8. Donald Trump, Wall Street, and power: How billionaires choose their next president

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1:06Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci. And me, Katty Kay. How are you, Katty? I'm good because I'm back in D.C. after my kind of travels around this enormous great country. And it's very nice to be home. On today's podcast, we're going to be looking at the big spike in Donald Trump's fundraising since that criminal indictment at the end of last week, as well as some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, in finance, who had previously alienated themselves from Donald Trump after January the 6th. they're now jumping in and saying they're going to fund his campaign for a second presidency.

1:46In the second half of the program, we're going to take a look at Joe Biden's announcement of an executive order on immigration that would allow for the US-Mexico border to be temporarily shut down to asylum seekers. And we'll get into why the president did that, how it's annoyed members of his own party on the progressive left. And look actually a bit more broadly, something I've wanted to do for a while, about the Republican Party's relationship with immigration and how it used to be the party that was in favor of immigration reform. You had American business in favor of immigration. And now that's all being switched around in the Trump era.

2:25First though, Anthony, as you always say, let's follow the money and talk about what's happened with Donald Trump's fundraising since that criminal indictment last week when he was found guilty of fiddling his books in order to cover up a hush money payment to the wonderful porn star, Stormy Daniels. It's just an incredible story. If we just stop and think about the story and the fact that he is immunized the American public from the story. And I want you to imagine 20 years ago, a 2004 campaign where this had erupted on one of the candidates or 30 years ago, the stuff that Bill Clinton was dealing with.

3:07It's just an amazing story that he is moving on. He's raised, he says, $200 million. Now, I don't believe that number of candidates. I just want to provide some perspective on that. When we were working in 2016 for Donald Trump, he was not raising money. when Mnuchin and I got together to build the protocol to raise money from the high net worth donors. And I had the Romney list. I had the George W. List. And we were going out to those people. They're saying, no, we don't want to give money to Donald Trump. He's off his kilter and it's bad for our business. And so to Jared Kushner's credit and a few other people, They organized this small donor, send out ads on Facebook, Instagram, et cetera.

3:54And we were picking up tens of millions of dollars at an average clip of about$61. And that's worked for Mr. Trump. He got the big donors in 2020 as the sitting president, but he's not getting the big donors. If you look at the math, he's still getting the small donors. He's not getting the big donors. he closed several of what he calls his outreach offices in some of the swing states this past week. People are saying, okay, if you raise$200 million and you know you have to get out the vote exercise, why are you closing these? Okay. So there's a lot of misinformation happening in that campaign.

4:35And by the way, they do what corporations do is they pull from the month before and they pull from this thing. President Biden went to Radio City Music Hall a few months ago, raised$25 million. So Trump had to say, well, I raised$50 at John Paulson's oceanfront mansion in Palm Beach, but he probably didn't. He pulled it from other places and took some of it from the small donors. So I just want to provide context to people to understand. And yes, he raised money. Yes, he probably raised money from new people. But I don't think he's raising the money he's saying. We won't know the final numbers.

5:17In America, of course, campaigns have to file what they raise with the government, with a FEC. And we won't know that until the next quarter. So there's no confirmation of the exact number that he's raised. But it's pretty clear that that criminal indictment did lead to a surge. I mean, even the Biden campaign is admitting this, and they've told me this, that it led to a surge in donations to Donald Trump. And he managed to go out there and say, listen, this is a sham trial, a sham verdict. and that resonated because I just keep going back to this number of how insane it is that he says he raised$53 million in the first 24 hours after the verdict came down.

6:03Now, to put that in some kind of perspective for you, the kind of language that I understand, the biggest movie out in America this year so far was Dune 2, which I haven't seen yet. Actually, by the way, I love Dune 1, so I want to see Dune 2. I haven't seen it yet. That didn't even make$53 million in the first 24 hours. So he is raising more from the Trump show is raising more than the Dune 2 show. You'll be glad to hear this because we like Kendall on this program, that Barbie made$70 million in its first 24 hours. So Ken beats Don, which I think is some kind of retribution. But anyway, so I'm sure he's going to try and raise more.

6:40But the point is that verdict managed to get a lot of money for him. We'll get the final numbers later. What do you think about the fact that all of these billionaires, and I know you're saying he's not getting all of those billionaires, but there have been a slew in the last couple of weeks, Anthony, and I'm sure you know half of them. There's been the Silicon Valley investor, David Sachs, who said he's going to have a fundraiser for Donald Trump in San Francisco. Apparently, attendees are being asked to contribute it as much as$300 ,000. That's$300 ,000 just to go and get kind of shrimp cocktail and warm white wine.

