Anthony Scaramucci: Elon Musk’s Trump Exit, Tim Cook’s Tariff Problem

Summary

Podcast Summary: Big Technology Podcast with Anthony Scaramucci

Title: Big Technology Podcast
Host: Alex Kantrowitz
Guest: Anthony Scaramucci
Episode: Anthony Scaramucci: Elon Musk’s Trump Exit, Tim Cook’s Tariff Problem
Release Date: June 4, 2025

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1. Introduction and Personal Connections

Alex Kantrowitz welcomes Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital and host of "Rest Is Politics Us." They bond over their shared Long Island roots, setting a personable tone for the discussion.

• Alex [00:00]: "What a great time to speak with you, Anthony. Thanks for being here."
• Anthony [00:27]: "You got a great studio. Thank you. And you got a great show."

2. Scaramucci’s Tenure in the Trump White House

Scaramucci recounts his brief 11-day stint as Director of Communications in the Trump administration, emphasizing the challenges of transitioning from a campaign to a governing body.

• Anthony [03:48]: "Donald Trump is the type of guy where he could play golf with you for 45 years. If you can't help him, he'll run you over with the car."
• Alex [03:10]: "Tell us what working in the Trump White House was like."

He highlights Trump's transactional nature and the difficulty of maintaining genuine relationships within such an environment.

• Anthony [06:00]: "He's very tight, somewhat insecure and mercurial. A lot of flattery helps you stay in his good graces."

3. Relationship and Departure from Trump

Scaramucci details the fallout from a disagreement over Trump's comments about female House members, leading to his dismissal.

• Anthony [08:03]: "He had the right to fire me, and I deserve to be fired."
• Alex [09:14]: "What's that like when you get put on blast by Twitter?"
• Anthony [09:16]: "I got knocked off of Twitter for 12 hours. He was all guns a blazing at me."

He explains the hostile backlash and the personal toll it took, including marital strain.

4. Elon Musk’s Role and Departure from Government

The conversation shifts to Elon Musk's brief role as a special government employee, with Scaramucci predicting and analyzing his exit after 135 days.

• Anthony [11:06]: "He lasted 135 days. When you're in and around Trump, you get blown up, and bad things start to happen to you."
• Alex [14:10]: "So how are we going to trash the guy?"

Scaramucci critiques the Washington establishment for targeting Musk, citing his wealth and independence as factors that make him untouchable.

• Anthony [16:05]: "'Stunat' means stupid. Trump allies wanted to push Musk out because his vision didn't align with theirs."

5. Economic Criticisms: Deficit Spending and Trade Policies

A substantial portion of the discussion focuses on the implications of massive deficit spending and aggressive trade policies, with Scaramucci offering a detailed analysis.

• Alex [30:32]: "Can you talk about this new consensus emerging in the business world about why deficit spending might not be wise?"
• Anthony [30:32]: "This bill is an abomination. It's wildly increasing the growth of deficit spending."

He argues that the current trajectory is unsustainable, predicting a significant increase in interest payments that could cripple the economy.

• Anthony [37:36]: "I think they're still okay with it. We're still measuring their confidence, but we're going to get to that point."

Scaramucci emphasizes the need for legislative guardrails to manage deficits, referencing the effectiveness of past policies like the pay-as-you-go legislation of the 1990s.

6. Trade Wars and Tariffs

Scaramucci criticizes the current administration's inconsistent and aggressive trade tactics, particularly targeting China without coordinating with allies.

• Anthony [36:58]: "Trump is trying to Brexit us from the rest of the world, isolating the U.S. from global trade."

He underscores the irrationality of unilateral tariffs and the detrimental impact on international relations and domestic manufacturing.

• Anthony [40:16]: "We're all about fairness and moderation, but the administration prefers reactionary measures that harm long-term economic stability."

7. Apple and Tim Cook’s Relationship with Trump

The discussion turns to Apple and CEO Tim Cook's interactions with the Trump administration, highlighting the transactional nature of their relationship.

• Alex [49:19]: "What do you think about the trade-offs Apple makes, and Tim Cook’s relationship with Trump?"
• Anthony [49:19]: "When Trump needs Tim Cook, he'll bring him to the White House. It's very transactional."

Scaramucci praises Apple’s resilience and strategic decisions post-Steve Jobs but criticizes the administration for creating an adversarial environment for major corporations.

• Anthony [56:09]: "Apple did what they thought was right for themselves, their shareholders, and their customers. They deserve better support from their leaders."

8. Future Predictions and Economic Outlook

Looking ahead, Scaramucci offers his perspective on the economic challenges and potential solutions, advocating for Bitcoin as a hedge against fiscal mismanagement.

• Anthony [59:30]: "I don't see the freight train of spending stopping. Bitcoin is a disciplinary mechanism."
• Alex [59:11]: "What’s gonna happen with Bitcoin? You think $100,000 is still in play?"
• Anthony [60:10]: "Bitcoin could check the power of central banks, serving as a store of value."

He anticipates continued economic strain due to unchecked spending and emphasizes the importance of strategic, long-term planning to mitigate fiscal crises.

9. Closing Remarks and Personal Insights

Scaramucci shares personal anecdotes, including the impact of his White House experience on his marriage, and reiterates his commitment to advocating for sensible economic policies.

• Anthony [58:37]: "I'm running for reelection in my marriage. My wife filed for divorce, deservedly so."
• Alex [62:15]: "Thank you for joining us, Anthony. We hope to have you back."

He concludes with a call for moderation and strategic economic planning, expressing optimism for Elon Musk’s future endeavors.

• Anthony [62:22]: "I'm a huge fan. Strong Island."

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Notable Quotes:

• Anthony Scaramucci [03:48]: "Donald Trump is the type of guy where he could play golf with you for 45 years. If you can't help him, he'll run you over with the car."
• Anthony Scaramucci [30:32]: "This bill is an abomination. It's wildly increasing the growth of deficit spending."
• Anthony Scaramucci [36:58]: "Trump is trying to Brexit us from the rest of the world, isolating the U.S. from global trade."
• Anthony Scaramucci [59:30]: "I don't see the freight train of spending stopping. Bitcoin is a disciplinary mechanism."

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This episode offers a candid look into the tumultuous nature of politics intertwined with technology and business, providing valuable insights from Scaramucci's unique perspective as a former White House communications director and a seasoned investor.

Transcript

[Alex]

Where do Elon Musk and Tim Cook stand with Donald Trump? And where does the economy go from here? We're joined today by a special guest. Anthony Scaramucci is here with us. He is the host of the Rest Is Politics Us, which you can find on your podcast player of choice. He's also the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital, and he's here with us in studio to talk about all of this fascinating breaking news. What a great time to speak with you, Anthony. Thanks for being here.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

It's a big honor to be here. You got a great studio. Thank you. And you got a great show. So I immediately responded to your DM. I think you DMed me.

[Alex]

Right? Yeah. We just met via DM. I've been obviously following you for a while. I listened to you on Kara Swisher's podcast, and you spoke a lot with her about how you're from Long Island. I'm from Long Island. I figured it was time for us to meet.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

All right. Amen. Something about the water on Long island that makes everybody crazy. So I'll evaluate you at the end of this, and I'll determine if you're as nuts as the rest of us.

