337. Trump Returns: What Now?

Did Trump win it or did the Democrats blow it? What are the implications of a second Trump presidency for America and the rest of the world? Has rightwing populism delivered a fatal blow to liberal democracy? Catchup on the last of our three special US election livestreams. Alastair is joined by Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History, Marina Hyde from The Rest Is Entertainment, and Anthony Scaramucci from The Rest Is Politics US, to unpack Trump’s historic comeback victory and grapple with what it means for all of us. We also hear from political strategist, Peter Hyman, who predicted a Trump victory. 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 a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. 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 Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: Evan Green, Becki Hills, Alice Horrell Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas, Callum Hill 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

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

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve, 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?

  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?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/risterspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 2:10Alastair Campbell?

  Hello, welcome to the last of our three Rest is Politics live streams from New York. This morning, the scale of Donald Trump's victory is even clearer. Not only has he won the Electoral College, he's won the popular vote too. Conventional wisdoms have been shot to pieces. Women were supposed to be taking Kamala Harris over the line, yet more than half of all white women backed Trump. Sick jokes about Puerto Rico were supposed to swing Latinos behind Harris. Trump won them over by 10 points. Wherever you care to look, if there was a swing, the chances are it swung to Trump. Now, there are very big questions that I'll be discussing with Dominic Sandbrook from the Rest is History, Marina Hyde from the Rest is Entertainment, and Anthony Scaramucci, once a Trump comms man, now presenter of our US sister podcast.

• 2:54Alastair Campbell?

  If you're asking where Rory is, he's on another plane back to London for what we call a previous engagement. What does it mean for Ukraine, NATO, the climate crisis, women's rights, and the future of politics around the world? So, let's begin with our reflections. Marina, how are we feeling?

• 3:13Marina Hyde?

  Well, I slept 90 min's.

• 3:14Alastair Campbell?

  Well done.

• 3:15Marina Hyde?

  But here is something that we didn't have to say five years ago in America. It is important to accept the results of the elections. I don't have to be happy that a convicted felon who stoked an insurrection against the peaceful democratic transfer of power is... and a guy who's been accused of sexual assault by 26 women. I don't have to be happy that they're the president, but I accept it.

• 3:36Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, and Dominic, you predicted it. You also said that you weren't going to appear today. Thank you very, very much for doing so. I'm glad that I managed to psychologically manipulate you into actually bothering me to turn up.

• 3:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  Is that what it was?

• 3:52Alastair Campbell?

  How are you feeling this morning? What's your reflection overnight? I've sort of... I've kind of... I feel even worse this morning than I did yesterday. But what's your take on it?

• 4:02Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think it changes the way we think about Trump and arguably about Trumpism in America. So, it makes us realise that 2016 was not an aberration, that all those people who said at the time, "This is not America." I mean, that's a classic line in The Guardian, The New York Times, whatever. This is America.

• 4:18Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Dominic Sandbrook?

  Um. Now, the the margins are not enormous. A different candidate, a better candidate, can win for the Democrats.

• 4:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  But they will not win until they they reckon with the problems they have.

• 4:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 4:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Winning voters in in the Rust Belt, in the Sun Belt, suburban voters. And and actually, a lot of the people they thought they would, that they thought were theirs. So women, Latinos, black voters. There was a shift to Trump among almost every single demographic.

• 4:46Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 4:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  And that should really worry you if you're a Democrat.

• 4:48Alastair Campbell?

  I think also, Anthony, that um, I think underlines as well, I've always said this. Really, really special politicians don't come along very often. And I think Bill Clinton was a very special politician.

• 5:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 5:01Alastair Campbell?

  I think Barack Obama was a very special politician. In his own way, I think Joe Biden was a very special politician. Stayed too long. Uh, whether we like it or not, you cannot under, you can't dispute that Donald Trump is a very, is it utterly, I think, unique phenomenon? And we, and I think one of the things we've got to, we we haven't really handled it well. The progressives have not handled this sort of populist, polarizing, post-truth politics well.

• 5:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I want to say something, because I had the chance to reflect on this, I want to get the reaction of all of you. There was a great meme that the Harris team was promoting. It was a man at a voting booth, and there was a young daughter. Dad, how are you voting?

• 5:39Alastair Campbell?

  I'm voting for you.

• 5:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm voting for you. Well, you know what happened last night? It was a mother at the voting booth, and the son was saying, Mom, how are you voting? And she was saying, I'm voting for you. Forty-six percent of the women in this country turned out for Donald Trump. And I'm wondering if we are having an existential crisis in the country in the sense that we've left out a very large group of people. Uh, we cancel people immediately, we have this whole D E I thing. And men eighteen to thirty-six are more likely to commit suicide by thirty-three percent relative to other demographic groups and age groups. And I'm just wondering if the culture, if the Democrats have gotten the culture wrong

• 6:23Anthony Scaramucci?

  and have been tone deaf to this dilemma, and it showed up in the polling booth.

• 6:27Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry.

• 6:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  I was about to say, when you look at the demographics, so among young voters, so young voters in Michigan, fifty-two percent of eighteen to twenty-nine year olds, fifty-one percent of thirty to forty-four year olds in Michigan backed Trump. There was a, there was a shift among voters of all demographics. And I think the tendency that the Democrats have is to divide people up into specific groups and to say, we'll get women, we'll get these, you know, to sort of parcel people up and to assume that they have a lock on particular groups.

• 6:58Marina Hyde?

  And that he's got angry old white men.

• 7:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, exactly.

• 7:01Alastair Campbell?

  And yet, look. The angry old people in Michigan voted more for Harris than for Trump, the young people. And then, but the other thing is, it's interesting, and this, this underlines how we can't just see people as being a Republican, a Democrat. So abortion, massive issue in the campaign arena. But progressive abortion rights amendments were on the ballot and they passed in seven states. Montana, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Maryland, New York, they failed in three, South Dakota, Nebraska, and California. So people have been able to say, I'm going to vote for Kamala Harris, but I'm going to vote against more liberalisation on abortion. I'm going to vote for Donald Trump, but I'm also going to vote for greater abortion rights. And I think this idea that we sort of, so when

• 7:45Alastair Campbell?

  the Democrats told us the whole time, abortion's going to take it over the line, I mean, politics doesn't work like this.

• 7:51Marina Hyde?

  And actually, it's really interesting. Someone told, gave me a great saying the other day in a military context. They said that the British treat war as sport and the Americans treat war as war. And in this analogy, like the Democrats are the British and the Republicans are the Americans. On this issue of abortion, over the past decade, I've read and listened to such a lot of stuff about how patiently and strategically Republicans and anti-abortionists have worked. And they don't work on like, and I'm contrasting this within general how the Democrats work, by the way, which is such a sort of scattergun and like, something will come along approach. And they do things in five, ten, thirty year plans. And they have clear outcomes and they work, they relentlessly focus on them. So

• 8:34Marina Hyde?

  they've got obviously one big target, like you overturn Roe versus Wade, which they succeeded in doing because of how they had put people in positions. And they spent ages getting, years getting these people into position. And so now you have to say, what's their stretch target? And we'll have to see about that. But. Also, the demographics, the long-term, demographics are shifting, so they're trying to think, well, how do we get voters? And they have these long-term plans to bring voters to them. And you see, you know, one in three minority ethnic voters in this country voted for Trump. And that wouldn't have happened before. So they are bringing people over. But they are so strategic, they have the, they had, by the way, if they had got the wrong result, they had the right people in places to say, no, we won't certify. They had got everything, they have all their ducks

• 9:16Marina Hyde?

  in a row. And the Democrats are just not good at this. They're so bad at planning. They don't plan ahead, and they wait for things to come up, and they are in these permanent convulsions. They are a mess.

• 9:28Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but, and yeah, we were talking about, you were saying in Pennsylvania, how brilliant the ground operation was, and how they got more money.

• 9:34Marina Hyde?

  Well, that's the ground operation when you get to the election campaign. This is not five years out.

• 9:40Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I'm a Bill Clinton, always used to say, that it's really hard in our country, the UK, in your country, the US, it is harder to win from the left than it is from the right, okay? And he was, and he always said, they have got the better songs, they have got the better organisation, they usually have the media on their side, and it's even more so now that you've got people like Musk in charge. And that is why, the point you were making last night, Dominic, if you are on the left and the centre-left, you've got to fight harder, you've got to be more strategic, not less strategic.

• 10:11Marina Hyde?

  Process-oriented, I don't think they are.

• 10:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, but I mean, they had the organisation, but what they didn't have is the right candidate. Let's just be honest about it, okay? They, she's a nice person, she's articulate, but they put her in a ridiculously difficult situation.

• 10:29Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, but that's the long-term.

• 10:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  It was literally like a Mission Impossible, right? Okay, July 21st, go, you were the vice president that we ignored in the administration, we dished you, we dropped bombs on you in the press, but now you're going to be the beacon of democratic hope in the society, because the person that was 81 couldn't Couldn't handle.

• 10:49Marina Hyde?

  You know, he was, he was going to be eighty one and they really knew that for not like literally eighty one years, but for quite a lot of years. They knew that he was going to.

• 10:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  But that's the power of the presidency. He wasn't budging.

• 10:58Marina Hyde?

  You know, that's the organisation. Yeah, they were paralyzed.

• 11:01Alastair Campbell?

  But Dominic, what do you make of this thing about winning from the right, winning from the left? Whether, in fact, even whether these left, right terminologies is still as relevant as it was.

• 11:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because both parties are coalitions, of course, all big parties are. The Republicans had won the popular vote, what, in two thousand and four? But they hadn't won it in two thousand and eight, two thousand and twelve, twenty sixteen or twenty twenty. So it's not that it is that America is inherently a Republican or indeed a right wing country. But I think the Democrats to some degree, and especially liberal Democrats, are blinded by their own evangelism and by their own sense of virtue. So they believe what they want to believe. They talk, there's a danger, of course, in a very fragmented culture. We were talking so much last night, weren't we?

• 11:45Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 11:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  You were talking about this, Marina, about the, the collapse of the kind of, the political common ground where, where people meet to have conversations.

• 11:53Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Dominic Sandbrook?

  So people retreat into their silos. The dangers of the echo chamber, particularly in the United States, where you are often physically more distant.

• 12:02Marina Hyde?

