Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. There were some memorable
Speaker 1: characters in Donald Trump's administration during his presidency, but the
Speaker 1: most memorable, arguably was probably Trump's former communications director, anthony's Karamucci. Now,
Speaker 1: the Mooch as he's known, was in the role for
Speaker 1: eleven days, and if you dare say ten, he'll quickly
Speaker 1: correct you. And he's got a lot of thoughts about
Speaker 1: what might happen to America and the world if Trump
Speaker 1: gets another go in the White House.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I saw Anthony at an event at Bloomberg House in Davos,
Speaker 1: and he was actually in a corner with fifteen people
Speaker 1: laughing around him because he really brings some of these
Speaker 1: stories alive. He's pretty dramatic, and in Davos everyone was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what a Trump two point zero
Speaker 1: in the White House would mean and whether he would
Speaker 1: get it. So I thought it made sense to get
Speaker 1: someone who was alongside Trump during the campaign and with
Speaker 1: him for a part of the ride in the White
Speaker 1: House into our studio here in London. So this week
Speaker 1: of conversation with Anthony Skermucci about whether a Trump presidency
Speaker 1: would be more right wing, how dangerous he would be,
Speaker 1: or how beneficial he would be for financial services, and
Speaker 1: why he's such a believer in bitcoin. Welcome to in
Speaker 1: the City from Bloomberg's offices in the heart of the
Speaker 1: Square Mile. This is our weekly podcast about the stories
Speaker 1: driving the conversations of policymakers, hower brokers, and finine seers
Speaker 1: in the power centers the world over. I'm Francin Laqua
Speaker 1: and I'm David Merritt, And like you're actually sitting this
Speaker 1: one out, Dave.
Speaker 2: Yes, here in spirit, if not anybody always.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm really excited, Dave, about this week's interview with
Speaker 1: Anthony Skeramucci, which we actually did with a friend of
Speaker 1: the show, our opinion columnist Adrian Woolridge.
Speaker 2: Yes, it just feels incredibly timely to speak to somebody
Speaker 2: with such firsthand knowledge of Trump, how he operates, and
Speaker 2: he had a ringside seat first time round, to think
Speaker 2: about what might happen if he gets back in the
Speaker 2: White House. It is when you mentioned it was on
Speaker 2: one's mind that Davos Francine, I mean, I'm going to
Speaker 2: be back in America next week. It is certainly on
Speaker 2: everyone's mind there. The elections not till November, but it's
Speaker 2: going to be upon us for we know it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and Adoniskiramuci has this unique inside because he was
Speaker 1: really a Trump lover, right, he backed Trump, he went
Speaker 1: to work for Trump, and now that he's like one
Speaker 1: of the fearcest critics of Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: That is the amazing thing, isn't it The swing of
Speaker 2: opinion here from lover to hater. And you know, we
Speaker 2: are tracking closely, of course, across America a public opinion
Speaker 2: about Donald Trump, who, as we all know, is very divisive.
Speaker 2: We've got a pole that we're running every month. It's
Speaker 2: in the seven what they call the Purple States, the
Speaker 2: swing states. That did you see the one that was
Speaker 2: out this week, Francine. This was a particularly interesting one
Speaker 2: because it showed for the first time a bit of
Speaker 2: a bump for Biden, attributed maybe to some of his
Speaker 2: perceived success at the State of the Union address, but
Speaker 2: he is narrowing the gap in those crucial states. Now
Speaker 2: people clutching straws here to think. Is there some hope
Speaker 2: for Biden because he's still behind in lots of these places,
Speaker 2: or is this the start of a new trend.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because Anthroy Scerumoucci doesn't think Trump will get in,
Speaker 1: although he's much better organized, so he's a better campaigner,
Speaker 1: he says, And if he does get in in the
Speaker 1: White House, he'll know what to do, so he could
Speaker 1: be potentially more dangerous for US democracy, a Skrimucci says,
Speaker 1: and for the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: You know, but this is one of the things, isn't
Speaker 2: it that we all remember or maybe we've sort of
Speaker 2: collectively forgotten a bit back in twenty sixteen. No one
Speaker 2: thought Trump was going to win then, and you know,
Speaker 2: sort of here we are again at this point where
Speaker 2: the media commentators, even people who were at the ringside seat,
Speaker 2: are saying, no, it's not possible. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 2: So I'll be visiting the Washington Bureau next week and
Speaker 2: I definitely get the sense from everybody there that you know,
Speaker 2: November is going to be upon us before we know it,
Speaker 2: and this is a rematch. It's looking pretty certain between
Speaker 2: Biden and Trump. So everyone is dusting themselves off for
Speaker 2: that and acknowledging. You know, covering Trump administration last time
Speaker 2: around was exhausting. You never knew what was going to
Speaker 2: happen when you woke up every day, so everyone is
Speaker 2: bracing for more of that. But you know, our coverage
Speaker 2: out of DC, of course, will be spectacular. We've got
Speaker 2: a Washington newsletter, We've got a podcast every week, We've
Speaker 2: got our daily news show. So check it all out
Speaker 2: on bloombog dot com.