[Alex]

So do you think it's the water? I always thought it was. We're close to New York City, but we're not quite in New York City, so we are nowhere. We have access to the show, but we know we're not part of it, and that makes us angry. Is that your Long Island?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

It's an interesting perspective. So I don't see you that way already. You're giving off a vibe of a comfortable outsider. So there are uncomfortable outsiders that are angry, but then there are comfortable outsiders that almost enjoy the voyeurism of being an outsider. But I don't know, maybe. Are you angry?

[Alex]

No, I don't think angry. Maybe angry was the, you know, what I was when I was a kid, but now I think it's just a healthy chip on my shoulder.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay.

[Alex]

Because I feel like when you're from Long island, you have to work a little bit harder than everybody else than the city states.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I'm all about that. I agree with that. I do. You know, we're gonna probably talk about Trump at some point. He's got a chip on his shoulder.

[Alex]

Queens guy, because he was twice. He's not that dissimilar.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

But the difference between Long island and guys like Trump is we're comfortable outsiders. I don't mind. I can't get into certain country clubs. They probably would want Me to landscape their greens as opposed to putt on them. Totally fine by me. Don't care. Guys like Trump, they get worked up about that stuff. They're out to prove something. I'm just happy to be here. You know, I'm very grateful to be sitting here. But also maybe the. I'm too short to see the glass as anything other than half full. Like when I look up at the glass, it looks full to me, so. But it's great to be on with you, but. And I love Long island and do you still live out there?

[Alex]

No, I'm in Brooklyn now.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay. Closest.

[Alex]

How about you?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, yeah, I'm two miles from the house I grew up in.

[Alex]

Amazing local boy. Yeah, well, we still spend a lot of time there. And then look for our international listeners or those who are in the Bay Area who are like, what's all this Long island talk? To start the conversation. Long Island, Nassau County, Suffolk county, it's right outside the city. You could take the train in, take the train out. Good place. But yeah, like I said, you grow up there and you realize that there's something big happening pretty close that you're not quite a part of. That motivates a lot of Long island people.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, I think it's well said.

[Alex]

All right, so you go from Long island to the White House. And I just want to start briefly about your time in the White house. You spent 11 days there. I'm not going to shortchange it. I'm not going to say 10. Some people have said 10 days is a scare, Moochie.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, it hurts my feelings. And they're not doing the math. I mean, you have tech, you got tech people listening, right?

[Alex]

That's right. We need to be precise.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

These are good math people. If you start on the 21st and you get your ass fired on the.

[Alex]

31St and you work the 31st, that's 11 days.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Count the days, guys, count the days.

[Alex]

That's 11.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Don't chip me in out of 9.1% of my federal career. And by the way, why Jim me out of that last day? I got my ass fired on that last day. That was a big day.

[Alex]

It's important day. Let's not go into too much depth about what it was like in that moment. But I just want you to give our listeners and viewers a feel for what working in the Trump White House was like. Just a very brief, like, tell us the vibe, the experience of those 11 days in the White House. Cuz we want to know how, what's inside the Trump, White House.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So I don't want to put any hate geography on it. It's eight years later, so I don't want to spin. I'm just trying to remember it as clearly as I can remember it. I will say a couple of things. Number one, it was very different than working on the campaign. At least that was my experience. I had a decent relationship with Donald Trump. You're not friends with Donald Trump. Let me give a news flash. If you got a tech CEO listening, kiss his ass all you want. Wait for him at the service entrance in Mar a Lago, Write him checks, do whatever the hell you want. You're not friends with the guy, he will never see you as a friend. He sees you as an object in his field of vision. He's a transactionalist, and if he can get something out of you that helps him, great. If it turns out that five minutes later you can't help him, he'll run you over with the car. Trump is the type of guy where he could play golf with you for 45 years. You have a heart attack on the ninth hole at the halfway house, and he's like, who was that guy, Alex, I was playing golf with? I don't barely know the guy. Can we get another guy out here to finish the round with me? That's Donald Trump. And I knew that I had a comfortable enough of self awareness of him and myself. I knew that. But when I was on the campaign with him, it was very loosey goosey. It was very decentralized, and we were doing a lot of different things at the same time. I was working in communications and media advocacy. I was working in fundraising. I was working on speech writing. I was working on logistics for some of these rallies. We were doing a little bit of everything. And the relationship with Trump, because he was also loosey goosey, if that's a term I could use. Probably a little old fashioned.

[Alex]

We understand that. Yeah.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

You could talk to him straight up. You say, well, that idea sucks. Why did you lie about that? What are we doing here? This doesn't make any sense. And Jared once said to me, Jared Kushner, he said, you know Mooch, he likes talking to you because you remind him of his dad. You made your own money, actually don't give a shit. You're here to try to help him, but you're not here to kiss his ass. There's so many of these politicos that go into the situation that are just, you know, I mean, to put their whole head up somebody's ass. And they have, like, a ring on their neck, you know, like a ring around the collar.

[Alex]

Is that what happens afterwards?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, I think it's sort of revolting. So what happened to me, though? I got into the administration, foolishly so. Cautionary tale of young people. Don't do things that are out of your depth or your experience, but also don't chase your ego. So I went in to work for Trump for pride and ego reasons. I grew up like you out on Long Island. My dad was a crane operator, went to Tufts, Harvard Law School, built a successful business on Wall street, and now I got the chance to work for the American president.

[Alex]

And he calls you and says, come be the director of communications.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, it was irresistible. My wife was like, you're crazy. Don't do it. My wife probably hates him, like, almost as much as Melania hates him, which is, like, through the roof of what we're talking about here. And she told me not to do it. We almost got divorced over it, frankly. But I did it because my pride was involved and my ego was involved. So now I'm in there, and it's different. He's president. Guess what? You're not president. He's president. It's not a campaign, which is like a startup, and it's flat. And you could tell, hey, Alex, you're not doing this right? Or Alex moved the microphone closer or move the microphone back. Couldn't do that with him. He was very. He got very tight, somewhat insecure and mercurial. And so it was a lot of flattery. If you're flattering him, you're doing better. If you're not flattering him, you're not doing well. And I made a lot of big mistakes there. I was talking to him the way I'm talking to you now, and the way I talked to him on the campaign, and that was getting me in trouble. And then finally we got into a fight, which I really can't get into because it was sort of some national security issues related to it. And then we got into that fight on Friday. I was fired on Monday, and he had the right to fire me, and I deserve to be fired. And learning lesson number two, be accountable. You know, I got fired. I got fired because he's the president. I'm not the president. He wanted to do something I was not comfortable with. He's gonna find somebody that's more comfortable than me in doing what he wanted to do. He fired me, and life goes on. I tried to stay loyal to him. I was loyal to him until 2018 I broke from him after the tweeting related to the women of the squad. So you're a New Yorker. Maybe your friends outside of New York may not know this, but there are several women, hard left leaning women, which I don't agree with ideologically. But Donald Trump in 2019 said, Time to go back to the countries you originally came from. Well, three of them were born in the United States, one was naturalized from Africa. These were members of the House of Representatives. And it was a very harsh, nativist, very harsh, racist statement. And it triggered me a little bit because my grandmother was told in the 1920s, go back to the country you originally came from. And so I was on the Bill Marshall. I was trying to defend Trump. It was August of 2019. Defending him, defending him. Somebody then asked me a question. Well, what about the comments that he made about the women in the House? And I said, I don't really like that very much. I don't think he should talk like that. It's nativism, it's racism. And by the way, he's the American President, he shouldn't talk like that. The next day, he's lighting my ass up on Twitter.

