1.2 million New Yorkers are food insecure, and most have jobs.

I mean, I'm getting my ass fired from the White House. I'm getting it lit up by the late night comedians, excoriated [music] in the press. Goes, "Hey, Dad, are you going to be okay?" Well, it was the first time in my life where my kid was trying to parent me. Welcome to a new edition of uh Power Players. I'm so excited to welcome in my next guest. I talk to him all the time, but he's the author of the new book uh All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. That's Anthony Scaramucci. Good to see you. >> Good to see you, too. I mean, yeah. You know, I just said if that that book was about all my wrong moves, it would have been the size of a phone book. So, it was just just about a historical analysis of how we got to where we are. >> When do you find time to write this? You're still uh you got a day job. >> I'm on the planes a lot and I had two good research assistants that helped me with it. And, you know, I'm always asked the question when I'm traveling or speaking. What happened? How did we get so tribal, so partisan? How did such a large group of people in the United States feel left out? Uh, a group of people I grew up with with, you grew up with that were economically aspirational as working-class people, how did they become desperational from a economic point of view and uh, so I did about a year's worth of research, formulated a few ideas and put it down and then obviously backed it up. >> You're famously 11 days communications director. You and I have talked about >> 11 days more infamously. I don't know famously, but you've been steadily like pushing back. You've you've you've sounded the alarm on what's going on in this country very early on. >> Well, listen, I love the country. Um, I say in the book, I made a mistake working for Donald Trump. I, you know, I I I also objectively explain in the book what Donald Trump has done well. I try to tell people uh it's really not about left or right, but what's right or wrong for the country. And in this book, it is not a partisan book. It's not a witch hunt. It's just an observation, economic observation, political observation, but also a historical observation of what happened in the country to create the moment that we're in right now. And by the way, if you don't like this moment, the last two chapters are about how we can repair and how we can rebuild. Um, but I sounded the alarm on President Trump in 2019 because I didn't like uh I don't like the politics of hate. Don't like the politics of anger. Uh, people can criticize me for working for the president when he was ridiculing Mexicans before he got into the presidency. I have to own that. We have some cognitive dissonance in our personalities and we project onto other people what we want them to be as opposed to what they are. Um, but at least I was man enough to admit my my my mistakes and I admit a lot of my mistakes here. Okay, I thought some of the things that we did in those three catastrophic decisions, I probably would have supported all three of those at the time. So, this is a hindsight test. This is like, okay, hey, we thought this was going to happen. These are wellended, good people trying to make a great decision on behalf of the American people. And the consequences being what they are, they went in a different direction than they originally anticipated. What would you say to someone that would counter that with but Anthony the stock market's at a record high? >> I would say that the the country's topheavy. I would say that the dynamics in the country and I know you talked to a lot of economists the upper third of the country certainly the upper 1% of the country is doing incredibly well. Those are the owners of the stocks. Uh the profitability for those large companies are quite good and that is all well and good and I'm all about that. But if you look at disposable income and you look at the median income in the country, uh, you know, we're not catching up and there's a lot of financial anxiety, it's a very large group of people that feel left out of the system. That's what I would say. >> It is topheavy. You know, the other side of it is, you know, I track a lot of companies. I read a lot of earnings call transcripts and companies that are exposed to Dollar Tree, Dollar General. I mean, these people can't even afford to make it week to week. I mean, they're cutting back on what they can eat week to week. Suddenly a trip to McDonald's is too damn expensive. >> Okay. So, so Brian, to fortify that, I'm on the board. Eric Schwarz, who's the head of the board, former Goldman partner, dear friend of mine, put me on the board of City Harvest this past year, which is a big honor for me, frankly, because I I want to be helpful. It's the largest food bank in the city. Uh the stats are very damning. We have 1.2 million people in this beautiful, very wealthy city that feel food insecure. By the way, these are not homeless people. These are people have two jobs working super hard to your point about going to McDonald's. They're having a hard time because their energy prices are up, their heating prices are up. The transportation to get to and back to work is up. And it's starting to eat up the other aspects. Remember