Anthony Scaramucci: "The Musk-Trump relationship is not sustainable"

This is a transcript of the interview with Anthony Scaramucci, which took place on 15 February 2025.

How would you rate Trump 2.0's first 30 days, and what do you expect from his administration in the first 100 days?

Anthony Scaramucci: “So, not a lot of substance. Nothing has really changed. The border maybe has been a little tighter, which I think is a good thing, by the way, but a lot of smoke, really not a lot of substance.”

“But I'm surprised that the disorganisation of the Democrats, they don't have an organised dissent against them yet, and they have to find their voice there.”

“At the end of 100 days, there will be a few people that will have already left the administration. There Elon will be on the way out. And again, he'll fizzle. He won't get blown out. It'll just be he's back doing his thing, and they quote unquote still love each other because they can't kill each other. They're too important to each other in terms of politics and business. But he'll be on his way out by the end of the 100 days, and there'll be at least one person that will have left the administration by then, and people will be shocked by it, but they really can't be because that's Donald Trump. We'll see what happens.”

“Vance will be weakened. Trump told people that he's not his successor because he hates that he's Macbeth, right? He's King Lear. That's what's going to happen over the next 100 days.”

Are there any presidential picks to date that give you any confidence that Trump 2.0 might turn out to be not quite so disastrous as some of us fear?

Anthony Scaramucci: “I think the thing that's going to make Trump 2.0 not disastrous is time. You don't have enough time. A lot of the stuff he's going to do is going to get blocked.”

“The White House is very concerned about all these prosecutors quitting here in New York over the deal that he cut this very open wound. And so it's not just the picks. Bent is a good pick. I feel bad for Rubio because Rubio looks completely out of it. He doesn't know what to say because Trump is doing things that are so antithetical to common sense. Trump says he's about common sense, and then he sends Vance to give this stupid ass speech.”

“So, I don't know if it's any picks as much as it's time. Remember, after the midterms, if he doesn't declare martial law or end the election—something very hard to do in a country like this—I think he's out of office, and the question is who's going to replace him? And they don't have a personality like Trump to replace him. The Democrats unfortunately don't have a personality either that they're willing to galvanise around. If I were the Democrats, I would team up with the former Republicans. I would go to Christie and Haley, and I would create a fusion government to beat the MAGA people. The Republican party has really been taken over by Trump. It's Republican in name only. It's really the MAGA party.”

“I would have Adam [Kinzinger], and I would have Haley and Christie. But you see the hard left of the Democrats make it hard for them to do that. But I would tell these guys, "Hey man, hold your nose. Get in the boat together and start rowing." The same way the Brits had to during the war, these coalition governments, I think, could defeat the insanity that we're faced with the MAGA people.”

Is there a Trump policy you agree with, and why do you support it?

Anthony Scaramucci: “I agree with the pro-crypto legislation, and I will say something underlying this. This is the reason why Trump is so successful is there's always a kernel of truth in what Trump is doing. So when you analyse Trump, you say, "Okay, he wants to rightsize the tariffs. If you understand the trade situation in the United States, the tariffs have been uneven since the end of the war. We accepted goods and services into our country relatively untariffed, and we accepted tariffs from other nations. Why did we do that? We did that because we were trying to create rising living standards around the world, and we're trying to fortify the world with rising living standards. And so Trump is actually right that over 80 years in order to protect American workers, we need to rightsize that. But surgically.”

“Trump is right about the Chinese taking advantage of the trade system due to the negligence of western leaders related to China. So Trump is actually right about that. But again, it's about how you go about it, which is the more important thing. Trump is right that we actually didn't want those governments in Europe to hit the 2% threshold in the beginning of NATO. Why? Eisenhower was very concerned about Germany. He did not want Germany to rearm like Germany did in the 1930s after the First World War. And so he told everybody, let it go. It'd be better for the United States to be the biggest military. So Trump is right that these people now have to increase their burden of defence. He is right about certain things. He's right about the American southern border and the fentanyl traffic. He is right about that. They are right that there's too much bloat in the federal government, but go about it with a democratic process.”

“Don't go about it with one lone guy starting with a chainsaw on the government. So there's a lot of things that he's right about, which is why he has high popularity.”

There has been a lot of speculation about the relationship between Trump and Musk—how do you foresee this relationship playing out? Has there been any talk of infighting yet, and do you think it will last?

Anthony Scaramucci: “So, the Musk-Trump relationship is not sustainable. And so, they can pretend otherwise. And there's that very famous line in Shakespeare, [the lady] doth protest too much. So they were on Sean Hannity last [Friday] night trying to impress upon people how much they like each other and how important they are to each other.”

