Anthony Scaramucci on Trump and the Threat to American Democracy (Part One)

Summary

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Intelligence Squared

Episode: Anthony Scaramucci on Trump and the Threat to American Democracy (Part One)

Date: October 5, 2025
Host: Emily Maitlis (for Intelligence Squared)
Guest: Anthony Scaramucci

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Episode Overview

This episode features a candid and wide-ranging conversation between Anthony Scaramucci—best known for his tumultuous 11-day tenure as Donald Trump's White House Communications Director—and Emily Maitlis. Scaramucci charts his unlikely journey from Wall Street to political fundraiser, his time inside the Trump campaign and administration, and his current perspective as a Trump critic. Key themes include personal anecdotes from the campaign trail, critiques of American political dysfunction, and a deep dive into the threats facing U.S. democracy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Opening: Personal Origins and Political Evolution

[03:07 – 14:26]

• Scaramucci’s blue-collar upbringing:

  • Emphasizes working-class family: father was a union crane operator; mother a makeup artist.
  • “I did not grow up poor. I would never want to dishonor my dad’s work ethic by even suggesting I grew up poor.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [07:36])

• Feeling like a ‘fish out of water’:

  • Relates how his lack of elite social skills and connections motivated his political fundraising.
  • Early support for both Republicans and Democrats (Giuliani, Dole, Pataki, Clinton, Obama, Romney, Walker, Bush).

• His initial contact with Trump:

  • Trump's recruitment approach after The Apprentice; “I want you to have breakfast with me.”
  • Scaramucci initially dismisses Trump’s seriousness about running:
    • “You’re just doing that for publicity. You’re not really serious.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [12:41])
  • “If Bush drops out of the race, you’ll come work for me.” A handshake agreement—the “colossal mistake number one.” ([14:46])

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2. Inside the Trump Campaign: Seeing the ‘Missed Wedge’

[14:46 – 21:31]

• The impact of Trump’s campaign style:

  • Trump’s instincts: labeling rivals (“Low Energy Jeb”) undermined Bush, and others.
  • On Trump’s campaign genius:
    • “People think he isn’t [a genius], but trust me—you don’t go from being a reality TV star to the American presidency in 18 months… if you don’t have some instincts.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [14:56])

• First Rally in Albuquerque:

  • Contrasts Bush’s empty rooms with Trump’s massive crowds.
  • Interacts with working-class supporters:
    • A factory worker explains lost manufacturing jobs after NAFTA, struggle to replace job with Domino’s & Lowe's.
    • “What we did to the country is we turned working-class people who were once economically aspirational… to economically desperational. Mr. Trump saw that. I did not see that.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [19:22])

• Epiphany on establishment disconnect:

  • “I grew up with the people Mr. Trump was talking to, but I ended up getting the confirmed biases of the people I started hanging out with.” ([19:54])
  • “The establishment Democrats and the establishment Republicans missed this huge wedge in the system that he exploited.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [20:28])

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3. Political System Disrepair: America’s Structural Problems

[24:10 – 28:51]

• Scaramucci’s sobering assessment on the state of America:

  • “It’s going terribly, but it’s been great for the podcast business, right? ... Trump is good for one thing. That’s podcasting.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [24:34])
  • “We have a crisis of leadership… and a structural problem going on.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [24:45])

• Three big structural issues:

  1. Third-party suppression:
     • Since Ross Perot scared the “daylights” out of both parties in 1992, duopoly rules ensured no competitive independent candidates across 50 states.
  2. Gerrymandering:
     • “Are we in a real democracy if the politicians are picking the voters? I thought the voters were supposed to pick the politicians.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [27:23])
  3. Citizens United (Money in politics):
     • “The legislative agenda has skewed toward… big pharma, big food, tax cuts for the rich.”
     • Congressional approval is abysmal, yet individual incumbent re-election rates remain at 95%.

