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- [00:05]
A
This episode is brought to you by Whoop.
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B
Whoop is one of my favorite all time products. It's clear we're living through pretty stressful times right now. It's easy to underestimate how much that can affect our sleep and ability to stay focused day to day.
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A
Yeah, avoiding burnout can feel like a full time job in and of itself.
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B
Whoop helps with the bit people miss that shows what actually is going on beneath the surface. Kat, it's a screenless wearable device that monitors your sleep recovery, lifestyle and stress.
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A
Yeah, and this matters to me. It even looks very elegant.
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B
Did you hear that guys? Whoop is so stylish that even Catty K will wear the Whoop.
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A
It's the little gold clasp. I like that.
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B
I'm telling you, I had no idea how much my old routine was impacting my health. But since using Whoop and making those small adjustments, I've already started to feel the difference. Better sleep, clearer thinking, even more energy.
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A
Head to join.wH-O-Oop.com politics to get started with Whoop today. Hello and welcome to the rest is Politics us. I'm Katie Kaye.
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B
I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Caddy, would you have eaten your salad if you heard gunshots outside the ballroom?
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A
I would like to think I'm a cool customer and would have carried on with my burrata salad. I know Michael Glantz very well for a while. He's a television agent at CAA and he is the agent who is having a viral moment because rather than diving under the tables at the White House Correspondents Dinner after the shots were fired, Michael very coolly sat there and carried on eating his burrata salad. We are going to talk about the events at the White House Correspondents dinner. The the shooting has of course raised questions about American security around the president. Was the President safe? Were security protocols carried out as they should have been? I think it also raises interesting questions about the level of political violence and rhetoric in this country. We know that the shooter was inspired by hatred of the President and his cabinet. So we'll talk about that. And then in the second half of the program, we're going to talk about this new peace deal that has been sent by the Iranians to open the Straits of Hormuz but delay discussions about the nuclear program. The White House is kind of putting out a message that this shows how desperate the Iranians are. I've spoken to a couple of people who aren't quite so sure about that. Should we quickly run through what happened on Saturday night I was not at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. You've been once, right to that dinner, that wonderful celebration of the right of the free press.
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B
I was there in 2011 when Barack Obama was roasting Donald Trump. And I sat at the Fox News table with Donald Trump in 2015.
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A
Do you like going?
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B
No, I didn't really like it, to be honest. 2016 was the last time I was there. I've been to it three times.
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A
I've been about 10 times. The first time I went, I actually went into labor during the dinner. Bill Clinton was speaking and then I kind of gave up going about 10, 15 years ago. I decided that it wasn't necessarily the most edifying of events.
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B
But anyway, do you think they're going to do another one in 30 days?
- [03:28]
A
This is what the president has wanted. So there was a shooting. Just to quickly bring you all up to speed, in case you don't know what happened, a man checked himself into the hotel. The White House Correspondent's Dinner is held at the Hilton Hotel. Those of you listen to our Reagan series will remember that that is the hotel where Ronald Reagan was shot. It's held every year in the basement ballroom of this hotel. A man had checked himself into the hotel, which you are allowed to do as a guest. But then that man took a couple of guns and a knife and rushed the and was motivated by a hatred of the president and his cabinet. And he tried to get into the room. He didn't get anywhere near the room, but he did fire off some shots which had all of the journalists jumping under the table. And the president afterwards said that he would like the event as a celebration of the right to free speech and the freedom of the press, which is what this event is meant to be about, to be held within 30 days. It's an incredibly hard event to pull off, Anthony. People fly in from all over town. It's not just one dinner. There are parties all weekend long in Washington. Georgetown, where I live, has been packed with people in suits and summer dresses all going to different parties. You get a lot of celebrities come in. You get CEOs come in. Heads of all of the media corporations come in. Trying to get time on those people's schedules to redo this within 30 days I think would be very tricky. I'd be surprised if it was held at least in that format in 30 days time. I'm sure that Donald Trump would like to give the speech that he had prepared. Apparently it was about an hour long. He was going to absolutely roast the American press corps, which he thinks has been very unfair to him. He would like to have a chance to give that speech. If there is something held, I imagine it'll be smaller. So I can't imagine you're going to have anything quite like the White House Correspondents association dinner. First of all, let's deal with the security, and then let's deal with the kind of political culture. What do you make of how the security held up at the event?