remember these price increases and inflation are regressive. Uh wealthy people can handle it, but the poor can't. And so we have 1.2 2 million people that are food insecure in the city likely to go up after the midterms because the SNAP benefits, one of the things in the big beautiful spending bill is that the SNAP benefits are going to uh be reduced after the midterms. So guys, that put a lot more pressure on these people. So So you see it, you see it in the economic data, I see it. Um I'm doing well. >> Have the Republicans lost the the economic narrative? I think I think the Republicans have lost the economic narrative and I and again I want to be objective. I think the president frankly understood the crisis at the border handled the border reasonably well. I don't like the fact that he shut off legal immigration. I think as an economist we need one and a half to two million people to come into the country to refortify the labor markets and also to help us with our intellectual capital. We always need a flow of smart smart people to come in. That's where you got Sergey Brin. That's where you got Elon Musk and some of these very uh incredible innovators and and visionaries. We certainly want that in the country. Uh but shutting the border down, I think helps on narcotic trafficking, helps on sex trafficking. It probably it probably reduces the overupp of labor in some of those jobs. I think he certainly got that right. Uh but if he had just stuck with the d direction of where things were going in 2024, he didn't like admitting this, but the inflation numbers were going down, the economy was going up. Uh we we were we were starting to rebuild off of CO. Uh but I think the decisions to ratchet up the tariffs was a bad one. Moreover, it was illegal. And so we've had this pushpull stop start with the tariffs. Tariffs are a regressive tax on poor people. Second thing that he did, he promised he wouldn't go into a forever war, the prosecution of that war. Um, you know, we many people will take him at his word about the risk of Iran and so on and so forth. I'm just not so sure. We had a deal with Iran that got ripped up, the Iranian deal that the President Obama put together, and we're now in a quagmire and it's pushing prices up, fertilizer prices, which affect food, energy prices. We're about to go into the winter. we could have $7 gas and by the time we get to Christmas and we don't solve this problem, uh we've depleted our strategic petroleum reserves here and in Europe. And so I think from an economic narrative point of view, these things are hurting us. Now, someone will push back and say, well, look at look at how robust the uh the business cycle is at the top end and look at the spending cycle and AI and so forth and so on. I say yes, there's no question about that, but the average American has about $400 in savings. The average American is missing dental appointments. They won't go to the insurance adjuster if they have a fender bender. Um, we have 40% of the students, again, this is sort of a statistic knowing what food insecurity is. 40% of the students in the elementary school, that would be K to the sixth grade, if they're going to a public school in the United States, 40% of them respond to the following question. Why aren't you doing well in school? They said, "Because I'm hungry. I'm going to school hungry. I can't concentrate." Now, whatever you think of Kathy Hulk call on that one issue, I applaud her because she restored uh what was taken away in federal funding for the public schools here in the state of New York. You know, Brian, we're a rich enough country. We don't have to have the kids going hungry going into the schools. So, there's a have not thing going on right now that's creating a lot of anxiety. >> What's your what's the mood within your Wall Street community? I mean, you know, everyone. >> Well, I think the mood in November 2024 is, "Haha, Trump is back. Mooch, you're an idiot. You thought Trump would be bad for us." >> Lie by regulations. >> Haha. Yep. Great. Yeah. Haha. Haha. Mooch, you're such an idiot. You got this wrong. >> And I think the mood now is more akin to what Jerry Baker said two days ago. I don't know if you know Jerry WSJ. >> Yeah. WSJ editor. He's now a columnist there. He says he thinks he's getting a case of Trump derangements in them. He's a longtime Trump apologist, longtime supporter. Uh he was also making the lesser of the two evils argument that Trump was the lesser of the two evils versus what the Democrats were offering. But I think he's now seeing the existential harm that the president's causing to the body politics. There's something else the president's doing which is very very bad for middle and lower income people. It's the corruption. Because let me tell you how corruption works in somebody's mind. Corruption takes away hope. When you're Brian or Anthony growing up on Long Island and the families we grew up in, we had hope. And our parents looked around and said, "You're going to be somebody." But when you have that level of corruption going on inside of Washington, people look up and say, "Oh my god, there's a two-tiered system." Uh some people are getting treated more favorably than others. And guess what? I'm not in there. Uh