84. Waltz Out, Rubio In: Trump’s Cabinet Chaos

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Hello and welcome to The Rest is Politics U.S.

with me, Katy Kaye, not wearing a Dr.

No t-shirt.

1962 was a good year, Katty.

It was before the Kennedy assassination.

You know, Sean Connery looked 60, but he was like 32 years old.

But anyway, very suave guy.

But it's also me.

It's not Sean Connery.

It's me, Anthony Scaramucci.

Before we start, Katie,

I've got to ask, are you excited to be back in the spotlight?

You know, personally, I've already booked 16 different makeup artists to get me through the night because it's July the 16th.

And, you know, listen, and I need hair products too, as you know.

Yeah, and I know you don't like sharing because you need enough time and attention to yourself.

And by the way, if there are British Airways people listening, can you please do me a favor?

I need more kilograms in luggage, you know, depositing the luggage in the undercarriage.

I mean, I don't, I don't know, they tell me I can only do 26 kilograms.

You know, that's not enough for my

gold bars.

No, no, no.

Lots of products, Caddy.

Lots of products.

This doesn't just come naturally.

There's a lot of products involved.

We have big news.

I'm very excited.

For anyone who doesn't know why Antony could possibly need so many products and makeup artists for one night, we are thrilled to be returning to the stage in London on July the 16th.

You can get tickets to see me and Caddy.

The RestisPoliticsus.com.

You got to go to that website.

General sales are open 9 a.m.

Friday.

That's the 2nd of May, 9 a.m.

Friday, but they are selling fast, which is very flattering, I might add, Caddy, that they're selling so fast.

And so if you're listening and you want to come, go to the restispoliticsus.com.

And we can't wait to see you there.

So come and join us.

But do get those tickets fast.

They are going like hotcakes.

So Caddy, what are we going to be talking about today?

Well, we're going to talk about Trump's first 100 days, his view of how well it's going and how that may or may not be realistic.

The cabinet that is sucking up to him would be an understatement.

And in the second half, we're going to talk about Elon Musk and the reality of Doge.

But before we get to all of that, we have just had the news that Mike Waltz, the national security advisor, is being moved aside.

I think that is how you politely put a little bit of a demotion in Trump world.

Initially, we all thought he had been fired, perhaps because of Signalgate, and also because he's really not much of a MAGA person.

He's more of a globalist than an isolationist.

But then during the course of the day, it became apparent that...

Donald Trump had other plans, didn't want this to be seen as a total firing.

And so Mike Waltz is being shipped up to New York to be ambassador to the United Nations.

And Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, is going to become the National Security Advisor.

So he's going to have two hats on.

Doesn't happen very often.

Has happened in the past, but it gives Marco Rubio two pretty big portfolios.

It also, by the way, puts Rubio closer to the president, which I'm sure Marco Rubio will be happy about.

As for Mike Waltz, it's interesting that he, the announcement came, the leak came rather during the day that he was being moved aside.

And then during the State Department briefing,

it was announced by Donald Trump himself on a Truth Social post that Waltz was actually not being fired totally, but was being given, I guess, what you might call a soft landing and sent up to New York to be UN ambassador.

The State Department spokesperson, by the way, had no idea this was happening.

He was caught completely flat-footed during the briefing by the president's Truth Social Post.

Clearly, he was out of the loop on this one.

Why has he done this?

I think he doesn't like the idea of giving into media pressure and getting rid of anybody.

He doesn't want to be seen to fire somebody, but he clearly thinks Mike Waltz

needed to go.

And make no mistake, UN ambassador is a demotion from National Security Advisor.

You're up in New York.

You don't have the president's ear.

But it is a way, I suppose, of being able to say, look, I haven't fired anybody.

I've just moved them aside.

You know, watch this sparkly thing over here.

Let's talk about Marco Rubio now becoming National Security Advisor.

So in a way, it was done fairly dexterously by the president, I guess.

He didn't make the news cycle about Mike Waltz for very long.

He shifted it to Marco Rubio.

He gives Mike Waltz a bit of a soft landing.

People were around the world know Mike Waltz and respect him as a seasoned foreign policy hand.

And there was some concern about losing the more internationalist people in the administration.

So at least at the UN, they'll be happy to have him.

But I don't think anyone's kidding themselves that Donald Trump thinks the UN is a great place to be or thinks that the UN is particularly prestigious.

