241. From White House To Courthouse: Trump On Trial

Will Donald Trump's hush money trial derail his presidential bid? What's happening on college campuses in the US? Join Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci for the first episode of The Rest Is Politics: US as they answer all these questions and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:19Rory Stewart?

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• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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• 2:28Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me Rory Stewart.

• 2:31Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 2:32Rory Stewart?

  We're joining you today for the first ever episode of The Rest Is Politics US with Anthony Scaramucci and Katty Kay. Hello to you both.

• 2:41Katty Kay?

  Hi guys.

• 2:42Rory Stewart?

  Nice to be with you guys. It's an amazing combination that we've got Anthony Scaramucci, who knows Donald Trump like very few people on earth and was right at the centre of Donald Trump's early White House as his spokesman until he fell out magnificently with Donald Trump and became one of his leading critics. And we've got Katty Kay, who is, I don't want to say veteran, because that sort of implies that she's ancient, which she's not, but a very, very longstanding, incredibly well-informed BBC commentator on US politics. And I think we'll bring just the most wonderful combination of personalities and thought into our analysis of the US election over the next six months.

• 3:18Alastair Campbell?

  So we're just going to let you get on with it, you two, because I think the truth is you know a lot more about America than we do. But for listeners who missed the end of our main episode on Wednesday, from now until the US presidential election in November, and who knows, possibly beyond, we're releasing a weekly episode of Trip US every Friday morning, UK time. Is that right Cathy?

• 3:40Katty Kay?

  Yeah, just in case you haven't had enough of Donald Trump in your life. I feel I've lived with Donald Trump in my life, day and night, since he came down that escalator in 2015. But what a time to be covering American politics. And we're going to come out every Friday morning, Anthony and I, with some of the news. We'll give you the headlines and our take from kind of an insider and an outsider's perspective on what's happening in the news of the week. But we're also going to look at broader cultural, political, societal issues. I'm convinced people think they know this extraordinary country, but don't always have the feel for it that they could and should do. So we're going to bring you some of that as well.

• 4:21Rory Stewart?

  Anthony, come in very quickly with you. Just tell us, I mean, you've got so much to tell us, but one thing I'd love to get more from you on is just a sense of the personality of Donald Trump. What is it that outsiders don't really guess about this guy? Because you spent nearly a year living with him on planes and, I mean, you were very close to him, right?

• 4:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  Close enough to be named part of the executive transition team after the election. There was only 12 of us on that committee. And yes, I did 71 campaign stops with him. On the Trump plane, we went all over the country together. And I think I know him very well. And so we'll be sharing insider secrets. We'll be inside the campaign. Believe it or not, even though I'm a Trump adversary at this point, I still have a lot of friends that are working for Donald Trump. And so we get a constant feed of information from what's actually going on inside the campaign. But also, I think where Katty and I can add a lot of value is just describing what's going

• 5:21Anthony Scaramucci?

  on in US society, how it's affecting the global economy and how it's affecting the potential future of not just America, but Europe, things going on in Asia. All of this stuff is connected into the 2024 campaign. So, yeah, but, you know, listen, he's not as nuts as people think. He is nuts, but he's smart nuts. And we'll, we'll, we'll explain that to people. We'll explain why that's so dangerous.

• 5:48Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, it's great to have you both. Rory and I will probably pop up very, every now and then on your show too, to get our heads around what's going on over there. But come on, Rory, we have actually got you two, Anthony and Katty. We'll give you one guess each. We've got to go to the American Embassy here in London to do an interview with a prominent American politician who happens to be in town.

• 6:09Katty Kay?

  Male or female, Alistair?

• 6:11Alastair Campbell?

  Female.

• 6:12Katty Kay?

  Then it has to be the Speaker Emeritus.

• 6:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well done, Nancy Pelosi. Well done.

• 6:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  Get some stock tips for me. I would really appreciate it. Just text them to my cell phone.

• 6:22Katty Kay?

  One thing our show won't be bringing you guys is stock tips. Let me just reassure you right now.

• 6:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  Just thought I would just throw that out there because I know Alistair would be tempted by that.

• 6:31Rory Stewart?

  Andy, what's quickly, before we go in a few, what's the backstory there? She's just done, she's published how much money she's made on the stock market or something?