[Alex]

What's that like when you get put on blast by Twitter?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, that sucks. That sucks. You go white as a ghost. You can pretend otherwise he's the President of the United States. You're not. And when he hit me on Twitter with his 80, he's got like maybe 150 million X followers now, but back then, 80 million followers on Twitter, he's hitting you, you go white. It's a nervous feeling.

[Alex]

Phone calls.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

You go white people or ds? Yeah, people start calling, what the hell's going on? I then took a New Yorker's approach. Okay, you can take a couple different approaches. I took the New Yorker's approach and I hit him hard. I said. So said the fattest president since William Howard Taft. I'm a New Yorker. That got me knocked off of Twitter for 12 hours. You can't fat shame people on Twitter. Even though he's ripping me to pieces.

[Alex]

This was before Elon.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, before Elon. Maybe you can fat shame now on X, but you couldn't fat chime. I got knocked off of Twitter for 12 hours. He was all guns a blazing at me. I was hitting him left and right cuz I know all of his weaknesses. So I was hitting him left and right. And then he started attacking my wife. I was like, all right, this is it. You know, I'm not Ted Cruz. Don't go after my Wife, I'm a New Yorker.

[Alex]

But so through that lens, I mean it's the perfect setup to explain what's happened with Elon. Now Elon is not in the middle of a flame war with Trump right now. Maybe he is, cuz he did just say something about the big beautiful bill. He says it's a massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill and a disgusting abomination, which is a bill Trump supports. So we'll get to that in a moment.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Be very careful with him.

[Alex]

But through the lens of what it was like in the White House, how it changes from campaign to governing, give us your best insight into what happened with elon. He spent 135 days as this special government employee and I think you had predicted that he would be there for a year. So it seems like a little bit shorter than you initially thought.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Oh, I got this thing completely wrong. I was shooting all over the place. I thought six or seven weeks. And I said, wow, he made it six or seven weeks, maybe he would make it a year. And I got it wrong. He lasted, as you said, 135 days. And so just to do the calculation for everybody listening at home, that's 12.2 Scaramucci, that's important. Pretty big. It's a long enough time in Trump world. 12.2. Walsh, the NAT security advisor lasted 9.1. Okay, so you do calculate. Everybody's got it, you got it. Don't you think you have to just like measure them in Scaramucci's and so you know, Kevin McCarthy 24.5 Scaramucci's as Speaker of the House. So when you're in and around Trump, you get blown up, definitionally bad things start to happen to you. You get excoriated. I said on CNN in December, I was on Wolf Blitzer's show. What do you think's going to happen with Elon? I said, well, he's going to get hurt. And the hard right came at me. And the hard right Twitterati or Xerotti came at me and said I'm physically threatening Elon. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, actually guys, I am not physically threatening Elon. I love Elon. Full disclosure, I am a investor in Xi Xai. I was an investor in Twitter. It got converted into Xai. It's sort of Twitter merged with Grok. Now I have a small investment in XAI. Prior to that I have an investment in SpaceX. Me personally, I'm very close friends with Antonio Gracias, who's on his board. And I love Antonio. We worked at Goldman together. And I am a huge Elon Musk fan. Huge. And so when I said he was gonna get hurt, I was basing that on my life experience as a business person going to work for Donald Trump. Because what happens to you is you get a 360 degree shootout at the OK Corral. The politicos don't like people like Elon. And I'm gonna give you a number of reasons why. Number one, he's a very rich guy. Newsflash, they are not rich people. Number two, you can't control somebody like Elon. He's not a corruptible guy. Like people say, Washington is a swamp. I don't see it as a swamp. It's a gold plated hot tub. Okay? You go into the hot tub, they look at you and they say, can I buy you, Alex? Are you somebody that's capable of being bought? And they size you up like a 01 switch in a computer. Bought. Not bought. Bought. Not bought. Ah, you can be bought. Okay, here's two bottles of Cristal. Come sit in the hot tub, let's smoke a Cubano together. And we're going to talk about how we're going to milk this system to make money for ourselves.

[Alex]

But I understand he's the richest person in the world, but. Or private citizen in the world. But can't he be bought in some ways? Contracts with SpaceX, contracts with Tesla, not. He does a lot of government business.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, but he's not just throwing this out there. But he said corrupt. But he's not a corrupt guy. He has no. There's no yes could he want.

[Alex]

So maybe he's corruptible, but not corrupt.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

No, I don't see him as even corruptible. He's not that kind of a guy. He's a execution oriented entrepreneur. Would he certainly lobby the government for a contract? Certainly he would do that. But he's not a corruptible guy. He doesn't. I mean he could be. I don't know him that well. I mean he could be, but I'm just giving you my impression of him. 61 years on planet Earth, 38 years in business. I don't see Elon as a corruptible guy. And I know the way Washington works. Bought can't be bought. Bought can't be bought. Elon can't be bought. Okay, we got to excoriate the guy. So how are we going to trash the guy? We're all going to trash his businesses. We're going to trash him personally. We're going to leak information on him. Cabinet members are going to leak information on him. Susie Wiles is going to go after him. But I did predict that Trump would never go after him. There wouldn't be a Pyrrhic demise to Elon like there was to Steve Bannon or me or Mark Esper or General Kelly, because Elon's a loaded guy and Trump got several hundred million dollars out of him to help him win the campaign. And he's not gonna wanna piss off Elon too much. Trump is too smart of a guy to make Elon into an adversary. Now, that's a separate conversation. The Democrats. For the life of me, God Almighty, how could you let Elon leave the tent?

[Alex]

Right.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

That I don't get. You don't invite him to the EV thing. Are you guys crazy? You invite him to the EV thing, even if the UAW president doesn't want him there. Moreover, you leave him in the tent. You let Bobby Kennedy and Elon Musk out of the tent. And I'm gonna use the Long island expression that your Silicon Valley people won't know. You're stunat. You know what stunat means?

[Alex]

Why don't you explain it for our listeners?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, well, she's stupid, okay? Yeah. It's an Italian guttural phrase for stupid.

[Alex]

Okay, but so.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

But let me just finish. You. Don't let Johnson, Lyndon Johnson would have said, keep everybody in the tent when they got to take a piss. Let the elephants piss outside the tent. Don't let an elephant outside the tent that could piss back into the tent. That was Elon. It was a disaster for them. But I don't see him as a corruptible guy. They didn't see him as a corruptible guy. So they put the hurt on him the way I predicted. Again, not a physical hurt, but they went after him. And it was an inside job there. Make no mistake about that. That was MAGA people.

[Alex]

Bannon.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Bannon. Bannon went after him right away from the beginning. Steve Miller went after him.