I mean, this is a president who hates multilateral organizations, doesn't have much time for the United Nations.

It's really just a way of being being able to say, I didn't fire him.

I just shuffled my cabinet around.

So, Anthony, what do you think about Mike Waltz and his short tenure, a little bit longer than your tenure in the White House, but so far the first member of the inner circle of the Trump administration to be ousted from his position?

Are you surprised by this news, Anthony?

I am surprised by the news.

And I would say to you that Trump told people as recently as two two days ago, friends of mine that work in the MAGA world, that he has a no firing policy right now.

He doesn't want to fire anybody.

He doesn't want to give any scalps to the liberals.

Let's not have a knee-jerk reaction about firing people.

Yeah, and I heard that he regretted firing people in the first term as quickly as he did.

I don't know if he regretted firing you.

He didn't regret firing me.

In fact, the day that he fired me,

the announcement that I was fired was at 2 o'clock.

There was one and only one Trump tweet that day at 4 p.m.

He said, and I quote, it's been a wonderful day here at the White House.

He didn't say, he was sorry to see Anthony go or anything like that.

I didn't mean that snarkily.

Hindsight being what it is, I don't regret being fired.

Probably regret working for him, but I don't regret being fired.

And I don't regret him not regretting.

firing me.

But I will say this, and I've done the calculation here for viewers and listeners.

It's 9.18 scaramucci's.

It's 101 days.

And what I will say to Waltz is we are generous here on this program, and we're going to round up.

And I'm going to put on Twitter as we are speaking that Waltz lasted 9.2 Scaramucci's.

I think he deserves the generous roundup.

I did that for Liz Truss.

She was at 4.08 Scaramucci's when she was blasted out of the prime ministership.

And I just think we need to be generous to these people that are short-termers in their political positions.

And I speak about this with great empathy, Katie.

Yeah, he fired his first national security advisor in his first term.

He does kind of rattle through national security.

23 days, 23 days for his first NSA.

General Flynn, and he always apparently regretted that he got pushed into doing that.

He fired, of course, John Bolton as well.

National Security Advisors don't have a lot of longevity with Donald Trump.

I've been thinking about national security advisors recently.

A friend of mine, Ed Luce, who's a great journalist at the Financial Times, has written a book called Zbig, The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America's Great Power Prophet.

It's a really good read.

I'd highly recommend it because he kind of paints the portrait of Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter's national security advisor for the whole four years of Carter's term and was this kind of larger-than-life figure in American foreign policy in the vein of kind of Kissinger and George Kennan, I guess, and maybe you'd even add in Brent Scrocroft there.

But America seems to lack...

I mean, you look at this administration, Anthony.

I don't know what you think about this, but where are the great foreign policy leaders?

I mean, what?

We got Witkoff, but he's meant to be, who's a real estate developer.

I mean,

there isn't anyone in this administration who you would look to and you'd say, in fact, maybe even in recent American politics, who you'd look to and say, wow, that is a Zbigniew Brzezinski.

That is

a Kissinger, a Henry Kissinger figure in American politics.

And it's a great timing.

If you want a good read, guys, read this big.

It will remind you of the time when American foreign policy figures really counted and had an impact.

Well, listen, he's a great writer, and I look forward to reading it.

And

I think the big thinkers on this stuff have left stage.

And that does sometimes happen in history.

You get the big thinkers, and then you get the people like Trump who are the contrarian thinkers.

And so

we'll have to see what happens.

But of course, Anthony Meitwalt's not the only story in town this week because we have heard an awful lot from Donald Trump celebrating his first hundred days in office.

Well, I mean, there's so much to talk about, but I guess I want to fact-check a little bit here on MAGA, what they're saying and what's actually happened.

I think we should also talk a little bit about Doge, what was actually achieved, and who's making money off of Doge.

You know, this seems like there's some things going on inside of Washington.

As I've pointed out in the past and you have pointed out, we're in the golden age of corruption.

And so there's just baldface, shameless corruption going on.

I guess the senator from Connecticut, his name is Chris Murphy.

I guess he gave almost a 20-minute rendition of everything that's going on that are sort of reprehensible, but it's unchecked.

So I think we need to talk a little bit about that.

But, you know, listen, I mean, you know, did eggs go down 80% in the last hundred days in price?

Did gas prices are, quote-unquote, down by a lot?

as he says it.

Has that really happened?

They hit $1.98 in a lot of states.

