Anthony Scaramucci: Biden was the number 1 reason Harris lost the election

This is a transcript of the fourth interview with Anthony Scaramucci, which took place on 11th November 2024.

Did Harris lose or did Trump win?

Anthony Scaramucci: So, I think you have to give him credit. I'm going to call it a Trump victory. She lost because she was unknown and she was reasonably unpopular and so forth, but the loser really was the culture war. When you looked at what people said; "Okay, why didn't you vote for her?" people were tired. They don't want boys who are saying they're girls playing in their daughter's swim match. People get upset about that and they don’t want it so people have to understand that. Some will be insensitive to it and others will not be but I am being observational about it.

That's my take. But when you talk about that live stream, I’ll just give you an example of legacy media versus current media. We had 2.8 million viewers, Fox News with all of its apparatus did 10 million. But just think about that. Four guys in a studio with two cameras, it's sort of incredible, the difference between legacy media and what's going on in podcast media. So, I would say Trump won that election. I would say the Democrats mishandled the candidacy in terms of the selection of the candidacy. I would say that the Democrats mishandled the culture debate. I think they've missed the moment with where the Americans are at with culture. I think what the Democrats actually could have won is that they have a strong economy in this country, if you look through the numbers, everybody's wages are going up, and things are improving. There was lots of disinformation out there in social media talking about the economy, making people feel anxious, and triggering people on the economy.

What caused Harris to lose the election?

Anthony Scaramucci: I would say four things caused her to lose. Number one is the definition of the culture, people are upset and they don't like the direction it's going in and the Democrats have to regroup. They've got to stop this nonsense and focus on the lower and middle-income workers.

Number two is misogyny, and whether people like it or not, the United States is not ready for a left-leaning woman politician, any more than Labour has put up a woman politician in the UK. In the UK, you have had three women Prime Ministers, but they’re all from the Conservative side.

Number three, and I think this is true and people have to accept this is there was lots of disinformation out there, and whether you like Elon Musk or you dislike Elon Musk, if you analysed his feeds, there was tremendous amounts of disinformation on those feeds. What's interesting is they're talking about closing the State Department's office of disinformation where the State Department is putting out, ‘hey, this is from a Russian bot’, ‘hey, that's probably from a Chinese bot’, ‘ hey, this is not true, dogs and cats are not being eaten in Springfield, Ohio.’ But there's a good group of people in the country that actually think that dogs and cats are being eaten in Springfield, Ohio.

And then the fourth thing, and this is the one that I think got everybody is that Trump did something that no politician has done in about 40 years as a presidential candidate; he travelled into states that people didn't think he was going to win. So, he closed the margin, he was only down four in New Jersey, he was in New York, he's only down six in California. So, when people were criticising him, asking  what the hell is he doing in Madison Square Garden? Why is he in California? Why did he go to Wildwood, New Jersey? He did those things to win the popular vote, and he won the popular vote. So, he has a mandate now whether you like it or not.

Do you think Joe Biden deserves more blame at his door?

Anthony Scaramucci: What was the number one reason why she lost? Joe Biden. That was the number one. You can't put somebody in that position 105 days and just say ‘go’. Some people think you can, but I don't think you can. There’s a lot of women in the Democratic party that are very ticked off. To explain, it’s a situation where ‘Biden of course gave Harris the job with 105 days to go. He hurt women by doing this.

Why didn't he drop out a year ago and maybe Harris would have made it through the primary, but they feel he put her in a position to fail.

He [Biden] now goes down in history negatively and the movement that Joe Biden hates, which is the MAGA Trump movement - this anti-immigration sort of misogynistically charged movement -  Joe Biden fueled - Joe Biden put shrimp on the barbecue. So, you would have said if she won or he won, Joe Biden ended Trumpism. But the great irony is that he fueled it.

There was a four-year interregnum period where Trump amped up his rhetoric, his ‘stop the steal’ nonsense about a stolen election. Trump amped up his racial hatred like a coiled spring. Because of his [Biden’s] age, the sun was setting for him, let's just be honest about it. He couldn’t respond. He wasn't able to respond on the great things he was doing about the economy, the great things he was doing to clean up COVID, the great things he was doing to restore manufacturing and he failed to make those arguments. So Trump got stronger and stronger and now you've got Trump again in a much more powerful, more prepared position.

He knows who he wants to put in that cabinet. He's going to make sure that there are no moderate Republicans in that cabinet. He's going to put all the extremists in place. And so the irony is that Joe Biden created more havoc for these people.

When did you all know Harris had lost the election?

Anthony Scaramucci: I knew at 8:30pm because they had fed us NBC, and CBS exit polls. And so those polls look terrible for Harris and those polls look terrible in all seven swing states and of course, she went on to lose all seven swing states. So by 9pm Alistister Campbell said to me, "She's going to lose." And it became clear to us that she was going to lose. Of course, we weren't going to say anything because we're not officially calling something based on a few exit polls.

What do you think Trump will do in the first 30 days of his term?

Anthony Scaramucci: The first thing he wants to do, which I'm very worried about, he wants to sign an executive order to renege on birthright citizenship. I was born in this country, so I'm entitled to citizenship. So what he's going to say is, let's say my mother was here illegally and I was born in the country. Currently, I'm entitled to citizenship because I was born in the country. George Washington was an immigrant, so is he going to revoke his children’s citizenship?

There's a culture in this country that the Brits love, the Japanese love, the world loves. What's the culture of the country? You're welcome here. It doesn't matter where you're from. Doesn't matter your sexual preference, orientation, whatever it is, you're welcome here. And now you're going to put up almost like a gate or a wall. There's going to be a harshness in this country that is in other countries as it relates to immigration. It is going to hurt the country, because the intellectual capital flows to this country, rich or poor. Like Trump says, ‘I really want the best and we're going to bring the best in’.  You don't know who the best is! Sergey Brin, came in from the Ukraine penniless, and he went on to create Google.

How about the illegal immigrant Elon Musk? By Trump's definition, Musk has to return to his country. But, whatever you think of Musk, he's one of the most successful entrepreneurs, if not the most successful, in global history, and I would like him in the country. Even if I don't like every one of his political views, I want him here, creating jobs and creating technology in this country.

What is next for monetary policy/Fed independence under the Trump administration?

Anthony Scaramucci: So, if he puts Scott Bessent in at Treasury, I don't think they're going to move towards the independence of the Fed. Scott Bessent is a very very smart markets person, 40+ years in the markets, multi-billionaire, seasoned, rational human being okay he would be a minuchin-like pick at treasury and so even if Trump wanted to push for that [independence], I think Scott would really do the best he could to block it. So, I think that's rhetoric.

Katty [Kay] Caddy and I did a couple of [Rest is Politics] live shows and I asked the following question:  you've heard Donald Trump, here's a list of things that he wants to do. Do you think he means it or it’s rhetoric? Raise your hand if you think he means it. 80% of the people say it's rhetoric.

And so, does that [Fed independence] fall in the category of rhetoric? I'm going to take that and say yes, it does. I don't think he's going to do that. because I don't think he has people around him that believe in that, and the economy is quite strong and the Fed has done a good job. I mean, what the hell are you going to do? Rip up the Fed, take interest rates down to zero and destroy the dollar? That would be a disaster for the country.

Considering Trump’s past admiration for Putin and his scepticism toward extensive US support for Ukraine, what does the Trump victory mean for Ukraine’s future? How might Trump’s relationship with Putin influence his approach to Zelenskyy’s efforts to resist Russian aggression, and what shifts could we see in the US stance on the conflict when he returns to the White House?

Anthony Scaramucci: So, it's interesting because apparently he had Elon Musk on the call with him and Zelensky, so I'm saying to myself, what the hell are they talking about? What kind of a number are they going to do on Zelensky? In the meantime, he's also leaked that he wants Putin to deescalate what's going on, so it'll be really telling. If he goes to Putin and says, "Knock it off, otherwise I'm going to triple fortify the Ukraine”, people in this country will be shocked - everyone's expecting him to partition the Ukraine.

