transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:08] Welcome to The Rest Is Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci.

Speaker 2:
[00:12] And me, Katty Kay. Trying to reign in this morning, Anthony's inner 13-year-old classroom rivalries. Anthony is so happy about some of the chaos that is happening in the White House, particularly in the Pentagon.

Speaker 1:
[00:28] Well, there's some bad guys that are getting removed from the administration. And so for me, as a Southern Italian, I still have that vindictive streak in my personality. I like seeing some of these people get roasted. But is this a betterhelp.com therapy session? Or should we get into the show? What are we talking about today, Katty?

Speaker 2:
[00:49] We're talking about the on and off ceasefire. We are now in a position where there is a ceasefire extension with no particular deadline after the latest round of talks in Pakistan failed. And Donald Trump has just sent out a truth social post saying that he has ordered the United States Navy to shoot and kill any boats, small boats, though they may be their naval ships are all 159 of them at the bottom of the sea that is putting mines in the water of the Straits of Hormuz. There is to be no hesitation. So Donald Trump's now threatening to fire on Iranian small boats at the same time that there's a ceasefire extension. Make sense of that if you can. There have been these ship seizures, of course, by the Iranians and by the Americans. We've had those videos of the Iranian forces repelling onto tanker ships that were trying to evade their blockade. Remember, we've got a blockade on a blockade there at the moment. Whilst we've got a blockade at the Straits of Hormuz being conducted by the US Navy, we've got the Secretary of the Navy being fired, Anthony, very secretly, not very secretly. Quite happy about this. Personal stories there. We'll go into that. Then in the second half of the program, we're going to talk about the Democrats who have just had a big victory in Virginia. You can call it redistricting when it works in your favor and gerrymandering when it works against you. But the Democrats now say they are neck and neck with the Republicans' efforts to redraw the lines of congressional districts. What's the strategy for the Democrats as they head into the midterm elections? They're feeling very excited about this and they've got some new good polling to boost their spirits.

Speaker 1:
[02:27] But first, let's go to the Iran Ceasefire Extension and the classic routine on again, off again, tweeting of Donald Trump, which leads to excessive volatility in the markets, Katty, but also great market timing. Hundreds of millions of dollars are being made. The details have been displayed by several news organizations, including the FT and the CNN, et cetera. But let's go to the ceasefire, Katty, where do you think things stand right now?

Speaker 2:
[02:58] Well, I think, to some extent, Trump has devalued his own currency. He puts out these tweets one morning, and then he contradicts himself the next morning. He goes on CNBC and says, I'm going to be bombing them by Wednesday night, and then offers them an indefinite ceasefire with pretty much no red lines, which is a bit like playing poker, but putting your own cards on the table and showing everybody what a weak hand you have. He's made it very clear to the Iranians that he doesn't want to get back into this war. He doesn't want to get back into the military campaign. I had a super interesting conversation with somebody that knows Iran much better than I do and is in regular contact with people in Iran who said, look, the White House is trying to make a big deal of the fact that there is chaos inside the Iranian leadership, and that was what the president said to justify this latest ceasefire, saying that the Iranian leadership is fractured. This may be coming from the Pakistanis, by the way. They may want to promote this too in order to keep the process going. But this guy said to me something that was very interesting. He said, listen, it's not really that there's fractures within the Iranian leadership. It's that there are fractures within the IRGC. There are people in the Revolutionary Guard who are more pragmatic, and they tend to be the people who are running the budget. And they're looking at the balance sheet and thinking, oh, Christ, we don't have much money left in the account. We better do some kind of a ceasefire. This can't go on forever. In the end, we're going to have to do a deal with Israel. In the end, we're going to have to do a deal with the United States. And those people who are saying, we don't run the budget, we don't care. All we care about is keeping the Revolution going and the survival. Now, I'm told that Moshtaba Khamenei is thought to be more in the pragmatic camp, along with this guy, Ghalibaf, who is the Speaker of the House. He's the person who went to the last round of talks. But President Trump, according to my reporting, was very excited, Anthony, after the last round of talks in Pakistan, because JD Vance came back and said, They're broke. They've got no more money. They're really broke. They're much more broke than we thought they were. Donald Trump thought, like a New York realtor, that he is. That series we did on Donald Trump, this reminded me of him, thought, Well, of course they're going to do a deal. What idiot wouldn't do a deal? You've got a choice. It's a no-brainer. We could give you lots of money and you can refill your bank accounts or you can not do a deal and we'll start bombing you. Trump at that moment apparently was super happy and he assumed, okay, I've gotten by the short and curlies. There is no option that they have. They'll take this deal. They're going to think like I do. They're going to think like New York realtors, and guess what? They didn't. I think there is just this fundamental misunderstanding within the White House and particularly within Trump's brain, that anything other than pure materialism could motivate somebody. He still, after all this time and however long this has gone on board, he still just can't really fathom that. He can only think on this one track. I thought that was super interesting. Anyway, so this time around, it looks like these talks may be on again. They may happen on Friday, probably unlikely. Maybe JD Vance is just going to hang out at Andrews Air Force Base for a while until he gets the go ahead to go. But what do you think? Does this ceasefire last? Does it not last? When do we actually start seeing oil flows happening like normal levels again?