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B
Well, listen, nobody got hurt, obviously, thank God the Secret Service agent who was shot had a protective vest on. But I. And again, I don't want to be critical of this situation because, again, the Secret Service did their job. But you'd have to ask a lot of open questions here. Open question number one would be, do you need more magnetometers or do they need to be further away from a ballroom like that? And do you need then a crisscross setup so if someone comes through the magnetometer, they can't get a straight shot into the ballroom. If he was moving faster, or maybe there were, let's say there were four guys that rushed that magnetometer with guns and they took out a few of the Secret Service agents, God forbid, and one of the guys got into the ballroom, and let's say it wasn't a shotgun, but an AR15. I think they could have done tremendous damage. So I think. I think it's going to require people to think about the setup for these things and to add an additional layer of protection.
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A
Just to clarify, the ballroom is on the kind of second basement level. He only got a level above that. He wasn't actually on the level where the ballroom is. So he was a level above the basement. He would have had to go down another layer of stairs, and there were more security agents on the level below where the basement is. So he would have had to. He kind of got to the first ring of security. He would have had to get through a second ring of security. And I am told there are other security assets that the public doesn't even see around. So there was quite a lot of security. But one question I have is, and I want to get your thoughts on this, can you ever, short of confining the President to the White House compound, can you ever guarantee a president's safety 100%? I mean, the President is going to go out there and give rallies. I've been to those rallies. Yes, you go through a mag. But again, somebody could rush those mags. I'm just wondering if the expectation is a little unrealistic. I Mean, if this security worked, how much more do you want to up it at the expense of the President actually being out there in public and meeting the American people?
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B
I think all of those points are important ones. But I still, even though it was on the second level, Caddy, if you had, let's say, 10 people, it would have been difficult. You know, they have to rethink this and they have to make an assumption as opposed to a lone gunman. Maybe there's a. There's a 10 person gun situation. What do you do in that situation? I think there's a secondary issue here which relates to the dysfunctionality of the American government. Secret Service is unfunded right now. If you go to the Department of Homeland Security and you talk to these guys or you listen to somebody like Representative James Comer, who's railing about this stuff, we have 70 days now following the February shutdown where the Secret Service is unfunded. Okay? So we're asking men and women to take a bullet for the President of the United States and other people in the Cabinet, but we want to stiff them on the payroll. I don't understand why we're doing this. And it just speaks to the raw incompetence of our political leadership to allow something like this. I guess. I guess the last point on this, which I'd like you to opine on, is how about the normalization of this sort of behavior? So we've had three assassination attempts on Donald Trump since July of 2024, and the market didn't move. Bitcoin market is the only one trading overnight. Didn't move. There's no general reaction. Some people at Goal Hanger were like, should we do a emergency podcast related to this? And I think your reaction to it was, I can sum up your reaction the best, was why? And the answer is, we didn't, because no news really came out of it. So I guess have we gotten so crazy with the Trump administration that we've normalized the abnormal?
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A
I mean, we've had a rough year in terms of political violence with the shooting of Charlie Kirk and now this assassination attempt, if it was directly targeted at President Trump, against President Trump. And clearly the rhetoric online on both sides is very high at the moment. You've got the language that the President uses against the press and against his opponents, calling them horrible people, et cetera. You've got also language from the left accusing the president, I hate to bring this up, of fascism and of being a threat to American democracy. Maybe this is a moment to think about the language that all of us use, because I think that is all being driven online. But actually, I mean, if you look at it compared to the 1960s and 1970s in America, this is a moment of less political violence generally. One thing that has changed I'd come across Anthony a a couple of weeks ago actually, and I went back and looked at it yesterday. A super interesting report from the center for Strategic and International Studies, csis, which had looked at political violence recently, because the trend in America until very recently was that political violence came actually much more from the right, from right wing extremists than it did from left wing extremists. But 2025 was the first year in more than 30 years that left wing attacks outnumbered those from the far right. So I guess that begs the question, what is happening on the left that they are suddenly picking up their number of terrorist attacks and attacks of this kind of nature compared to on the right? I mean, is it that the right feels happy that President Trump was reelected and so they aren't taking to the guns, or is it that the left feels unhappy and unhappy with this administration and so they're resorting to the tactics which have traditionally been the tactics of the right in this country. So overall political violence and there are actually very few. In 2025, there were five left wing terrorist attacks and only one right wing terrorist attacks. If you go to the data, the incidence of attacks is actually very small. I would call in a country of 350 million people, I would say that's pretty small. But I think that the language makes it seem that we are living in a moment of extreme violence. And obviously goes without saying, guys, any attack is one attack too many.