[Alex]

And these are the people that have stuck with Trump from the first term.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Also, Cabinet members went after him. You know, they went after him. They didn't like the power they had. Remember, Washington is not like tech and it's not like Wall Street. See, you're in tech and you're on Wall Street. You're on the green team, okay? And just for the demonstration purposes, I'm showing Alex the green, Right? That's Swiss money, but, you know, you get the point. Okay? This is. This is green. See it? There's A red party, there's a blue party and there's a green party. I'm not talking about the environment. This is the party. And so Silicon Valley, they know how to play on the green team. They can get along when necessary if this is involved. Same on Wall street. In Washington, you don't know what's going on. There's a blue team, a red team, a yellow team. One guy wants to be closer to the president. The other guy's jealous that Elon's traveling with Trump back and forth to Mar a Lago and Air Force One. They start shooting at the guy, and that's what happened.

[Alex]

So you just think it was an inside job, basically, that Trump allies who didn't like Elon's vision just said just slowly pushed him out of favor with the president.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

And then 135 days gone, his own companies were orchestrated.

[Alex]

Right?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

To think otherwise, you don't understand how it works. They orchestrated these attacks on his companies.

[Alex]

What about, like, what he was there to do because his signature project was Doge. Do you think that was a success?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I don't think it was a failure. I don't think it was as successful as perhaps as they wanted it to be. I think they learned something that it's harder to cut the government than people had anticipated. If you had said to me, and you can find this in recordings about me, he said, well, Doge, what's going to happen? He's going to find some things to cut. He's going to find it harder to cut other things. He's going to realize that the government is not a business. You know, it's just a weird thing. This is eternal.

[Alex]

It's like he tried to do the Twitter cuts when the government just didn't work.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

He can't do that. So he tried to let me give a news flash to the Silicon Valley people listening in. The government is not a business. You don't need a businessman to run the government. You need a policy wonk to run the government who can build a consensus and can provide long term guidance to a government. You got to move the aircraft carrier slowly. It's not going to turn in the water like a speedboat. And so you have to target things. You know, Clinton understood that, you know, we're going to target the budget and we're going to get the budget in a certain sequence so that the growth of the economy is going to exceed our spending. And when we get to the end of the Clinton term in 2000, we're printing a $240 billion, budget surplus, last budget surplus that the U.S. printed. So you have to think of the government very differently than a business. You're a conductor, you've got an orchestra. On some days, they want to play from the same sheet music. On other days, they don't want to play together. And the cacophony of sounds coming out of the government is very nasty. And it's your job to try to calm everybody down and get them on the same sheet music. It's harder to do today because we've gotten way more polarized and there's a lot more entrenched interests that keep themselves perpetually in power as opposed to serving the people. So Elon's stint in the government very well intended, I think, successful. He's pointed out a lot of mistakes. I think the declarative statements that he's making on X today are evidence of his knowledge and his now worldly understanding of what goes on in the government, which is why he is being so critical. He knows that that spending bill is going to increase the slope of spending at too fast of a rate to the growth of the US Economy, which means the deficit is going to widen, which means that we're stealing from future generations of Americans, which is very unfair at this point in our history. It's very unfair to the next two generations coming up in the country.

[Alex]

Okay, can I give you one more explanation, by the way? This is not pro anti Elon. I'm just trying to, like, think, think through what happened with him. It's a very consequential moment for him to jump into the government.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I'll tell you some negative things about Elon, too. I'll tell you. Positive and negative. I'm not trying to be pro Elon Musk. Yeah.

[Alex]

We're doing this as straightforward analysis.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I'll tell you what he got wrong.

[Alex]

But let me just kind of throw this other idea out there, which is that maybe it wasn't. Maybe there were people within the government that didn't like what he was doing. Maybe the Democrats sort of had it out for his businesses because he had become so close to Trump. But maybe the reason why he's left the government is because Doge wasn't. I mean, he aimed to cut trillions of dollars. He ended up cutting, you know, I think a couple hundred billion, maybe. And he went to Wisconsin to try to sway an election. He failed after spending a lot of money and his poll numbers were bad. So it's just simple politics.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, well, I mean. But worse than that. Worse than that. So Model S comes out. Do you know who Elon Musk is? 70% of the Americans say they know who Elon Musk is. Do you have a favorable opinion of Elon Musk? 70% of the Americans that know Elon Musk say they have a favorable opinion of Elon Musk. He is the Tony Stark of our era. Most people that know who he is, wow, we're glad he's one of us. He's an American entrepreneur. Half the country has a favorable opinion of him. You ask people now, do you know Elon Musk? 90% of the Americans know who he is. 70% of those Americans have an unfavorable opinion of him. So look at the numbers.

[Alex]

There you go.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

You've got a 63% negative opinion. And when you go into politics, that happens. And if he had talked to me, not that he would have, but he had talked to me and said, listen, you're selling cars to progressives. You're selling cars to people that believe that you are an environmental pioneer. You're trying to help heal this environmental catastrophe that we've created. And so you're a hero to these people. If you're going to side with Trump. And I get why, because the Democrats are out to lunch, they're breaking your balls on SpaceX launches, they're torturing you with the electric car company because of the love affair they have with the autoworker unions. And I get why they're doing that to you. But if you take a chill, this group of Democrats, this older group of Democrats is going to pass. And then you could align yourself with a newer group, like a Ro Khanna group of Democrats. It'd be a way better experience for you if you decide to become politically active. But he sees the shooting, and God forbid, and thank God Trump wasn't killed in Butler Penns, July of 2024. And he's like, okay, this guy's going to win. That visual picture of Trump with his hand up in the air, blood on his ear, American flag behind him is a winning picture. Let's just be honest with everybody. Elon sees this, he immediately goes out and endorses him. Sean Maguire from Sequoia goes out and endorses him. And now you've created this portal for other Silicon Valley people who have typically hid their political stripes. There were way more conservatives in Silicon Valley than they were willing to admit to in 2012 or 2016 or even 2020. But now it's 2024, and they're like, okay, the portal's open. There's space for David Sacks. There's space for Chamath.

[Alex]

There's Mark Andreessen.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Mark Andreessen. There's space for Elon. I think Horowitz was there, then he backed off.

[Alex]

Right.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay. And so now. But you're with the wrong guy. Let me give you a news flash. You're with the wrong guy because this is a transactionalist. It's not just that he's a narcissist. He's an angry guy. He hates himself and he's projecting that hatred into the society. And he's a divisive guy. And he's got ill founded policies as it relates to economics and ill founded policies as it relates to terrorists. And I know Elon thinks he's an imbecile. Let me just give you my proof. Because like geometry in ninth grade, Elon thinks he's an imbecile. Let me apply the proof. He. He's tweeting about Peter Navarro. A couple of weeks ago, he says Peter Navarro is as dumb as a bag of rocks. And then there's another tweet, which I adored. No, no, I apologize. I just want to personally apologize to the bag of. The bag of rocks. Okay, so you got to love Elon for this. But look at me. The fingerprint of Peter Navarro and Donald Trump on trade and economics is identical. So when you're saying that someone's an imbecile and the person that's identical to that person, that person therefore, definitionally also has to be an imbecile. So Elon's not a dummy. He knows these tariffs are wrong. He knows they're bad for the society, and he knows this big, beautiful spending bill is actually atrociously ugly. Big, but atrociously ugly spending bill. And very harmful long term to the interests of America and its citizens, but very good short term for these pigs in Washington feeding at the trout.

