316. Why Kamala Harris Still Has a Problem

What does Kamala Harris need to do next? How would Republicans react to a Trump loss? Would Harris ever debate Trump on Fox News? Join Katty Kay and Anthony Scaramucci as they answer all these questions and more on The Rest Is Politics US. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win tickets to the TRIP O2 Arena show in October. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP TOUR: To buy tickets for our October Tour, just head to www.therestispolitics.com Instagram: @RestPoliticsUS Twitter: @RestPoliticsUS Email: [email protected] Social Producer: Jess Kidson Assistant Producer: India Dunkley Producer: Fiona Douglas Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 0:04Rory Stewart?

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• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. It was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

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• 0:49Rory Stewart?

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• 1:06Speaker 02

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• 2:07Katty Kay?

  Hello and welcome to this edition of The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay.

• 2:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  And with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

• 2:14Katty Kay?

  You recovered from the week, Anthony, from your, are you still on that massive sugar high that you were on when you were down in Philadelphia?

• 2:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, no, I recovered from the week. I, no, I had a breakfast this morning of roasted cat. I'm now looking on the menu for lunch for a grilled dog.

• 2:28Katty Kay?

  Donald Trump looked like he'd eaten a cat at the end of that debate.

• 2:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  I mean, this stuff is just, you can't even ma, I mean, listen, it's so crazy. And how many times in your life you said, I, you can't make it up. But when you have somebody that should be in an insane asylum, running for president. But anyway, the cat tasted really good. We're just, I think the dogs are smarter than the cats, though. They, they heard Trump say that they're getting eaten and they were moving last night, you know? They were moving away from the television and they were running from Trump.

• 2:54Katty Kay?

  Yeah, all the gazillion cat and dog memes that we are now going to have to sit through. Anyway, my cats and dogs are very safe, I can tell you. No one is eating them. The poor birds in my backyard are less safe, but there you go. So, look, before we get going, we are very excited to announce that, beginning on Monday, we have something a little different for you. We've recorded a four-part series which takes you behind the scenes of the 2016 presidential election when Donald Trump won the White House.

• 3:24Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, Katty, it's just, it's just an amazing story, right? He's a reality television star. He's a property developer in New York. And then 18 short months later, he slayed, I don't know if you remember Charles Krauthammer, but Charles Krauthammer is now deceased. He was a great conservative speaker. He said the 2016 slate of Republican candidates was the best that he's seen in history. And here comes Donald Trump. He smoes down every single one of them. He defeats the Democratic establishment to win the presidency. And we're going to TikTok this every step of the way, what happened, all the trials and tribulations. And Katty, as you know, it creates post-traumatic stress in me, but we've already recorded it, so I'm starting to feel better.

• 4:06Katty Kay?

  Yeah, I was there with you. I mean, I covered that whole campaign and I got a little post-traumatic stress revisiting it all as well. We will- Release an episode every Monday for the next four weeks. However, if you want all four of these episodes on Monday, the 16th, if you just cannot wait, you can sign up to our brand new membership club. Just go to therestispolitics.com to become a founding member of Trip US. It just takes you a couple of minutes.

• 4:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, when you read these selling blurbs, I'm like thinking, Miss, she would have been such a good institutional salesperson on Wall Street, you know?

• 4:42Katty Kay?

  Can I just come and work for you, Anthony? I don't, what was I doing going into, you know, I started out at the Bank of England. I could have stayed in finance and what did I do?

• 4:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  You see that?

• 4:51Katty Kay?

  I went into journalism.

• 4:52Anthony Scaramucci?

  You would have been running Goldman Sachs, but now you're stuck with me on the Rest is Politics US. And you guys are stuck with us too. Listen, okay, please support us. We're going to have ad free listening, early access to the series. And starting in October, we'll be releasing a bonus episode every week for our founding members. So sign up now for therestispolitics.com. Katty is way better at this. I mean, I thought I was a good salesman, but I got to tell you, you're just blowing me away with these promos.

• 5:21Katty Kay?

  These Trump mini series episodes will only be going out on our separate The Rest is Politics US feed. So if you're listening on Rory and Alistair's feed, they very kindly let us share their space for the last few months. To make sure we're not confusing you about which version of Trip you're listening to, we'll also be moving our weekly Friday episode over to the Trip US separate feed too. So once you finish this episode, make sure you search The Rest is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts and hit follow so you don't miss an episode.

