Pod Insights The Rest Is Politics 267. TRIP US: If Trump wins, what actually happens to America? About this episode From killing wild horses to banning the abortion pill, join Anthony Scaramucci and Katty Kay as they take a deep dive into Project 2025 - the very long MAGA wish list, on today's episode of TRIP US.
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Transcript 9,728 words · 13 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:04 Rory Stewart? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.
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0:42 Alastair Campbell? Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?
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2:27 Anthony Scaramucci? Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.
2:32 Katty Kay? And me, Katty Kay.
2:33 Anthony Scaramucci? How are you, Catty?
2:34 Katty Kay? I am good. I'm actually in prison.
2:36 Anthony Scaramucci? Well, it's a pretty nice prison. That's the prison that Donald Trump hopes he gets into with the plush pillows and so forth.
2:42 Katty Kay? I thought it was kind of, you know, with the theme of the moment with Hunter Biden and Donald Trump. I'm actually, it's a hotel in Boston that was a Victorian prison and has now been changed into a hotel. And it has kind of little, you know, Oscar Wilde and the Ballad of Reading Jail vibes to it. But probably a little closer than either Hunter or Trump might see.
3:00 Anthony Scaramucci? So our Bostonian listeners know that a Thursday night, that's a hot place, that prison. They have a, quite a social hour there.
3:08 Katty Kay? Yeah, it's beautiful.
3:09 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, so what do you want to talk about?
3:11 Katty Kay? Look, this week, I think we want to start by kicking off, obviously, with the Hunter Biden verdict. This has been a crazy month for trials and guilty verdict. So we're going to talk about that. He's been found guilty in that federal gun trial. We're going to talk a little bit about how that might be affecting the Biden campaign. And then I've had an interesting conversation this week with somebody senior in the Biden team because they still seem to be almost weirdly calm amid something of a Democratic freak out about poll numbers and how the race is looking for them. So we're going to kind of talk about whether they have a secret plan or not. And talking of plans, in the second half, we're going to take a look at Project 2025. This is something that a couple of listeners have written into
3:53 Katty Kay? us about. It is the massive, detailed, 920-page conservative agenda for a Trump presidency. It's got proposals on everything from culling wild horses, to banning abortion pills, to deporting illegal migrants, to restoring conservative values in American schools. The Democrats have announced their own plan just this week to counter Project 2025. So we'll take a look at that, too. But let's start with Hunter Biden. I'm not quite sure, honestly, Anthony, how this is going to play in November. November still seems quite a long way away, and a lot can happen between now and then that sort of raises the images of this week. I'm not sure many Americans are fully dialed in to the details of federal
4:36 Katty Kay? law and how Hunter Biden was accused and found guilty of lying on a form about whether he was a drug addict when he bought a gun. But I do think one thing from that trial is going to stand out and potentially is going to last, and that is the image right at the end of the trial when Hunter Biden was found guilty this week of Joe Biden making a detour in his schedule, flying into Delaware, Hunter Biden arriving at the airport and on the tarmac, the two of them have a big hug. And there is this image of a father who has lost his other son, who lost his baby daughter in a car crash, who lost his first wife in a car crash, and his adult son who has struggled with addiction, who has been found guilty on federal charges
5:20 Katty Kay? of this falsifying records to get a gun. And there is something very human, I think, about that image. And if anything breaks through from this trial, I think it's going to be that. Sometimes people make their decisions based on emotions, right? And that was a pretty emotional image.
5:34 Anthony Scaramucci? Well, I have addiction in my family, unfortunately. And so my older brother has suffered from this, several of my other family members. And it is a very painful thing to see. And so there is a group of people that view it as a habit and a choice. And there's another group of people that view it as an illness. I think if you talk to the neurologists and the neuroscientists, they fall into this is an illness camp. If you get involved with drugs, or you are treating yourself, self medicating yourself for depression or something like that, you end up in this world. One of my closest friends is very close to Hunter. And I talked to him in preparation for this podcast, and he said to me, and
6:16 Anthony Scaramucci? I'm just going to give you the summary of it, that Hunter is a tormented soul. Bo Biden, his brother who died of a glioblastoma, a brain tumor, used to say that he prayed for him every night. He said, from the moment his mother and sister died in the car crash, he was never himself. He's tormented and was tormented by the guilt of his survivorship relative to them. And it was further compounded by his brother Bo's death. So I'm in the camp where this is a very personal issue for the president and a very personal issue for his family. Politically, the president really doesn't have a choice in terms of making the statement that He's going to not pardon Hunter Biden, but I'll make a prediction on this podcast.
7:01 Anthony Scaramucci? Win or lose the presidency sometime November, December, that sentence will likely be commuted if he does have to go to jail. That's my opinion and I'll make that prediction here on this podcast.
7:13 Katty Kay? So commuting the sentence is when the sentence can be reduced and the president has the power either to pardon somebody, the crime goes away, the guilty verdict goes away, or he has the opportunity to commute the sentence, which would mean that whatever sentence Hunter gets, the president can reduce it.
7:30 Anthony Scaramucci? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. And of course, commuting the sentence would give President Biden less baggage because the charges would still be on Hunter Biden's record, but he wouldn't have to serve any time if that becomes the case that he has to serve time.