But something happened over the weekend that made me think about these things a little differently. On Russian television, they were showing naked pictures of Melania. It makes me think it was a tell to Trump, that they've got stuff on him and they're going to embarrass him if he does things they don't like. It'll be interesting to see what happens - my gut tells me he's going to give Putin what he wants, but it's hard to know at this moment.

If Harris won, NATO would have been flexing against Putin. It would have helped the Ukrainians, it would have fortified the Eastern Europeans and helped the European economy. If he's going to partition the Ukraine, it's going to freak out Europe and it's going to cause Europe to spend lots of money on the military. It's probably going to depress the European economies. So, we'll have to see which direction he goes in.

How does Anthony think UK SMEs that export to the US will be directly affected by Trump’s tariffs or could the UK see a pass?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think he likes the UK. He's got pictures of him and the Queen in his new scrapbook and he's a royalist. He wants to have a good relationship with the UK. It's important to him because his mother, I believe, was a working-class woman from Scotland.

The person to focus on is Robert Lighthizer - he's going to be the architect of his trade policy. Lighthizer has written a book about this and I would recommend that book to anybody who wants to understand where they're going because Lighthizer has taken a position in the book where he believes the US was taken advantage of in the general agreements and trade and tariffs, in what ultimately became the World Trade Organization. The book states no trade is free, changing course, taking on China and helping American workers. So I would say this is going to be aggressive, it's going to be rough, but I think some of it is fair in the sense that we do have to recalibrate where things are now.

How important was Joe Rogan, Dana White, and Elon Musk to Trump’s win?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think this was the bro podcast election. Again if you look at the cross tabs [polls], Trump got the majority of the white women. Trump got 46% of the women overall, but he crushed it with the white men and he crushed it with men that typically don't vote. I said this got it wrong, I said, she's relying on people who always vote and he's relying on people who may not vote. But they showed up and they voted.  She could have done everything that he was doing but she was nervous. She didn't want to do what he was doing, Rogan invited her on and she could have gone into all those areas, but she was afraid to do it and that's something people sensed as well. He beat her fair and square. He beat her harshly. And the question is how do the Democrats regroup? Forty-four years ago,  Reagan came into town, and he crushed Jimmy Carter. Forty years ago he had a 49-state landslide and the Democrats said that they were in disarray and they couldn't pull anything off ever again, and Bill Clinton was standing there eight years later and won on the card table.

You described Donald Trump as “the Freddie Krueger of US politics”. You were definitely right about that weren’t you? What do you foresee in this latest “sequel”?

Anthony Scaramucci: When Berlusconi was out of power and then he retook power, he came in hot, he came in more aggressive, he came in more damaging, he came in more arrogantly. And so, if history is any guide, someone that loses power, that returns to power, at age 78, I don't think we're getting a benevolent version of Donald Trump.

When you talk about Freddy Krueger and the slashing, I think he's going to come in hot and I think there's a risk now that you've got some oligarchic coordination. There's a group of people that are very, very rich in this country and they've decided that Trump and Vance is their vessel, their vehicle for manipulation and their vehicle for inserting themselves into the government.

These guys are all from South Africa. They have an idea of the world different from the idea that you and I have of the world, in terms of liberal democracies. So if they can manipulate this guy and make money off of that manipulation, that's what they want. So the Freddy Krueger sequel could be a combination of things that are not great. Cruelness and meanness as it relates to policy and it could relate to winners and losers.

What kinds of positive Bitcoin and crypto-related policy changes can we expect from the next US administration? And how will this impact the future of finance, DeFi, and the web3 / blockchain ecosystem in the coming years?

Anthony Scaramucci: So that's the brightest thing on the horizon and that's something because I own a lot of Bitcoin and Solana - my two large positions have done very well since after the election. You have guys like Jay Clayton and Brian Brooks who are putting together a 100 day plan for the SEC and cryptocurrency stable coin legislation definitions of what are securities versus tokens/commodities. I think that's going to be incredibly favorable.

I feel like Bitcoin should be $150,000 given the demand for Bitcoin and given the properties that Bitcoin has. I'm coming out with a new book. It's called The Little Book of Bitcoin. I wrote it with Michael Sailor, the micro strategy investor, and I think it's [Bitcoin] been suppressed by US faulty politicized regulation and so this is one of the good things about the Trump administration they're going to depoliticize the cryptocurrency regulations be very good for crypto but remember you're going to get you don't want them pulling out of NATO. You don't want them walling the country off literally and figuratively from the rest of the world. You don't want 500% tariffs. All of those things would outweigh the benefits of the positive crypto regulation.

This is a transcript of the third interview with Anthony Scaramucci, which took place on 1st November 2024.

If the markets continue to price in a Trump win and Harris prevails, how do you anticipate the markets will react the day after? Could we see significant volatility or corrections?

Anthony Scaramucci: Remember under Harris and Biden, the market's at an all-time high. And I think the market is now pricing that she could win. You had a correction in the crypto markets, which is an indication of that. And I think people realize that if she wins, the economy is probably going to be okay.

She said something brilliant in her speech. She didn't call it a tariff because nobody really understands that. She called it a 20% sales tax. Did you hear her say that? ‘ Wait a minute. Trump's going to put a 20% sales tax on something I'm going to go buy in the store because that's effectively what it is.’ Whoever told her to do that or to say that is smart.

If Trump loses the 2024 election, do you think he will step away from politics entirely, or is there a possibility he will continue to influence Republican candidates and the party’s direction? How could that impact the Republican landscape in the next decade?

Anthony Scaramucci: So, Trump I'm the contrarian on this. Liz Cheney would tell me I'm wrong about this. I don't think he's going to put up a big stink. Everyone says that he's going to. I don't think he's going because he will go to jail if he does. He's got a sentencing on November 26th. The judge is going to tell him, "Look, man, you're a convicted felon. If you're going to incite political violence, we're going to put you in jail."

The markets appear to show more confidence in Trump’s chances than some polls and analysts. What does this say about the divergence between public opinion and financial markets? Are markets betting on Trump’s brand and economic promises rather than actual electoral data?

Anthony Scaramucci: So I think we can prove that the Polymarket is a very thin market. I would ask my buddy Rory Stewart, who wants to put a $100,000 wager on Kamala's chances to win, he can't place the bet. So in other words, betting companies don't want the bet because someone went into those markets, moved those markets, and they're not indicative of where the actual polls are.

How important is the fed meeting next week after the election?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think you're going to get a minimum of a 25 basis point. They’ve got room in today's [job] data to get a cut. You can see it in the stock market this morning [1st Nov]. We're about to open, but the futures market is already up.

Will Trump leave Americans poorer?

Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, he'll hurt us, he'll make us poor. Look at Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Meryl Lynch, they all say more debt, higher tariffs…he'll take the GDP down and he'll expand the deficit. There'll be a lot of people to potentially stop him from doing this, but what if he pulls out of NATO or what if he reduces the sanctions on Russia? Remember the Western Alliance forces us to rely on each other, but the US is the biggest economy in that alliance. You need the US to be a benevolent leader that understands it's got to watch the back of the UK, Australia, France, Germany, Italy. Trump’s telling you he's not that guy. He doesn't want to do that. He's talking about America first but as my co-host Katty Kay always says to me, when he says America first, she hears Europe alone.

Do you think that's a reality if Trump wins?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think it's a big possibility. The good news is you have a lot of systems. He can do a lot of damage, but I think there's a lot of things that are going to prevent that damage, but why take the risk? He wants to take the FBI out of the Department of Justice and have it report directly to him. They want to remove the structure around the national security clearances because a lot of the guys in his team can't get clearances due to their illegal activities in the past.

How will the job market figures for October impact the result of the election?

Anthony Scaramucci: I take the opinion that if she wins, Jerome Powell's likely going to stay as the Fed chair, which I think is better for the job market. I think the market has performed well and the Fed is doing a generally good job. If Trump wins, he wants to fire him and potentially end the Fed's independence to work in ways where the Fed has to be beholden to him - that has never worked. If you don't believe me, take a look at Erdogan and Turkey. I think the job market would be more stable and better under her than him.