7:15And then Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager, who I know you know, also expected to throw his weight behind him. Nelson Peltz, the billionaire investor, who after the Capitol riot on January the 6th said he regretted voting for Donald Trump. He has also said he's had a change of heart. I I mean, there are a bunch of these quite high profile names who had been alienating themselves from Trump after January 6th who have now jumped on board. What are they looking for and how important are they to his campaign? So they are important to the campaign because of the symbolism. He's also speaking at the Business Roundtable this week.

7:52As you know, that's an elite group of CEOs and Mr. Trump is going to make his case there. Unfortunately, President Biden is not there because he is in France, the 80th anniversary of the Normandy invasion. But I'll just say a couple of things that I want you to think about, our viewers and listeners to think about. Let's take out a Venn diagram and think like a Wall Streeter for a second or a billionaire. If I'm for Trump - My problem is I've never managed to do that. And I wish I could because I would not be sitting here as a journalist. Okay, there's still time though, Katty. I know there's still - There's still time, okay.

8:23As you say, we are the same vintage and we're running out. But anyway, there we go. No, no, not me. I'm in denial. You got to live in denial, Caddy. Okay. We are the same vintage, but it's still a good year. It's still a good year. All right. But anyway, and by the way, thank you for making the Ken Dahl reference, the second one on the Rest is Politics US, Ken Dahl reference. Now the official mascot of the Rest is Politics, I think. I think so. I need abs like Ken, but no other anatomy like Ken. We'll just leave it like that. Okay. So on the Venn diagram, if I support Donald Trump, he wins, very good for me.

8:59If I support Donald Trump, he loses, doesn't matter. Joe Biden is a traditionalist. He's not coming for me. If I support Joe Biden and Donald Trump wins, very bad for me. So when these guys are looking at the Venn diagram, Nash game theory analysis, supporting Donald Trump to them, and it's 300 ,000, which is a tremendous sum of money, but to somebody that's worth millions and millions, billions of dollars, it's not that big of a deal to them. And so they're going to put their money behind Donald Trump and they're going to put it there superficially with the first derivative analysis. I just want to tell a 30 second story, which I don't believe I've told on this podcast, but I think you'll appreciate this.

9:41I host a VIP dinner at my conferences every year. And in 2017, I had then former Vice President Joe Biden as the guest of honor. Sitting right next to him was Bill Ackman. And I had Lara Logan there, who was former 60 Minutes correspondent, etc. David Petraeus was there, was a whole host of glitterati, hedge fund managers, etc. Just briefly, Anthony, for our audiences who don't know him, Bill Ackman, hedge fund billionaire, who has become sort of notorious in democratic circles in America, having been seen as a kind of liberal himself for being opposed to diversity initiatives in colleges and being behind the push to remove some of the presidents of American colleges who he didn't feel were there on their merits.

10:26Harvard graduate, Harvard Business School graduate, very bright guy. I put him next to the guest of honor, Vice President Biden, now President Biden. Well, the conversation got started and the journalist at the table, unfortunately, went rogue on me. I wanted it to be pleasant. She started asking stuff about the Iraqi war. Joe Biden looked at her and said, you know, Anthony invited me here. He said, this is a social event for me. And so I'm going to bite my tongue and not answer that question. And Bill Ackman leaned over to Joe Biden. He said, you're 72 years old. You've never bit your tongue before.

11:01Why start now? And so Joe Biden is an Irishman. He got red in the face. He looked over to Bill Ackman. He said, hey, listen, you little punk, I'm going to drag you outside and beat the daylights out of you. This is Scranton Joe. Okay. And that's literally what he said. Okay. Scranton Joe. Okay. And Steve Cohen, me, Dan Loeb, there was a whole collection of hedge fund guys. We looked at each other. I said, I think Joe Biden's going to beat the hell out of Bill Ackman. Okay. And that literally I calmed it down. I think we started talking about the weather, but there has been a rub there between Bill Ackman and Joe Biden since that moment.

11:41Okay. And by the way, uh, the Biden people will be mad at me for saying this. I didn't leak that to anybody, but they leaked it. Okay. And why did the Biden people leak it. They leaked it because they wanted to show Joe Biden in his full glory of beating up on the punk billionaire hedge fund manager. Bill Ackman has denied it. He put out a tweet this January actually discussing his side of it. But I was sitting right across from them and I could see how the vice president took it as offensive. There was definitely a fracas at the table. So I want to just explain to our viewers and listeners the inside baseball tension that's going on with some of these people.

