84. Waltz Out, Rubio In: Trump’s Cabinet Chaos

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0:34Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katty Kaye, not wearing a Dr. No t-shirt. 1962 was a good year, Katty. It was before the Kennedy assassination. You know, Sean Connery looked 60, but he was like 32 years old. But anyway, very suave guy. But it's also me. It's not Sean Connery. It's me, Anthony Scaramucci. Before we start, Katty, I've got to ask, are you excited to be back in the spotlight? I, you know, personally, I've already booked 16 different makeup artists to get me through the night because it's July the 16th. And, you know, listen, and I need hair products, too, as you know.

1:13Yeah. And I know you don't like sharing because you need enough time and attention to yourself. And by the way, if there are British Airways people listening, can you please do me a favor? I need more kilograms in luggage, you know, depositing the luggage in the undercarriage. I mean, I don't know. They tell me I can only do 26 kilograms. That's not enough for my hair products. What are you trying to carry? Gold bars or something? Lots of products, Katty. Lots of products. This doesn't just come naturally. There's a lot of products involved. We have big news. I'm very excited. For anyone who doesn't know why Anthony could possibly need so many products and makeup artists for one night, We are thrilled to be returning to the stage in London on July the 16th.

1:59You can get tickets to see me and Caddy. The rest is politics US dot com. You got to go to that website. General sales are open 9 a.m. Friday. That's the 2nd of May, 9 a.m. Friday. But they are selling fast, which is very flattering. I might add, Caddy, that they're selling so fast. And so if you're listening and you want to come, go to the rest is politics US. dot com. And we can't wait to see you there. So come and join us. But do get those tickets fast. They are going like hotcakes. So, Katty, what are we going to be talking about today? Well, we're going to talk about Trump's first 100 days, his view of how well it's going and how that may or may not be realistic.

2:39The cabinet that is sucking up to him would be an understatement. And in the second half, we're going to talk about Elon Musk and the reality of Doge. But before we get to all of that, we have just had the news that Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, is being moved aside. I think that is how you politely put a little bit of a demotion in Trump world. Initially, we all thought he had been fired, perhaps because of Signalgate, and also because he's really not much of a MAGA person. He's more of a globalist than an isolationist. But then during the course of the day, it became apparent that Donald Trump had other plans, didn't want this to be seen as a total firing.

3:17And so Mike Waltz is being shipped up to New York to be ambassador to the United Nations. And Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is going to become the national security advisor. So he's going to have two hats on. Doesn't happen very often, has happened in the past, but it gives Marco Rubio two pretty big portfolios. It also, by the way, puts Rubio closer to the president, which I'm sure Marco Rubio will be happy about. As for Mike Waltz, it's interesting that the announcement came, the leak came rather during the day that he was being moved aside. And then during the State Department briefing, it was announced by Donald Trump himself on a Truth Social post that Waltz was actually not being fired totally, but was being given, I guess what you might call a soft landing, and sent up to New York to be UN ambassador.

4:05The State Department spokesperson, by the way, had no idea this was happening. It was caught completely flat-footed during the briefing by the president's truth social posts. Clearly was out of the loop on this one. Why has he done this? I think he doesn't like the idea of giving into media pressure and getting rid of anybody. He doesn't want to be seen to fire somebody, but he clearly thinks Mike Waltz needed to go. And make no mistake, UN ambassador is a demotion from national security advisor. You're up in New York, You don't have the president's ear. But it is a way, I suppose, of being able to say, look, I haven't fired anybody.

4:40I've just moved them aside. You know, watch this sparkly thing over here. Let's talk about Marco Rubio now becoming national security advisor. So in a way, it was done fairly dexterously by the president, I guess. He didn't make the news cycle about Mike Waltz for very long. He shifted it to Marco Rubio. He gives Mike Waltz a bit of a soft landing. people around the world know Mike Waltz and respect him as a seasoned foreign policy hand. And there was some concern about losing the more internationalist people in the administration. So at least at the UN, they'll be happy to have him. But I don't think anyone's kidding themselves that Donald Trump thinks the UN is a great place to be or thinks that the UN is particularly prestigious.

