One of the things that Trump has done, which pisses me off more than anything else, is threatened the rule of law in the country. Because of the isolationism, because of the tariffs, because of the stupidity around the war, okay, and the current supply shock energy crisis, he's weakening the United States. The moves that he made prior to the election were counter to any proper moves that you would make if you were trying to support the Republicans prior to the election with the Russians. So, this is a wipeout of epic proportion. And it's not something that they can recover from immediately.
Today, I'm talking to Anthony Scaramucci. Anthony is a founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital, a global investment firm which manages billions of dollars. He's a founder and chairman of Salt, a global thought leadership forum with past speakers at their events including presidents, prime ministers, and more. He was also formerly the White House communications director for Trump in his first term and he currently hosts The Rest Is Politics US. And he recently wrote a bestseller called All the Wrong Moves. Welcome again to the show.
Hey, good to be on with you, man. So we're speaking today a few days after the midterms, where the Democrats had a sweeping victory, winning both in the House and in the Senate. I mean, the House, we knew that, but the Senate is much more, we didn't know that. They didn't win by a small amount, they won by a huge amount. For example, in Michigan, Abdullah won by seven points. But the main thing was looking at, let's say, a place like Texas, where James Talarico won by 12 points, 12%. What do you make of this?
You know, as a full-on destruction event for the GOP, the party of Ronald Reagan. The message was sent to the GOP that your cult leader, Donald J. Trump, is being rejected by the American people. You have to just think about how unbelievable this is. They turned Texas into a purple/blue state. They turned South Carolina, flip that. They turned North Carolina. Look at what happened in Michigan. Look at what happened in Maine, Ohio. I mean, this was a wreckage like we haven't seen in a forever period of time. And it's also a big message about 2028. There's no going back, Eli. Let me explain why. You have a 2030 election which is a midterm election, and that's going to be a disaster for them. The 2028 election, which is a presidential election. You now have every governor of every swing state is now a Democrat. And now all of that infrastructure is going to go into place to help the Democratic party. You have Trump is hated in the country. He has a 34% approval rating, 27% on the economy. The polling is unbelievable. 85% of the Americans hate the tariff war with Canada. 70% of the Americans hate the forever war with Iran. So, I don't know how a GOP-adjacent candidate is going to run against a Democrat. Who are they going to put up? Ron DeSantis, he's Trump-adjacent. Rubio? I mean, don't make me laugh. Start laughing on your podcast. JD Vance? I mean, come on, guys. There's no shot for these people. So, they have to now come up with a candidate that isn't tainted with orange Cheeto stains on their fingers as a result of being affiliated with Trump. This is a wipeout of epic proportion. And it's not something that they can recover from immediately. You now have a scenario, due to the magnitude of these majorities, where they won't be able to retake the House anytime between now and, in my opinion, 2036, maybe 2034. They screwed themselves in a way that you couldn't believe.
And that's Donald Trump. And by the way, he was never a Republican anyway. And just so you know, because I've been on your show before and I predicted a lot of this stuff. I said he hates them. They hate him. And so he will do everything he can to damage them on the way out. And he started that nonsense as recently as Tuesday night, when he was saying, "Oh, I'm not on the ballot. I would have won them by a landslide if I was on the ballot. I'm not on the ballot." Blah, blah, blah. He hates them. They hate him.
So, when you look at Trump, when you look at the midterms, this looks like a significant weakening of his power. You've got, you know, before the first two years, he's got both the House and the Senate. Now he's lost both of that. And also it shows his team to potential candidates that he might lose, that maybe they should move away from him. Maybe they should, you know, because maybe he's bad for their political career. What do you make of this? You said like, you know, he's trying to damage the Republican Party. How do you think the next two years will go? What will Trump 2.0 without power look like?
Let me put it back to you for a second. Do you think that Trump could get impeached and removed from office in the next two years?
Well, you asked me that question because you want to get something to eat, but
In all seriousness, I mean, I don't think so. He needs to get, you're not going to get the Senate.
Okay. So I don't know, because you got 55 senators and you need 12 Republicans. That's all you need.
They're going to impeach him.
And now the question is, are there 12 Republicans that say one of the ways to cleanse the party is to get rid of him?
I don't think they'll manage.
Do you think they'll manage? It's not zero. Anything can happen in America. It's not zero. Did you expect this mandate? Did you expect this type of electoral... I didn't.
I mean, nobody did. But, I mean, out of all the polls that you gave there at the beginning, the main one that really matters is the economy. That's what I see. I mean, I know JD Vance put out a tweet giving several ideas of what might be. He said, okay, it might be to end the Iran war, we need to focus on cost of living. We need to put America first, change our relationship with Israel. Out of all of that, what really matters, I think, is the economy, and this twisted economic stance that Trump has had against your best friends, like America's best friends, Canada, against Europe, against, you know, putting tariffs on everybody, which costs American consumers. It just doesn't make sense.
You have a $2 billion drop in tourism from the Canadians, Eli. You have to think about what this guy's done to the country, okay? He's hurt us in every which way that you can imagine. But I think he could get removed from office. It's not zero.
Do you think the Republicans are going to start openly criticizing him now?
I do. And Nate Silver, did you hear what he said?
No, I didn't hear what he said.
He said that there's a better than even chance that Trump quits.
So, just to be clear, Nate Silver is a famous pollster. So, he said what? That he thinks that there's a chance that Trump might quit.
Hates the presidency anyway. Doesn't even like the job.
It's going to be an interesting two years, I think. Let's put it that way.
It's also just something else that's been really interesting to watch is his reaction to this. In 2020, it was famous. You know, there was January the 6th. Yeah. He got on the phone to, I think it was Fox News, and he says, "The Democrats did well." What happened? Like, why did he so easily concede?