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4. The Economy: Innovation Amidst Dysfunction

[28:51 – 31:43]

• On economic hope despite political chaos:
  • The resilience and innovation of American industry. Echoes historical trends—apocalyptic predictions are usually wrong because of technological leaps.
  • “Despite everything I just said, the people… in the economy are innovating and… there will be things that happen deus ex machina that we’re not planning for that will right-size the ship.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [29:20])
  • Advises against linear thinking; references Thomas Malthus’ failed predictions, fracking, and energy innovations.

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5. Trump’s Economic Policies: Hurting the System

[31:43 – 36:44]

• Rule of law as economic cornerstone:

  • “The number one driver of the economy in a country like ours… is the predictability of the rule of law.” ([31:53])
  • Attacks on the legal system, project “2025,” and targeting adversaries undermines investor confidence.

• Tariffs and economic disruption:

  • Mocks Trump’s chaotic tariff proposals:
    • “If you’re going to come down on the 2nd of April from Mount Evil like orange Moses with the tariff tablet…” ([32:40])
    • “He’s setting a trajectory for a recession in the country. So no, I think his decision-making is very, very flawed on policy.” ([35:11])

• Concedes that Trump is “right about a few things”—

  • Need to address unfair trade, border security, and lost manufacturing—but attacks the administration’s approach as counterproductive, chaotic, and divisive.
  • “There’s no articulate organized opposition. The Republicans are scared out of their minds of him and the Democrats are too busy fighting with each other…” (Anthony Scaramucci, [36:29])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Trump’s persona:

  • “If you went into [Trump’s] apartment, it looked like Louis XIV smoked crystal meth and, like, decorated the apartment. You’ve never seen an apartment like this.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [20:44])

• On political evolution:

  • “It’s sort of like a sports team. You can’t go from Man City to Manchester United, right? You can’t do that. So I’ve always been a Republican...” (Anthony Scaramucci, [12:01])
  • “People think he isn’t [a genius], but trust me—you don’t go from being a reality TV star to the American presidency in 18 months… if you don’t have some instincts.” ([14:56])

• On structural flaws:

  • “Are we in a real democracy if the politicians are picking the voters? I thought the voters were supposed to pick the politicians. Right?” (Anthony Scaramucci, [27:23])
  • “Congress has an approval rating of 14%. So Kim Il Jung, the North Korean dictator, is doing almost as well as the Congress, but the individual incumbent has a 95% re-election rate.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [28:13])

• On Trump’s impact:

  • “How’s it going? Great for the podcast business. Shitty for the country.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [28:44])

• On economic threats:

  • “If you’re going to take one person and lift them above the law… that puts pressure in the system and on the margin, that hurts the commercial activity in the country.” (Anthony Scaramucci, [32:02])

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Important Timestamps for Segments

• [03:07] – Introduction & Scaramucci’s upbringing
• [06:10] – Political fundraising origins, moving across party lines
• [11:26] – Scaramucci on why he “lost” faith in Democrats
• [14:46] – First-hand stories of working with Trump & campaign dynamics
• [17:39] – Albuquerque rally and the “missed wedge” of working-class discontent
• [24:34] – Scaramucci diagnoses America’s structural political problems
• [28:59] – Economic hope & innovation despite dysfunction
• [31:53] – Analysis of Trump’s economic actions, rule of law, and impact on business climate

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Tone & Style

The conversation is fast-moving, personal, at times humorous and biting, with Scaramucci frequently self-deprecating and candid about his regrets, mistakes, and new perspectives. He combines storytelling with explicit critiques of America’s political and economic systems, delivering memorable one-liners and concrete examples.

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Conclusion

In this first part of the conversation, Anthony Scaramucci dissects both his own journey through American politics and the ways in which Donald Trump harnessed working-class discontent ignored by traditional elites. Scaramucci’s diagnosis of U.S. political dysfunction is incisive and deeply critical of both parties. He balances blunt warnings about the state of democracy and the economy with optimism in the innovative power of the American people—tempered, however, by his warning that structural flaws and leadership crises still threaten the republic.