[Alex]

Yeah. And Anthony, by the way, this is why it's so great to have you here. And folks, this is why I wanted to have this conversation with Anthony. It's so difficult to speak about Elon's role in politics, but here we have a Republican, former communication director of the Trump White House.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Why is it difficult? Because he's a powerful guy and everyone.

[Alex]

Thinks you're coming in when you speak about Elon with an axe to grind, but that's not you. You're an investor in Elon's companies. And I think that's the right diagnosis, by the way.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

By the way, I have no axe to Grind. Here's what I know.

[Alex]

That's why I'm glad you're here.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I want Elon to go back to work. I think he is literally the quintessential American hero entrepreneur. I think he's a brilliant visionary. I think he's gotten so many things right in his career. This Xai the Grok stuff is phenomenal. It's helped me in my business. It's helped me as a person. I think the stuff he's doing with Neuralink is going to be transformative for so many people with disabilities.

[Alex]

We had Noland Arbaugh, the first Neuralink patient, on the show a couple months ago. I've seen four technological miracles in my life. The iPhone, ChatGPT, driving in a driverless Waymo car, and watching Nolan play a video game and beat me in a.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Video game, I know as a crime. But I find that people are nervous about saying things about Elon Musk because he's a powerful guy, and they don't want to get in his field of vision and they don't want to cross him. But my attitude is I want to be real with people because I think that really smart people are real with people, and then they gravitate to each other. Like, if I've got a booger in my nose, do I have a booger in my nose? Alex?

[Alex]

All clear, Anthony.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay. But if I had one, I would want you to say, hey, Mooch, you got a booger in your nose. This way, I could excuse myself and rip the booger out of my nose. And you got to be with people in life that are going to talk to you straight, but they're going to talk to you straight out of love, where they want to help you, if anything. I think Tesla's a great company. I think this robotic stuff he's doing at Tesla is amazing. I think he hurt his brand by going into Washington, and I think there's plenty of time to repair the brand. The great news about America. F. Scott Fitzgerald got something really wrong. He was a brilliant writer. 100th anniversary of a Long island novel. The Great Gatsby came out in April of 1925. But Fitzgerald got one major thing wrong, Alex. He said there are no second acts in American life. Very famously said that 100 years ago, he got it wrong. There's hundreds of seconds, second and third acts, for sure. There's tenth acts. You know, Trump is an example of that. I'm an example of that. I don't know your life story, but I bet if you had a shortcoming Or a failure. You could pull yourself together and come back from it. America loves to come back. They want the success story. So if you invite me back in a year, I'll make a prediction on your show. Elon will be flourishing in a year. His businesses will be flourishing because he's that kind of a guy. But you know, politics is a rough sportman and you're talking to somebody who's got tire tracks on his back.

[Alex]

Yep. Okay, so now let's talk a little bit about Elon's economic criticism or criticism of this big beautiful bill, because I think it's important for us also to get into current day policy and current day politics. So big beautiful bill, it's going to increase the deficit, I think by $3 to $5 trillion. Elon says, I'm sorry, I can't stand it anymore. This is on Tuesday. This massive, outrageous, pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong. He says it will massively increase the already gigantic budget deficit to $2.5 trillion. I think it's even more than that. And burden American citizens with crushingly. I think even by 2.5 trillion. And burden American citizens with crushingly unsustainable debt. Anthony, you're a business person. You know, for years people ignored this mounting debt that the US Had. Now I think we're about to hit a moment where the country is going to pay a trillion dollars a year or more just in the interest payment on debt, which is I think close to a fifth of all US government spending. So can you talk about this brand new consensus, I think, that is emerging in the business world about why all this deficit spending might not be wise?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, first thing I'm going to say is buy Bitcoin. That's the first thing I'm going to say. And a lot of people that really analyze and study this understand why. But the second thing I'm going to say to you is that this is a fixable thing. But we have a disease now in the system and the disease is one born from complacency. And so I want to articulate this for your listeners that can understand it because if they're actionable, they can help fix it. And so what basically happened is Ross Perot ran for office in 1992. He won 19.9% of the vote. Bill Clinton became the president. But he scared the living daylights out of the two parties. So the two parties got together and created this bone crushing duopoly. They strengthened themselves In a way that has prevented for 33 years a third party to come on the scene to try to liquidate the extremists of the two parties. And so what ended up happening is they allowed each other to gerrymander. They gave each other breaks on each other's situations. The fat tails of the extremists of the two parties started to run things, and now they've stayed in perpetual power. So Chuck Grassley, I think he was like George Washington's great grandfather. Maybe he's like 900 years old. He's in the Congress. He'll be there for another hundred years, I guess. Nancy Pelosi's 85, Schumer's 75, Trump on his way to 79, Biden 81. They don't want to leave. They don't want to leave. And they're all there in the sclerosis. And to keep the sclerosis going, they pile on the pork and they pile on the spending, and it's an unstoppable train, to quote the economist Lyn Alden. And why is this important to bring up? Because it wasn't that way. You know, after Reagan did the deficit spending to help bring down the Iron Curtain, George Herbert Walker Bush passed, with the help of Dick Gephardt, these pay as you go legislation. And pay as you go was a guardrail on the Congress. He said, we got too much deficit spending. If you want a social program, no problem. Have to raise taxes. If you're a Republican, you want to cut taxes, no problem. You have to find something in the budget to cut. We got to have guardrails on the system. And Clinton adhered to those guardrails, but this group of drunkards has pulled the guardrails off the system. And they're spending like maniacs. And you can't get the economic growth to track the spending, but they won't stop the spending. And they will tell you that something's been cut, something's growing at 6%, but they had it targeted at 8%, and they'll tell you it was cut by 2%, even though it's growing by 6. So you have to really understand what they do in Washington, which Elon does, and he's looking at it and he's saying, okay, this is catastrophic for my fellow citizens of the United States. You have to stop what you're doing. Now, the flip side is he also knows you can't pull the rug on people, because if you pull the rug on people, it'll be deconsumptive. It could touch off a recession. But you could slow the growth. You could slow the growth and you could reimpose the pay as you go legislation from the 1990s, and it would take about 20 years and you could bring the deficit down. Now, that's the bad news for the politicians because they don't want to tell all the Americans that. But you can't fix this thing in two weeks. You can't cut a trillion dollars, or Lutnick was saying 2 trillion. And you can't take the chainsaw out. You're going to hurt people if you do that. But you can set it up so that the growth of the budget slows and the economy outpaces the growth. You could do that and you could fix it. So this bill is an abomination. And what this bill is doing is it's wildly increasing the growth of deficit spending. And you brought this up, Alex, let's just point this out to people. If you get a rise in interest rates, you could be spending $1.5 trillion on interest. You're only taking in 3.5 to $4 trillion in tax revenues. Okay? Max, 5 trillion. You're spending 6 or 7 trillion, depending on what's going on. Not sustainable. No way, no how. Moreover, if you have a nutty president that wants to declare war on everybody, he's the Admiral Yamamoto, he's got a Pearl harbor attack going. Trade War One has been started by Admiral Yamamoto, Trump, okay? And he's hitting everybody in a 360 degree move. So he's going after our allies and he's going after our adversaries in this maniacal way. He's like Orange Moses coming down from Mount Evil with the tablet. He's walking in with the tablet. Nobody understands the tablet. Everybody's afraid of him. And he's got 145% tariffs and tariffs on the penguins and all this crazy.

