Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the votes in Verdeckts podcast hosted
Speaker 1: by the litigation and policy team at Bloomberg Intelligence, the
Speaker 1: investment research platform of Bloomberg LP. Bloomberg Intelligence has five
Speaker 1: hundred analysts and strategists working across the globe and focused
Speaker 1: on all major markets. Our coverage includes over two thousand
Speaker 1: equities and credits and have outlooks on more than ninety industries,
Speaker 1: one hundred market industries, currencies and commodities. This podcast series
Speaker 1: examines the intersection of business policy and law. I'm Nathan Dean,
Speaker 1: an analysts with Bloomberg Intelligence covering financials policy.
Speaker 2: And I'm Elliott Stein. I'm an analyst with Bloomberg Intelligence
Speaker 2: covering and financials litigation.
Speaker 1: So our guest today is Anthony Scaramucci, founder and managing
Speaker 1: partner of Skybridge Capital, a global alternative investment firm, and
Speaker 1: founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum
Speaker 1: and capital introduction platform encompassing finance, technology, and public policy.
Speaker 1: He's also no stranger to the podcast business. He's also
Speaker 1: the host of open Book, a podcast interview series with
Speaker 1: some of the brightest minds in business, politics, entertainment, and more,
Speaker 1: and co host of the rest of politics US. I'd
Speaker 1: like to talk more, but Anthony has done a lot
Speaker 1: in his career. So Anthony, welcome very much to the
Speaker 1: Votes and Verdicts podcast.
Speaker 3: It's great to be on with both of you guys.
Speaker 3: Thank you for the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks so much, Anthony. So the first question we
Speaker 2: always ask our guests is about their history. Nathan just read,
Speaker 2: you know, a short snippet of your bio, but you know,
Speaker 2: we and our listeners would love to know more about
Speaker 2: how your career developed. You know, one thing Nathan didn't
Speaker 2: mention is that you got your BA and economics from Tufts,
Speaker 2: then you got your law degree from Harvard Law School,
Speaker 2: and then then you went straight to Goldman after graduating
Speaker 2: law school. I believe, so what drew you to Wall Street?
Speaker 2: And you know, tell us about how you founded Skybridge,
Speaker 2: and then maybe you can also tell us about your
Speaker 2: law school experience, because I believe your classmates there included
Speaker 2: President Obama and Supreme Court Justice Neil gor.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting because you can tell people the glossed
Speaker 3: over story and I've read some of these billionaire biographies
Speaker 3: where they get everything right and the story sounds fantastic
Speaker 3: and it's nice and glossed over. But I'm just not
Speaker 3: that type of a person. I'm gonna tell you the
Speaker 3: real story, the good, bad, and the ugly, and some
Speaker 3: of it doesn't reflect well on me. But I was
Speaker 3: incredibly superficial because I had no money as a kid.
Speaker 3: My dad was a crane operator. He was a union worker,
Speaker 3: hourly worker. There was a tremendous amount of economic anxiety
Speaker 3: in our house. I grew up in Port Washington. Some
Speaker 3: of you guys may know the area. It's an affluent area.
Speaker 3: The tip of Port Washington was actually written about in
Speaker 3: The Great Gatsby. It was East Egg There were these
Speaker 3: beautiful baronial estates on the water. But in the town
Speaker 3: of Port Washington there's a lot of middle class people,
Speaker 3: a lot of Italian American immigrants that were landscapers and
Speaker 3: masons and sheet rock installers. And my dad, who grew
Speaker 3: up in a coal mining family. My grandfather was a
Speaker 3: coal miner in Wolkesbury, Pennsylvania. He moved out to Long
Speaker 3: Island to mine sand because it was outdoors. He responded
Speaker 3: to a classified ad. He got there in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: went to the US Army for two years, came back
Speaker 3: and spent forty one years at the same company as
Speaker 3: a crane operator. And by the way, this was at
Speaker 3: a time in America where you got a living wage
Speaker 3: in a union. So he was able to buy a
Speaker 3: sixteen thousand dollars house, which Zillo now says is worth
Speaker 3: seven hundred and eighty thousand, but and the taxes on
Speaker 3: that house are probably eighteen thousand. They're more than the
Speaker 3: purchase price of the house in nineteen sixty two. And
Speaker 3: we lived in a small house in the town of
Speaker 3: Port Washington. And I went to a great public school system.
Speaker 3: But Elliott and Nathan I had tremendous economic anxiety as
Speaker 3: a kid. And so because if my dad got his
Speaker 3: wages cut, we got cut. If there was a boom
Speaker 3: going on, he got time and a half overtime on
Speaker 3: the weekends. It was a happier place seventy two Webster
Speaker 3: Avenue where I grew up. But I can remember my
Speaker 3: dad coming home once wages cut, lots of door slamming,
Speaker 3: glasses breaking in the house. I went out and got
Speaker 3: a paper at I was twelve years old, and I
Speaker 3: was hustling Long Island newsday around the town. I did
Speaker 3: pretty well decent salesman. I got the route up to
Speaker 3: forty five to fifty people. I was making about forty
Speaker 3: five dollars a week, giving twenty five of it to
Speaker 3: my parents, Okay, And then when I quit that route
Speaker 3: to go play baseball, I had to get another job.
Speaker 3: So I went to go work at the local Key Food,
Speaker 3: which was like a stopping shop or a Red Lion
Speaker 3: or wherever you guys are living. And so I was
Speaker 3: stamping cans of you know, green giant peas and dill
Speaker 3: pickles and all kinds of stuff as a kid, because
Speaker 3: we had no money in the house. So why am
Speaker 3: I saying all that's very important? Because all my life
Speaker 3: decisions were based on that have no money, going to
Speaker 3: get some money. My parents wanted me to go to school.
Speaker 3: I was scheduled to go to Sunny Binghamton, which is
Speaker 3: a state school. There was a gentleman, an Italian American
Speaker 3: from my high school. He was my guidance counselor. He
Speaker 3: came to see my father and my mother and they
Speaker 3: must have smoked forty cigarellos and they drank sixteen pots
Speaker 3: of espresso, and they sat at the kitchen table was
Speaker 3: very small, and he told my parents an Italian, your
Speaker 3: kid is very smart. Don't let him go to the
Speaker 3: state school. It's a good school, but he should go
Speaker 3: to this other school that he got into called Tuffs
Speaker 3: And my father was looking at I thought it was
Speaker 3: spelled toughs. He had no idea, okay, and John Zinetti
Speaker 3: told my dad he'll figure out a way to afford it.
