Episode summary
Anthony Scaramucci on Trump, Wall Street and America’s Economic Anger | Bloomberg Businessweek
Bloomberg Businessweek Daily
· · 20 min · Hosts: Carol Massar, Tim Stenovec · Guests: Anthony Scaramucci
Summary
Anthony Scaramucci argues in his new book that three policy decisions helped create the economic and political conditions for Donald Trump’s rise: opening China to the World Trade Organization, the post-9/11 wars, and the 2008 financial crisis and bailout politics. He says he originally supported parts of that bipartisan consensus, but the results included wage stagnation, deindustrialization, deficit spending, and a sense among many blue-collar Americans that they had been left behind.
He also revisits his brief White House stint, saying joining Trump’s campaign and then the White House were increasingly larger mistakes. Scaramucci says Trump’s style and personnel choices turned the administration into a “goldplated hot tub” of self-enrichment and dysfunction, and he argues that Trump failed to deliver on his promise to bring excluded workers back into the economic mainstream. He credits some traditional Republicans with acting as guardrails in Trump’s first term, while saying the current party is no longer the one he knew.
Despite the criticism, Scaramucci says the country can still fix these problems. He points to a more technocratic, less partisan approach as a possible path forward and says the U.S. has historically recovered from major crises before.
Key takeaways
- Scaramucci says China’s entry into the World Trade Organization helped boost low-cost imports but also contributed to lost manufacturing and flat wages for many Americans.
- He argues the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, plus tax cuts and deficit spending, widened economic anger by adding trillions in costs without broad middle-class relief.
- Scaramucci says Trump’s appeal came from promising to help people “left behind,” but that promise was not fulfilled in office.
- He describes Trump’s administration as driven by self-enrichment and says the current GOP is no longer the party of Romney, McCain, Ryan, or Kelly.
- He says the U.S. can still recover if government becomes more functional and less focused on left-right politics.
Notable quotes
“I would say uh campaigning for Donald Trump, uh I was with Jeb Bush, Jeb dropping out of the race and me accepting the offer from then candidate Trump to go work for him was a colossal mistake”
“we have a crisis of wages for a very large group of people in the United States. We've sort of left a large group of people, blueco collar workers, etc. out”
“He had the potential to do that”
“The country's neurally plastic. We got ourselves out of the civil war. We got ourselves out of the depression”
How the episode opens
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. — You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Masser and Tim Stenc on Bloomberg Radio. — We're We're already having fun with Anthony Scaramucci. He's the founder and managing partner of Skybridge. He's the co-host of the podcast The Rest of Politics. He also briefly served. Okay. 10 days or 11 days? There's a there's no debate there.
Serious debate here. — Your book says 11. You say 11. — You're hurting my feelings. Okay. I mean, I got fired on the 11th day. It's a big day for me. Don't jip me out of 9.1% of my federal career.
So, it's 11. — Yeah. And by the way, when Trump is trolling me on Twitter and calling me a total loser and all that type of stuff, he says 11. I think he should be the official scorer on that. Don't you? It was. If you start on the 21st and you work a full day on the 31st, count the days.
Yeah. Okay. It's 11 days. You don't go 31US 21. — I did that. I said 11. I'm just telling you. — You guys work at — Tell the BBC. Okay. That's all. — No. No. The BBC is locked in at the 10day mark. They want I mean I I actually went to them and tried to make a forcible appeal. Your book is
They insist that I'm only there for 10 days. — Your book and it hurt. It hurts my feelings. — Your book is called All the Wrong Moves and it really gets into why we saw the rise of Donald Trump. Um was being in the White House for you an a wrong move? Do you consider it a wrong move as you look back?
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- economic anger
- trump rise
- china trade policy
- iraq war
- 2008 financial crisis
Companies and tickers mentioned
- Skybridge Capital
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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