[Alex]

Shit that you gotta tariff the penguins. Yeah, absolutely crazy shit.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So he's sitting there with the Orange Moses, you know, ten commandments of tariffs, and people are looking around at the rest of us, the rest of the world, going, wow, this is a disaster for the United States. But he could have said, hey, the Chinese, which is true. They were supposed to buy certain agricultural products. They signed a deal with me back in 2018, 19. They didn't live up to it. The minute Joe Biden came in, they stopped obligating themselves to the agreement. And so I need to go back to them in a tough way and enforce that. But before I do that, let me call my European Allies. Let me call my Canadian friends and let me say, hey guys, let's team up. And now there's a billion of us and let's go after our economic adversary, China. But he didn't do that, okay? And so now he's got the Canadians mad at us, all the Europeans mad at us, the Greenlanders are mad at us, the Panamanians are mad at us. It's just totally freakishly irrational and unnecessary. But he's got a group of sycophants in the room that won't tell him the truth.

[Alex]

Okay? So I definitely want to cover tariffs also, but let's just go back to deficit for a minute. I mean, the argument that's gotten the politicians or the people who, the ideological supporters of this deficit spending to the point where we're at now, which I think is nuts, the level of debt we have, the argument that they've made is the US has the reserve currency, so we can just keep borrowing and everything will be fine. We can print dollars and we can pay it off whenever. But that seems to have sort of crossed into territory where people don't believe that anymore.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, I don't 100% buy that. I would say we're not there yet.

[Alex]

Okay.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I think they're still okay with it. It's still the tallest of the shortest people, right? Can't use the word midget anymore, so we'll just say the tallest of the shortest people breaking all the rules.

[Alex]

You're going to get me demonetized, man. No, I'm kidding.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

He get demonetized, it'll be fine. BLEEP it out. I'm not trying to demonetize you, I'm.

[Alex]

Just trying to say that's okay, I hear you.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

We're the tallest, shortest person in the room, so we're probably still okay. So I don't 100% buy that, but we are gonna get to that point, okay? It's a year, two years out on this trajectory. And also Trump is trying to Brexit us from the rest of the world. And so he's trying to cut our air supply with the rest of the world. And when the UK Brexited from Europe, they became weaker, they became poorer, they have less disposable income in the country and they have really bad morale in the country as a result of what they did. And Trump's trying to do that to us. Cuz this is a populist, emotionally driven idea. So if you have big beautiful spending and you have an American Brexit at the same time, where you're trying to isolate us from the rest of the world. You're going to cause capital movement on the margin to move away from the.

[Alex]

United States and the interest rate will.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Keep going further, and then the interest rate will go.

[Alex]

That's why Jamie Dimon is saying that bonds are going to have a reaction to this because of those two forces in combination.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, 100%. Well, he's not stupid, and he should be president, frankly, but he's not stupid. He knows. And again, all of these things are fixable. One of the best lines ever uttered from a presidential podium was in June of 1963 at American University. Jack Kennedy got to the podium in the flowing robe at a commencement address. And he basically said that these problems are created by us, and so therefore we can fix the problems. It's not like the Earth is opening up and it's swallowing us. It's not a natural disaster. We're creating this as a disaster. He was really talking about nuclear weapons and nuclear proliferation and he wanted a test ban treaty to stop the testing of these bombs because it was poisoning the water and the air that we lived in. But this is a different thing. This is a catastrophe of mismanagement. This is a catastrophe of political expediency. You don't have people in Washington like Elon Musk who are trying to tell people the truth and they don't want to do it.

[Alex]

Right.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

And this is the reason why they went after Musk, because they know Musk is a truth. Musk is a truth teller. So he's telling you the truth. This is a disaster. And oh, by the way, you know, it's a disaster, but you're acting with want, indifference because you want to stay in power.

[Alex]

Right. Okay, let me read to you a response that I heard from a tech CEO who supports Trump and supports these tariffs. And I'm curious what your perspective is, cuz I think this sort of sums up the ideological backing of why this trade war is happening. He said every nation in the past that's run a really aggressive trade deficit for a long period of time bankrupts itself. When you're sending all your wealth overseas such that the overseas entity can own your property and equity, you're in a very tricky position. What do you think about that?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I mean, I think it's a little bit bullshitty and I think it's a little bit too simplistic.

[Alex]

But it sounds like you think there's some truth behind this.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

There are kernels. This is the brilliance of Trump. There's kernels of truth to what he's saying. Okay, but it's a little bullshitty. Okay, so understand something. You had to even the playing field. Trump is correct about that. But understand what America got from the whole experience. We ended the Second World War with 2% of the world's population, 50% of the world's GDP. I got that from Grok, by the way, so you can verify it. And we made a decision that we needed to help the rest of the world. We didn't want another Versailles experience where our vanquished adversaries were impoverished and taken over by Joe Stalin. We didn't want that. So we created the General Agreement to Trade in Tariffs. We made it uneven. We allowed free trade to flow into the United States unfettered, by and large, and we accepted protectionism from other countries. You can read Robert Lighthizer's book, no Trade Is Free to understand the history of this. Now, he would argue in the book that that was unfair to the U.S. but the U.S. leadership, like Dean Atkinson, Truman, et cetera, argued that this would create rising living standards and it would eliminate higher risk of another global conflict. Because if we're all integrating and eating together at the same table, probably not going to shoot each other. Tom Friedman said it differently. Two countries that have a McDonald's in each country typically don't fight with each other.

[Alex]

He said they never go to war. But that's changed.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, the Ukraine and Russia. Yeah, Ukraine and Russia, yeah, exactly. So that changed.

[Alex]

But that's a decent rule, though.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

But it was a decent rule. So what your CFO or your CEO is saying is sort of true. But you can't change the system. And it's ignoring what William F. Buckley would say to you and others, that you are creating the deficit because you're getting a good from the other country that is of value to you. Moreover, if what this gentleman was saying is 100% true, we would have had a downward shift in our economic supremacy. We would have had a downward shift and the supremacy of the dollar. And we didn't have that. You've had 1980 to today, 45 years, 26% of the world's GDP, 4.5% of the world's population. And so it's evidence that the policies that we have in place do work for the country. But we made a mistake. We were fixing the deficit problem at the end of the year 2000, 25 years ago. But then bin Laden hit us right here in this location that you and I are speaking from. We overreacted. If we're going to be brutally honest with hindsight now. And we declared war in two different places, spent $7 trillion, killed hundreds of thousands of people, lost 7 or 10,000Americans in the wars. 20 year wars to nowhere. Trillions of dollars of spending, decoupled ourselves from pay as you go and we've now lost the plot. So what he's saying, I agree that we have to right size things. I agree that we have to surgically go through the tariffs and make them fairer to the American worker. But we don't have to do that and wreck our standing in goodwill, particularly with our allies. We don't have to do that. Okay. We are a beacon for freedom for man and womankind. Lincoln said we're the last best hope for mankind. It's the most interesting political experiment in the world. The US the US we have 5.7 billion people in the world living under some form of autocracy right now. And we have.