Speaker 1: Good plug, nice shameless plug, Dave. But we do we're
Speaker 1: pretty on top of it. Here's our conversation with the
Speaker 1: former White House Communications director Anthony Scirramucci. Adrian, how excited
Speaker 1: are you by having Anthony scirramuch I'm excited.
Speaker 3: I'm excittionally excited because for the next hour we will
Speaker 3: get you everywhere with me.
Speaker 1: For the next hour, we'll listen to two stories of
Speaker 1: what it was like working for eleven days with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: his prediction on the US economy, and we'll talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the markets too. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3: It's it's awesome to be here.
Speaker 1: Do you ever get tired of talking about your time
Speaker 1: in the White House?
Speaker 3: You know, I mean, if I mean asked about it,
Speaker 3: I'll about it. You know, I like talking about it
Speaker 3: with kids because it was such an epic fail and
Speaker 3: getting fired like that was a It was the appearance
Speaker 3: of a catastrophe, and I think it's a good thing
Speaker 3: to talk to kids about where you can have missteps
Speaker 3: in your life or a step on a land mine,
Speaker 3: but you can survive it and what you need to
Speaker 3: do to pull yourself back together. So I don't really
Speaker 3: mind talking about it. I think the issue for me,
Speaker 3: which I don't like because it's a really poor reflection
Speaker 3: on me, is why did I actually go work for
Speaker 3: Trump in the first place. I think that is a
Speaker 3: poor reflection on me, and it speaks to perhaps a
Speaker 3: weakness and character. It speaks to ego, and it speaks
Speaker 3: to pride, because ultimately that was a prideful decision. It's
Speaker 3: a cautionary tale about putting your ego and your pride
Speaker 3: into your decision making.
Speaker 1: So you didn't do it to serve the country you
Speaker 1: wanted to be in the White House.
Speaker 3: No, I certainly did it to serve the country. But
Speaker 3: you have to understand you have a round in a
Speaker 3: square hole. Okay. I worked as a wall streeter for
Speaker 3: thirty years. I went to a couple of good schools.
Speaker 3: I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. Now I
Speaker 3: can serve the American president, but the American president's crazy,
Speaker 3: and so people that had their pride out of the equation,
Speaker 3: like my very good friend Vinnie Viola. I don't know
Speaker 3: if you would recognize that name, but he ran vert
Speaker 3: to as the president of the Merk. He was named
Speaker 3: by Donald Trump to be the Secretary of the Army.
Speaker 3: For two hour meetings with Trump, he withdrew himself from
Speaker 3: the position, and when I asked him why he did it,
Speaker 3: he said, you know, after spending more time with mister Trump,
Speaker 3: I realized I really couldn't work for him. He didn't
Speaker 3: have the right executive management skills, highly insecure person He's
Speaker 3: not able to share credit. I resulted with I'm withdrawing
Speaker 3: myself from the position, and he too, was an army veteran,
Speaker 3: went to West Point, served the country, wanted to be
Speaker 3: the secretary of the Army, but it was incongruous with
Speaker 3: Trump's personality. I wasn't brave enough to make that statement.
Speaker 3: I was smart enough, but my ego is in the way.
Speaker 4: Do you think Trump has deteriorated over the years. Do
Speaker 4: you think he'd be worse next time around than he
Speaker 4: was last time?
Speaker 3: Well, he'll be significantly worse, but not because he's deteriorated.
Speaker 3: I think everybody deteriorates over time. He's going to be
Speaker 3: seventy eight years old, so he's att slower. But that's
Speaker 3: not the issue for Trump. The issue for Trump is
Speaker 3: that he's now experienced. He's now been in the White House.
Speaker 3: He's lost the White House. If he gets the job again,
Speaker 3: he'll be very, very dangerous in that job. And he's
Speaker 3: also got some very experienced campaign people with him now
Speaker 3: that believe in the expansion of unitary executive power, and
Speaker 3: this is very, very dangerous for the society.
Speaker 4: Can you say, have a little bit more about the
Speaker 4: sort of people he's got around him, because it seems
Speaker 4: to me that they're different from last time. Last time
Speaker 4: had a lot of Republican establishment, a lot of moderates,
Speaker 4: a lot of people who didn't quite know what they
Speaker 4: were getting themselves in. For this time, it seems to
Speaker 4: be true believes Is that right?