You're referring to all of the town halls and the interviews and the Michigan rally that Donald Trump gave during the course of this week to celebrate his 100 days.

And I think there is a kind of correlation with Donald Trump that when things aren't going well, he goes even further into the realm of exaggeration about how well everything is going.

Do you think that's fair?

I mean, there is a sort of, I almost think there is a tell with Donald Trump that he has seen the opinion polls that are not good for his first 100 days, that show him underwater, that show him with lower approval ratings than any other president in American history.

He's seen the approval ratings that show that whilst people who voted for him like the aim on immigration and like the aim of rebuilding the American economy, they don't like the speed with which he's doing things.

They don't like the kind of cavalier nature with which he's doing things.

They don't like some of the chaos surrounding the way he's doing things.

And it's in those moments that Donald Trump, who's never, you know, kind of a strict adherent of the truth, let's put it like that, who keeps fact checkers and podcasters in gainful employment.

It's in those moments that he goes even more so.

And I think this week, I mean, you can run through them from gas prices to the price of eggs

to the border crossings to the number of jobs who have been created and for the number of jobs of particularly of native-born Americans.

And in each of those instances, he distorts reality.

And I think that for me is often a tell

that he does it a lot, but when he does it to the degree that he did it this week, combined with that extraordinary scene we saw in the White House of the cabinet meeting that looked like something out of, you know, that, did you ever see that great movie, The Death of Stalin, where nobody wants to reveal that Stalin has actually died.

And so they keep pretending that, you know, Stalin, it's like a kind of emperor has no clothes moment, right?

And that, the combination of the degree to which he's kind of told said things that aren't true and that real pledge of fealty cabinet meeting just made me think that there must be some awareness in the White House that not everything is going as swimmingly as he kept repeating that it had gone this week.

Well, I mean, you're going to death of Stalin.

I mean, the Armando Ianucci screenplay was awesome, but it was also factual because he sat in his urine for several hours, Stalin.

They were so afraid of him, they wouldn't even go into the room.

And so you've got a group of cabinet members.

I had the opportunity to speak at a private equity event.

It was an honor to speak there in Athens this week.

And I asked the following question.

If you made an investment in a private company and the CEO had a board of directors meeting where the people were saying, oh, you're so fantastic and everything about you is fantastic.

And the numbers were going this way, Gaddy, which is diagonally down.

Okay, 45 degree angle down.

And the trajectory of sales and operating activity and margins were all negative.

But then the board was saying, you know, you're just so fantastic.

You're the greatest ever.

And his vice president said, and I'm not making this up because I watched it twice, you know, there were placeholders in this job before you.

There were just ceremonial placeholders.

So I guess Lincoln and Roosevelt.

I mean, like all of them.

It wasn't just saying Biden

was running through all presidents.

Prior to his arrival, the other 44 people that have actually been president of the United States were just placeholders.

And then, of course, on the eve of the inauguration, it is my stock market.

I own this market.

The market's up because I'm coming into town.

He's blistered the market in 100 days.

He's literally caused a likely recession.

Don't go by me.

Go by the Apollo investment letter, J.P.

Morgan's chief economist, likely caused a recession.

But it's now Biden's stock market.

It's Biden's economy, which is a lie.

But he, you know, my friend Chris Cuomo had this sort of weird town hall.

I listened to that actually.

I thought it was interesting.

Yeah, it was Stephen A.

Smith, Bill O'Reilly, the old conservative

talk show host from Fox.

And Trump was on there trying to defend himself.

And they let him go by and large, except for Chris.

Chris was like, hey,

you caused a recession.

And Trump wasn't hearing it, wasn't having it.

And I...

People are not going to like me for saying this, our podcast listeners.

But when I got done listening to that, Katie, and I I want you to react to this, I sort of admired the delusion.

I have to tell you, I was like, you know, this guy is so delusional that it's almost like you want to pin a metal on him for delusion.

You know, you know, it's like, I mean, you don't want him to be president, but, you know, the fact that he's so delusional.

Is it weird to say that, Katie?

But I was like,

I mean, it's so shameless and so, it's so abnormal.

You know, I think that, I mean, it's so interesting that you had that reaction because I was trying to think as we record this on Thursday, how to sum up this week and all of these different appearances.

Because really, you know, Trump has been sort of blanketing the airwaves here in the States this week.

And I listened to a lot.