• 5:54Anthony Scaramucci?

  Are you going to say anything nice about Alistair before we get out of this promo?

• 5:58Katty Kay?

  Oh, Alistair and Rory, who have hosted, I'm going to miss them. I feel like, you know, we've been tenants, living in their basement for the last four months.

• 6:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  I promise to say something nice about Alistair every 10 seconds, but not these 10 seconds.

• 6:08Katty Kay?

  You just, you just want to be teacher's pet, but I'm afraid that spot is already taken, Mr. Scaramucci. Okay, on with today's show. Both of us, Anthony, have had a couple of days to digest that debate. You may have come off your sugar high. Probably have to have another look at the Scaramucci lollipop by the end of this episode, which is fine. I will give you one more week to show it off. But I've had a really interesting few conversations over the last two days since the debate with democratic strategists with a very interesting woman who is actually a Labour Party pollster for Keir Starmer in the UK, who has been Deborah Matinson, who's been over in the US helping the Harris campaign with some focus groups and also with a couple of American strategists I

• 6:53Katty Kay?

  know. And, you know, I think there was a strong sense that Kamala Harris won that debate. There's questions about the impact the debate will have on the actual election. And there is also a kind of awareness, I think, that Donald Trump lost the debate as well as Kamala Harris winning it. And that there were certain areas of her messaging which she still has not got right, got strong and kind of forceful and crisp enough to make a sale to that, whatever they are, 100,000 voters who are going to make the difference in this election. I mean, this is going to be such a tight election. And there's kind of whatever we used to say, there's a couple of Taylor Swift concerts worth of people who are going to make the

• 7:37Katty Kay?

  final choice. And the area that I feel, and I'd love your take on this, because I know you've been kind of in contact a lot with the campaign, is that she just has not really finalized that message on the single biggest issue of this election, and that's the economy. And that Kamala Harris's background as a prosecutor has made her very comfortable on some areas. She was very comfortable on abortion. She's very comfortable on kind of justice and law issues, gun control. But she doesn't really have the background of kind of economics as her sort of political passion point. And I think that's still something she's going to have to work on if she's going to persuade those voters who are sitting on the fence. I do feel like I'm

• 8:22Katty Kay?

  sort of the Democrats' angel of doom at the moment, you know?

• 8:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, I don't think you're the Democratic angel of doom. And I'm going to say some things, and this is why. You know, we'll probably end up getting canceled at some point, Katty, because you know, I'm going to say things that people don't like in our, our current culture. But Donald Trump got elected because we had a black man by the name of Barack Obama as president for eight years. Okay. And Van Jones, you and I both know Van, he worked for Obama, he's now a CNN commentator. The night that Trump got elected, he said this was a white lash. And so Donald Trump blew the dog whistles and said, come out for me if you're mad that a black man was in the White House, right? We named it the White House. So white people are supposed to live in the White House. So Donald Trump blows the dog whistle, come

• 9:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  out and vote for me. He wins the presidency. It was a white lash. Van Jones's words, not mine. So Donald Trump has great political instincts and everything I'm about to say is totally inappropriate, but I want you to hear it. So Donald Trump goes back after getting destroyed in that debate because he was ill-prepared. And he says, okay, I've got Roy Cohn's playbook. Okay. And so for listeners outside the United States, who is Roy Cohn? Roy Cohn was Donald Trump's lawyer. He was a very, very ruthless man. He was the lawyer for Joe McCarthy during the Red Scare in the 1950s. And he was a take no prisoners attitude. And Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father, said, go to Roy Cohn, he's going to mentor you. And Roy Cohn turned him into a ruthless SOB. And three things

• 9:55Anthony Scaramucci?

  that Roy said to Donald Trump. Never apologize to anyone about anything. Never admit defeat under any circumstances. No matter what happens, it's 21 to 0. Don't admit defeat. I deny the fact that you lost an election. And then the third thing is, no matter what other people are saying about you, go with your instincts. So let me tell you what Trump's instincts are right now. It's a team of one. He's talking to himself. There's probably like five people inside of his brain. And they're all having a committee meeting right now. And he's saying, you know what? This is a sexist country. I didn't win that debate, but I'm going to tell all my base that I won the debate. I'm going to go on Sean Hannity's show immediately after the debate because I obviously lost it. And I'm going to say that I crushed her and her campaign is over. And he's going to use the prop that, oh, she's asking

• 10:41Anthony Scaramucci?