• 6:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, no, I mean, in the United States, it's a sort of, we have some weird outs for the American Congress. She's done quite well, her and her husband. Us in the hedge fund community, you know, we have thousands of people, legions of analysts, but we can't outperform Nancy Pelosi. So God, God bless her. Okay, when she, you know, I told, I told my mother, Ma, until Trump's out of the political situation, Nancy Pelosi is my favorite Italian American. I just want everybody to know that. Mom is number two until after the election. She can come back to number one, but we need Nancy right now to help us defeat Donald Trump.

• 7:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well, listen, I just hope Nancy Pelosi doesn't listen to this before we interview her.

• 7:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  She won't mind, by the way. I've, by the way, I know her family well. I've teased her about this. She will, she will not mind, by the way. She'll laugh. She'll think it's funny.

• 7:28Katty Kay?

  She has a good sense. I share a hairdresser with her and she has a very good sense of humor.

• 7:32Anthony Scaramucci?

  And by the way, she's done absolutely nothing wrong. I'm just saying that this is something that the Congress does take advantage of.

• 7:38Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 7:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  Alistair, I'll give you one Bitcoin from my stash if you flat out ask her her five best stock picks, okay?

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 7:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  It's gotta be, it's gotta be on the podcast, okay?

• 7:47Alastair Campbell?

  I'll do it. I'll do it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Well, here we go with the first ever episode of The Rest Is Politics US.

• 8:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  Welcome to The Rest Is Politics US. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. I'm the former White House Communications Director for Donald Trump, fired after 11 short days, but worked on his campaign for nine months and had been involved in presidential politics primarily as a fundraiser and donor for the last 25 years.

• 8:23Katty Kay?

  And I'm Katty Kay. I'm a US Special Correspondent for BBC Studios. I've been covering American politics for 25 years. This will be my sixth US presidential campaign. This is the first ever episode. I want to explain a little bit about what we're going to do every week when we release these shows on Fridays. We're going to start by talking, of course, about the news of the day. We'll get to that in a second. And then we want to broaden out to bigger cultural issues and what Anthony and I are observing in this incredibly complicated, fascinating country and how it all ties in, of course, to the 2024 election. And we're going to start. With the news of the week from New York City and that Manhattan courtroom and Donald

• 9:04Katty Kay?

  Trump on trial and how terminal might this be for his campaign, what's the problem for his campaign here? So of course, all of you will remember that this is the hush money trial that is taking place in New York. Donald Trump has actually been indicted in four separate criminal cases. One of them is a civil fraud case, and this is the one of the four that is coming to trial in New York, and it all surrounds the adult porn star Stormy Daniels and whether he paid her off in order to keep her story about him having an affair with her quiet so that he could get elected president of the United States. It's all kind of fabulous, sort of sleazy stuff that is taking place up in New

• 9:49Katty Kay?

  York. He, of course, denies all of this, and it's actually a sort of technicality because it's was there falsification of business records that took place to disguise a campaign payment to the wonderfully named Stormy Daniels? And we're going to take a look at what that means for his political campaign. I mean, one of the things that interests me about this trial is what this means for Donald Trump. And I want to hear your thoughts on this, Antony, because you worked for Donald Trump in the White House for a few days, but you spent a lot more time with him on the campaign trail. Even though we knew Donald Trump was going to be a defendant in this case, watching him day after day, having to sit in this kind of dingy courtroom and being treated like

• 10:30Katty Kay?

  any other defendant, looking bored, nodding off occasionally, looking irritated. I mean, I don't think I've ever spent so much time thinking about the psychological impact of being a defendant in a criminal trial and how exhausting that must be, particularly for somebody like Donald Trump, who has tons of energy, you know, loves to express his opinion all the time, wants to talk all the time, wants to be the center of the attention, wants to control events. And as much as anything, I find this trial fascinating for what it's what it's doing to him every single day out there in New York.

• 11:03Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, for starters, I just want you to imagine somebody that has gotten away with everything for six decades. And so he's pushed the envelope, he can bully people, he can say things about people that nobody else can get away with. As an example, he'll say that he likes his POWs, his veterans, not captured versus captured, and in a way denigrating somebody like John McCain. So he's got away with everything, and he thought he was going to get away with this. And what was interesting about this case is that one person, one of the witnesses on the case, Michael Cohen, who I know very well, has gone to jail already for this case. Now, some will say, well, he went to jail specifically for the perjury caddy, but he

• 11:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  went to jail effectively for the sleaze in the case and for the obstruction that the case caused. And so now Donald Trump is sitting there on trial for something that one of his minions already got caught doing. And so I think the psychology of this is, whoa, wait a minute, six decades of getting away with everything, this may be the time in my life where I've come to the end of my rope, and I'm not going to get away with things. And so one thing I would just say to you is that he's not actually being treated like other people that are being prosecuted in a criminal court. If someone like you or me, for example, or someone listening, did the things that Donald

• 12:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  Trump has done in the courtroom, he would already be thrown in jail, mega fines, silenced immediately.