  A million miles apart, yeah.

• 12:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah. So I think the Democrats, there was a line I used last night, which I, I'll use again. I think they talk a lot about MAGA voters.

• 12:12Alastair Campbell?

  Not to.

• 12:12Dominic Sandbrook?

  But they don't talk to them.

• 12:14Alastair Campbell?

  That's what Patah has been saying.

• 12:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  And try to meet them on their ground.

• 12:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  They despise them though, Dominic, they despise.

• 12:18Alastair Campbell?

  Do you think?

• 12:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well.

• 12:19Alastair Campbell?

  See, we get, we get this.

• 12:21Anthony Scaramucci?

  It's deplorable, the, Hillary called them deplorable. You know, my friend Mark Cuban, and I'm almost embarrassed to bring him up because he's such a great guy, he made a mistake. He said, well, women are voting for Trump, they're stupid. You can't do that.

• 12:34Alastair Campbell?

  But that's a terrible mistake. But I know during, this is where the right are better at weaponising this. During the Brexit debate, we constantly get told. That you think they're all racist. No, I don't. You think they're all stupid. No, I don't. I really don't. But that is what the right are much better at. They're disciplined at basically trying to delegitimize attacks upon them.

• 12:55Marina Hyde?

  But many people talking about it do do come off. The vibe is condescending.

• 13:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  There's a large group of the population that has an emotional trigger bomb in their personality. And Trump knows the code on that bomb. And boom, he can trigger them.

• 13:11Marina Hyde?

  And you can see them talking on social media, which in the old days, you wouldn't have been able to see it so much. But now people are able to say, look at what this person's done and make viral these kind of moments of great condescension or being patronizing. It's so easy. Everybody sees it. Whereas before, it would have been in a

• 13:26Alastair Campbell?

  against the throne.

• 13:27Marina Hyde?

  Unless you were there, you didn't hear it.

• 13:28Anthony Scaramucci?

  I before I, I'm sorry. No, I spoke at an event over here.

• 13:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  Speaking event. The woman that logged me in, white woman, mid 50s. She knew exactly who I was. I'm sorry that the thing lost. Does it tell me the truth? Did you vote for him? Oh, yes, I did vote for him. Why did you vote for him? Oh, no, I voted for him because the left is a mess. And they, I don't like the culture that they're shoving down the face of my children. And I don't think she could handle the American military. That's what she said to me. I mean, look, it's a sample. But you have to understand that they didn't form the right narrative. And by the way, in fairness to her, I give her an A plus on that campaign. She had 105 days.

• 14:11Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  What was she gonna do in 105 days? He's been running for nine years.

• 14:16Dominic Sandbrook?

  There's also a bread and butter aspect to this, though. If you look at the exit polls, the number one issue is the economy. And the inflation that peaked a couple of years ago, that obviously left a scar in the minds of a lot of ordinary voters. Now, there are a lot of people, frankly, more affluent people who say, do you know what? The economy is not doing too badly. I think Biden did a pretty good job with the economy. But if you're not very well off, those price rises matter an enormous amount. And when you look at data over like 50, 100 years of election, high prices are a killer for an incumbent party.

• 14:47Marina Hyde?

  And she didn't really acknowledge it or create a clear message or say or suggest it was a staging post and that it had got it had come down and was gonna come down further.

• 14:56Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but you look at the economic data in these swing states in Trump's period and Biden's period, Biden kind of wins. He does on the data. What he's brilliant at, we've just got to acknowledge this, what he's brilliant at that is even if people Actually, on a kind of objective level, have opportunity, have, you know, things in their lives, he can make them feel, even when they do, that they don't.

• 15:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Alistair, you must know this better than anybody. Politics is so much about narrative.

• 15:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 15:25Dominic Sandbrook?

  You create a story, you tell people the story.

• 15:27Alastair Campbell?

  That's what he's brilliant at.

• 15:28Dominic Sandbrook?

  And Trump is very good at doing that. And, you know, everyone's sort of written him off as this orange monster, which of course to some degree he is, but he's also a brilliant political storyteller.

• 15:36Alastair Campbell?

  I spoke this morning to, um, trigger alert Nigel Farage, um, and because I think it is important, I mean, I really do think, I'm slightly obsessed with this Peter Hyman project that he's engaged in about how progressives deal with this sort of politics. And I said to Nigel Farage, I'm really, I'm cut all this normal stuff that we do, just sort of telling each other we're both terrible human beings, blah, blah, blah. What do you think? I don't, I genuinely don't understand how somebody who's all the things that we've said he is, can win, the sex, the lies, the da, da, da. He said, look, there's all this stuff. People just, they want a strong leader. If their lives, if they're angry about their lives, they want somebody who kind of acknowledges that and addresses it, and they don't want to be patronized by a bunch of, you know, woke warriors. That is kind of how he summed it up.

• 16:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  The woke warriors for me. I, at the end of the day, I don't think these people understand the nanny state wokeness where a 10-year-old kid is coming back from school and the mother's being called that the 10-year-old said something that was inappropriate from a pronoun perspective. And now the kid is being rebuked at the school and the mother's smoke is coming out of the mother's ears.

• 16:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but they also, I mean, listen, how many people actually, when I talk about weaponizing issues, how many people actually have had these sex trade operations? The way he talks about it, you think the whole world was.

• 16:58Marina Hyde?

  No, not at all. I think there are lots of those mothers, you know, holding, you're the cartoon, the meme of the person who's thinking, you know, I don't want a boy on my daughter's swim team. Maybe it hasn't happened, but they don't want it and they're thinking of that. And they're thinking that I'm being told to accept something that I'm not sure about. And this is what lots of those women who, who voted for Trump were thinking.

• 17:20Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, and I think it's, we talked last day about the parallels of 1968 in that election. And one of the things, that was the Vietnam War election, but the one thing that voters hated more than the Vietnam War was people who protested against the Vietnam War, the long hair, the Ho Chi Minh slogan, the Vietcong flags, all of that kind of stuff. Of course, that's only a tiny minority, but people see it. And so the woke stuff, I agree, of course, it is a small group who push it.

• 17:45Marina Hyde?

  But it's shared everywhere.

• 17:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  And it's a tangential thing, but everybody's, and social, it's everyone on social media.

• 17:49Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, they weaponise successfully.

• 17:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  But Democrat, but the Democrats are not, they should see that.

• 17:54Alastair Campbell?

  Correct.

• 17:55Dominic Sandbrook?

  They should have more discipline.

• 17:56Alastair Campbell?

  Not play into it.

• 17:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, of course, absolutely.

• 17:58Alastair Campbell?

  Marina, we, we, pictures, particularly when we talk about history, pictures are so, so important. I mean, I've been trying, I was trying to think overnight, what's the, what's the picture of this campaign? I think it's probably the assassination.

• 18:12Marina Hyde?

  Yes, and I was, okay, can I just say that it was 3.29 last night? And I was basically speaking tongues, but when Rory said that, I know he's not here, so this is slightly unfair. But when he said that 20% of people in the world would have just got straight back up, like punched the air like something covered in blood, reflexively having just clearly survived the task, that was not correct.

• 18:34Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 18:34Marina Hyde?

  And I don't even believe that people, anyone in the military.

• 18:37Alastair Campbell?

  But Rory did call the election right, didn't he? Oh, no, he didn't, sorry.

• 18:40Marina Hyde?

  He's like a punditry terminator, though, like he was getting back, you know, they're laid out and then they're getting back and they're rebuilding themselves and they're coming at you shooting more punditry. And that's, he's a punditry terminator.

• 18:51Dominic Sandbrook?

  To be fair, that is this show.

• 18:52Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Alastair Campbell?

  So what do you, what do you think the implications of the assassination attempt and his survival? Do you think, I mean, none of us know.

• 18:59Marina Hyde?

  Well, as I said yesterday, it's interesting because you'd think that something so shocking and so, and that produced such an iconic image. We were going to talk about, but even while it was happening, you thought we won't be talking about this in three days. But that, if you want to think of one sort of iconic thing that people will have in their mind, then they may have various images of Trump. But that is now surely going to be like in the mental image bank, you're gonna, that's gonna be number one.

• 19:23Alastair Campbell?

  Listen.

• 19:24Marina Hyde?

  I'll never forget it.

• 19:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  When, and this is a question really for Dominic, but my observation, when you look at a leader. A Reagan, a Tony Blair, the people, they see something in the leader. What do they see, right? Different characteristics. Resilience is something that Americans see in Donald Trump. But I guess the question I have for Dominic and you Marina, the coarseness of the language. You know, there's an expression that the fish sinks from the head down. If the leader is coarse and the leader is misogynistic or talking in racist-like tones, it filters down to people. It opens up like a portal or a doorway of acceptance.

• 20:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  Do you believe that historically?

• 20:03Dominic Sandbrook?

  I do. Just the last thing on the picture. I think what the picture expressed was a kind of vitality that Trump has. I mean, he's roughly the same age as Joe Biden, but Trump is so much more vital and kind of resilient than Biden is. And I think the picture played to his strengths there. I completely agree with you, Anthony. I think for those of us who don't really care for Trump, his victory, his success legitimizes this kind of language.

• 20:29Marina Hyde?

  Hundred percent.

• 20:30Dominic Sandbrook?

  And I think, cast forward 10 years or 15 years, when you have a generation of politicians coming through who are currently in their twenties, maybe, yeah, in their thirties, who see what works. They will see this, they will say, this is what works. The polarization, the stridency, the aggression, the nicknames, the demeaning your opponent, the sort of ostentatious lack of the decences that were so common in the kind of politics of the post-war years.

• 20:57Marina Hyde?

  And it's so hard to put that way of talking back in the box. I'm not even sure you can. And it's also how people talk on social media. But just one more thing on that image. I would say that the one thing everyone did say when that happened was, well, that was the election. That was the ballgame. And afterwards, we started, you know, you kind of correct and think, oh, that wasn't, hang on a second, hang on a second. But maybe in retrospect, if we go back and think, come on, how could, how could someone who did something so unbelievably unique not actually be a very, very special kind of electoral force that people just missed, that people underestimated?

• 21:29Dominic Sandbrook?

  But this is the thing about, there's never one thing.

• 21:32Marina Hyde?

  No.