5:22I mean, this is a president who hates multilateral organizations, doesn't have much time for the United Nations. It's really just a way of being able to say, I didn't fire him. I just shuffled my cabinet around. So, Anthony, what do you think about Mike Waltz and his short tenure, a little bit longer than your tenure in the White House, but so far the first member of the inner circle of the Trump administration to be ousted from his position? Are you surprised by this news, Anthony? I am surprised by the news. And I would say to you that Trump told people as recently as two days ago, friends of mine that work in the MAGA world, that he has a no firing policy right now.

6:06He doesn't want to fire anybody, doesn't want to give any scalps to the liberals. Let's not have a knee-jerk reaction about firing people. Yeah. And I heard that he regretted firing people in the first term as quickly as he did. I don't know if he regretted firing you. He didn't regret firing me. In fact, the day that he fired me, the announcement that I was fired was at two o 'clock. There was one and only one Trump tweet that day at 4 p.m. He said, and I quote, it's been a wonderful day here at the White House. He didn't say he was sorry to see Anthony go or anything like that. I didn't mean that snarkily.

6:43Hindsight being what it is, I don't regret being fired. Probably regret working for him, but I don't regret being fired. and I don't regret him not regretting firing me. But I will say this, and I've done the calculation here for viewers and listeners, it's 9.18 Scaramucci's. It's 101 days. And what I will say to Waltz is we are generous here on this program and we're going to round up and I'm going to put on Twitter as we are speaking that Waltz lasted 9.2 Scaramucci's. I think he deserves the generous roundup. I did that for Liz Truss. She was at 4.08 Scaramucci's when she was blasted out of the prime ministership.

7:21And I just think we need to be generous to these people that are short-termers in their political positions. And I speak about this with great empathy, Kat. Yeah. He fired his first national security advisor in his first term. He does kind of rattle through national security - 23 days. 23 days for his first NSA. General Flynn. And he always apparently regretted that he got pushed into doing that. He fired, of course, John Bolton as well. National security advisors don't have a lot of longevity with Donald Trump. I've been thinking about national security advisors recently. A friend of mine, Ed Luce, who's a great journalist at the Financial Times, has written a book called Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet.

8:00It's a really good read. I'd highly recommend it because he kind of paints the portrait of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's national security advisor for the whole four years of Carter's term. and was this kind of larger than life figure in American foreign policy in the vein of kind of Kissinger and George Kennan, I guess, and maybe you'd even add in Brent Scrowcroft there. But America seems to lack. I mean, you look at this administration, Anthony, I don't know what you think about this, but where are the great foreign policy leaders? I mean, what, we got Wyckoff, but he's meant to be, who's a real estate developer.

8:35I mean, there isn't anyone in this administration who you would look to and you'd say, in fact, maybe even in recent American politics, you'd look to and say, wow, that is as big Neff Brzezinski. That is a Kissinger, Henry Kissinger figure in American politics. And it's a great timing. If you want a good read, guys, read Spig. It will remind you of the time when American foreign policy figures really counted and had an impact. Well, listen, he's a great writer and I look forward to reading it. And I think the big thinkers on this stuff have left stage. And that does sometimes happen in history.

9:08You get the big thinkers, and then you get the people like Trump who are the contrarian thinkers. And so we'll have to see what happens. But of course, Anthony, it's not the only story in town this week because we have heard an awful lot from Donald Trump celebrating his first 100 days in office. Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about, but I guess I want to fact check a little bit here on MAGA, what they're saying and what's actually happened. I think we should also talk a little bit about Doge, what was actually achieved and who's making money off of Doge. You know, there seems like there's some things going on inside of Washington, as I've pointed out in the past and you have pointed out, we're in the golden age of corruption.

9:48And so there's just bald face, shameless corruption going on. I guess the senator from Connecticut, his name is Chris Murphy. I guess he he gave a almost a 20 minute rendition of everything that's going on that are sort of reprehensible, but it's unchecked. So I think we need to talk a little bit about that. But, you know, listen, I mean, you know, did eggs go down 80 percent in the last 100 days in price? Did gas prices are, quote unquote, down by a lot, as he says it? Has that really happened? They hit$1.98 in a lot of states? You're referring to all of the town halls and the interviews and the Michigan rally that Donald Trump gave during the course of this week to celebrate his 100 days.