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Transcript

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[Anthony Scaramucci]

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[Anthony Scaramucci]

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[Intelligence Squared Producer]

Learn [e-mail] TradeSmart welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Anthony Scaramucci on Trump and the threat to American democracy. Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communications director turned outspoken Trump critic, came to Intelligence Squared in September for a straight talking conversation on the fallout from Trump's second presidency. From his brief but explosive tenure inside the Trump White House in 2017 to his career on Wall street and success as a co host of the Rest His Politics Us podcast, Scaramucci has never been one to hold back. He joined Emily Maitlis to explore the biggest questions facing America and the world today. If you'd like to listen to this episode in full and ad free, why not consider becoming an Intelligence Squared member [e-mail] membership or tap the IQ2 extra button on Apple. Now let's join our host Emily Maitlis with more.

[Emily Maitlis]

That was the warmest, loveliest welcome. Thank you all very much Indeed. I'M not going to introduce this man because he's why you're here. You know who he is. You care. Came to see him. All right, just one line for those of you who have been dragged here by their wives. Auntie Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, investment firm, broadcaster, podcaster. For 11 days, Donald Trump's director of communications at the White House, which is where I met him. Do you remember how we first met?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I remember very vividly. Yeah.

[Emily Maitlis]

And you did hold my hand.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I held your hand, yeah.

[Emily Maitlis]

Do you remember how I got you to. Come on, we're gonna start early. We're in a church.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Go ahead, Emily. I'm listening.

[Emily Maitlis]

Do you remember? So Anthony Scaramucci was walking past with Sebastian Gorka, and we suddenly spotted you. You'd just become the director of comms about three days earlier, four days earlier. And we went, that's the Mooch. That's Scaramucci. And Sebastian Gorka was meant to come on Newsnight that night. And I said, we prefer you. And Gorka, to his credit, just said, yeah, you should do it. Go on. You should go and do Newsnight. And so there is this very weird, spontaneous interview where it looks as if the Mooch is the handsiest person in the history of television interviews. But what nobody realized is it was me grabbing his hand so he didn't walk off my set. That is actually what happened. You tried to keep it.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Finally getting the real story right. Because you have no.

[Emily Maitlis]

I was not letting go those little fingers. But that day, you have no idea.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

How much grief I took for that. But okay, keep going. This is getting better and better. Keep going, Emily.

[Emily Maitlis]

Yeah. So that day, you stood in front of me and told our entire audience that Donald Trump was a man of the people because he loved eating burgers and pizza. We've come a long way since then.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay, so I think that was a. All right, so I do remember the conversation. I think it was a segue. But listen, he got 80 million people to vote for him.

[Emily Maitlis]

Yep.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So, you know, and I will. And I will tell you that I did 71 campaign stops with Donald Trump. And so we went through all of the United States, and he would come down the steps of that plane, and the first thing he would say to the. He always had a police chief greeting him. He would look over and say the guy was trying to say hello to him and potentially get a selfie. He'd say, is there a Burger King near here? Is there a McDonald's? And the police chief would look at him and he Was like, yes sir, there is. And he would say, okay, okay guys, what do you want from McDonald's? And we'd all look at him and say, we don't want anything from McDonald's. And they would be bringing trays of Quarter Pounders into the plane. And you know he's gonna live forever, right? You know that. So anyway, keep going.

[Emily Maitlis]