and this doesn't become a glass ceiling, Brian. It becomes a concrete ceiling for people. I said something last night. I was at Politics and Pros in DC promoting the book. I said, I just want you to just think about this. This country lives on hope. Okay? I had hope as a kid. You know, my parents had a tight budget. We were in the middle class. But you know what? I had hope that I was going to break out. >> Okay? And Henry Ford, whatever his stupidity was on certain issues, he had one great line that I always repeat. If you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. >> Okay? And when you take hope away from people and they think they can't, guess what happens? They start taking their careers. They start taking their lives in a different direction. And we have to have a hope restoration in the United States. >> What does that even look like? Hope restoration. >> Well, you need reform. You know, you you need to have some accountability for this egregiousness that's happening in Washington. You need reform. You need to end Citizens United. that that has been a failed experiment. This unlimited amount of money going into the political system since January of 2010 when that Supreme Court decision was rendered has been an abomination for the system. Uh the whole legislative agenda over the 16 years is big food, big business, big pharma, tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, crony capitalism, don't break up u obvious monopolies. Um that's not helping the country. So there's a lot of things we could do, okay, that are in the best interests of everybody. Uh, and that can make the system a lot fairer. Uh, but you know, Citizens United is creating a separate but equal democracy. So that's a big thing. Gerrymandering, look at what's going on now. You know, they they used to jerrymander quietly. Now it's like an opens arms race where they're trying to redistrict each other to gain an advantage. And I submit to my fellow Americans, are we in a real democracy if the politicians are picking the voters? I thought the voters were supposed to pick the politicians. So, so that's another thing that we could do to reform things. Uh, we got to get back to the Clinton, George Herbert Walker, Bush budgetary guardrails. I write about that in the book. We had we had the Bush administration, the first Bush created with Dick Dorman, his OM director, a legislation called Payo or pay as you go legislation and it put guard rails on the Congress. Bob Kerry voted for it. The Democrat Dick Gapard voted for it and it forced the Congress to make spending decisions pursuant to those guardrails. Moreover, if you wanted a tax cut, you had to find a spending cut. If you wanted an increase in social services, no problem, but you needed a corresponding >> Now we're starting to feel the pain of this. I mean, we got we have yields over 5% and we got a mortgage uh rate over 7%. The housing market's basically frozen. I mean, we're now finally at that point, you and I have been talking about this for years where our debt problem is starting to become a crisis problem. >> Well, I mean, I more, you know, I know you just had Rick Reer on the show. I be interested his his take on it. He's obviously somebody I respect enormously. >> An eye opener what we're seeing right now. He he stopped short calling it crisis. I maybe took it a little too far. >> Eye opener for him. >> Yeah. But I think I think when you analyze it, the higher rates to me are based on the energy supply shock. The higher rates to me are based on inflation expectation. And the higher rates, we had an expectation coming into 2026 that we were going to have a 75 basis point cut. People don't remember that now. Yeah. But then the war starts in February. uh and we have a 25 basis point increase with likely another 25 basis point increase. So our expectation was minus 75. And so if you have 50 basis point increases, you're you're 1.25 off of what your expectation was, right? So it's surprising that prices aren't lower in the stock market, but they certainly are lower in the bond market if you look at the activity. But I submit to you that this is probably more energy shock related. If you could somehow resolve the war and you got the energy prices down, there's a lot of deflation coming in terms of innovation and AI and the technology that we're >> about so quickly like what is the what is what is the lasting damage of this war? >> Not going to happen quickly enough. >> Uh well, I mean we'll have to remain to be seen, but let me tick off some things. We've our our bases in the Sunni area uh which would be the the the western side of the Gulf uh they've been decimated. You know the Bahrain supply depot all decimated. We're trying to supply our aircraft carriers from Diego Garcia which is a British denominated island. It's 2,200 miles away from where the war is going on. So that's the doctrine of unintended consequences. what's going to happen to the American security footprint in the Middle East as a result of the war. Um, it's not clear to me what's going on with the regime. Will the regime be able to stay in place? Uh, they've got, you know, 60 70% inflation. Uh, some of the personnel in the IRGC are not getting paid. There's a lot of pressure on the regime. So, there's a game of chicken going on now between the administration and the Israelis and the regime. Who's going to break first? Uh so it's unclear how that's going to work out. Uh but if the regime is successful in staying in place and controlling the the Gulf, you know, you got a you got a supply constraint and you could have $7 gas, you're going to have some very unhappy people in the United States. And you already see it in the president's approval rating. Uh you probably saw this this poll this week, his uh how's the president doing on the economy? 