• 21:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  There are thousands of things. But that, I think you're right, will be the image. But just briefly going back to this, I think we should talk about Joe Biden in a minute. Just briefly going back to this whole sort of woke thing.

• 21:42Alastair Campbell?

  I still find it incredible that, so that was a big issue in his speeches, it's been a big issue. I heard they were, they spent twenty five million in the last few days of the campaign on adverts to young black men and Latinos about the transgender issue. And yet, we are here in a country where, as Kamala Harris said, your kids go to school and you don't know if they're going to come back, they might get shot, okay? And yet, she also said, when she was under attack on the gun control stuff, you know, I've got a gun. Yeah. You know, so it's like, is that, how have they not managed to make that an issue that helps them? So I just think that this, I said this yesterday, I think that Trump winning again is, the reason why I think it's so seismic is I think it says something

• 22:25Alastair Campbell?

  far more profound than just the fact that he's won again. It says something really profound about what's happening in politics generally, but specifically here.

• 22:32Anthony Scaramucci?

  I want to, I want to say something very superficial and I want you to react to it, okay?

• 22:37Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 22:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, because this is how a lot of my friends think, all right, I'm a Wall Street business executive, yes, I've, I've had twenty four years in presidential politics, but I do run money. The Wall Street business executive is looking at this thrilled. The Wall Street business executive says, in their minds, okay, we've got the return of a strong leader.

• 22:55Alastair Campbell?

  Tesla shares.

• 22:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's, he's, he's gonna end, he's gonna end the war, uh, he's gonna solve the Middle Eastern crisis. They do believe this, okay? Uh, he's gonna help businesses, large and small, in the country. And maybe the tariffs aren't so bad, Anthony, you know, I mean, we, we think of the tariffs as starting, uh, depressions, the Smoot-Hawley, uh, Trade Act in the nineteen thirties, but maybe they'll protect our industries and we can regrow our manufacturing. And Wall Street responded this morning with a twelve hundred point rise in the Dow Jones, okay? And so I'm, I'm sad for my nation on many levels, but I'm not sad for my portfolio right now. My portfolio went to the moon, particularly

• 23:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  my Bitcoin position. So, so I want you to respond to that. So you push back on me now, go to the second or third derivative, tell me as a superficial Wall Street executive, what I'm missing in the analysis.

• 23:49Alastair Campbell?

  I don't think that's necessarily that's superficial. What I do think is that that, the, the, the attitude, that's what matters, which a lot of these guys think.

• 23:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  ought again, I think, to be to the benefit of the Democrats because that is driving a lot of the inequality, the accumulation of wealth in this in an ever shrinking group of people. And yet, the people who paid the price for that have voted for Trump. That's what that's my reaction.

• 24:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  They voted against their economic and by the way, I was voting against my economic interest because my thing is I don't want my fellow neighbor suffering, Alice.

• 24:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  You got a lot of crypto, haven't you?

• 24:23Anthony Scaramucci?

  I do got a lot of crypto, yeah. Eat your heart out, eat your heart out, yes, it'll be.

• 24:26Dominic Sandbrook?

  You gave me a Bitcoin once, but you're so generous, I gave it back.

• 24:29Marina Hyde?

  I sometimes hate it when I hear.

• 24:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  Thank God, because that was like forty percent ago, so let me just make the sign of the cross on the ear.

• 24:35Marina Hyde?

  But I sometimes hate it when people say they voted against their economic interest as though that's so stupid and that's the worst thing you could possibly do. This, you know, this is human life. There are things that matter sometimes to people more than money.

• 24:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  No question. Trump, Trump, Trump says that better than anybody.

• 24:49Marina Hyde?

  And to constantly say that you voted against your economic interest, therefore you're the sort of moron at the bottom of the pile. Well, that's wrong. I don't think we do think that.

• 24:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, but I'm saying it different for myself. I voted against. Because I want rising living standards for these people. There's no reason to be.

• 25:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Anthony, I think people are the best judges of their own interests. I think it's up to them to decide what matters most to them. And through history, for as long as there's been democratic politics, a lot of people have often decided that what matters to them are those classic kind of family, faith, flag issues, what people dismiss as culture war issues, they really matter to people. So the trans donor stuff or, you know, in the sixties, the war.

• 25:28Anthony Scaramucci?

  Whatever from Trump's rise, what you just said, should I should probably tattoo it on the inside of my skull, what you did. Because because that is, that is an apps, it's an axiomatic historical fact.

• 25:41Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 25:41Alastair Campbell?

  I just saw flashed up there, somebody was confirming that R F Kennedy fluoride is going to get taken out of the water.

• 25:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  It's ridiculous. It's it's from a health, a public health and safety thing. The fluoride thing is on that conspiracy, you know, which.

• 25:59Marina Hyde?

  That's against your health interest and, you know, I think we can all agree that's not great.

• 26:04Dominic Sandbrook?

  Dominate.

• 26:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  I hate that thing, but you know, I'm going to do. What will history say about Joe Biden? History will barely mention Biden now. He'll be an interregnum between the two Trump presidencies. So people will talk, he will be an actor in the Trump story. People will write books about the Trump years, the age of Trump. And Biden will be, you know, an important character in that story. He's a remarkable figure because he's the only person who was able to beat Trump. And we've all been laughing at Biden for being a thousand years old and for the last four years. But maybe we should take him a little bit more seriously and look at what he got right.

• 26:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  And the guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who knew how blue collar Americans thought, who knew how to talk to them in the kind of, you know, the simple, kind of earthy terms. So paradoxically, it means that Biden looks like a punctuation point in history. But at the same time, it also makes him look politically more adept, I would say.

• 27:10Marina Hyde?

  But again, they didn't plan. They really, he was the only person who could beat him in 2020. But there's such a lack of planning to not see. Everyone was saying from the minute he was elected, oh, he's going to be, look, what age is he going to be? He's already a bit doddering. I remember seeing him on the last day of that campaign in 2020. And he got off a bus and mentioned, thanked someone there in the name of his dead son. And I remember thinking, he's only one, you know, he was, you know, he's obviously a very, very long and tiring campaign. And it's, he's doing 20 stops on the last day. But I remember thinking, this is, that's not great at all. And yet it was, it was completely covered up and it was a non-issue. And we now know that they were concealing quite a lot about his state for people.

• 27:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  It just shows you rather, the old Enoch Powell say all politics ends in failure. I mean, Joe Biden has had an incredible political career and an incredible life. So to hear something like you say, it's going to be like a punctuation mark in the Donald Trump story is, yeah, but I guess.

• 28:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Probably not going to get invited to the last Biden Christmas party now because I'm going to say something that none of them are going to like, but I really think there's a big responsibility for Barack Obama in this story. I really believe when they are writing that history, they're going to say that Barack Obama blocked Joe Biden, literally, physically blocked him. You remember that very long Rose Garden speech that Biden gave in 2016? You can't run. I cut a deal with the Clintons in 2012. I told them I'm paving the way. And so this is the group that says democracy's on the line, democracy's on the

• 28:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  line, but no democratic process in 2016, no democratic process in 2024. You see what I'm saying?

• 29:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 29:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  And you got to say to yourselves for a second, that does Obama bear some responsibility for doing that?

• 29:07Alastair Campbell?

  You think if Biden had stood when Hillary didn't?

• 29:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, he would have.

• 29:13Alastair Campbell?

  You think Biden would have won?

• 29:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  I do.

• 29:15Alastair Campbell?

  The Trump story would have?

• 29:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  No Trump story. Trump would have been back on The Apprentice. Trump would have been railing this screed that Nigel, this screed. Could another populist figure rise? Perhaps.

• 29:28Alastair Campbell?

  But you think the Trump story would have been dead then?

• 29:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  Dead. Would have been no Trump.

• 29:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  And don't forget Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. I think Biden would have outperformed her. He'd have outperformed her in the states, those kind of so-called blue walls.

• 29:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, think about it this way, Dominic. He beat the incumbent sitting president with all the power of the incumbency and Air Force One swooping into these areas. He beat that. It's very hard, as you know, and I'm sure everyone here knows, to beat an incumbent president. They have the power and the flex of the presidency, and he beat it. But Obama stopped Biden from running, and I think that's also got to be a part of the story.

• 30:05Dominic Sandbrook?

  Do you not think there's also an Obama derangement syndrome at work? So as soon as Obama won the presidency, there was always going to be an inevitable backlash. There are a lot of people, frankly, I mean, I hate saying-

• 30:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  We were calling it white lash last night, but that's-

• 30:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  There are a lot of people who basically were inflamed by the spectacle of a black president.

• 30:21Anthony Scaramucci?

  No question.

• 30:22Alastair Campbell?

  There's a very interesting tweet on the screen there. She raised a billion dollars WTF. She was a pitcher who came in during the sixth inning, the best she could.

• 30:32Alastair Campbell?

  It's an absolutely beautiful day, I have to say that. We're in a wonderful building. Thank you to Spotify for putting us up like this. We have back with us Peter Hyman. I should just remind people, Peter was a colleague of mine in the Labour Party back in the mid 90s, and then in Downing Street, then he went off to become a head teacher, went back to help Keir Starmer when his landslide, and has now been spending a time going around the country, talking particularly to Republicans. I wanted to get you back, Peter, today because one of the people saying, why wasn't I more shocked last night? Why wasn't I sort of banging my head on the desk and said... It was partly having seen you earlier in the day, because you were the person who persuaded me actually that Trump's going to win,

• 31:12Alastair Campbell?

  because you'd been explaining to me what you were seeing and hearing on the road from both sides. So just straight up, very simple question. Why did all the people who voted for Trump vote for Trump?

• 31:25Speaker 09

  So I thought within a few days of getting here that he would win comfortably. I didn't think it was close. I didn't believe the polls. I'm not just saying that now. I was texting you and other people. I think the starting point, and I know you've touched on this quite a lot in the broadcast, and the left has got to understand this. There is a swamp, and it does need draining. The left finds that impossible to understand. In other words, as someone put it to me, government hasn't performed for about 20 years. Hasn't performed on the economy for working people. It's done what people see as unnecessary wars. It hasn't delivered what they say they're going to deliver, so there are a lot of broken promises. So on the fundamental stuff, Washington is not working, as people see it,

• 32:10Speaker 09

  and Westminster is not working, the equivalent. And before anyone in Britain runs to the defence and say, well, that's just Trump language, all you've got to say is Grenfell Tower, Hillsborough, blood infection,

• 32:24Alastair Campbell?