10:30And I think there is a kind of correlation with Donald Trump that when things aren't going well, he goes even further into the realm of exaggeration about how well everything is going. Do you think that's fair? I mean, there is a sort of I almost think there is a tell with Donald Trump that he has seen the opinion polls that are not good for his first hundred days that show him underwater, that show him with lower approval ratings than any other president in American history. he's seen the approval ratings that show that whilst people who voted for him like the aim on immigration and like the aim of rebuilding the American economy, they don't like the speed with which he's doing things.

11:12They don't like the kind of cavalier nature with which he's doing things. They don't like some of the chaos surrounding the way he's doing things. And it's in those moments that Donald Trump, who's never, you know, kind of a strict adherent of the truth, let's put it like that, who keeps fact checkers and podcasters in gainful employment, it's in those moments that he goes even more so. And I think this week, I mean, you can run through them from gas prices, to the price of eggs, to the border crossings, to the number of jobs who have been created, and for the number of jobs of particularly of native born Americans.

11:46And in each of those instances, he distorts reality. And I think that for me is often a tell that he does it a lot, but when he does it to the degree that he did it this week, combined with that extraordinary scene we saw in the White House of the cabinet meeting that looked like something out of, you know, that, did you ever see that great movie, The Death of Stalin, where nobody wants to reveal that Stalin has actually died. And so they keep pretending that, you know, it's like, kind of emperor has no clothes moment, right? And that the combination of the degree to which he's kind of told said things that aren't true, and that real pledge of fealty cabinet meeting just made me think that there must be some awareness in the White House that not everything is going as swimmingly as he kept repeating that it had gone this week.

12:36Well, I mean, you're going to devastate. I mean, the Armando Iannucci screenplay was awesome, but it was also factual because he sat in his urine for several hours, Stalin. They were so afraid of him, they wouldn't even go into the room. And so you've got a group of cabinet members. I had the opportunity to speak at a private equity event. It's an honor to speak there in Athens this week. And I asked the following question, if you made an investment in a private company and the CEO had a board of directors meeting where the people were saying, oh, you're so fantastic and everything about you is fantastic.

13:15And the numbers were going this way, Gaddy, which is diagonally down, okay, 45 degree angle down. And the trajectory of sales and operating activity and margins were all negative. But then the board was saying, you're just so fantastic. You're the greatest ever. and his vice president said, and I'm not making this up because I watched it twice, there were placeholders in this job before you. There were just ceremonial placeholders. So I guess Lincoln and Roosevelt - Forever. I mean, like all of them. He wasn't just saying Biden. He was running through all presidents. Prior to his arrival, the other 44 people that have actually been president of the United States were just placeholders.

13:56And then of course, on the eve of the inauguration, it is my stock market. I own this market. The market's up because I'm coming into town. He's blistered the market in 100 days. He's literally caused a likely recession. Don't go by me. Go by the Apollo investment letter. J.P. Morgan's chief economist likely caused a recession. But it's now Biden's stock market. It's Biden's economy, which is a lie. But my friend Chris Cuomo had this sort of weird town hall. I listened to that actually. I thought it was interesting. Yeah, it was Stephen A. Smith, Bill O 'Reilly, the old conservative talk show host from Fox.

14:40And Trump was on there trying to defend himself. And they let him go by and large, except for Chris. Chris was like, hey, you caused the recession. And Trump wasn't hearing it, wasn't having it. And people are not going to like me for saying this, our podcast listeners. But when I got done listening to that, and I want you to react to this, I sort of admired the delusion. I have to tell you, I was like, this guy is so delusional that it's almost like you want to pin a medal on him for delusion. It's like, I mean, you don't want him to be president, but the fact that he's so delusional, is it weird to say that caddy but i was like i think i mean it's so shameless and so it's so abnormal you know i think that i mean it's so interesting that you had that reaction because i was trying to think as we record this on thursday how to sum up this week and all of these different appearances because really you know trump has been sort of blanketing the airwaves here in the states this week and i listened to a lot i listened to that news nation town hall with Chris Cuomo.

15:51I read the Atlantic interview and the ABC interview. And I came away in my head thinking, what is Donald Trump thinking? And I don't mean that in a like, what is Donald Trump thinking type of way? I mean that in like genuinely, he's a smart guy. He knows exactly what's going on. He reads the polls. The people around him read the polls. He saw the stock market tank. He knows the problems in the bond market. He sees the issues with the dollar. He knows that inflation is not down anything like what he said. And yet throughout this week, what does he project? A relentless optimism about his own case and a refusal to broker any kind of dissent or weakness or vulnerability or second guessing.