Speaker 3: One was four thousand, the other was twenty four thousand,
Speaker 3: and so my father gave me a check in April
Speaker 3: of nineteen eighty two. It was for ten thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: I said, Dad, what's this phase. Well, I cashed in
Speaker 3: my Union life insurance policy and so this is really
Speaker 3: all I got to help you get through college. Here's
Speaker 3: the money. And guys, that was a big epiphany for
Speaker 3: me because I was a Long Island Italian driving around
Speaker 3: in a Camaro, wearing gold chains, doing push ups in
Speaker 3: the parking lots of the local discos, chasing young girls
Speaker 3: around the island, going to Jones Beach, and it was
Speaker 3: right then and there I looked at that check. I said,
Speaker 3: I cannot disappoint my dad when I go to this school,
Speaker 3: Tufts University. I got to take the thing seriously. And
Speaker 3: so I did, and I graduated summa cum Laudie and
Speaker 3: all that other stuff. But in nineteen eighty five I
Speaker 3: read an article that Time magazine was reporting that the
Speaker 3: law firm of Grasswayne and Moore was paying sixty five
Speaker 3: thousand dollars a year for attorneys first year attorneys. And
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god, my dad's making like
Speaker 3: thirty two grand. That's double my dad's pay. I'm going
Speaker 3: to be a lawyer, okay. Not I want to be
Speaker 3: a brilliant jurisprudence. Not that there's a calling for me
Speaker 3: to practice law. All money, Okay. I had no money.
Speaker 3: I wanted money, and so I went and I applied
Speaker 3: to law school. I applied to seven schools. I got
Speaker 3: into six. I got rejected from Yale. I went to Harvard,
Speaker 3: and so now I'm at Harvard Law School September nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six. And I absolutely learned one thing and one
Speaker 3: thing only at law school. Don't be a lawyer. That
Speaker 3: was the first thing I learned, Okay, And so I said, okay,
Speaker 3: I got to find another job, and so I started
Speaker 3: crossing the river to the Harvard Business School. Mike Bloomberg,
Speaker 3: obviously a graduate of Harvard Business School, lots of employment opportunities.
Speaker 3: I started interviewing for jobs in the investment banks. They're
Speaker 3: paying more than the lawyers. Seems like more fun. I
Speaker 3: get a job at Goldman. These are all superficial money
Speaker 3: related decisions. I'd like to tell you that I was
Speaker 3: much more substantial than that, but I was not. But
Speaker 3: let me tell you the learning lesson of all that
Speaker 3: you got to do what you love. You cannot do
Speaker 3: the thing for money, or you can't do the thing
Speaker 3: for what the superficial status of it. So I got
Speaker 3: hired at Goldman Sachs August fourteenth, nineteen eighty nine. I
Speaker 3: was fired from Goldman Sachs on February first, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: You can look up that day. That was a Friday.
Speaker 3: The partner took me to his apartment in Jane Street
Speaker 3: in Greenwith Village and said, you know, you really suck
Speaker 3: at this job. You're fired. Here's an eleven thousand dollars
Speaker 3: sevens check. So I've been fired a few times, that
Speaker 3: was the first one, and I walked out of their
Speaker 3: very crestfall and I said, well, I really sucked at
Speaker 3: this job. There were layoffs going on at the time
Speaker 3: they cut forty people. I was one of them and
Speaker 3: learning a lesson for young people listening to your podcasts,
Speaker 3: be nice to the people to fire you, because they're
Speaker 3: having a bad day too. I was nice to the man.
Speaker 3: Turned out there was a job opening at Goldman. I
Speaker 3: got rehired into Goldman, and so I was fired at
Speaker 3: Goldman February first rehired March twenty eighth. Personnel called me
Speaker 3: and said, hey, you know you're gonna be on Nathan
Speaker 3: and Elliott's podcas yes, someday, and you don't want to
Speaker 3: tell people you got fired. Okay, We're going to just
Speaker 3: mark you down as into departmental transfer And I said okay,
Speaker 3: And they said, can we get the eleven thousand dollars
Speaker 3: check back? And I said nfw. I needed the money.
Speaker 3: I had to pay off law school debt, I had
Speaker 3: to buy some suits, so I didn't give them the
Speaker 3: money back. I got hired back, I got fired, rehired,
Speaker 3: kept the seven check. That probably hurt my career at Golman,
Speaker 3: but that was me at the time, stupid and naive.
Speaker 3: And I was now working in the capital markets, migrating
Speaker 3: into private banking, and then in nineteen ninety six. I
Speaker 3: left to start my own business, but I want to
Speaker 3: just set the scene for it. I have no connectivity
Speaker 3: to anybody. I don't know any rich people. I never
Speaker 3: hit a golf ball, never swung a tennis racket. I
Speaker 3: know nobody. But I'm in the rich person's area at
Speaker 3: Goldman Sachs, the High net Worth area. I got to
Speaker 3: meet rich people. So how do I How am I
Speaker 3: going to meet rich people politics? I'm going to meet
Speaker 3: rich people through politics. My father was a card carrying Republican.
Speaker 3: You say, what the hell is that all about. You
Speaker 3: guys are younger than me. But there was a gentleman
Speaker 3: by the name of Joe Margiata in Nassau County, Long Island.
Speaker 3: He was a Republican. He was the chairman of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party, and he controlled all the unions. This was
Speaker 3: an obscure fact because most counties the unions are controlled
Speaker 3: by the Democrats. But when I registered to vote, I said, Pops,
Speaker 3: am I a Republican or a Democrat? No, no, no, You're
Speaker 3: a Republican. You gotta vote Republican. You gotta help me
Speaker 3: with my wages. So I became a Republican, and so
Speaker 3: who's the Republican running for mayor Rudolph Giuliani. Okay, I
Speaker 3: wrote a two hundred and fifty dollars check to Rudolph Giuliani.
Speaker 3: Young Republicans for Mayor Giuliani, and he won the election.
Speaker 3: He had lost the election in eighty nine. He won
Speaker 3: the ninety three election. This was like one of the
Speaker 3: luckiest things that ever happened to me because I was
Speaker 3: close to the mayor and his team. I was at Goldman.
Speaker 3: I got a parking pass.
Speaker 1: Guys.
Speaker 3: I want to make the two of you jealous for
Speaker 3: a moment. Okay. I had a parking pass. I could
Speaker 3: park on two wheels, Okay, on top of a fire
Speaker 3: hydrant anywhere in the city of New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean in New York.
Speaker 3: I didn't I want to park on a radio city
Speaker 3: music hall while the Christmas Show's getting out, No problem,
Speaker 3: you know, you tell me the spot you want to
Speaker 3: park the car in. I was parking it there, okay.
Speaker 3: And I was tight with the mayor and it led
Speaker 3: to a lot of people coming into my wheelhouse that
Speaker 3: I opened up accounts for at Goldman. So my odyssey
Speaker 3: into politics was based on business. Never saw myself as
Speaker 3: a political figure. Never saw myself as a political pundit.
Speaker 3: I just was trying to figure out a way to
Speaker 3: do my job at Goldman. In nineteen ninety six, I
Speaker 3: left and started my own company. And so that is
Speaker 3: the whole backdrop. Two successful companies Republican party fundraisers. Since
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety two. I worked for George W. Bush, I've
Speaker 3: worked for Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. You pick the garden
Speaker 3: variety a Republican. And I was with Jeb Bush when
Speaker 3: Donald Trump ousted him from the campaign in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: And then Trump called me and said, come work for me.