• 12:37Katty Kay?

  Because of the gag orders, you mean?

• 12:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, because of the gag order. So what's interesting here is he's at the end of his rope, not getting away with certain things, yet he's going on these radio shows attacking witnesses, threatening witnesses, and definitely you're not allowed to do that in our courts, but he's getting away with it. So the real question is, and I push it back to you, 25 years of observing this, is he going to get away with it again this time? Will he be exonerated? Is there one MAGA witness? And that 12 person group of witnesses that's going to allow him to get off come hell or high water.

• 13:14Katty Kay?

  Yeah, I think that's that's the question for him. Does he get acquitted outright? Do the members of the jury, all of them, say, we, the jury of his peers, find Donald Trump not guilty of falsifying his business records in order to interfere with the 2016 election? Or does he have a hung jury? One member of the jury says, actually, you know what? I don't think the prosecution has enough evidence to show that he was intending to falsify his business records to cover up this hush money payment to Stormy Daniels? Or is he found guilty by all 12 members of the jury? And I think all of those have

• 13:57Katty Kay?

  different implications for the 2024 election, right? If he's found not guilty, then that plays into his argument that all of this is just a political witch hunt and the government is overreaching and he is being attacked by the deep state, just like you, my MAGA supporters, are being attacked by the deep state. If it's a hung jury, I think he gets some of that benefit. I think he can still go and say, you see what? I wasn't found guilty. A member of the jury decided that actually I was innocent. If he's found guilty, then I think that's more problematic for him in terms of his ability to go out to the country. And remember, we're going to hear the next four weeks, hearing about porn stars and the fact that he is accused

• 14:42Katty Kay?

  of having an affair with a porn star when his wife had just given birth to a child. Now, I've had a few children. I would not have loved it if my husband went off and had an affair with a porn star after I'd just given birth. I mean, that's just like, there's a ton of suburban mothers out there who might say, guys, this is not great behavior. So the impact that this could all have, just hearing the testimony, whatever the outcome is from the jury, just hearing this testimony day after day after day, I wonder what kind of impact that's going to have on suburban women voters.

• 15:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, listen, I went to law school and I only learned one thing in law school, Katty, and that was, don't be a lawyer. I think that was the most obvious thing I learned in law school. But I have a lot of friends that are DAs. I have friends that actually work in the Southern District. The Southern District, which is the federal courts in the United States, has a 99% conviction rate. So if they take a case and you want to go to trial with them, it's 99%. Sam Bankman-Fried, an example, the cryptocurrency fraudster, he took the case, they convicted him on all counts. The Southern District of the United States and the federal courts did not take this case. I think it's important to express

• 15:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  that to our viewers and listeners. When you ask those guys who are buddies of mine, well, what are the likelihood of the prosecutors winning this case? They say 60 to 70%. So there's a two-thirds chance that Trump gets convicted. Okay, well, what if he gets convicted? I've asked prosecutors before the show, what do you think happens? Well, he's the former president of the United States, so he's likely to get a fine, potentially some home confinement, but he's not going to go to jail. Could he have an ankle bracelet on him? Would he have to campaign remotely for a period of time and beam himself into his rallies? Possibly. So this is not, in my opinion, the election-killing case if

• 16:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  it goes to full fruition and they actually get the conviction that they're looking for. But it is gnarly, and it is something that the Democrats should exploit, particularly, as you say, as it relates to the suburban women.

• 16:50Katty Kay?

  There's an interesting kind of money side of this to those in there, Anthony, because of course, while he's stuck in that courtroom, which he just looks like he is stuck in a theme park kind of place you'd love to be, but which I would hate to be in, he looks like he's not having a good time. He's not a happy camper. And one of the reasons he's not a happy camper is he can't be out on the campaign trail while he's stuck in Manhattan courtroom, raising money for his campaign, part of which, of course, goes to pay for his legal fees. But I wonder what impact this has on the campaign more generally. I mean, when you were with him on the campaign in 2016, and you're flying all over the country, and you're holding rallies, and you're raising money and going to fundraisers, how much does the fact that he can't be doing that at the moment...

• 17:33Katty Kay?