What is the feeling in the Harris camp at the moment?

Anthony Scaramucci: They're saying they're nauseously optimistic - not cautiously - they’re nauseously optimistic. They’ve got a pit in their stomach, but they're looking at their data and they like their data. They're looking at the women's turnout and they like it.  The elder vote in Pennsylvania is way down. It means older people are saying,, “I'm not going to vote. I don't like her, so I'm not going to vote for her, but I can't vote for this anymore”.

Does the MAGA movement ride or die depending on this election result? Do people like Vance pick up the torch should Trump lose – or does the Republican party retreat to traditional conservatism? Similarly, does MAGA continue after Trump has finished his second term should he win?”

Anthony Scaramucci: I don't think that Vance can pick up the torch. He is an articulate guy, but I think he's too close to Donald Trump at this point, and I think he gets absorbed in the heat blast, meaning if Trump implodes, he gets eviscerated. If Trump wins, Vance will be destroyed the same way that Mike Pence was. So, I think Vance is too close to Donald Trump. He's finished. He'll never be able to come out of it. He's smart, though. He gave a good interview with Joe Rogan. He's articulate, but I think he'll never make it.

So, what could happen is the party implodes? The Mitt Romney, John McCain, that element of the party's over. You now have this fusion party of MAGA and hardright cultural issues with normal public Republican party principles. So who picks it up? If you poll these people, they like Tucker Carlson the most, They see him as the leader of the party. I don't think Vance can be the leader of the party and I don't think the Republican party under Trump can, in other words, be the MAGA movement and Trumpism cannot hold. That's a personality cult. So I don't know what comes in its wake, but it won't be that.

What will you do if Donald Trump wins the election and would you work with him again?

Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah. No. I would never work with him in the government again. First of all, he would never want me in the government again. If he or his administration wanted me to do something for them that could benefit our country, I would 100% do that. But in an official policy advice some type of role that is not in the White hbHouse. I'm always open to things like that.

If Donald Trump or somebody asked me to help on crypto, I'm helping on crypto. I'm a patriot. I love my country. I don't want him to win. I don't want him to be the president. If he does become the president, I would want to help in any way that I can because I know, that would reduce and mitigate potential danger.

You’ve been both a supporter and a critic of Donald Trump, not only for his handling of the pandemic - but as well his language and behaviour. I imagine there was a turning point for you during his administration. With the upcoming election, has Trump done anything recently that reminded you of that turning point? Has there been perhaps a specific moment that you felt was particularly disappointing or unforgivable? For example, the comments made at the Madison Square Garden rally about Puerto Rico?

Anthony Scaramucci: I've tried to tell people this, and you could ask General Kelly and others. He is a lawbreaker. He is a rule stretcher, And so the reason I got fired so quickly from the White House, I just wasn't willing to do certain things that he wanted me to do. Just wasn't willing to do them. To give you an example. first of all, he wanted me to go into the press room and lie for him. He wanted me to say certain things, that were exaggerations or I can't remember the specifics. I said, "Look, I’m just not willing to and I can't do that."

Second thing he did, he wanted to veto the Russian sanctions bill. It's not illegal for him to do that. But I pointed out in front of a large room that if he did that, Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan who are on his team are going to go to Chuck Schumer and get the veto overridden. He didn't know. I mean, that's eighth grade social studies in the United States, but he didn't know that you could get the veto overridden. And so I embarrassed him. So that was another reason.

And then the last thing about it was he said to me he wanted to release some classified information. I just couldn't release it. It had to do with the Russians and it was to provide evidence that he personally didn't collude with the Russians. And I said, "Look, we can't release either because there's human intelligence involved with this stuff and somebody could die that's an American agent." And then he called me a deep stater. He said, "You're a deep stater." I'm like, "Dude, I've only been to Washington one time, on a school field trip. I'm not a deep stater. I'm an Italian kid from Long Island." Okay.

And then Kelly, he said, "Look, I'm sorry. He doesn't want you working here. I got to fire you." I said, "No problem."

I think this Madison Square Garden rally really hurt him.I think for Americans to call Puerto Rico a pile of garbage and yes you'll say okay it was a comedian blah blah. No, it's a comedian warming up for a potential future president. If it was a comedian warming up for Bill Maher, it's a different thing. I think that really lit up the Puerto Ricans in this country. And there's 400,000 of them in Pennsylvania. And if 250,000 of them are of voting age and 10% of them vote for Harris, she wins Pennsylvania.

If you could say one thing to every American voter, this is the last message from you, what would you be telling them right now?

Anthony Scaramucci: I would be telling them I'm for Harris. While I may not agree with every single policy, she's a constitutionalist and she's for our system. He's talking about shaking the system and going after his enemies. Imagine a politician who wants to go after his enemies in a democracy that has free speech, versus if you were railing against her and she won, you would have zero worries about her coming against you.

This is a transcript of the second interview with Anthony Scaramucci, which took place on 8 October.

In short, is there any scenario that keeps you up at night as we head into this election?

Anthony: “I'm going to say something really contrary here and I want you to think about it from this perspective; I think the chance of the Democrats challenging the election result is close to zero because it's part of their brand not to do that. Al Gore didn’t do that in 2000 and I don't see any Democrat doing that today. Moreover, I think Biden is an institutionalist and as a traditionalist, he will show up at the inauguration, even though Trump didn't show up at his. I think he will do that.”

“As a contrarian, I don't think Trump is going to give people a hard time after the election. Everyone's set up for him to have this massive insurrection, saying ‘Let's have a civil war.’ But Trump has a legal case. He has a sentencing on November the 26th in New York. He's been convicted of 34 felony counts and I don't see how he gets around that.”

“If Trump says - ‘the election was stolen, I want you to march on the Capitol, I want you to burn buildings, I want you to go and riot,’ - the lawyers are gonna get them. They’ll say he will have to go to jail - you're a traitor to the United States. This is the second time that you've formed an insurrection and since we already have you now on these counts, that act is going to put him in jail. And one thing Trump doesn't want to do is go to jail.”

And you think that's a fair term that he's a traitor?

Anthony: “Okay, don't go by me, go by the facts of the situation: He never conceded the election - it was a free and fair election. There's no evidence of fraud. There wasn’t a court case anyone in his team won. He had people that were on his team, including the Secretary of the governor of Georgia, who looked at the election results and said these are fair. By the way, we both voted for him. He's also been caught on tape asking for additional votes in Georgia. I don't know. It sounds pretty traitorous to me.”

You previously predicted a 75 basis point rate cut from the Federal Reserve by the end of the year. Do you still think it’ll be a 75 point cut?

Anthony: “Yes, I do. I think they’re going to cut by another 50 points at the next meeting, and then they’ll cut by another 25 basis points before the end of the year. That’s what I expect.

Will the Biden administration’s record on the economy help Harris’ election aim?

Anthony: “The stock market is at an all-time high. The economy is doing well, if you look at the data that was released last week, it's very hard to get better data and that in terms of wage growth. Something else very unusual is also going on. You have job growth and wage growth, and you have inflation numbers down.”

“Usually, when you get wage growth, you get lots of inflation but those inflation numbers are coming down. The Biden policy initiatives, which include reshoring and manufacturing, such as remaking microprocessors here in the United States are all helping. The infrastructure bill which was embedded in the Inflation Reduction Act, is all of the bridges and road and tunnel restoration that has led to higher wages, leading to good economic growth.”

“So these are reasons to stay the course because in the last three years, we've had rampant inflation. I'm not just talking about five, six, or eight percent inflation, which is the aggregate. I'm talking about, certain prices going up as high as 20 to 25 percent. I think that's created a level of unease in the population. And so the question is, are those numbers coming down in time to help Harris? I don’t think any of us know the answer to that.”

If the election was tomorrow, how likely do you think that would be for Harris to win that blue wall?

Anthony: “The Siena New York Times poll said Harris is currently sat at plus three. In the last two years, Trump has under-polled so Harris will need to be at plus five in the polls for her to win comfortably. If the latest polling has any error in it, Trump will win. At this point in the last cycle in 2020, Joe Biden was at plus 10, so Harris is behind where Biden was in 2020 at the moment.”