Speaker 3: And then you know, you know, you know what Jeb
Speaker 3: Bush said to me. Guys, you love this. He said,
Speaker 3: you know, if I had won the presidency, you would
Speaker 3: have never even gotten anywhere near the White House, not
Speaker 3: even at a Christmas party. I wouldn't even invited you
Speaker 3: to a Christmas party, but not Donald Trump, Okay. And
Speaker 3: so there I am on the presidential transition team. And
Speaker 3: then of course he asked me to go work for him,
Speaker 3: and then I allowed my ego and my pride to
Speaker 3: get the better of me. My wife hates Trump, probably
Speaker 3: as much as Milania hates him. Telling you it's a
Speaker 3: very high level of hatred, okay, And she told me
Speaker 3: not to do it. But I did it because of greed,
Speaker 3: for status. I did it for pride, and I did
Speaker 3: it for ego reasons. And I think when you make
Speaker 3: decisions like that, whether you're at Bloomberg Intelligence, Skybridge Capital,
Speaker 3: if you're making personal business investment decisions off of your
Speaker 3: pride and your ego, they end up being terrible decisions.
Speaker 3: And that was one of my more terrible decisions.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, one of the questions that we want
Speaker 1: to ask you about is your love of politics and
Speaker 1: specifically what we're seeing with the US elections right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, I follow you on Twitter, sorry X, and
Speaker 1: you know, on that platform you've been an outspoken critic
Speaker 1: of the Trump campaign during this election cycle. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think just yesterday we're recording this on August thirtieth,
Speaker 1: but yesterday you said, do you think he's going to lose?
Speaker 3: You know, to lose?
Speaker 1: What I guess my question is is that, like, if
Speaker 1: he were to win, just under the scenario, if he
Speaker 1: were to win from a market perspective, what are your
Speaker 1: largest concerns?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, if he were to win, you
Speaker 3: have to tell me where the Congress is, you know.
Speaker 3: So let's say he wins and he takes the Senate
Speaker 3: with him. Okay, and he's now got the house on
Speaker 3: the Senate. Then I'm very worried about the markets because
Speaker 3: there's a lot of things that these guys want to do.
Speaker 3: And he's disavowing Project twenty twenty. But he set it up,
Speaker 3: and so we can pretend now that he because he's
Speaker 3: a great liar. He's a very effective liar. He can
Speaker 3: lie to your face. He can say two contradictory things
Speaker 3: at the same time. No one calls him out on it,
Speaker 3: and for some reason he gets away with it. He's
Speaker 3: against crypto, now he's for Crypto. He put eighty five
Speaker 3: people into Project twenty twenty five. Jd. Vance wrote the
Speaker 3: forward to Project twenty twenty five, the nine hundred and
Speaker 3: two page document. But it doesn't pull well. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of disastrous handmade's tale like activity and Project through
Speaker 3: twenty five. So now he disavows it. And this is
Speaker 3: the classic thing. When Trump is disavowing you, he barely
Speaker 3: knows you. That's what he says. Okay, so you could
Speaker 3: work with him, You two guys could be in his
Speaker 3: foursome playing golf with him for forty years. The two
Speaker 3: of you dropped dead of a heart attack at the
Speaker 3: halfway house. Who was like, who the hell was Nathan
Speaker 3: and Elliott?
Speaker 1: Who?
Speaker 3: There are two other guys here I can play golf with.
Speaker 3: He drops people like their objects in his fe vision.
Speaker 3: So now Project twenty twenty five has gone by the wayside,
Speaker 3: It really hasn't. And so this would be very bad
Speaker 3: for the markets. He wants very high tariffs. He wants
Speaker 3: more control over the FED. He wants to work on
Speaker 3: strategies using this new immunity case to empower the executive
Speaker 3: branch of the government. Okay, and all of these things
Speaker 3: are very bad for the markets. And remember everything is connected.
Speaker 3: It's just like your body. Your foot is connected to
Speaker 3: the top of your skullp our alliances internationally are connected
Speaker 3: into the US economy. You want to pull us out
Speaker 3: of NATO, You want to disavow NATO. You want to
Speaker 3: praise dictators and autocrats when remember, guys, we have five
Speaker 3: point seven billion people living under some level of authoritarianism
Speaker 3: or autocracy. This is supposed to be the United States,
Speaker 3: a beacon of freedom and a beacon of liberty. Our
Speaker 3: parents and our grandparents came here for a reason, for
Speaker 3: this aspirational society that we all live in. And mister
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't like that. He praises autosocrats. He told John Bolton,
Speaker 3: General Kelly Jim Mattis h R McMaster, I'm pulling out
Speaker 3: of NATO if I can win a second term. This
Speaker 3: NATO thing is obsolete. It's ridiculous. You will have to
Speaker 3: explain to me because you're Bloomberg intelligence. The love affair
Speaker 3: with Vladimir Putin. I don't understand it.
Speaker 1: H R.
Speaker 3: McMaster just wrote a three inner page book. Doesn't understand it.
Speaker 3: Some people say that he's tied to them in some
Speaker 3: way through money laundering and his condominiums. I have no idea.
Speaker 3: I'm not suggesting that. I'm just saying there is something
Speaker 3: about his love affair with Vladimir Putin where Putin is
Speaker 3: invading sovereign nations and he's praising him as a genius.
Speaker 3: Putin is disavowing the security contract that he knows the
Speaker 3: West has with the Ukraine. In nineteen ninety four, the
Speaker 3: sixth largest nuclear arsenal was the Ukrainians. Bill Clinton said,
Speaker 3: give us the nukes and we're going to give you
Speaker 3: security guarantees. Trump liquidated them those security guarantees twenty seventeen
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty one and opened the path, opened a
Speaker 3: portal for Putin to invade the country. And you could say,
Speaker 3: you know, Repubcina said, oh no, that happened before he
Speaker 3: took Crimea. Yes, he did take Crimea. And Obama they
Speaker 3: made a decision to let him have Crimea because they said, okay,
Speaker 3: give him the access to the sea that he wants,
Speaker 3: the warm water port. But that's where it's got to stop.
Speaker 3: But Trump created the pathway for the current war. So
Speaker 3: this guy's a disaster. And I was with him. I
Speaker 3: was a garden variety Republican, moderate Republican. He won the nomination,
Speaker 3: I said, okay, I'm going to do the loyal garden
Speaker 3: variety thing. I'm going to go work for him. And
Speaker 3: I made a serious of mistakes. I equivocated, and I
Speaker 3: moved my principles like Trump asked me to do. Yes,
Speaker 3: everybody to move the goalposts. You got to move your goalposts,
Speaker 3: move them again, move them again. I'm going to say
Speaker 3: that Mexican's are rapists and this and criminal. You got
Speaker 3: to accept it. I'm going to make fun of disabled
Speaker 3: people at rallies. You got to accept it. I'm going
Speaker 3: to say misogynous things. I find that completely reprehensible, and
Speaker 3: I find it completely unacceptable from a American presidential candidate.
Speaker 3: And I equivocated on all that stuff in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 3: and that's my fault. I have to own it. But
Speaker 3: he will be a disaster for the markets. He'll be
Speaker 3: a disaster for our alliances, and he will do reckless
Speaker 3: things in an organized way because he won't have Mattison,
Speaker 3: Kelly and mc master working for him. He's got a
Speaker 3: group of whack jobs from the Heritage Foundation that are
Speaker 3: going to pile into that administration.