  West Office.

• 32:25Speaker 09

  Post Office, Windrush scandal, let alone 8 million waiting for treatment for the NHS and all the sort of public service delivery. No one can say that the government is delivering for working people, and that's the starting point. Then the second point is, if that's the premise, then you need a disruptor. And that explains Trump, who people still don't understand. You need, if the swamp, if the swamp needs draining, you need someone who's capable of knocking heads together and draining it, therefore you need a larger-than-life personality. What comes with that is the showbiz and the over-the-topness and the language we don't like and all the rest of it, because that is the essence of who he is, and that's what people are buying into.

• 33:07Speaker 09

  If he softened, if he softened all of that, then he wouldn't be the disruptor.

• 33:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  I respect that, I respect it, but he had four years to drain it, he didn't drain it, so why, why is that?

• 33:16Speaker 09

  Well, what is staggering, there was a poll I saw that showed of all the presidents going back to Clinton, people thought by, by about 20% on all of them, some slightly less, that he had delivered for working people. In other words, his reinvention of his term of office, whatever we might think in terms of the stats, everyone I spoke to, that's why Kamala Harris's language, "Don't go back", people said, "I want to go back, I thought it was better than Biden's term."

• 33:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  Peter, can I ask you, we were talking earlier before you came on about the, the balance between the economic bread and butter issues, the high prices and so on, disappearing jobs, and then the stuff about wokeness, transgender issues, all of that kind of stuff. What's the balance there, do you think, in terms of Trump's voters?

• 34:05Speaker 09

  I think it is, they come together, they, they overlap. All the DC think tank people I spoke to said the identity politics had gone too far. It was a bit late for them to, a lot of, there was a huge recognition that that happened. But it, it's together in, in the disconnect between politicians and, and the public. So it's a disconnect in terms of, you're saying the wrong thing, we talked, we talked about that a bit yesterday, you're, you're not using the appropriate language as we determine it, and that's the culture stuff, added to, and I'm working even harder than, and working far harder than ever before in order to get on in life, and that's not recognised either.

• 34:46Speaker 09

  And, and I go back to the point of, at the Harris rallies, there was not a sense of class there, there was a sense of identity and single issues, whether it's a board Or climate or whatever, there wasn't a strand of we're in it for working people, cost of living, poverty. So we need to return to a class based analysis of this. I don't mean class envy or whatever, but it means you've got to understand working people.

• 35:14Marina Hyde?

  But that's, that's the way with a lot of these things that they, they kept saying, don't vote for darkness, don't vote for fear. It's like, I'm not, I'm voting for hope. I, I am hoping that things will be better for me. And even this morning in the analysis, when you, there's many people have said, you know, fear wins over hope. And it's like, well, I, I actually think this is a form of hope for these voters. And whether or not, you know, you might regard it as misplaced or whatever, it, to suggest that they're voting for fear or darkness is, is again, this sort of misreading that gets you here in the first place.

• 35:43Speaker 09

  Yeah. People disappearing up their backside as to whether he's a fascist or not seems to me entirely making, entirely making the point that Trump is making.

• 35:54Anthony Scaramucci?

  In addition to loving Sally dot com, because I do love Sally, I have to retract my fascist comment.

• 36:03Anthony Scaramucci?

  And I say that with great nausea in my.

• 36:06Speaker 09

  We are here, but it's the serious point that this is exactly what they think we're doing. That we are in this elevated way, looking at whether intellectually he's a fascist or not. When actually what they're thinking is this is a guy who's going to make our lives better.

• 36:21Alastair Campbell?

  Even if he doesn't.

• 36:22Speaker 09

  Even we may think he doesn't, we, you know.

• 36:24Alastair Campbell?

  Right, let me ask you this. You've worked for, you worked with Labour for several prime ministers. You've worked with, with Keir Starmer.

• 36:31Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 36:33Alastair Campbell?

  What lessons, if any, are there in this for, for the Labour Party?

• 36:37Speaker 09

  Well, they're huge lessons. I mean, as we've talked about, we've got to, it was fashionable in the Clinton Blair days to talk about reinventing government. We've got to seriously reinvent government. The performance of government, the delivery of government has to be better. That is not enough. We've got to. Have a story that connects with people in far better ways. The story being told by Harris was not, I mean, there were message. It's very easy to criticize a campaign from outside.

• 37:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:04Speaker 09

  And they had a really.

• 37:05Alastair Campbell?

  And especially after they've just lost.

• 37:06Speaker 09

  They've just lost and it's unfair in a way because they've worked their socks off and whatever. But but in terms of the message, the message wasn't fundamentally resolving the things that needed to resolve. The thing I still think at the heart of this is whether there was continuity or change. They hadn't resolved whether, you can't disown your own record, but you've got to make sense of it. We were talking the other day, we had a message in 2001 for Tony Blair, which was a lot done, a lot to do. That's quite a.

• 37:33Alastair Campbell?

  And a lot to lose with the others.

• 37:34Speaker 09

  A lot to lose with the others. It's quite a boring message in some way, but it's actually very strategic. Because the way you get in smuggling some of your record, which you might say people don't feel yet, is by saying, being humble about, we've still got a lot to do to make your lives better. But we have done a lot. We've laid the foundations in the first term. And now I'm going to build on it by accelerating. And she hadn't reconciled that.

• 37:57Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. What, so that, okay, that's Labour. How do you, if Rory Stewart were here, he'd say to you, as he said last night, and it did, I thought he had a point on this. How do you do this from the left and the progressive politics without going down the same route of lying? Of thinking it's all about message as opposed to about delivery, of demonizing your opponents, of saying that, you know, how do you do that without actually just playing their game and becoming like them?

• 38:26Speaker 09

  I've met a group, groups of people who are working on this idea of what they call belonging without othering. And although that's quite academic language in a way, the essence of that is interesting. People want a sense of belonging. They feel dislocated, they feel unheard, they feel strangers in their own land. But how do you do that? This is the challenge. I haven't got all the answers to it without othering, without having enemies. But all of that. Stigmatizing this group or insulting immigrants or whatever. But how do you rebuild community in a way that's effective?

• 39:02Marina Hyde?

  Don't you need an amazing person as a vehicle? Is that, I mean, do you think that just finding those kind of politicians? And there are politicians, as you say, that you said at the start, Alistair, who are just sort of hugely charismatic. And I'm, you know, no disrespect to Kamala Harris, but she's not one of those ones that you're just thinking, my God, they had something, they had some connection, they had some sort of something. How do you sort of surface those people? Or do you just have to wait for them? Which is what the Democrats seem to be doing.

• 39:30Alastair Campbell?

  In an era when more and more people are saying, politics is really not for me.

• 39:34Speaker 09

  I think it's really difficult. I think you need it, definitely. I think her personal story was almost underused in this. She feared Hillary going on about them. And it wasn't just about saying, I'm going to be the first woman president. She could have used her background and her story better. What I thought was interesting is the personal story, and I was saying this at a lot of Trump rallies, but elsewhere as well, Trump's story of the comeback kid was more powerful than anything she had.

• 40:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Don't you think that politics works best when an individual leader is the embodiment and the incarnation of their message? So a great example of that is Margaret Thatcher, who says in the end in 1979, you know, I'm from Grantham, I'm from the middle of nowhere, I'm an ordinary plain speaking.

• 40:20Marina Hyde?

  I'm a grocer's daughter.

• 40:21Dominic Sandbrook?

  I'm a grocer's daughter. I'm a woman, so I'm something new. But because I'm a woman, I understand about inflation and prices. You know, you embody your message. You don't need to explain what your message is because you are your message. Bill Clinton in the 1990s, a new Democrat. You know, he can connect with ordinary voters. He's got a populist side to him. Tony Blair, of course, as you will know. I do think the Democrats, if they found a candidate, the margins are not that great. So they can, you know, a good candidate can fix a multitude of things.

• 40:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  Can I ask Peter a question? So behind you while you're speaking, Peter, there's a biplane flying back and forth on the Hudson River. And there's a tagline being dragged behind it. It says, we held the democracy together. Donald Trump disavowed that in 2020. He said that he won it, it was rigged.

• 41:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  I believe you fomented an insurrection, but if you don't believe me, go look at the Jack Smith complaint about the evidence associated with that. Is he the person, and I accept the outcome, by the way, because he won fair and square democratically, but is he the right person to hold the democracy together?

• 41:31Speaker 09

  Well, that's for everyone to judge in a way, you know, we'll all have our different opinions on whether he's right or what are the, you know, but I suppose what I pushed back on is the idea-

• 41:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  Is it a risk? Is it a risk now that we're with him?

• 41:45Speaker 09

  It is a risk, but I pushed back on, again, it was the wrong way of looking at it. This surely has ruled him out. January the 6th has ruled him out, or what they said at his rally has ruled him out, or, and actually that, it was sort of, well, it may do, we may think it should have done.

• 42:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  So fomenting violence at the Capitol building-

• 42:03Speaker 09

  I mean, incidentally, his supporters say he absolutely didn't. So now-

• 42:07Anthony Scaramucci?

  But he did.

• 42:08Speaker 09

  Now, so what is-

• 42:09Anthony Scaramucci?

  But we know that he did. We know he did, because we've read the complaint.

• 42:11Speaker 09

  Yeah.

• 42:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  So he didn't have guardians of the democracy to excise him from the democracy, because he fomented it. He never accepted, he didn't do the traditional thing and sit there at the inaugural. He didn't help the Biden team transition. Now we're bringing him back. All those Republicans announced him, now they're all banging at his, at his knee. I'm just telling you, I think it ends in tears for a lot of people.

• 42:38Marina Hyde?

  That is, I mean, that is the two types of forgetting that we had.

• 42:42Anthony Scaramucci?

  You've got to really think about it for a second.

• 42:43Marina Hyde?