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B
I mean, Katty, maybe I'm too old fashioned at this point in my life, but I sort of feel like it's unfair to you.
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A
Old fashioned?
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B
I don't know. I feel like the statement I'm about to make is very old fashioned. I just don't feel like it should be left wing or right wing accusation. These are nuts. If I'm a right leaning person and there's a nut on the right that's prosecuting political violence, he just happens to be a nut. Doesn't matter what his political persuasion is. The same thing for the people on the left.
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A
I mean, one of the dispiriting things the President said, everyone came together. But I think one of the very dispiriting things about what happened on Saturday night is how quickly this became political with people on the right saying, you see, this shows that the left are a bunch of crazy lunatics, and they're violent. And you have to tone down your attacks on the president because this is going to be what happens. And every time there's an attack from the right, the same happens on the left. I mean, people use this to justify their own political positions.
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B
I think there's something broader. And I think, unfortunately, you and I are going to be talking about this for some time to come. And that is what I would call the Luigi Mangione phenomenon. And what is that? That are younger people that are incredibly dissatisfied with what's going on, and they see a act of violence, an assassination of a CEO or, God forbid, an assassination of a president as their duty to be a martyr in a society where they feel hopeless. And so for me, the other problem for this is that there is a fan base for this stuff. If you think about what's going on here in New York for Luigi Mangione as he's on trial, or you think about the people that would cheer political violence, I think that's another big issue that the country has to address. You know, in the 1960s, when John Kennedy was slain, or even his brother RFK or Martin Luther King Jr. If you just go back and look at it, look at the news reporting, et cetera, you didn't have this happy effect. There was no Luigi Mangioni phenomenon going on. There was like, okay, this is absolutely tragic, and we have to figure out a way to resolve it. Now it's fueled by social media. It's fueled by these manifestos. I mean, he dumped a manifesto. I'd like you to talk a little bit about the Norah o' Donnell interview with President Trump, which was aired last night. You know, this guy's idea was, I'm gonna do this, likely get killed or survive, but my manifesto is gonna live on in social media. So, I mean, you know, you had Norah o' Donnell reading it to presidential Pleasant. What happened in that interview last night?
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A
Before I get to Nora's interview, which actually, I think was very good. I mean, quickly, you and I, in that Reagan series that we did, talked about how America came together after Reagan, the attempted assassination attempt on Reagan at that same hotel where Cole Allen tried to assassinate the president, we think, on Saturday night. So there does seem to be this instant tribalism and instant splintering into different camps. And the other thing I think that was kind of depressing, I felt about Saturday night, was the number of people, smart people, who said to me, oh, did. Was this a setup? Was this real? As if Somehow the President had orchestrated the whole thing in order to distract from Iran. It did distract from Iran, because yesterday I was watching television a lot. On Sunday, the only story was about the White House Correspondents Dinner. Now you've got a whole bunch of journalists in Washington. They were part of the story. Maybe that, not to disparage my colleagues, maybe that makes us talk about ourselves a little bit longer.
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B
Answer that question, though, in your opinion. I have mine, obviously. Was it a setup?
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A
No. And nor was the Butler shooting a setup. But I think we live in a world where people, the level of conspiracy theories fueled by social media and particularly the COVID pandemic has risen in the country recently. And in a tribal world that we're living in, people reach for conspiracy theories. I remember saying to you after the Butler shooting that I had been at an event with some very senior Democrats who had worked in the Biden administration or the Obama administration. Smart, smart people who said, oh, we reckon that Trump orchestrated this whole thing in order to boost his approval ratings. I just think that's what it would take to do that. The absolute uproar that there would be if that was ever uncovered. The idea that the president or anyone around the president kind of was Watergate style, hired this 31 year old from California and got him to check into the hotel and then launch this attack on the White House Correspondent's Dinner, I find absurd. But it's interesting how many people, I don't know whether you've heard the same thing, Anthony, whether you heard people saying to you, was this real on Saturday. That was the first reaction of a lot of people who don't like the President.