“It looks like Trump is going to win Georgia. It feels like it's toss up in Pennsylvania and places like Wisconsin but of course, Trump wants to win one of those states. So Harris has to win the blue wall which includes Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan; she's gotta win those three.”

With tensions between Israel and Iran increasing, what effect is that having on the commodities market with oil hitting $80 per barrel despite the US producing more oil than ever before and how could the election result impact this - will we see more escalations and these tensions turn into an oil war?

Anthony: “The short answer is no and I think that Harris and Biden have proven that despite their ecocentrism, focus on ecology and the rhetoric related to the environment, they're producing more oil than ever before. This is something that frustrates Trump people because they can't run on that idea anymore.

“People that are pro-Israel, which I happen to be,  have to be very careful with the Trump administration because he's a very transactional person and he'll say one thing and he'll do another quickly. And whether you like it or not, Biden and Harris have got two aircraft carriers in the region which are providing some level of stability.”

“If you are a pro-Israel voter, in November, you have to vote for Harris.”

“Harris’s and Biden's actions have been very pro-Israel. They said they sent billions of dollars of arms. They have sent two aircraft carriers and strike forces in the region. And so to me, you got to vote Harris if you're pro-Israel.”

The Harris early bounce has stalled a little and the polls are not shifting much either way. What does Kamala have to do in the last four weeks to gain the edge?

Anthony: “I want to start by saying that I believe the polls are accurate this time. They were behind, meaning they were under polling Trump support in 2016 and 2020. But I think they're accurate this time because when you go through the methodology, they're building two to three points for Donald Trump before they post up the final number. So I think the race is currently too close to call. And I think the race is definitely winnable for both sides”

“Whether you like him or not, Trump is out there. He's going to do one rally a day or two rallies a day now until election day.”

“Kamala Harris’s positive is that in addition to not being Donald Trump, she has a very broad team. And she's doing more work than her predecessors. As an example, Hillary didn't go to Wisconsin once. Kamala showed up in Wisconsin recently with Liz Cheaney. She has 2,000 people on the campaign staff and tens of thousands of volunteers. The last time we counted the volunteer numbers, she had 200,000 people but they were working effectively 300,000 peoples’ worth of shifts, meaning, many of those 200,000 people were working two, eight hour shifts. So she's got 320 campaigns, this is an unprecedented number - nobody has that. From the Hillary Clinton perspective, this is very different from 2016 because they're in the field, they are working, and she is showing up the campaign so she's got all that going for her.”

“But Trump has something that she doesn't have. He has a hundred percent brand name saturation. Now, Harris started on this real assault for the presidency on the 21st of July, but I would say that she's still somewhat unknown. That's a problem for her. Someone may say, I'll take the devil that I know versus the devil I don't.”

“So, for me, this is the question. Whose hand would I like right now? Nate Silver says Trump's hand. He's got a 60% chance to win because if you look at the seven states, the battleground states, he's better than Harris on most of the margin metrics.”

“But I like her hand better because she has momentum. She's doing more media and she's raising more money than him. We're gonna spend almost two billion dollars to elect a president. So she's gonna have a two to one money advantage on him and she's gonna have a two to one personnel advantage on him as well. He has a name advantage and he's a former president. But she's got something she can build on. Trump has a high floor but he has a low ceiling - he caps out at 47 and a half percent.”

Trump played to his base with his return to the scene of the assassination attempt. He has strong cards to play like that, but Kamala doesn’t appear to have many cards like that to play. Could that be decisive? And What did you think about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump? What was your initial reaction when you heard the news?

Anthony: “I thought - okay, he's winning the election. He's rising from the gunshot saying fight. There's an American flag behind him. It's an incredible photo opportunity. He is going to single-handedly because of that. He's going to win the election.”

And you still feel that that is the case?

Anthony: “No, I didn't have any impact. It's interesting, if you were talking to me in 2012, that would have had an impact. If you were talking to me about the debate, he got destroyed in that debate by anybody's metrics, except for his own. But it didn't move the polls. He was shot at and it didn't move the polls, so it's telling you how tight and how close the election is. All the types of things would move the polls historically, they didn't.”

Trump has barely concealed racism in his immigration rhetoric. And you’ve mentioned previously that you fear the US is too racist to elect a black female. Is the 2024 election one which will reveal how racist America is as a nation? Do you think it’s still the case? Do you feel there's hope?

Anthony: I have said that every country is racist and every country is sexist. But as racism and sexism go, the US has a storied legacy of racism and sexism starting with slavery. Women have only been able to vote for the last hundred years. Other female candidates have failed to get there and so, it may be a situation where the country is not ready [for a female president].”

Melania Trump clearly supports the right for women to have abortions, yet Donald is campaigning for the opposite. That’s one weird marriage right there with such polar opposite views on something so integral?

Anthony: “Kamala Harris has got the policy of reproductive freedom on her side. I think Melania Trump coming out in support of reproductive freedom, rights, and pro-choice - the complete opposite of what her husband thinks - was planned by the Trump campaign. They're trying to get some sympathy from the female voters.”

There’s been a big focus on the president, but how about the vice president - I can't recall to being quite so different and having quite so different CVs and personalities. Do you think the VP role will make much of an impact? Maybe not the election, but the administration moving forward.

Anthony, Robert Greene says you must never upstage the master and he has done that consistently. And so, Trump will destroy this guy. He is Mike Pence number two. You have the Texas Chainsaw Massacre and it does well at the box office, you make a sequel. You're gonna witness the destruction of a human being and it'll happen.”48 Laws of Power: “I think JD Vance is in trouble because he's smarter than Trump. He won the VP debate, Trump lost the presidential debate, and Trump hates that. In the

“JD Vance will never be president of the United States, and it'll happen one of two ways: He'll blame the whole election loss on JD Vance - he'll do everything he can to destroy the kid’s career - or the worst thing that could happen for JD Vance is that Trump wins. He'll be the Vice President serving for a megalomaniac. When you're looking for a job, you should always ask the person who you're replacing what the job was like, ’ Okay why is the job vacant?’ The guy that had the job previously got massacred.”

Donald Trump is 78 years old. Should age be a contributing factor in voters making their decision at the ballot box? Is Trump’s cognition to be brought into question?

Anthony: “I think there are two ways to hit Donald Trump: 1). You can hit him on the cowardice argument that he is not debating or 2) You can hit him on his age and the fact his mental faculties are shot. A recent New York Times article described the dementia that he's facing. You can see it in the incoherence of his sentence structure and the way he's handling himself. I think they've [the democrats] got to hit him very hard on that, and they haven’t.”

Does Donald Trump have any redeeming features - either personally or professionally?

Anthony: “What I would say is that he's got great political instincts. He's identified the economic desperation of large swaths of working-class people. He can be incredibly charming in person. And I would say that he has some good policy instincts when it comes to regulation and tax policy for businesses.”

"Up against that, though, he doesn't like America's position in the world. He doesn't like America oversharing its resources with other countries. He doesn't like the way the alliances are set up because they're all leaning on America. But if you understand power and the balance of power, you have to go back to Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan, Hobbes says that we have our greatest level of peace when there is one large behemoth, one large hegemonic power, and through its military power can deal with conflicts and tribal differences around the world."

“And remember, the US wanted to have military supremacy so they were less anxious about getting to the 2% GDP spending threshold for NATO members. For other members, they were less anxious about all this. They figured less military power in places like Germany is better for the US long-term.”

What is going to happen in the markets the morning after the election? How will they react and who will be the winners and losers?

Anthony: “So, I think the market will rally on a Harris win and the market will be flat on a Trump win. I think the market knows that with Trump, there comes levels of unpredictability. Remember, in the Biden/Harris administration, we've gone to record stock market highs.”

“Could Trump be good for business? Yes, perhaps but he's got the same issue as Harris. She can't tax unrealized gains and Trump can't put 100% tariffs on people.”

