Project 2025 & An Inside Scoop on Trump’s Presidency — ft. Anthony Scaramucci

I think the energy around Olympics is going to be fun. You know, you have a great city like Paris and you have some of the best athletes of our generation competing. This is, you know, the closing of the chapter for some of the best players to ever compete. So make sure you tune in. It'll be a fun conversation.

Tune into this Point 4 special series presented by Verizon Business, starting on July 31st. You can find it on a Point 4 feed wherever you get your podcasts.

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Welcome to Prop G Markets. Today, we're speaking with Anthony Scaramucci about his time in the Trump administration, the threat of Project 2025, and the state of political fundraising. But first, here at the news is Prop G analyst and Discover card holder, Ed Ellison. Ed, what is a good word? I'm very well.

We missed you last week. How was Greece? It was wonderful. And I've decided that I need to recover. So I'm in Munich and I'm about to, in about a half an hour, I'm going to go see Spain versus France in the semifinals of the Euro.

So yeah, life goes from.

. The vacation never ends, huh? Better, better, best. You're learning too much from the Europeans. You're supposed to be working hard.

Like I said, my reductive analysis, after molesting the world for 30 years, is, earn your money or make your money in the U.

S. and spend it in Europe. So I am spending it in Europe, Ed. Predictions for who's going to win the Euros? I'm all in on Team England.

I think that everyone is so critical of Southgate. I can't understand, it. literally embodies the British people. for me, is this guy is in the semifinals. I think they've had some of the fewest goals scored against them.

They've had probably arguably the best goal of the tournament, Bellingham's bicycle kick. And everyone is just furious at the coach. Yeah, but the trouble with him is how he takes credit for it. I mean, I don't know if you saw his interviews afterwards, but that was all Bellingham. In the post-match interview, he's like, yeah, you know, it was a last minute decision to bring Ivan Toney on.

I'm really glad I made that decision. It's the ultimate taking credit for something that you should not be taking credit for. But it's such a fun moment. Oh, 100%. It's such a good time.

Yeah, it's incredible. Every time Cole Palmer comes on the sidelines as if he's going to be subbed in, my boys literally go crazy. They start jumping on the bed. I go ballistic. Yeah, he's fantastic.

Anyways, go ahead. Get to the headlines. Let's do it.

Now is the time to buy. I hope you have plenty of the well at home. That's, the stock rose 27% in a week, erasing all its losses for the year. The $200 billion rally was partially due to a better than expected second quarter deliveries report. Saks Fifth Avenue's parent company, is buying Neiman Marcus for $2.65 billion.

Amazon and Salesforce will also take a stake in the company and provide technology and logistics for the luxury retailers. And finally, Paramount has agreed to a merger with Skydance Media. at last. As part of the deal, the Ellison family and Redbird Capital will invest more than $8 billion in Paramount to buy shares and to help pay down the company's debt. The stock fell 6% on the news.

Scott, reactions to these headlines. The Paramount story, it's like when I go to, I don't know,

it's like when I went to the Barbie movie. I pretend to enjoy it. And I just, all I can think about is when is this fucking thing going to be over? Let's just put it, just pretend this whole Paramount thing is a dog, a sick dog, and the governor of North Dakota gets a hold of it. Let's just take it to a gravel pit.

I am so sick of talking about this, this company with its mediocre brands and its mid cap to small cap market cap. Good. Unfortunately, I don't think the fat lady's song here, because as a good board, you have to have a 45 day go shop. And the fact, the thing that was getting in the way and scaring off all bidders was like, was essentially. Sherry is a billionaire kid who is irrational.

We just don't want to deal with her. And now that she's actually signed a deal with public terms, I would be shocked if a bunch of players, ranging from Barry Diller to someone you've never heard of before, is getting out their pencil and thinking, well, should we maybe look at these assets and come in with a topping bid? So unfortunately, unfortunately, I don't think this thing may be over. I hope it is. Move on MTV.

