Inside Trump's 3,700 Trades — ft. Anthony Scaramucci

It's disgusting. It's probably legal, Ed, and that's the irony of the whole thing. They've created these loopholes for themselves, but it's absolutely disgusting and it makes people very cynical and very turned off by politics. Number two, I think this is probably the most important thing about it is he doesn't care, which means that worse things are on the way. You're going to see a tsunami of corruptive activity over the next two and a half years, and it's going to be put right in your face.

Well, you know, listen, I mean, this is the reason why everyone hates Washington. They hate politics. It's a bipartisan thing, by the way. I'm not trying to whitewash Donald Trump. This has gone on with Democrats in the House. They get inside information. They're able to trade on it. Trump is at a point in his career where he actually doesn't care anymore. He just got himself a $1.7 billion, I don't know what it's called, a lawfare restitution fund or something like that from the IRS. I don't even know if that's constitutional. And hopefully there's somebody that has standing that can actually challenge that quote-unquote settlement, which just seems completely unethical and misguided. But, you know, I guess there's three things I want to say. Number one, it's disgusting. It's probably legal, Ed, and that's the irony of the whole thing. They've created these loopholes for themselves. But it's absolutely disgusting and it makes people very cynical and very turned off by politics. Number two, I think this is probably the most important thing about it is he doesn't care. Which means that worse things are on the way. You're going to see a tsunami of corruptive activity over the next two and a half years, and it's going to be put right in your face. And then the last thing, and this is the thing I really don't like, is there's nobody out there that you can point to and say, 'Oh, that's an ethical player.' Because let me tell you what happens here. They put a situation together and then they say, 'Well, Hunter Biden sold a painting. Nancy Pelosi traded this stock. That Democrat did this, this person did that. Oh, you know, is Trump going to pardon every one of his family members and himself on the way out? Well, most certainly is. Well, Hunter Biden was pardoned by his dad, Joseph Biden.' So, you know, this is as swampy as swamp gets. But I just want to remind the Prof G Markets listeners, this is not actually a swamp. This is a gold-plated hot tub, Washington, D.C. And they get into the hot tub together and they pass the Cristal and they pass the Cubanos, which happen to be illegal, and they light them up and they laugh and then they say, 'This is so fantastic. How do I stay in the job for the longest amount of time possible?' And if you want to have a fun exercise on ChatGPT or Claude, just ask Claude to go through the 435 members of Congress, 100 senators, and say, 'What were the disclosed net worths before they became senator or congressman or woman, and what are they now?' And you'll see that this is a very lucrative place called Washington, D.C. for these people.

That right there. Yeah. If you can prove that he knew something, then he's got to go to jail or he's got to be punished in some way.

Which is an interesting point, but a different one.

Well, but I mean, okay, so you know, there's, but there's, let's, let's parse everything out because I think people need to understand this. There's a 2012 STOCK Act which prohibits some of this activity for members of Congress. It does not, for whatever reason, prohibit the president or the vice president. So the Palantir example that you used, believe it or not, is inside the ambit of the law. Okay. He's buying Palantir and then posting about it from an official governmental capacity as president of the United States. The second one that you brought up is probably illegal. There's a statute, if you went to law school like I did, there's a statute called 10b-5 which delineates what insider trading is. And if you read the statute, the president is actually included in that statute. And so he's right now guilty of insider trading. Okay? So the SEC commissioner, he serves at the appointment of the president, at the leisure of the president, as does the attorney general who's now acting, who was his personal attorney. So go ahead. Who's going to prosecute the guy? Go ahead.

Well, okay. So then the real question is, and this is why people listen to your podcast, we're delineating between what's right and wrong, and then we're saying, okay, then what would you do, right? Okay. And this is where the Gillibrand Senate bill, the Roy Maguire House version of that bill, would include everybody. Okay. And then the question is, well, will they pass that? Well, Peter Schweizer way back in 2010 exposed all of this nefarious behavior. There was a 60 Minutes special about it, and the Congress said, 'Oh, this is despicable behavior. We're going to denounce it and we're going to prohibit it.' And then they did that, and then very quietly, nine months after they did that, they did a voice vote. They did a voice vote so it wouldn't be on the airwaves. It wouldn't be on C-SPAN. And they did a voice vote. Call into this number, Ed, we're going to vote to reinstate it. And they voted to reinstate it, and they got right back in the running to do this. So, this is stuff that's going to continue. Unless you're telling me somebody comes in with an omnibus ethics act, equivalent to the 1978 Ethics in Government Act, which technically revises everything. But then you're going to have to put independent watchdogs and special prosecutors in permanent place, or you're going to have to take the Department of Justice out of the executive branch. It's in the Constitution that it would be in the executive branch. So I think that that's very tough to do. And so then you got to say to yourself, well, what will the next president do? He or she, will they take Trump's playbook and say, 'Wow, I mean, I got the job. I'm going to make four to ten billion over the next four years. Let me just go to section four of Trump's playbook. I'll start buying Apple and tweeting about it.' Or you pick the stock. You see? You see what I'm saying?