  For their rematch, only losing fighters or UFC fighters would ask for a rematch. If she didn't win the debate, why would she be asking for a rematch? And then the last thing he's saying is, I'm gonna go hard, super hard at my base. And I'm gonna find moderates that are actually sexist, that don't like the idea that there could be a woman running the United States. And so whether people like this or not, that is Trump's strategy. Okay, and I'm gonna say two last things quickly. The assassination attempt, if I'm being brutally honest and I'm grading both of us, we both got it wrong. We sat there in July, looked at each other and said, this is gonna change the election. That picture of him is gonna ascend him to the presidency.

• 11:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  Katty Kay, it had virtually no impact on the polling. It's had virtually no impact on anything. And now we're at the debate. And some people like Frank Luntz, a famous political pollster here in the United States, said this debate is gonna win Kamala Harris the election. But I'm here to tell you that that debate is like the assassination attempt. It's gonna last a few moments in time. It's helped her, it's helped her with the fundraising. And something happened this morning that we need to tell people. Democratic registrations are off. They were boom when she got the nomination and they were rising, but in the last three days, they've trended downward. That's a problem for her.

• 12:08Katty Kay?

  Yeah.

• 12:08Anthony Scaramucci?

  And she needs, whether she likes it or not, she and Waltz need more media time. They gotta get out there more. This guy JD Vance, I was trading the PPI numbers this morning because I do have a, I do have a day job. And so I'm watching JD Vance on CNBC and I said, this son of a bitch, I gotta give him credit. He's on CNBC, he's lying through his teeth that Trump won the debate. And he's lying through his teeth about the tariffs and he's lying through his teeth about the economic policies.

• 12:36Katty Kay?

  And by the way, he knows better.

• 12:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, of course he does. And he knows better. And he's lying through his teeth about all these ridiculous things. But the gall to go on CNBC and lie through his teeth and push back on the journalists is a winning strategy, Katty. So guys. If you want to win this thing, you got to get in the flow. One thing that J D Vance said this morning that was true. He said to Joe Kern and the anchor. He said, you know, she's got to come into the process, the American journalism process. And answer questions, easy questions, hard questions.

• 13:09Katty Kay?

  All of them.

• 13:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  Medium questions.

• 13:10Katty Kay?

  Just get out there.

• 13:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  Any questions, you got to do it because if you don't do it, people are going to like, what is she doing?

• 13:15Katty Kay?

  I agree. We got it wrong on that assassination. And I think we were both kind of, you know, we looked at that photo and it was such an iconic photo and his moment of strength and the fight, fight, fight. And also, by the way, that was when he was up against Joe Biden. So to give us a little bit of slack there. It was a kind of different era in politics. But I had this text, I flew overnight from the States to London and I had this text from a very good democratic strategist who basically texted me same swing states, same undecided voters and same lack of clarity. And that was her kind of, you know, couple of days later analysis of Kamala Harris's problem. And it's true, it's still, there are still those undecided voters. And as we know, not very many Americans will watch the whole 90 minutes.

• 13:58Katty Kay?

  I know this had record ratings and they said it had 60 million, but whether people are actually tuning in for the whole thing. Mostly what they're seeing are the clips afterwards. And what I'm hearing from people who really want her to win, I mean, Jim Messina, who famously managed Barack Obama's reelection against you and Mitt Romney. And you personally and Mitt Romney back in 2012.

• 14:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  They ate our lunch, actually.

• 14:21Katty Kay?

  They ate your lunch. I was on Morning Joe with him the day after the debate. And, you know, he was obviously saying she did a great job and we were all very impressed by her performance. And like you said, Anthony, she went through the playbook and she remembered everything and she prosecuted the case against him. But what his concern was, was still that the, the lack of clarity on the single issue that ever since this election campaign has started, there has not been a single poll that has not showed us that cost of living, inflation, affordability, whatever you want to call it, is Americans' number one concern.