26% of the people say that he's he's doing well. That means 74% of the people are saying he's not doing well. That is not good for the president. It's not good for the Republicans. So, so to me, you have unnecessary consequence. You know, it's like it's like like it's like this, Mr. President. You have a rising economy and you have a reduction in interest rates, close the border, but still allow for legal immigration. Uh help the crypto industry, help the banking industry, uh be incredibly popular president. >> What happened? But but he didn't do Totally off topic, but like what went wrong with >> I'm not going to pat myself on the back, but I'm going to pat myself on the back. Say that. Like Stephanie Rule said to me yesterday, you know, I'm not dogging you. I said, actually, when you say you're not dogging me, you actually are dogging me. So, I'm not going to pat myself on the back, but I'm going to pat myself on the back. Okay. >> I said that this would never pass. >> Yeah. >> Because I understand how Washington works and how you make sausage in Washington. And the incentives were aligned for it not to pass. So, guess what? It didn't pass. And that's a shame. Now, they'll they'll use the forces of the administrators in the CFTC and the SEC to put together clarity like provisions to allow for certain things. But as Paul Atkins would tell you, the SEC commissioner, the chair, he would tell you that, well, that can get reversed in an ensuing administration. So, that's bad. You would really want this to come from the Congress. You'd want it codified and have some solidity and permanence to it, but it's not going to. Does it temper your enthusiasm on crypto >> or at this point? >> I think it's going to slow I think it's going to slow down some aspects of tokenization, but I don't think it slows down Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin's probably up 20% since the announcement that Clarity failed. >> Ethereum, Bitcoin. >> Yeah. Because those tokens are going to be part of the future whether people like it or not. Those are the Ubers. Hear me out for a second. Every taxi commission, every mayor hated Uber >> and nobody wanted Uber. But they still do. >> But you know who? Yeah, they still do. You know who wanted Uber to people. Yep. >> Brian and Anthony wanted Uber and Brian and Anthony got Uber. And so Ethereum and Bitcoin and Salana, they're going to be part of the future whether the regulators like it or not, you know, and so and so for me, um, I could have predicted that happen. I did predict. I was on record saying it wasn't going to pass. Uh, but you know, listen, you know, if you really, you didn't ask me this, but I'm going to answer it. The president heard it because three days before his inauguration, he's launching a memecoin. He rug pulls about six700 million dollars out of the memecoin. $3.8 billion is lost in the memecoin. No bueno. And so that if you want to piss people off, do that. And now all your adversaries that are Democrats are saying, "Well, wait a minute. I'm not going to support this. The president wants it. I'm not going to give him a win." And which was the main reason why I thought it wasn't going to happen. You mentioned earlier on the word hope. Looking out over the next two years of the Trump presidency, what what should investors hope for? What should they cling on to? >> Well, I mean, it's very cynical of me to say this, but if the is a change in the House, which I think is very likely, that's good for investors because you and I both know a mixed government always better for investors. If there's a change in the House and the Senate, I would say, okay, look out. We're gonna have some shenanigans going on because there going to be biccameal investigations on the president and his family. I predict if that happens, the president will move quickly to pardon his family members and likely pardon himself. Uh he'll he'll want to stop those investigations. And so that'll create a whole new set of constitutional issues. So I think we're in for way more mayhem at the governmental level. I don't like it. Uh I would like there to be more tranquility. You know, we all do better when we don't, you know, if if you're not watching the president's tweets hour to hour and you don't have a president where there's people spending $100,000 a month to get his tweets ahead of the other people because they could trade on that information, we probably would probably would be doing better if we didn't have a situation like that. >> Think we're headed towards a Kamla JD run. >> Oh, you think so? >> Do you think I'm I'm asking you? I mean, what do you what do you Well, I I I think Gavin was trying, you know, Governor Nuome was