7:45 Katty Kay? Yeah, I thought it was interesting that Corrine Jean-Pierre, the White House Press Secretary, when she was asked about whether this sentence would get commuted by the president, who has already said, as you say, that he won't pardon Hunter Biden, she demurred on that. She wouldn't give a comment on that. She said she had yet to speak to him. And I think the White House is giving itself a little bit of wiggle room. The Bidens are very close. They were all there in the court all week. There were lots of them. His daughter testified, perhaps not to his advantage, particularly his ex-wife testified, Beau's widow testified, Jill Biden, I think, came out of this. It's an interesting story of Jill Biden, of course. She's not actually Hunter Biden's biological mother. She's his stepmother and shout out to stepmothers who often get a hard rap.
8:27 Katty Kay? My children have a wonderful stepmother and she's been an extraordinarily important person in their lives, as is their stepfather. So I think seeing Jill Biden in that role and just the Bidens standing up straight, accepting the verdict, not challenging it, not questioning the justice system in the way that Donald Trump had done just a couple of weeks before. There is a Big contrast at the moment in the public image of these two men. And you're right. Look, not everybody knows somebody who has paid off a porn star to help swing an election. But we all know somebody who has struggled with addiction. And in that way, I think it helps humanize the Biden family. It is this image in contrast, there is Joe Biden accepting the result and there is Donald Trump railing against the justice system.
9:12 Katty Kay? I would say one thing that I think is going to be more problematic potentially for the Biden family when it comes to Hunter Biden. And that is that in the fall, he goes on trial on tax fraud charges for not paying his taxes in California. And I think Republicans are going to use that trial much more aggressively than they've used this trial. Actually, it's been remarkable, the degree to which Republicans have not gone after Hunter Biden. This is not the trial they want to attack Hunter Biden on. They know about these addiction issues. They know there is a lot of public sympathy for that. But I think you're going to see that turn around when he goes on charges of tax fraud in the fall. Because they'll use that to get to their overriding message that, you know, this phrase that they use, the Biden crime family.
9:55 Katty Kay? There's no evidence that the Bidens have committed any kind of major corruption crime, certainly not Joe Biden. But they'll go after the Biden family. I still don't even, I mean, do you know this? Why have people not decided yet? I mean, we know Joe Biden, we know Donald Trump. What is it that makes people decide? It could be something like that. It could be an emotional image.
10:12 Anthony Scaramucci? Well, I mean, I, I, I think they've decided. I think that they sometimes tell pollsters that they haven't decided, but I, I think.
10:19 Katty Kay? You think there's no one out there that hasn't decided yet?
10:22 Anthony Scaramucci? Uh, well, I mean, yeah, you know, look, of course, statistically, there are people out there that haven't decided. And some of those people are going to vote catty, some of those people are not going to vote. But I think they generally know, like when you do these demographic footprints and, uh, yeah, you know, this, I'm sure our viewers and listeners know this. This election is going to come down to about 600,000 people in seven states.
10:47 Katty Kay? If that.
10:47 Anthony Scaramucci? If that, yeah.
10:48 Katty Kay? If that, I'm reckoning about 150,000.
10:51 Anthony Scaramucci? Yeah, there's some unpredictability in the polling, but seriously, it's a very small number. And remember. President Biden won eight and a half million popular vote, but he only got 48,000 votes more in those swing states than Donald Trump. So it's going to be a close election, no matter what. Just before we go to another topic, just two questions for you, because we talk about these conspiracy theories, the notion that Biden's a crime family, no evidence of it. They chant that on the right. They're now saying, well, they're going to put Hunter Biden in jail, create symmetry to allow for Donald Trump to also be jailed. So I think that's nonsense, but I'd love to get your opinion on that.
11:31 Katty Kay? I mean, the same rules apply to Hunter Biden as applied to Donald Trump, right? It's in a way, it's a nonviolent offense. He's a first time offender. And so I would think that the judge in both of these cases is going to weigh up those factors against, certainly against any kind of, you know, push from the political side. I mean, I do think that is where the Americans is.
11:53 Anthony Scaramucci? So neither of them go to jail?
11:54 Katty Kay? I think there's a chance neither of them go to jail. Over those cases, now, listen, if Hunter Biden gets found guilty of the tax fraud cases in the fall, it's possible, I suppose, that that then is a second offense. So is it possible that that, you know, that increases the chances of him going to jail? One of the jurors, by the way, came out and said he doesn't think that, I mean, it's not up to him. But one of the jurors came out afterwards and said that he doesn't think that Hunter Biden should get jail time and that actually if his name had not been Biden, and Joe Biden has said this, that if he was not running for president again, if Hunter Biden's name was not Biden, these charges would not have actually been put to trial, that he would never have been put on trial for this.
12:35 Anthony Scaramucci? Probably true.