Speaker 1: So you know, the question I have is is that
Speaker 1: you travel the globe and you talk to other Wall
Speaker 1: Street investors, c suite executives, and so forth. What do
Speaker 1: you say to them when they say that there you know,
Speaker 1: are there opportunities that could come under a Trump presidency?
Speaker 1: For example, he has said he wants to get the
Speaker 1: tax rate down to two fifteen percent from twenty one
Speaker 1: percent the corporate tax rate, You know, are there any
Speaker 1: opportunities from the market perspective if he were to win.
Speaker 3: I want to be balanced. Ok there are several. Okay,
Speaker 3: so let's talk about what they are. For whatever reason.
Speaker 3: Even though Democrats have historically done better with the economy
Speaker 3: over the last twenty five years and the stock market,
Speaker 3: Republicans are perceived to be more pro business and Donald
Speaker 3: Trump is pulling higher than Vice President Harris on the economy.
Speaker 3: So number one, when there's an era of good feeling
Speaker 3: or there's good optics, Okay, the market would probably rally
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the Trump administration or on a victory. Well,
Speaker 3: I'm assuming we're going to talk about crypto in a second.
Speaker 3: He's pivoted effectively on crypto. I will praise him for that.
Speaker 3: That'll be good for the crypto markets. It'll be good
Speaker 3: for that industry. He'll make some regulatory changes which I
Speaker 3: think will be better for people in business. But off
Speaker 3: setting that is fed dependence. Off setting that as a
Speaker 3: breach in our lineciences. Off setting that as an increase
Speaker 3: in tariffs, which you guys know are paid by the
Speaker 3: American people. They're not paid by the foreign entities. And
Speaker 3: these foreign entities sometimes offa scate in terms of how
Speaker 3: they manufacture things get around the tariffs. So yes, there
Speaker 3: are some positive things, but if he's threatening the three
Speaker 3: branches of government and he's pushing the unitary executive power angle,
Speaker 3: which he is pushing, and he's going to liquidate the
Speaker 3: two other branches are weaken them, that's very, very bad
Speaker 3: for the capital markets, and it's very bad for the
Speaker 3: US society because when you study the United States, why
Speaker 3: do we have dollar supremacy, Why do we have unbelievable
Speaker 3: capital markets, Why do we have an influx of international
Speaker 3: capital heading to our shores. There are many reasons, but
Speaker 3: one of the main reasons are we have this great
Speaker 3: decentralized government. There's no autocrat at the top of this government,
Speaker 3: a result of which everything is checked and balanced at
Speaker 3: the governmental level. And there's a very predictable judicial process
Speaker 3: in the United States where people feel that they own
Speaker 3: the property that they actually have purchased. And so we
Speaker 3: have our property rights date back to British common law.
Speaker 3: We have nine hundred years of protecting property rights. You're
Speaker 3: not going to send your money to she or putin
Speaker 3: because arbitrarily and capriciously they could make up stuff in
Speaker 3: the law and take your property. And so you don't
Speaker 3: want somebody that believes in autocracy or autocratic behavior to
Speaker 3: take over. But yes, there are many people in the
Speaker 3: business community. There are billionaires that I know in Silicon
Speaker 3: Valley that are supporting Donald Trump. But I push back
Speaker 3: on them, and I say that you are providing a
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen cursory analysis of what he's doing. Everybody's on
Speaker 3: the same rotisserie, Nathan and Elliott with Donald Trump. They
Speaker 3: start out hating him. Okay, he hated Elon Musk, he said.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk was on his knees in the Oval office.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk said he hated Trump. And then you go
Speaker 3: into the love affair with Trump, and then you come
Speaker 3: out the other side hating Trump. Kelly and Conway hated him.
Speaker 3: Now she loves them. You know, maybe privately she says
Speaker 3: she hates them, but you know the whole story. Mike
Speaker 3: Pompeo hated him, goes to love. You all go through
Speaker 3: the same thing I did. I was with Bush, I
Speaker 3: said the guys in imbecoul. You should be president of
Speaker 3: the Queen's County Bullies Association. He wins. Now I got
Speaker 3: to figure out where to like him. Now I'm on
Speaker 3: the other side again. So everybody goes through this rotisserie
Speaker 3: with Trump. He alienates everybody, and he's a dangerous guy.
Speaker 3: And you're playing with a team of one where you've
Speaker 3: got a guy that has no executive management skills running
Speaker 3: the American government. Not a great recipe.
Speaker 1: Go ahead, no, no, no please. You just mentioned Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: and that's a good segue to a question I have
Speaker 1: about Vice President Kamala Harris. You know, we've heard some
Speaker 1: folks in Silicon Valley, you know, an area that she's
Speaker 1: historically tied to due to her home of California, that
Speaker 1: are somewhat concerned about her policies being tough on the sector,
Speaker 1: maybe even artificial intelligence and so forth like that. Do
Speaker 1: you think those concerns are valid or do you think
Speaker 1: a potential Harris administration will be I don't want to
Speaker 1: say more moderate or you know, what do you say
Speaker 1: to folks who say that they're concerned that a Harris
Speaker 1: administration would be tough on that sector.
Speaker 3: So I've been working with them. I've been working with
Speaker 3: them on crypto policy. I've been working with them on
Speaker 3: economic policy. I don't know the answer to that at
Speaker 3: this moment, Okay, because she's got advocates out there going
Speaker 3: on business channels talking about the taxation of unrealized capital gains.
Speaker 3: And so if they're going to go in that direction,
Speaker 3: she will lose the election, and that would be a
Speaker 3: nightmare for the United States. That would be very disqualifying
Speaker 3: to be president if she wants a tax on realizing.
Speaker 3: Not because I have some level of wealth and I've
Speaker 3: made some independent wealth in the country, it's because it
Speaker 3: would be a disaster for the capital markets in terms
Speaker 3: of the disincentivization of holding long term assets in the
Speaker 3: United States, and we have favored through tax policy, long
Speaker 3: term investing for a reason. It creates great stability and
Speaker 3: creates great flow of capital for innovation. If you invent fracking,
Speaker 3: you got to go to Wall Street and get the
Speaker 3: money for fracking. So you're going to get the money
Speaker 3: from people that are willing to make the long term investment.
Speaker 3: But then they want to be able to hold the
Speaker 3: thing without taxation. Moreover, let me talk as a blue
Speaker 3: collar person, because ultimately that's what I am. If I
Speaker 3: make one hundred cents, I'm taxed in New York at
Speaker 3: fifty two cents. I'm not a New York City resident.
Speaker 3: I'm a Long Island resident. So I'm now a minority
Speaker 3: partner in my own life. A dollar comes into the
Speaker 3: Scaramuchi's forty eight cents is kept by the Scaramuci's fifty
Speaker 3: two cents goes to Kathy Holkol and Joe Biden. So
Speaker 3: I'm a minority partner in my own life. But I
Speaker 3: decide now with the forty eight cents that I'm going
Speaker 3: to invest it in the capital markets, not spend it
Speaker 3: on consumption. You've already taxed me, and I've made some
Speaker 3: very wise and good investments. The forty eight cents goes
Speaker 3: to four dollars and eighty cents, So I've taken all
Speaker 3: the risk, I've delayed all of my consumption, and now
Speaker 3: you want to penalize me by taxing the unrealized portion
Speaker 3: of those games. And so you know they're going to
Speaker 3: play the game. Well, we're only going to do it
Speaker 3: for people that are over one hundred million dollars. But
Speaker 3: taxation in this country has always had creep to it,
Speaker 3: and this will be an international disaster for them. So
Speaker 3: if they're going in that direction, she will lose the election.
