There are questions about the resume of the new White House press secretary, Katie Zachariah, one day after she delivered her first briefing to the media. Zachariah has often referred to herself as a lawyer, including during multiple appearances on this show. Pepperdine Law School says she graduated from their program, but CNN has not found evidence that she ever passed the bar exam here in California to practice law. Zachariah says she practiced international transactional law while working in China. Zachariah's briefing on just her second day on the job was widely mocked by Democrats and even criticized by several White House officials, with some questioning whether she'd be fired faster than our next guest. Anthony Scaramucci famously lasted 11 days as White House communications director and gave a very memorable briefing of his own during that time. He's written a new book called All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. Let's start with the news of this day. Katie Zachariah now in there as the press secretary. What's your advice to her?
Don't go back to the podium is my advice to her. She's not qualified or skilled to be at the podium, and so they'll have to make a decision whether they can media train her and try to get her up to speed. But the way she was handling herself there, she just didn't have confidence in the information or the data that she had in front of her. And in fairness to her, it was probably too early for her. It was her first or second day on the job. But that's not the right job for her. And she seems like a nice person. You've had her on your show. I don't know her personally. I've been obviously critical of the Trump administration, but I have nothing against her. And of course, I want her to succeed. I don't wish any individual, Alex, unwell in any way, shape, or form, but she's not qualified for the job. And so, if she was a friend of mine, or I was her life coach, or I was her brother, I would say, 'Look, it's just not the right job for you.' Moreover, you've got to lie like a machine gunner at a turret in that job. You're like the mendacity machine gunner. And Karoline Leavitt was really good at that. She lied with great impunity and great enthusiasm, and she said all of these wholesome and wonderful things about Donald Trump. But this woman is not ready for the prime time of that job. I mean, it's just obvious. So again, they won't fire her. By the way, my record's going to stand, Alex Michaelson. Okay, I'll make a bet on this air right now that my record stands because she didn't do anything wrong. It's not like she said anything bad about the president or anything like that. She's just not ready for that job.
You know, it's been interesting to see what people have said publicly and privately. I know when you started off, President Trump wanted you in that job, but it was clear that there were people behind the scenes who didn't, and then made life difficult for you when you were actually in the job. Let's put up a couple different statements. The first one was the on-the-record public statement from Steven Cheung, who is the director of communications for the White House, who's her boss: 'A tremendous start for the new White House press secretary. She commanded the room, effectively reminded the American people of all the great work President Trump and his administration has done thus far.' Now, let's go to this. Brian Stelter quoting our colleague Kaitlan Collins, who said, 'Several White House officials are questioning how long Katie Zachariah will keep the press secretary job after her first briefing, noting her performance was unlikely to satisfy President Donald Trump.' Talk about that dynamic which happens in White Houses.
Alex, one of the things I said from that job is I didn't realize how many backstabbers there were. You know, I'm from New York. I said that I was a front-stabber. People inside those jobs are backstabbers, right? And just remember something about these people. The ones that are stabbing her are probably jealous that she got picked by the president, and probably there were certain staffers that probably weren't even informed about her getting the job. And so they're shivving her right now, and that happens in Washington. And so you can't really complain about that as much as you have to just work around it or even try to build bridges to those people. You know, something that President Trump said to me, and Alex, he told me this in the Oval Office. It was on a Wednesday. The reason I know it was a Wednesday, I was only there for one Wednesday, so I know it was a Wednesday. [laughter] He turned to me and he said to me, 'This is a rough town.' He goes, 'I thought I was a billionaire real estate developer, and these billionaires that I work with were killers, but you know what? Down here in Washington, they would be a bunch of babies.' And so his exact quote was that they could take your eyeball out with an ice pick, drop it in your martini glass, you're bleeding at the table, and they're talking to you like nothing happened. And so they're going to do that to her. Now, I know Steve a long time, and I appreciate him supporting her, and I appreciate him going on the record to support her because that's what a good teammate would do. Now again, you could agree or disagree with the Trump administration. I'm just talking about one woman's career and some missteps that she's making and whether or not she's going to get the support of White House staff. And frankly, I hope she does because, you know, it would be terrible for her. Not a lot of people could handle an 11-day firing, Alex. You know, I hope it doesn't happen to her.
So, an author, his latest book, which came out last month, is called All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. He argues that those three decisions were the trade deal with China passed under President Bill Clinton, George W. Bush's wars and tax cuts, and the bank bailouts under Bush and President Barack Obama. I spoke with him earlier and asked him why he considers those decisions, in his words, to be catastrophic.
Well, they're linked. And again, the book is not a polemic or a partisan diatribe or anything like that. It's just an economic and political and a historical observation. And the message of the book, Alex, is that we could have very smart, well-intended people that are making decisions expecting one outcome, and they get a totally different outcome. And so in Bill Clinton's case, bringing China into the WTO was okay, but what he did was not check them. And there were no politicians that checked them. So they had emerging market rights. When they got to the size of Germany, let's say, they should have been treated like Germany, and they were still given those emerging preferences. But as it relates to the war, we went to war. We expected that war to last months. It lasted decades, Alex. We cut taxes twice, once in '01, once in '03. Never in U.S. history did we do that going to war. And so you had two wars, two tax cuts, two decades of fighting, and that was an eight-trillion-dollar credit card expense that we put on the American people. And that's 20% of our national debt right there. And so that caused this sort of trajectory to go haywire. And so on those two things, we hurt people's wages. And then because of the deficit spending, we have to monetize the debt. And so that created an affordability crisis for these people, which is why they're so angry. And then the last piece, we gave the money to the banks. And I understand why we had to bail out the banks. I write about that, the historical analysis of why, but they should have left some money aside for poor and middle-income, lower-middle-income people. They didn't do that. The fat cats at the banks paid their buddies. 5,000 people, Alex, got paid $1 million or more in bonuses the year of the bailout. And, you know, that created a lot of anger in the country. That's where Occupy Wall Street came from. That's where the Tea Party movement came from. And I submit to people that those two movements got together, had a baby, and they named the baby MAGA, and Donald Trump came in and became the godfather of that baby. And that's where we are. We're in a populist divide where there's people that feel left out of the system, and if you're not going to help me, I would rather hire somebody like literally an orange wrecking ball to smash into the system and hurt you. And we have to heal that.
A big part of this also is going to be who's going to lead the country next. You know, we have the midterms in a few weeks. After that, President Trump is essentially a lame duck, and there's real thought about what happens after him. You've talked a lot about the fact that you describe the Republican Party as essentially a cult of personality. And the one thing that's holding all these folks together is their love of Donald Trump, but in reality they don't agree on that much other than they love Trump. And if you pull Trump out of it, you end up with very different visions for the party. Which vision do you think wins out if Donald Trump is no longer the leader of the party?
It is such a fascinating question, and I think there will be an intellectual civil war for the future of that party. I do believe that the Trump movement, the MAGA movement, is a personality cult. And so when Trump's political life extinguishes in January of 2029, there'll be a vacuum at the top. And I think there'll be a fight between moderate Republicans, populist Republicans, and a whole host of people for the direction of that party. And so one of the reasons why I didn't leave the party is I'd like to be a part of that intellectual conversation. I'd like to get things back to something that is a little bit more healing and a little bit less dividing. You know, I mean, even if we just calm down the president's Twitter feed where he's running AI things of him defeating tigers and all this sort of stuff on there, that would be a plus for the country.
Is there a presidential candidate on the right that you're excited about?