12:36 Katty Kay? Let's see, I'm so reluctant to kind of game the system in terms of the legal things at the moment, just because they're all so novel and so unprecedented, and we're in such uncharted waters when it comes to legality and the politics of this at the moment, that I'm kind of reluctant to make a decision. So I don't know what impact this is going to have on the campaign. I don't know that it'll have, it clearly has an impact on Joe Biden personally. It's very painful for him. I don't know that it has a massive impact on the campaign. But one thing that has interested me over the last couple of weeks, because we've had a slew of new polling, and we should never really put too much weight on one poll. I mean, you can give me an Economist poll showing that Joe Biden is behind and isn't going to win. And then there's an F T poll showing that actually Joe Biden is doing much better on
13:19 Katty Kay? the economy than he was a few months ago and has closed the gap quite significantly with Donald Trump. He's still a bit behind. So I don't know, you give me an economist poll and I'll raise you an F T poll. But there is clearly a little bit of a freak out going on about STEM because I don't know where you still stand, Anthony, if you're still in the calm and it's all going to be good camp. But it is weird how the Biden campaign, and I spoke to somebody this week, they're still pretty calm. I mean, kind of perhaps preternaturally calm, perhaps delusionally calm, as one Democrat said to me last night.
13:50 Anthony Scaramucci? I'll tell you a few things that I don't like if I were in the Biden campaign. I had also, in full disclosure, had the opportunity to talk to several members of the Biden campaign this week related to their ideas around cryptocurrency and digital assets and what their policy is there. And let me just give you a quick ledger. Donald Trump, he was against crypto. Now he's for crypto. He sees that as a way to gain young voters. Joe Biden has been ambivalent on crypto. Donald Trump hangs out with MMA fighters. He hangs out with these young celebrities like Jake Paul. He's a young celebrity fighter, but he has this energy drink called Prime that if you're 14 to 28 years old, you probably have it in your refrigerator and you're drinking it.
14:35 Anthony Scaramucci? It tastes disgusting, but my young kids love this thing. And Donald Trump's hanging out with him. Joe Biden is not doing that.
14:41 Katty Kay? I've had to ration it in my fridge, too.
14:44 Anthony Scaramucci? Yeah, it's gross.
14:44 Katty Kay? What is it? It's disgusting.
14:46 Anthony Scaramucci? It is. It's disgusting. Have you tasted it? You're probably too posh to taste. Just admit to me that you haven't tasted it, Kathy.
14:51 Katty Kay? There's no, my daughter drinks it and it's that in Celsius and I, you know, have a coffee.
14:56 Anthony Scaramucci? Right, you haven't, you haven't. I love that about, no, I just love the fact that you haven't tasted. Of course I've had it. It's disgusting. Okay. But anyway, Donald Trump is in a face off with that. You go to TikTok and see him in a stare off face off and then he's laughing and smiling. You have one candidate relentlessly campaigning.
15:16 Anthony Scaramucci? Looking like a happy warrior, enjoying himself. And you have the other candidate that is in almost a Jimmy Carter like Rose Garden strategy. And so just a little history perspective, Jimmy Carter was dealing with the hostage crisis in 1980, and he didn't do much campaigning, and he got destroyed by Ronald Reagan come election day. So, so I am worried about it. I still believe that Biden can win because we're going to get into Project 225 here in a second, and we're going to get into the ramifications of a Trump victory. Because remember, it's not just Donald Trump, it's an organized group of people that want to
15:55 Anthony Scaramucci? push America into what they call the post constitutional phase of America. And so I believe if this information gets out there, and the Biden campaign does a good job of this, I still think he can win. But I don't like the president's energy level relative to the former president's energy level, or the enthusiasm around the relative campaigns.
16:17 Katty Kay? Okay, well, hold on a second, because I don't see anything happy warrior about Donald Trump at the moment. All I see is the guy that comes out and rails about the 2020 election, talks about vengeance. I mean, he's been on multiple conservative networks where the hosts have tried to get him to say this is not going to be a vengeance presidency. And what does he do? He says, oh, no, I think it's fine to have vengeance, and that it has to be done. He's angry about the justice system. I mean, he gave this super weird rant at some rally in, was it Las Vegas or Phoenix, somewhere hot, and maybe that was the problem, where he spent like 10 minutes talking about shark attacks and falling in the water with
16:59 Katty Kay? I think it was about electric boats, but there was a weird bit about, you know, the woke shark defense squad on the left. I mean, it was, it's not happy warrior. This is not Ronald Reagan morning in America stuff. This is
17:11 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, let me, you're right. Okay, I have to, let me rephrase. A enthusiastic, passionate, grievance
17:20 Katty Kay? I give you, Mr. Scaramucci.
17:23 Anthony Scaramucci? Victimized, okay, warrior. Okay, but I just think the enthusiasm, let me also restate, I think the enthusiasm around Trump's campaign
17:33 Anthony Scaramucci? Is larger than the Joe Biden campaign. And you can say, okay, well, they're different personalities. The one guy had big rallies in 2020. The other guy beat him by eight and a half million votes. But there's something going on that I'm not in love with. And this is the Trump amnesia. Okay, people don't remember the full on craziness, the relentless Twitter activity, the relentless commotion in the government, the constant firings. I'm wondering if the Biden people are going to present or relitigate before the American public.