Speaker 3: I would say that that's right. A little bit of
Speaker 3: a contrarian on this, because I really know the beast
Speaker 3: of Donald Trump. He's such a name dropper, Adriana, He's
Speaker 3: such a status state seeker that those people won't rise
Speaker 3: in the cabinet. He's got them in the campaign. Now
Speaker 3: they're very discipline. I'll probably try to bring Manifort back
Speaker 3: because Manafort has back channels at the foreign money. So
Speaker 3: those people are loyalists to Trump, but also the idea
Speaker 3: of massive expansion of executive power. And this is actually
Speaker 3: a Dick Cheney concept. So this is like a Frankenstein
Speaker 3: monster that was unleashed by Cheney in the early part
Speaker 3: of the two thousands, perpetrated by him and George W. Bush.
Speaker 3: And now it's become this Frankenstein golam of Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: And so this is something that we have to stop immediately.
Speaker 3: And then you have to ask yourself. Once Trump has stopped,
Speaker 3: which I predict you will be stopped, what comes after
Speaker 3: Donald Trump? Is there a worse monster coming? Or can
Speaker 3: we renew the American experiment? Can we renew the American democracy?
Speaker 1: What do you mean he'll be stopped? So you don't think,
Speaker 1: first of all, how did he get the Republican nomination,
Speaker 1: and you don't think he becomes president.
Speaker 3: Well, he definitely doesn't become president. No, he doesn't have
Speaker 3: a he doesn't have the You have to look at
Speaker 3: the data very carefully, and you have to remember in
Speaker 3: the United States, you have something called the Bradley effect.
Speaker 3: And so Mayor Tom Bradley, the first African American mayor
Speaker 3: in our history, when he was running for real election,
Speaker 3: when the pollsters called, so you're voting for Mayor Bradley,
Speaker 3: people said yes. It was a nine point spread between
Speaker 3: the poll and the actual election. Bradley lost the election,
Speaker 3: and the people said they didn't want to appear racist
Speaker 3: to the person on the phone. They didn't want to
Speaker 3: vote for Bradley because I didn't think he was competent
Speaker 3: at his job, had nothing to do with his skin color.
Speaker 3: And so what's happening right now with Trump is that
Speaker 3: there's more media exposure for him relatively, and there's people
Speaker 3: that actually like what's going on at the border. They're
Speaker 3: gonna vote for Joe Biden, but they're telling people that
Speaker 3: they don't like what's going on at the border. And
Speaker 3: the other big issue for Donald Trump is that they're
Speaker 3: going to run the replay film of his full on insanity,
Speaker 3: the craziness of the insurrection, the insanity around the COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen situation. But how do you see what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 1: But then how did he get the nomination?
Speaker 3: You got the nomination because he's got an ardent support
Speaker 3: base of twenty percent of the American population that feel
Speaker 3: left out. And this is another problem with the United States,
Speaker 3: is another problem with the UK. Our political established and
Speaker 3: primarily baby boomers have failed these countries. Okay, specifically talking
Speaker 3: about the United States. The baby boomers are indulgent, they're selfish.
Speaker 3: They got passed up aton from the greatest generation of
Speaker 3: a vanquished fascist fascism in Europe and architecture that rebuilt
Speaker 3: the world for peace and prosperity, led by the UK,
Speaker 3: the United States, and the family of liberal Western democracies,
Speaker 3: and so we've grown tired of it. That happens in history.
Speaker 3: If you study Barbara Tuckman's books The Guns of August
Speaker 3: as an example, when we lose our wartime memory, we're
Speaker 3: eighty years out from the D Day invasion now, and
Speaker 3: when we lose our wartime memory or living memory, we
Speaker 3: have a tendency to glorify war, and we increase our
Speaker 3: propensity towards nationalism. So that's happening right now. And rather
Speaker 3: than going back to the principles that got us to
Speaker 3: where we are, our politicians become more tribal. That become
Speaker 3: more insular. It's also being helped by the former Soviet
Speaker 3: Union through their server farms. They're pushing a lot of
Speaker 3: this narrative into the Internet. It's a lot of garbage
Speaker 3: that's showing up on social media references all of this,
Speaker 3: and Trump plays right into that.
Speaker 4: Can I put you a bit on the Bradley effect,
Speaker 4: because surely you could cate the opposite conclusion from the
Speaker 4: Bradley effect. We have people in this country called shy conservatives.