So, you know, the bottom line is this is going to happen. Okay. The bottom line is for your viewers and listeners, life is unfair, and these guys are sitting there ladling money into their own accounts for their own self-interest. And it would be hypocritical of me, Ed, if I just went after the president on this. You have to go after the Democrats that are also doing this. This is a bipartisan thing. Now, you can say, and this almost makes me laugh about Trump, and if Galloway was on with us right now, he would laugh at this because I know the son of a bitch would be like, 'Yeah, no, he's right. Trump is doing it to the 29th power compared to these guys.' Okay. So if Pelosi's taken five million, Trump's taken 500 million. So all he's done is pumped himself with unethical steroids. He took the unethical steroid needle, he pumped it into his biceps, and he's out there making billions of dollars for himself. But they're all doing it, Ed. And I think it would be remiss of us to pretend that it's not happening on both sides.

Can I add a sentence to everything you just said, please? And if there's some wise guy, to use Trump's own words, that would try to prosecute me, and they came close to it, I would pardon myself because I'm going to pardon. And as quoted by the Wall Street Journal, if you're within 200 feet of the Oval Office, you're going to receive a pardon from me. You know, Corey Lewandowski said, 'Hey, do whatever I want. I'm going to get pardoned.' The family is certainly going to get pardoned. Hunter Biden got pardoned. And so even if you are bold enough to prosecute me, I'm going to pardon myself. Now, there is a remedy. There is one remedy which will never, ever, ever happen. But the remedy would be impeachment. Okay? And what would happen under a normal system is people say, 'Okay, this is bald-faced, immoral, and it's illegal, and we have to set a message to the American people that we have some honest accountability in the government, so we're going to impeach the guy.' Jack Schlossberg, who is JFK's grandson, has a cheeky book coming out called Profiles in Cowardice. It's the reverse of his grandfather's book, Profiles in Courage. And so if you remember the Kennedy book from the 1950s, he took 14 people who broke from their parties to do something principled in the Congress. And then people laughed at him. He won the Pulitzer Prize, and they said, 'Well, Senator Kennedy, this book is so short.' And he said, 'Well, look, if I was writing Profiles in Cowardice, it would be the size of a phone book.' Okay? Only this misfit, right? That was a big Kennedy line back in the 50s. But now Schlossberg is writing a book, Profiles in Cowardice. It won't be phone book size, though it should be. But, you know, John Thune would have to answer for this. Mitch McConnell would have to answer for this. You know, but here's what happens. Bill Cassidy, everybody on this show knows who he is. He's the senator from Louisiana. He lost the primary vote last weekend, Saturday night. And so he's now been ousted effectively from the Senate. He's not going to be able to seek reelection. Bill Cassidy voted to convict Donald Trump in the second impeachment trial. And so even though he's squared that off by voting with the president each time in the 16 months since Donald Trump has returned to the White House, the Trump people and Trump himself went after Bill Cassidy, and he lost his primary. So you've got a situation now where they should impeach him. He should have been removed from office just because of the war crime. He's telling people on Easter Sunday that he's going to wipe out a civilization. That, you know, the threat is a war crime. Just want to make sure everybody knows that if you threaten to wipe out a civilization, if you look at the Hague and the statutes, that's a war crime. You don't have to actually wipe out the civilization.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, okay. So he's committing a war crime. No one's going to prosecute him. No senator's picking up the phone and saying, 'Hey, you're making the country look bad. Could you please stop doing that?' They're not going to do it. And by the way, he won in Indiana two weeks ago. He ousted five mainstream Republicans. Okay? He knocked out Crenshaw. He's given Cornyn a hard time in Texas. Knocked out Crenshaw is not going to be able to seek reelection. He just took out Cassidy. There's going to be a big fight over Thomas Massie this week as to whether or not he can knock him out as well. And so he has been incredibly good at meleeing and taking out his adversaries. So guess what? We just got done telling you how lucrative it is to stay in the Congress. Hey pal, Ed Elson, Anthony Scaramucci, bye-bye. I'm staying in the Congress. I'm not prosecuting this guy. Let him do whatever the hell he wants.

Well, this is the thing. He could be trading his personal account.