“Now they have an economic relationship, and they have a guy that can spend a hundred USD 200 million the way you or I could spend a GBP 20 bill somewhere in London. So Trump is not going to jettison him. I've said this consistently. He's not going to jettison him the way he would jettison somebody like me or Jim Mattis or General Kelly. But he'll jettison him over time. He'll fade out over time. The DPGE thing, which is interesting, is everything else that we've tried in that government when we try to find fraud in the government, and we have USD 2,000 toilet seats and USD 10,000 hammers and things like that. It will make a little bit of a splash. It will save a little bit of money on the margin.”

“Maybe there's 60,000 people that apparently have taken their buyout offer, and so it will shrink some of the government. The government naturally has attrition of about 200,000 people a year, meaning people are retiring or they leave to go to other jobs, and it goes this way.”

“So what I would say to you is that I'm not impressed yet. There's nothing he's done. He's making headlines. He's signing executive orders. They haven't deported more people than Joe Biden did. They haven't really done anything other than make a lot of headlines. What's interesting about Trump this time, he's decided that he wants a daily reality show. And so, when he first ran and they said, "Okay, this is how a president acts," and you put somebody in the press room to handle the press briefings, and you act presidential and do president things. He doesn't like that. He's very much so an attention seeker. And so in his second round of being in the presidency, he sits in the chair in the Oval Office, and he's literally having a press conference or a reality television show every day. So I guess the issue for me is when will the press get tired of that? When will the press stop running that?”

“I don't think—and Trump has told people this—Elon is going to get bored. We don't need to really worry about Elon. He'll get sidetracked. He'll move on to something else. Okay, Elon also said something that people should really pay attention to: “I'm going to do this for four more months.” So sometime in June, Elon's moving back into his companies, and he's going to turn over the keys to DOGE. And so DOGE is a lot of splashing in the water. Not a lot of things are going to happen. No way they could save USD 2 trillion. Can they cut between USD 500 billion and a trillion dollars over time from that budget? They exploded that budget in COVID, and they don't need to be spending that much money, but they'll never do it the way Elon Musk wants to do it with a chainsaw. It's just not going to happen. Can they have more than 200,000 people leave the federal government this year, which is what their average is? Yes, they could do that as well.”

“So on the margin, things could get better on the margin, but not significantly. So that's the Musk issue.”

Do you think the war in Ukraine will come to an end during this administration, and how might the relationship between Trump and Putin impact the potential for a peace process—like the fragile negotiations currently underway in Gaza/Israel?

Anthony Scaramucci: “The Europe issue is something this is where I really can't help you because you could ask Jim Mattis, Mark Esper, you could ask General Kelly, if you ask them the following question: what does Vladimir Putin have on Donald J. Trump? None of us really know the answer.”

“There's been stories written about whether he's helped them with money laundering or they provided loans to the Trump Organization. I don't know if any of that is true or not. I'm not going to pretend that I know something that I don't. But if you said to me, who would you want to have in the White House if you're Vladimir Putin? It's Donald J. Trump.”

“And so, let me explain this because it's very, very important; the Russians see themselves as a cynical government. The Russians see themselves as the people of Russia are working for the cynical government and Vladimir Putin, it's his country, or as Louis the 14th would say, I am the state. There's a cynicism to that. There's negativity to that.”

“So now, if I were Vladimir Putin, what would I want in a president of the United States? I would want him to go to Europe, get his vice president to rebuke and scold Europe. Imagine Ronald Reagan going to Berlin or Munich and scolding Europe instead of saying that, we're together. And I would want the United States to flex itself against the rest of the world and create a trilateral of meanness: China, the United States, and Russia, and then the rest of the world. And that's what's going on. That's what Trump wants. He's got four years to do that, He's term limited.”

“Is he going to leave? The real question you'd have to ask your viewers and listeners, is he going to leave or is he going to start or ferment a constitutional crisis? I honestly don't know the answer to that. I'm not a histrionic person that believes he's going to stay. I'm saying I don't know. I would say this to all things being equal, would Trump stay? I believe the answer to that is yes. If he could stay, he would stay.”

“The other thing he's doing is he's flouting the rule of law. Now he's got an imbecile who's an accessory to him, and that's Joe Biden. Joe Biden did as much damage as you can do upon the exit of a normal presidency. He pardoned legions of people. He pardoned every one of his family members. He just did all the things that they accused Donald Trump of being against; democracy.”

“He says okay, but we're not going to have a primary. We're going to put Kamala Harris in. Donald Trump's against democracy, but we're going to cancel the New Hampshire primary. Bobby Kennedy's not allowed to run against me. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy, but Barack Obama told me I can't run against Hillary Clinton in 2016. So, my message to the Democrats is end the hypocrisy, defend the democracy.”