I think before we get stuck into today, we should just explain a little bit to people. You were quite politically ecumenical. I mean, you've supported Clinton, you supported Obama, you, you supported Romney. I think you endorsed Scott Walker, Wisconsin, Jeb Bush. Just kind of take us around that what brought you into the trumpet?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So I am so accidentally into this thing. It's really hard to believe. I was a business person. I started my career at Goldman Sachs and I was in the private banking area. Problem is I grew up in a blue collared neighborhood in New York. It was in a like a middle. Middle class is different in the uk but you know, my dad was making. When my dad left his job, he was 41 years as a crane operator on Long Island. His last salary in the year 2000 when he retired at age 65 was $32,500 a year. So when I was going to school, you know, meaning middle school to high school, my dad was making between 25 and $30,000 a year. So that was in the country at that time, on Long island, believe it or not, you could buy a house. You had a family. My mother, believe it or not, was a makeup artist. So she always comments on my makeup when I want to. I'm a Mac 5. If you're ever looking to buy me any, that's my color scheme according to my mother. But anyway, so my mother was doing bridal parties on Saturday and my dad was working. And if my dad was lucky, he was working on a Saturday because that's when he got time and a half from the union. So I'm telling you that story. I did not grow up poor. I would never tell anybody I grew up poor. I don't. I would never want to dishonor my dad's work ethic by even suggesting I grew up poor. But I'm telling you this story because I had been a fish out of water for most of my life. I went to Tufts in Harvard. I wasn't dressed appropriately. My first job interview at Goldman Sachs, I was wearing 100% polyester, okay? I was fully flammable. For my first job, I had a black polish suit trousers. I had a white poly shirt. I mean you never had to go to the dry cleaner. You just throw it in the laundry. I didn't know any better. And I had this. I'm gonna call it what it was. It was a black guido tie. And I was sitting at the Charles Hotel, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Goldman partner looked at me and said, listen, you're a smart kid, but you are the worst dressed person that we've ever met at the Harvard Law School. And I remember being so embarrassed by this. I remember calling my mother, of course, typical Italian mom. She goes, you look great. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about. He does. I look like a young undertaker from Brooklyn trying to get the job. So this is an important part of the story because I was a complete fish out of water. So now I'm at Goldman. I've never hit a golf ball. I've never swung a tennis racket. All I did was work as a kid to make the money to go to school. And I had no access to the people that they wanted me to develop relationships with. And then it dawned on me that the way I could do that was through politics. So I was 29 years old. I wrote my first check to Rudy Giuliani. I mean, he lost his mind now, but back then, he was running for mayor. And I wrote a $250 check, Young Republicans for mayor. He won, which was like the luckiest thing that happened to me. Emily. You know, parking passes in New York are a really hard commodity. I had literally the best parking permit in New York City. I mean, I could park my car on two wheels on a fire hydrant in front of Radio City on Christmas Eve, no problem. Okay? And so Rudy and I became very close. And he introduced me to Bob Dole. I don't know if you remember Bob Dole. He introduced me to George W. Bush. He introduced me to George Pataki. And so I was a Republican Party fundraiser, which helped me grow my business. And that's how I got involved in politics. But you mentioned Barack Obama. So I went to law school with President Obama. I think he was here last week. And a couple of my friends very close to him, they said, okay, you're a big Republican fundraiser. But he went to law school with us, and I didn't know him that well. And so I went to a Democratic fundraiser for then Senator Obama. I walked into the room, he was there, and I said, senator, I said, we didn't really know each other that well in law school, but I have a big check for you. I said, but I want to tell a big fib to people and tell them that I knew you really well in law school. Are you cool with that? He looked at me, said, if you double the amount of the check, we'll take it all the way back to Hawaii. And I ripped the check up, I had another check, I doubled the check and I handed it to him. And if you know Barack Obama, he's got the best smile in American politics since Jack Kennedy and he went on to win the presidency. And Emily, a little bit of trivia for you. I've been to more Barack Obama Christmas parties than Donald Trump Christmas parties. I've been to no Donald Trump Christmas parties.

[Emily Maitlis]

But, but how did he lose you then? Because you've written him this great check. It's all going well.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