Speaker 1:
[06:16] What's interesting is we both have our sources, and I am in the camp that there's a little bit of fantasy going on here. And so I want you to respond to- A little bit?

Speaker 2:
[06:27] I mean, like a little bit or a little bit?

Speaker 1:
[06:29] So a lot of it. And by the way, the word fantasy is not mine. The word was used by the Iranians saying that there was some fantasy framing of getting control of their nuclear capabilities. That won't happen. There's some fantasy framing about the Strait of Hormuz and the peace process, and that the president is telling a series of myths, truths and a series of lies related to what's going on. I guess what I'm worried about when I look at the process, and I'm now analyzing it as a capital manager, allocating capital and also a political analyst, what I'm worried about is that we're nowhere near where we would need to be to actually get a deal done. And you're right about the Iranians. We've learned that from many different sources, $500 million hit per day from the American blockade. Trump is tweeting out that they're not paying the IRGC and they're not paying the police. We do know from sources in and around the situation that that is real, so that's the truth that Trump is saying. But up against that, though, is energy depletion. Jet fuel is way down in Europe.

Speaker 2:
[07:40] Lufthansa just canceled, what, 30% of flights this summer or something?

Speaker 1:
[07:44] Yeah, 20,000 flights canceled this summer. They're trying to ration the fuel and figure out which flights have the highest occupancy inside the flight and which flights are going to be handling the most cargo. Everything else is getting dispatched. You've got the Australians saying that they're worried about their energy supply. Could be electricity rationing in cities if this keeps up. So I think it's a game of chicken, Katty, between both sides. There's a global economy on one side driving its car at 100 miles an hour, and it's the IRGC and the hardliners driving their car. Both sides are going to be weakened economically. And I guess my question to you is which side is going to blink first, Katty?

Speaker 2:
[08:29] I think at this point it's going to be the Americans who blink first because the Iranians feel that they have survived this incredible amount of bombing so far and that they don't have much left to lose by carrying on with the situation as it is. The only caveat I would add that's interesting from what I'm hearing inside the White House is that I've had two contradictory conversations with people just this morning. One is that Trump genuinely thinks this is going great. He doesn't actually seem to be too worried about it. He doesn't seem to be that worried about the economic impact on American voters at the moment. He wants to talk about anything else. He wants to talk about the ballroom. He wants to talk about his successes. He wants to talk about immigration still. He wants to talk about Jerome Powell, too late Powell and Jerome Powell's renovation of the Fed buildings. He gave that extraordinary CNBC interview, which went on for like half an hour, and he spent about 10 minutes talking about the insulation panels in the renovation of the Fed buildings and how there wasn't enough money left in the budget for them. Because I've looked at all the polling, Anthony, and that really is top of most voters' concerns. That is what they are focused on, is those Fed buildings and how they were renovated.

Speaker 1:
[09:48] You know, Katty, when I listen to the, because of course I watch CNBC in the morning when I'm able to, I listen to all 30 minutes, and I just want to remind everybody listening into this, that is peak Trump, meaning...

Speaker 2:
[10:00] Peak Trump, you're so right!

Speaker 1:
[10:02] Trump is not going to get any better, meaning next month he'll be worse, next month he'll be worse. That's the best you're going to see Donald Trump. So as ever crazy as you think that that was, and maniacal, it's getting worse. Okay, it's not getting better. He's turning 80 on June 14th. And so this mania will persist because we've got these cowards in Washington that are going to allow this to happen.