Well, I think he didn't really have a choice, did he? I mean, what was he going to say? "Hello, can you find me 20 million votes?" How is he going to contest the election if it's a Victor Orban situation where you've got tens of millions of people voting against you and tens of millions of people letting you know how much they dislike you? What are you going to do? You're going to say, "Oh, I'm going to fight this now and I'm going to try to invalidate the election." How are you going to do that? Not possible.
Well, are you asking how can Trump act more crazy? I mean, he can. He'll find a way.
Okay. But I don't think he can. I actually think he's screwed. If anything, he would be better to remember, he's a survivor and he's a cockroach. So, what you got to do in a situation like this is you got to try to figure out if you can put a charm offensive on the people that are going to be coming after you. Look what he did with Mandani. Everyone said, "Oh, no. He's going to go after Mandani and attack him." Did he do that? No. He embraced him. Don't underestimate his lack of ideology, his lack of principle, or who he is as a guy. He's a full-on transactionalist, and he'll change on a dime to suit his needs. You may see a Trump that gets together with these Democrats and says, "Okay, what do you guys want to do?" And then starts doing it with him. He doesn't have an ideology. He's not a Republican.
Yeah. Okay. Um, what's it called? I want to move also to the impact that the midterms have. So, you know, we're speaking today on Friday. Yesterday, on Thursday, the S&P 500 lost, you know, went down $3 trillion. It went down about four and a half percent. Nvidia went down 9%. Because the electorate, people who are investors, are scared that the Democrats, who are, you know, I feel like they're a bit more populist towards data centers and AI, that they're going to put much tighter regulation on it and let China get ahead. What do you think of that?
Well, who's negative on the data centers, though, Eli? It would be the American people.
It's not just the Democrats. The American people are saying, "Whoa, but you know, Gina, who just won the governorship in Texas, said, 'Hey, if it's being built right now, I'm going to let it be built. I'm not going to fight that. Texas is about being pro business.'"
Yeah. But the majority of the Democrats are very much against it, aren't they?
They are. So, but that's the American people. That's the will of the American people. See, what I don't understand with the tech bros that they think Trump was going to be in office forever. Why did they line up with Donald Trump the way they lined up? Why did Elon Musk give $500 million to the Republicans and not be more balanced about his approach to politics?
What did they think? They thought he was going to be there forever. They'll probably start lobbying the next president, whoever comes in then.
That's what will happen. See, they're all transactionalists, my brother.
Look, I'm loving this because Trump sucks. He's a scourge to society. He's a scourge to Americans in general. He's hurt us in every which way possible. And the Americans have had enough. And I love that this is a very resilient country. I'm sorry. It's a very resilient country, and I'm loving the fact that they handed him his ass in his hands.
I mean, but specifically, I just want to focus on the AI point because I know a lot of the American people are very much against AI data centers. I think it's a huge mistake. You can't let China have an advantage. You need to make sure America has the biggest advantage in AI. Do you think that the Democrats will start putting on policies against AI and will that cause some sort of either tech, you know, tech crash or stock like the S&P 500 tech, or like an AI bubble burst or something like that?
I don't think so. I think that this correction is a healthy correction. I think you would have gotten a correction one way or another. People were looking for a way to get a correction. The correction started before the electoral results were displayed. The market actually rallied on the first day. The data centers, I think, have already been overblown. If you're really following this stuff, the bonds for these data centers, look at Core, they're trading in the mid-70s, these bonds. And so it's just like everything else in life. Too much capital flew in one direction, and now you're having a correction. I've been in the industry for 40 years. I've seen 12 large corrections, 20% bear markets, probably seven of those, and a global financial crisis, a 1998 credit default debacle. So this is in line with all that stuff. But typically, what happens if you have a mixed government, Republican president and the Congress tied to the Democrats, the market tends to do well in an environment like that. And I predict when things settle down, it will.
Do you think that they're going to manage to pass any policies against, against... No. Then Trump will just veto it all the way.
Not going to pass. He put a big red veto hat out the other day.
Yeah. Yeah, he's not going to. They're not going to pass them, you know.
Unless they go to him and they say, "Okay, here's what we want to do." And it's stuff that benefits him. And if it benefits him, he'll work with them. He doesn't care about the Republicans, Eli.
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So, let's talk about the future of the Republican Party. We're talking about Trump and how it will impact the future of the Republican Party. Already for the better half of the past year, we've already had some sort of, like, huge infighting within the Republican Party, some sort of civil war where you have the mainstream right, you mentioned a few of them before, Marco Rubio, you know, Ted Cruz, versus much more of a conspiracy wing right, such as Tucker Carlson, maybe even, let's say, JD Vance. Those sort of figures. With Trump leaving, how do you think, and with these crazy election results, how do you think this will impact that future?
Nobody that's adjacent to Trump is going to be the nominee of that Republican Party. Nobody. Not possible. The guy's universally hated in the country. You've got some white supremacist pockets of the country that like him still, but very few. And so I'm telling you, if they put up a Trump-adjacent person, they're going to get destroyed by the Democrats in 2028.
So what do you think about someone like JD Vance? I know you mentioned last time he came on the podcast that you think JD is not going to even run in 2028. But how can he run? Okay. Also, his wife moved out on him. You paying close attention?
Yeah, she moved to Middleburg, Virginia. She's gone.
She just needs a holiday.
She put the kids in school out there. She left the Naval Observatory.
Oh, really? I don't know.
Yeah. But, let's say JD, for example, right now he's already distancing himself from Trump with the tweet he put out the other day saying it was the Iran war, and he's underneath the news. He's been pretty against the Iran war. It seems like he can come out maybe and say, "Okay, I disagree with a lot of what Trump said." Or do you think that's just not possible?
How's he going to do that? You were the guy's vice president, dude.