That was a lifelong Republican. So my dad's union was tied to the Republican Party, which is rare because most unions in the United States are tied to what you guys call labor. I guess it's labor. And so it was Democrats. But in New York, in the county of Nassau, there was a very tight fisted Republican by the name of Joseph Margiotta that ran the unions. And so when I went to, When I turned 18, I registered for the draft and I registered to vote. And I turned on my dad, I said, am I a Democrat or a Republican? And so he said, oh, no, no, you're a Republican. And so it's sort of like a sports team. It's like you can't go from Man City to Manchester United. Right? You can't do that. So I've always been a Republican, but I did write a check to Hillary Clinton when she ran for the Senate because she was coming from my home state and I knew she would be a good senator. Wrote a check to Barack Obama. I did do that, but I was a lifelong Republican, so I went to work for Mitt Romney. You know, that's how I met a lot of the people that are still working in the Republican Party, like Paul Atkins, our SEC chair, was on the Romney transition team with me. And then I worked for Scott Walker and Jeb Bush and you know, I don't think I've ever told this story, but I'll tell you guys this. I got a call from Trump and I had met Trump because I was a CNBC analyst. He was at NBC and he was doing the Apprentice. And he invited me to a few parties and then we bought a charity table together for Robin Hood, which is like a hedge fund, like charity for the underprivileged. Then we went to a couple Yankee games together. He called me and he said, listen, this was the day after the Apprentice. So this is like, typical Trump. He says, listen, I want you to have breakfast with me. I said, okay, I'm come over and have breakfast. So if you ever go to Trump's office at Trump Tower, his chair is up here, your chair is down there, and you're like, looking up at him. I mean, and he's like, you know, spitting at you with the pursed lips and everything. He says, did you see me on the Apprentice last night? I was terrific. I was terrific. It's like, no, I didn't see you on the Apprentice. Like, ah, you were the only one. You were the only one. He said, but that's over for me now. I'm gonna run for president. And I remember looking at him and I saying, you're just doing that for publicity. You're not really serious. He said, no, I hired this guy, Corey Lewandowski. I built a. On the fifth floor of this building. I built a campaign headquarters. And Emily, have you been to that? Were you at that campaign? So if you go from the fifth floor of the Trump Tower, you walk up one flight of stairs, you're at the 14th floor. That's everything you should know about Donald Trump. And that one time. And so all those condos, like that 56th floor is really like the 42nd floor. You got that? And so now this is what he.

[Emily Maitlis]

Used to call truthful exaggeration, right?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Exactly.

[Emily Maitlis]

A big life.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So now I say to Trump, I can't come work for you. I'm loyal to work for George W. Bush. I'm working for Jeb. Don't you think Jeb has low energy? Don't you think he has low energy? I said, no, I actually don't think he has low energy. But he did have low energy, and he lost. Okay, so now Trump's.

[Emily Maitlis]

Do you think the nickname killed him? Do you think it cut him out the race?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, I think what happens to these guys, and this is something that Trump is part of his genius, and people think he isn't. But trust me, you don't go from being a reality television star to the American presidency in 18 months and wipe out everybody, including the Democrats, if you don't have some instincts for this stuff. But what happens is someone hits you with that label and you start to internalize it. Like, you got to tell your kids, you reflect everything. You don't absorb things. If someone's being mean spirited to you in social media or things like that, reflect it. Don't Absorb it. But you can see that Bush absorbed it. You could see Rubio and Cruz. They absorb the commentary, even Secretary Clinton. But so now Trump and I shake hands. He says, if Bush drops out of the race, you'll come work for me. Guys, I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, but that was, like, colossal mistake number one. I, like, reached over, shook his hand, and he called me. He called me the day that Bush dropped out, and he said, listen, I want you to come work for me. He actually wanted me to co chair the campaign with Mnuchin, but I was hosting something for Fox Business called Wall Street Week, and I didn't want to give up the show, so I said, I'll be on the committee. I'll help raise some money, I'll provide media advocacy, and let's go to work. And do you mind? I'm going to tell this story because this is an important part of Trump's success, and it's also something I learned from him. And you can think he's an evil guy, and I think he's probably one of the worst people on the planet right now. But I did learn from him, and I want to share it with you. He took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the first campaign stop. When we got to the Albuquerque Civic center, we got to see something we never saw on the Bush campaign. You know what that was, ladies and gentlemen? People. There were people in the room, okay, with Bush. We had, like, five people, three were staff. And, like, we were, like, asking somebody to come in. There was one point where Bush was in New Hampshire. He was like, finish speaking. Nobody clapped. And he said, please clap. You remember that? I know you remember that. And then that was, okay, so now you're coming in on the Trump plane. There are 9,000 people in the Albuquerque Civic Center. There's overflow in the Civic center. And the Secret Service gives you this badge when you travel with them. And I and had never traveled with them. So I said, what is this? And the guy says to me, well, if the shooting starts, we know not to shoot you. You never had a badge on. You've never been badged by the Circumflex.