  Impact his campaign and his campaign's prospects, do you think?

• 17:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  Listen, on the margin, I think it does affect him. On the margin, I think it's demoralizing to his staff. The glaring obvious thing here is no Melania in the court, no Ivanka in the court, no family members in the court. So they're obviously upset at the facts of the case. I think there's another thing lingering here, Katty, and I'll push it back to you. I think everybody knows this is true. So he did this. There's no question about it. He, I mean, in the immortal words of the great Mormon Mitt Romney, another person I also worked for, you don't pay $130,000 to somebody not to have sex with them.

• 18:15Katty Kay?

  That was, that was a very good line from Mitt Romney.

• 18:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know Mitt, okay, if I had to put all my money on Mitt has never had sex outside his marriage, all my money's going on that. Okay, so, so you know this is true. And so the result of this, do the American people really care? You know, one of the things we learned on the Romney campaign is that Americans like bad behavior. You know, Mitt was a model citizen, you know, I mean, he got mad at me once because, you know, he said, what do you think's going wrong for me? I said, well, you know, you look like a Ken doll. And I said, that's going wrong for you. He said, well, what do you mean? I said, well, Mitt, when you pull the pants down on a Ken doll, you know, you're flat in front. You follow what I'm saying? You don't have enough balls going on here.

• 18:57Katty Kay?

  And strapping his dog to the roof of his car, that was not enough bad behavior, clearly.

• 19:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  I mean, I think that hurt him too, but the over perfection probably hurt him because most Americans have a tattoo, most Americans are overweight, most Americans have problems in their marriage, most Americans have issues. And so when they look at Trump and they see those flaws and that bad boy behavior, I think they've chosen, in Trump's case, to ignore it. He's the first politician that has broken all the taboos, Katty. 30 years ago, Bill Clinton said that he smoked pot, but he didn't inhale pot. That was a big taboo to say something like that, right? Now these guys are going on the Bill Maher show, smoking pot with him. You know, my, my, my point being is the entire world has changed.

• 19:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Trump has changed that world, whether we like it or not. He has dented and shifted the discourse in the American political society. He's made it coarser, he's He's a bully and he's given license now to way more bad behavior.

• 20:01Katty Kay?

  I agree with all of that and I'm going to do a yes, but which my husband always hates it when I do a yes, but but I'm going to push back a bit because I wonder whether actually what the American public is feeling right now is not the titillation factor of some bad boy behavior, Donald Trump versus super pristine Mitt Romney. It's a complete exhaustion factor and that they look at this, look at the fact that there's no one out there in New York. Where are the crowds? Where are the demonstrations? Where are the people chanting his name outside the courthouse? Everybody's bored. They're bored of the Donald Trump show. They're exhausted by the Donald Trump show. They've seen, we've, we've been hearing about Stormy Daniels. We know even that Stormy Daniels name comes from the fact it's the

• 20:43Katty Kay?

  name of her first dog and the street she grew up on. We know way too much about Stormy Daniels. And I think it's kind of like, I don't know that we want to watch this movie again. My sense of the American public at the moment is that there's a kind of feeling that this is yet more chaos and that this is the chaos that comes if Donald Trump is reelected. And more than that, just exhaustion with the election generally. And it's not just with Donald Trump, it's also with Joe Biden. And people are turned off by the whole thing. And I think this trial, if anything, it's kind of revealing some of that. I mean, maybe the public's exhaustion is going to be Joe Biden's secret weapon because they're going to watch this trial and think, actually, you know what, reruns, we in America, we don't like reruns, we like new shows. Come on Hollywood, give us something new. And Donald Trump drove

• 21:27Katty Kay?

  up turnout like crazy in 2016. He drove up turnout in 2018. He drove up turnout in 2020. He drove up turnout in 2022. But there was an NBC poll out this week that showed that enthusiasm for this election is at its lowest level in 40 years. If anything, that probably plays to Joe Biden's advantage because some of that lack of enthusiasm comes from watching Donald Trump sitting in a courtroom and talking about porn stars and hush money payments.

• 21:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, listen, I think you're, I think it's a brilliant and insightful analysis, but what I'm more, what I'm more impressed about is that you know the origin of Stormy Daniels, the stage name.

• 22:03Katty Kay?

  I do have to think though, that my first animal, my first pet was called Dog. We had a dog called Dog. And I lived on a street called London Road. So my stage name would be Dog London, which just, it doesn't, it doesn't work, does it?