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B
Well, I mean, listen, Tucker Carlson had an open question on his show yesterday about whether or not it was real. Listen, I don't, I'm with you. I'm not a big believer in these conspiracies. I think the Butler thing was prima facie. The Charlie Kirk thing, even though there's questions about it, I still think is prima facie. And I think this is prima facie. But the one thing that would make people raise alarms is the way they capitalized on it. So they rushed down to the White House briefing room. They get into the briefing room with their tuxedos and their answering questions of reporters and in their tuxedos and evening gowns and they've got messaging coming out of the White House where lots of their MAGA supporters are on the same text thread. There's a communique that goes out from the White House that you need to now support the ballroom and the activity around the construction of the ballroom. And there's probably 100 MAGA influencers that almost within the same minute of each other are sending out messages that, that the ballroom needs to be promoted. And so when you step back from that, you can say, oh, see, this was all coordinated and blah, blah, blah.
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A
But because it gets him off Iran, it gets the conversation away from Iran, it gets the conversation onto the ballroom.
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B
Correct. But I think that that is a reaction to what happened. I don't think the event was planned. And I think this is again, another big problem. And this is where our adversaries have won.
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A
They've divided us, they've made us, pushed us into these camps and we believe things that aren't true.
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B
No question. They've made us believe things. Katherine Belton wrote about this in Putin's People six years ago where she explained all the server farms that were set up outside of Moscow to drive public opinion away from each other and to create heated bullyish tribalism on the net. But you know, the president is the bully in chief, as we both. No, I mean, he's a keyboard warrior. But tell us about his conversation with Norah o' Donnell where he is saying to her that the Democrats and the press are almost the same. One and the same is his exact quote.
- [19:23]
A
Look, you and I were texting about that interview. So Nora o' Donnell's a correspondent for CBS News and she did a long interview, a sit down interview with President Trump for 60 Minutes program on Sunday. This was his first sit down interview. He's called into a lot of shows over the weekend, but this was his first sit down interview. And at one, one moment, Noor o' Donnell points to Cole Allen's online manifesto in which he allegedly wrote, I am no longer willing to permit a pedophile, rapist and traitor to coat my hands with his crimes. What's your reaction to that? She asked the President. The president, looking kind of slightly flustered and angry, says, well, I was. Here's his quote. I was waiting for you to read that because I knew you would because you're horrible people. Horrible people. Yeah, he did write that. I'm not a rapist. I didn't rape anybody. At which point Nora, and this credit to her, this was a very good journalistic instinct, said, oh, you think, do you think he was referring to you? She interrupted. And then Trump really got angry and said, I'm not a pedophile. You can read that crap from some sick person. I got associated with stuff that has nothing to do with me. I was totally exonerated. Your friends on the other side of the plate are the ones who are involved. Involved with it. Let's see, Epstein and other things. I listen to that. And kudos to Nora for thinking of jumping in there. First of all, you never want to be in the position of saying, I'm not a pedophile and I'm not a rapist. I would say, what do you reckon? You're the comms person here. If you were in the comms director of comms, what would you have been thinking at that particular moment?
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B
Well, I mean, listen, Trump can get away with anything. He can say anything, do anything. And so a normal person, certainly, certainly. No, you don't want to be in a situation where you're telling somebody that, no, I didn't beat my wife last night. You know, I mean, how are you going to get out of that one? Right. You can't prove a, a negative. So, so. But Trump can get away with anything. I found the most interesting part of that. He's calling her despicable and all those different things. But he sat for the interview.
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A
Yes. And he didn't get up. We was texting and saying, was he going to get up and leave? Did he want to get up and leave? It was great teleport television, by the way. So, no, he didn't get up and leave.
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B
Yeah, he's not getting up because he's got David Ellison and Larry Ellison in his pocket. They did an event at the White House prior to the White House correspondence dinner where CBS was there. Obviously, Nora o' Donnell was at that event as well. And so remember, some of that is a little staged, too, is a little performative. So let me give you my not conspiracy theory, but this is my surmise. And you can push back if you don't agree. But the President's looking at the new cbs, the new new cbs, and he says, okay, I got this under control. I've silenced ABC. They got Stephanopoulos to pay 16 million. We've put a little bit of a lid on cnn. It's now going to be owned by the Ellisons. And CBS used to come at me all the time. You got Barry Weiss over there that has sort of curbed that. And so, you know what? Let's let her say something vicious to me so that it doesn't look like I've got this thing completely under control. And by the way, the FT over the weekend wrote a great piece on this. I think the reason why the podcast industry goal hanger Et cetera, is doing well is that these podcasts are unfiltered. These podcasts are not censored by the corporate media. And so I almost feel like that Trump was doing that. It was a of lot bit of cosplaying caddy, so that Trump could say, oh, you know, look, look at the way they attacked me. They're, they're no better than the Democrats where he is basically saying to himself, they are a lot better than their Democrats. I got this thing under control now.