“So we’ve got to make sure that the moderates win as money likes cowardice - Money is a coward. Money likes predictability. Money does not like boldness, but likes predictable and stable situations, money is a coward.”

What do you believe will be the regulatory change Trump and Harris will pursue under their White House administrations? What will be the impact on the US stock market in which particular sectors?

Anthony: “I'm a big believer that in a divided government, not a lot will get done. If you judge the Harris plan out of a group of economists, hundreds of them will tell you that the Harris plan is better. It's less deficit spending, less tariffs, and more promotion of the middle class and small businesses, which is where the job growth actually is - she's also on a deficit reduction plan and inflation reduction plan. Those would be very positive, but she's going to probably have a divided government if she wins. So, not a lot will get done. On the Trump side, the tariffs would be very problematic. Also, I think people are forgetting that he wants out of NATO - he’s been very clear about that. He wants out of our military alliances around the world. He'll probably work on a deal with Vladimir Putin to see at least half of Ukraine - and I think that will put pressure on capital markets because one thing that mortgages don't like is uncertainty. Markets like predictability, they like sanctity, and he'll be way more unpredictable. But, he'll likely also be faced with a divided government. So, I think we're going to be okay. The number one thing driving the market is the Federal Reserve interest rate policy and that's coming down. We expect at least 150 to 200 basis points of additional reduction in interest rates over this 12 to 18 month period of time. I think that'll be generally good for the markets.”

Are there any particular sectors you think there'll be regulatory change that will have a particular impact on the markets? If Trump does what he is expected to with NATO and with Ukraine, defence stocks may potentially increase as well. Do you think there'll be any kind of opportunities in certain sectors and some that won't do so well?

Anthony: “Trump polls ahead of Harris on the economy. But, if you ask about individual policies, she pulls ahead of him. His image as a Republican and as a business person is stronger than the actual content of his policies. And so, it'll be lots of unpredictability and from 35 years of working in the capital markets, the markets don't like that kind of unpredictability.”

Do you think the hedge fund world is more friendly to Trump versus in 2016? When many backed Biden, things changed and people were particularly nervous about the direction the US was going in. Do you see a rise in support for Trump within the funds you have invested in and, do you have any data among funds that Skybridge is invested in?

Anthony: “I think that way more of the billionaire class have sided with Trump this time than they did in the two prior elections. I also think there are hedge fund managers that are high profile, like Bill Ackman, that are for Trump now. Other influential people like Elon Musk are for Trump. But I think, in general, most people in the hedge fund community are quietly against him. They don't like the uncertainty.”

Do you think the US will continue to dominate the global equity market and returns as it has done for the past decade or do you think the next 10 years will be less of a one horse race?

Anthony: “I don't see it as a one-horse race per se, I think they'll be other drivers. I think one of the things we do, any time we project out more than three years,  we get so many things wrong. We can't anticipate certain ecological changes that could affect decision making or policy, so, I don't know the answer to that.”

Given the past few years of rising interest rates, what are your expectations for defaults by corporate borrowers, especially in the private credit arena?

Anthony: “We've had less commercial banking lending. That's been the case since the financial crisis 15 years ago - so you have more direct lending from hedge funds, and more direct planning from private equity, which has generally been higher interest rates for corporate borrowers. I think rates are coming down though. I do think they'll be across the board, a 200 basis point reduction in rates which will help the economy.

“If we look at the rates, it's tricky. In the savings economy, the rates are high - there's more disposable income for people and people feel richer. But if you're in a debt economy, the reduction rates are going to increase people's cash flow and increase their spending. They'll be a positive flywheel to that. So, corporations are going to get a chance here to refinance, once again, at lower rates. There will be more earnings, more repurchasing, more hiring and more capital equipment and investing. All of that is quite positive.”

Does Harris' proposed tax plan—which includes taxing unrealized gains—suggest a tougher environment for corporate profitability and, consequently, the stock market compared to Trump?

Anthony Scaramucci: “I don't think there's a chance that a tax on unrealized gains could happen in the United States. There are Democrats who are against it, but it never got out of committee the last time it was proposed. I think that is put in there to keep the hard left on side for political gamesmanship. I don't take the threat of tax on unrealized gains seriously. If that were to come to pass, that would wreck the US capital markets and it would be an economic disaster for the country. For that and many other reasons, I don't see it as a looming threat - I think the bigger issue is deficit spending”.

“So what are we going to do about the deficit? Trump wants to reduce corporate taxes from 21 to 15 per cent. The deficit Trump says that he wants to get rid of the taxes on tips, which both sides have said. Trump has said he wants to end taxation on our social security payments, so that's $4.6 trillion over 10 years. That's a $460 billion additional load on the deficit. Can the United States sustain that when we have $35 trillion of debt? What would the interest rate be on that debt?”

“Let's say for argument’s sake it's four per cent - that's going to be more interest rate expenditures than our military expenditures and so one has to ask, is this sustainable? At least Vice President Harris has proposed ideas to address deficit spending to an extent. Trump does not want to take this approach. Gold’s market capitalization has increased by $5 trillion this year, with central banks buying gold so I think the real problem is the imbalance in the United States between the deficit and the dollar”.

Bearing in mind some of the things Sir Keir Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy have said about Donald Trump in the past, is he likely to be antagonistic in his dealings with the UK Government? Presumably, he is a lot better disposed to Nigel Farage?

Anthony: “I think Trump is positively disposed to the UK. He's a bit of an Anglophile being a lover of the Royal Family and so forth, I don't think it had a negative impact when he was president from 2017 to January 2021. I don’t think a Trump presidency will have a big impact on the UK.”

Would a Trump presidency interfere with the Fed’s independence?

Anthony: “I think it's a big risk. He's been very clear about that. If he controls one of the houses through executive action or gets rid of Jerome Powell and puts in a loyal stooge, he could end up getting that. That's extremely dangerous for the capital markets. I think all capital market experts would say that an independent fed is better than a dependent one. And if you don't believe me, just look at what Erdoğan did to the Turkish Lira, as a result of subjecting the central bank to his will - it would be very dangerous.”

Will a Trump presidency make the UK/City of London a more appealing prospect for international investors (whether the UK would benefit at all)?

Anthony: “I don't think it's gonna have a big impact.”

Of all the things you learnt in your brief tenure at the White House, what shocked you the most (that you're allowed to tell us!)?

Anthony: “I'll say after going through a presidential briefing, it shocked me. It shocked me to get an idea of the issues that are facing the United States, which are monumental. They are also facing the United Kingdom, of course. Terrorism, migration, foreign adversaries that are infiltrating our social media, drug trafficking, Fentanyl, for example.”

“I wasn’t in the intelligence briefing itself, but if I listed all of the things that we were faced with then you would understand how organized our adversaries actually are.”

“We're disrupting lots of terrorist activity in the West. The NSA has the capability of identifying threats and keeping things from getting out of hand. There is a reason why the United States has not had a terrorist attack of consequence since 2001 and that's because we've intercepted countless terrorist attacks. We're working alongside our European allies, New Zealand, Australia [and], Canada to try to resolve that but when I read the first presidential daily brief, I was very concerned.”

“When I got fired from the White House, George W. Bush said to me, “Did you have access to the brief?”

“Yes, sir, I did.”

“That's a game changer. Isn't it? Is that a life changer?”

“And I said “Yes, sir. It's a life changer, yes.” He said It's hard not to have a change in your life when you read it for the first time”

“This was another problem with Trump. He didn't take the stuff seriously. You need leadership.”

This is a transcript of the first interview with Anthony Scaramucci, which took place on 5 September 2024. As such, it took place a little less than a week before the first TV-debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Saxo: What are you seeing or hearing to suggest an outcome one way or another?

Anthony Scaramucci: I can give you both side’s strategies and I can tell you who I think will prevail. Both strategies now are very base related and so let me provide evidence of that - and what I mean by base related is neither side is making any attempt to appeal to what I would call the centrist independent voter there. They're going to let the chips fall where those centre independent voters fall to.