16:45And that's why the combination of what he's been saying and then that cabinet meeting where even Ann Coulter, who was a super conservative, pro-Trump media figure in the US, she tweeted out, would it be possible to have a cabinet meeting without the Kim Jong-il style tributes. The way he kind of takes the sycophancy of that cabinet meeting, I mean, really with people saying things like, what did Pan Bondi say? Mr. President, your first hundred days has far exceeded that of any other president in this country ever, ever. Never seen anything like it. Thank you. I mean, that's the kind of stuff that they were kind of gushing over the cabinet table.

17:32and Trump is sitting there not for a moment looking uncomfortable. I mean, if I was in a meeting and people were saying that to me or one of your CEOs was in a meeting and saying that to me, I'd be mortified. You'd have to get him to a shrink and you'd have to get him out the door. He kind of loves it and it feeds his sense of bullishness. I'm going to shout out one of my friends who's an Italian guy. First name is Scotty. I won't give up his last name, but he's a prolific listener of this podcast And he's obviously a big Caddy Cade fan, but he's a huge Trumper, huge Trumper. And he'll disagree with me and say, no, he likes certain things about him, doesn't like certain things.

18:09A lot of Trumpers will say that because Trump is so insane. But he says to me, what's good about Trump? Give us 100 days. Please tell us on the podcast what he's done well. And so I am going to tell people that the border crossings, and I'd like you to respond to this, the border crossings are down. Now, they're not as down as much as he is saying. He says they're all-time record lows, but they are down and they're the lowest since the late 1960s rather than the lowest of all time. And this is impressive. And by the way, I will just say this to people. I'm a humane guy. I don't believe in the cruelty.

18:44We'll talk about the White House lawn in a second. But you have to control the border. Every country, particularly countries like ours that have a welfare state, Milton Friedman would say this, the great conservative economist, Nobel Prize winner. If you have a welfare state, you have to control your border because market forces will dictate that people will come across the border to participate in the welfare state. And your taxpayers should not be shouldering that burden unless it's done in a legal way. And so I got to give Trump his due on this. I think this is the best part of what's happened in the last 100 days.

19:20But there's cruelty here that I don't like, and I'd like you to respond to this. He's deported less people than Joe Biden, but he's putting their faces on signs of who's been convicted, and he's putting it on the lawn of the White House to disgrace the 18 acres that the White House sits on. But I'm going to say this, okay? As I've pointed out, he's the Napoleon of the culture war. And this feeds his base like red meat caddy, that there's these pictures of these people who have committed crimes that are now been ejected from the United States. What's your reaction to all that and the cruelty around it?

19:55And am I right? Do you give him credit for the border? Again, ahead of this, taping this, I wanted to call a Trump supporter who I know is a pretty prominent guy here in Washington, but is also a solid conservative and likes some of what he sees and doesn't like some of what he sees. And when I asked him what was really going to change America in this first 100 days, he said, look, 90 % of it is noise and 10 % of it really changes the country. And the first thing he pointed to when he said what changes the country is that he has accomplished what he needed to do for his supporters on the border.

20:29And that was the very first thing that he mentioned. And he said, look, and he's also made the border a kind of 80-20, 70-30 issue in American politics. So he's shifted the center of the political debate on the border. And I think that has a long-term impact because I don't think you're ever now after what Trump has done in successfully closing the southern border. And after how badly Joe Biden handled that southern border, we saw those pictures during his presidency of streams of people crossing it, literally, I mean, floods of people coming across the border. What this Trump supporter said to me is that you're never going to see Democrats again campaign on anything other than keeping that border closed.

21:06So he's changed the nature of the conversation in the United States. But then he said, look, even conservative lawyers like myself, like all of this in theory, we like the deporting of the criminals, but we don't want him to do it without due process. We don't want that expanded to picking students up off the street. We don't want him to be overaggressive and he twists the law when he does it. And I would add, just from my own point of view, watching that Michigan rally on the 100th day, the way they played not just once but twice that sort of Hollywood style produced video of the detainees who were deported to El Salvador and they follow them every step of the way, including with their, you know, forcibly having their heads shaved on camera and being shuffled along.