[Emily Maitlis]

I've never heard of badge.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

So now I take the badge off, I put it in my pocket, I cross the security perimeter, and I go into the crowd. Because I'm now fascinated that there are 9,000 people here in Albuquerque to see Mr. Trump. Why are you here? And I'm going to give you a composite. But this has never left me, and hopefully this is something you'll take with you from tonight. There was a gentleman there about 35 years old, and he said to me, listen, I was at a factory with my dad. My dad retired from the factory. He has his pension. But I lost my job at the factory after 12 years. They moved the factory. Anthony, you think you're in New Mexico, New. New Mexico, okay, that would be Mexico, because that's where my factory moved to. And if you really study the trade situation, Emily, 65,000 factories left the United States from 1993 when we signed NAFTA to 2016. 65,000 factories. And so this young man was telling me that he was working at Domino's, the pizzeria delivery service, and he was working at Lowe's, the home improvement store, to try to supplement his income. And he said he was here because Mr. Trump was bringing the jobs back. When I got back on the plane, I went on the Internet and I looked up my dad's local union, Local 986, the operating engineers on Nassau county, to figure out what the wages were, because I knew my dad's wages. And I turned to Mr. Trump, I said, well, you know, my dad's wages, 40 years later, his 1976 wages are down 26.5% in terms of purchasing power. So that now takes our family out of that small house I grew up in, in that middle class living environment, into needing some level of government assistance. So, ladies and gentlemen, what we did to the country is we turned working class people who were once economically aspirational, who once thought that their children were going to grow up and, you know, live the American dream, maybe go to Harvard Law School, work at Goldman, things like that, to economically desperational. Mr. Trump saw that. I did not see that. And it always. It's a poor reflection on me, if I'm being brutally honest with you, because I grew up with the people that Mr. Trump was talking to, but I ended up getting the confirmed biases of the people I started hanging out with. Those were the people in the hedge fund community or Goldman Sachs or going to Davos, Switzerland. And what ends up happening to you if you're not careful? You start to pick up the confirmed biases of the people you're hanging out with, and you lose touch with what's actually happening on the ground. And I will tell you that the establishment Democrats and the establishment Republicans miss this huge wedge in the system that he exploited.

[Emily Maitlis]

Yeah, I mean, very good at recognizing problems, possibly less good at finding solutions.

[Anthony Scaramucci]

I mean, no, he doesn't want to find the solutions. He just wants to draw you in. Just think about this, Emily. This is a guy that was living in a triplex apartment adjacent to the Tiffany's jewelry store. If you went into the apartment, it looked like Louis XIV smoked crystal meth and like decorated the apartment. You've never seen an apartment like this. I mean, and there's no way you could live in an apartment like that. You wouldn't be able to sleep. But this guy with that level of detachment saw what was going on on the ground. And I grew up with these people and I missed it. And so it doesn't reflect well on me. But I think it's an important story to tell about the epiphany that I had on that campaign watching you chose.

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[Emily Maitlis]

Okay, so I want to try and find an arc of how we're going to be talking tonight. And I guess I'm going to divide it into three, three areas. And then your questions will take your questions as well. How's it going? Where is it leading? And where is everyone who doesn't like it? So starting really basically America, how is it going?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, it's going terribly, but it's been great for the podcast business, right? Come on, give it up.