So, the strategy from Kamala Harris is ‘I'm going to focus on my base. I'm going to bring in Tim Waltz who's red meat for my base. I’m going to take hard left positions on a lot of things. I'll moderate a few things like fracking. But what you see with me is a liberal Democratic politician and if you're a liberal Democrat, I want you to come out and vote’.

On the other side is Donald Trump, ‘I'm picking JD Vance who's hard, red meat for my base, and I'm going to double or triple down on things like misogyny. It appeals to the nature of his base, and they think they're running the testosterone-laden campaign’.

They do have a big spread versus her with white male voters and so both sides have said ‘this is a get out to vote election, and I'm going to beat the drum for my base and get as many of my base voters out as possible’.

So, I believe that you have to see this thing from Harris's point of view at this moment, in the following respect. Forty-eight days ago, she was cooking bacon in her kitchen. It was a Sunday morning, July 21st, 2024. She gets a call that she is going to be the presumptive nominee, Biden's dropping out of the race. She needs to go on 48-hour lockdown and lock in these delegates.

Secondary to that, she has to make sure there isn't some type of missile shot at her, or some type of gap that she creates, that causes a Democratic freefall, because they just had a very big internal fight about removing Joe Biden and they're not going to be able to survive a secondary fight about a five-person mini-primary leading into the nomination. So, she locks that down, and she does a very good job of not going to the press. The press wanted her to go to the press, but the people really didn't care. This prevented her from making any seismic or substantial gaffe.

She's gone out and given one interview now. It was a decent interview, it wasn't terrible. I thought her lighting was terrible. She's got to get somebody on the campaign with her to work on her lighting. She doesn't want to look that tired when she's doing these things.

Trump is an entertainer first, he's a politician second. So, he's always got the orange war paint on, he always looks relatively Trump-like at least he's consistent in his look.

I think you have to give Harris credit. She's only been in the race for 48 days, she's put together an economic team, national security team and a fundraising team. She's raised $540 million in the last five weeks. She has a field operation that is much larger than his, she's out manning him two-to-one in the field. She's out-officed him in the swing states, at least two to one, in some cases, three to one, and that is really good for her because that creates organizational opportunity to get the vote out.

So, they're banging on doors ‘are you an early voter? Ok great, here's the ballot, let's get this ballot in ASAP’. You're voting on election Day - that's great. Here's the van. It's picking you up at nine o'clock from the nursing home. Bringing you over to the voting booth. Are you for Harris? Yes, I am, get in the van’. 

Trump doesn't have that, and so Harris also has a registration advantage to him. Her registrations for the Democrats or in the low 30s. For the Republicans, they are in the high twenties, it's like 28 or 29 percent.

Forty plus percent of the registrants are independents, but when you poll that likely voter group, voted in the last two elections or likely to vote in this election, she's got a six-point spread over him.

And I think her campaign sees her campaign narrative starting on September 10th with the Presidential Debate and I think she will go gangbusters after September 10th forming her narrative, using her team to rebuild the Obama Coalition, so I'm going to make a prediction and say she wins the election.

She's been very disciplined on not gaffing and she wins the election because she builds a bigger, broader, more ethnically diverse and more economically diverse coalition than Donald Trump.

His ceiling has never been higher than 47 and a half percent. If he can't get above that, she can generate more than that substantially and so she'll win enough of those swing states to win the election.

That's not my bias, I've endorsed her. It’s my opinion based on the data. Can he still win? Yes, he can. She gaffs, she can blow the debate, she can go for unrealized taxation of the United States. She can make some imbecilic hard left policy. impossible for independents to vote for.

She could do that, but I don't think she's going to do that because she's already moderated her position on gun control. We just had another school shooting in the US, she's moderated her position from what it was in 2019. It was very Australian in terms of her ideas, she's walked away from that, she’s walked away from her anti-fracking and so she's trying to present herself as the middle of the road, moderate Democrat versus a lunatic. That's basically her message.

On his side, he thinks that those seven states are going to fall in his favour because the lunatics that want to vote for him, he thinks he can get them out. He's going to beat the drum on racial dog whistles, he's going to beat the drum that she's a dumb woman, that she can't stand up to Vladimir Putin. And he's going to make the bet that more than expected white male voters are going to turn out for him. He may be right, but that's a much smaller demographic group than her, so she has more potential constituents than he does.

Saxo: And in 16 and 20 turnout was key right in the elections and Hillary probably under-inspired the Democratic base a little bit. Trump inspired key Midwest states to come out, didn't they? And in 2024, do we think it's all about turnout? Because obviously 2020 was high but there was a bit of a referendum on the pandemic and about the reaction to George Floyd’s murder. Is this all about turnout?

Anthony Scaramucci: So, you're thinking of turnout differently than me. Let me provide the distinction. You're thinking about massive numerical turnout. More voters turned out in 2020 than they did in 2016. Trump eclipsed his voter total, he had 68 million in 16, he got 75 plus million in 2020. Biden got 81 or 82 million.

I'm thinking of turnout in terms of the political stripes of the potential people that are voting. Is my base if I'm Kamala Harris going to turn out more than Trump's base or vice versa? If I'm Trump, is my base going turn out more than Harris’ base.

If there's a very large turnout, Harris definitely has the advantage because there's more people on the Democratic register. These are more moderate women voters that want to protect their reproductive freedoms. So, if there's a massive turnout, I think she wins on that.

Saxo: But perhaps this is a different election because it's really the first time Gen Z, a whole new generation, can actually take part.

Anthony Scaramucci: There's 40 million Gen Z's that have been added to the voting scrolls since 2016. Moreover 20.2 million baby boomers have died since 2016. So, you've had this incredible demographic shift in the electorate and that plays better to the younger politician.

Some of the stuff Trump is saying, which worked with Baby Boomers - ‘she's dumb, she turned black’ - they can handle his misogyny and his racism, and they ignore it, but the Generation Z people get triggered by it. They don't like it.

Saxo: In 16 and 20 Trump's base was male, white and old and probably uneducated as well. There is some Gen Z which suggests that in the young males especially, they favour Trump?

Anthony Scaramucci: When Biden was in the race, men of 18-29 favoured Trump by an average of 11 percentage points. Young women favoured Biden by 28 percentage points. Now that Harris is in the race, Trump is plus two with the men, Harris is favoured by 38 now with the women.

But this is good news for Trump, because there's more male voters than there are female voters. So, yes, the 18–29-year-old voter who is white is going for Trump. There's a 51% split, so the question is, is there another group of demographics that she can appeal to in order to keep pace with those numbers, to eclipse those numbers? I think that there are.

If you ask me, honestly, did she have a successful Democratic Convention? She did, but if I was a man from Mars and I landed on planet Earth and those were my first three days on earth, I would have assumed that the United States was 80% black and 70% female from the Democratic convention. So, it didn't appropriately reflect what the actual demographics are in the society. So, she's at risk there. I'm not saying that it's a slam dunk election for her, but I am saying that on the data she has an advantage in terms of the registrations, and she has an advantage in terms of the broader appeal, the wider net that she can cast.

Trump's goal is to hammer down a lot of these red meat, testosterone-laden issues - the border, immigration, the unemployment situation, the economy. These things poll very well for him with that group of voters. And so, his goal is to get as many of those voters through the door.

What we know about white male voters, 18 to 29, is that they don't vote 50% of them, stay home.

Prima facie, it's a close election but I don't think you've seen her narrative unfold yet, and I think they are timing that unfolding of her narrative to be after the debate. She's got a very solid economic team down and a very solid national security team, and she's willing to do the work.

Biden couldn't do the work; he was too old and too frail - she's willing to do the work and get out there. But if she doesn't take interviews and she doesn't amp up her interaction with the media it will cost her because the media will get frustrated with that, they'll start complaining about it, they'll still cut to Trump more to punish her, and that'll be a problem for her. But what I would say to you, whatever we're talking about right now will be fortified by 17 September. A week after that debate more concrete things will have been set in the electron’s foundation. Then you and I will be able to look at the data and say, ‘Okay she's going to win and here's why’ or ‘she's miss executed and he's going to win this thing’.