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A
I think you're right. But I think also Trump likes to have somebody to fight against. I mean, I think the message of the last year and a half is that Trump does better and he does better in the polls and he does better in public opinion when he is in a position of opposition. And his problem slightly at the moment is that he controls everything and he hasn't got anyone to fight against. So having the press, which has very low approval ratings as a sparring partner is a much more useful position for him to be. And he likes to be able to say, you're a disgrace to Norah o', Donnell rather than pretend that they're all buddy, buddy, because they've all gone through a shooting together at the White House. One other thought quickly on security, and then we'll take a break and come back and talk about Aurora on Pop Quiz for you. President Trump, J.D. vance and Mike Johnson were all at the White House Correspondents Dinner. I think this is going to prompt some security reviews around how many senior members of the cabinet and the line of succession are in a room at the same time? Because if all three of those figures had been taken out, who would be the president today of the United States?
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B
So are you, are you saying that RFK's raccoon penis is not in the line of succession? Is that what you just said?
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A
How did you come up with that?
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B
No, I just was thinking about the various things that could be in the line of what's presidential succession? No, I'm just checking on you. You know, have to keep it real here.
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A
Caddy, the president, the pre four, all of our. Just to clarify for our dear listeners, RFK's raccoon penis would not today be the 48th President of the United States. It would be Chuck Grassley, who is the President pro tempore of the U.S. senate.
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B
And how old is Chuck Grassley?
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A
Like 583. And if he was not available because he's 583, it would be Marco Rubio, who is the Secretary of State, who is the fourth in line of succession were the president to die. If you want to find out more about Marco Rubio, this would make him very happy because we are doing a series for our founding members on Marco Rubio and his enormous ambition.
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B
I did say that for a reason. And the reason I said that as
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A
opposed to a gratuitous Monday morning thing.
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B
No, I said that for a reason. I mean, it was not just a shock value. I just think that we've, we've lost our way. When you and I were growing up and you started in journalism or even when we were in college, even if we had people mudslinging at politicians, which they've done for 5,000 years, there was some level of respect and decorum. But the president has stripped all of that out of the United States now to the point where he's getting shot at and we're not even really responding to, to it anymore. The stuff that he puts out on the social media. We're numb to ending civilizations. Open the effing straight. And so, you know, I think the raccoon fits into all of that in terms of the insanity of it. And you know, and whoever came up with the word sanewashing to me, you know, needs an award in the Oxford Dictionary because we're doing too much sane washing of all this stuff. But I did also do it for your reaction, Katty. I just want you to make sure you know that as well.
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A
I knew you did. We're going to take a break.
- [26:31]
C
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- [26:53]
A
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- [27:06]
B
Welcome back to the Rest is Politics, Us with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Catty
- [27:11]
A
K. Catty K was still trying to figure out what to wear to the royal garden party to which I've been invited at the British Embassy this afternoon. So if I'm a little distracted today, I'm focusing on dresses.
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B
How many times have you met the king, Cat?
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A
I have not met the king before, so this will be a great pleasure for me.
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B
And you never met him when he was Prince Charles as well no, no.
- [27:30]
A
He met my parents. He came to stay with them when my father was an ambassador. He and Diana actually came to stay with them, but I have not met the king himself.
- [27:39]
B
Okay, well, I want to hear all about it.
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A
Photos will be forthcoming.
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B
Good. I want to hear all about it. So let's talk about what's going to be on the president's mind, because he was in the Situation Room over the weekend looking at the proposals that are coming in from the Iranians, none of which he likes, which is why he canceled the Witkoff Kushner flight to Islamabad. But where do you think things are right now with the peace talks?