12:23And so I'll just say this and people will get this. Yes, maybe Trump will be for lower taxes and maybe better for business regulation. That's the perception. But what he's not good for is the system. And he's not good for the predictability of the laws. And as a capitalist, I'll tell you that's what's made America so successful is the stability of our legal system, the common law, contract laws that allows capital to flow from the rest of the world into the United States. So anyway. Yeah. I mean, look, we spoke about this the other day. His plans to increase tariffs on all imports into the United States by 10%, including imports from China by potentially 100 % is going to throw the global economy and the American financial markets into chaos, potentially.

13:12And is there actually any much room to have more tax cuts in a second Trump administration? Tax cuts don't seem to feature very highly in the list of economic proposals that some of the people around Trump are coming up with. Although he has said, I mean, it's interesting when you look at the people that are donating to him, and I think he's skirting the legality on campaign finance laws here by suggesting that he will implement policies in return for money. And he's certainly done that with the fossil fuel industry when he had all of those oil executives down to Mar-a-Lago. And he told them that he would implement policies in favor of the oil and gas industry if they donated a billion dollars to his campaign.

13:55So whether these people are doing this because they feel they will get direct policy results from donating to Donald Trump, or are they doing this just because they hate Joe Biden um that that's what i think is interesting is what do they think they're going to get out of this specifically i mean what what will they get in return for the money that they're donating because these are people i mean bill atman said that trump should apologize to all americans in the wake of january the 6th i'll remember but remember this these are all barometric pressure guys they study the markets uh and trump's stock was going down at that moment so that tweet was celebrated.

14:34Trump's stock is up right now because Biden is perceived by these guys, even though the stock market's at an all-time high and the economy's in generally good shape, as anti-business. So they're shifting. And remember, they're momentum guys. That's how you make your money. This is a call option. I can put$300 ,000 down on the Trump call option. He goes in the money as president. I get the windfall of having the relationship with him. If I lose the money on this call option, big deal. I chalk that up to my P &L and some other trades that I've lost money on. And so that's the approach that they're taking.

15:12And I think it's a dangerous approach, frankly, if you don't mind me saying so, because it doesn't peel back what is really going on in the society. under the surface of what Trump wants, and at some point we'll get into this, is Project 2025. Under the surface of what Trump wants is he wants to deport 15 million people from the United States. And you and I both know that 15 million people that are here, perhaps illegally, are actually benefiting the economy. Believe it or not, they're paying social security taxes. We're going to talk about that in the second half of the program. Yeah. So I'm just saying it's just a nonsensical thing, but I get it.

15:50I've been there. I've done what they have done. I get it. I think it's a mistake, but I understand why they're doing it. Do you think he calls them personally to get the money? Is he calling up Bill Ackman and saying, hey, Bill, my friend, billionaire to billionaire, help me out here. Let's face it. I think everybody knows this. Trump is only a billionaire in Zimbabwe where a billion dollars can get you a cab ride for due respect to our listeners in Zimbabwe. Yeah. And I love you guys in Zimbabwe and you probably fixed the money at this point, but I do have a$10 billion bill in my wallet because when people ask me if I'm a billionaire, yeah, I am a billionaire, but unfortunately only in Zimbabwe.

16:30And that's me and Trump have that in common. We're billionaires in Zimbabwe, perhaps nowhere else. And so he perceives himself as a billionaire and he's so insecure, he'll never call the other billionaire and ask for money. Now, if the billionaire has given him the money, then he'll call. He'll say something to Bill Ackman like, my bill. He always says that. Or he says to General Milley, my general, how you doing? Or my Anthony when I was in good favor with him. And so he'll call you, but the money's got to be in the door. You see what I mean? A guy like Mitt Romney, no problem. He'd get on the phone.

17:06He said, give me the list, Anthony. Who is it? Okay, Okay, Katty Kay, she's a billionaire. Great. Hello, Katty. I need some dough for this campaign. How are you today? No problem, Bill Rahn. George W. Bush liked it. He liked it. He'd come up with nicknames for these people. He'd invite them in. Let's go get some barbecue. But Trump is trying to pretend he's in their peer group. You see the difference? So that's the morose insecurity. One question I have about money generally in this campaign, and we've talked about this a little bit before, whether the whole nature of social media advertising means that money that used to have to be raised to buy ads in television markets, and television markets around America are not all equal.

17:53If you want to spend ads in television markets in California or Texas or the Dallas-Fort Worth area, that's an expensive ad market, right? You buy those ads a long time in advance. The Biden campaign feels a little bit reassured by the fact that it has already paid for ad space in the key swing states in, say, Phoenix, Arizona. They've already bought a whole of ads right through November the 6th. The earlier you buy the ad space, it's like buying tickets to the show, right? The cheaper that, or tickets on an airplane, the cheaper that ad space is. And they say, oh, well, the Trump campaign, they're coming in late with the money, and so they're having to pay even higher amounts of money for that ad space.