trying to say, "Well, if she's running, I'm not going to run." But he was really trying to say she had her chance. Why is she going to try to go out there and run again? I think she's having a hard time raising money. She wants to run, but I think she's having a hard time raising money. I think I think Nuome is is clearly running in my opinion. I don't see anything going to stop him. JD Vance, if you had interviewed me over the summer, I would say JD Vance is running. I'm a longtime Republican party presidential candidate fundraiser and JD Vance was out there surfing all summer for leads, banging the tin cup for potential donations on the runup to his presidential candidacy. Marco Rubio was not. And Rubio is telling people privately that he hasn't made any money and he would like to make some money. And I don't predict Marco Rubio will run because you you have to you may maybe don't announce until >> May June of 2027, but you got to get the fundraising apparatus together. You got to try to lock up some of these big potential donors. Vance is doing that. Uh I think Nome is doing that. There's a selection of candidates that could be in the race, but he is the whole position person. And just the way the Republicans work, they are a traditional party. Whatever Trump did to them in terms of magifying the party, they're still a traditional party and they will probably nominate the vice president. They did it for Richard Nixon in 1960. Uh they did it for Bob Dole. Remember, he didn't win the vice presidency, but he was nominated in 76. They gave him the presidential nomination in 96. They did it for George Herbert Walker Bush, right? He was the >> president. Who would president JD Vance >> resemble? More George W. Bush or more Trump? >> Uh, great. It's a great question. I'm going to say neither. And I'm not dodging the question. I think he'll have elements of Trump in terms of his anti- Europeanism. I really go back to that Munich Security Conference speech in February of 2025. That seemed like that was his rhetoric more than the president. >> So, he'd be leaving tariffs on. He he's not coming there day one. >> Yeah. I I think I think he he's running hot on the populist strand of the party. >> I think he's a huge boligarch. Uh so I think he'll be very pro business. Um so he may that that may be where he has less Trumpian aspects. He's smart JD, you know. He I mean Vice President Vance read his two books, illeology and communion. They're thoughtful books. He's a smart guy. He's had an identity crisis. Changed his name three or four times. He shapeshifted. He went from Donald Trump as Hitler to Donald Trump is Moses and Jesus combined, you know, and I don't think Donald Trump is either of those things. And and JD Vance won't have if he if he were able to rise of the presidency. I don't I don't think he would have the personality following, the personality cultlike following of a Donald Trump. But here's the other thing. You know, I think Rubio thinks that this is an anti-incumbent environment and Vance is going to get smoked by the Democrat. As long as the Democrat can fog a mirror and not act overly woke, they'll probably beat the Republican this time just given where the president's approval ratings are. >> Lastly, before I let you go, um it takes takes a special type of person to say, you know, I was wrong. And you've said repeatedly over many years like you've made mistakes your career, the communications job. Where does that come from for you? How have you been able to do that and put yourself so out there publicly? >> I think if you I think you become way more relatable as a human being if you were able to admit your mistakes. You know, some of these guys have very tough time doing that. But I think when I got my ass kicked at the White House and you've met my older son, he's the CEO of Treasure Troves. I Hey dad, are you going to be okay? Well, it was the first time in my life where my kid was trying to parent me. I mean, I'm getting my ass fired from the White House. I'm getting it lit up by the late night comedians, excoriated in the press. And I said, "Yeah, I'm going to be okay. Watch what I do with this." And I think for our children's sake, expressing vulnerability, observation of vulnerability, I find too many of my wealthy friends try to pretend everything is perfect. Their their life went up in a 45 degree angle. They never made a mistake. I read some of these biographies and you got some of them behind you. I'm like, "This guy never made a mistake." >> No, no, no names, please. No, he was come back on he he [laughter] was uh he was in he was in the first grade. He got everything right and everything right since then. >> Hasn't aged. >> And I feel that that puts huge pressure on the kids. I'd rather be like, "Hey, here here is me warts and all to give my kids space to fail, to give my kids comfortable with the idea that they can go for their passion projects and if they have ups and downs, they can put it together uh if something goes unexpectedly." So that's that's part of the motivation of me being so honest about things. >> Good to see you. Tell your son if I said hi. Congrats on the book. Great. God bless. Thank you, Brian. >> All right, that's it for the latest episode of Power Players.