• 14:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  So why is she not doing that, Katty?

• 14:58Katty Kay?

  Look, it's not her wheelhouse. Her wheelhouse is law and justice and abortion rights. She's not Bernie Sanders who had Medicare for All, right? He had a very strong, clear populist economic message. She's not Elizabeth Warren who had corporate greed. Again, strong, clear economic message. She's not Donald Trump who had immigration. Strong, clear kind of message that he tied, yes, to cultural issues, but he's also tying it to the economy. And she has not developed, and maybe it's just because she's only been there for six weeks. Maybe it's because her team does not get how critical this is. And yet, focus group after focus group, Deborah Matinson, who's one of Keir Thomas-Polster's and advisers,

• 15:41Katty Kay?

  said she had had focus groups with people who are going through supermarkets. And as they're putting stuff into their basket, they're putting in orange juice, they're putting in milk, they're putting in eggs, and they're calculating on their phones how much it costs. And they get to the checkout and they put stuff back because they can't afford it. And that's the reality that a lot of these voters, who are going to decide this election, are dealing with. And until she comes up with a clear and crisp and passionate message, and I think standing there on stage saying, I believe in the middle class, I grew up in the middle class, I have a plan, it's not enough. Now, the one thing that Deborah Matinson said when she focus grouped people, and I asked her, you know, okay, so of the proposals that Kamala Harris has laid out so far,

• 16:25Katty Kay?

  are there any of them that are resonating with these, what she calls hero voters, the voters who will decide the election? Are there any of those proposals? And the one that she said, which I don't think you're going to like very much, because a lot of economists and finance people don't like it, was the promise to stop price gouging by supermarkets, which got slammed by, you know, by Democratic economists who worked for Barack Obama. Centrist Democrats didn't like that plan at all. But it is the single proposal that she has come up with, the $25,000 for new homeowners, apparently is not resonating with them. It's not an easy one for her because her background is not in that field. But she's surrounded by smart people.

• 17:08Katty Kay?

  And I think if they don't come up with a with a clear answer to this one compelling question, then however much people dislike Donald Trump's character, they have a nostalgia for the economy under Donald Trump. I mean, fair or unfair, they look back and they think, oh, price, you know, I could go to the supermarket and put stuff in my basket and I didn't have to take some of it out again at the end of the shopping run.

• 17:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  So let me, let me test you.

• 17:33Katty Kay?

  Damn, I hate these moments.

• 17:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, but not, not bad testing, like the way you embarrassed me with all these trivia things. I'm just like a

• 17:39Katty Kay?

  I haven't done one for a while, actually. I think I need another trivia thing.

• 17:42Anthony Scaramucci?

  I want you to respond to some of these things, okay?

• 17:45Katty Kay?

  Yes.

• 17:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Whose fault is the inflation? And so I know that it's situational. I know that if Trump had won the election, we'd have Trump inflation. I know that these things are cyclical. Does the American public know that? Whose fault is the inflation?

• 17:58Katty Kay?

  It gets pinned on whoever's in government and it doesn't really matter whose fault it is. Yeah, of course, it's supply chain. Of course, it's high interest rates. Of course, it's pumping. And to some extent, yeah, maybe it is the Biden administration because they pumped so much money into the American economy. There may be an element of that to which they own this.

• 18:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  The pump started in March of two thousand twenty under the Trump administration. So, so you can't blame it on Biden himself.

• 18:24Katty Kay?

  But I don't think it matters whose fault it is. It exists under them and therefore they own it.

• 18:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  Let me say it differently then. If, if it doesn't matter whose fault it is.

• 18:33Katty Kay?

  I mean, of course, it matters. It just doesn't matter to voters as they're deciding who to

• 18:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  I understand, but, but if I'm, if I'm on watch and inflation is happening on my watch, am I pinned with it? Yes or no?

• 18:43Katty Kay?

  Yes.