[Alex]

That's crazy.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

We have to be a beacon and an anchor of leadership for the free world. We have to fortify and we have to help them. Now. Did we do some things wrong? Could we have changed some of the protocols at usaid? Certainly. Could we right size some of the tariffs? No question. But why blow up the whole Apple cart that has led to us having 30 plus trillion dollars of GDP for a population of 330 million people? Why do that? I think it's absolutely asinine. And whoever said that, by the way, will come around. Okay. The same way I predicted Musk would get there with Trump, which he's there right now. This person, whoever this person is, invite him onto the podcast a year from now. Like, wow, you know, he'll come around. He'll see what I see.

[Alex]

We should have him back. It was just a sort of newsletter interview, but he should come back again. I want to take a break. And on the other side of this break, we only have a few minutes left, but talk about one company in particular that you can look at through this lens of trade, which is Apple. And I also want to make sure to shout out your show again. It's called the Rest is Politics. Us. You also have a show with Scott Galloway, a limited run, I think, about American men.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Is this called Lost Boys? Yes. Scott and I are close friends and we did a six part miniseries on what's going on with males age 18 to 30. We got to pull these guys out of the depression that a lot of them are in and the lack of self confidence and you know, there's been an Attack. Listen, I'm all about making the society fairer and having there be more equity in the society, but I don't think we realize what we did to white males in the last 15 years. And guess what? 46% of the women in the country voted for Donald Trump, 54% of the White women. And when you ask them why they voted for him, you know, we're tired of our men getting picked on in this culture and it's had a big impact on men. And so Scott and I did a six part miniseries called Lost Boys, interviewing a lot of very clever people, sociologists, psychologists, et cetera. And you know, it's near and dear to my heart. I have four sons. I want them to grow up and be fair and kind to people, but I also want them to have a lot of self confidence.

[Alex]

Okay, so definitely wanted to shout that out. Let's take a quick break and come back and talk about Apple.

[Kwame Christian]

Hi, I'm Kwame Christian, CEO of the American Negotiation Institute, and I have a quick question for you. When was the last time you had a difficult conversation? These conversations happen all the time. And that's exactly why you should listen to Negotiate Anything, the number one negotiation podcast in the world. We produce episodes every single day to help you lead, persuade, and resolve conflicts both at work and at home. So level up your negotiation skills by making Negotiate Anything part of your daily routine.

[Alex]

And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony, so great to have you here. So let's just pick up our conversation.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Is it though? I mean, am I blowing up your podcast? I mean, no, no. Am I going to get you demonetized or some of my.

[Alex]

Maybe this one video, but I don't care.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

All right, all right. Yeah, bleep out the stuff you don't want.

[Alex]

It's okay. No, I'm not complaining. But I do want to talk to you about Apple because we just talked previously about the trade relationships that we've had. And Apple I think sort of epitomizes this conversation of like, the US creates the ip, makes the products in China, and even if all this stuff is made elsewhere, the US Gets the better deal. I'm curious to hear two things from you. First of all, what do you think about that trade off? And then second, one of the most interesting narratives that we've seen people follow that follow this podcast is the relationship that Tim Cook has had with Trump. So I'd love to hear your perspective on what might be happening there.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, again, it's very transactional so when Trump needs him, he'll bring him to the White House. He'll call him Tim Apple. When he wants to showcase American manufacturing, he'll fly to Texas with his daughter and they'll tour a factory together. And when Trump feels like he wants to beat up on him because he wants to beat up on everybody, you know, let me give Mark Zuckerberg a memo. You can do whatever you want to do and you lay in front of him if you want. And the Washington Post can give up their editorial content. It's not going to matter if he's going to come for you, he's coming for you. There's nothing you're going to be able to do. There's no push buttons. I mean, maybe you can go play golf with him and kiss his ass on the golf course all day. You know, Shinzo Abe, may his soul rest in peace, great guy. Trump liked him, they played golf and he flattered them all day on the golf course. I guess maybe that. But, you know, to me, I don't think that's even workable. Just go do your job, practice your business, work as hard as you can. This cat is going to be gone in three and a half years from the system. And see if you can work with other political leaders to find people that are more common sense oriented about the economy and not as vengeful and as shortsighted as Donald Trump. That would be my message to the Apple people. I would also say to Tim Cook, I would say, you've done a really good job, a phenomenal job post Steve Jobs. And you had rules. What were the rules? The US Set it up. The US Let China into the wto. The US Created the trading system that we're now living in. And if we made some mistakes, let's correct them. But you can't take a manufacturing company like Apple and bam, bam, change it in five minutes. It just doesn't work that way. So if you need guidance from our government to say, listen, we'd really like to get your factory out of China and we'd like to get it back here to the United States, or we'd like to get you into another part of the world, you got to give them some time to do that, okay? The same way you gave them time to move it off the shore of the U.S. can I tell a quick story? I know we're running out of time, but I want to tell this story because it's illustration of how stupid I am as a person. And it's a good cautionary tale for others. In 1999, I was 35 years old. I was on Wall street, and I believed in the lower cost of capital, lower cost of labor ideas at that time. And we were going to offshore manufacturing to lower the cost of the per unit of manufacturing, which was going to benefit the American consumer and benefit the American shareholder. At that moment in time, there was a protest in Seattle. You made WTO protest, WPO protest.

[Alex]

It was the Teamsters and the Turtles.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, the Teamsters and the Turtles. Ralph Nader went up there and they said, please do not let China into the WTO. And at 29, I very smugly was like, well, look at these socialist bozos who. What do they know? And they were right, Alex, and I was wrong. And the bozos turned out to be us on Wall Street. And I say this to you with great humility, because we should have had a hybrid strategy in place, and we should have said, okay, China, we're going to let you in to help you urbanize some parts of your population to raise your living standards, but we're going to check a lot of things that you're doing at the door to protect these American workers. We did not do that. Donald Trump is right about that. That was a shortcoming of the establishment. And I always attribute this to the establishment's indifference born from their very strong duopoly. They weren't listening to the people, so much so that the grandparents and the great grandparents of the Trump supporters voted for Lyndon Johnson and they voted for fdr, but they turned and switched parties and voted for Donald Trump. So we got this wrong. But you can't blame Tim Cook for this. This was our idea in 1999. This is the rollout of the idea over 15 or 20 years, really ended in 17 when Trump called it out. So from 1999-17, this is what we were doing. And Apple did what they thought was the right thing to do for themselves, their shareholders, and their customers. And so I don't like seeing Apple, which is one of the greatest American companies in the history of mankind, on its back foot. I want Apple on its front foot, and I want Apple explaining that to the American people. I want Apple explaining that. You want to bring the iPhone back. Great. It's going to cost $3,500, an iPhone, and I don't think we're ready to do that. And I think we need to come up with a plan that's more sensical than this reactionary thing that we're doing. And I just want to make one last point. You could have said to people, hey, I'm going to give you a 50 year tax abatement and here's US Federal Land and we're going to build a city. We're going to put plumbing and architecture and a power plant and we're going to work alongside of you and Apple and Taiwan Semiconductor. You guys come back, you come back, we're going to give you this tax abatement and you're going to create hundreds of thousands of jobs and we'll collect the taxes off the taxpayers that you're paying in salary and take the taxes from you guys yourselves. And then we could do something that Clinton always wanted to do, have a sort of omnibus 15% corporate tax which would help us in places like Ireland and other places like that, create more tax equity in the system. And you could have your cake and you could eat it too. But we got Donald Trump yelling and screaming, flexing sharp, oboing people, going out on truth social like a maniac. And he scares the living shit out of these people. And so they won't, they won't operate offensively. And so my message to them is start playing a little offense. He's a declaying, he's a decaying political asset. He's got three and a half years to go. Get focused on who's going to replace him and make sure you've got money behind smart, clear thinking people who are going to help your company, help your employees, help America instead of this nonsense that we're perpetrating right now.