Saxo: John Stewart's daily show, they made quite a lot of fun of the convention. It was all about vibe…

Anthony Scaramucci: I believe based on talking to people inside her campaign that their pushback to you would be, this woman entered the race 45 days ago. We had to get her ready for the national stage. Yes, she was the Vice President, but you know how the Vice President is treated in this country, they get relatively neglected.

She's now thrust into the spotlight. Her first thing she's got to execute on is don't gaff and have another entrant come into the race and spoil it for her and have some kind of mini primary, so no press and then Americans don't care because they're in summer, the media cares. She then has to execute a base laden DNC.

She does that, but she provides no specifics because frankly, she's only at that point. She's days into her campaign. She's not ready. She didn't even have Gene Stirling on the team until this week. He's the senior economic advisor now, she’s broadened the map for Democrats, Trump has got to go to more places and spend more money in places that he thought he wasn't going to have to spend money as a result of her being in the race. But he's also behind her on the fundraising, she's raised $540 million since the convention. And so, she's got a tremendous amount of money. She's got twice the number of field offices and personnel in Pennsylvania than he has.

People say she should have the narrative together already, but it just does not work like that. It would be like you're the contractor on my house, and I say, ‘let's go, I got to get the frame up’, and you're like, ‘we didn't pour the cement for the foundation, how are we going to get the frame up?’, so you can't get the cart before the horse with this thing. 

Let's evaluate after the debate. If you tell me there's no narrative and she's not going to visit with the press after the debate, or form an independent narrative, or take hard questions from the press, or do some impromptu press conferences, she's going to lose, you'll have to reevaluate it.

But if you tell me she's been disciplined thus far, then the next phase of this thing is to be disciplined with specifics and to show that she can command the facts impromptu - if she does that successfully, she will broaden her viability, she will beat him.

He has very high negatives and he's never been able to get above 47 and a half percent, and he's under criminal indictment and there's the spectre of a sentencing coming. Now, I don't expect him to go to jail, but you could see a wrist slapping. You could see some kind of punitive thing that hurts him. Trump will say that these things help him, and maybe it does galvanize some of his base, but in general it doesn't help him with the independents. Having a conviction record and having a potential penalty in terms of time being served, even if it's home confinement or an ankle bracelet or that sort of thing, it's not ideal for trump.

Saxo: But on the Gen-Z, this is the first generation where the financial prospects are less than their parents. Do you think they look at that as the Democrats' fault, Republicans' or just because of the system?

Anthony Scaramucci: The Trump voter is similar to the Bernie Sanders voter. The Trump voter is a populist, the Trump voter is saying 'the establishment hasn't worked for me, the establishment is not aggregating for me - burn the goddamn thing down'. And so those people that feel that way in the lower and middle income were voting very hard for Donald Trump in 2016, less so in 2020. But the real question is now, where are those voters going to go?

If Harris can get out there and say, ‘hey, we had a great legislative agenda, we passed onshoring of the manufacturing act, we put 250 billion dollars into that, we passed a CHIPS act, we're now making microprocessor chips in the United States, we passed the Inflation Reduction Act where we've got bridges, roads and tunnels being rebuilt in the United States that's going to lower the cost of goods of services in the country, and by the way, those three legislative items have added to real wages and added to real income growth for lower and middle Americans, and Mr. Trump did nothing for you - yes, he expressed your anger and he acted as a representative of your anger but it didn't pass any legislation to help you’ - you see what I'm saying?

Joe Biden was too frail to make that argument. But she's not made that argument yet, the way I just made the argument - if she doesn't do that, she's at risk. But I'm being told she is set up and is getting ready to do all that. But remember you're 45 days in and I think she's been disciplined, and she's been contrary to conventional wisdom, but I think it has worked for.

Saxo: We were talking about the economy which is obviously at the heart of the previous question, but everyone's concerned about the overall level of the debt in the US, yet no politician on either side can promise austerity.

Anthony Scaramucci: But it's also not going to happen because they have the flexibility of having the US dollar be the reserve currency, and we've got a lot of dollar denominated assets floating out there. They're both making a mistake not coming up with a coordinated, long-term, decade-plus deficit reduction plan. They should both be saying ‘hey, let's get this off the table in a bi-partisan way, we're going to work for 15 years to lower the percentage of the GDP that's going into the debt and we're going to figure out a way to reverse course on what we've done over the last 20 years’ - neither side wants to do that.

The American public is not taking that potential crisis seriously. And the politicians, frankly, are saying ‘if I've got to print another two trillion dollars this year, I'll do it’. It does hurt living standards. These deficits are unfunded tax liability. You're either going to pay them back by raising taxes or you're going to inflate them, you're going to monetize them by creating so much money that you're paying them back with dollars that are worth less than the ones that you borrowed.

Saxo: Is it a poisoned chalice then for either of them, because inflation is going to be hard to avoid?

Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, but remember, when we think linearly, you're talking to investors, and you should remind these investors when we think linearly, we get things wrong. We thought in 1985 we were running out of oil. It was something called Peak Oil Theory. I was told by a professor that we would run out of oil by 2010.

We didn't run out of oil. We invented ideas and ways to get more oil out of the system; fracking, better offshore rigging, GPS technology, thermal imaging - we figured out where the oil was, and we tapped into more oil.

So when you sit there and you say, it's going to go a certain way, it may or may not go that way because you could have tremendous productivity growth in the United States as a result of robotic technology and AI, and all the sudden the economy's growing faster than you expected, the receipts are coming in from the tax revenue perspective that are helping you pay down things or at least reduce the percentage of our budget that's going to interest expenses.

Saxo: One of the things that Kamala Harris has announced is the capital tax on unrealised gains. Does that risk any slice of the voters?

Anthony Scaramucci: Listen, that's never going to happen. I think it's a mistake for her to bring that up. I think she's trying to feed red meat to the left wing of her base, but that's never going happen. They don't have enough Democratic votes to pass that. No Republican I know would vote for that. There's many Democrats that would never vote for that.

Saxo: If she was to bring it in, would it have an impact on trading behaviour in the global market. Would it deter people from investing?

Anthony Scaramucci: It would destroy the capital market in the United States. That's the reason why, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, who are all economists who I have spoken to and have their research, haven’t written about that. They know the consequences of it would be absolutely cataclysmic and they know, it's just chin music for her base. Anything's possible, and I've been humbled by life, but I have that at less than a five percent probability that even gets proposed.

Saxo: You've been talking to JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch etc - big business has so much power in the States, doesn't it? You clearly operate in that area, what's the inside scoop on what business thinks of Kamala?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think the big CEOs are with her. What I mean by that is the Fortune 500. Jeff Sonnenfeld - the dean of the Yale School of Management - says that there are no Fortune 500 company CEOs supporting Donald Trump.

Musk is supporting Donald Trump. Elon Musk is of the opinion that under Donald Trump it will be more decentralized and less controlled. That's good for him in his businesses, so he's for Trump. I think it’s incorrect and this is a 2016 analysis.

I was once for Trump, I got to see up close and personal what he's like. My conclusion was that he can't be President again. He may be who the hell knows? But I'm telling you, there's a reason why 40 of us have gotten together and said, ‘’Hey, this guy shouldn't be president.’’

If I worked at a pharmaceutical company, and I had 40 people that were distinguished, experienced people in their 50s and 60s that worked at that company who weren't monetarily incentivized, and were telling you the truth and said, ‘’Hey, this pill, I watched it getting made. If you take the pill or you give it to one of your kids, it's going to kill them and you,’’ would you take the pill?

But yet in American politics, you have 40 people saying that to people and you have 73 million people that still support Donald Trump.

Saxo: There’s a feeling Trump will go after people who have gone after him or stand in his way. His initial stance on not going after Kamala has not held out, how low will he go?

Anthony Scaramucci: He's going to viciously try to tear at her and attack her. He's hoping that she will break down somehow and will not be able to withstand the attacks that he's bringing, that's his goal and she will make a mistake If she goes Hillary Clinton on him.

So, what did Hillary Clinton do?  Clinton said: ‘’I'm going to read the policy book from A to Z. I'm going to show it at the debate and I'm going to demonstrate to people my depth of knowledge of policy’’.