Mission impossible. Best of luck to you, Ed. Ellison, the kid. Great. A new dynasty.

in media we can all obsess over as they lose money. And with that, let's move on to the Tesla headline. So, I mean, there was a deliveries report ahead of their earnings report, which is in a few weeks. They delivered 444,000 vehicles, which was above expectations. Wall Street expected 439,000 deliveries.

And that's why the stock ripped on this announcement. Now, what's interesting to me is, yes, it punched in above expectations, but it's very interesting to see how far expectations for Tesla have fallen over time. And I mean this in a very literal sense. So there was an expected 439,000 deliveries in Q2.. But if you look at the expectations for Q2 from a month ago, the number for expected deliveries was 448,000..

Six months ago, it was 542,000.

. And a year ago, it was 565,000.. In other words, the expectations for this company, just on this one metric, have fallen 22% in the past year. And meanwhile, if you look at the stock after this rally, the stock is only down around 6%. So yes, maybe it was being a little oversold.

But as always with Tesla, if you want to justify the price of this stock, which is currently trading at 64 times earnings, you've got Toyota at 16, Volkswagen at 4.

. This is 64 times earnings. To justify that valuation, you still have to believe that there's something much bigger in the pipeline for this company than just selling cars. It's a meme stock. It's an absolute meme stock.

is the way I see it. It's just taken on a life of its own. Let's talk about Sachs and Neiman Marcus. One of the biggest trends in retail over the last 40 years has been verticalization. And that is department stores.

My dad and I, whenever we needed to buy my stepmom, my new mommy, a gift, we'd go to Sears or JC Penney's, because they had all these brands at a decent price. They brought everything together. You didn't have to make that many decisions. The service was mediocre. It was overpriced.

And then these luxury brands said the key is the brand experience. And rather than selling Hermes or Cartier or Rolex or Clarence, whatever it might be, through these department stores that have multiple brands, we're going to invest in our own real estate and we're going to forward, integrate into retail and we're going to make crazy strong brands. So instead of selling Panerai through Neiman Marcus, we're going to build Panerai stores that are just all about the brand instead of having, I mean, Coach, did it. Everybody slowly but surely started picking apart the department store and people decided they wanted to have surgical strikes in a more branded environment. And you had a massive transfer of market capitalization from department stores to the brands themselves.

And you have seen brands from, Hermes is now worth more than Nike. And even Nike said we're pulling out of Full Locker, not entirely, but we're going to focus on building vertical channels. And those are the brands, Lululemon, Sephora, those are the brands that have really captured a ton of market share. So this is what you do in a down market. You consolidate, they'll cut costs.

What's really interesting here is that obviously they have very strong databases, they have strong direct-to-consumer businesses, and they're taking investments from Amazon and Salesforce, who are the gangsters in e-commerce and CRM. So this is a retreat and an acknowledgement that technology now runs the roost in retail. But what it is, is it's almost sort of it signals the beginning of the end of an era called department stores. One of my first jobs in high school was in Bullock's, this high-end department store that was eventually acquired by Macy's. Macy's is a shadow of itself.

So again, I would argue this is kind of the beginning of the end of this era. Any thoughts on what's in it for Amazon here? Why would they invest in this slightly outdated physical retail chain? The place Amazon has largely been sequestered or elbowed out of the way, and I don't know if this deal helps, but I think it might, is from the luxury category. And that is the best luxury brands have pretty much said, including beauty brands, we just don't want to play with Amazon.

And that is difficult because Amazon shows up every day. I remember when Toomey went on Amazon and says, you know what? Hey, head of North America for Toomey, oh, you're going to miss your numbers. I can increase your gross sales by 30% this year. But it's a bit of a deal with the devil, because then you sort of lose control of your brand.

slowly but surely. They start to margin from it and it becomes like a crack cocaine addiction. And slowly but surely people start going to the, go straight to amazon.com because Amazon has all the brands. And the high-end brands don't want Amazon playing with their brand or anywhere near it, or touching it or smearing it. That's the way they look at it.