Speaker 2:
[10:30] But when it comes to the war, he's actually pretty relaxed about it. And that I'm told is because he's just hearing the sunshine view of it. Somebody texted me this morning and said, who's close to Trump and talks to him fairly regularly, his team feeds him sunshine. He thinks it's going well, it's actually pretty gross. And that there is really no one around Trump who is feeding him other than, we've bombed their missiles, we've put them back in the stone age, they're going to come to the table because they're broke. And I think that's the problem is he, the reason he may carry this on is because he's surrounded himself by people who aren't telling him what's really happening. And that's a dangerous situation to be in because if he hasn't got clarity, how can he make the best decisions and he hasn't got anyone around him? Apparently even Marco Rubio is not the guy who's going to be telling him this is going badly. Quick plug for our series on Marco Rubio, by the way, guys. If you'd like to hear that, we're doing it from our founding members. Super interesting figure right now, Weathervane Marco. So I think that we're in a position where the outcome of this is pretty messy. The one thing I would say is that there is almost no trust in the IRGC, that Trump won't defy whatever he says, and that they still believe he's going to go back to bombing, which I think is a dangerous position for all of us to be in. But there's also a feeling that the Iranians won't abide by whatever is signed. So even if they manage to get some kind of deal, and at the moment, Trump's only barometer for that deal is that it has to be better than Barack Obama's deal. He's really lowered the threshold for success. Whatever deal they get, the feeling is that over the next few years, the Iranians will rip it up and will just carry on creating a nuclear weapon because they have decided that that is the ultimate goal now. There's no point in them not having a nuclear weapon. All of their facilities, by the way, need rebuilding. So even if they get a deal where there's some kind of a freeze on enriching uranium or on facilities like the JCPOA had, that actually suits the Iranians. They've got to freeze it anyway, because they've got to rebuild these facilities and that could take years. So I think there's no expectation that the Iranians really are going to abide by whatever piece of paper is signed, and so it's just going to get pushed down the road for Donald Trump's successor to deal with. I think the issue of Iran is not resolved, and we could have done this without the amount of money that's been spent and the civilian lives that have been cost, including those girls who were killed in that girl's school at the beginning of the war. So I think that's where we are. That I think this is messy, and I don't think there's any chance of this really getting resolved, even in the long term.

Speaker 1:
[13:08] I'm going to stipulate this, see if you agree with it. There's no unified position from the Iranians at this moment. Yes or no?

Speaker 2:
[13:15] I think that's true, but I think the White House and the Pakistanis are exaggerating the splits for their own reasons.

Speaker 1:
[13:23] So do you think that the lack of a deal happening, which we both, I think, sort of agree that there's no deal coming together quickly, a lack of a deal happening is going to have economic consequence to the global economy? Yes or no?

Speaker 2:
[13:40] Yes, I think absolutely. I mean, you're the economist, Anthony, but everything I've read in the FT and the Wall Street Journal, and the economist this week, by the way, is very alarmist about this, that pretty much whatever happens now, this has gone on so long that there will be serious economic ramifications in terms of costs and supplies, not just for Europe and Asia, but also for the US. Is that how you see it?

Speaker 1:
[14:06] Yes, but I think that the market is still ripping.

Speaker 2:
[14:10] Right, but the market, as Stephanie so brilliantly pointed out when she was filling in on the podcast last week, the market is not the economy. The market is just loving the volatility. These investors are just loving the volatility here. They're making money.

Speaker 1:
[14:23] But they're also, there's just an overwhelming wave of CapEx spending related to AI, related to energy infrastructure, and also from a volatility perspective, the banks have made a fortune on the volatility. So there's a lot of profits coming into these stocks, which is levitating the stocks. But this is also causing, what we were talking about last week is the K-shape economy. But here's what I'm worried about. Is the blockade that Trump has put on, okay, is to me, I think the wild card here. Because if you shut down the Strait of Hormuz in its entirety, and the Chinese can't get the oil they need for their economy, it sets up a very bad global dynamic. And so Trump is telling you, I mean, you probably saw the quote, I'll give them three to five days to get their blank together, is what he said. He's really telling you that he doesn't have a strategy. He really just has a clock of rolling ultimatums that are just not happening.

Speaker 2:
[15:31] Yeah, that nobody really believes anymore.

Speaker 1:
[15:34] So Katty, if you were in the following situation where I came to you and I say, hey, Katty.

Speaker 2:
[15:39] Oh my God, here we go. 9.36 in the morning and we're doing the role play. Okay.

Speaker 1:
[15:43] I didn't call it role play this time.

Speaker 2:
[15:45] I know, but that's what it is.

Speaker 1:
[15:46] Because I know you get very frustrated with my role playing.

Speaker 2:
[15:49] So who am I? Who am I? Am I Hegseth? Am I Trump? Come on. I got it. I need a character.

Speaker 1:
[15:53] I see you more as Trump today, actually.

Speaker 2:
[15:56] Oh, thanks. What is it, the hat?

Speaker 1:
[15:57] You're going to take on the role of Trump. And I'm the recently fired secretary of the Navy, which we'll eventually get to. And I come in to you and I say, Mr. President, what do you want to do here? Because if you don't let these oil tankers go through the strait, we're going to have a problem with the Chinese on top of the problem that we're currently having with the Iranians and our gulf allies. And you say what?

Speaker 2:
[16:19] Everyone else is telling me it's going great. Get out of the room, because he doesn't want to hear bad news.

Speaker 1:
[16:23] Okay. So you're okay with us blockading the oil that's supposed to go to China?

Speaker 2:
[16:28] They'll come to the table. Their economy is rubbish. We'll just pressure them a little bit longer. My guys are telling me, Pete is telling me that just another week of this and they'll come to the table.