The American people don't want that. They want a verbal sparring match, and they want you to outwit him. I would love to tell you that this is a hiring contest in the United States, but it’s not. It's a popularity contest. Who's going to keep me interested? Who looks like a safe pair of hands? If she can roll with Trump in a live debate, that means she can be okay with Vladimir Putin. It's simplistic, but that's how the American people think.

Saxo: Trump seemed a bit restrained in his attacks against Biden in the previous debate - though he didn’t have to do much with Biden struggling.

Anthony Scaramucci: Trump is not stupid. Anyone who thinks that he is stupid, they're missing the whole experience that's going on with Trump when he saw Biden imploding. The right move on the board was not to pile on Biden, but to point out that he was imploding and then get away from the implosion.

He then went on a 10-day sabbatical after that debate because he didn't want to pile on, He wanted Biden to stay in the race. So, he went away for 10 days and didn't criticize Biden at all. Because if Biden comes out of the race, he may have to deal with somebody younger than him. That would be more dangerous for Trump.

Saxo: He won't be timid on Monday though, would he?

Anthony Scaramucci: No, he's going to come out guns-a-blazing!

He's going to come out fierce, He will tell her she’s incompetent and a dumb woman - which is a code word for ‘you’re black’. Just racist, dog whistles. She has to handle herself well because she has to parry him. She's got to debate him and tell people he is wrong for the country, and she is right for the country.

It's going to be hard for her to win with an ‘’I'm not Donald Trump. That's my campaign message. So, vote for me!’’ I don't think that works. If there's a narrative that's coming out of her campaign of what she stands for vs what he stands for, then she has the best shot to win.

If she doesn't provide that she creates a vacuum of advocacy for her own policies. Then I think she'll lose because people won’t know what they are getting from her.

The other thing that happens when a politician does that is that the other side comes in with the worst policy that they could think of, and they superimpose it on their competitor.

She's hammering totalitarianism and project 2025. He'll be hammering unrealized gains, taxes, and so forth.

Saxo: So, the fear is that she might play defence? Because Trump is only going to play offense, isn’t he?

Anthony Scaramucci: The fear is she plays defence, or she goes into Hillary Clinton policy wonkiness, which is incredibly boring and incredibly trife for the American people and it doesn't serve her well.

Saxo: What cards can Trump play? What does he have to play?

Anthony Scaramucci: Trump has two things going for him. He's got the economy on which he polls better than her, and he's got the border, which he also polls better than her. On both of those things if he blames her for the inflation, she has to respond to that, say It's not her fault and explain that.

He can press her for the feeling in the economy. The stock markets are at an all-time high, but people feel poorer because they have less disposable income. He can pressure her on that.

Saxo: The narrative is starting to grow a bit of momentum around the election that it has been rigged. How close is the US to reaching the tipping point to send it into anarchy If the Republicans don't get the result they want?

Anthony Scaramucci: I have a counter view to all this. The conventional wisdom theory is he's going to try to cause a massive insurrection, that if he loses the election he is going to ask for guns and violence and a takeover. But I have a different theory on this. I don't think that's going to happen because I think he's under criminal conviction. He's been convicted 34 times for a series of different felonies. And I think they have to say to him - 'if you start a violent insurrection, that's a jailable offense'. You're not going to jail for the other stuff that you've perpetrated, but if you start a violent insurrection, you are going to jail.

Saxo: Can he control his base though?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think so. And also, the American government is going to be way more prepared for him. They were caught off guard on 6 January in 2021. They're expecting the type of thing that you are talking about. Remember the doctrine as an investor of reflexivity is that if everyone's expecting it to happen, it reduces the likelihood because of the preparation.

You have candidates in the race. If Vice President Harris loses, is there going to be an insurrection? So, we have one candidate that we think could cause an insurrection, isn't that prima facie disqualifying for the son of a b?

So now as this narrative unfolds over the next two months, are there enough smart American people to make sure that he doesn't go back into the White House? We're going to get a garden variety Democrat, the economy is going to be fine, the stock market's going to be fine. Putin will have to cut a deal because she'll remain convicted on Ukraine, the status quo will exist.

He will wreak havoc on the status quo, he’ll want out of Ukraine, he’ll allow Putin to push into other republics, that’s what he does.

Saxo: So, does he make the election if he knows he's going to lose? He looks as though he's the type of character that would take the ball away if he's upset?

Anthony Scaramucci: If he's down 10 or 12 points, he's going to drop out. He will never let her beat him that badly. I'm telling you; I've gotten that from the internal people that work with him. Plus or minus five he will stay in and try to win. He goes down 10 or 12 points; he'll fake a health issue. He’s the worst presidential candidate for the Republicans, since Herbert Hoover.

Saxo: Is this the end of his career if he doesn't win? Does he retire from politics or trying to influence politics? And if that happens, who is left from the Republican Party to pick up the baton?

Anthony Scaramucci: If he loses, that will create an opportunity for the Republicans to move away from him and to grow a new centre coalition in America. If he wins, he'll use his right-wing organizers and his right-wing base, his project 2025 to try to recreate what goes on in America? And it'll be very dystopian.

Saxo: If it's dystopian, what does that represent for the economy? And what impacts will it have on the US, the value of the dollar, globalization and trade? Does that risk the pillars of the US economy as we know it?

Anthony Scaramucci: The short answer is, yes. He's already talking about Fed dependence on him. He's giving speeches and said the Fed should no longer be independent. Is that a good idea for investors, that we don't have an independent Fed? Look at what Erdogan did to the central Bank of Turkey when he said he was taking it over. It would be terrible for the US.

Saxo: Trump is campaigning on the back of he'd be better for the economy, but he could be worse.

Anthony Scaramucci: Well, he’s saying he wants to take over the Fed, pump up tariffs to 20% with the Chinese, and cut income taxes. And it's going to create a 4.6 additional trillion-dollar balance in debt. How's that good for the economy?

Harris needs to do exactly that - ‘So, this is what he wants to do, how is that good for the economy?’. And smart people know that it isn't.

Saxo: The Fed Bank is meeting just after the debate, how do you see them changing the rates?

Anthony Scaramucci: I think they're only going to cut .25 right now. I think you will get three .25 rate cuts by the end of the year unless anything catastrophic happens.

People think they are behind the curve and should cut more, that it should be 125 basis points by the end of the year just to get back to even, but they will only cut by .75

I think the dollar will strike once they cut rates because once you cut rates, remember, it's a match selling race. So, the other banks will start cutting rates. Which will strengthen the dollar because it's a relative game.

Saxo: Is it still good to keep holding cash as investors, or are there other commodities attractive all the time the US economy is potentially volatile?

Anthony Scaramucci: I own a lot of cash and a lot of bitcoins. I still have a stable of technology stocks I long-term believe in. They're down a little right now but I think the markets are up 16-17 percent so far this year, which was a very good run. If you get three rate cuts, I think it'll bully the market. It'll provide a floor evaluation for the market.

Saxo: In terms of the other assets, commodities such as gold or other metals, which would you say are the ones to go to and what are you staying clear of?

Anthony Scaramucci: We have in our portfolio copper, and we have gold. You need copper for the electrical properties associated with it, the conductivity, you need it for the plumbing in the home improvement and housing. I think gold has outperformed the S&P 500 over the last two years.

Saxo: Is the S&P too reliant on the Magnificent Seven?

Anthony Scaramucci: No question. What should be done and what could be done? They could be challenged from an anti-trust perspective. And they can be broken into a multitude of different companies, and that would, frankly, unleash more innovation. That's something that could be done. Will that be done? Just too strong of a lobbying effort to prevent it but there are people in Washington who think that they should be broken up.

The great irony of all this, when they broke up the AT&T Bell System in 1984, it unleashed all of the great technology that led to the Internet, to the explosion of Web One, social media and all the other things. So, we had to do that. I think it's a mistake not to allow for this in innovation, but those companies eventually will have to get broken up.

It’s not going to happen anytime soon I'm just talking about what's right or wrong,