18:07 Katty Kay? The great thing about Reagan National Airport, the small local airport in Washington DC, is that you hang out there for more than 10 minutes. You're bound to bump into a member of Congress. And last night I bumped into a Democrat who I know. And I asked her, how concerned are you? And she said, look, it's three things that get you an election, that win you an election. It's money, which we've spoken about a lot. It's machine and it's message. She thinks the money, they're fine. The machine, and this is where the Biden team say that they have reason to be calm, that they have built all these field offices. They've got 200 field offices around the country. They've employed 500 staff. They're going to pay canvases, not just volunteers to go and knock on doors. And they say that's way more effective. This is all part of their kind of infrastructure plan. The machine that they have, and they say they are laying the infrastructure out
18:52 Katty Kay? in the swing states. Trump is not even opening offices there. The Biden campaign is very confident about the machinery that they have. But I think you're right. This Congresswoman said to me last night, the message, what is the message? And I have to say, when I speak to the Biden team, a lot of the message is about Donald Trump. Well, that didn't work so great for Hillary Clinton back in 2016. She ran on an anti-Trump. It's all about Donald Trump. They need a better economic story. They've got to do more with black and brown voters. They acknowledge that black men and Hispanic men are not enthusiastic about the campaign. And they've got to find the right messengers to get to those people because it's not going to be Joe Biden. So they do say it's going to be very, I mean, they keep saying this, and maybe they just have to say this to reporters.
19:36 Katty Kay? It's going to, because if reporters started saying, Christ, the Biden campaign is anxious, then that would be a big story. But they They know it's going to be very close, but they are confident that when it's a choice between the two candidates, especially when we see him on that debate in a couple of weeks, and we should talk about debate prep because they're already doing that, that they think the public will, you know, that the public will realize that it's going to be a choice between Biden and Trump, and Biden's campaign feel pretty confident that they've got this.
20:01 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, okay, so let's do a little role play on our podcast. Okay, we're in the inner sanctum of the Biden campaign. The president has some freeze moments. You've seen him do it. He forgets where he is.
20:15 Katty Kay? I spoke to somebody this week who'd been in a meeting with him who had seen that in a national security meeting.
20:20 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, so we, we, we, we've seen Mitch McConnell above the age of 80. He's had some freeze moments at the podium. What are the freeze moments? Is something to be more concerned about? Or is it just old age and it's old age itself to be concerned about? You, but you and I are now his campaign strategists and we're looking at things like the economy. It's decent, although people are worried about the inflation. We're looking about Joe Biden's likability. I think he still generally has good likability. And then you've got this culture war going on in the country, which we both know about. Uh, but we can't get our president, we can't get our candidate out there on the hustings
21:01 Anthony Scaramucci? to argue on his own behalf because he's freezing and he's stuttering more. And he's got a broken foot where he's doddering to get to the teleprompter. So go ahead, Catty K, you're the strategist. What do you do here to help President Biden?
21:19 Katty Kay? Well, he's old and he looks old.
21:20 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, okay, I gotta, I gotta interrupt you because you're such a Brit and you're so polite. Okay, he looks old. He looks like he's a fossil. He looks like he's in the National Museum of American History, along, next to the T-Rexes. I mean, what do you mean, he looks old? Listen, I, I love the guy and he's been to my conferences. He's fossilizing before us. Okay, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt. Okay, what are we doing, Gaddy? You're the strategist.
21:45 Katty Kay? You get as many surrogates out there as you can and you choose your big moment. So that's why they have the debate in June. They want these big set pieces. Moments where they can prep him, he's going to go to the G seven, he's there now. He has one fundraiser in California and then the campaign tells me that after that, it's heads down preparing for the debate and then Joe Biden's taking this very seriously. So you organize these big set piece moments like the State of the Union where he can rally. You probably don't get him out there doing certainly not like Donald Trump in a hundred degrees, which it is already out in Phoenix and Las Vegas. You don't get him out there doing that kind of big rally. It's going to be controlled videos and you rely on your get out the vote machinery.
22:26 Katty Kay? This is where the and you and you have that's how and you keep reminding people that he's the president and he's running the country and therefore he's not going to be flying around doing these big rallies. And their argument as well is that, look, Donald Trump did big rallies in 2020 and it didn't translate into him winning. So that's you may get thousands of people turning out for a Donald Trump rally. That doesn't actually necessarily mean that you're going to win the swing states. Look, I don't know. I hear from a lot of Democrats that they are very nervous about this, that the race is tight, that they would have liked to see the polls tightening by now and that they are concerned that the Democratic base, I mean, as one Democrat said to me this week, our voters are lazy. Donald Trump's voters are motivated. So this may not just be about getting that 150,000 people in six states.
23:12 Katty Kay? It could be about making sure that our own people also turn out to the polls, which is where the machinery takes him. What, okay, you're the, you know, you've been there, Anthony. I don't know why I'm playing the strategist. I'm I'm the, you know, journalist. You're the strategist. What would you do?
23:26 Anthony Scaramucci? I, I, I think you're very insightful. That's why I'm asking the question. I, I love the surrogate idea, but there's something going on where there's a cultural block for these people. Okay, they brought Governor Christie down to meet with the campaign manager to talk about debate prep. They have reached out to people like me to talk about crypto policy. But in general, they have a ton of surrogates, younger, fresher faces, business leaders, politicians. Our viewers and listeners may know who Adam Kinzinger is. He's a former House of Representatives Republican Midwest. Absolutely abhors Donald Trump. He would go out there and help them. But there's a mental block going on with the campaign.