Speaker 1:
[16:40] All right. Look, he's one of the luckiest people that I've ever come in contact with in my life. And this whole strategy of not having a strategy, you know, there's this great meme that if you're confused about what you're doing, the enemy is also confused about what you're doing. Right. So this strategy weirdly could work, is what, you know.

Speaker 2:
[17:01] Okay. That's the madman theory. That's the Nixon theory. There is a risk that as somebody who knows Iran said to me, the problem with the madman theory is you take it so far, that after a while, they don't trust anything you say anyway, and that they just think this piece of paper we're signing is not worth anything. The Americans aren't going to abide by it. We were in talks twice before. They bombed us during the talks. So we don't trust him. We'll just do our own thing. We're never going to give up our nuclear capacity. Even if we have to give something up, we'll just rebuild it. We've got all of these missile cities underground. They've still got half of their ballistic missiles. We'll just move the production down there. We have the ability. We have the know-how. We've got the scientists. We're going to, it might take five to 10 years. This will be, I mean, Donald Trump doesn't care, right? What happens in the future. He doesn't care if this is somebody else's problem. Until there's regime change in Iran, you haven't really dealt with a nuclear problem. So there isn't going to be a regime change. Donald Trump has gone from, we're going to get the rioters out. The rioters should come out, we're going to help them. They can change the regime too. We're going to end the civilization too. We're going to cooperate with them and have a joint venture with them on the Straits of Hormuz. So he doesn't have a plan for regime change at the moment. And until you do, you've probably still got the nuclear problem.

Speaker 1:
[18:25] And I'm going to agree with you, but here are three things that could happen. And I want you to respond to all three, but let me say all three. Are you ready?

Speaker 2:
[18:32] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[18:32] Number one, the IRGC is like, what the hell is going on? And they have to consolidate and they decide that they want out, meaning the money is running out. Okay. Number two, there is a palace coup that produces a pragmatist. And again, that could be a fantasy, but that also could happen. Okay. And then the Saudis and the Emiratis, we both know, are quietly trying to broker a deal to end the volatility in the situation. And we know, as it's been reported, that the Emiratis are looking for a dollar swap situation because they're running out of dollars and they need to sell their oil in order to get dollars into the coffers of their treasury. And then the fourth piece...

Speaker 2:
[19:18] There were three. You said three.

Speaker 1:
[19:20] I know. But I'll add a fourth one because I... Go on.

Speaker 2:
[19:22] Because it's Thursday. You get a fourth. Go on.

Speaker 1:
[19:25] Okay. Yeah. So China leans onto Iran because they need the oil. So of those four things, what do you think? Any of those could happen? Or you and I will be sitting here a week from now, two weeks from now?

Speaker 2:
[19:36] Oh, I think we could be sitting here in six months from now discussing these same things. Look, I think the IRGC again, I'm going to split the IRGC between pragmatists and principalists. Pragmatists won out, but it's not clear that it's the principalists who aren't winning. I mean, I think there is a chance that after all of this bombing, the bombing, the war may have breathed new life into a zombie regime. That was how it was described to me. It was on life support. Yeah, we damaged their infrastructure, we damaged their missiles, but if you've given this regime of principalists a new lease of life, that's a disastrous outcome. You may have bought the pragmatists and the principalists closer together, in fact, because of the bombing. You may have actually united people within the regime more than they had been divided before. I think the Saudis and the Emiratis obviously want something to change. This is a disastrous situation for them going forward. But I think we're going to be stuck. I think whatever happens in the short term, the thing that I've come to realize is that we're stuck in the long term with the Iranian problem, the chances of Iran saying, okay, we've been bombed into submission, our economy is hurting, we're on the same page now in the leadership, and we're going to do some kind of a deal that we will actually stick to looks pretty minimal. So maybe we're back to the Chinese, maybe you're right, maybe the Chinese come in and save the day, ride in on a white horse and get some kind of naval access to the Persian Gulf, which a lot of people aren't happy with.

Speaker 1:
[21:11] I think something happens here because Trump likes spectacle, so I think something happens here with the Chinese by May 15th, 16th when he has this summit meeting with them.

Speaker 2:
[21:22] Don't confuse spectacles to long term outcomes. You can have a short term spectacle without a long term resolution.

Speaker 1:
[21:30] When I talk to people at Treasury, or I talk to people in the international community about cash levels for the Iranian government, the estimate is 30 to 45 days left of cash reserves in Iran. And that doesn't account for potential help outside the swift transaction system that the Chinese could give them. There are rumors that the Chinese have been doing that. They've been forward paying some oil here, okay, to help the regime. But do you think that they run out of cash, and then Trump gets the win that he's looking for?