Speaker 3: He will win the election. We'll deal with the positives
Speaker 3: and negatives of him. But on the other stuff that
Speaker 3: you're talking about. I do believe that she's a moderate.
Speaker 3: I do believe that she's tacking to the middle. There's
Speaker 3: one thing I didn't like about her interview last night
Speaker 3: is she looks tired. The job is weighing on her. Okay,
Speaker 3: when you have her at the DNC, you got the
Speaker 3: you guys are TV guys, right, you got the uplight.
Speaker 3: You know, Barbara Walter is vented the uplight. You can
Speaker 3: have a fifty five year old woman look like they
Speaker 3: have no wrinkles. Okay. The lighting in that interview was terrible.
Speaker 3: The way she was dressed is terrible. The shot was terrible. Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you she didn't look right. But there
Speaker 3: are two things about it that I did like. She's
Speaker 3: a human being. The job should weigh on her. Okay.
Speaker 3: It doesn't weigh on Trump because he's a sociopath, so
Speaker 3: he looks the exact same every day, no matter what.
Speaker 3: But she looks like she's stressing over the job. An
Speaker 3: I prediction, move to moderation. If she does win, you're
Speaker 3: getting a garden variety Bill Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama
Speaker 3: sort of style of policy from the American presidency and
Speaker 3: as long as she doesn't tilt towards taxing unrealized gains. Look,
Speaker 3: it's one thing, guys to talk about it. Trump talks
Speaker 3: about some ridiculous stuff that will never happen. As long
Speaker 3: as that stuff's not going to happen, I think we'll
Speaker 3: be fine. But if it's gonna happen, be this. As
Speaker 3: for the country, how.
Speaker 1: Are you thinking about a Harris presidency in terms of
Speaker 1: your investments? You know, if she were to win, and
Speaker 1: let's say that if she wins, she gets at least
Speaker 1: one Chamber of Congress, you know, she has access to
Speaker 1: the regulatory agencies you mentioned. Tax twenty twenty five is
Speaker 1: going to be a tax reform year just because of
Speaker 1: the expiration of the Trump Ara tax cuts. You know,
Speaker 1: how do you how would you go into a Harris
Speaker 1: presidency thinking about sectors and you know, just market performance.
Speaker 3: Great question. So, so my recommendation to them is to
Speaker 3: follow the path of Bill Clinton. And so what Bill
Speaker 3: Clinton did, and it was very controversial at the time,
Speaker 3: is he raised taxes. He pushed through a mega tax
Speaker 3: increase thirty years ago. You guys may remember Al Gore
Speaker 3: coming down from the Naval Observatory. He was like oj
Speaker 3: in the in the Bronco right. He was heading up
Speaker 3: to the Capitol to cast the deciding vote to put
Speaker 3: through the largest tax increase in history, and the Republicans said,
Speaker 3: ha ha ha, you push through the largest tax increase
Speaker 3: of history. He's going to lose in the nineteen ninety
Speaker 3: six election. But Clinton did something very smart. He set
Speaker 3: the taxes. He then went to the podium and said,
Speaker 3: we're done raising the taxes, and this is what the
Speaker 3: tax policy is going to look like for the next
Speaker 3: eight years. She has to raise taxes. I don't want
Speaker 3: them to be raised. You guys probably don't want them
Speaker 3: to reraise, but you are staring down the barrel of
Speaker 3: multiple trillion dollars of deficit spending that has to be curtailed.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you could end up in a debt supercycle, which
Speaker 3: would be absolutely horrific for the markets. We are beneficiaries
Speaker 3: of a dollar denominated world, where beneficiaries of US being
Speaker 3: the global reserve currency. But you don't want to end
Speaker 3: up in a debt supercycle that's not sustainable for the
Speaker 3: United States, and so raising the taxes and figuring it
Speaker 3: out a way to slow that down and again just
Speaker 3: to give you some political history here and you can
Speaker 3: look this up and your viewers and listeners can look
Speaker 3: up pay as you go legislation. It was invented by
Speaker 3: Dick Dorman in nineteen ninety. It was signed into law
Speaker 3: by George Herbert Walker Bush, and Bill Clinton adhered to it. Okay,
Speaker 3: Bush also did. That's why he raised taxes during the
Speaker 3: golf War. Remember no new taxes, read my lips. He
Speaker 3: lost the election, but he adhered to pay as you go.
Speaker 3: When Bob Rubin got the job, he out debated Bob Reich,
Speaker 3: the Labor secretary. Labor Secretary wanted deficit spending. Rubin said,
Speaker 3: raised the taxes for your plan, and we were running
Speaker 3: a surplus at the end of two thousand. So the
Speaker 3: Vice President Harris has to think like Bill Clinton, and
Speaker 3: she has to right size what we're doing from a
Speaker 3: spending and control perspective, not creating austerity, but setting ten
Speaker 3: or fifteen year guidelines to get this thing back in line.
Speaker 3: It's Banata Wax's two thousand and eight. If she does that,
Speaker 3: the market will respond very powerfully to that. She's also
Speaker 3: got to get to the podium and say I'm all
Speaker 3: about FED independence. That's worked in the Capitol market since
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty. I would like to continue to work. You
Speaker 3: do not want Donald Trump pushing FED dependents. One thing
Speaker 3: you guys got to know, Okay, because I'm a Republican. Okay,
Speaker 3: these guys are cowards. Okay, let's just stipulate this. Okay.
Speaker 3: The Republicans are afraid of Donald Trump. They know he
Speaker 3: sucks as a person, they know he's not a principal guy.
Speaker 3: But they cower and shake. They're literally the tin man
Speaker 3: collectively in the Wizard of Oz with the Wicked Witch. Okay,
Speaker 3: their knees knocked together on this guy, and they're very malleable,
Speaker 3: and that's very dangerous for the country. This guy's allowed
Speaker 3: to sit on his hands for three hours on January
Speaker 3: sixth while they're insurrecting and creating violence at the Capitol.
Speaker 3: They're calling for help. He doesn't help them, and then
Speaker 3: they fly down to Marrow Lago to take photo ops
Speaker 3: with them. I mean, whoever heard of something like that?
Speaker 2: I want to ask. We talked a little bit earlier
Speaker 2: about regulators and cryptos. I want to pivot to the
Speaker 2: SEC and some policy issues, just starting generally let's talk
Speaker 2: about the SEC a little. I'm curious to get your
Speaker 2: thoughts on Gary Gensler and his tenure as SEC chair.
Speaker 2: You know, they've been very aggressive in terms of rule
Speaker 2: making and enforcement actions. You know, do you think that
Speaker 2: they've been too aggressive under his leadership.