So I wonder if Amazon sees an opportunity to get more distribution from some higher-end brands vis-a-vis their relationship with Saks, Neiman Marcus. All right, we'll be right back with our conversation with Anthony Scaramucci.

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com slash box. All right, it's been a great summer for sports and we're only just getting started. With the Paris Olympics. kicking off, Point 4 is bringing you a couple of special episodes that'll help you connect more deeply with the athletes, teams, and underdogs you'll be cheering for. over the next few weeks.

We have Carmelo Tatum, Andre Ogodala discussing some of the top past USA Olympic moments. I think the energy around Olympics is going to be fun. You know, you have a great city like Paris and you have some of the best athletes of our generation competing. This is, you know, the closing of the chapter for some of the best players to ever compete. So make sure you tune in.

It'll be a fun conversation. Tune into this Point 4 special series presented by Verizon Business starting on July 31st. You can find it on a Point 4 feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Anthony Scaramucci, the founder and managing partner of Skybridge Capital. Anthony served as the White House Director of Communications for 11 days during the Trump administration. Also the host of the Open Book and Restless Politics U.S. podcasts.

Anthony, thank you so much for joining us.

Makes me feel like it was a little longer.

It ended 14 years of conservative government. Labor's center-left leader, Keir Starmer, is now the new prime minister. And over in France, there was something of a shock result. The far-right National Rally Party, which was expected to win, instead, it came in third, and it was the far-left New Popular Front that took the most seats, with President Macron and his allies trailing in second. No party won a majority and France is now dealing with a hung parliament.

Anthony, do you have any just initial reactions to either of those results in the UK or in France?

Question is, is Joe Biden capable of going from here to the election coherently? We have to honestly assess that and I don't know the answer to that, but I've been in politics. This is my sixth presidential political cycle. I worked for a number of different presidential candidates over the course of my career as a fundraiser. After watching his debate performance, should he be running at age 81 for president?

The answer to that is no, he should not be running for president. But you know what? He is running for president. He's raised a quarter billion dollars. He's on the ballot everywhere.

He's a very well-known name. And, guys, we have a lot of low information voters in our society that are not as focused on these elections as the three of us. And he's a known entity. And the number one thing you need to be president in this country is name recognition. That's the number one thing you need.

And if you don't have the name recognition, they pull him and they put up a Kamala Harris, they put up a Gavin Newsom. You know these people, I know these people, but they don't have five decades of media exposure and they haven't been sitting as president of the United States for the last four years. So it's a very tough dilemma, but I like, if you want, Joe Biden to win, which I do, and I'm happy to explain why, but if you like Joe Biden and you like Western liberalism and you like the integrity of the system of our democracy, then those two elections bode well for November. That's sending an indication, because these countries are different, certainly, but they think alike. When the Brexit took place in June of 2016,, it was a portend for the November victory of Donald Trump.

And it was a narrow victory, but it was a similar ilk of people that voted for Donald Trump in terms of their mindset.

If you have an elderly parent, or, again, I say this humbly because we're all aging and I should have the good fortune to get into my 80s and represent like that. No, it's a disaster. I'm not saying that it wasn't a disaster, but I'm saying, can you come back from that? And the answer is yes, you can come back from that. if he has a great press conference this coming Thursday with NATO.

You can come back from that if he forces himself to do some of the things he's doing. It was very awkwardly on Morning Joe yesterday. The Stephanopoulos interview did not go well, but it wasn't as big of a disaster as the Thursday debate. You could get him positioned. You know, Professor Galloway is smarter at marketing than me, but you could get him positioned as, I'm old, but I don't have dementia.

I'm slower, but I'm an experienced hand at this. Now, what's at issue for the United States historically is we've done this before. And the question is, can you do it in this society now with this media glare? We did this in 1944.. We had a very frail president.