24:11 Anthony Scaramucci? I don't want to go to moderate advocates because I think it's going to hurt me on the hard left. That's the impression that they're giving. Now, when you call them out on that, they deny it. But yet, why aren't you operationalizing more? Okay, I get it. Joe Biden, 81, he does look a little frail. He is stumbling a little, but why not operationalize a whole group of people? You have the business community. Donald Trump is playing that he has the business community. He has a small slice of billionaires who are with him. And we went over this last week because of that Venn diagram analysis. I'm going to throw him some money. If he wins, I'm protected. If he loses, Joe Biden and his team is not coming after me.
24:55 Anthony Scaramucci? But by and large, most billionaires are with Biden. Most business leaders are with Biden. Yet, for some reason, Trump is controlling the narrative that he's got the business leaders returning to him. Silicon Valley, they threw a fundraiser, David Sacks. So purportedly, they raised $12 million. Yes, 85% of Silicon Valley is with Joe Biden. How do we not have that information out there?
25:22 Katty Kay? Yeah, counter the narrative.
25:23 Anthony Scaramucci? Ron Conway, Reid Hoffman, wrote a brilliant essay.
25:27 Katty Kay? You're right, there's front page story after front page story about all the Silicon Valley leaders who are with Trump.
25:33 Anthony Scaramucci? Yeah, but okay, you got 15% of them. You were at zero last time.
25:37 Katty Kay? No, that's a Biden campaign error. They need to counter those stories.
25:41 Anthony Scaramucci? They've got to, they've got to do that. And they're not doing it. And the reason they're not doing it is the culture war. They are so afraid. Okay, this month is gay pride month, and they're focused on that. And God bless them for that. I have no problem with that. But they're seeding blue collar whites to Donald Trump. Even though the president has put policies in place. That have helped blue collar whites. I just, I don't, I don't understand how they can't blend the two is, is the point I'm making. And if I were their strategist, I say, guys, wake up. Okay, you can win this thing, but you've got to get the narrative better and you've got to be less afraid of your hard left. Okay, Reagan was not afraid of the hard right. He
26:24 Anthony Scaramucci? told people, these are my principles. If it doesn't work, I'm 69 years old, I'm going to go back to my ranch. I love my wife. I'm going to cut brush on my ranch and I'm not going to listen to you guys telling me to curry favor with the hard right. And he won the election.
26:39 Katty Kay? But you know what? I mean, what they, I think what they have to do equally is they've got to have better surrogates who can go out and talk to Hispanic voters, many of whom are pretty conservative, Hispanic men who can talk to black men as well. And when I asked the campaign, you know, who is it? Who do you have out there talking to those people who you are losing and who could lose you the election, who are meant to be part of your base? And they came back with a couple of names, John Leguizamo, do you know who he is?
27:04 Anthony Scaramucci? Yeah, yeah, he's a great actor.
27:06 Katty Kay? He's a great actor, right?
27:07 Anthony Scaramucci? I know, John.
27:07 Katty Kay? I'm going to be honest, I didn't know who he was. So he's the voice that they put out to, but he can't do it all. He, you know, takes out a New York Post ad and tells people to, you know, be in favor of diversity and more Hispanics and vote Biden, but they can't just be one person. They need, they need people who can relate to the different groups, to the business community, to the Hispanic community, to the black community. And they've, they've got to start moving on that more. Okay. Uh, we've spoken a lot about the Biden camp. So in the second half of the program, after the break, we are going to talk about Project 2025, this opus that is going to be your summer reading. We'll be right back.
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29:33 Katty Kay? Welcome back. This is The Rest Is Politics US version with me, Katty Kay.
29:39 Anthony Scaramucci? And me, Anthony Scaramucci.
29:40 Katty Kay? And in this half, we want to talk about something we've touched on a little bit before, but a couple of you have written in to ask us to do a deeper focus on it. And I think it's something that American voters may have heard about, but the vast majority of them are not very aware of what it is. And that is this thing called Project 2025, which is... A big, comprehensive document that has been drawn up over the last few years by a group called the Heritage Foundation. It is one of the think tanks in Washington DC. It's a conservative think tank and they have gone through every single department of the US government to look at how it would change if a conservative president were to
30:21 Katty Kay? be elected. Now, it's not actually written as a Trump campaign document, but it is written for a conservative Republican president and it is being seen as the blueprint for how Donald Trump would change almost every area of the US government. And it is a cast of characters of people from the former Trump administration who have been writing up these kind of mini essays on the Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior, Homeland Security, and not an area of government is untouched. And basically, it rests on the idea of reducing the role of all of these departments, putting power into the presidency,
31:03 Katty Kay? and making American life more conservative, more focused on Christian values. In some ways, it's a fairly classic conservative document. It talks about the need to defend Taiwan, for example, were China to attack Taiwan. It even talks about the brutal Russian war in Ukraine. So some areas of it, I think, a lot of classic Republicans like yourself, Antony, would recognize as conservative doctrine. But in other areas, it's much more extreme, much further to the right, more focused on immigration, more focused on religion, and very focused on anti-green policies and anti, what they call anti-woke policies throughout
31:46 Katty Kay? the government. It's a kind of fascinating read. I spent some time trying to read it. I did not, I'm promising I did not read all 920 pages, but I did spend some time reading it this weekend.