• 18:44Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay. And so therefore can I unpin myself with the American voters? Can I come up with a strategy? To unpin myself with the American voters. And so I believe you can. Okay. And I believe that you could message the people and I believe you can go on Bloomberg, CNN, MSNBC, you pick the messages. So, okay, guys, here's the chart. The federal government put $3 trillion of cash into the economy to save people when they were locked in their homes. The Federal Reserve dropped interest rates to zero, which caused another $4 trillion to get dumped into the economy. The supply chain broke. Supply chain broke. And so we had less goods and services in the economy and more money in the economy. Of course, we were gonna get

• 19:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  inflation. This started in the Trump administration. No fault of Donald Trump's, by the way, I'm not here to blame him. And it's no really, no fault of ours. We're trying to save the economy. Here are the things that Joe Biden and I have done to slow down the inflation. Here are the things that we've done to improve your bridges, roads and tunnels. And we put $250 billion into manufacturing and reshoring. And oh, by the way, let me show you this wage data for lower and middle income people. Okay. And she's not doing that. And she's gotta get out there and do that. And she's gotta say, oh, and you know what? Over the next six months is gonna be better. If you stay the course with me, in the next two years is gonna be even better. If you go with Mr. Tariff, Tariff Trump, you're gonna

• 20:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  have 20% tariffs, 100% tariffs. And you want to talk about regressive taxation. If you're lower or middle income, he's stealing the money from you.

• 20:19Katty Kay?

  And it's gonna drive up inflation and crash the dollar potentially.

• 20:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  The way they handled the price gouging speech, the only thing people heard were price controls. That's the only thing they heard. So 37 states have price gouging laws. Many of them are conservative red states. And what are those set up for? Katty, I don't want to bore you with monopoly power and inelastic pricing, but let me just say a few simple things. If I control All of the product and the consumer needs the product and there's no competitor. I can jack the prices on the consumer. That's unfair to consumer. The monopoly laws came into power, actually, in Renaissance Italy. People said, okay, we can't, can't allow for that.

• 21:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  In 1890s, we had the Sherman Antitrust Act in the United States. We gotta bust these things up. They get too big. We had one company, I think you guys had British Telecom in the UK. We had AT&T controlled every phone line, every phone call, every phone piece of equipment in the United States up until 1984. It was under the conservative Ronald Reagan. He broke up AT&T. And the great irony is the breaking up of AT&T unleashed all this innovation and, and we ended up with Google and Facebook and all this stuff because AT&T was sitting on all that tech. They wouldn't let it out because they had a monopoly and they were controlling prices through the monopoly. Vice President Harris, all she has to say to people is, look, when you have a monopoly

• 21:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  or you have five food companies controlling the food, they control the prices. It's not fair to the consumer. I am all about market prices, but they're manipulating the prices on their side. We're not, I'm not trying to manipulate the prices. I'm trying to create fairness for the consumer in the freest possible market. You see what I mean? And by the way, by the way, my, my rhetoric just now probably sucked a little bit, but you gotta get reps in, you know, it's like training your body. You gotta get reps in, you, okay? That, that interview sucked. Let me go to the next interview. Let me tighten up my language. And all of a sudden, two weeks from now, bam, she's on point on these messages.

• 22:26Katty Kay?

  She did a week of debate prep and she was good, right? She was on message. She was sharp. She had her lines down. She was confident. She delivered super well. She didn't forget the lines that she was going to deliver. So it shows that it does work. I mean, I think of the, of all of the things that you said that she should go on CNBC and the other business channels and say, it's that the thing that actually moves the dial with focus groups and polls is the very last bit. It's, it's not what happened beforehand. It's not what they've done up until now. I think keeping telling people that, you know, she could easily get pinned with Bidenomics. Stop telling people that what they did has helped them when they're still going through the supermarket and they can't afford to pay for their groceries. Tell them what is going to make it better in this next six months to a year.

• 23:12Katty Kay?