I listened to that News Nation town hall, Chris Cuomo.

I read the Atlantic interview and the ABC interview.

And I came away in my head thinking, what is Donald Trump thinking?

And I don't mean that in a like, what is Donald Trump thinking type of way.

I mean that like genuinely, he's a smart guy.

He knows exactly what's going on.

He reads the polls.

The people around him read the polls.

He saw the stock market tank.

He knows the problems in the bond market.

He sees the issues with the dollar.

He knows that inflation is not down anything like what he said.

And yet, throughout this week, what does he project?

A relentless optimism about his own case and a refusal to broker any kind of dissent or weakness or vulnerability or second guessing.

And that's why the, you know, the combination of what he's been saying and then that cabinet meeting where you you know, even Anne Coulter, who was a super conservative pro-Trump media figure in the U.S., she tweeted out,

would it be possible to have a cabinet meeting without the Kim Jong-il style tributes?

The way he kind of takes the sick of fancy of that

cabinet meeting, I mean, really, with people saying things like,

what did Pam Bondi say?

Mr.

President, your first hundred days has far exceeded that of any other president in this country, ever.

ever never seen anything like it.

Thank you.

I mean, that's the kind of stuff that they were kind of gushing over the cabinet table.

And Trump is sitting there, not

for a moment, looking uncomfortable.

I mean, if I was in a meeting and people were saying that to me, or one of your CEOs was in a meeting and saying that to me, you would be, I'd be mortified.

You'd have to get him to a shrink and you'd have to get him out the door.

He kind of loves it.

And

it feeds his sense of bullishness.

I'm going to shout out one of my friends who's an Italian guy.

First name is Scotty.

I won't give up his last name, but he's a prolific listener of this podcast, and he's obviously a big Caddy K fan, but he's a huge Trumper, huge Trumper.

And he'll disagree with me and say, no, he likes certain things about him, doesn't like certain things.

A lot of Trumpers will say that because Trump is so insane.

But he says to me, what's good about Trump?

Give us 100 days.

Please tell us on the podcast what he's done well.

And so I am going to tell people that the border crossings, and I'd like you to respond to this, the border crossings are down.

Now, they're not as down as much as he is saying.

He says they're all-time record lows, but they are down and they're the lowest since the late 1960s rather than the lowest of all time.

And this is impressive.

And by the way, I will just say this to people.

I'm a humane guy.

I don't believe in the cruelty.

We'll talk about the White House lawn in a second.

But you have to control the border.

Every country.

particularly countries like ours that have a welfare state.

Milton Friedman would say this, the great conservative economist, Nobel Prize winner.

If you have a welfare state, you have to control your border because market forces will dictate that people will come across the border to participate in the welfare state.

And your taxpayers should not be shouldering that burden unless it's done in a legal way.

And so I got to give Trump his due on this.

I think this is the best part of what's happened in the last hundred days.

But there's cruelty here that I don't like.

And I'd like you to respond to this.

He's deported less people than Joe Biden, but he's putting their faces on signs of of who's been convicted, and he's putting it on the lawn of the White House to disgrace the 18 acres that the White House sits on.

But I'm going to say this, okay?

As I've pointed out, he's the Napoleon of the culture war.

And this feeds his base like red meat, Caddy, that there's these pictures of these people who have committed crimes that have now been ejected from the United States.

What's your reaction to all that and the cruelty around it?

And am I right?

Do you give him credit for the border?

Again, ahead of this, taping this, I wanted to call a Trump supporter who I know is a pretty prominent guy here in Washington,

but is also

a solid conservative and likes some of what he sees and doesn't like some of what he sees.

And when I asked him what was really going to change America in this first hundred days, he said, look, 90% of it is noise and 10% of it really changes the country.

And the first thing he pointed to when he said, what changes the country is that he has accomplished what he needed to do for his supporters on the border.

And that was the the very first thing that he mentioned.

And he said, look, and he's also made the border a kind of 80, 20, 70, 30 issue in American politics.

So he's shifted the center of the political debate on the border.

And I think that has a long-term impact because I don't think you're ever now after what Trump has done in successfully closing the southern border and after how badly Joe Biden handled that southern border, we saw those pictures during his presidency of streams of people crossing it, literally.

I mean, floods of people coming across the border.

What this Trump supporter said to me is, look, you're never going to see Democrats again campaign on anything other than keeping that border closed.