31:56 Anthony Scaramucci? I want to give some backdrop and perspective to people because I know all of the people that have written this. And I want to explain to people that we had a garden variety Republican Party. There were some radical right wingers in a garden variety Republican Party that believed in the deconstruction of the American Constitution. So what do I mean by that? They want more power for the executive branch and they want less power for the legislative branch and the judicial branch. And so for our Constitution, as Brits probably know, it's separate but equal. Of course, Trump didn't necessarily understand that, but the
32:37 Anthony Scaramucci? people that have organized around him now actually do understand that. And I think this is very important to explain to people. We had garden variety Republicans, and then here comes Trump. He's ill informed, but he has a worldview. Steve Bannon is articulate and has a worldview. And so what ends up happening is Trump can't find his worldview because he's not that articulate. He doesn't have historical references. But Bannon and his minions like Paul Danz, et cetera, do. They are now attaching themselves to Donald Trump. In 2016, we're not taking this guy seriously. We're not attaching ourselves. We have an ill-prepared transition, so much so that we don't even know who the Secretary
33:22 Anthony Scaramucci? of State is until the two weeks before the inaugural, right? So we're picking Rex Tillerson, a man that Donald Trump doesn't know, at the suggestion of Robert Gates, the former Defense Secretary. And as you know, Katty Kay, the Secretary of State is the most important cabinet position. It usually goes to the President's best aide or the President's best friend. So that's how ill informed we are. Now, fast forward eight years, these clingers have now clinged to Donald Trump, and they have this right wing agenda. And so if you're not scared about it, you should be because it's organized, it's a well-oiled machine, and they're using Trump as the effigy to get themselves through the door of the
34:05 Anthony Scaramucci? government. Trump is effectively their Trojan horse. When he wins, we're coming in with our apparatus, and we're going to deploy this strategy on America. To effectively liquidate, and that means dilute the branches of government like the judicial branch and the legislative branch, and we're going to empower the executive branch. This is a white movement. Just remember that, too. It's not a want black and brown people running the government, and so we don't like the democracy anymore. So we're going to change the rules so that we can make this a white, Christian nationalist movement that eventually sits on top of the government known as the United States.
34:45 Katty Kay? Yeah, and you're right. I mean, there are a lot of references, for example, in the section on the Department of Defense about getting rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. That phrase getting either that, and they use the word woke quite often. Do a word search for woke and it comes up quite often. Do a word search for diversity, equity, and inclusion. It comes up a lot in lots of departments. They want to get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Is this, what you're talking about is what legal scholars call the unitary executive theory. Is that right? The idea that-
35:18 Anthony Scaramucci? That's correct, yep.
35:19 Katty Kay? That the, and it's, I don't, you're the lawyer, not me, but proponents of that theory say that Article II of the Constitution would actually allow the president to have total authority over the executive branch. How are they making that case? I mean, is there valid legal history for that?
35:37 Anthony Scaramucci? Okay, this is, so this is fascinating. We need some historical context. So in 1973, Arthur Schlesinger wrote a book called The Imperial Presidency, and it was an indictment of Richard Nixon. He basically said that Richard Nixon had usurped powers from the Constitution to effect war, war in Vietnam, et cetera, and that the House of Representatives and the Senate need to, needed to check his power. But what's happened in the United States is that these elected leaders don't want the decision-making. Okay, I'm here in my district. I don't want to vote for the war because if the war goes badly, I'm going to lose my election. I don't want to vote against the war because maybe we need the war.
36:22 Anthony Scaramucci? So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to let the president make the decision through the War Executive Powers Act. And so what's happened is the executive branch has actually expanded because a lot of these political leaders don't want to make the decision, and so they've empowered the president. Barack Obama- He was empowered. All of these presidents were empowered. But they want to push it further. They want to make it so that it's almost embedded in the law that the president has the say and the rest of you don't. And this is an interesting thing because they'll eventually have to change the election laws in the country. Right now, the Republicans are winning these elections through what's called the tyranny of the minority,
37:05 Anthony Scaramucci? Katty Kay. They can win in Electoral College. They can win in primarily white swing states that will vote red while the coastal cities are blue and voting blue. But they can beat the Democrats in the Electoral College. There may come a day where they won't be able to do that. So they'll have to change the election laws in order to create some permanency to their power. And it's all there in the document. It's all fresh and in the document. Want to make one more point about Leonard Leo. He's a contemporary of mine. I've met him many times. Leonard Leo runs something called the Federalist Society. He is the vetting person for the Republicans on Supreme Court justices and justices for the Court of Appeals.
37:49 Anthony Scaramucci? And so he has a litmus test. And one of the things in his litmus test, let's say Katty Kay's coming up for a judgeship. He will spend time with you. He'll review all of your, all of your decisions that you've made as a judge. But more importantly, Katty Kay, are you willing to cede certain arguments to the executive? Yes, I am, Leonard Leo. Okay, that's great because you're going on the Supreme Court. Okay, you see, you see what's happening. So this is why this immunity case, the typical judgments are rendered in the first part of June by the Supreme Court. This immunity case is a super, super important case. The, the rendering should have happened on the 4th or 5th of June.