• 22:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  Dog London doesn't work, but it could work though, you know, because that's how brands are. It could work.

• 22:20Katty Kay?

  And this case, by the way, Anthony, just has the most, you couldn't make them up. It's the most extraordinary names.

• 22:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I mean, Stormy made up her name. I give her credit for that. But God gave David Pecker this name. All right. Is this the best that we have the chief witness for the prosecution? The guy's last name is Pecker. I mean, do you love this? Or I personally love it. I don't, I, I feel like there are no coincidences in the universe, Katty. And this is God's way of letting us know that you should be having a little bit of fun in sports, religion and politics.

• 22:51Katty Kay?

  Yeah. If you were writing this in Hollywood as a screenplay, probably your editor would say, don't be ridiculous. That's not possible.

• 22:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  But you're, you're, you're saying something that I think people need to understand and to really open up the hood of what is going on. The engine is misfiring. And so I know people say, ah, you know, he worked for Trump. They got into a spat. He doesn't like Trump, blah, blah. It's actually more than that. You know, you know, I've tried to be objective about Trump. I want to be fair about his political instincts. I want to be fair about how he's moved the political zeitgeist in the society, how he has shaken to the core of the Republican Party. But there's something going on underneath all of this that I think people need to understand. He's sputtering. He's running out of money.

• 23:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  His legal fees are through the roof. His campaign donations are going towards the legal fees, not to the field offices. And Katty, I submit to you, and I want to get your reaction to this. These are two people running for the presidency that are well-known by the American public for five decades. Both of these people are known entities. This is not like a Barack Obama introduction tour circa 2008. These are known entities. Therefore, people have made a decision, the man or woman on the street. Who do you like and why they've made the decision? So I'm suggesting that this is a get out to vote election.

• 24:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  And Joe Biden is going to win the popular vote. You know that, I know that, even the Donald Trump people know that. So the way Trump wins this is through the Electoral College. He came close in 2020. He lost only by 40,000 votes. And so now what is at stake here is how many field offices are going to be in these swing states? And the former president doesn't have enough money to put as many field offices in as the current president.

• 24:49Katty Kay?

  And which is why all the money is going to be important. But I think all this trial is contributing, you know, to the sense that things are off kilter. The tension is high. The rhetoric is hot at the moment in America, not just around Donald Trump and not just around these trials. But we're seeing it play out, you know, a few miles north of that courtroom where he is in some of these university college campuses in New York. And we're going to talk about that and what's happening on these college campuses. Is it really about Gaza or is something else going on? And we're going to talk about that after the break.

• 25:20Speaker 02

  Hey, Bose here. On your next track, listen for the decisions. Distortion on the bass, the vocal right up front. Every choice deliberate. With Bose, you'll hear it all. Your music deserves Bose.

• 25:35Speaker 03

  Chronic migraine is 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more.

• 25:40Speaker 04

  Botox, onabotulinum toxin A prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine before they start. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It prevents on average eight to nine headache days a month versus six to seven for placebo.

• 25:53Speaker 05

  Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection, causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

• 26:29Speaker 03

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• 26:36Speaker 08

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• 27:08Anthony Scaramucci?

  Welcome back. In addition to everything that's going on in the world of Trump and Biden, we have a big spillover into our nation's campuses where there's a lot of people protesting. Catty, tell us, set the scene there for us.

• 27:22Katty Kay?

  Yeah, so we want to take a little step back and look at some of the kind of broader cultural and social issues that are happening in the country. And when you look at American college campuses, you've all seen the pictures of them and the protests that are taking place with students embroiled in this Israel Gaza battle that is taking place thousands of miles away, but which seems to now have landed squarely in the middle of American universities. And we wanted to kind of look at what that might mean as well for the politics of the country, for the race. So what happened is that last week, the administrators of Columbia University had to go before the Senate and testify about what they have done on campus since October

• 28:03Katty Kay?

  the 7th in order to protect Jewish students who have been the victims of antisemitism and who say they don't feel safe on American campuses. This followed a previous testimony from the presidents of MIT and Harvard and Penn University, which led to two of those presidents after those hearings having to step down. And so the administrators of Columbia were very aware of what might happen. They knew their jobs were potentially on the line and they went before this Republican-controlled committee in the House of Representatives and they were much more in favor of restricting students.

• 28:46Katty Kay?