Speaker 4: The number of people actually vote Conservative is generally bigger
Speaker 4: than the number of people who say they will, because
Speaker 4: people don't want to be associated with this, you know,
Speaker 4: this slightly disreputable party in their mind. Isn't the same
Speaker 4: thing true if Trump? A lot of people will say
Speaker 4: they're not going to vote for Trump, who actually, when
Speaker 4: they go into the ballot box say they unleashed that
Speaker 4: in the Trump I.
Speaker 3: Would say that was true in twenty sixteen, It was
Speaker 3: not true in twenty twenty. I don't believe it's the
Speaker 3: case in twenty twenty four. And so what you're saying
Speaker 3: was a twenty sixteen phenomenon, But in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: he's a known entity. He does he has very high negatives.
Speaker 3: Nobody's won the presidency with this high of a negative.
Speaker 3: He has not won a plurality of Americans. He's never
Speaker 3: had a higher approval rating above fifty percent at any
Speaker 3: time that he was in the presidency. But I'm telling you,
Speaker 3: the American people are going to choose older and mildly
Speaker 3: for yet fall to fall on in sent.
Speaker 4: So surely a lot depends on whether Biden makes mistakes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and people go and vote.
Speaker 4: Actually is if Biden makes a few crucial mistakes.
Speaker 3: You know, I love about you, guys. I mean I'm
Speaker 3: gonna push Can I push back on you too? Because
Speaker 3: I love you guys? Okay, because you you know, this
Speaker 3: is like the Davos set. We were in Davos together, right,
Speaker 3: and so I've been going to Davos for seventeen years.
Speaker 3: Davos is always wrong. In two thousand and seven, they
Speaker 3: told us that the trees were going to grow to
Speaker 3: the sky and we had solved all of our monetary
Speaker 3: policy problems. In two thousand and nine, in January, they
Speaker 3: said that the world was going to open and we're
Speaker 3: all falling into the earth. We're going to go to
Speaker 3: the worst depression since the nineteen twenties, we had the
Speaker 3: greatest bull market run in history. Twenty sixteen, Davos said,
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton's going to be president. There's no reason to
Speaker 3: have the election twenty twenty with absolute certainty Trump was
Speaker 3: going to win the election. Now in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: Trump is going to win the election. He's just not
Speaker 3: going to win.
Speaker 1: But I do think they're going to win. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: especially on the economy. Your enemy in DeVos, Jamie Diamond
Speaker 1: JP Morgan, went on a rival channel and he said,
Speaker 1: let's just take a step back. He's kind of right
Speaker 1: about NATO, he's kind of right about immigration. He grew
Speaker 1: the economy quite well. Is this economy going to let
Speaker 1: Joe Biden down?
Speaker 3: So with all respect to Jamie, because I think he's
Speaker 3: one of the smartest people that I've ever met. He's
Speaker 3: certainly one of the smartest people in the financial services.
Speaker 3: I have an intellectual disagreement with him on the crypto currency,
Speaker 3: specifically bitcoin, but he's a lot smarter than me, so
Speaker 3: I'll see economic points to him. But Trump lost twenty
Speaker 3: one million jobs on his watch. He totally and completely
Speaker 3: mishandled the COVID nineteen situation. He has no executive management skills,
Speaker 3: and he disorganized the executive branch of the United States,
Speaker 3: which includes nineteen cabinet and sub cabinet level agencies and
Speaker 3: departments that were paralyzed by Donald Trump and his Twitter account.
Speaker 3: And so he is the wrong guy for that job. Now,
Speaker 3: if you want to say, because let's be objective on
Speaker 3: your podcast, that he has points to be made on deregulation,
Speaker 3: he has points to be made on economic growth, he
Speaker 3: does have those points. He blew the tax reform. He
Speaker 3: did nothing to help the twenty percent of the people
Speaker 3: that put him back in the nomination, his ardent supporters,
Speaker 3: he has done nothing for He's an avatar for their anger.
Speaker 3: He represents an orange wrecking ball into the establishment to
Speaker 3: smash the established.
Speaker 1: For me, that because if you think, even if he's
Speaker 1: done nothing for you, if you think that there's one
Speaker 1: person that fights for you, you're going to get him reelected.