He was in a wheelchair. They tried to hide as much of that as they could from the American people. He swapped out his hard left vice president for somebody more centrist than Harry Truman. And he died four months. And there was nobody close to Franklin Roosevelt that was surprised at his death four months into his fourth term.

The question now, though, is, you know, it may have been a fishbowl back then, but this is a full-sized international aquarium, the White House now. And lots of things leak out of that White House. There are White House officials that are quietly saying to people, geez, I hope he malaprops again quickly so we can swap him out for somebody that would pull better. So is it possible that he could pull out of this? Yes.

Is it likely that he could pull out of it? The best thing he has going for him is Donald Trump. If you had a smart, younger governor, if you had a youngkin going up against Joe Biden right now, those bidding markets would be 80-20.. You know, but he's got Donald Trump going up against him. And I'm going to say something flattering about Donald Trump, if you don't mind.

He is on message, okay? I'm just letting you guys know, I know the son of... You let a curse on this podcast? I can't remember. Fuck yeah.

Okay, yeah, because that's how I got my ass fired from the White House. But I know this son of a bitch. a long time. He didn't listen to anybody but himself. in 2016.

He had a very sloppy 2020 campaign because of COVID. He is on message. He's got Susie Wiles running that campaign. He's listening to her. 12 days after the debate, he's given one interview to Sean Hannity.

That's by design, fellas. You know, when your enemy is collapsing, Sun Tzu tells you to do nothing. Get out of the way of your enemy's self-inflicted harm. And so Donald Trump could not have done that in 2016 or even in 2020.. The debate format helped him.

You know, what's also helping him is truth social. He's blathering like a simpleton idiot on truth social. If you read this stuff, you're like, okay, we got to get this guy into a sanitarium. But no one's looking at it because it's not on Twitter or Instagram. Do you see what I mean?

So Biden does have Donald Trump as an asset on his ledger. But this is a more disciplined Donald Trump. And this is a more controlled Donald Trump, which makes him a more dangerous Donald Trump.

When you are getting crushed like that, you become way more psychologically aware of your surroundings, of the people around you. You become more empathetic. And so it was a very tough time in my life, sir. But it was definitely something I'm glad I went through, because I think it's made me a different person and hopefully a little bit better of a person, a little bit more aware of what's going on around me.

And, as God says, or supposedly, you know, when a window closes, a door opens. By the way, the CEO of Boeing also said that. Anyways, let's move on. Let's use that as a segue.

You got to keep going.

They're going to be running clips of him leaving the debate stage and looking really frail. I think there is a contrast in terms of what drives imagery and the respective skills of those two presidents. The path you're talking about, or the positioning of Biden right now, and by the way, it might be enough, but the primary positioning of Biden is, I'm not him. That's his primary positioning right now. I'm not Trump.

And I would argue, and I think a lot of Democrats would argue, and I want to get your pushback here, that it would be a wider path to bring on one of the very talented members of the bench, the Democratic Party, have a Shark Tank-like debate format. If Britain can have an election in six weeks, we can pull this off in four months, have a debate hosted by the DNC, CNN, and Fox, eight people, then four people, then two people. It would be a media spectacle. You would raise the awareness and get the name recognition of whoever it was to 90% pretty quickly. And if you have a young, talented governor, whether it's, and I know, Whitmer would too today, but if it's, for example, a Whitmer and Shapiro, and you had two of the three swing states, or you had that tall, good-looking fella who's much younger, who I think would rip Trump limb from limb on the debate stage, I think that path is much wider to the presidency as opposed to...

But I'm telling you right now, Gavin Newsom took Ginsu knives. It was like one of those Ginsu knife infomercials to Ron DeSantis about six months ago. I don't know if you saw that, but they debated each other. He chopped him up. It was a chopped Ron DeSantis salad better than a Caesar salad, okay?