Speaker 2:
[22:09] I was told that about a month ago, I was told the regime probably had four to six months of survival in it. So somewhere in that timeframe, they start running into trouble. But I'm not, you know, this is a regime that still has half of its missiles left. What do they do with it? Let's say they feel they're really up against the wall and they're running out of time and they don't have cash left, and the Chinese can't help them in the way that they have been helping them. What do they then do with those missiles? Do they go out with a bang? Do they go out with submission? I think all of those are unknowns. What does Mojtaba, how many really want? How healthy is he? How much is he controlling things? I think there's a remarkable amount we still don't know. And it's clearly confusing at the top, although maybe, watch this for a segue, Anthony, not as confusing as it is at the top of the Pentagon right now.

Speaker 1:
[23:01] Yeah, interesting, yes.

Speaker 2:
[23:02] Which is the thing that you have been calling me about this morning.

Speaker 1:
[23:05] Yes.

Speaker 2:
[23:06] With smiles of delight, chuckles of delight.

Speaker 1:
[23:09] Well, I mean, listen, I mean, you know, look, I am trying my hardest.

Speaker 2:
[23:15] Explain what has happened to our dear viewers and listeners.

Speaker 1:
[23:18] I'm trying my hardest to be an adult, but I just need people to know that when you have very arrogant people on Wall Street that are mean and rude to everybody and are super silliest and think they are smarter than everybody, John Phelan, the estimates are, we will just say, many millions of dollars. I don't know the exact amount of money.

Speaker 2:
[23:39] And who is John Phelan?

Speaker 1:
[23:40] So John Phelan is the fired secretary of the Navy, but prior to that he ran an investment firm and he gave many millions of dollars to the campaign. And as a result of that favor, he was appointed secretary of the Navy, never had any military experience, doesn't, I guess, understand the chain of command because that's how he got fired.

Speaker 2:
[24:03] What do you mean?

Speaker 1:
[24:03] Well, he's done a couple of things over the last year. He's gone around, Steve Feinberg, the deputy secretary of defense, and he's gone around Pete Hexeth directly to the president using that personal relationship. He's the one that came up with the scheme of these battleships, which if you talk to people in the Navy, they're really unworkable. But this is something that Trump thought was an interesting thing because it would have his Trump class battleship name on it. And so they made those announcements a few months ago that perturbed Hexeth and Feinberg. And because he thinks he's smarter than Hexeth and Feinberg, he was beating his chest, not really understanding the chain of command. And Hexeth got permission from the president to fire him, and he flat out fired him.

Speaker 2:
[24:46] And this makes you happy because?

Speaker 1:
[24:47] Because he's an asshole. Okay? And when assholes like him get roasted, I think it's a general good feeling on Wall Street. Because we, you know, good guys on Wall Street would like to see some of the bad guys get their asses kicked. And so the best part of this story is the ego-centrism. So when I got fired, when General Kelly fired me, I said, okay, I shook the guy's hand. I said, there's like two or three things I need to do before I leave. Completely understandable. Let's have your departure be at two o'clock. Okay, no problem. Thank you, General Kelly. That's why I think I deserve credit for that 11th day, which we could all talk about. But this guy, he's getting fired, and he doesn't believe it because of the arrogance and the ego-centrism. He's running over to the White House, knocking on the door of the White House. He's walking around the old executive office building, the Eisenhower office building, where friends of his are working over there. And he's like, oh, by the way, I just want to confirm this. Does Trump know that Hegseth is trying to fire me? Now I don't know if he met with him or not. I think they're trying to save a little face by saying Trump met with him. My bet is Trump didn't meet with him because Trump is a conflict-avoider in a situation like that. So to me, number one, the thing is totally and completely disorganized. Number two, Hegseth is indiscriminately firing people. I think it's kind of ironic you have a television host firing three...

Speaker 2:
[26:12] He watched The Apprentice. He thinks that's what the boss wants. You're fired.

Speaker 1:
[26:17] But I mean, you got a television host firing three decade veterans, the best and the brightest of the American military, because they're not in lockstep with some of the elements of his stupidity and his strategy. But this particular firing, I like. Because let me tell you something, okay, I know Steve Feinberg, and Steve Feinberg is a very competent guy, and Steve Feinberg is an American patriot. And Steve Feinberg, I guarantee, because I know his personality, is burning the midnight oil at the Pentagon, trying to do the right thing for the American people, and trying to do the right thing for the American government. And the fact that his name, he doesn't like his name being in the press. The fact that Steve Feinberg's name is in the stories is a sign that failing pissed off Steve Feinberg. And so you have a good guy on Wall Street, Steve Feinberg, with a bad guy on Wall Street, John Phelan, and Steve Feinberg took him out with an Exocet missile, and yes, Katty, you know that I'm an overgrown adolescent at times, and I can be shallow, and I like this. I do like it, yeah.