  And I think that's where she's falling down. Okay. Before we sound like we're getting super. Negative on what she's doing. There are a couple of things, I think, that she did well in that debate, that she can also carry on with messaging, and I wanted to get your sense of those. One of them was that towards the end of the debate, when Trump was asked about 2020, and whether he thought he had won the election, and he clearly said that he thought he had won the election, and that he was only being sarcastic when he said that he hadn't. And she gave what I thought was a very good rebuke of that, because she

• 23:48Katty Kay?

  tied his delusion, or lying about the 2020 election, to his mental fitness for office. And basically, what she said is, listen, this guy either believes genuinely that he won the 2020 election, although all the facts and the lawyers and the courts have said otherwise, or he's pretending to believe it, but he's not up to the job cognitively. Do you trust somebody who is so delusioned about something as clear and obvious as 2020 with the realms of government? And I thought that was, her comment on abortion has got so much attention, and it was a very powerful comment, and the fact that he refused to commit himself to saying that he wouldn't veto a national abortion ban, I think is

• 24:31Katty Kay?

  a problem for him. But actually, I think this answer, where she kind of brought it home, that he either doesn't grasp, or he ignores facts, and therefore, what would he do if he was having to negotiate with Congress? What would he do if he was having to negotiate with Putin? What would he do if he was having to negotiate with Kim Jong Un, or with the Iranians? How would you trust him to have the real grasp of the facts? If he doesn't get the facts of 2020, how can he govern? And I thought, actually, I thought that was one of her most compelling features in this debate. And the fact that she went into it, as you said, well-prepped, well-versed, on top of the subject. I mean, if this was a job interview for CEO, which of those two candidates would you be giving

• 25:13Katty Kay?

  the CEO's job for? Because if you want to be President of the United States, you have to prep, you have to know the facts, you have to be mentally agile, you have to be facile. And she proved herself, I think, better at all of those things. I thought she did well there. I thought that was, that was a point in her favour, that will potentially help. With those groups of voters who are still sitting on the fence, all three of them.

• 25:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, so now I'm really gonna get in trouble. Okay, you ready? Because I've got the big butt. Okay, I've got the big butt.

• 25:41Katty Kay?

  Come on, I was trying to end on a little oops.

• 25:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, but everything you said is totally true, and she should be the president, and I've obviously endorsed her. But, ready?

• 25:51Katty Kay?

  Yes.

• 25:51Anthony Scaramucci?

  But, she is a woman, Katty Kay. And this is not 1979 and Margaret Thatcher in the UK. This is a sexist country. She is a woman. And so you know this about this country. You gotta go 10 steps higher than any man.

• 26:09Katty Kay?

  Any country.

• 26:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  Any country, but definitely this one. She's a woman. And so to me, I would say there are three things that she's got to hammer into her campaign, her strategist and herself. Sanity. Okay, you're making a choice between sanity and insanity. A dog-eating, cat-eating, election-denying, orange lunatic, who's 78 years old in mental decline. So sanity versus insanity. Freedom. Michael Lewis, the very famous author, is writing about the federal government right now. And he's aghast that Donald Trump wants to fire 50,000 federal employees, rehire people that take a loyalty test to him,

• 26:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  and politicize the government, the government that's worked so successfully for us by not being politicized. Okay, you may not like certain aspects of the government, and certainly it could become more efficient. But the government has led to the most prosperous economy, or been part of the most prosperous economy, one of the most exceptional countries in the world. And so, don't break it, okay? Don't break it. Okay, so freedom. Okay, that would include reproductive freedom. It would not politicizing things that shouldn't be politicized. And then the last thing is middle-class growth, okay? The orange guy that I'm running against has done nothing to expand the middle class.

• 27:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  Let's go over the Biden-Harris strategy, and let's talk about what we've actually done.

• 27:41Anthony Scaramucci?

  To help the people that are aggrieved with the system. So I'm saying you get more freedom and you get more growth. And if you don't believe me, ask Goldman Sachs. And by the way, I know you're a progressive and Goldman Sachs is a big, ugly, bad bank. But I applaud her for bringing it up in the debate.

• 27:59Katty Kay?

  That Wharton School of Finance, no, she did, she did well, kind of listing all of the financial institutions.

• 28:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  They compare and contrast my plan to this guy's plan. This guy's plan is going to run you into a ditch. My plan is about growth.

• 28:13Katty Kay?

  The other thing I would add there is chaos that, I mean, maybe that ties in with sanity. One of the things I think people do respond to, people want, they want change in the sense they want prices to change. And they also want stability. This has been a really tumultuous few years, not just in America, but all over the world with, you know, we came out of 2008. We went into COVID. It's been, it's been a lot that people have had to deal with. And I think being able to represent stability and lack of chaos and say, do you remember the chaos that comes with this guy? And the sanity question I think is part of that. So look, there are things she can run on. I think we're both agreeing that, you know, she needs to work on that. And I think it's the last part of what you just said.