  Who were trying to threaten Jewish students. So they were much more on the side of the Jewish students and much more kind of firm about what constituted unlawful violence on campus. As a result of that, they got kind of, you know, some applause from the Republican members of the committee, who said, yep, you've done a good job, you've made us satisfied. But then they went back to campus and all hell broke loose because the faculty and the students said that their right to free speech had been trampled on and they were furious and they started protesting again on campus and camping out in the middle of the campus quad. And actually now what we see, Antony, is this kind of spreading around the country.

• 29:28Katty Kay?

  It's disrupting classes. Classes have gone back online at Columbia because students say they don't feel safe. I know kids at Columbia University have just gone home because they say the atmosphere is so tense on campus. And you've had a whole load of congressmen in the last few days also turning up at Columbia University, Republican congressmen saying, we stand with the Jewish students and the president of the university should resign and the administration isn't doing enough. I mean, God, what do I think? What I think I am so glad that I am not part of a university administration in America at the moment because you have so many conflicting pressures. You've got pressures from the students saying that this is a free speech issue. You've got pressure from the faculty, you've got pressure from these very wealthy donors

• 30:11Katty Kay?

  who are often alumni of the colleges, who are saying not enough is being done to protect Jewish students on campus and threatening to withdraw their donations, which these universities depend on in the United States. So it's a mess. And I think I get what you're saying, Antony. I do think this kind of, in some ways, reflects the tone and the heat and the temper and the violence and the anger in the American political system more broadly. I mean, you know, America's become dysfunctional and things can't get run. Whether you're at the college level or you're at the congressional level, things are pretty dysfunctional at the moment.

• 30:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Listen, I'm going to say something, it's going to probably offend everybody, but I'm going to say that the American people did better when their political leaders came out of the military. And if you go back, we had conscription in the United States during the Second World War, First World War, Korean War, et cetera. And we had 85% of the Congress was tied to the military and most of the business leaders, teachers even, were tied to the military. And there were certain standards and protocol that was put in place. So people are not going to like me for saying all this, but that's the case. And even a George McGovern could fight with a Bob Dole. They were on opposite sides of the spectrum, but they both fought

• 31:28Anthony Scaramucci?

  for freedom and the Constitution in World War II. And so there was more decorum. And because we don't have that anymore, in my opinion, there's a fraying overall in the society, and it's spilling over into a lack of protocol. And I'll just point this out. In 1984, there were protests at Tufts University. They raided the administration building. I was a sophomore there at the time, and they were protesting South Africa and apartheid, and they wanted a divestiture. It was done peacefully. It was a pain in the you-know-what for the president of the school, but the late great Jean Meyer said it well, "If we can't allow for peaceful protests on a college campus, where on God's earth are we going

• 32:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  to allow for it?" And you know, this is the lungs of the society, if you will. We had peaceful protests and non-peaceful protests during the Vietnam War, but I do think that that impacted the politics of that. And I think it helped to lead to a closure of that war. And I want to push it back to you in a second, Katty, and ask you this question because I think this is a big impact. The demographics of the United States are changing once again. There are way more Arab-Americans in the population that are exerting political influence. As an example, in Dearborn County, Michigan...

• 32:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  Many of the Arab American community voted not for Joe Biden. They didn't vote for his competitor, but they just voted undecided or whatever they basically said. Hundred and seventy thousand people in that county could swing the entire presidential election. So I push it back to you. You're a student of American politics and free speech and free speech is very different here than in the UK. How would you handle it? What would you do?

• 33:14Katty Kay?

  I think you have to make the rules on campus super clear, right? I mean, I had a conversation with the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University, which is perhaps a more conservative environment down in Nashville, Tennessee than in New York City. And he said it comes down to clarity. This is what you can do and this is what you can't do. And we allow what you can do and we enforce rules against what you can't do. So maybe that's part of what needs to happen in these universities. But it's interesting that you and I have had this conversation for the last, we've been chatting about this for a few minutes and neither of us has raised Gaza. And I wonder why it is that it's Gaza, the issue, and I keep thinking about this. Why is it Gaza that's kind of triggered

• 33:55Katty Kay?

  this explosion on campuses? I have no doubt that many of these students are sincere in looking at what they're seeing happening in Gaza and they feel appalled by it. They're offended by the fact that America is sending weapons to Israel that are being used, you know, against civilians in Gaza and they're protesting about that. But I think there's something else that's happening. I think that there is also a moment where you look at some of these protesters and you've got a feeling of we, the oppressed, unite together against oppressors and whether we are feel we're oppressed because of gay rights or Black Lives Matter. There's a kind of, all of these forces have come together on campus because five years ago in the United States, if I went on a Sunday