38:33 Anthony Scaramucci? You and I are talking now mid-June. The case has not been rendered because it's being controlled by these conservative judges. And they're working on how do they create unitary executive power. Remember, though, they've got a left-leaning president right now. So they've got to create unitary executive power that they know that the left-leaning president is not going to use.
38:56 Katty Kay? Yeah, so that is the case about whether a American president, any American president, has total immunity from any crimes that he may have committed while he was serving as president. And it's the case that is holding up the January the 6th investigation into what Donald Trump did around that insurrection. It's not just at the judge level, and I would love the idea of being your honor, Katty Kay. No one has ever called me that. That would be kind of nice to have that power. One day, we will, I think we could start referring. I would like a little bit more of that, Anthony, if you don't mind.
39:27 Anthony Scaramucci? I'll practice, I'll practice.
39:28 Katty Kay? Definitely, yeah, thank you. It's also the way they're planning this is very strategic. They are going to put people in at the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Defense or the Office of General Counsel in the Department of Energy. They've identified from their experience in 2016 hundreds of positions where they felt civil servants who did not agree with their agenda basically blocked Donald Trump's agenda in 2016. And on day one, they're going to put in acting positions, people that don't have to be confirmed by the Senate, into all of those positions. And that's the way they're going to try and get the agenda through. The cast of characters who've written this up, I'm sure you know many of them. There's one actually who's in prison at the moment, Peter Navarro,
40:11 Katty Kay? who is responsible for the trade side. Project 2025 calls for much tougher tariffs on imports into the United States. There's Ben Carson, who was a cabinet secretary, who is the guy that once told me I should have my microphone turned off when I was interviewing him. He's makes a, he makes an appearance in Project 2025. He's actually being touted this week as a potential vice presidential pick for Donald Trump. So he's bringing back a whole load of people. Shall we just run through a couple of the things that it says in the document? Because they are kind of extraordinary. This you go through the the document department by department. A lot of it is about this anti woke agenda. So in the education department, they want to define sex
40:54 Katty Kay? as meaning only biological sex recognized at birth. In the Department of Energy, there's calls to stop the war on oil and natural gas. The Department of Health and Human Services talks about abortion pills and banning abortion pills as abortion pills pose the single greatest threat to unborn children in a post Roe world. They want to ban abortion pills. The Department of Labor is interesting. That's really where they want to get into reversing what they call the D E I revolution in labor policy and getting rid of any managerialist, left wing, race and gender ideology that has impacted every aspect of labor policy and became a vehicle with which to advance race, sex and other classifications and discriminate against conservative and religious viewpoints.
41:39 Katty Kay? I'm reading some of this because I want to give people a flavor of it. That is the kind of agenda that we're looking at. Family first, Christian first. I think you're right that it is a, in a way, it's a white nationalist document. This is a white nationalist view of American life in that's, you know, that code for D E I. Interestingly, it says that America should withdraw from both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, terminate financial contributions to both institutions. If the U S is to provide economic assistance or humanitarian aid to other nations, it should do so unilaterally, not through multilateral organizations. So there are things in this document that would have a big impact on the world economy that would have an impact on America's role around the world in terms of its role with multilateral organizations.
42:24 Katty Kay? The one that really struck me, though, Anthony, guess how many wild horses there are in the United States? This is your pop quiz of the week. This document is not happy with the number of wild horses in America.
42:36 Anthony Scaramucci? So given the fact that I'm an urbanite. And I have been on, I think I've been on a horse.
42:42 Katty Kay? Have you ever been on a horse?
42:42 Anthony Scaramucci? Yes, I think I've been, I was on a horse one time. It was possibly a pony when I was eight years old. Why, you know, not really. I mean, look, I, I, I'm embarrassed to say this. I know you Brits love horses and you wear all these fancy hats and so forth at these horse things, but I'm a blue collar kid from Long Island. I don't know anything about horses, but.
43:01 Katty Kay? Yeah, you're sitting there with a picture of Manhattan behind you.
43:03 Anthony Scaramucci? I, I am, yeah, correct. That's part of my, uh, that's my screenshot from my home studio. So when I'm blabbering on television, but, but I have no idea. So I don't know, a hundred thousand wild horse? I have no idea. Go ahead.
43:14 Katty Kay? There are 95,000 wild horses in the United States. And Project 2025 is not happy about this. So they are calling for the curds to be culled. They want to kill wild horses. I mean, forget everything else that Project 2025 wants to do. I just don't, I don't know that killing wild horses is going to win you very many votes. But anyway, that was a pretty weird bit that popped up in, on page 643 of this vast document. I think it's a kind of anti Department of Interior. There's a kind of, there is a slight sort of anti parks thing about this. There's like Bureau of Land Management has been bloated and Donald Trump's,
43:54 Katty Kay? Donald Trump is like you, Anthony. He's got a picture of Manhattan behind him. He lives in a gold Trump tower. He's not interested. Have you ever seen Donald Trump riding a horse?
44:01 Anthony Scaramucci? I have a gold, I mean, now, now that you're bringing it up, Catty, I do.
44:05 Katty Kay? No, there you go.
44:06 Anthony Scaramucci? I do have a gold plated toilet. Have you ever been in Trump's apartment?
44:09 Katty Kay? I have never been in that.
