About the first seven weeks of Donald Trump's presidency

S E E D E D   C O N T E N T

Transcript (formatted by ChatGPT):

Interviewer: Welcome to our show. Thank you for making the time.

Scaramucci: It's good to be here. Thank you.

Interviewer: How dangerous is this moment in time after seven weeks of Donald Trump in office?

Scaramucci: Well, I think it's very dangerous for a number of different reasons. He is ripping up the post-World War II order. He wants to do things to the United States from an economic perspective that are not realistic, and they’re moving in a way that doesn’t understand that everything is interconnected.

Think of the economy like your body—if we’re operating on a certain part of your body, it does have stress and impact on other parts. So what he’s doing with the tariffs, for example, is going to hurt the country. It’s going to hurt lower- and middle-income people. It’s a regressive form of taxation—or, to quote Warren Buffett, in addition to being a regressive form of taxation, it’s an act of war.

Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada said he means it when he says that Canada should be the 51st state of the United States.

Interviewer: Do you think that Donald Trump has a serious plan to take over Canada, for example?

Scaramucci:  I think you have to take him seriously. I’m not one of these people that pretends otherwise. I think what happens is people hear something like, “Well, he’s going to take Greenland”—to use his own quote from a speech last night:

"One way or another, I’m taking Greenland."

If you’re observing that, you’d have to ask, What does he mean by that? That could mean some type of military intervention in Greenland.

He’s decapitated different areas of the government and installed people who are incredibly loyal to him but not necessarily competent in their jobs. They’re serious yes-men or yes-women as it relates to him. So you just have to ask, How deep does that go? How far does it go?

I think you have to take him seriously. I think you have to take a position in the middle.

When you interviewed me in November, there were three views. One was an optimistic view, one was a middle-of-the-road view, and one was an apocalyptic view. The optimistic view is off the table. He’s made that very clear.

He wants to disengage the United States from its allies. He wants to side with people like Vladimir Putin. He wants to create a sphere of influence for the United States that is very different from what it was from the Second World War to today.

And I think when you listen to him, he’s telling you: I want to control Canada. I want to control Greenland because we can make an argument that it’s part of North America. I want to have a big say and big influence in the Western Hemisphere. As for other areas of the world—let Vladimir Putin have his say in Eurasia and Eastern Europe. And let’s take it to an extreme just so we can understand the danger—let China have Taiwan and, possibly at some point, even Australia.

Interviewer: But this is apocalyptic, what you’re describing.

Scaramucci:  That’s the apocalyptic view. What Trump is doing is un-American.

I’d make one more statement, and I think it’s important. The most un-American thing I have seen him do in the last seven weeks is the berating and the rebuking of President Zelensky in the Oval Office.

Let me set the scene for you. I’m living in a homeowners association. I live in the mansion, and you have a smaller house down the block. There’s an arsonist setting your house on fire. You call me and say, I need help—can you pass me your garden hose? I’ve got to put the fire out.

We have to stop the arsonist because he’s going to set other houses on fire.

I invite you into my living room to discuss this with you—and then I berate you in front of national and international television.

That, to me, is the most un-American thing you could do. He said something about cards—you don’t have the cards. He’s trying to flip the card table over. He’s trying to restate the rules of the road.

This is not American—not as defined by 250 years of American history. We have to explain that. We have to rebut him. And we have to try to convince the American people that this is the wrong way to go.

Interviewer: Is this gangster rule coming out of the Oval Office? And is it inspired—or even dictated—by President Putin in Moscow?

Scaramucci:  If I were Vladimir Putin, what would I want in the first seven weeks of an American presidency?

I’d give Donald Trump a grade of 100% if I were coming out of the Kremlin.

But I think Trump is actually weighing the Russians as well. Here’s something counterintuitive and contrarian to think about: He’s so unpredictable. He’s running things with an element of reality television.

And of course, when you’re in a reality television show, you set up conflict. He’s been running a studio out of the Oval Office, taking unending questions from journalists. He’s got Keir Starmer in there, trying to be lovey-dovey. Macron, the French president, trying to be lovey-dovey. Then he put Zelensky in a crossfire.