• 28:58Katty Kay?

  And I think standing up there and saying, I have a plan for the middle class is probably not enough. There needs to be something more distinct.

• 29:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  Get out there, get, get your reps in, get your reps in, build your mental biceps here. Let's go.

• 29:09Katty Kay?

  That's what I'm always telling myself and then I slack off and just don't do any more bicep curls. But there we go. I know you do. Okay, we're going to take a quick break and we'll come back and take some of your questions.

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• 31:21Katty Kay?

  Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Katty Kay, and Anthony Scaramucci. And before we start, because I am the official salesperson for this show, listen, guys, we are doing two live shows in New York City and in Washington DC at the end of October, right before the election. The New York Tickets, Team Anthony Scaramucci, sold out in one day. The DC Tickets, Washington DC, on the 30th of October, Team Katty Kay, we need to do a little bit better, my hometown. Please, guys, come out and support us. It'll be a really fun evening, and it's right before the election, so I'm sure you'll have a ton of questions. So go to restispoliticsus.com.

• 32:04Katty Kay?

  That's restispoliticsus.com to find out about that Washington DC show on October 30th. We'll be thrilled to see you there. And we are going to jump in because we've got some questions that have come in. I'm gonna give you this one, Anthony, and it's from Mick Cavatsini, which I hope I Mick, I hope I have said your name right. Why wouldn't the Harris team want a debate on Fox if their intention is to broaden the base and reach traditional Republicans? Great question, Mick.

• 32:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  So I, I think it's a, I think it's a great question, and I think she should debate him anytime, anywhere. And it was interesting, I was in the spin room before we went, I was in the holding tank before we went down to the spin room, and her team came out to offer some suggestions of what they wanted us to say to the media. And he said, the gentleman said, we've also requested another debate from the Trump campaign. There was a few people in there that's like, well, why do you want to do that? She already won this debate. Why do you need to debate him again? And the point being is that she is still, needs to get up the curve in terms of who knows her, and how much they know about her, and how comfortable they will be with her. That shows up in the polling, Mick. And so she should debate him

• 33:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  anytime, anyplace, anywhere, irrespective of the format.

• 33:22Katty Kay?

  What about irrespective of the moderators? Because Trump has already said that he didn't want the two moderators who were proposed for Fox News, Bret Baer and Martha McCullum. Trump has already said he doesn't want them. He only wants Laura Ingraham, Jesse Waters, and Sean Hannity, who are big Trump supporters. Do you think that would make for a fair or useful debate?

• 33:42Anthony Scaramucci?

  That would probably be unfair. That would probably be unfair.

• 33:45Katty Kay?

  Worth her doing?

• 33:46Anthony Scaramucci?

  But it, but it would take a lot of courage for her to do it. You know, and if, if I was sitting in a situation with Jesse and Sean, doing the antical stuff that they do for Trump, I would point that out to the American people. I'd say, look what's going on here right now. They're ganging up on me, because they know that we're dealing with somebody that's unhinged. They know they're dealing with someone that's not mentally well. We're dealing with an election denier. We're dealing with somebody that's cognitively impaired. And so we've got a three on one gang up right now, which is fine. Here's what I'm gonna do for the American people. I think it would soften. And by the way, if they hit her like that, I think it would soften her. And I think it would make people rethink the bullying nature of Donald Trump. So I I would do it. Okay, I understand why they don't want to do it.

• 34:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  But to me, debate him anytime, anyplace, anywhere. You know, I offered Steve Bannon money to come to my conference. And I said, let's debate. Okay, I'll pay you $100,000 speaking fee. Come to my conference, let's debate. You pick the moderator. Roberta Duran once said no mas when he was getting his ass kicked by Sugar Ray Leonard. Steve Bannon would not debate me because he knows that I know all the specious lies that he's going to tell in the debate. And I'm just going to call him out. She's got to get there with Trump. She's got to be able to do that with Trump.

• 35:00Katty Kay?

  Yeah, I think we need to hear more of her.

• 35:02Anthony Scaramucci?