21:57I mean, I get, you know, maybe some of these people are terrible people and they may be gang members and they were in the country illegally and Donald Trump has a right to deport them. But there was in the play, in the filming and the editing and the playing, repeated playing of that video and the kind of way the crowd went wild around the playing of the video, I found that quite chilling. There's something about some of those images, Antony, that have historical resonances that that it's hard not to think, okay, do this. It's the right thing to do legally, politically. The country does need to secure its borders, but relishing the humiliation and very harsh treatment of these people, that felt cruel.

22:47I think you're right. And I don't know how the American public will in large respond to that video, but I don't think that's what the American people alike? Well, I mean, listen, I mean, I can tell you the 55 % of the American public doesn't like the way he's handling the immigration. And I think it has to do with the way we identify as Americans. I think ultimately, Americans like to see themselves, whether or not this is true, objectively, we like to see ourselves as benevolent. We like to see ourselves as boy and Girl Scouts where we're going to do the right thing and be good Samaritans. So what do you think people make of that video?

23:23Why play it twice at a rally like that to celebrate the 100 days? I think it's red meat for his base. He knows that all of his political power is coming from that base. And if you really study things, he's making the bet that the base will continue to turn out for him. The base will continue to donate to him. He's also making the bet that whatever is going to happen in the next 20 months is going to be positive for the economy. meaning, and again, and I'll predict this on our podcast, I he'll blink on these tariffs. He's going to blink. There's no way he can stay where he is because you know the Wolfs of K Street, you know the Senate, you know the people there, you know the CEOs that descend on Washington.

24:09There's no way that he's going to be able to stay here. And by the way, President Xi, I guess he's waiting for him to blink first. Doesn't look like that that's going to happen. I think it's a cultural thing. And I think he's really helped Xi. Here are the politicians that he's helped. He's helped Albanese in Australia, helped them. He helped Carney in Canada for sure. He helped Xi who doesn't have to run for elections, but he's increased his popularity, the nationalistic popularity. And is there anybody, Caddy, in a cabinet room that would say, Mr. President, just let you know, we're going to have a steep recession.

24:49You can't fire the Fed chair. You're causing a steep recession. You're hurting all of our manufacturing. Whatever's left of manufacturing in the US, you're hurting them because a lot of the goods and parts come in from overseas to manufacture here in the US. Instead of saying, Mr. President, we seized 3 ,400 kilos of fentanyl and we've saved 258 million jobs. I mean, Katty, it's almost like an arms race of lies and sycophancy and distrust. It's like, okay, you just told a great lie, but I got an even better lie coming. Let me tell a bigger lie than your lie. Do you follow what I'm saying? Here's a little pop quiz on that for you.

25:36Who said in 2016, Donald Trump is a con artist, perhaps the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency? And who said this week, thank you for the honor of being able to serve alongside you, for you, and alongside all these excellent people thanks to your leadership? I'm going to say Marco Rubio. There you go. I think that's pretty much your answer. Yeah, that's your answer. You have tiny orange hands. If we let him take over U.S. foreign policy, it's going to be a disaster. Here's what Lindsey Graham said in 2016. If we elect Donald Trump, he will get destroyed and we will deserve it.

26:14That was Lindsey Graham back in 2016. So to your answer, is there anyone around him? No, because who has he brought into the White House? I mean, yes, he's brought in a bunch of smart billionaires who don't really need to worry about money. And you would think would have some autonomy and independence. But they all sat there one after one in that cabinet. meeting, falling over themselves to profess their loyalty to him. And that's what my reporting is. That's pretty much what is going on behind the scenes. Now, we hear that Donald Trump likes people who come in to the cabinet meetings and to Oval Office meetings and bring something extra.

26:49He soaks up the praise like a sponge, but he does apparently want people to bring extra ideas. And that was why he liked Elon Musk, who came in with kind of these other ideas and also managed to do the praise. We're going to speak about Elon after the break a bit more. But in this cabinet meeting, you're not hearing any form of people who are saying no. And Congress has been an incredible disappointment. So Congress is not saying no. So I don't think you're getting anyone at the moment who's going to stand up and say to Donald Trump, actually, you know what, that's a really dumbass idea. One thing I will say, the other thing I took away from this week listening to hours of tape of Donald Trump is he is conflicted on the tariffs.