Speaker 3: Well, the short answer to that is yes. But I
Speaker 3: want to give I want to give a bagdrop here.
Speaker 3: What happened to Gensler and Warren is they got embarrassed
Speaker 3: by the Bankman Freed family. And so for your viewers
Speaker 3: and listener, Sam Bankman Freed was the crypto fraudster. He
Speaker 3: created this very large business called FTX. He was taking
Speaker 3: client funds. None of us knew this at the time,
Speaker 3: fully disclosed. I was an investor in that company, and
Speaker 3: he also owned a piece of my company because I
Speaker 3: liked the kid and I trusted him. I got it wrong, okay,
Speaker 3: But so did Gary Gensler, and so did Elizabeth Warren,
Speaker 3: and so did twenty five other venture capitalists and sovereign
Speaker 3: wealth funds that gave them a billion dollars to build
Speaker 3: this business. But what happened against Ler and Warren is
Speaker 3: they were friends with his parents, who were law school
Speaker 3: professors at Stanford. Sam went to go see those guys
Speaker 3: several times. He blows up. And so in order to
Speaker 3: eclipse the media drama around the mistake that they made,
Speaker 3: they don't own it like I do. They try to
Speaker 3: pretend it didn't happen. They have swung the pendulum to
Speaker 3: this wildly over aggressive position about being anti crypto, okay,
Speaker 3: and this shields them. It provides an eclipse for the
Speaker 3: stupidity of working with Sam. And that's literally what's happening.
Speaker 3: And so they are regulating through enforcement. They're going after
Speaker 3: good actors in the industry. They're losing court cases after
Speaker 3: court cases. They approve a bitcoin futures ETF, but they
Speaker 3: reject the cash one. They've got to have Grayscale go
Speaker 3: to the court system and have the court enforced the
Speaker 3: administrative law in the United States. Gensler has been rebuked
Speaker 3: by the courts. He's been criticized by the courts. He's
Speaker 3: got people leaving because they think he's overly aggressive and
Speaker 3: he's outside the scope of his authority. He's the Donald
Speaker 3: Trump of the sec meaning he doesn't care about the rules.
Speaker 3: He's flouting them for his own political ambition. Okay. So
Speaker 3: that's Gary Gensler and that's Elizabeth Warren. But I'm gonna
Speaker 3: say something favorable about them. And this really pisses off
Speaker 3: my friends in crypto. Okay, ready, he broke the law
Speaker 3: by not approving the spot ETF. He broke the law
Speaker 3: because you had the futures ETF. The law says you
Speaker 3: can't be arbitrary capricious. They're identical, basically, and he accepted
Speaker 3: one and rejected the other. But that saved the industry.
Speaker 3: And I'm gonna explain to you why, because the delay
Speaker 3: of fifteen months between those two things, there's actually a
Speaker 3: little more than that. Excuse me, the delay of twenty
Speaker 3: five months, Okay, save the industry because by not doing that,
Speaker 3: he exposed all the fraud and all the leverage in
Speaker 3: the industry. Okay, So crypto people can not like to
Speaker 3: like him or dislike him that delay. All the bottoms
Speaker 3: dropped out of these businesses, all the leverage collapse in
Speaker 3: the industry, and we have a much sturdier, safer industry
Speaker 3: from an investor perspective today than we did prior. And
Speaker 3: so people can like that or they can dislike it.
Speaker 3: But I want to be objective on your podcast. But
Speaker 3: what I don't like about him is he's not following
Speaker 3: the rules. Okay, And here's the problem. If they don't
Speaker 3: make it bipartisan, Trump wins, Democrats will be anti crypto
Speaker 3: for fifteen years because anything Trump does, even if it
Speaker 3: makes sense, they don't like. As an example, Biden gets
Speaker 3: the job, he signs seventeen different executive orders to revoke
Speaker 3: all the policies that Trump had of the border, and
Speaker 3: we get a huge border crisis, which they now have
Speaker 3: to admit. They don't actually say they were wrong, because
Speaker 3: no politician ever does that. But they didn't have to
Speaker 3: admit they got a border crisis. And now Vice President
Speaker 3: Harris's miss Madam border right. But all they had to
Speaker 3: do is leave Trump's policies in place. They left Trump's
Speaker 3: tariffs in place with the Chinese. You know, guys, for me,
Speaker 3: it's not about left or right, it's about right or wrong.
Speaker 3: What's right or wrong for our society? Okay? You know
Speaker 3: when you're when you're entrepreneurial owner. Mike Bloomberg was running
Speaker 3: the city for five years. I served on his financial
Speaker 3: services advisory board, and he didn't care about politics and partisanship.
Speaker 3: He was like, Okay, what's right or wrong for the city.
Speaker 3: I would make the citizens of city healthier and safer.
Speaker 3: How am I going to increase tourism and prosperity and
Speaker 3: economic growth in the city, And so we need to
Speaker 3: return to something like that. This hard left I hate
Speaker 3: crypto just to hate cryptot and is stupid. Moreover, let's
Speaker 3: not make it a partisan debate. I'm all for it
Speaker 3: becoming bipartisan.
Speaker 2: And Vice President Harris has dropped hints that, you know,
Speaker 2: she would be a little more favorable to the crypto
Speaker 2: industry under her presidency. I'm curious to get your thoughts.
Speaker 2: You know, what you expect her crypto policies will be.
Speaker 2: What will regulation look like under her presidency if she wins.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I don't know the answer. Okay, I don't
Speaker 3: know the answer. I was on the crypto for Harris's
Speaker 3: zoom call. I have a relationship with Senator Jilibran and
Speaker 3: Senator Schumer, our state senators here in New York, US
Speaker 3: senators from New York. They both want legislation past this
Speaker 3: year that's bipartisan and provides greater clarity to the SEC.
Speaker 3: And they're speaking the right language. Okay, if you really
Speaker 3: want to have a great podcast. Have somebody do some
Speaker 3: research on Elizabeth Warrenck. She has the worst legislative record
Speaker 3: in the Congress twelve years. I think she passed one bill.
Speaker 3: But she's done a beautiful job of staffing her minions
Speaker 3: all over the executive branch of the government. Her minions
Speaker 3: are at the FED, her minions are in the White House,
Speaker 3: her minions are at the SEC and Treasury, and she's
Speaker 3: done this brilliant job and they're following her marching orders.
Speaker 3: And so if Kamala Harris is sticking with those people,
Speaker 3: she's going to hurt the industry and it's going to
Speaker 3: be very bad. The beatings will continue until morale improves.
Speaker 3: If she does make an adjustment, and guys like Brian
Speaker 3: in her senior policy are talking about making an adjustment,
Speaker 3: that'll be very good. But I don't know the answer
Speaker 3: to that yet, and I think she hasn't committed one
Speaker 3: way or another to what direction she's going in. But
Speaker 3: I'd like to believe that Schumer and Jillibrand and people
Speaker 3: like them in the Democratic Party, the younger Democrats wrote Conna,
Speaker 3: they will win out versus Elizabeth Warren And.
Speaker 1: When you said, Brian, you're referring to Brian Diese, former National.