• 34:39Katty Kay?

  morning political show and I said the word Palestine or Palestinians, it was like there was a kind of bad smell in the room. You know, it was a kind of almost a point of principle that America was standing by Israel. And I think what we're seeing happening on campuses is a demographic sea change, which is not just to do with a rise, a smallish tick up in the number of Arab American voters in the country. It's also to do with polls that showed even before October the 7th, that young Americans under the age of 30 were no longer supporting Israel over Palestinians. In fact, there was a poll last summer, I missed it at the time, but I've digged it out since,

• 35:19Katty Kay?

  that showed that Americans under 35 were more sympathetic to Palestinians than they were to Israelis. If I was sitting in Tel Aviv right now, or in Jerusalem, that poll would terrify me. Because I would look at the demographics of the United States and say, those young people who today are demonstrating on college campuses, in 10 years' time, they're going to be members of Congress. And they're going to be voting with that kind of thing. Now, look, the war may get cleared up, this may blow over as a political issue, but that longer shift of America being so firmly pro-Israel, I think that's changing and I think it'll change American foreign policy going forward. You know, there is an element of cynicism in this, right?

• 36:02Katty Kay?

  We saw this week Mike Johnson go up to Columbia, and he was on campus talking about, you know, the students who he said were intimidating Jewish students, and he called on the president of Columbia to resign for not doing enough to protect Jewish students. I am old enough to remember 2017, when there was that big march in Charlottesville that was a far-right march, and they were walking through the streets of Charlottesville, carrying banners that had swastikas on them and shouting, "Jews will not replace us." Where was Mike Johnson then? Where was Donald Trump then? Donald Trump was saying, "There are fine people on both sides." So it's possible that a perception that campuses have become too left-wing and too liberal,

• 36:47Katty Kay?

  and that student bodies have become too woke, gets used then by conservative politicians as a kind of political tool, a bit like it did by Nixon, right? In 1968, when he came up with the silent majority, he used that to kind of divide the left. And I think you could see some of that happening, too.

• 37:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  I give you credit for that. I never understood that before, and I think you're making a brilliant connection between the oppressed and the oppressor. But let's talk about who the quote-unquote oppressor is in their minds. That's very wealthy people. And the very wealthy have decided that they don't like this. And you got to follow the money in the United States. One thing that you have to understand about US politics, it is about the money. Universities, it is about the money. And you know what? It is about the money in most things in the US. And whether it's Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots. He says not giving any more money. It is the CEO of Apollo, the CEO of Blackstone.

• 37:51Anthony Scaramucci?

  You could go through the list of people. I, you know, I'm going to take a pause in my donations because I don't like what's going on. And I've been in the, you know, trustee position, a board of advisor position at a major college. And I understand the laboratory that they're trying to create and this sort of Petri dish that they're trying to create of freedom, free speech, you know, give people the intellectual bandwidth. But I predict, Katty, that October 7th was a seminal day. If we go back in history, let's say it's 25 years from now, we look back, we say, oh, wow. October 7th was a seminal moment. It pushed the envelope.

• 38:33Anthony Scaramucci?

  It pushed the pendulum back to something more normal than the allowance of this level of radicalism on a campus because the administrators want that money, Katty. And they're going to change their tune. And I'm not going to say they're going to change their tune 100% to please all those big donors, but I predict that the tune at these campuses will change as a result of the extremists that's happening. So I don't support it. I think that antisemitism is a sign of ignorance. It's, the Jews represent 0.3% of the population of the world, yet they have 20% of the Nobel prizes. You mentioned one, I just want to comment on one last thing, and you said about the Americans.

• 39:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  The Americans have been pro-Israel because of, when you think about the leadership in the United States in the post-World War II era, they understood the importance of having a democracy in that region. And that's why there was full bipartisan blanketed support. It'll be interesting to see if that continues, and I think that's really on the ballot this coming November, the rules-based order that we've been living by, or does the United States and the people of the United States want something new?

• 39:48Katty Kay?

  We will do, I am sure, a whole nother show on America's relationship with Israel, and how it's evolving or not evolving, or might evolve. On the campuses thing, and how campuses have kind of drifted to the left and become more radical, I'm reminded, I had this amazing, I went down to Arizona and spent some time down there a year ago, and I was taken out into the desert by a guy who calls himself America's sheriff, and he has five kids, and he took me out for some target practice out in the desert. And we were talking about, you know, he's a very conservative, has a talk show, and he was talking about his kids, and he's saying, you know, and I say, you know, what do your kids do? And he said, well, none of them went to college. I don't want any of my kids

• 40:30Katty Kay?

  to go to college, because you know what might happen, Katty? If I send my kids to college, one of them will come back liberal. And it was, that was worse than a death in the family.