Speaker 3: He's not fighting for them as much as he's striking
Speaker 3: a match to the establishment. So he's done nothing for them.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden, through his legislative accomplishments in the last three years,
Speaker 3: has done way more for those people. But he's a
Speaker 3: very poor messenger because he's frail. The people that voted
Speaker 3: for Lyndon Johnson or Jack Kennedy, you know, their grandparents
Speaker 3: or their great grandparents, a voter for Franklin Roosevelt. Many
Speaker 3: of those people that are aligned with Trump now because
Speaker 3: the Democrats seeded those people. The establishment Democrats say we're
Speaker 3: going to focus on transgender bathrooms, pronoun usage DEEI that's
Speaker 3: going to be our champion in this generation. The white,
Speaker 3: lower middle class and the working class have been left
Speaker 3: disenfranchised by both parties. Like or dislike Donald Trump, he
Speaker 3: saw that he went into those communities. I went into
Speaker 3: those communities with them, seventy one campaign stops with him
Speaker 3: on the Trump plane. I saw the blight in those communities.
Speaker 3: I grew up with those people. And again, this doesn't
Speaker 3: reflect well on me, but this is my cognitive bias.
Speaker 3: Because I've hung out in the salons of the wealthy,
Speaker 3: and I hung out at Davos, and I went to
Speaker 3: work at Goldman and I went to Harvard Law School.
Speaker 3: These people don't think like the blue collar people I
Speaker 3: grew up with. And so when I arrived on the
Speaker 3: Trump campaign in twenty sixteen, and I was in New Mexico,
Speaker 3: and somebody, a blue collar worker looked at me and said, oh,
Speaker 3: you think you're in New Mexico. New New Mexico. That
Speaker 3: would be Mexico, because that's where the factory that I
Speaker 3: was working in my dad was working and moved to.
Speaker 3: So this is no longer New Mexico. And those people
Speaker 3: who Trump is do nothing for, they'll vote for him
Speaker 3: anyway because he wants to wreck the establishment. He wants
Speaker 3: to destroy the system, and they don't like the system
Speaker 3: because the system hasn't worked for them.
Speaker 4: How did the liberal astablishment get things so wrong? How
Speaker 4: did it create so much I think just often justified
Speaker 4: animosity against.
Speaker 3: Itself, complacency. They got very complacent. They took for granted
Speaker 3: the votes. Hillary Clinton looked at Wisconsin and said those
Speaker 3: are primarily union workers and blue collar people. She did
Speaker 3: not show up in Wisconsin. Trump went seven times to
Speaker 3: Wisconsin after the Republican convention. So his messaging, he's a look,
Speaker 3: he sucked as president, let's just be honest, and he
Speaker 3: sucks for the world order, and he sucks for peace
Speaker 3: and global prosperity. But he's a wonderful communicator, and he's
Speaker 3: got tireless energy and he resonates with a very large
Speaker 3: group of people that feel left out of the system.
Speaker 4: Do you think the liberal astablishment has learned anything from
Speaker 4: what happened in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Joe Biden has Joe Biden put legislation in place for reshoring.
Speaker 3: He put the Chips Act in place, He passed an
Speaker 3: infrastructure built.
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk a bit about the UK,
Speaker 1: but if Donald Trump goes bankrupt, does that make a
Speaker 1: difference to the American psyche and the run up to
Speaker 1: the election.
Speaker 3: Not to his core base. They'll vote from no matter
Speaker 3: what bankrupt in jail he could he could be, he
Speaker 3: could be campaigning with an orange suit on a zoom
Speaker 3: call from a jail cell. They're still going to vote
Speaker 3: for him. Okay, they've they've decided they're in that cult.
Speaker 3: They've decided he can do absolutely no wrong. But the
Speaker 3: people that matter are the independence, the suburban women are
Speaker 3: going to drive this election of it again. You know,
Speaker 3: if you've got two movies that are playing in the
Speaker 3: United States in twenty twenty four, Weekend at Bernie's and
Speaker 3: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, I'm going weekend at
Speaker 3: Bernie's I'll take I'll take one guy who's got one
Speaker 3: foot on a banana peal the other one in the casket,
Speaker 3: over a guy that needs a lobotomy, that's certifiably crazy,
Speaker 3: that wants to demolish the post World War two architecture,
Speaker 3: wants to destroy the institutions of the American democracy.
Speaker 4: You've painted a pretty depressing picture of the choice that
Speaker 4: America faces in the next selection.
Speaker 3: I'm painting an accurate picture.
Speaker 4: Suppressing it's contradictory things. But how did you get into
Speaker 4: this position as a country is the most important country
Speaker 4: in the world.