[Emily Maitlis]

Am I doing this going terribly?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Trump is good for one thing. That's podcasting. But other than that, no. But it's going terribly because we have a crisis of leadership. This is actually, and again, to be fair and objective, it's an indictment of both parties. We have a crisis of leadership going on, and we have a structural problem going on. And so three things that happen has created the structural problem. And so then the question is, do we have trans. Formative leadership? Do we have transcendental leadership that can pull us out of the structural problem? So problem number one started in 92. Ross Perot ran for president. Bill Clinton was in the race with George Herbert Walker Bush, and he scared the daylights out of those two parties. He got 19.9% of the vote. So they structurally collapsed on third parties and they tightened their duopoly to the point where you can't get a third party on a ballot in all 50 states even. And it's become impossible to have an independent run, even though independents now are the highest voter registration in the country, over 40% of the registered. Structural problem number two is we allowed for this thing called gerrymandering. I think most people here know what it means, but I'll just be brief. The local authorities can pick the congressional district. So if you're, you know, the incumbent's in and you like him, well, your house will be included in the district. If you don't like him, they'll figure out a way to cut your House out of the district so you no longer can vote in that district. And so these districts used to look like geometric shapes that we would recognize from geometry, but they now look like jigsaw puzzle pieces. And I submit to you rhetorically. But just think about it. Are we in a real democracy if the politicians are picking the voters? I thought the voters were supposed to pick the politicians. Right. So that's a structural problem. And then the last problem, and this is the. Is the big one, is Citizens United. And so if you don't know what that is, again, just briefly, it was a Supreme Court case in January of 2010 where Justice Scalia said, well, you know, if you've got money, you have a First Amendment right in the country to expend unlimited amounts of money on your political candidate or your cause, whatever it may be. And this was the rise of the political action committee. And I can show you. I didn't bring charts. I don't want to bore people, but I can show you. Since January of 2010 to today, the legislative agenda has skewed towards big pharma, big food, tax cuts for the rich. The big Beautiful spending bill, which was just passed, is a representation of that. If you made a million dollars a year, you got a $7,000 benefit from that bill. If you made $50,000 or less, you lost $700 of benefits. The bill, at the time of its signing, had a 38% approval rating in the country. It's now at 31%. But the politicians don't care because they can continue to get reelected because of these structural things that they did to the system. The overall Congress has an approval rating of 14%. So Kim El Jung, the North Korean dictator, is doing almost as well as the Congress, but the individual incumbent has a 95% reelection rate. So these structural problems have put us in a place of continual disrepair. Deficit spending will go up. The partisan bickering will continue because they don't have to play to the middle, because they're screening out the people that are in the middle. They're playing to their bases. And we've discovered the algorithms and social media enhance the followership of the people that are the most rancid. And we know that, and those are the problems. So how's it going? Great for the podcast business. Shitty for the country.

[Emily Maitlis]

Does any part of the economy or the direction of the economy excite you?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Okay, so that's a different. That's the political system. So the great irony, and this is the hope that you should take from tonight is that despite everything I just said, the people, the men and women of industry and in the economy are innovating and they're bringing more productivity to bear. And there'll be improvements in software, there'll be improvements obviously driven by AI, there'll be robotic technology, there'll be more fuel efficiency, sustainability. All these things are happening. And so the great ironies will probably get bailed out by that, you know. And again, just remember this because if you're an investor in the room, you got to be very careful of the linear way that we're designed to think. If you really study the brain, you're designed to think linearly as part of your survival mechanism. You know, the brain is literally a hundred thousand year old piece of machinery. It hasn't had a software upgrade in 100,000 years. Right, your phone went from iPhone One to iPhone 17. But this really hasn't evolved. And so you have to understand how it operates. We're thinking linearly, but the world is happening exponentially around us. And so let me give two examples. One would be Thomas Malthus. Most Brits know who he is. He was a former famous apocalyptic economist in the 1840s. He said we were going to run out of food. Population is growing exponentially. We can only grow the food linearly. We're going to run out of food. But he missed everything. He missed fertilization, irrigation, vertical farming, GMO activity, all the things that we do now. We have more people. Prior to Ozempic, we had more people dying from obesity related illnesses than we did from starvation. But he said we were going to starve. If you were in class in the 1980s, somebody told you about peak oil and they said we're going to run out of oil. My professors at Tufts said it would be 2010. I said, wow, we're going to run out of oil. Did we run out of oil? No. We invented fracking, improvements in energy efficiency, satellite technology so that we can actually get thermal imaging of where the fossil fuels are, that we can extract better offshore drilling mechanisms, all of this stuff. We have more energy, we have to deal with the environmental impact of the energy. But my point is don't think of the thing linearly. If I'm telling you it's not going well right now, there will be things that happen deus ex machina that we're not planning for that will right size the ship. And so you can't sit there and be overly pessimistic because we've always figured a way out of it.