And the reason why is? the arguments on the right now are specious. And anybody, and listen, I am a right-leaning person. I'm a center-right person. I'm agnostic, related to social issues.

I'm a New York style Republican my whole life. But what I am not is a fascist. And what I am not is a demolition derby expert on how to wreck a amazing country and how to create a central authority in what has been a very successful decentralized governmental structure in the country, okay? These people are loons. If you read the stuff that they write, you would have to be frightened, okay?

This is the reason why I have put out excessively the stuff on Project 2025. That is a Trump-owned project. That is a very dangerous dystopia for America. There's a lot of things in that project that are very un-American.

So Project 225 is quite dystopian. They want to roll back DEI, all the issues related to affirmative action, some of which have helped the country. They want to pull back abortion. They want to pull back contraceptive. They want to deport 15 million people.

It's right there in the document, okay? So I just want you to think about that for a second. They're going to deport 15 million people. You're going to have Handmaid's Tale armored vehicles in your local neighborhood pulling people out of their homes. Okay, then what are you going to do with the people?

They're not going to self-deport. So you then have to put them in deportation centers, or let's call them what they would be. They would be concentration camps. As you're waiting to find a place to land those people, you have to build that type of infrastructure to deport these people. So now Trump would probably hear something like that and not take it that seriously, but his minions, they want to do that, okay?

They want to perpetrate that on this country. You know, I would encourage you guys, and I would encourage your young people listening in, to go back to some of the writings of Abraham Lincoln. We were stressed out. We were polarized. We had a great fight over the concepts of liberty and who was free in the country.

And who was to be enslaved? That was a very rough time in America. And if you read what Lincoln was saying about the country, it is a persistent and consistent love affair with the idea of America. The notion, what did Lincoln say, okay? And I'm paraphrasing, but number one, there should be no permanent labor class in this country.

Number two, it's an idea. It's not based on a bloodline. It's not based on historical, ancestral boundaries. Number three, it's a flat system. So people can come in and live off their merit and they can scale their lives.

They can move aspirationally through America, okay? And so, while I'm saying this to you, you have a group of anarcho-Christian nationalists that literally want to take over the country and impose their values on everybody. That is the most un-American thing that you can think about. Go read the Project 2025, the 925 pages. It is wrath and judgment.

And I'm telling you, they will inflict a tremendous amount of harm on the country over and above. By the way, do you know why I believe in God? I don't know if you guys still believe in God, but I'm a practical guy. Do you know why I believe in God?

I'm like, okay, God has been good to us. He saved us from Bannon. Because Bannon can articulate the Trump doctrine, okay? I know the Trump doctrine, which is why, in good conscience, I had to speak out against it. And this has been an exploitation project by a group of people that have been working on this for a very long period of time.

They've got a guy who's a rapist. They got a guy that's banging porn stars. They got a guy on his third marriage, but they don't care, because he's gonna deliver them anarcho-Christian nationalists to the court. He's gonna wipe out through Schedule F 50,000 civil servants. He's gonna put the anarcho-Christian fascists in the government.

And so the fact that Joe Biden cannot articulate, he can't go on television or Elson and Galloway's podcast and articulate what Trump is going to do and what he wants to do is a problem for me, okay? Now I have no problem going out there and doing it, getting the death threats and listening to all the nonsense. I have no problem doing it because I have five children. I've gotta be on record that I've seen it up close and personal. Now I am a little upset that I'm not even in the top 40 on the Trump enemy list.

Esper and Millie, who are buddies of mine, they're in the top 10, these two sons of bitches. And I feel like I'm doing a lot of work. I don't feel like I've cracked into the top 10.. I had lunch with these two guys. They're in the top five.

I'm like 48.

. I feel like I'm left out. I feel a little neglected, by the way.

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What what do you sense in terms of the flows out there? You know, it's our investment. When we talk about the markets, we talk about flows like Latin. America is just had so much outflow of capital. It doesn't matter if the companies are performing well or not.