You know the answer. You know the answer. You're asking me the question, but you really down deep, you know the answer. You know that if you are going to take the KGB's approach to spying, you're going to do everything out in the open. And if you're going to take the Donald Trump approach to corruption, you're going to do everything out in the open. You're going to make it so ridiculous and you're going to make it so inundating that people's heads will be spinning, and then they get numb to it. And then once they're numb to it, you keep doing it. You know, the allegations that were made in the Epstein files and the disgusting behavior of these people in the Epstein files are an atrocity. Yet, Donald Trump masterfully figured out, either through a war or other means, to bury the news and bury the lead on those files. And now Thomas Massie's up for a political fight of his life. He was for producing those files. But when you go down the list of things that voters care about, guess what? The Epstein files are at the bottom of the list. They want jobs and they want affordable jobs where, I mean, excuse me, they want jobs that will allow them to afford their lifestyle and they want low gas prices. Okay? And so Trump's corruption is not even on their radar screen. And he knows that. And he also knows that he's figured out the wormhole in the system where he can exploit the system. But do not underestimate him. He is a very formidable politician. He's got 34, 35% approval ratings, lower than Herbert Hoover, but he's got nine out of 10. And in some areas of the country, Ed, he's got 10 out of 10 of the people that see themselves as Republicans. And so he says bark, they say roof. He say jump, they say how high, sir. Well, I want you to jump and vote against Bill Cassidy. Done. I want you to vote against Thomas Massie. Done. Okay. But here's the irony of what he's doing. Okay. Because he's such a narcissist, he's weakening the Republican Party because Cassidy's gone now. You lost all that seniority. If Massie leaves, well, you've lost all of his seniority, and they're replaced by weaker, less influential Republicans. Okay? But they're doing that to serve Trump's narcissism. See? So you have to put this whole thing in the cauldron and say, 'My God, you want to talk about life being unfair?' Donald Trump took a system of genteel practices. He took a system of gentlemen and gentlewomen's agreements where nothing was specifically delineated, and he steamrolled over it. Okay? Because you don't have a codified law that says the president cannot do blank, blank, blank, blank, blank. The president, if he does bump, bump, he's ejected like a villain in the Aston Martin in a James Bond car. No, that doesn't happen to the president. You see, you see, you see what I'm saying? And so he said, 'Oh, this is great. I'm going to run roughshod over this whole system. I'm going to annihilate everybody in the system.' And his family members are telling, 'Look, we expect to be the richest family in the world when we leave.' And so we've got a lot more to do in the next two and a half years. And oh, by the way, let me put up all these disclosures right now because Ed Elson and Anthony Scaramucci will talk about it. Wah, wah, wah, like the Charlie Brown teacher. And what difference does it make? I'll be locked and loaded doing this. And no matter who lights their hair on fire in outrage, not going to matter. And that's where we are right now. So the next president hopefully will say, 'Okay, I've got to weaken myself and I've got to weaken the presidency to make the system stronger again.' You know, it's what Cicero once said 2,400 years ago: we are slaves to the law in order to be free. 2,200 years ago. But you get the point. You want to subordinate yourself to the process, the checks and balances of the system, because that means less cronyism, less corruption, less of a funnel at the top of illegality, right? Can I make one last point? I know we have to hop, but I want to make one last point. Think about the willing billionaire sycophants, right? These guys are all motivated by money more than anything else, or they wouldn't be billionaires. And they're sitting around saying, 'Hey, man, I'm paying the piper here. If I pay the piper, he's going to lay off my business.' Okay. Jeff Bezos was coming at him in the first term. Not doing that. I have a $40 million documentary on the wife. We're going to pay for the wall. We're going to pay for this. You want to pay for the ballroom? No problem. What do I got on the plane with him to China? What do I got to give to the PAC? No problem. Conspicuously absent from that plane ride was Jamie Dimon. Jamie Dimon said, 'I'm not playing ball with the ballroom. I'm not doing this.' What did Trump do? He sued him. Suing the bank, right? And he didn't make the plane ride. Jane Fraser from Citibank made the plane ride. Citigroup. My point is he's got all of those people between a rock and a hard place because they're like, 'Shit, if I don't kowtow to him, he's going to hurt my shareholders. He's going to hurt my image. He's going to hurt me with my own board. So I'm going to kowtow to the guy.' And Trump understands that as well. He's used every mechanism in his game and he's exploited every mechanism, and there's very few people at that level that are like, 'You know, I'm going to pass on that trip to China. Oh, you know, I don't want to be in the Great Hall hanging out with Xi and the Chinese.' They're all looking at each other and they're doing that, you know, manifestation of cognitive dissonance, and they're saying, 'Hey, I got to go. It's best for my country. It's best for my business. It's best for me. Best for my shareholders, too.'