[Emily Maitlis]

So I guess if you make that a smaller question, do you think the actions that Trump is making right now are helping or hurting the economy?

[Anthony Scaramucci]

Well, you know, the actions that he's making right now are hurting the economy because the number one driver of the economy in a country like ours and yours for that matter, is the predictability of the rule of law. And so that's not just the contract law, but it's the criminal laws. The criminal laws, the procedural system. You could look to the United states over an 80 year period of time since the end of the Second World War, and you could make the statement, hmm, some tribalism, some partisanship, lots of bickering, but the legal system is stable. It's very predictable. The contract system is stable. And the property rights, Emily, like this country, are sacrosanct. They date back to the Magna Carta. There's 900 years of common law precedent. And it gives people great comfort that they can invest in the country. If you're going to take one person and lift them above the law and they're going to go down a list called Project 2025, and they're going to go through the list to put pressure on the legal system, pressure on the courts, go after their adversaries as they're publicly saying indiscriminately, go after their adversaries. So I'm sure we're going to get to James Comey. But if the prosecutor that's been at the Department of justice for 25 years says there's no meat to the case, the case is specious, I'm not bringing the case. I say, okay, you resign. We're going to give it to Miss Arizona. I guess she was to take the case. Okay? And so that puts pressure in the system and on the margin, that hurts the commercial activity in the country. If you're going to come down on the 2nd of April from Mount Evil like orange Moses with the tariff tablet and you're coming down with the tariff tablet and people are looking at it and like, what the hell is that? And nobody can figure it out. And you're going to try to shock and awe the global economic system. You're going to slow down commerce, you're going to put the country into a recession. The country's country's heading now, country. If he left the Biden economic policies in place would be growing slowly with inflation being reduced and more global integration would lead to lower costs of capital. But what he's done now is he's totally disrupted the system. He flipped over the global system to the point now where people are not hiring the incremental employee, they're not going to build the additional factory and he's setting a trajectory for a recession in the country. So no, I think his decision making is very, very flawed on policy. Now, if you said to me, is he right that America needs to right size some of their tariffs? He is right. I probably don't have the time to give you the 80 year economic trade history, but he is right on portions of that. He is right on the border. You can have a welfare state and have 7 to 10 million people cross the border every year. You won't be able to sustain from a tax perspective. So he is right that you have to control the border and have legal as opposed to illegal immigration. He is right that we lost our manufacturing advantages by offshoring too many things. And some of those things have a national security implications of the United States like the semiconductor chips that are being made in Taiwan. But the way he's going about policy, I think he's very flawed. And by the way, just as evidence that he's right about a few things, the Biden administration left some of the tariffs in place. Everybody knows that. Right. And I would just say this on the tariffs, I think about it this way. If you've got a country like China where the private sector can team up with the government and they can get a gigantic subsidy from the government to help them develop their goods, and now they can lowball private price their goods and have them enter the UK market or the United States, that's unfair competition. And so the UK government or the US government as a responsible agent to protect their workers, needs to come up with tariffs, surgical tariffs to defend their workers. But to come down from Mount Evil with the 39% and the 104, he's got the Penguins, I guess, taxed at 140%. I mean, I don't know. I mean nobody. You guys are laughing because it was on the sheet, right? I mean, I'm not making it up. It's not like you're not making it up. So this stuff is terrible. There's no opposition. There's no articulate organized opposition. The Republicans are scared out of their minds of him and the Democrats are too busy fighting with each other to get an organized opposition leadership in place.

[Intelligence Squared Producer]

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Hannah Kaye and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings. Become a [e-mail] membership and to join us at future events. Head to intelligencesquared.com attend to see our full live events program. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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[Intelligence Squared Producer]

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