44:10 Anthony Scaramucci? It literally, it literally looks like Louis the 14th smoked crystal meth and then decorated the place. Okay. You've never seen anything like this. And like the great irony of the whole thing is like, he's walking around in there thinking that it looks great. You're walking around in there saying, okay, I'm, I'm in a psychedelic song by Elton John or John Lennon. But, but Catty, here's the thing I want to ask you. I'm an American that got raised by World War II veterans and my father, who was a, uh, was in the US Army, you know, for the draft. I mean, he was, he was only there for two years. They're very patriotic people. Who actually understood the values embedded in the Marshall Plan. And so my dad or my uncles, they would have said, America is a force for good.
44:55 Anthony Scaramucci? We're going to help the people that got vanquished in the war. We're going to build a arsenal for democracy. And we're going to build and promote ideas of freedom. And we're going to engage with the international community that so that they all feel a part of it. So that they'll want to come to America. They'll want to be a part of this idea. These ideas here reject all of those values.
45:19 Katty Kay? Yeah, I think that's true.
45:21 Anthony Scaramucci? It's almost as if we're a big flexing bully. And we're now going to sit on the international block as a big flexing angry bully. As opposed to being this avuncular charitable beacon of light and hope for the rest of the world. And I know we're a flawed country. I'm not suggesting what Reagan said, we're this shining city on a hill. But many of us love the country like that. And many of us want our leaders to espouse those values. So my question to you is, how on God's earth are there this many people that want to move the country in this direction, Gaddy?
45:56 Katty Kay? Well, let's see if there are. I mean, let's see if people know about it, right? I mean, how many people, you know, actually even know about Project 2025? How many people know what this vision is? It's, I think you're right. This election in a way is going to be an election between, do you like multilateral organizations? Do you like America engaged in the world? Do you think that the system of the world order that we've had since the end of the Second World War has benefited the United States? Or do you believe like Donald Trump, that you should only have bilateral relationships? Everything should be transactional? And that America has been taken for a ride by all of these multilateral engagements? And by having immigrants coming into the country? And I think those, that's the kind of different worldview between MAGA and in a way, it's between MAGA and non-MAGA.
46:40 Katty Kay? It's not even between Republican and Democrats because apparently Republicans ascribe, as you do, to a view of America engaged in the world. But time and again, in this document, it's less a multilateral engagement. It's diminishing the budget of the State Department. It's empowering law enforcement to get rid of immigrants who are here in the country illegally. It's a kind of, it is an isolationist document.
47:03 Anthony Scaramucci? Well, at a time where there's a need for renewal and a restatement of these principles. We have an absence of a strong advocate. We had Franklin Roosevelt that put down the America First movement in the late 1930s. And unfortunately, we have a frail, we have to be honest about this with our viewers and listeners, we have a frail Joe Biden, prone to freezing and disorganization and stuttering at a time where this has to be redressed and resold to a very large group of Americans. So we'll have to see how this all works out.
47:38 Katty Kay? We talked in the first half about machine money and message. That is a message that is not being particularly effectively sold. Just a last point before we go. I have noticed two things, Anthony Scaramucci. One, you have a new book out that you have not even mentioned on the podcast. What is the point of having a podcast and being a podcast host if you don't sell your own freaking book?
47:56 Anthony Scaramucci? All right. So here, here, here, here is the new book. And if you're listening, you can't see this picture, which is my high school yearbook picture made to look old. Look at the photoshopping. And I wrote a, I wrote a book about my trials and tribulations coming back to my business after being unceremoniously fired from the White House. The title is From Wall Street to the White House and Back. It's doing quite well. And I appreciate you mentioning it. You can buy it where books are sold. I also brought this for you, Catty Kay. You can't, you can't see this if you're listening in your car, but this is a British Bulldog that I bought from the James Bond internet store. Okay. And the reason I brought this is just, just take a look at this face. Okay. This is the face that I am making when
48:40 Anthony Scaramucci? Katty Kay wakes me up in the middle of the night to do these podcasts because she thinks I'm on the UK time. See that? This is the face that I'm making. Okay.
48:49 Katty Kay? That's the, that's the grump face. Okay. The final point I want to make is that, Anthony, you've been doing a public service by giving people reading recommendations. I've noticed this on your Instagram feed. And you recently suggested that the book they should read, the number one book they should read is the Iliad. I looked this up. The Iliad is 15,000 lines. On average, it comes out at 600 pages. Project 2025 is 930 pages. It's longer than the Iliad. And I'm going to do our audience a favor and say, guys, when you're heading to the beach this summer, this does not need to be your summer reading. Listen to Uncle Anthony instead. Take the Iliad.
49:26 Anthony Scaramucci? If you read these New English translations of the Iliad, everything you need to know about the world is in there. And one of the great historical figures, fictional historical figures, of course, is Cassandra, who tells her father that the Greeks are coming to destroy the city. She's been gifted with this clairvoyance, but she's also been cursed that no one will believe her. And this is Homer telling you that none of us like the truth, Katie Kay, and our politicians prey on that every day. So the Iliad's got a lot in there for people to learn from.
49:55 Katty Kay? And we will leave it right there. Thank you for listening so much. We'll be back next Friday with more. The rest is politics, US.
50:02 Anthony Scaramucci? Thanks so much for being with us.
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