It's just it's hard for a stock to get any traction there. What are the flows of capital in to the Trump and Biden campaigns the last couple of weeks? And what does it tell you?

he was behind Joe Biden. And that was. that was good news for Joe Biden, because if you had asked me before the debate, Scott, I would have said, listen, Biden's got more money than Trump. He's the incumbent. I submit to you, guys, that these are people that have 50 years of exposure to American people, Biden and Trump.

A result of this is going to be a get out the vote exercise. There's not a lot of undecided voters. And Biden's going to have a more robust field operation in those swing states, bringing people out of the nursing homes over to the polling booth. And so, in a get out to vote exercise, where the Democrats have a higher number of registrants relative to the Republicans, Trump has actually shrunk the Republican Party since he started his nonsense. I would have said to you that they could win.

But the convictions increased his donations. The successful debate performance by Trump has increased his donations. But on the other side, Biden has still got enough money, Scott. And he is the incumbent. And since we're talking about it as an investment, I want you to think about it like this.

If I am raising money for Trump, I'm not on his enemies list. Joe Biden is not going to go after me. OK, I'm in Silicon Valley. I'm a know-it-all guru. I'm going to raise money for Trump.

I'm going to make this mistake that, frankly, I made in 2016.

. But, you know, and he loses no big deal to me. So think about the call option of it, right? Trump wins. Great for me.

Trump loses. No one's coming after me, right? Flip side. If I'm giving money to Joe Biden, he's the incumbent president. If he wins and incumbents generally do win, this is a rare case because of his age and his relative infirmity.

But if he wins, I'm in good shape. So these are all call options. This is all diversified portfolio management. You know, I have given to Ro Khanna, but I've also given to Dave McCormick. They're both pro crypto.

I'm going with Mark Cuban and Mike Novogratz to see Ro Khanna and members of the Biden administration tomorrow in Washington to talk about how to depoliticize cryptocurrency and digital asset regulation, because Trump is now burying you guys. He's raised $50 million from the crypto bros, Scott and Ed. OK, and Biden is getting killed by Elizabeth Warren and getting killed by, you know, the real life. Jiminy Cricket, Gary Gensler. OK, he's getting killed by those two.

And so, for me, what I would say is the money's there for the president. OK, now, if you say to me he's staying in, is the money going to dry up? I don't believe that.

And just for you, as someone who's worked on Wall Street, who still works on Wall Street and who has also worked in the White House, give us your read on the general sentiment on Wall Street right now. How are bankers and how are fund managers feeling about what appears to me to be a shit show in American politics right now?

I can explain to you why from the data that we look at here at SkyBridge, but I think they've got to get up the curve and start cutting rates sooner rather than later. And I'm happy to take you through that if you're interested. But I think ultimately, this is still a Fed-driven market. And I think the market is perceiving now whoever wins, there will be Fed rate cuts coming by the back end of the year. But if you look at who's better, and this is great irony, but who's better for capitalism and who's better for the economy, it's actually Joe Biden.

But Trump has a perception, because of The Apprentice and pro-business and this sort of thing, that he would be better. He's calling for sky-high tariffs, which will cripple poor people. Tariffs, as you both know, are regressive taxes on poor people.

OK, he is serious about it. if it's going to help him politically and it's going to help him achieve what he wants as it relates to his personal power. Always look at this thing through the prism of Donald Trump's personal power. This is not a public servant. He's not there to serve his fellow men and women that are fellow travelers on this planet.

He's there to serve himself. He's there to serve his cronies. Classic totalitarianism. OK, and you guys know, we have 5.7 billion people living in totalitarian regimes around the world. And these regimes always go the same way.