Speaker 2:
[27:26] Can I zoom out a little bit just before we go to a break? I think I get what you're saying about Phelan, happy that he's gone if he's a bad guy, but this chaos at the top of the Pentagon at a time that America is at war is not going unnoticed in Tehran. The person that the Iranians love to troll the most is Pete Hegseth. They've got all of these little Lego figurines, the Lego videos that you and I love so much. A lot of them are about Hegseth, and they have him totally down pat. I think this comes back to Pete Hegseth, who we know Susie Wilds doesn't like Hegseth, because right from the beginning, he wasn't honest about his background, the drinking and the womanizing, all of those personal liabilities that then came up during the confirmation process. Trump still likes Hegseth is my understanding, because he likes the TV performances. He loves it when Hegseth shouts at the media and attacks the media, likes it when he calls the press Pharisees, sort of a weird thing to do around Easter. But anyway, especially after what the president has done. But the Pentagon is now building that is rife with paranoia because of all of these purges at the top. I think the vacuum that is left for the public, and possibly even the deciders in Tehran as well, is that none of this is explained. There's no clear rationale. We didn't know why Randy George was fired. We didn't know why Phelan was fired. There have been seven other senior firends with no real explanation, and that leaves a vacuum for speculation. The speculation that is going around is this is all personal vendetta. It's all ideological on the basis of Pete Hegseth, who is trying to save his own job, and that this is not to do with the caliber and the quality of the people who are being fired. So maybe it's good that Phelan is gone, one individual, but the general amount of chaos and churn, I think is a problem for the states at the time when we're at war.

Speaker 1:
[29:22] I think it's well said. I think the departure that would worry me the most at the Pentagon is Steve Feinberg, for all the reasons that I just mentioned, because he's an incredibly competent, thoughtful guy, he's a great leader, he knows how to delegate power. I'm sure, at a respect for Pete Hexeth, he's working well with him, because he is the subordinate on the chain of command. But I would imagine that he has engendered a lot of respect inside the building. In fact, I know that. But the fact that his name is in this press communique, I think is very telling. I think it's telling you a message that Phelan was way over his skis. Phelan had, Katty Kay, Potomac fever. I'm smarter than you guys, because I have a bigger bank account, and my ego is bigger than you guys, and my art collection is bigger than you guys. And so I'm coming into town to show you how to do things. And Pete Hexeth's still there, but John Phelan lasting 41.4 Scaramuccis. And so we're gonna say 41 Scaramuccis, we don't like him. We're rounding down to 41 Scaramuccis. Like Elon Musk, you know I have a soft spot for him. So he lasted 11.8 Scaramuccis, we rounded up for Elon, and said 12 Scaramuccis, Katty Kay. Just to explain to you how this methodology works. And I think because I think I should be the official scorer of this stuff, don't you?

Speaker 2:
[30:46] Well, I can see that. Well, it is all about your time.

Speaker 1:
[30:50] Yeah, I think we should measure the stuff in units of 11 days, don't you?

Speaker 2:
[30:53] We could just call them Anthony Scaramuccis. I think that's exactly right, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[30:57] Scaramucci being a unit of time is good enough.

Speaker 2:
[30:59] It's enough self-reference.

Speaker 1:
[31:01] But by the way, 41 Scaramuccis, the guy should get like a gold watch. He beat Pam Bondi.

Speaker 2:
[31:06] And the one to watch, Pete Hegseth. How many Scaramuccis does he survive after the war is over?

Speaker 1:
[31:13] As long as his head is up Trump's ass, as deeply as it is, I think it's going to be many more Scaramuccis. That's my prediction.

Speaker 2:
[31:20] It's going to be hard to pull him out. OK, we've got to take a break, guys. We'll come back and talk about the Democrats. Welcome back to The Rest Is Politics US, and a Democratic party that is feeling very good this Thursday, 23rd of April, six months before the midterm elections, Anthony, because they have had a victory in Virginia. Virginia voters have narrowly approved a referendum, but it doesn't really matter to the Democrats, whether they were as narrow or not. They've approved a referendum to redistrict Virginia in order to give Democrats more congressional seats. This is part of that gerrymandering war, if you like to call it that, that was launched by the White House in Texas last year. Now, you've had all of these states, because Texas gerrymandered its seats to give Republicans an advantage, you've got into a war where all the states that can gerrymander are trying to do so to give their side a victory. At the moment, because of what happened in Virginia, the tally I'm told is that Republicans are likely to gain four to eight seats in the midterm elections, and the Democrats are likely to gain eight to ten seats in the elections. We've had gerrymandering in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Virginia. The only outstanding one is now Florida. It will be interesting to see what Florida does. At the moment, after all of this gerrymandering, and Democrats would say to you, the war was started by the Republicans, we just joined it, we didn't want to. They started it, we joined it, and now at the moment, the Democrats are winning it. So much so that Ari Fleischer, who was Trump's spokesperson in the first term, sent out a post. He's usually very loyal to President Trump, but he sent out a post saying Trump should never have started this war. If you're going to start a war, make sure you can win it in brackets. Hey, what about Iran? No, he didn't say that bit about Iran, but he could have done. But anyway, so Ari Fleischer saying they shouldn't have started this war, and it puts the Democrats in a position where Democrats are feeling very good about the midterm elections and their chances in the House of Representatives. But I think what's interesting here, Anthony, is what should Democrats be doing about this? They've got all of these polls as a new NBC news poll showing that Trump's approval ratings amongst Republican voters at the moment is 68 percent, which means that 31 percent of Republican voters disapprove of Donald Trump at the moment. I mean, that is a stunning figure for me because he was, remember, up at 90 percent approval rating amongst Republican voters before the war, so he's had a 20-point drop. Enthusiasm is much higher amongst Democratic voters than it is amongst Republican voters and amongst independents. There's a new poll just come out today by a political report of battleground states that shows that in a generic ballot choice, so any Democrat versus any Republican, independent voters would choose a Democratic candidate by 25 points. There's some argument, well, look, this is all going very well for Democrats. Sit back, go to the Turks and KCOS, don't do anything, take the win in the midterms. You've got a 98 percent chance of winning the midterm elections in the House of Representatives. Do you think Democrats are now at risk of sitting back on their laurels and thinking Trump's doing their work for them?