  We had the people, the Democrats forgot what a unique and amazing electoral candidate he is, but those people, those Republicans who knew and who said, or who went very quiet and were shocked and appalled on January the 6th, then just let it sort of percolate for a couple of years and then we're back with him. Well, yesterday I made a sort of tentative and wishful thinking prediction for Harris that was against all the instincts I've had the last two years. This prediction I will make is entirely in keeping with my feelings that I've had for the last two years. It will go wrong. His presidency will go wrong in ways, there'll be corruption and wickedness and things that those same Republicans who were shocked on January the 6th will find, that will happen again.

• 43:26Marina Hyde?

  And then this time, they can't sort of forget and sweep it, because you have been wrong once. And so we'll talk, we'll talk a lot about the Democrats, like, oh, you've done the same as, you've done the same again, but this will happen again in his presidency. Things will go very badly wrong, I think like that.

• 43:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  I mean, Pence is going, I mean, Vance is going in the wood chipper. I got that by like year three, you know, the Trump woodchipper.

• 43:47Speaker 09

  But the only point I would make is, so I agree, I agree with everything you said, but we, the left has got to do more soul searching about why it's getting this wrong and not just think, sort of throw its hands up and say, how could, because as soon as you say, how could people have done this and how could they have voted, you are saying people are stupid or you're, or they're unhinged, or they're deluded, or whatever. And I think that's a very bad place to get yourself into in politics.

• 44:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, thanks for coming in again, and good luck with this project that you engaged in trying to work out how progress is to take on. It isn't easy, but thank you very much, Dean. We're going to go to a quick break and then we'll be back to talk about all sorts of stuff. See you soon.

• 44:32Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Digger not a center of this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 44:48Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 44:53Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 44:56Speaker 04

  I'm not the first, Danny.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 to middle without parent.

• 45:08Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to this third Restless Polities livestream from a very warm, sunny, beautiful New York, where people are digesting the extraordinary result from, from last night. And I just want to, I think we should just talk a little about the campaigns and how they're feeling. There's, there's nothing worse than losing an election. Well, okay, there are worse things than losing an election, but if you're a political campaign or a politician, there are very few things worse than losing an election. And I've been getting messages today from All sorts of people involved on the Democrat's side saying this is like kind of death. This feels like a death in the family. It's horrific, but they're gonna have to pick themselves up and analyze it. What about, what are you hearing from Republicans?

• 45:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I mean, I've heard from both sides. So I'll start with the Republicans. They are ecstatic. They feel that they, that Trump is subdued. Okay, again, he was subdued last time when he won, so I don't know how long that will last. And they see that as a good thing. They see him bringing in big amounts of staff.

• 46:11Marina Hyde?

  When you say he's subdued, what, he's like reflective?

• 46:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, no, no, no, somebody, just to be brutal.

• 46:15Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 46:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  A direct quote, he's 78 years old. He's absolutely exhausted. He's too tired to govern. He's gonna let other people do this job.

• 46:26Marina Hyde?

  It's happening again.

• 46:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm just telling, I'm just telling you what the people are saying, you know, you know, they're. And, but they're saying that in a good way. They're saying that meaning he's gonna pick good people. He's gonna let them run the government. Not to worry. I got one very wise, you know what, sort of a text saying that I hereby declare that you won't be deported. Don't worry. Ha, ha, ha. But, but, but the point being that they're in a great mood and they think Trump is in the right place. They don't see Trump in an anger place. They don't see Trump like, hey, good morning, where's the enemies list? I got 100 days to get the right DOJ in place to wipe out my enemies. They don't see him doing that at all.

• 47:03Alastair Campbell?

  Just give us a.

• 47:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  Those are the facts. Give us, the Democrats are saying something totally different.

• 47:07Alastair Campbell?

  Give us a feel for what happens. You were part of the transition team last time around. How does this transition actually work? You've now got between now and January, you've got processes to go through.

• 47:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 47:16Alastair Campbell?

  I assume that Biden and Kamala Harris, who will have to certify the election defeat herself. It's a pretty grim prospect for her. But what, what's gonna happen now between the, the relations between the Trump team and the, and the current administration?

• 47:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  Fascinating question, and I think the Biden team is gonna help. The Trump team, even though the Trump team didn't help the Biden team. But Trump will ignore everything that the Biden team presents to him because he has a big brain and he's smarter than everybody. The other problem for the people that are on his executive transition committee, which I once served on in 2016, is that Trump has no executive management skills. He's a raconteur, he's a communicator, he's a prejudiced politician, but he's not an executive Alistair in the sense that, okay, Alistair, you're good at this, Marine, you're good at that, Dominic, and delegating, and then you report back to him, he doesn't do that. What ends up happening is it's like a billiard table, the balls are running all over the

• 48:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  billiard table, and then he gets upset if you have done something that he doesn't like. Always after the fact, you gotta be very, very careful, he puts everybody on eggshells. We had people in place, we brought them to Trump, we told the people that they were gonna be the XYZ, you didn't, you didn't tell me in time, I don't want that person.

• 48:30Alastair Campbell?

  Will he read stuff? Will he read folders of economy, foreign policy?

• 48:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  Never, never. Trump likes pictures, okay, and he likes pictures of himself, and you know what he likes pictures of himself? He likes pictures of himself, straight on like this, because he complains that he looks fat from this angle, okay? So when you're presenting something to Trump, it's two pages, three or four pictures of him, maybe a MAGA hat on, and he's looking straight on. You think I'm making this shit up?

• 48:55Marina Hyde?

  No. It's just interesting how you create an office with just using only pictures of Trump.

• 49:01Alastair Campbell?

  Which president's read tons of stuff?

• 49:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, but the more you read can be a very dangerous thing. So Jimmy Carter, famously a massive micromanager, the great fact about him is that he insisted on handling the bookings for the White House tennis court personally. Richard Nixon kind of would stay up till 3 o'clock, 4 o'clock in the morning. Clinton was a prolific reading. Reading papers. The more you read can be, I mean, it sounds a weird, counterintuitive thing to say, I mean, obviously, it's not ideal just to stare at photographs of yourself. It's odd. But.

• 49:31Marina Hyde?

  It's a process.

• 49:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, much as I enjoy doing it.

• 49:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  I mean, just so you know, you can't make this shit up, and that's exactly what he does, but you present him something. Something in there related to him, and then you tell him what you want him to do. And if he signs off on it, you're fine. But if you're doing stuff in that transition that he hasn't signed off on, I'll tell you right now, Treasury, super important to him. Commerce, super important to him. State Department, which I do think is going to Marco Rubio.

• 50:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 50:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, I do, I do, is super important to him. Marco's very tight with Susie Wiles. Susie Wiles wanted Marco to be the vice.

• 50:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  His campaign.

• 50:08Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's guru, she's from Florida. Marco's from Florida. She wanted him to be the vice president. She thought he fit the niche, the niche for the Latin community, et cetera. Trump did not want that. He wanted to triple down on the base. But I think he gets the Secretary of State.

• 50:22Dominic Sandbrook?

  Here's a question for you. So the way you're describing Trump governing, which is, he doesn't read much. He likes looking at photographs of himself, whatever. He's not massively dissimilar in that regard from Ronald Reagan, who wanted everything reduced to, you know, bullet points, who didn't like, he said, you know, I figured, the famous story.

• 50:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  Can I explain the difference?

• 50:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  He said, they say, hard work never killed anybody, but I say, why would you take the chance?

• 50:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, right, right. It was a great line.

• 50:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  But what Reagan did is he surrounds himself with very, very skilled, ruthless, effective operators. Will Trump be able to do that?

• 50:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  You see, I just want to explain that this is very important. Reagan had on his desk a plaque that said, you can get anywhere you want in life as long as you don't care who gets the credit. You remember that line? That's a Truman line. Okay, Harriet Truman. He took it from Harriet Truman. Yeah. Trump is the opposite. All credit comes to me. I am the black hole for credit. Don't try to take credit. Oh, you think you're President Campbell now, Alister? Oh, Alister, you're getting more famous than myself? Those are key words. Run, run for your life, okay? Does he pit you against each other? Oh, 100%, 100%. He'll say something to you. Yeah. That he knows is going to antagonize him. And then he'll say something vice versa, and then he'll watch that happen, and he'll laugh about it. He thinks it's funny.

• 51:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  To be fair, that's what we do and the rest is, actually. Yeah, but you're, you're sort of, you know.

• 51:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're running something rather bigger. You're the Steve Bannon puppet master, though. I know you are, I know you are. You're the Machiavellian.

• 51:44Dominic Sandbrook?

  Here's one for you, Anthony. This is unlikely right now, given some of the things you've said, but J.D. Vance did call him Hitler. If the phone went again, and it was the White House saying, oh, we think you should come back.

• 51:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, so first of all, I am running for reelection in my marriage. Okay, so sali.com, you're very important to me at this point in my life. I gotta tell you, Deirdre's way more important. And I'm probably, I could be term limited in that marriage for all I know. Okay, so there is no way that I would ever return to a Trump government, or frankly, any real, any type of government. However, I am an American. If they put me on a Presidential Monuments Committee, if they said to me they wanted help on the Crypto Advisory Council, would I do an outside council advisory position as a private citizen? I would certainly do that because I'm an American and I would want to.

• 52:34Alastair Campbell?

  He's been advertising Salio now, he's now advertising Scaramucci.

• 52:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, no, let me tell you something. Let me tell you something, Deirdre, I don't want that. Okay, no, most men would not want that, and I'm just telling you, you don't, you don't want that.

• 52:49Alastair Campbell?

  Okay.

• 52:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  All right. What do you?

• 52:52Marina Hyde?

  Amazing.

• 52:53Anthony Scaramucci?

  Marina, Marina, the rest is entertainment, right?

• 52:54Marina Hyde?

  No, I got, I got the gesture, I understood, and I think you're probably right, just do like a little random committee.

• 53:00Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 53:01Marina Hyde?

  For the non-fascists.

• 53:03Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think the media's gonna do with a second term Trump? When I say the media, I know it's such a big thing, but what's the mindset that says, if you're on the Trump beat, if you're the Guardian Washington correspondent, you've got four more years of this, first of all, how are you feeling about it? Secondly, how are you gonna handle it?

• 53:19Marina Hyde?