Speaker 3: So the answer to that, there's a couple of things
Speaker 3: that happened. One of them is Citizens United. One of
Speaker 3: them is Ross Perot. Ross Perot actually caused this. He
Speaker 3: didn't realize it at the time, but he scared the
Speaker 3: daylights out of the oligarchic duopoly known as the Demo Publicans. Okay,
Speaker 3: so they had a duopoly going quite strongly. Pero entered
Speaker 3: the race, got nineteen point nine percent of the vote,
Speaker 3: freaked them out, So they strengthened their duopoly by going
Speaker 3: into the state and local governments and tightening the restrictions
Speaker 3: on having a third party enter a race. You know,
Speaker 3: you've got to get thousands and thousands of petitions. You
Speaker 3: have to follow this uh weird life of laws and
Speaker 3: procedures to get on the ballot. And they did all
Speaker 3: of this to strengthen to doopoly. They then ceded to
Speaker 3: each other's jerry mandering. And so for your UK listeners,
Speaker 3: that basically means these local governments, the state and local
Speaker 3: and the governors can look at the map and they
Speaker 3: can reconfigure the congressional district. So when I was growing
Speaker 3: up as a kid, these districts look like geometric shapes
Speaker 3: that you could recognize from ninth grade geometry. They now
Speaker 3: look like jigsaw puzzles pursuant to whose house is where,
Speaker 3: and they try to carve out they try to carve
Speaker 3: out their enemies. So the US actually needs a constitutional
Speaker 3: amendment on that. And so you're asking, so I want
Speaker 3: to keep going because I want to explain this to
Speaker 3: the people you have citizens United There was a very
Speaker 3: famous case in the United States called Pleusy versus Ferguson.
Speaker 3: This case had to do with racial segregation. The court
Speaker 3: ruled that you could have separate but equal facilities in
Speaker 3: the United States. And this doomed any potential for the
Speaker 3: integration of the races in the America. This was an
Speaker 3: unmitigated disaster for the country. It was reversed by Brown
Speaker 3: versus the Board of Education. This has been a disaster
Speaker 3: for the United States. And so Justice Scalia wrote the opinion.
Speaker 3: What did he say, if you have unlimited amounts of money,
Speaker 3: it's your first Amendment right to use that money in
Speaker 3: the political process. You can set up a pack and
Speaker 3: you can spend unlimited amounts of money. And they accidentally
Speaker 3: created a separate but equal democracy. And so now go
Speaker 3: look at the legislative accomplishments of that Congress, which is
Speaker 3: primarily a failed system now because they get nothing done.
Speaker 3: But when they do get something done, it's corporate welfare.
Speaker 3: It's kleptocracy. It's a big pharma, big food. Put fertilizer
Speaker 3: in the cheerios. No problem. I'm going to get re
Speaker 3: elected if we do that. And you have this caribdis
Speaker 3: of nonsense is taking place inside the United States as
Speaker 3: a result of all this money flowing into the system.
Speaker 3: So that court case has to be reversed where there
Speaker 3: needs to be a constitutional amendment to make the democracy
Speaker 3: farer again. Because it's a two tiered system now, So
Speaker 3: that's how we got there. Fourteen percent approval rating for
Speaker 3: the Congress, yet a ninety four percent reelection rate for
Speaker 3: an incumbent. So what other group of people could have
Speaker 3: a one out of five consumer rating and not care
Speaker 3: about it. It's these people because they rig the system,
Speaker 3: and the politicians are picking the voters through jerry mandering
Speaker 3: as opposed to the voters picking the politician. The United
Speaker 3: States is being victimized right now by not having the
Speaker 3: DNA to understand fascism. Everybody here in Europe understands it
Speaker 3: because they have legacy from their families. The Americans missed it,
Speaker 3: so we have no memory of fascism, a result of
Speaker 3: which we glorify at least a group of us do
Speaker 3: people like Donald Trump. Here in Europe, they look at
Speaker 3: it and say, well, wait a minute, my grandfather died
Speaker 3: because of this, or my uncle died, and they worry
Speaker 3: about fascists.
Speaker 4: The rights in Europe is gathering strength.
Speaker 3: So the right in Europe is gathering strength because the
Speaker 3: wartime memories are fading, and a result of which the
Speaker 3: educational system is not pressing the people hard enough to
Speaker 3: understand the horror of what that represents, and so we
Speaker 3: don't have that in the US, and so we.
Speaker 1: Need that bitcoin. You were an early adopter, I wish that.
Speaker 3: You're very flattering. I wish I was an early adopter.
Speaker 3: I actually am an early adopter for an old man
Speaker 3: who grew up in traditional finance. So I was four
Speaker 3: years I had a black Rock. But I'm not an
Speaker 3: early adopter, the.
Speaker 1: Early adopter for a preng time.