They go kleptocracy, oligarchy, cronyism, corruption. And I'm going to tell you something, because I know you have a lot of young viewers. OK, we have no hereditary memory of dictatorship and authoritarianism in this country. But your country, Ed, where you come from, does. You go on field trips to see Churchill's war cabinet, or you visit spots where the blitz happened in London or up in the Midlands where the bombs were dropping on the manufacturing centers.

If you're in France, you go to Normandy. If you're in Germany, they take you to Auschwitz. If you're in Poland, you go to one of the concentration camps. And the Brits, the Europeans, the French, they have historical, hereditary memory of the scourge of fascism. OK, and so.

so we have to explain this to as many people as possible, because it's right there. It's right there in front of you guys. OK, and I and I know these people and I know what they're capable of.

I know we're in OT, but. Sure. OK, so, and this this happened on a Wednesday, and I know it was a Wednesday because I was only there for one Wednesday. OK, in the White House. And so we were having dinner and I was invited to the Blue Room to have dinner with the president and a few people.

And my name tag was next to Melania's. And Trump walked over to me menacingly. He's a lot bigger than me. He says, what are you doing sitting next to my wife? And I'm looking at him like, I have no idea.

I didn't put the name tags down. He's like, it's just like a wild.

Insecure, overcompensating. Whack job, you know, but no, I liked her. She hates him. OK, and she hates him. More than you, or I could hate him because she's had to live with him.

She's Pat Summerall's daughter. Credibly talented political strategist. She is running that campaign. She has Trump's ear. And, as I said, Trump is on message.

And Trump is disciplined because he likes and respects her and listens to her. And she has given him very good advice.

He doesn't need to know that.

That was a great movie. Do you remember what it was about? And then you have to tell Trump a story. And then all of a sudden, you weave in the Sykes-Picot Treaty because that was a big part of the plot. And now you've told Trump something without him feeling insecure that he didn't know it.

And I won't hold up these arms coming to you today. By far, the number one person is Gavin Newsom. If you put Gavin Newsom up against Donald Trump, Donald Trump's sphincter, he'd be constipated for about a week. His sphincter would close. Why?

Because Newsom is good looking. Newsom is articulate. Newsom is well-versed in policy. And you may not like every part of his policy decisions. And there's a lot of things going wrong, as Scott pointed out in California.

But Newsom can slay Trump. And Trump is a very image conscious person. And the imagery of this good looking Californian, who's 25 years younger than Trump on stage, OK, would be very powerful, would really bother Trump. OK, so those are the people he's worried about. The people that he dislikes, he disliked nobody more than John McCain.

OK, and I tried to get him. on the Saturday that I joined the administration. It was July 22nd. I tried to get Trump. We had to fly somewhere for an event.

And I tried to get Trump to take Air Force One to Arizona and stop in and see McCain at his home, where he was ailing from brain cancer, because I knew McCain was going to be the deciding vote on the Obamacare legislation. And I knew Trump needed that vote. But Trump was maniacal with the hatred of John McCain. Why? A war hero, a veteran, a patriot, all the things that Trump is incapable of.

He absolutely despised John McCain. OK, those are really good questions. OK, let's keep going.

OK, and I said, no, I don't remember the guy. Oh, yeah, Barack Obama. I said, I don't remember the guy. And then he won the Senate. He came to New York at the University Club.

Two of my buddies that I went to law school with, they were close to him. He's running for president. Again, I was 44 at the time, 16 years ago. He said, go up to the University Club with us and write the son of a bitch check. I said, OK, no problem.

I brought a check. I put it in my coat, Ed. I walked over to Obama and I said, Senator, I said, you and I didn't know each other in law school, but I'm about to write you a big check. I want to lie to all my friends. And tell them that you and I were close in law school.

I want to drop your name everywhere. And he looked at me with that smile. Again, the best smile in America by his Jack Kennedy. He said, I'll tell you what, if you double the amount of the check, we could take it all the way back to Hawaii, where we in high school together. And I like telling that story because it's the wittiness of Obama.