  Well, I tell you what, I'm not even, I'm not gonna sort of narrow it down to the Guardian, because this is across all news, there'll be loads of anguished hand wringing about, you know, did we miss something this time? How do we say, how do we cover it this time when it's gonna get crazy? And how do we fact check? All the same things that we've been saying. But the honest answer is, it's good for business. It will drive, as I said yesterday, it will drive subscriptions up, it will be good for business. There will be a lot to cover, lots of things will happen, and if you're in the news business, in some ways, that's what people want. And I know people say, no, I want to live in a peaceful world where nothing happens. But actually, people, it will, it will drive business, and many, many news organizations will probably hang on longer than they would have done because of this.

• 54:01Alastair Campbell?

  But the point that Peter Hyman was talking about, he seemed to be saying, and I wasn't really worried about this. He seemed to be saying, you know, banging on about fascism, banging on about, you know, January the sixth the whole time. I think part of the problem, first time around, is the media didn't bang on enough about the bad stuff. And that's what normalized it and legitimized it. Do you think the media will just think, oh, well, that's Trump, leave those sorts of things?

• 54:23Marina Hyde?

  I mean, I don't know. I think there was a lot, you know, there was a lot of people complaining that people even went and spoke to people who voted Trump and said, you've gone and interviewed Nazis and I, this is, again, this is not helpful and it's whether or not the media regards itself as a sort of actor in all this, which I don't think it should personally. I think, you know, you're a journalist and you should, I mean, I'm an opinion journalist, so it's different. It was quite obviously marketers' opinion, but I think you should, you know, you should cover your times. You shouldn't necessarily think completely that you are an actor. Now, don't forget that Trump tries to make them an actor because he's used them as a really, the fake news media, they're a really useful antagonist. And they can be blamed for all sorts of things and they're almost like a part in the pantomime.

• 55:02Marina Hyde?

  So I think you just, that is best to avoid, but as I say, I mean, honestly, it is good for business and that is the reality.

• 55:09Alastair Campbell?

  Joe Biden and Donald Trump have spoken and Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have spoken and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have spoken. I think of the three, that might have been the tastiest conversation.

• 55:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  Definitely, that's not a love triangle, let's just say that, but I have a question for you.

• 55:26Marina Hyde?

  Okay.

• 55:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  They detain a journalist, maybe it's an international journalist, there's a 2,300 journalists at the White House. They've decided it's not enough to take the press credentials away from the some, but the person's detained. Maybe they're put in a holding tank or something like that. How does the press report that?

• 55:43Marina Hyde?

  Well, then, this is what I mean when I say things will go wrong. Bad things are going to happen that lots of people, including plenty of sort of moderate Republicans who still voted for Trump, will have to recognize as a dark path to be going down. I do think those things will happen and I would sort of bet on that happening. I'm not suggesting that they will definitely sort of imprison a journalist, but yes, of course it could happen. And it will divert from something else and he will use it as a tool and all sorts of these sort of things will happen, yes. But I think then the press have to sort of work together and, but they would do. I mean, everyone, lots of people.

• 56:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  Buddy Putin does it.

• 56:18Alastair Campbell?

  Let's take some of your questions. We've had lots and lots and lots. Sorry we won't be able to get through them all, but here's a few. Fergal Banks, what's the next step for those Republicans? The question's now gone away again. What's the next step for those Republicans who spoke out for Harris during the election campaign? Anthony.

• 56:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I think for me, I'm going to regroup with members of that Harris team. I think there's a group of executives, Mark Cuban, myself, others, want to regroup with them and at least give them our report back from the field based on our feelings of what they would need to do to recalibrate. I think we are no longer Republicans, frankly. We have to just accept that. Republican Party, because that's Trump's party, it's known as a Republican Party, should be the Trump-lican Party, but that's the party. And so I have to probably, I'm thinking about frankly, re-registering as an independent, because I think it fits more where I am right now. I am a former Bush Reagan Republican, you

• 57:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  know, but that doesn't exist anymore, and it's not ever coming back. And so I'm not going to join forces with him at a principle. I don't think what he's doing is the right thing to do. Just the fact that I'm talking to you about the potential that a journalist could be jailed is a sickening thought in this beautiful, wonderful, amazing country. So I will re-register as an independent. I will offer a voice against nonsense that I see happening, and I'll explain to the American people why this is dangerous for them. I just spoke at an event. I said, "The bellicosity of this man's rhetoric is having an effect on your family. It's having an effect on the culture in our society, and it's giving license to people to be cruel to each other." I don't want to represent

• 58:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  that. And I think many of us in that camp that, is it Fergal? I'm sorry, my contacts aren't in today. Fergal Banks is saying, "It's a great question. I don't think we can be..." I don't think we could be with him and so I'll be in the box of independence.

• 58:19Alastair Campbell?

  Can I just get an assurance that this one hour a week arrangement that you have for the rest of this presidency is going to continue?

• 58:25Anthony Scaramucci?

  One hour a week, sleep deprivation, dehydration.

• 58:28Alastair Campbell?

  It's going to carry on through the presidency?

• 58:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm going to need like an IV drip. I'm going to need better health after. I haven't brought them up, but I'm going to probably need them as well.

• 58:35Alastair Campbell?

  So you'll carry on?

• 58:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, I'll carry on.

• 58:37Marina Hyde?

  He's mentioning advertisers.

• 58:40Anthony Scaramucci?

  Especially let me sit in Rory's chair. Okay, while Rory's flying around the world. Okay, I like this chair. I feel like it's a chair of power. This is the closest I can get to power at this point in my career. Sitting next to Alison. Okay, sitting next to Alison. Just sit up in the chair because this son of a bitch is really tall.

• 58:55Alastair Campbell?

  Another question. Another question. Would a more, Lauren Kelly, Mariana, why don't you take this one? Would a more radical Democrat candidate have had a better result against Trump? Are we just in an age that values the extremes, whichever way that falls?

• 59:08Anthony Scaramucci?

  Great question.

• 59:09Marina Hyde?

  Well, I mean socially radical, no, that would have been an even greater kiss of death. No, not at all. But economically radical, I mean, yes, you know, the idea of left economic populism that I suppose is best embodied in someone like, the figure of someone like Bernie Sanders. People, what you don't want, as Peter was saying, is that you need that person to sound like a disruptor, even if that person is actually a bit of a continuity economic, proposing a sort of continuity economic program. And I don't think that people feel that enough radical suggestions were being made. But a lot of what Biden did, you know, with his legislation was to steal the clothes of MAGA. He understood that people needed

• 59:54Marina Hyde?

  more than, that Trump had noticed how bad things had got for people after the financial crisis in a way that the Democrats had been really slow to realize. So he did actually sort of steal their clothes to some extent and pass this legislation.

• 1:00:06Alastair Campbell?

  You don't necessarily want a radical, but you want, I mean Rory, thank God he's not here. I don't think populism is always a bad thing. And I think somebody who's a populist with a common touch. And that's what the Democrats need. Here's one for you, Anthony. Who do you think, give us a few names that you think might be the candidate next time around?

• 1:00:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, you know, I don't know, is Hakeem Jeffries, I don't know them as well. I don't know how, assuming they're all ambitious. I know AOC wants to run. I don't even know if she's at the age threshold of 35 yet. I'd have to look that up. But I know those are the people that want to run. They are, they would represent that sort of harder left progressive wing of the party. I think she is 35. She is 35. Yeah. So I think she would want to run. She has a compelling message. She's incredibly hard worker. She's very charismatic. But then again. Too radical?

• 1:00:59Marina Hyde?

  Radically progressive is more of the problem. Economically radical.

• 1:01:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, no, I think, I think, again, look at what, you know, we had a woman just run, said she was against fracking, then she became for fracking. She was against, she was for defunding the police. Now she's against it. She was for bail reform, then she was against it. I don't know what they're going to morph themselves into and they start messaging as a presidential candidate. But, but I disagree with that. I think they need a Clinton layer figure. He's a 40, 45 year old person. He's been around the block. Perhaps he's a governor. Unfortunately, he probably is a man, just for just being brutally honest. He's probably a governor out there that's done a good job in his state.

• 1:01:45Marina Hyde?

  Which state?

• 1:01:46Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, it would have to be one of the bigger states, you know. You know, I got to look through the list and you say, okay, this guy. Gavin Newsom? So I think Gavin is too old now. I think he's jumped, I think he's jumped the shark. I mean, he may try it. Okay, he's 55. He may try it. Too old? Yeah. I think he's too old. Too slick, too Californian.

• 1:02:06Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  I do, I do. I think, I think, I think the, what's happened here has been burnt by a Californian from San Francisco. He was the mayor of San Francisco. I think that stove is a little bit too hot for Gavin. I might be wrong. Let's take another question.

• 1:02:22Alastair Campbell?

  Sirwan Zare, now Trump has the Senate and the House, Dominic, I think. Can he bend democracy and become a semi tyrant? How much power can he give himself? How much power does the president have, say, compared to a British prime minister? In their own countries?

• 1:02:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  In many ways, not as much. So, I mean, with my history hat on, when this system was set up by the founding fathers, the one thing they wanted to avoid was a tyrant. So that's the point of the federal system, the separation of powers, the kind of balance of power, senior judiciary, legislature, the executive. A president has less power than we commonly think. There is no doubt that Trump will want to be an imperial president, for want of a better word. He'll have the Senate. The House is still in the balance, as far as I understand.

• 1:03:07Alastair Campbell?

  They're in the lead.

• 1:03:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think, I mean, he's got two years. Then there's the midterms. Who knows what happens in those midterm elections? How much can he do? Probably less, I would argue. He can set the tone. He can make a few landmark, you know, executive orders. But, you know, it's hard for any president, even with a majority in Congress, to get stuff through. So he may be more limited than we think.

• 1:03:34Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, another question.

• 1:03:37Alastair Campbell?

  Jade Higgins, Keir Starmer's statement congratulating Trump felt disingenuous. Would you have guided him to be more honest, as to me? Would you have guided him to be more honest about the difference in opinion? Or is it better to seem courteous? I think you have to seem courteous, you have to be courteous. You have to acknowledge, as you did last night, he won. And also, in the special relationship, the United States is the far bigger partner. And it is now a big part of Keir Starmer's job, is to try to make sure there is some sort of relationship there. It's interesting, I watched a little bit of Prime Minister's Questions, that's how sad I am, Anthony, today. I was interested, Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat leader, he went at Keir Starmer on trade and tariffs.

• 1:04:19Alastair Campbell?