“But they're as mixed up as the Republicans are. So the question on where we are with the Ukraine is Trump wants to give Putin everything that he wants. So that means half of the Ukraine reverts back to Russian territory. There could be a little bit of a security zone there and some peacekeepers. The western side of Ukraine gets to stay as Ukraine. That's probably what happens. Will the Europeans have the will to stand up to that or to block it or to help the Ukrainians without the help of the Americans? That I don't know. But that's what he wants. He's been very clear about it.”

“Are they going to how much damage can they do in four years or how much damage can they do in two years when hopefully the Democrats can retake the Senate or retake the House?”

“On the Palestinian issue separately, no way is there going to be an ethnic cleansing of Palestine. The Gulf nations will never allow it. I actually feel embarrassed for Netanyahu. He probably stayed in that lane because he's got the on his side that he needs and his coalition. And they loved what Trump was doing and saying. And Trump 100% believes that. If you think he doesn't, then you really don't understand Donald Trump. He would like to ethnically cleanse the area. but it's not going to happen. It's absolutely insane. But what will happen though is the decimation of Hamas and the weakening of Hezbollah.”

“So, Hamas will not exist in Gaza the way it has from 2005 to let's call it 7 October 2023, it will not exist. The Gulf states understand that Israel cannot allow it. And the Gulf States actually want peace with Israel. They were ready to sign the Abraham Accords. but what's going on which I think is not really being well reported is the weakening of the Iranian regime. So the Iranian regime has gotten itself closer to China, gotten itself closer to Russia, but the Russians have had to pull out of the area too because of what's going on in Ukraine. So there is a scenario here, this is where Trump could get lucky.”

“There is a scenario here where the regime actually gets severely weakened and their tentacles in the area get reduced. It is possible that that could happen. But I do see a cold peace stalemate, a North-South Korean situation with the Gaza Strip in Israel with Israel having decimated Hamas.”

What are your thoughts on cutting down government spending, and do you believe it has to be done, and if not, what is to be done about the US deficit?

Anthony Scaramucci: “You're never going to cut your way out of the problem. The only way you can get yourself out of the problem is to grow your way out of the problem. So, you can freeze hiring. You can slow down the rate of growth on certain things. The non-essential things could be zero-budgeted. So what happens in the government is, I get a budget. It's a dollar, and then we got to spend the whole dollar. Even if we only have to spend 85 cents, you and I find a way to spend the other 15 and then we ask the budgetary process for USD 1.05. Then USD 1.11 the year after. And so there are things that we could do in the government that we could zero out.”

“There could be zero-base budgeting going forward on certain things, but the truth of the matter is austerity does not work. And you need a 20-year plan to rightsize the budget deficit. And right now it's at 26% of GDP. It should be at 20. You can't get there overnight. Could you go to 25 next year? Could you go to 23? And then over time you got it back down to 20, and then all of a sudden your economic growth is such where the budget deficit is quite manageable. It can't stay on its current trajectory though. And so Trump is right about that, and any smart person would know that. And so how do we slow down the”

If you could choose one sector to invest in for 2025, what would it be? - Excluding Bitcoin and Ethereum, which areas of crypto do you believe hold the most potential for value in the next 18 months? Layer 2 solutions? Tokenisation of real-world assets? A revival in DeFi?

Anthony Scaramucci: “So, I'm a big Solana buyer, I own a lot of Solana. We have a nine-figure position in Solana, but I would say to you that in the digital asset space, it's really for me Bitcoin and Solana. I own some Avalanche and Polka Dot, which I like long term, but I say those are the ones that are really going to help tokenize the planet, and then the other thing I would say to you is that away from this I have big positions in AI. We have private positions and public positions in Asteroid Labs, in Nvidia, and I'm sitting in those spaces even though some people think that they're bubbles. This is revolutionary stuff that reminds me of when I was 36, all the rage was the web and the internet, Web1. And people got destroyed in Web1 when the crash happened. But anybody that held on got very, very rich. And I think we're in the same situation today as we were with Web1 and with these two asset classes, crypto and AI.”

What is Trump's plan with crypto, and why has he launched a memecoin?

Anthony Scaramucci: “Because he's a grifter, that is the answer. And that there's no other answer. So, I was asked a question "If you could negotiate something with Donald Trump, what would you want it to be?” I would like to buy his world liberty coin, and I'd like to buy his truth social, and shut all three of those things down because it's a national embarrassment.”

“But remember, with Donald Trump, you get everything. There's no à la carte menu with Donald Trump. If you like his policies on the border, if you like his trade policies, you get the grifting as well with Donald Trump, and you get the meme coins as well. So, it's absolute absurdity, and he's also done something. He's actually slowed down positive crypto regulation, and he's proliferated. The meme coins are going into the stratosphere, meaning there's hundreds of them. So that's a disaster, and he's a grifter.”