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A
So Tehran has submitted a new proposal overnight to the White House through Pakistani intermediaries. And the offer outlines a framework to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, but push any discussion of the nuclear question further down the road. There are some people in the White House who are reading that as a sign that the Iranians are desperate, that this American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz is depriving them of all oil revenue because they can't sell their oil. And so now they are finally coming to the table. That's what the White House is saying. President Trump said something odd on Fox News in an interview yesterday where he said that in three days time, the Iranian pipelines would explode, he said, and therefore destroy Iran's oil infrastructure because they are being surged with oil that is not going anywhere and there's no release. This is actually the scene from the beginning of a Tom Clancy novel, Red Storm Rising. Exactly this. That a country's oil capacity explodes because they can't shut down production quickly enough. I don't know if that's where the President got this idea from, but I called up somebody who's an ex CIA oil analyst on the Middle east who said, this is ridiculous. It's just silly. They know how to shut down down production. The Saudis have shut down production. The Iraqis have shut down production. It is not going to explode. But the White House is trying to put out the message that this shows how well the blockade is going, that the Iranian regime is on its last legs, and so they are prepared to come to the table to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, I don't know how you read this latest offer or whether you think this gets us further to clarity on how this all ends. It's possible that President Trump still could bomb the Iranians. I'm being told that is not being ruled out, but clearly he doesn't want to and he wants to get out of this still. So I don't know that this new offer goes anywhere.
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B
There's been some discussion about the Russians becoming sort of one of the guarantors here where the Iranians, they're suggesting the Iranians to move the uranium to the Russian soil.
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A
Is that why the Iranian foreign minister is going to Moscow?
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B
Well, that's the speculation. The papers are reporting that. I guess the real question is, are we comfortable with that?
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A
How do we feel about the Russians being the guarantors of Iran's highly enriched uranium? That sounds like an excellent idea.
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B
So it's sort of like what Mater Keynes once said about the stock market. He said the stock market, I'm in a beauty pageant. It's not for me to pick which stocks are beautiful. I have to ascertain what my fellow judges think. And in this case, it's really up to Donald Trump. Right. Because he has a love affair with Putin. Maybe he's comfortable with it. And if he is comfortable with it, would that change the peace negotiations? Obviously, I'm not comfortable with it, but for me I think there's something else going on that the discussion about having courts and not having courts and the president constantly saying they can call us and constantly saying they're completely decimated. We have all the cards. Well, it turns out that that's not really true, Caddy. They still have, as you pointed out last week, missile inventory, drone inventory, speedboats all over the Strait of Hormuz that can wreak havoc, rocket fired missiles that they can take into the strait to blow up tankers. And so for me, it's always going to come down to the economic chicken. Who's got enough money to hold out and are we going to go to $9 gas prices at a Fourth of July barbecue here in America. And so what are your thoughts there? Because I'll leave with mine. I don't think the Americans or Donald Trump himself have the toleration for that. And I think if you understand the Iranian culture versus the American culture, I think they do. But what are your thoughts?
- [32:07]
A
I think that Trump is, is hoping that he can squeeze the Iranians and if he squeezes them enough economically, they will come to the table. We're in this kind of game of chicken in a way of the American economy versus the hold that the Iranians have over the global economy and how much the global economy is suffering. And of course that affects the American economy. And there's all the conversation now about high jet fuel prices, which is much more a problem at the moment in Europe, but will become a problem here in the US so I think if we're at July 4th and this is not resolved, then the president has a serious problem, because I think the American people really won't like that. That's why he's trying to say they only have three days. I'm told they have three to four months still, the Iranians of economic viability. So this game of chicken could go on for quite a lot longer. I had an interesting conversation on Friday night with Congressman Mike Turner, who, of course, is very steeped in intelligence and foreign relations issues in the House. And he said that for Trump, the priorities are. And this is why I think this deal won't work. The priorities are the uranium. That he really does want to show that he is the president that sorted the uranium issue and pushed back Iran's ability to produce highly enriched uranium and potentially a nuclear weapon. Weapon. And the measure for him is Obama's, of course, because he's Trump. He just wants to do better than the Obama deal. So he wants to be able to push back their ability to produce a weapon 20 years. And the other thing that Congressman Turner told me is that he really doesn't want any money to be transferred on pallets to the Iranians. And he keeps referring to this weakness in the original jcpoa, which was that the Iranians got some of their unfrozen assets. A lot of it actually was in Swiss francs that was transferred in hard cash. And he doesn't want that image. Trump wants to be able to say, I got a better deal than Obama did. I don't know if he's going to manage to do that, but if he does, I think at that point he declares a victory and gets out.