  And essentially saying, you know, this clearly is going to make it very, very difficult for Britain if we're not more closely aligned with the European Union. And I thought it was a very interesting take. I think you've got to, I don't know what you think, Marine, I think you've got to say the sort of things that Keir Starmer said last night. I mean, the idea that in the first statement, you sort of say, well, yeah, but where there's difference of opinion will go.

• 1:04:44Marina Hyde?

  Oh, no, you can't. No, no, no. I didn't even think it sounded disingenuous.

• 1:04:47Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 1:04:48Marina Hyde?

  It sounded bland and political, which is probably what you're trying to go for, just a sort of boilerplate. Nothing too incendiary, nothing too, and nothing. So I, no, I thought that was the tone to strike. I mean, they all struck something like that. You saw all the leaders around, all the sort of libel-ish leaders around the world.

• 1:05:07Alastair Campbell?

  I've just seen as while you're talking, Modi and Trudeau have just put out pretty positive.

• 1:05:12Marina Hyde?

  Alasdair, can I just say, can we hear a little bit about what you've been hearing from inside the Democrats campaign?

• 1:05:17Alastair Campbell?

  Did we not do that?

• 1:05:18Marina Hyde?

  I don't think we went.

• 1:05:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, we just went on the Republicans.

• 1:05:20Marina Hyde?

  We just did the Republicans.

• 1:05:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  Democrats are saying something that I think I find unusual. And I'm shocked by it. They're tripling down on the hysterical nature of not understanding Donald Trump. And so, you know, and I talked to three business executives that I'm close to. I said, you know, we are almost going to have to have an intervention. They don't understand the movement. They don't understand how we got 10% more of the Latino vote, how we got 46% of the, they, they don't understand. I've talked to five or six cons people. I've talked to strategy people. I've talked to people inside Biden's White House.

• 1:06:01Anthony Scaramucci?

  And they're all sitting there, you know, Alasdair referred to it as a death, but it's more than that. There's a denialism that has taken place.

• 1:06:10Marina Hyde?

  Spill.

• 1:06:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  They ran.

• 1:06:11Marina Hyde?

  Even when the numbers come in.

• 1:06:12Anthony Scaramucci?

  But Alasdair, they ran the same playbook that Hillary had right down to the concert. And we said, please don't do that. And they did the exact same thing. And the outcome was not that we, not only did we lose the House and Senate, like the House, the House is still being voted on, or counted, let me say.

• 1:06:30Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  But not, not only did we lose that, but we also lost the popular vote. So guys, what are you doing?

• 1:06:35Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Let's have a little run around the world. Start in the Middle East. So Benjamin Netanyahu was, I think, the first leader to come right out and say, this is great news. What do we think this means for, let's take them in order, Middle East. Ukraine and China, Taiwan. Let's start with you, Dominic.

• 1:07:00Dominic Sandbrook?

  Middle East. Netanyahu is obviously delighted. My sense is that there's no end in sight there and where the peace process, such as it is, whether it restarts, very hard to say. Russia, Ukraine. So I saw Zelensky's message. Zelensky sent a very finely crafted message. You know, he's hoping for the best. And he used the word strong a lot, which is a word clearly calculated to appeal to Donald Trump. But my fear, I mean, this has always been my big fear during this election, is that the real losers of this are the Ukrainians.

• 1:07:38Alastair Campbell?

  China, Taiwan.

• 1:07:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  China, Taiwan. I think, listen, if Trump appeases Putin in Ukraine, I think that sends a very worrying message to Beijing. If I was in Taiwan, would I feel confident that Donald Trump would step up to deter a Chinese attack? I wouldn't, frankly. And what was the other thing? The United Nations, did you say?

• 1:08:07Alastair Campbell?

  No, Europe.

• 1:08:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Oh, Europe. Well, you know, because I think European foreign policy defence, I think this, you know, we said last night, the one thing Trump definitely got right was that NATO countries in Europe have taken America. He was absolutely right about that. I think Europe has put this question off for far too long. And by Europe, I don't mean necessarily just the EU. I mean, the EU and Britain and its allies in the kind of, as it were, the Atlantic Western democratic world. So Australia, Canada, and so on. I think there's been, there has been, Trump was right, there has been too much freeloaded on the back of American defence spending. And Britain and its allies have to think very seriously about a security apparatus that maybe has the United States as a semi-detached or indeed absent partner.

• 1:08:52Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, you know, I mean, I'll start with the Middle East. He doesn't understand it. He has no concept of it. And so, and one thing about Trump, from his nature, Alister could never brief Trump and start explaining things to him didactically. He would flip out because he doesn't want people to know that he doesn't know things. So, we were on the plane once and someone was trying to explain. They brought a foreign policy guy on and saying, "Look, let me explain to you the Sykes-Picos Treaty", which is effectively the treaty that was, happened in World War I to evacuate the Ottoman Empire, the British and the French, out of the Middle East. There were some sinister things that happened where they left border disputes everywhere and they had the tribes fighting with each other. These guys are mostly, "I'm gonna leave this mess and let them handle it", right?

• 1:09:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, they created these imaginary countries, Iran, Syria, not Iran, but Syria and Iraq are two imaginary countries, etc. Kuwait is an imaginary country, that's why that war started. And Trump cut them at the knees. "What are you talking about? I know what the Sykes-Picos Treaty is", he clearly didn't, "and I know more about the Middle East than what's in my thumbnail that's in your entire brain. And what are you talking about?". Because he's so insecure, he didn't want somebody to explain to him something that he didn't know in front of a group of other people. So, about an hour later, we were sitting at the table with him. I think he was like horsing like McDonald's french fries. And I said to him, you know, "Do you remember, just out of curiosity,

• 1:10:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  you ever see the movie Lawrence of Arabia?". "Oh, Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O'Toole? Oh, what a great movie. Yeah, I was a young kid when I saw that movie. We saw it on the big screen, Cinem scope and blah, blah, blah. Yeah, do you remember what the movie was about?". "No, not really. I don't really remember what the movie is about". And then I took him through the plot of the movie. And I took him through the Sykes-Picos Treaty, through the movie. When I was done, when I was done doing that. There are any pictures of it? Pictures of what? But when I was done doing that, he then said to me, so that's what these sons of bitches did? I said, yeah, let me show you on my phone. They literally took a ruler and drew a line between Iraq and, I'm sorry, Iraq and Syria.

• 1:11:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  And as you see this thread, there's no, usually there's a territory, there's a mountain, there's a river, but they just cut it right here and they knew these tribes would be fighting for hundreds of years after they evacuated from the area. And so that fortified him, okay? The other thing he didn't understand was GAAT. Do you want, you want me to keep going or you want me to stop? Is it okay? I tell the GAAT story real quick? Yeah, yeah. Did not understand GAAT. Okay, the general agreement to trade in tariffs. And so someone was coming to brief him on GAAT. I said, please, don't fall into the same trap. Okay, I, I want you to tell him a story about George Marshall and, and Harry Truman and what they were trying to do.

• 1:11:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  Why, Mr. Trump, do you know why the tariffs, the US were accepting high tariffs on the way in? Okay, I mean, we were allowing for blockades and we were low tariffing. You know, we were allowing countries to tariff because we were 3% of the world's population, 65% of the world's GDP, and we wanted rising living standards, okay? So, so, and we did that for the Europeans and we did that for the Japanese. And then we layered on the Marshall plan, which Trump did learn about in eighth grade social studies. So he sort of knew that. And then he looked at me and he said, so this thing was intentionally uneven? I said, oh yeah, it was intentionally uneven because there was a specter of totalitarianism and communism

• 1:12:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  and we had to balance the powers in the world. And then he looks over at me, he says, how the hell do you know all this? I said, you know, I read. I read, I read. And then the very next day, and you'll enjoy this, Alster, he was trying to tell somebody this new imparted knowledge. And he was fumbling the goddamn thing all the way. Where's Scaramucci, okay? Come on, tell me that story again, okay? But I'm going to tell you why this is an important story. He's still using it. He's still using it. You'll see it in his speeches. You'll see it in the way he's talking. So, but why? He had, he had the instincts to raise the tariffs, but he didn't understand the history.

• 1:13:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  Also, I said, by the way, you know why the Europeans are paying less than 2%? When Eisenhower was running NATO, he went back to Truman and they were fighting those two. He said, "Don't let it go." "What do you mean, 'let it go'?" "Well, let it go because we're going to be the biggest military." And he tore a page out of Thomas Hobbes.

• 1:13:22Alastair Campbell?

  And so it was a good thing.

• 1:13:24Anthony Scaramucci?

  So it is a good thing. And he said, "Let it go because in the Leviathan, written 350 years ago, there is one global hegemon who uses its military might beneficially to suppress the internecine conflicts around the world." This is what Eisenhower told Truman. He said, "Let it go." "I told Trump that." He said, "Well, you know, it's 60 years later. Should we still be letting it go?" And the answer to the question is no. Not at this moment because the world has changed. But he didn't understand the historical context of all of these legendary leaders making these decisions.

• 1:13:57Marina Hyde?

  Have you read any books? Sorry, that's a bit off topic.

• 1:13:59Anthony Scaramucci?

  Me?

• 1:14:00Marina Hyde?

  No, not you. You've read every book.

• 1:14:02Alastair Campbell?

  He hasn't even read the one that he wrote.

• 1:14:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  The joke on the campaign in 16, Trump has written more bestsellers than he's read because he always had a ghostwriter writing the goddamn book.

• 1:14:14Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Let's just take the... You mentioned the tariffs and we talk about economy and global trade. I mean, I don't... I'm not an economist at all, but I got the feeling when he was talking about tariffs during the campaign that he literally didn't know what he was talking about. He doesn't understand the consequences of what he was saying about tariffs.

• 1:14:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh, he does. Okay, so I... Sorry, I know he does because Lighthizer... Yes, he does.

• 1:14:36Alastair Campbell?

  So what he's saying about China, he understands what...

• 1:14:38Anthony Scaramucci?