Speaker 3: I should have said that, Yep, exactly, he's the one
Speaker 3: that's signaling from her campaign that the policies will be
Speaker 3: more favorable to digital assets.
Speaker 2: Yeah. One thing we'd like to say here, actually Nathan
Speaker 2: says this a lot, is that crypto policy is more
Speaker 2: generational than sort of you know, partisan.
Speaker 3: It's no question. Look look at the way people voted
Speaker 3: on that bill that Biden vetoed. The younger Democrats voted for,
Speaker 3: the older Democrats voted against it.
Speaker 2: And we talked personnel a little just a few minutes ago.
Speaker 2: Who would you like to see as SEC chair under
Speaker 2: you know, if if Harris wins or if Trump wins,
Speaker 2: who would you like to see as the next SEC chair?
Speaker 3: It's a great question. I'm gonna I'm gonna answer the
Speaker 3: same person for both administrations, because I'm going to take
Speaker 3: the Vice president her word that she wants Republicans in
Speaker 3: her administration. I would put Jay Clayton back of the SEC.
Speaker 3: He's a very effective guy. I know him a very
Speaker 3: long period of time. He's a great administrator. He's also
Speaker 3: a good ball he's a good umpire. He's called balls
Speaker 3: and strikes some things he's done that the crypto industry likes,
Speaker 3: some things he's done the crypto industry doesn't like, but
Speaker 3: is actually good for investors. And I like him as
Speaker 3: a guy, and I know he's a fair impartial guy,
Speaker 3: and I would recommend him to both candidates. I think
Speaker 3: it would be a big sign from Vice President Harris
Speaker 3: if she has some Republicans in her administration. He would
Speaker 3: be a good one because he's not the garden variety Republican.
Speaker 3: He's a good, impartial arbiter of things like this.
Speaker 2: And what about for Treasury secretary? Who would you like
Speaker 2: to see in that role?
Speaker 3: Really good question. So Jamie Diamond has put his hand up.
Speaker 3: He's written an article about this, and I think Jamie,
Speaker 3: I'm in is seen as an incredibly competent person, and
Speaker 3: I think he's probably one of the smartest people that
Speaker 3: I've met in the world of financial services, if not
Speaker 3: the world in general. He's not a politician. I think
Speaker 3: that's a strike against him, by the way, because when
Speaker 3: you're running a big company, it's hard to make a
Speaker 3: transition into being a political leader. Mike Bloomberg did a
Speaker 3: great job of that. I don't know if Jamie could
Speaker 3: do a great job of that or not, but assuming
Speaker 3: he could, he would be my pick for both sides. Okay,
Speaker 3: I think he would be acceptable to both sides. I
Speaker 3: think he would get approval quickly. If Harris vice President,
Speaker 3: Harris doesn't want to go with him, I'd recommend somebody
Speaker 3: like Larry Fink. Now, some of the hard left would say,
Speaker 3: oh no, that's Wall Street people again, we need a
Speaker 3: hard lefty if she goes with Elizabeth Warren. You know,
Speaker 3: hopefully you guys have room in your basement, and one
Speaker 3: of the two of you'll have room in your base
Speaker 3: where I can live with my family for four years.
Speaker 2: As much as I'd love to have you guys over,
Speaker 2: I don't think we agree in my basement.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, taking that far, I think that is
Speaker 3: a shot. Okay, I heard Nathan. I'm relying on you
Speaker 3: now because Elliott just hurt my finger to me and
Speaker 3: tell me you have room in your basement. Ok I'm
Speaker 3: going to have to use it, but just lie to
Speaker 3: me make me feel better. After that, I'll talk about it.
Speaker 2: I'll put my kids in the basement and you can
Speaker 2: take their rooms.
Speaker 3: All right. See that's now he's now he's being more diplomatic.
Speaker 3: I live in Rgina.
Speaker 1: I live in Virginia. You'll have to get used to
Speaker 1: the hotter summers. But you know, one last question we
Speaker 1: have before we move on to our fun question, and
Speaker 1: it really just because I know when you do the
Speaker 1: Salt conferences, I see you doing interviews from the UAE,
Speaker 1: from Asia, from Europe. I mean, I'd hate to know
Speaker 1: what your travel schedule likes, because it looks like you're
Speaker 1: always on the road. So I want to ask you,
Speaker 1: where do you think the US China relationship will go
Speaker 1: over the next few years under a Harris Trump presidency
Speaker 1: or a Trump presidency. Is this something that should be
Speaker 1: keeping investors up at night thinking about I.
Speaker 3: Think it keeps investors up at night, but I think
Speaker 3: that it's become unnecessarily adversarial, and I think we're on
Speaker 3: the right path paths President she has decided that he
Speaker 3: wants to be a little more controlling of that government,
Speaker 3: a little bit more controlling of that economy, and that
Speaker 3: economy is paying the price. There's been a diminution in
Speaker 3: outside capital. You know this because you guys are Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 3: There's a real estate crisis going on in the economy,
Speaker 3: there's a banking crisis there. They're doing the best they
Speaker 3: can to manage it under the constraints of a very
Speaker 3: centralized authority coming from the government. So the question will be,
Speaker 3: is that the path that China's going to take forever.
Speaker 3: I believe it is not the path that China will
Speaker 3: take forever. I think these things break towards freedom, particularly
Speaker 3: places like China, where they've got a ton of well
Speaker 3: educated people. They've had a very big movement from an
Speaker 3: agrarian society to an urban society, which has increased disposable
Speaker 3: living standards, made people generally wealthy. I believe that we
Speaker 3: need to be patient with them, and we need to
Speaker 3: work alongside of them despite whatever the political rhetoric is.
Speaker 3: As business leaders and thought leaders, we need to stay
Speaker 3: in the game with China, and we need to make
Speaker 3: sure that whatever happens with China, the peaceful rise of
Speaker 3: China is something that the United States and the West
Speaker 3: can handle. I may not necessarily be in favor of
Speaker 3: every aspect of their system. They're certainly not in favor
Speaker 3: of some of the aspects of our system. But there
Speaker 3: was a book written about ten years ago that I'd
Speaker 3: recommend to both the it's still very relevant today. It
Speaker 3: was written by the Dean of the Kennedy School of Government,
Speaker 3: Graham Allison, and it's called Destined for War, and this
Speaker 3: is about the rising superpowers threatening the existing power structures.
Speaker 3: And so there's something called the Thudicity's Trap where the
Speaker 3: Spartans were threatened by Athens and so they hit them
Speaker 3: and it touched off a war that lasted way longer.
Speaker 3: The Pnesian War lasted way longer than either side wanted,
Speaker 3: and it damaged both city states, and Graham Allison's point
Speaker 3: is we don't want that to happen. There are sixteen
Speaker 3: episodic moments from ancient Greece to today where rising superpowers
Speaker 3: threatened existing power structures. On four of those occasions, so
Speaker 3: there's only four for sixteen where we've had some peace.
Speaker 3: And one of the most specific ones, specific ones is
Speaker 3: the US rising at a time when the UK was declining.
Speaker 3: But that was okay for us. We had more or
Speaker 3: less the same legal structure, more or less the same tribe,
Speaker 3: more or less the same religion. This is very very different.