- [34:13]
B
So, Katty, why does the president get a pass? And what I mean by that? He's sound asleep on camera in the Oval Office. He's dozing off and waking himself up. Back up. If Joe Biden was doing that, there would be a national outcry of sleepy Joe Biden. If you look at the Obama deal now and you study the actual deal, the actual deal looks pretty good. And the actual deal comes without $60 billion spent in the Strait of Hormuz. Again, that's just the military expenditure by the United States to prosecute the war. It's not the economic damage that's taken place as a result of the war and the rising prices, the fertilizer shortage and all that other stuff. Why does President Trump. What is it about his brand? Where he gets a pass for falling asleep in the Oval Office and on every metric. The way the thing is going right now, I'm going to stipulate, and you can disagree, that he's going to get a worse deal than the open because you have to add the 60 billion.
- [35:18]
A
Well, he's already spent more. Right, because The Iranians got 55 billion. So we've, it's already cost us more. And that's as you say, just from the bombing.
- [35:26]
B
Right. So why does he get the pass then, Caddy?
- [35:28]
A
I don't think he does get a pass. I honestly don't think he's getting a pass. Because if you were to take all of the approval ratings, there's been a slew of polls, including a recent Fox News polls. He's being decimated in the polls on this. If the American people were to vote for tomorrow and Donald Trump's name was on the ticket, if they had the ability they would boot him out of office tomorrow. There's no way he would be reelected. So there's not much that he can't be removed instantaneously. He goes to the midterms. Maybe he doesn't care his name's not on the ballot at the midterms. Maybe he just wants to have a Democrats running the House so he gets somebody to fight with again. That's quite possible and he'd quite like the Democrats to win in the midterms. But he doesn't get a pass. I think everything you see in the country in terms of polling on how the people feel about his handling of the economy, which is why this White House Correspondents Associated Dinner is like a two or three day story in the end. Yes, maybe people are focused on it for a couple of days. Actually what will matter for Donald Trump and the Republican Party is how they're doing on the economy and this war is hurting them. So I actually don't think he is getting a pass.
- [36:34]
B
Neil Ferguson has a team of researchers. They're estimating that 3 to 3.2 million barrels per day still being produced by the Iranians. The Americans are saying there's a blockade, but the Indian government has reported that 34 tankers that are Iranian oil supplied tankers have arrived in India through the blockade. And so the President, as we've pointed out, is letting certain tankers go through because he doesn't want to blow up the Indian or the Chinese economy. Economy while this war is going on. And so I guess again another question that's good for the Iranians, that gives them more money so you're, you're reporting is four to six month months. I said last week that I thought they had 45 days. And so I just want to go back and I want to say that your reporting is actually more accurate because what is happening is they're getting a lot of upfront payments from their oil price partners.
- [37:31]
A
Yeah, the Chinese are giving them upfront payments.
- [37:33]
B
Exactly. And so that's increasing the Runway that they have. They may have had 45 to 50 days earlier in the month, but now it looks like they're going to go six months again. Neil Ferguson is saying six to 14 months now of usable reserves with over $30 billion in the Iranian central Bank, bank of hard currency. So again, Caddy US is going to be tolerant. We're going to go 16 to 14 months, $9 a gallon of gas, no fertilizer in the farmland. That's what's going to happen.
- [38:11]
A
That's politically unsustainable for the Republican Party. And if they do badly after the midterms and Donald Trump really is a lame duck, who knows, maybe you will actually get voices of dissent from the Republicans in the Senate and the House who find a spine and decide this is not actually doing them or their party any good. So, no, I don't see America going that long. Okay, guys, we are going to wrap it up there. If you would like to listen to our series on Marco Rubio, which seems particularly relevant at the moment and his extraordinary ambition. Unfortunately, poor old Marco Rubio, even though he's fourth in line to succession to the throne, as it were, is not at the moment king. He's still only Secretary of State or as he's known in Washington, Secretary of everything. You can listen to that series by becoming a founding member. Join up@thereestispoliticsus.com and we'll see you back here on Wednesday.
- [39:05]
B
Thanks, guys. See you on Wednesday.
- [39:17]
C
Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings, there's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com
- [39:36]
D
hello, it's Norman Peston from the Rest Is Money. I've just had the most gripping conversation with an economist, Nick Bloom from Stanford, who's published a very influential paper on the costs of leaving the European Union. He and his colleagues calculated that leaving the EU has cost us 8% of our national income, our GDP, that's 240 billion more than we spend on the NHS every single year. What's really striking is that his numbers are now the numbers being used by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, when she talks about the advantages of getting closer to the eu. So if you want to know how damaging Brexit has been and whether that 8% number is robust, whether it's real, join me for the latest episode of the Rest Is Money.