Please welcome to the stage SkyBridge founder and managing partner Anthony Scaramucci and Bloomberg's Eric Schatzker.
I was like the voice of God. That was very impressive. Matt Gaetz has left the building. Paging Matt Gaetz. Is he here? Matt? No. Sorry. Sorry. Anthony, good to see you. Good to see you too. By the way, you know I miss you, Eric.
Anthony, as many of you know, is extremely generous with his time. So you may have seen him perhaps on television, perhaps on his own podcast in the days since the election. And Anthony, I've noticed that people tend to start the conversation with you in more or less the same place that casts you in the role of, forgive me because I know it's going to come out sounding the wrong way, but as the loser or on the losing end of the election. Yes, because of your objections to and criticism of President-elect Trump. Yes, yes. But I want to start this off by looking at things through a different lens. The way I see it, in many respects, and I'm not talking about politically, I'm not talking about culturally, I'm not talking about emotionally, but you and your firm have made out pretty damn well in this election, haven't you?
Oh, you mean because of Bitcoin? You mean well, yes. For now, I mean, listen, a lot of things have to go right, and the market is pricing a near perfect regulatory situation and a perfect Secretary of the Treasury and a perfect SEC commissioner, etc. So a lot of things have to go right, but yes, it's been a big move. But since we're just talking specifically right now about Bitcoin, I would maintain to the people in this room that Bitcoin is at the price that it should have been at in January of 2022. Just hear me out for a second. The cash ETF should have been approved January, February 2022. It was blocked by Gary Gensler. Lawsuits ensued. The court ruled in favor of the industry. If you go to a law school and take administrative law, there's a clause in administrative law that you can't be arbitrary or capricious with the administration of the law, and he clearly was doing that. So he did something to the industry that held back pricing and held back where we are today. So I think where we are today is just a reflection of where we should have been. Now before we go to the next question, I will say this about Gary: he didn't do this on purpose, but he actually saved the industry. Because by blocking the Bitcoin cash or spot ETF, it exposed the weaknesses in the industry. It exposed FTX and Celsius and Three Arrows, and we had this capitulation and collapse and deleveraging, which, you know, I mean, I was getting killed back then, as you know. You have very friendly journalists that write about me when I'm getting my ass kicked. But anyway, I stayed in those positions and obviously being rewarded now. But if Gary didn't do that, I think we would be living in a world of Sam Bankman-Fried. I don't think that that fraud could have necessarily been exposed. So you know, we do need regulation, and we do need propitious and mindful regulation. This could be my last public presentation until I'm deported, so I'm expecting people to be friendly on the way out.
All right. We'll go ahead. Matt Gaetz is not the only individual to have left the building. We also, to your point about Gary Gensler, learned today that he is stepping down as SEC chairman. And so we will have someone else as the Attorney General, we will have someone else as the chairman of the SEC, and we'll have many new people in many positions. How is... Anthony made a crack about this outside, so I'm going to use... I had a different way of phrasing it, but I like yours, Anthony. How is The Apprentice White House Part Two going to be different from The Apprentice White House Part One?
Well, you know, obviously the cliche is that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over again and expecting a different outcome. But there will be a different outcome because you have to understand how Washington works. I got my 11-day PhD in Washington scumbaggery. So let me tell you how it's going to work. They are ready for Trump, and they have shapeshifted and gotten into position. They were not ready for Trump Season One. They got caught off guard. Who's 'they'? The establishment. This is a garden variety of Republicans that hate Trump that when they get to a microphone like this, they say they love Trump. These are garden variety Democrats. These are the people of the establishment. They're shape-shifting right now to get ready for Trump and to get ready for any of the potential insanity that ensues. And so the walk-around yesterday is a brilliant example of this. And by the way, whatever you think, this is the walk-around of Gaetz and Vance, right? And by the way, whatever you think of JD Vance, I've got him up 25 IQ points from the election. Let me explain to you why. Where has JD Vance been? The election was over, and this guy said, 'I'm getting out of Dodge.' 'JD, do you want to do CBS Morning News?' 'I don't.' 'Do you want to go on Meet the Press?' 'I don't.' He disappeared. We can't find him anywhere because he's gotten the memo: this is Donald Trump's show. There's one light on the stage, it's on Donald Trump. Get out of the way. He was in a near death spiral because he went on Joe Rogan. Does everybody know that? You don't bigfoot the master. The master went on Joe Rogan two weeks later. You go on Joe Rogan? Very bad move. And here is JD Vance doing nothing other than what he's told. He's parading around the Senate with Matt Gaetz, and behind closed doors they say, 'You're not getting confirmed.' So if you want to embarrass the president and you want to go through the rigmarole and the show trial and you want to try to get a recess appointment, you can do that, but you're going to embarrass, you're going to damage the president on the way in. Where you can withdraw. Those are your choices. And this morning or this afternoon, whatever time it was, he withdrew. And so Washington is ready for Donald Trump. And so I do predict a better outcome this time, more stability, because they're ready for him and they're working in concert with each other. Now before, it was like, 'Ah, you know, I'm going to team up with Trump because he's a Republican and I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that.' They're not doing that now.