Speaker 3: I have, yeah, and I took a lot of bullets
Speaker 3: and was involved in the FDx fiasco, which costs me
Speaker 3: a lot. But I believe long term in the technical
Speaker 3: properties of bitcoin, and I believe that the network effect
Speaker 3: if bitcoin will be incredibly valuable, and bitcoin will emerge
Speaker 3: as a digital store of value. And it may not
Speaker 3: be for my generation, it will certainly be for my
Speaker 3: children that are thirty years younger than me. And you know,
Speaker 3: and the good news is people like Larry Fink, who
Speaker 3: when I first met with him, he hated bitcoin, but
Speaker 3: now he's been orange pilled by the bitcoiners and he
Speaker 3: has the largest, most successful ETF in his history, in
Speaker 3: black Rock's history as a result of waiting into the
Speaker 3: into the pool with us. So so you know bitcoin
Speaker 3: is here to stay, and you know it will trade
Speaker 3: in my opinion to the market capitalization of gold over
Speaker 3: the next decade.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about gold because there's
Speaker 1: something funny in the markets, right, Gold up, Bitcoin up.
Speaker 1: That's a little bit counter too, Like what's going on
Speaker 1: in markets?
Speaker 3: I don't I don't think so. I think what's going
Speaker 3: on in Marcus is that there's been a massive production
Speaker 3: and massive proliferation of fiat currency. What's going on in
Speaker 3: Marcas is a massive debt laiden society now and people
Speaker 3: are trying to figure out, well, is that sustainable. It
Speaker 3: may be sustainable for the next decade, but is sustainable
Speaker 3: for a century? Doesn't seem like it would be a
Speaker 3: result of which where can I put my money? Where
Speaker 3: I can store value and I can protect the money.
Speaker 3: So both of those places one is five thousand year
Speaker 3: old history of storing value in and the other one
Speaker 3: is a newer technology, and so I think that there's
Speaker 3: a there's a marketplace for both of those things. And
Speaker 3: so it doesn't not make sense to me. You know
Speaker 3: that three four five percent in each of those while
Speaker 3: we're going through this, but remember you're you're operating in
Speaker 3: the United States now with six percent of the GDP
Speaker 3: is going to deficit spending. So you have to just
Speaker 3: think about how remarkable that is. And you have to
Speaker 3: look at the scale of the percentage of the national
Speaker 3: debt to the overall GDP of the country. It's now
Speaker 3: through World War two levels, but right now we're not
Speaker 3: fighting World War two, and so you have to ask yourself,
Speaker 3: what are we doing? What are we doing? We're over
Speaker 3: promising and we're under delivering. And just for all your
Speaker 3: viewers and listeners, listen up. Deficit spending is unfunded tax liability. Okay,
Speaker 3: someone's going to pay it. Okay, maybe it won't be you,
Speaker 3: but it'll be your grandchildren. And how will they pay it. Well,
Speaker 3: they'll depreciate the Fiat currency, they'll monetize the debt. They'll
Speaker 3: pay back the debt with dollars that are worth less
Speaker 3: than the ones that they borrowed, and that will crush
Speaker 3: living standards for the lower and middle class. And these
Speaker 3: are the people that will show up at a Bernie
Speaker 3: Sanders rally where Donald Trump rally because they're upset about it.
Speaker 3: They don't like the fact that you're stealing their time.
Speaker 3: I'm an energy.
Speaker 4: How come this deficit spending is not an issue in
Speaker 4: the election, it's pretty extraordinary.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not an issue because the people that vote
Speaker 3: are older, and the people that vote that are older,
Speaker 3: they want those benefits. And Donald Trump's not stupid, Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: and both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have said, even
Speaker 3: though it's the absolute wrong thing to do, they're not
Speaker 3: going to correct the issues related to entitlement obligations in
Speaker 3: the United States. Older voters like that, they want those benefits,
Speaker 3: and so therefore it's not an issue. But will it
Speaker 3: be an issue down the road if there's a fiscal
Speaker 3: or a debt crisis for the United States. Now, the
Speaker 3: best thing that the United States has going for it
Speaker 3: are the other countries also the US because of the
Speaker 3: predictability of the laws, the legal system, the flow of capital,
Speaker 3: the mantle of financial services, leadership, the fact that we
Speaker 3: have the largest military, and the fact that the most
Speaker 3: important commodity, oil is priced in US dollars makes the
Speaker 3: dollar the global reserve currency. And so for all of
Speaker 3: those reasons, the US should be able to maintain its
Speaker 3: leadership if it gets the right political leaders gets the
Speaker 3: right policies. But this generation of leaders has failed the country.
Speaker 4: We all know that.
Speaker 3: The other question is, well, the next generation where our
Speaker 3: children do better than us? And I hope so otherwise
Speaker 3: there'll be a big crisis.