18:34I wonder whether two things are happening this time around. One is that you've got the social media effect. So actually, a kind of 30 second slot on TikTok could do you as much as a traditional ad, which costs you a whole load of money to buy in Phoenix. And is the money going to be as needed therefore? But also, campaign finance spending on advertising generally, part of the goal of it is to increase name recognition, right? Right? Candidates who are not known around the country need to introduce themselves in these TV ads around the country. There is nobody in this country who doesn't know who Donald Trump and Joe Biden is.

19:09So if they already have high name recognition, do they actually need as much money in terms of campaign financing? Or rather, will campaign finances be as determinative of the outcome as they might be in a race where the candidates aren't well known? Having worked on these campaigns for 25 years, what will happen here is a crowd out. And let me explain what a crowd out is. And if you get divorced in the United States, a cynical person will go out and they will - Full disclosure, both of us have been there and we know that it's kind of expensive. Yeah. Well, it's very painful. It's very painful.

19:46And then I'm never going there again. Let me just make the sign of the cross for people that really, you know, pray that that never happens again. But when you get divorced in the United States, you can go out and you can hire 15 lawyers and you give them their retainer. And now you've blocked your soon to be ex-spouse from using those lawyers. So you always pick the more sinister lawyers that your ex-spouse is going to put you on the tabloids in and you try to knock them out of the game. That's what the Biden people have done to Donald Trump. They've gone to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, et cetera, and they've crowded him out.

20:20So the top ads and the top positioning, they've already purchased it. Now he can still buy some because they always leave some for the end, the way a restaurant does in terms of reservations at a table and so forth. But they've been crowded out and he has spent three to one. This is Joe Biden, President Biden, three to one to Donald Trump's campaign in the world of social media, which includes Facebook, TikTok, believe it or not, Snapchat. Now you're asking a different question about name recognition. they are dropping issue ads. So if you like IVF and you like having choice as a woman, they're dropping that ad.

20:58They're reminding you that Joe Biden is for that. Donald Trump is proud that he revoked that. If you like a controlled border and less immigrants in the country, Donald Trump is dropping that ad. You see, so what they're trying to do right now is they're using those ads to force out the vote of the people that are issue voters. They say, oh my God, you're right. I've got to go vote for my rights as a woman and I'm going to show up at the election. I know the two entities, but they have reinforced for me the issues related to these two political candidates. Which is why the money still matters and why the Trump campaign is so happy that they've managed to raise all that money out of the guilty verdict.

21:37I think we end with Ken Dole again. $53 million in 24 hours. That is what the Trump campaign is saying that they raised after that guilty verdict. That is just a little short of what the entire UK election cycle will cost in one day. I appreciate that that may not be the actual number, but it's still, just to put it in perspective of how much the UK election campaign that is happening at the moment is going to cost, Donald Trump raised almost that much in 24 hours. And we'll be back right after the break to talk more about immigration and Joe Biden's executive order, which promises to shut down the southern border of the United States if, after a certain number of migrants are coming across, it is a play to show that he is being tough on immigration.

22:23And a couple of final thoughts from both of us on D-Day and the ceremonies that are taking place as we're recording this.

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24:37Welcome back to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kay. And I'm Anthony Scaramucci. In this half, Anthony, we want to look at the executive order that Joe Biden signed this week trying to curb migrant arrivals into the United States from Mexico. Basically, the order will stop migrants who cross unlawfully from receiving asylum, but only after a daily threshold of 2 ,500 crossings have been recorded. This is being seen here as a very tough executive order on immigration. And Joe Biden's team are certainly trying to paint it as that. And it comes, of course, in response to all of the opinion polls showing that immigration is a big issue for voters in the United States and the surge of migrants that we had crossing the border at the end of last year, which was showing up on all of the Fox News channel, all of the right-wing media were picking it up a lot, even the mainstream media were covering this and all of these migrants being shipped around the country.

25:41So immigration has become a big issue in this campaign. And this is kind of Joe Biden's response to that, trying to crack down on it. It's produced something of an uproar from liberals in his own party. He got a lot of pushback from progressives, people like the Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Pramila Jayapal, who said that they were trying to out-Republican the Republicans, and that never works. You've got the Texas Congressman Greg Cesar, also a Democratic progressive, saying that it was unfortunate that President Biden is responding to the kind of politics of the Republican Party.