  So Katty, I have a question to fire back to you. Ashley Prime, which is a phenomenal name, by the way, Ashley. Okay, what would happen to the Republican Party should Trump lose the election? Does it stick to Trump or have to reform totally? Okay, so I am too biased to answer this question. So go ahead, Katty.

• 35:19Katty Kay?

  There's a theory of the case that if Trump loses, the Republican Party, as we have known it for the last 30 or 40 years, the Republican Party of Mitt Romney, of John McCain, of Nikki Haley even, can say to the party structures and the party voters, look, Trump is a losing proposition. He lost in 2018, he lost in 2020, he lost in the 2022 midterms, and now he's lost in 2024. That brand of extremism doesn't work. Come back to the center because that's the only way that Republicans can win. Now, what I'm hearing from Republican pollsters and focus group people is something quite different. Is that actually, if Trump was suddenly out of the picture

• 36:03Katty Kay?

  from the Republican Party, even if he loses the 2024 election, the person that people would like in the Republican Party that polls the highest to be the next leader of the party is not Nikki Haley, it's Tucker Carlson, the firebrand media personality who used to be on Fox News and now has his own kind of show. And that they still want that populism, that it's going to take more than Trump leaving for this kind of nativist populist element that's in the Republican Party to Kind of work itself out of the system. I remember when Trump was first elected in 2016, speaking to actually a British political scientist, and it was the kind of beginning of the populist

• 36:47Katty Kay?

  era, and asking them, how long does populism take itself to work out through the system? How long do populist policies hang around before people start thinking they don't actually work for us? And I remember him saying it took something between 10 and 20 years. So we're at 2024, Trump was elected in 2016. I think we have a while longer of this. I don't think Trump losing means that you're suddenly going to get the old style Republican Party that we used to have.

• 37:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  I think it's a brilliant analysis. I'm just going to add one thing. What if they could find a young candidate who can appeal to some of Trump's base without the cruelty or the harshness? Tucker, unfortunately, is all about

• 37:27Katty Kay?

  Doesn't have that, right?

• 37:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah. So what about finding somebody that can appeal to Trump's base with less cruelty and harshness and see if they can create more space for other types of people to enter that party? The party, whether they like it or not, is going to need a bigger tent if they want to be successful on the national stage.

• 37:45Katty Kay?

  I think the issue there is how that person deals with the question of immigration. And we spoke in the first half of this program about how the economy consistently is the number one issue. The number two issue is immigration in America, as it is in Europe at the moment, such a big issue. And we're seeing in countries all over Europe how parties that are anti-immigration are picking up support. So whoever that young, kind of more open version of Trump was, more sunny, kind of less cruel version of Trump was, would have to have an answer to that that would satisfy people's concerns about immigration. Okay, here's another one for you, from Ellie. We all know that Trump is planning on disputing any result other than a win for him.

• 38:29Katty Kay?

  Do you think a landslide victory for Harris or a very narrow victory would be better for him to try and argue foul play? That's an interesting question.

• 38:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  Again, another good question. I think obviously the narrow victory is the one that he'll have the most chops on. A landslide will be Less compelling for him to make that argument. But I I've been saying to people, and here's a little bit of projecting, by the way. I was out with Trump alumni last night. I'll have to tell you offline how crazy that was, right? Because there were some diehard MAGA people there that were trying to poison my drink. And there were other people there saying Trump is crazy. It was really a nutty therapy session. But some of the diehard MAGA people are saying that Harris is going to challenge the election results. See, that's projecting on the report. Of course, he's not going to do that. But I I think he's not going to challenge the results. I'm going to be the contrarian on this. I'm going to explain why.

• 39:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's sentenced for his 34 criminal convictions on the 26th of November. If he loses the election and he does an insurrection move or tries to challenge a free and fair election, they're going to put him in jail. And he knows that. And he's going to be told that. And so I think he's going to figure out a way to mute that. And I think he's going to figure out a way to negotiate with these people. No jail time for a former president on any of these things that he's done that are criminal and insane.

• 39:48Katty Kay?

  And with that, great prediction. We will wrap it up. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you on Monday for the first episode of our mini series over on our separate The Rest Is Politics US feed. Just search The Rest Is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts and hit follow. Bye for now.

• 40:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  Thanks very much, guys. We'll see you next week.

• 40:57Speaker 09

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