• 40:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  Only one.

• 40:41Katty Kay?

  He had a, he had a friend whose kids had gone to college, and they came back liberal. And for conservatives in America, they've just, you know, they've long seen universities as this world that costs an insane amount of money. The sticker fee for Columbia University is a hundred thousand dollars, pretty much. They cost a lot of money. You look at the stats on diversity and how many students at Ivy League universities count themselves as conservative or very conservative, it's something like 5%. So there's very little political diversity of thought. And you can see why they've kind of become a target for the right. It'll be interesting to see now, after all of this, whether you're right, there's a kind of pushback.

• 41:23Katty Kay?

  And we saw some of that from the Columbia administrations up in that hearing on Capitol Hill, a kind of swing back to right. We're not going to be so accommodating of all of the students and everything they want to do and the faculty and their views on free speech. We're going to enforce some sense of law and order. And it's going to be really interesting. As this spreads now from New York and those elite universities, and now it's spreading to Texas and California and Chicago and North Carolina, and it spreads around the country, it's going to be fascinating to see how long it lasts and what impact it has on the election. And if all of these students come November, say, actually, you know what, we cannot bring ourselves to vote for Joe Biden.

• 42:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  Before we go, Joe Biden wins Michigan?

• 42:07Katty Kay?

  I think that's the big touch and go one. And I think if he doesn't win Michigan, then Donald Trump's chance of getting 270 Electoral College votes are significantly increased.

• 42:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, so I'll take a stab at it. I think Joe Biden wins Michigan because the alternative for the Arab American community is actually worse than Joe Biden. And so I think they show up and they actually vote for him. But we'll see.

• 42:32Katty Kay?

  Well, that was a pretty serious conversation, not surprising. Antisemitism, college protests. But to finish on a slightly lighter note, and because we like a quiz on The Rest Is Politics, and I know they like them on The Rest Is History, so I hope they're listening to this, a little historical quiz for you, Mr. Scaramucci. When was the first time that American students staged a protest on a college campus?

• 42:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh, wow. All right. So I have no idea when the first time was. So I'm going to venture a guess. That it was, uh, I don't know, the war of 1812. How's that? I don't know.

• 43:09Katty Kay?

  Not bad. I liked the number. Good, good effort.

• 43:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  Should I like hide from the camera now? I mean, should I wear a bag on my head now? I mean,

• 43:15Katty Kay?

  I think that's C for effort.

• 43:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh, my God. When it, when did Guy Fawkes blow up the parliament?

• 43:21Katty Kay?

  November the fifth.

• 43:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  November, November 5th, 160, 160.

• 43:25Katty Kay?

  Do you want the answer?

• 43:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  I want the answer.

• 43:28Katty Kay?

  It was 1766 and it was students at your alma mater, Harvard, who staged a walkout. You get a bonus. Here is your chance for a bonus point, though. What were they protesting about?

• 43:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  They, they probably wanted more food or something like that. I don't, I don't.

• 43:43Katty Kay?

  That was good. Good comeback. They staged a walkout over the quality of the butter that they were being served at school meals.

• 43:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  Ding, ding, ding. Okay. So if I was on Jeopardy, I would get the vote on that one. All right. Keep going.

• 43:55Katty Kay?

  Half the student body was suspended. That's it. Pop quiz over.

• 43:58Anthony Scaramucci?

  All kids scared about the booze and food. Okay. Is that the, is that the whole quiz?

• 44:02Katty Kay?

  That, that's the whole quiz. And I think you're gonna be.

• 44:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're gonna be. All right. Well, I give you an A plus on coming up with the quiz. And I'll give myself a self grade of a C plus for not knowing the answer.

• 44:13Katty Kay?

  Okay. Well, we will have another quiz for you next week and I'm, I'm kind of terrified that you might have one for me. So I'll have to try and get a heads up on that.

• 44:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  I can't wait.

• 44:20Katty Kay?

  We'll have a lot more next week. Join us on The Rest Is Politics next Friday. Anthony, great to be with you.

• 44:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  It's great to be on with you. Next Friday, we hope to see all of you guys. Lots to discuss as we get towards the 2024 presidential election.

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