, this is one too far. And yet maybe for Benjamin Netanyahu, who's thinking, look, this just gives me a little bit of a lease of life on my coalition government keeps the right wing happy. You never know. Donald Trump throws out these ideas. But what was striking to me about yesterday about that press conference on Tuesday evening was the degree of detail.

21:28I mean, Donald Trump, like you just said, this is not just thrown out there. Any of this is planned. I mean, he he came out with a lot of detail. It was written down. He was reading it. This was not Donald Trump riffing. since that press conference I've had, senior Middle Eastern diplomats texting me saying, this is unbelievable. The Jordanians we know, and I know from my conversations with Jordanian officials, cannot accept this. They're already a majority Palestinian country. They've seen how disruptive that could be during the Gaza war. It's very precarious for the King of Jordan, this proposition.

22:05So I don't think anyone in Washington is taking that seriously. It could be the moment where we see and we have seen some Republican pushback because it's not what Donald Trump was elected to do. So this is something where maybe the more rational voices in the Republican Party will turn around and say, hold on a second, we were elected to do something about the price of eggs and not get into forever wars. We're talking now about an ethnic cleansing in Gaza. But over the weekend, he was putting 25 percent tariffs on our two closest allies that live on the same continent as us. So all of this is absurd to you and me.

22:42And we both know that. You talk to some of these Republican senators. You have good relationships with some of them. You know that some of them do not like all of the people that have been approved to the cabinet. For me, I said earlier that Donald Trump is behaving like a king and Elon Musk is his general in this fight. The real sign of just how much power Donald Trump has, and one Trump supporter who is a serious guy in the finance world said to me, Donald Trump is the most powerful American president, at least since FDR, if not more powerful than FDR, and that he will end up with his face on Mount Rushmore because of how much power he has.

23:23But the sign of Donald Trump's power is the fact that Republican senators have agreed to RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard becoming cabinet members. You speak to these Republicans. I know you have conversations with some of these Republican senators. Why? Why? Why do they why are they saying yes? He is the politician, the American politician of the last 40 years. He's now, in my mind, eclipsed Reagan in terms of the force of his personality and the dent that he's making on American society. And I don't like it. And he's not popular with me. And Joe Biden enabled him. It's almost like he gave him 12 years because we were living under the shadow of Donald Trump during the Biden administration.

24:11So he's almost gotten the 12 years. FDR got 13. So weirdly, he's been overseeing this disaster for 12 years. And so, yes, he's very consequential. What those senators will say, and I won't name them because I don't want to out them, but what they will say, they will say to me, Anthony, of course, I shouldn't have voted yes on Hegseth or Tulsi Gabbard or whoever. But you want to know something? I can't die on this hill because what's going to happen, Elon Musk called me and said he's going to put$100 million into my alt-right primary candidate next time. and he's going to spend$100 million on my neighborhood to knock me out of the Senate.

24:54And so do you want a loony tune to take my seat in the Senate? You knock Liz Cheney into center field and we have a loony tune that replaced her. So what would you like me to do? Do you want me to die on this hill or something more consequential could come up, at which point I'm there as a moderate to prevent something quite disastrous from happening? And so it's an interesting thing to say, and I respect it. They're politicians, so they're not going to always do the most principled thing in the room. One other thing I've heard this week, which is also quite disturbing, was from a former Democrat in the House.

25:32She stepped down in the last cycle, but she's very close to other members of Congress still, and she has always worked in a bipartisan way. She said to me that if they speak out against Donald Trump, members of Congress in the Republican Party are not just worried about whether they're going to be primaried and Elon Musk is going to put a whole load of money into them being primaried. they're also worried for their lives and for the security of their spouses and their children. Because Elon Musk can turn that Twitter army against members and he will out them, even though ironically he has said that it's a crime that his little doge team of teenagers is being named in the press.

26:16He is quite happy to turn his army of Twitter followers against members of Congress, and it can become a real security threat for them. So they could be primaried or they would have to deal with the fact that their wife or husband and kids could actually be in a position where the Twitter mob could literally turn against them. And I was at a breakfast this morning where I was told that there are elevated threats against public officials that are against Donald Trump. Elevated, meaning there's a lot of barking that takes place on X and there's no bite. But there are elevated threats against our public officials if they go against these people.

26:55And the FBI has notified some of the public officials about their need to get more security around them and more safety. But I want to role play with you for a second because I want to be as objective as possible on this podcast. I want to put a MAGA hat on for a second. And I want to speak as a MAGA person. How am I catching up with Donald Trump? Because Donald Trump told me no more wars, but we're going to have now troops in Gaza, Panama, and Greenland. Donald Trump told me that he was going to solve the Ukrainian crisis in 24 hours. And now we know it will be years, if possibly longer. and he's moving the ball so quickly up and down the field.

27:37And I want to be with him, Katty K. I want to side with him. Donald Trump told me that he was against TikTok before he was for it. And if I was a member of the House of Representatives, I voted against TikTok. Now he's for TikTok. So be MAGA for me and tell me why they like this. Call Donald Trump for me. Hello, Mr. President, how are you? yes, you're going to ethnically cleanse Gaza. Okay, just out of curiosity, sir, what is your thinking behind that? This is 4D chess, and I understand that. So give me the 4D chess move here, sir. What is it, Katty? Yeah, I mean, it's always a question with Donald Trump.