When does Trump plan on executing the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve?

Anthony Scaramucci: “So the Bitcoin reserve, David Sachs has done a very good job, in my opinion, of trying to make that a bipartisan thing. I think if they rushed to put in a strategic reserve, what would happen is the Democrats take power? They'll sell everything. He's trying to get a bipartisan commitment to a strategic reserve. Remember, we have 27 things in our current reserve, right? We have uranium, we have trace metals, we've got metals that we need, we have lithium, we have all different types of things that the United States holds as a government in its reserve. We have the strategic petroleum reserve. Obviously, we have gold in our reserves. So the notion of having a digital reserve like Bitcoin, I think is workable. I think it will happen.”

“I don't think it will be the scale of what Bitcoiners want, but I do think that they'll get a bipartisan concession on this. David Sachs is working very hard on this, and I bet you by the end of the year, you will have a framework for it. Will they buy 50,000 bitcoins? Will they buy 100,000? Will they buy the BlackRock ETF? They're going to do something in this category, and so I think it's very clear to the rest of the world that the Americans are going to do something, which is why the rest of the world, lots of these sovereigns, are already getting in place. It's sort of like a Nash game theory. If you're doing it, I've got to do it. And I think you'll see people doing it. And this is another reason why I think Bitcoin is going to go higher this year.”

How fearful should the UK be of the Trump administration with regards to tariffs and possible global trade war?

Anthony Scaramucci: “So, I don't think so. There’s lots of splashing in the water, lots of theatrics, but I don't think he's going to ever really get there. And I don't think he's ever going to fully impose the tariffs that he's talking about. I mean, remember, we get lots of our energy and our electricity from Canada. Do you want to see Southern California's energy shut off? You're getting 78% of the aluminium for our car manufacturers from Canada. Do you want to stop all of the production? I think it's a lot of bombast, and I think when those policies meet the impact of the stock market, Trump is going to blink. And as he should, because he'll put the world into a recession.”

Skybridge’s Crypto ETF has returned 150% in the last year, making it one of the best performing ETFs on the market. It looks to be a fairly straightforward product with simple stock allocation. How was it put together, why has it performed so well, and what do you predict it will return in 2025?

Anthony Scaramucci: “How it came about, in 2021, we unfortunately were not allowed to have a Bitcoin ETF. And so we looked at correlations, and so we said okay how can we get as close to the return of Bitcoin as possible? We can own the components of the digital ecosystem. We can own some of the Bitcoin miners, which are publicly traded. We can own something like MicroStrategy, which is publicly traded. Coinbase, which is obviously an arms supplier to the crypto industry. And so we put together a list of about 20 stocks. We actively manage it. So we put things in and out of there depending on what we think is their earnings momentum. It got launched in 2021. It did well, and then it crashed, which wouldn't surprise you. 2021 Bitcoin went from USD 70,000 to USD 16,000. But if you were like us, we were buying it at USD 3 or USD 4 a share, and it's now back up to USD 18. This year, there’s probably a USD 35-36 price target for that ETF.”

“I think, and I could be wrong, and I always tell this to people, I've been humbled by life, but I think Bitcoin is a USD 200,000 asset this year. That's a 100% return from where we are right now, which would only put Bitcoin at a USD 4 trillion market cap. And so we're talking about what I think is an asset class would be the market capitalisation of our largest stocks, which would include things like Apple or Nvidia.”

“And so for Bitcoin to truly be an asset class, it would have to trade into the USD 15-20 trillion zone, which would imply that it had roughly the same value to humankind as gold. And so to me, I believe that that is the case, particularly for younger people, and so if I'm right, we'll have another great year.”

There have been calls for an Unexplained Wealth Order in respect of property transactions by Donald Trump in Scotland. Do you think this should be pursued?

Anthony Scaramucci: “Listen, I don't know Scottish law, but, I don't see how that's going to help anything. Trump triggers people, gets them angry, and then politicians want to respond to him by doing something that's frustrating to him. I would recommend they not do that. My strategy when I met with a group of people from the House of Lords last time I was in England and some of the MPs, was that you ignore Trump. Of course, Keir Starmer has to denounce ethnic cleansing in Gaza, but you generally try to ignore Trump. You’ve got to stay out of his field of vision because he's a very mean guy, and he'll demean Trudeau, call him the governor of the 51st state and this sort of stuff.”

“He's not a leader that wants to help other leaders. He's a leader that wants to hurt other leaders. He wants to help Putin for some reason. We don't understand why, but he doesn't want to help Western leaders. If you're overly flirtatious with him or you're overly sycophantic towards him, he'll be nice to you temporarily. It won't be for long, though. It’s just the nature of who he is, a very mean guy.”