Speaker 1:
[34:47] The short answer is yes, but I think there's three things I would tell the Democrats. Number one, stay away from Trump.

Speaker 2:
[34:53] Yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 1:
[34:54] Focus on how you're going to get jobs for people that need jobs, how you're going to create aspiration in America and more affordability, because bringing Trump's name up, it's not going to matter. The people that are with you that, hey, Trump, they're going to vote with you, and you're not going to win anybody over by bashing Trump. You may win people over by saying, wait a minute, this is a better alternative than Trump is giving you. But my big issue, and this is the third thing, which I think we have to be very careful of in our country, is that we are abandoning process and pretending that it's principle. And so, the Obama Spanberger narrative is, we hate gerrymandering, but we are going to fight fire with fire, okay? So they've won this round, but they may not win the next round.

Speaker 2:
[35:43] What was it Hakeem Jeffries said, when they go low, we hit back harder? That's their new motto.

Speaker 1:
[35:47] Yeah, that's their new motto, but this is a real problem, because when countries are doing well, and when corporations are doing well, probably even families, there is a process. And when you adhere to the process and the rules, and you subordinate your own self-interest to those rules, the country will generally do better, and there'll be more predictable outcomes for American businesses and American people. But now we're in a food fight at the highest levels of the government. So that means that every state now is gonna gerrymander. I'm not saying they weren't doing this, Katty, and they have been doing it for 200 years, but we've lost our way. We've lost our process. And if you're a Democrat listening, you'll say, Anthony, but you guys, the Republicans started it with Operation Red Map. And I'm gonna say to you, yes, you're 100% right. The Republicans did start it, and the Democrats are kicking their asses in right now. And I understand that. If we really want to get our country back, as I said at the top of the show, the politicians are now picking the voters. You're not in a real democracy unless the voters are picking the politicians, Katty. So those are my remarks.

Speaker 2:
[36:59] So would you have argued to the Democrats in response to Operation Red Map that started in Texas, which started with Donald Trump, who specifically was the person that asked for this to happen in Texas in a very unusual mid-decade redrawing of the Texas maps, would you have said to the Democrats, it's time to be the custodians of all that is good about democracy and not get involved in this food fight?

Speaker 1:
[37:24] This is among the many reasons why I really couldn't be a politician, because I would have said, not that, I would have said, listen, we're going to kick their asses in on this, we're going to fight this and we're going to win this battle. Then when we're done winning this battle, I would like to have a constitutional amendment to end gerrymandering, because this has hurt our society. Now, no politician will do that, because the gerrymandering gives them control. This is the reason why the Congress can have a 14 percent approval rating, but 95 percent re-election rate for incumbents is a direct result of the gerrymandering. This is the reason why you have 435 districts. We're going to win a big midterm election, Katty. Let me ask you the question, how many of these 435 districts are actually contestable, Katty?

Speaker 2:
[38:09] About 20 percent, if that.

Speaker 1:
[38:11] So I think that number is high.

Speaker 2:
[38:13] That may be high. I mean, it depends slightly on how these districts are redrawn up.

Speaker 1:
[38:16] When I looked through the Real Clear Politics polling district by district, I was guessing at 30 districts. You know, it's like 8 percent of the districts. But it could be as high as 20 percent because Trump is doing so poorly. But my point is, I would have definitely said, okay, they started the fight, we're going to finish it. But on behalf of the American people, we're going to do something that's very post-partisan. We need reform. We're in our 250th year as a country. We haven't had a constitutional amendment in 33 years, Katty Kay. And we need to do that again.

Speaker 2:
[38:52] I agree.