Speaker 3: This is very precarious, and we need to manage it
Speaker 3: with great common sense and great long term judgment, not
Speaker 3: overreact to whatever problems China has right now or they're
Speaker 3: inward move. And I would just point out to you guys,
Speaker 3: in April of twenty seventeen, when President She ended up
Speaker 3: at mar A Lago to visit then President Trump, he
Speaker 3: had a copy of this book in his hand. He
Speaker 3: was going to present it a Trump, But of course
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't read, so they would have had would have
Speaker 3: fallen on deaf ears. But I saw him with the
Speaker 3: book in his hand, and I went out and bought
Speaker 3: the book and read it. I think it's very relevant today,
Speaker 3: even though it's ten years later. We have to manage
Speaker 3: this relationship. We have to be there or we have
Speaker 3: to be present with them, and we have to we
Speaker 3: have to figure out a way to cohabitate on Earth,
Speaker 3: the Chinese and the Americans without being overly aversario competitive,
Speaker 3: no problem. We don't want anything connectic with the Chinese.
Speaker 2: That's a fascinating the anecdote about the book. So we're
Speaker 2: running up on our time limit here, so we're gonna
Speaker 2: end our policy focus questions, and we're going to end
Speaker 2: this episode with one question that we ask all of
Speaker 2: our guests at the end of each episode and that is,
Speaker 2: if you were stranded on a desert island, what are
Speaker 2: three pieces of music that you would want to have
Speaker 2: with you? And it can be you know, it can
Speaker 2: be an album or a soundtrack or a song or
Speaker 2: you know, if you want it to even be the
Speaker 2: entire catalog of one artist.
Speaker 3: It can only be one. Though I can't have a couple.
Speaker 3: You can have three three, three, Okay, So I want
Speaker 3: the whole catalog of Billy Joel.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, it's a long island guy. You
Speaker 2: got to go to a long island guy.
Speaker 3: The long Island anthem is down Easter Alexa. Okay, I've
Speaker 3: got I've got cousins of mine that are clamors. Other
Speaker 3: guys are sliceing Deli meat when I go for Christmas.
Speaker 3: Everybody in my family is named Anthony, because that's how
Speaker 3: the Dallians do it. It's my great grandpa.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: There's Anthony Pizzeria, Anthony Deli, Anthony Klamer. I'm just Anthony
Speaker 3: Hedge fund at the table.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: No one gives a shit that I've made a dollar
Speaker 3: or not, right, And so that's Billy Joel. The second
Speaker 3: thing is Led Zeppelin. I think I'm older than you two,
Speaker 3: but led Zeppelin Robert Plant to me, I think he's
Speaker 3: the best rock and roll singer every timeless, and Zeppelin
Speaker 3: to me, I think will be long remembered. And then
Speaker 3: the third thing, which is a little sacriligious here on
Speaker 3: Long Island, but it's somebody that I've gotten to know
Speaker 3: and I genuinely respect, is Bruce Springsteen. So there's always
Speaker 3: a great rivalry between the Long Islanders and Billy Joel
Speaker 3: and the New Jerseys with Springsteen. But Springsteen writes about
Speaker 3: the working class struggle. Uh, and Billy Billy Joel does
Speaker 3: as well. But Springsteen is capturing something about America that
Speaker 3: I think I would want with me on that desert island.
Speaker 2: I mean, those are three great choices. I live in
Speaker 2: New Jersey, so obviously you know Springsteen.
Speaker 3: He threw me out of the house, Nathan, Okay, you know,
Speaker 3: and he's got me living like Dinot.
Speaker 2: I've got you back in with these musical choices coming
Speaker 2: back into the house.
Speaker 1: Elliott has a Spotify account. He puts all these on
Speaker 1: her soil joined like you know. Uh, Mick mulvaney was
Speaker 1: Petchup Boys and former Lambrige secretary Eugene Schlee I think
Speaker 1: was the clash, So we'll put that on the opera.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: See see those are good guys, both of those good
Speaker 3: guys whose arc of their professorinal career and the arc
Speaker 3: of their judgment has been gravitationally pulled by Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: You see, you see see this is said. And by
Speaker 3: the way, myself included, I've made a lot of mistakes
Speaker 3: that I've regretted in my career because you're there's an
Speaker 3: expression in it, you know, an Italian the fish thinks
Speaker 3: them the head down. When you have a malevolent, morally
Speaker 3: beref leader, you have a tendency to move towards him,
Speaker 3: not away from him. You know, you need leadership in
Speaker 3: the country that's guided with good character and good principles
Speaker 3: to restore what we know about the country, which is
Speaker 3: the greatness of this country. And so we're in a
Speaker 3: little bit of an interregment period now and we'll get
Speaker 3: through it. But those are two great guys. But I
Speaker 3: would love to debate both of them on trump Ism,
Speaker 3: because this is a failed strategy for America. Anytime the
Speaker 3: America is talking in the victimhood America is talking about
Speaker 3: I mean, Trump trashes the country. He talks about the
Speaker 3: country like it's a failed state, that that's besmirching my dad,
Speaker 3: my grandparents. I don't like it. Okay. We got to
Speaker 3: talk about the country very differently, and we got to
Speaker 3: think about the country way long term as it relates
Speaker 3: to entitlement, deficit spending, interest payments, et cetera, not the
Speaker 3: nonsense that we're doing right now.
Speaker 2: Maybe that'll be another episode of votes and Verdicts. We
Speaker 2: could have you and maybe some of those guys too.
Speaker 3: Oh no, I love those guys, you know, Melvany, anytime
Speaker 3: you know school, I know.
Speaker 2: I'm serious. I think it'd be a great conversation.
Speaker 3: Lee, I know less well, okay, and I like him. Okay,
Speaker 3: he was. He was very good on the Department of
Speaker 3: Labor stuff in the fiduciary rule. Obviously, his father is
Speaker 3: a celebrated hero in our community. You know, I can
Speaker 3: tell you exactly where I was in June of nineteen
Speaker 3: eighty six when he was named to the Supreme Court. Okay,
Speaker 3: I was with my mother. She was cooking a lot
Speaker 3: of meatballs. Okay. The Italians thought that that was the
Speaker 3: greatest thing that ever happened in the community. And I
Speaker 3: when I met with scale I said, why are all
Speaker 3: these Italian mothers, why do they want their kids to
Speaker 3: be judges? And Scaleia looked at me. So you gotta
Speaker 3: understand some an When you're a judge, you have a
Speaker 3: lifetime appointment. So your mother thinks that you're not corruptible.
Speaker 3: She doesn't think you're in the mob, because if you
Speaker 3: go from mayor, she thinks that the mayors are all corrupted,
Speaker 3: but the judges are not corruptible. It was a great
Speaker 3: answer from Anthony and Scalia.
Speaker 1: Well, Anthony, thank you very much for attending. We're going
Speaker 1: to wrap up our episode of Utes and Verdicts there.
Speaker 1: We're extremely grateful to you for appearing on this episode
Speaker 1: and for our listeners.
Speaker 2: As you're a.
Speaker 1: Comminder, you can read all of our Bloomberg intelligence research
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal liked I Go, Thank you again
Speaker 1: and everywhereful