  He does. He does. He's exaggerating. Okay, Lighthizer, who he adores. Okay, and Lighthizer is from a blue collar family in Ohio. And for people's benefit, that was our US trade representative under Trump. And he wrote a very good book on trade, by the way. I would recommend it to people. But Lighthizer is somebody that's roughly Trump's age. And remember, Trump is an ageist. He's an ageist, okay? He would take advice from you, Alistair, because you're inside of a 10-year window of him. He doesn't like taking advice from people younger than him. But Lighthizer and him are the same age. And Lighthizer explained to him what we need to do with the tariffs. Trump's always exaggerating them, which makes you think he doesn't understand it. But that's for the messaging to the...

• 1:15:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  That's the red meat to his base, the exaggeration.

• 1:15:25Alastair Campbell?

  Dominic, what do you make of this? The way that he prepares, the way that he gets briefed. I mean, how can you possibly run a non chaotic administration?

• 1:15:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, that's why it's like that.

• 1:15:36Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, I mean, it will be chaotic. There's no question.

• 1:15:37Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, as Marina was saying, there will be plenty of chaos to come. The story doesn't end here. There will be all kinds of ludicrous myths.

• 1:15:46Anthony Scaramucci?

  You?

• 1:15:46Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because that's the nature of a Trump administration.

• 1:15:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  I don't, I don't, and I apologize, I don't have my laptop, but if we Google the letter that Trump wrote to Erdogan in early 2020.

• 1:15:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Can we get that?

• 1:15:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  If we can find it somewhere, it literally looked like somebody wrote it with a broken crayon, okay? And it was like, it was all grammatically like incongruous. And General Kelly called me and he said, did you read this letter? This would have never gotten out if, I mean, it was literally crazy.

• 1:16:14Dominic Sandbrook?

  But listen.

• 1:16:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  So in other words, like, people are like, okay, forget it. I can't, I'm not getting fired. I don't want an nasty tweet about me. Let them send the broken crayon letter out to Erdogan, okay?

• 1:16:25Alastair Campbell?

  Dear Mr. President, let's work out a good deal. Exclamation mark. You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people. I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Turkish economy, and I will. I've already given you a little sample with respect to Pastor Brunson. I've worked hard to solve your problems. Don't let the world down. You can make a great deal. General Masloum is willing to negotiate. He's willing to make concessions that they would never have made in the past. I'm confidentially closing a copy of a letter to me just received. History will look upon you favorably. If you get this done the right and humane way, it will look upon you forever as the devil. The good things don't happen. Don't be a tough guy. Don't be a fool.

• 1:17:01Dominic Sandbrook?

  Don't be a fool. I think that's the best.

• 1:17:03Alastair Campbell?

  I'll call you later.

• 1:17:04Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'll call you later. I mean, literally, Kelly's calling, like, okay, he obviously took a broken crayon out and he wrote the damn thing and someone transcribed it and just sent it out.

• 1:17:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  I get letters like that from Teddy.

• 1:17:14Marina Hyde?

  What was the upshot?

• 1:17:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, well, yeah, well.

• 1:17:16Marina Hyde?

  I can't remember this plotline. Then what was the upshot?

• 1:17:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  No, I don't, I don't, I don't.

• 1:17:19Marina Hyde?

  What was the reply?

• 1:17:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, so.

• 1:17:21Alastair Campbell?

  Erdogan's not somebody to mess with.

• 1:17:23Anthony Scaramucci?

  I don't, I don't honestly remember, okay, but he had this weird relationship with Erdogan because he liked Erdogan's strength. You know, he liked the fact that he took over a democracy and then he ended the democracy. He was fascinated with that. And he also liked Erdogan's control over the central bank. Okay, and thank God you have Mnuchin in place. And because Mnuchin helped get Powell through the nomination process, okay? And and Trump likes, he wants the Fed to be dependent upon him. And I would tell you that would be an international nightmare. It would destroy the deepest, most liquid capital markets in the world, the US. But this is the type of nonsense is going to come out of his administration. He doesn't have people checking him.

• 1:18:07Dominic Sandbrook?

  Okay, God almighty, what's it gonna be like? I don't know. Answer a question for you.

• 1:18:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  A transition process.

• 1:18:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:13Dominic Sandbrook?

  Uh, how's that? So that that's the important question now. And the question, who's he predict the cabinet? Who's he getting in? Secretary of State Rubio?

• 1:18:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  I think it's gonna be Rubio. I think Linda McMahon is gonna go to Commerce. She was a small business executive. Her husband owns the Worldwide Wrestling Federation. He's Jim McMahon, which is a very capable, very good person, by the way. So I think she'll do a good job there. She'll be a safe pair of hands. Uh, I think Treasury, there's gonna be a food fight between Scott Bessent. Probably not a name you don't know, but I know him in the hedge fund industry. He used to work for George Soros. Very smart guy, very capable. John Paulson and a gentleman by the name of Howard Lutnick. That is the co-chair of the of the transition team. I think Lutnick is the wild card, frankly, because he's new to Trump world. And I think he is hurting his position by over talking. There was a Wall Street Journal article about him.

• 1:19:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  Couple of guys dropped bombs on him in the article, being very critical of him.

• 1:19:09Marina Hyde?

  He's the CEO of Cantor.

• 1:19:10Anthony Scaramucci?

  He's the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. So another very smart, these are, these are smart guys. But the problem is when you're trying to out-Trump Trump. Okay, you create chaos for yourself. Okay, and that and that and that could be a problem.

• 1:19:23Marina Hyde?

  And where do, where do you do it? In Mar-a-Lago, in Trump Tower? What, where?

• 1:19:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, it wasn't Trump Tower. It'll be, it'll be in Mar-a-Lago. They'll, they'll set up a facility down in Mar-a-Lago. The interviews will be held in Mar-a-Lago. Uh, Trump asked me to do something for him. It was called the Tiger Team, uh, which I wasn't well suited for. What was the Tiger Team? Uh, I want you to be tough like a tiger. And I want you to screen out the people that are not full MAGA people. Okay, and so Don Jr. is gonna do that for him now.

• 1:19:52Marina Hyde?

  And that's what Lutnick really wants. He wants everyone to be loyal.

• 1:19:55Anthony Scaramucci?

  Has to have, they have to, you can't be a guard. You'll, you'll fail the Trump test. If you're a garden variety, or that doesn't translate in a great way, but you're a middle-of-the-road Republican, we don't want you. We want you with a MAGA tattoo on your forehead, and we want you with a red tie and a red hat coming through the door to get this interview.

• 1:20:16Marina Hyde?

  And what about, sorry, Lara Trump and Don Jr. What do you see, where do you see their roles? Will they have any kind of, she has something formal. What about him?

• 1:20:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, it's a very interesting question, because he likes having his family around. And I don't think Jared Kushner and Ivanka are coming in. If Jared gets U.S. Special Envoy to the Middle East to further the Abraham Accords, and he could still run his private equity enterprise, I think he would probably do that. By the way, he did that. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think he's gonna be in the administration. I think, I think Ivanka clearly wants out. That's just reading the tea leaves, though, not speaking with her. Don Jr., you know, in the past, for whatever reason, I think they're very similar. There's been a little bit of combustion between the two of them, and they seem to

• 1:21:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  do better relationship-wise if they're not doing that. And so, he may not end up in the administration. That's my, that's my sense.

• 1:21:14Marina Hyde?

  And Lara?

• 1:21:14Anthony Scaramucci?

  Lara will have a role, no questions. She'll have a role. She'll be doing something fairly, fairly large in the administration.

• 1:21:21Alastair Campbell?

  Well, look, we're coming to the end of our specials here in New York. We did eight hours, was it last night?

• 1:21:28Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:29Alastair Campbell?

  And now, thank you very much.

• 1:21:32Marina Hyde?

  Thank you.

• 1:21:33Alastair Campbell?

  And all that. Final thought. Let's go around the table, Dominic.

• 1:21:38Dominic Sandbrook?

  It's a shock. It makes you recalibrate the way you thought about the last eight years or so. But it is the, it is the new normal. It's no longer enough to say Trump is an aberration, a short-term reaction. And this is 21st century politics now. And those people who don't like what Trump stands for, and I count myself among them, have to realize that we're in a new world. The post-war, settled, consensual style of doing politics is gone forever. And we're, we are in an age of turbulence and chaos. And we need politics that deals with that.

• 1:22:15Marina Hyde?

  I agree. Buckle up. That's my two words.

• 1:22:19Alastair Campbell?

  Yep. Anthony?

• 1:22:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  You know, again, I'm maybe I'm too optimistic. I think there is a scenario where he has gotten his retribution. He's won back the presidency, incredibly hard thing to do. He's 78 and he may leave it up to the locals. I've gotten pushback now that I've said that. Three or four people have said to me, no, he's craving the autonomy. He's got the House and the Senate. He's going to try to break the system. So we'll have to see. One way or another, something's going to happen. But if a journalist gets jailed in this country, there's not one person on this panel that would be surprised by that if it happens in the Trump administration. And that's the most worrisome thing I can say in terms of where this republic stands right now on the cusp of 2025.

• 1:23:09Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, we've got that's it. The end of our third and final Rest Is Politics.

• 1:23:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Can I tell Rory that I got the seat now or no?

• 1:23:15Alastair Campbell?

  You can tell him. And also, I think if Rory was in that seat now, what he'd be saying is that I think Kamala's going to win.

• 1:23:20Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, we'll know that. He'd be asking what the odds are, you know, four days after the certification.

• 1:23:26Alastair Campbell?

  Can I get back to what was meant to be my big momentous finale? Okay, thank you. Yeah, so that's it. America has decided Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. And his presidency, as Marina just said, is going to be turbulent. So make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out. As the Rest Is Politics and the Rest Is Politics US, follow it all the way. If you get, you know, if you want something a little less cerebral, you can always try the Rest Is History. Dominic, Anthony, Marina, it's been absolutely brilliant 24 hours. And despite the result, which I don't think any of us feel great about, it's been a pleasure. None of this would have been possible for us without Spotify, who have been incredibly generous in letting us use this wonderful skyscraper studio here in the World Trade Center.

• 1:24:10Alastair Campbell?

  And thanks to the sponsors too. If you've missed any of these live streams, you can head to Spotify now to watch it all on catch up. And one last thank you to all of you. And we're into the millions now, watching around the world. It's been brilliant to see how many of you joined us. That's it from us. Goodbye.

• 1:24:28Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company tore me of the explosion on our rig.

• 1:24:31Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 1:24:32Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:24:37Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:24:44Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:24:52Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:24:53Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9 to 10 without parent.