Speaker 1:
[38:53] If you have 27 amendments and the Constitution is 236 years old, you should be amending once every seven, eight, nine years. We haven't had one in three plus decades. We got to get back to that. And one of the things to do is to clean this up so that it never happens again and there's a ceasefire on both sides.

Speaker 2:
[39:12] And this is the number one amendment, I think, we both agree needs to happen. It's the very first thing to try and stop this partisanship, to stop the drift to the extremes in American politics. Unfortunately, on Earth One, there's very unlikely to be enough of a majority on either side in order to enact. There has been times, not in too distant history, where there were real moves towards ending gerrymandering, where this was something that was actually viable. But I think in the partisan politics that we exist in right now, that it's produced from the gerrymandering chicken and egg, it would be almost impossible to get the majorities needed, to get some kind of amendment around that. I agree with you that the Democrats need to come up with a more compelling argument that just this is all about Trump, which is why it was disappointing to hear Tim Walz and Chris Murphy in the Global Progressive Mobilization Conference in Barcelona speaking this weekend, basically laying into Trump as the biggest threat to democracy since the Civil War, saying that he was feeble minded. I think if Democrats think that's the winning message, anyone who believes that is already going to vote for the Democrats. Here's my suggestion for the Democrats, the three Cs, costs, corruption, and chaos. Run on those things, make it very clear that you're talking about costs all the time. That was the message that worked in Hungary. That's why Viktor Orban isn't leading Hungary anymore and was ousted. You focus on the costs, you focus on the corruption. If you want to throw in a bit of chaos, I think most people don't need reminding of that because it's pretty clear. But Democrats, post the midterms, and I'm making, keep making this distinction between the midterms, which is one thing, probably sitting back and letting the Republicans make a mess of this is going to be enough in the midterms. But post the midterms, whoever takes over as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party is going to have to have a much more compelling message than just this is all about Trump being the biggest threat to democracy because that's not going to work.

Speaker 1:
[41:05] I had somebody here at SkyBridge do some research for us and going through the Cook Political Report and this is the most recent polling as of April 21st. There are roughly 34 truly competitive races out of the 435. So it's approximately 8% and the Democrats and Republicans like that because they can control it, but if we went with the constitutional amendment that made these races more competitive, it would be better for the American people.

Speaker 2:
[41:36] Well, it would mean that the people in those districts had to appeal to swing voters and moderate voters and independent voters and voters in the center, rather than just going to the partisan extremes, which in turn leads to partisan extreme legislation by whoever is running the House of Representatives, which means Washington is increasingly out of touch with most of Americans who are pretty much in the center of the political spectrum.

Speaker 1:
[42:01] We agree. Katty, before we go, we thought we'd share the trailer of our members-only miniseries on Trump's enigmatic Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.

Speaker 2:
[42:13] Yeah, over two episodes, Anthony and I are taking a deep dive into Rubio's background, his political rise from Florida, and his chameleon-like transformation into Trump's most influential adviser, all to answer the central question, what does Marco Rubio really want?

Speaker 1:
[42:30] Marco Weathervane Rubio, the most powerful Hispanic official in American history.

Speaker 2:
[42:37] The man who presented himself as the reasonable pro-NATO global statesman of the Republican Party and is now doing whatever Donald Trump wants him to do.

Speaker 1:
[42:49] This is a young man that was mentored by the Bush family, and specifically Governor Jeb Bush.

Speaker 2:
[42:54] What he wants right from the beginning that is not up for dispute is that he wants political office and he wants to keep climbing the political ladder. In 2015, Rubio announces that he's going to run for president. The party loves him, but there is going to be a wrecking ball coming his way.

Speaker 1:
[43:12] He made the fatal strategic decision to attack Trump on Trump's terms.

Speaker 2:
[43:17] He tries to mock Donald Trump's size of his hands. And you know what they say about men with small hands? It's at this point that Marco Rubio has to think, if I want to have ambitions in this Republican party, I have to get on board with the Trump train. To hear the first episode right now, head to therestispoliticsus.com. We're going to leave it there. And we will be back, of course, next Monday with more of the news. Lovely to have you with us. Thanks very much for being with us.

Speaker 1:
[43:46] The Friday, Ben Rhodes is tweeting that the press is going to celebrate Trump ending the war, Katty, because he ends the war every Friday afternoon to get started again on Monday.

Speaker 2:
[43:57] Well, nothing like ending a war on a Friday. Does that then stack up in his bid for the Nobel Prize? Because how many times has he ended this war now, Anthony? I mean, he could count every time he's ended it, I guess.

Speaker 1:
[44:07] I think it's a good point. And I'm going to let the Nobel Committee know that when I nominate Donald Trump for that award, I'll just mention that he's ended the Iranian war 20 times since it started.

Speaker 2:
[44:18] OK, guys, we'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 1:
[44:20] Take care, guys.