That was a total ambush. It was planned.

Interviewer: No question.

Scaramucci: They want to weaken Zelensky.

Interviewer: Do they want to weaken him or get him out of office?

Scaramucci:  Weaken him—and eventually get him out of office. Putin has told people he wants Zelensky out. But Zelensky turned out to be a way tougher character.

Let’s not revise history. In February 2022, the expectation was that Putin would be in Kyiv within three days and Zelensky would have sought exile somewhere.

But you have to think about the history here—the history of Ukraine, the history of Russia. The 1994 agreement to give up nuclear weapons in Ukraine. The West’s commitment to Ukraine’s security.

Over the last 80 years, what was the message from American presidents to this continent? We are here to protect you. We are here to put down the internecine conflicts. We are here, alongside NATO, to provide a security umbrella for the Free World.

And now Trump wants to end it.

I actually think Donald Trump has done something that may take a generation to repair.

If I’m a European leader who once trusted the U.S. as a security umbrella, but now I see the U.S. has a leader who doesn’t want that role—what does that mean? It means there are a lot of people inside the U.S. who don’t understand the benefits of that policy.

Interviewer: Is it wise for Europe to kiss up to Trump, as Keir Starmer, Macron, and the NATO secretary general are doing?

Scaramucci:  I don’t think so. I don’t think it even matters.

They handled themselves deftly. But the Europeans would be better off becoming more independent from the U.S. and more integrated with each other. I think that if you—if you want to—hurt Donald Trump, diminish the influence of the United States on this continent because you'll send a message to people in the United States that they are not as needed as they once were. And I think that integration has really helped the United States.

Interviewer:  In November, in our interview, you called Trump a fascist. Would you repeat that word today?

Scaramucci: Well, you tell me. He won't call him a fascist, but I know he's a fascist, uh, and just go, go, go through what he's doing. But I also know him behind the scenes. I know that he wants uniformity of applause when he walks on a stage. I know he wants zero dissent.

A good political leader that believes in a democracy wants dissent. They want the argument, okay? The Founding Fathers that put that document together, sir, they wanted—they wanted—the compromise. They wanted the inertia of the government. They wanted to prevent a tyranny. And he doesn’t. He definitely does not.

By the way, take a look at what he’s doing. You tell me—am I, am I, am I closer to the truth seven weeks into his presidency than I was in November? I know the guy. I know what he’s capable of, and I know the people that are organized with him now.

The people that he was organized with in the first term were not that.

Interviewer:  You were one of them.

Scaramucci: I was one of them.

Interviewer:  And do you regret it—that you were working for him?

Scaramucci: Of course. Of course. I'll—I'll regret that for the rest of my life. But I think—you know, you know—not to—I, I think it helped me. I think me working for him and me getting famously fired like that gave me a platform to explain the danger of him.

So the people—it—but I also think there's a silver lining to it.

Interviewer:  Yeah. J.D. Vance, Elon Musk—the people who are working with him now—are they more dangerous than the people he worked with in his first presidency?

Scaramucci: Way more dangerous.

Interviewer: What would be your advice to the Secretary General of NATO, Mark RTO, who now has to deal with—with Trump and, uh, basically told Zelinsky, "Make peace with Trump, you made a little mistake there, go back and make a peace deal"?

Scaramucci: Well, I—I think that's good advice in the short term, but I think he has to have a—a two-prong strategy.

Strategy number one is, he's got to get with his contemporaries in—in NATO—the people that are part of the alliance—and say that there's a chance here, over a four-year period, if not longer, that we may have to go it alone without the United States.

Interviewer: How dangerous is it for you to speak out on all these topics?

Scaramucci: I think it's dangerous. I think if I—if I were a politician, it would be extremely dangerous. I think I'm a political commentator, and so, uh, there's still space for me in the country.