It's the rock star capability. Again, you can like or dislike his policies, but he was a gamer. He was a guy like a Michael Jordan that could hit the shot when he needed to hit a shot. And I took the check out. I ripped it up.

And I wrote him a new check. I doubled the amount of it. I handed it to him, OK? And he loved it. And I went to more Barack Obama Christmas parties at the White House and Donald Trump Christmas parties.

That's the irony of that, right? But the point of the story is they are human beings. And the American people, whether you like this or not, this is a popularity contest. This is not a hiring decision for the Americans. This is a popularity contest.

OK, and unfortunately in America, they take the strong over the weak and they'll take a strong liar over weak competency. OK, they just did. They did. They will just do it. And this is another reason why.

I would take the risk and I would be bold here as an entrepreneur and swap out Joe Biden for somebody like Gavin Newsom or somebody like that.

. I have a 28-year-old, 24.. I got remarried 10 years ago, Scott. And so I have a 10 and 7-year-old. And my 10-year-old's gotten onto it.

He's like, Dad, so you and Mom were married in July, but I was born in April. So I'm going to religious instruction. I'm going to Catholic schools. Can you explain that to me?

You have five kids. You have a lot of young men, a lot of young fathers who listen to the program. I would love to hear what advice you would have for them. and having had one generation of kids and then locking and loading again. What advice would you have?

What learnings can you pass on?

Blue Collar, Tufts, Harvard Law School, Goldman Sachs, two successful hedge funds, best-selling author. I could give them this big bullshit story or I could expose them to all the warts, all the insecurity, all the trials and tribulations, the firings, all the different things. And I have found in my life that the realer that you are with your kids, the more space you're giving them to live their destiny of what they want. So I don't tell my kids, I want you to go to Wall Street or I want you to do this, or I want you to be a nurse. I tell my kids that life is precious and short, and the immortal words of Mel Brooks, relax.

None of us are getting out of here alive. Okay. And so you're here. We've got the gift that we've made a little bit of money. I want you to be aspirational in your lives.

And if you fail at something, as long as it's not health related, come see me, because I'll make you feel better. Okay. And I'll say this to your podcast listeners. If you've ever failed at something, think of my ass on the 31st of July, blown out of the front door of the White House into Pennsylvania Avenue, skinned alive by the media and then rolled in margarita salt by late night comedians, you know. You know, Bill Maher, I see Scott on Bill Maher all the time.

Okay. Bill Maher roasted me. He put an apple in my mouth and he roasted me on a spigot. Okay. And my PR people said, don't go on the Bill Maher show.

I've been on the show five times. And I've taken-.

And if you do that with your kids and Scott, I'll tell you the story. It's August 3rd. I'm fired from the White House. I'm walking on the promenade in Santa Monica and my 25 year old son puts his arm around me and says, hey, dad, are you going to be okay? I said, what do you mean?

He said, well, this is a disaster. You, I mean, how are you going to recover from this? And so it was the first time in my life I was actually getting parented by my kid. And I looked at him. I said, you know what?

It's really not a disaster. I don't have cancer. Thank God. And watch what I do with this, AJ. Watch what I do with this.

Okay. And I think that's the message of parenting. Let the kid have space for failure. Scott, how many billionaires, you know, they write the perfect story up and to the right. Everything in their life went well and everything's perfect about their lives.

And the kids are suffering from that. They can't live up to that. Does that make sense?

And the other is called Open Book. It's so rare that one of our podcasts meets our expectations. And this one did. We really enjoyed this conversation, Anthony. Yeah, real pleasure.

You're great. You really are. You've really kind of like, I don't know if you planned this, but you're sort of the accidental, authentic elder statesman that bridges, kind of bridges both parties.

This episode was produced by Claire Miller and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our associate producer is Alison Weiss. Our executive producers are Jason Stavis and Catherine Dillon. Mia Silverio is our research lead and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening to Property Markets from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

We'll be back with a fresh take on markets on Monday.