Speaker 4: Can you see a next generation? Can you identify some
Speaker 4: people who might be the leaders of the future.
Speaker 3: No, I can't see it off the top of my head.
Speaker 3: But I predict that they're going to be better than us.
Speaker 3: I predict that there'll be more data dependent, they'll be
Speaker 3: a little bit more technocratic than we were, and I
Speaker 3: think that they'll tighten the belt where necessary. And by
Speaker 3: the way, I mean you talk about depressing, let's talk
Speaker 3: about something optimistic. Every one of these problems is fixable.
Speaker 3: As Jack Kennedy once said, we made the problems man.
Speaker 3: He said man. Could have said man and woman when
Speaker 3: it was nineteen sixties. So he said man and he
Speaker 3: said man can fix the problems. Okay, so maybe men
Speaker 3: and women can fix the problems. But we can fix
Speaker 3: the problems. But there's nobody in the West that has
Speaker 3: a ten or fifteen year plan to fix the problem.
Speaker 3: You know, you could fix the deficit, no problem, take
Speaker 3: twenty five years to do it. You need a bipartisan
Speaker 3: commitment but if you could explain to the American people, Look,
Speaker 3: this is what we need to do. It's not left,
Speaker 3: it's not right, it's about right or wrong. This is
Speaker 3: the policies that we need to put in place. If
Speaker 3: we do this for twenty five years, we can bring
Speaker 3: the deficit down and we sustain the economic and therefore
Speaker 3: the national security of our country if we do this.
Speaker 3: But the current political leadership doesn't want to do so,
Speaker 3: this is.
Speaker 1: A G seven problem. The UK has a similar problem, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well I'm speaking in an American centric gue because
Speaker 3: I'm an American, but yes, the UK has this problem.
Speaker 3: The French have this problem, the Germans have the problem.
Speaker 3: Uh yeah, this is a problem. Uh, this is a
Speaker 3: cultural problem because politicians need to get re elected to
Speaker 3: serve themselves more than they want to serve the people
Speaker 3: that they're supposedly serving. Okay, if this was about public
Speaker 3: service as opposed to personal power, we would never be
Speaker 3: making the decisions the way we're making them.
Speaker 1: And then he's scaramuchie, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: Okay, nice to be here. Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: So it was a really fun conversation and it was
Speaker 1: a good insight into Donald Trump's psychology as a man
Speaker 1: who was president. My main takeaway is that Scaramucci does
Speaker 1: not think he'll be president again because he thinks the
Speaker 1: polls are off. So he says, when posters call your
Speaker 1: house in America, a lot of people say they'll vote
Speaker 1: for Trump because it sounds patriotic, but actually they'll vote
Speaker 1: for Biden, even if they're a bit.
Speaker 2: Of shame of the.
Speaker 1: Biden lovers loves really lucking. I haven't heard that before.
Speaker 1: You know, Brexit, we had like the secret Brexit, which
Speaker 1: is why the polls are off. So it's an interesting
Speaker 1: dynamic that he thinks it's this way around.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, a lot more polls for us to chew
Speaker 2: over over the coming months, not least the Bloomberg one
Speaker 2: that we're running every month. But I think talking of
Speaker 2: shameless plugs that we had at the beginning, another one
Speaker 2: coming here because we are going to be starting to
Speaker 2: make a bonus show that's going to be hitting your
Speaker 2: feeds every week, and it is to tackle this subject.
Speaker 2: This is the year of elections all around the world.
Speaker 2: It's also the year that geopolitics is really crashing into
Speaker 2: boardrooms as well, and business people are trying to work
Speaker 2: out how to navigate all of the political turmoil that
Speaker 2: we're going to see all around this year. So our
Speaker 2: new podcast is called voter Nomics. Voteronomics Voteronomics you heard
Speaker 2: it here first and listen every week coming soon, and
Speaker 2: we're going to be tapping into the biggest brains in
Speaker 2: the newsroom here on geopolitics and economics, including Stephanie Flanders
Speaker 2: who runs Bloomberg Economics and government all around the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Allegra, Adrian Woolridge, and yourself.
Speaker 2: It'll be fun, absolutely cult.
Speaker 1: Wait, thanks for listening to this week's in the City
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg. This episode was hosted by me Francine Laqua
Speaker 1: with David Marriage and featuring opinion columnist Adrian Woolridge. It
Speaker 1: was produced by Somersati additional editing by Rishie bou Jay Coole.
Speaker 1: Brendan Newman is our executive producer. Sage Bauman is head
Speaker 1: of Podcasts and Special Thanks to Anthony's Karamucci, Please subscribe,
Speaker 1: review rate wherever you listen to podcasts.