But listen, you know, uh, he's creating a chilling effect on free speech in our country, which is great irony, because he has J.D. Vance giving a speech at the Munich Security Conference—writing the free speech laws in Europe, most of Europe—and yet, in the United States, uh, they're—they're having a chilling effect on free speech.

So, yeah, it's dangerous.

Interviewer: Are there—

Scaramucci: I don’t care, though.

Interviewer: You don’t care? Are there personal threats to your life in the U.S.?

Scaramucci: There have been, yes.

Interviewer: Yeah? Do you have any protection?

Scaramucci: I do, yeah.

Interviewer: Um, the new director of the FBI, Patel—he's not a friend of yours. You're on his hit list, basically.

Scaramucci: Yeah, you know, I'm—but I'm moving up the list. Biden kept pardoning everybody, you know, so I've—he's, you know, through—through the Bon P pardons, I've probably gone up the list.

Interviewer: But it's not a laughing matter, is it? Because—do you get any protection from the FBI if you need it?

Scaramucci: Uh, no. Unfortunately, all of that stuff has gone away. And, and, uh—but, uh, since President Trump is in office—yeah, yeah. I think—I think he's, he's—he took Espers. I didn't have a detail, uh, but I think the relationships with the FBI are going to be altered by Kash Patel.

But all of the details of people that spoke out against Donald Trump have been removed.

And so, that's never happened before, by the way.

Interviewer: Anthony Fauci? The—the Anthony Fauci? Mark Esper?

When you worked with him in 2015 and ’16, could you have ever imagined that this would be the outcome? That the President—that Donald Trump—would develop like he is now?

Scaramucci: No. No. I—I—I didn’t see it. I mean, there are other people—if people want to be critical of me, they say, Well, he had these types of tendencies. You should have seen it. And this is a stain on your legacy that you worked with him.

I have to accept that. But I didn’t see it.

And remember—this is a guy that went to Elton John’s wedding. This is a guy that started out as a Democrat. This is a guy that was pro-choice as it related to the abortion issue in the United States.

Interviewer:  Why do people—billionaires, very powerful people like Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg of, um, Meta—yeah—now come back to Trump? While they were very critical, now they work with him, give him money, and want to be his best friend?

Scaramucci: Well, look at the Krupp family in Nazi Germany. Look at—look at—look at the different families.

When you have that level of wealth, and, uh, you have a tendency to be transactional—less principled. And those people are making a decision.

They've got great lives and great yachts and great footprints of wealth, and they don't want their companies broken up by the Department of Justice through antitrust. And they don't want, uh, their families threatened.

And so they've made—made a decision of capitulation to him.

Bezos has taken it very far. He had a tagline on The Washington Post—"Democracy Dies in Darkness." He's now switched the editorial programming of The Washington Post to be right-leaning.

So, uh, I think they've done this to protect themselves. And I think it's a, uh, it's an expedient thing to do.

But it's understandable. I'm not—I'm not sitting here criticizing them.

You have to make a decision in a situation like this—are you going to stick to your principles? And you've got to explain what is actually going on, and see if you can stop what is going on, or you can capitulate to it.

And I—again—I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood. Gr—blue-collar family members. Uh, my dad served in the U.S. Army. My two uncles fought in the Second World War.

And I think it's just very important. I've lived an amazing life. I've lived an undeserved life in America. I've lived many aspects of the American dream.

Uh, became financially independent. Had an opportunity to work in the White House. And I—my country—and I love the principles that this country has abided by over the last 80 years.

And I think it's important to rearticulate those principles—restate those principles to people—even if it creates some level of personal danger, or even if it creates some level of retribution from the American president.

Think about how un-American that is.

He's a very dangerous guy. And we got to—we got to—tell people why, so that we can stop him.

Interviewer: Anthony Scaramucci, it’s not a nice message that you’re bringing here, but thank you. Thank you very much for coming.

Scaramucci: Well, I mean, we got to be optimistic. I mean, we have to talk about this to prevent it from happening.

And I felt sorry. And I felt painful that my job is to dig and bring and open the wounds of people—again and again.