[Alex]

It could happen. I mean, it's just gonna be tough for them. Like the idea that they're gonna Apple will make any big changes to their operation. Doesn't seem feasible to me.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

It's not even fair though. But you gotta start saying that, you.

[Alex]

Gotta say, look, I'm really sorry, can't do it.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

This is what you guys told me to do. We went and did it, now you want me to do something different. I'm open to it, but I can't do it in five minutes. It's just not gonna happen. So if you wanna criticized me for something you told me to do and I ended up doing it and now you want me to do something different. Okay, but I need more than five minutes to reset myself.

[Alex]

Yeah, even this whole India thing, it's like they're moving to India, but they have Foxconn that's setting up the assembly process in India. They're not really moving to India, they're just, you know.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, that's a lot of what's going on. There's a lot of tariff washing. Right?

[Alex]

Tariff washing, exactly right.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

They're sending the stuff to Vietnam. It's getting completed. Vietnam. It gets sent over. They're sending stuff, sending parts to Mexico. It's coming through nafta.

[Alex]

Yep.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I mean, guys, come on. I mean, come on. Why don't we stop it? We all know what we're doing to each other. Why don't we stop it? Why don't we come up with fairness and some moderation and so that we can set a course trajectory that lasts longer than two minutes. And let's say, okay, this is our 10 year plan and this is what we should be doing over the next 10 years, which will help heal the upside down nature of the deficit. Spending, right size, some of the entitlement issues. Fix the trajectory. We could do it, but we don't want to do that. And they don't want to do that because they want to stay in perpetual power.

[Alex]

Right?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

And they've got all these lobbyists in there in a feeding frenzy. We didn't get the Citizens United, but that's another effed up thing that we did. You know where you got all this money flowing into politics possible for the little guy. That we've created this separate but equal democracy. Look at the legislative agenda in the Congress since January of 2010, when Citizens United was rendered. It's all skewed to big business, big pharma, big food, corporate welfare, kleptocracy. None of it's for the little guys because the little guys no longer have enough money in the game.

[Alex]

Totally predictable outcome.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, terrible.

[Alex]

Okay, so we have two minutes left. I got two questions for you.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah, go ahead.

[Alex]

Are you gonna go back into politics? The way that you're talking makes it sound like you want to.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

No, I can't go back into politics. I'm trying to.

[Alex]

You just said earlier that anyone can have a second life in American life.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I'm trying to stay married. I'm trying to have a second life in my marriage.

[Alex]

Okay, that's okay.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I'm running for reelection in my marriage. You know, my wife literally filed for divorce on me. Deservedly so, by the way.

[Alex]

During the 11 days.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, maybe 10 days prior to the 11 days. Yeah, it was a brutal time.

[Alex]

Oh, God.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

It was a brutal time for us. We love each other, would like to stay married, I gotta raise my kids. But yeah, no, I'm. But I'm not a politician. You know, the minute you go into politics, I just gotta start lying.

[Alex]

Yep.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

You know, I don't wanna.

[Alex]

Maybe not though.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I don't see that you gotta, the minute you start, you know when a politician is lying, when his mouth is moving, you know that, right?

[Alex]

Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay, what was the second question?

[Alex]

What's gonna happen with bitcoin? I mean, 100,000 to me always seemed like it was in play. But what happens is this because you have the administration that's running toward bitcoin right now, this seems like it's the best that it's going to get potentially. Let me throw that out there and see what you think.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, listen, I don't know. I'm a long term bull on bitcoin. I don't see the freight train of spending stopping. And so that's a drunk driving accident about to happen. The central banks are drunk driving with the currency. The legislature and the president are drunk driving with the fiscal budget. And so you're going to, you just told me that we're going to print more and more money and it's going to cause a debt crisis.

[Alex]

But doesn't bitcoin cause a bigger crisis because it removes the power from the Fed?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Oh, I see the very opposite. I think bitcoin, if anything, could check the power.

[Alex]

Okay.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I think sometimes the person, because of our proclivities towards excess, the person needs guardrails and the person needs a system in place that they can't control to protect them from their worst instincts. And so bitcoin is, I think is a disciplinary mechanism. And we'll probably end up having bitcoin on the fiscal balance sheet of the United States. We'll probably have bitcoin as a form of currency, some form of store of value transfer into stablecoins at some point. And I think that you're right. It sounds like you're a bitcoin skeptic. And I think people should be.

[Alex]

Oh, I'm just trying to ask the questions here that way, sort of.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I think you're right. There's a lot of great news in the system. So maybe it's fully priced, but I don't see it that way. I see it as a very early in the game and I see bitcoin as a asset class. I guess the question, let me throw it back to you and your listeners. Is bitcoin an asset class? Yes or no? If it's not an asset class and it's just another investment, then you're probably right. It's up there in market capitalization alongside of Apple and Microsoft and below Nvidia but it's up there. But if it's an asset class, then it's going to trade to where gold is trading. And gold is at 23 or 24 trillion right now and bitcoin's at 2 trillion. And so I'm not, you know, if you bring Saylor on, who I adore, I love Michael Saylor, he'll tell you it's the operating layer for the future of money. He'll tell you it's digital property. He'll tell you it's going to $13 million a coin. He's a lot more confident than me and let's face it, he's a lot smarter than I am. I just look at it and say, okay, this is going to be with us. It's getting adopted and I think it becomes an asset class. I think it's a million dollars a coin and I have a $20,000 cost basis in it and I'm gonna hold it.

[Alex]

Alright, the shows are. The rest is politics. Us and Lost Boys. You can find them both on your podcast app of choice. Anthony Scaramucci, great to see you. I hope you come back.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Hey, I hope I get invited back. I don't wanna say too much controversy. Not at all. Real pleasure to be with you. I'm a huge fan.

[Alex]

Likewise. Strong island, man.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Strong Island.

[Alex]

All right, everybody, thank you for listening. We'll be back on Friday to break down the week's news with a WWDC preview. And then I will be live or coming to you from WWDC in Silicon Valley next week. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.