So he's changed the nature of the conversation in the United States.

But then he said, look, even conservative lawyers like myself like all of this in theory.

We like the deporting of the criminals, but we don't want him to do it without due process.

We don't want that expanded to picking students up off the street.

We don't want him to be over-aggressive and he twists the law when he does it.

And I would add, just from my own point of view, watching that Michigan rally on the 100th day, the way they played not just once, but twice, that sort of Hollywood-style produced video of the detainees who were deported to El Salvador and they follow them every step of the way, including with their,

you know, forcibly having their heads shaved on camera and being shuffled along.

I mean,

I get, you know, maybe some of these people are terrible people and they may be gang members and they're in the country illegally and Donald Trump has a right to deport them.

But there was in the play, in the filming and the editing and the playing, repeated playing of that video and the kind of way the crowd went wild around the playing of the video, I found that quite chilling.

There's something about some of those images, Anthony, that have historical resonances that it's hard not to think, okay, do this.

It's the right thing to do legally, politically.

The country does need to secure its borders.

But relishing

the humiliation and very harsh treatment of these people, that felt cruel.

I think you're right.

And I don't know how the American public will enlarge respond to that video, but I don't think that's what the American people are like.

Well, I mean, listen, I mean, I can tell you the 55% of the American public doesn't like the way he's handling the immigration.

And I think it has to do with the way we identify as Americans.

I think ultimately, Americans like to see themselves.

Whether or not this is true, objectively, we like to see ourselves as benevolent.

We like to see ourselves as boy and girl scouts where we're going to do the right thing and be good Samaritans.

So what do you think people make of that video?

Why play it twice at a rally like that to celebrate the hundred days?

I think it's red meat for his base.

He knows that his all of his political power is coming from that base.

And if you really study things,

he's making the bet that the base will continue to turn out for him.

The base will continue to donate to him.

He's also making the bet that whatever is going to happen in the next 20 months is going to be positive for the economy, meaning, you know, again, and I'll predict this on our podcast, he'll blink on these tariffs.

He's going to blink.

There's no way he can stay where he is because you know the wolves of K-Street.

You know the Senate.

You know the people there.

You know the CEOs that descend on Washington.

There's no way that he's going to be able to stay here.

And by the way,

President Xi, I guess he's waiting for him to blink first.

Doesn't look like that.

That's going to happen.

I think it's a cultural thing.

And I think he's really helped Xi.

Here are the politicians that he's helped.

He's helped Albany's in Australia, helped them.

He helped Kearney in Canada for sure.

He helped Xi, who doesn't have to run for elections, but he's increased his popularity, the nationalistic popularity.

And is there anybody, Caddy, in a cabinet room that would say, you know, Mr.

President, it's like, you know, we're going to have a steep recession.

You can't fire the Fed chair.

You're causing a steep recession.

You're hurting all of our manufacturing, whatever's left of manufacturing in the U.S., U.S., you're hurting them because a lot of the goods and parts come in from overseas to manufacture here in the U.S.

Instead of saying, Mr.

President,

we seize 3,400 kilos of fentanyl and we've saved 258 million jobs.

I mean, Caddy, it's almost like an arms race of lies.

and sycophancy and distrust.

It's like, okay, you know, you just told a great lie, but I've got an even better lie coming.

Let me tell a bigger lie than your lie.

Do you follow what I'm saying?

Here's a little pop quiz on that for you.

Who said in 2016, Donald Trump is a con artist, perhaps the most vulgar person to ever aspire to the presidency?

And who said this week, thank you for the honor of being able to serve alongside you, for you, and alongside all these excellent people, thanks to your leadership?

I'm going to say Marco Rubio.

There you go.

I think that's pretty much your answer.

Yeah, that's your answer.

Again,

you have tiny orange hands.

If we let him take over U.S.

foreign policy, it's going to be a disaster.

Here's what Lindsey Graham said in 2016.

If we elect Donald Trump, he will get destroyed and we will deserve it.

That was Lindsey Graham back in 2016.

So to your answer, is there anyone around him?

No, because who has he brought into the White House?

I mean, yes, he's brought in a bunch of smart billionaires who don't really need to worry about money and you would think would have some autonomy and independence, But they all sat there one after one in that cabinet meeting, falling over themselves to profess their loyalty to him.

And that's what my reporting is.

That's pretty much what is going on behind the scenes.

Now, we hear that Donald Trump likes people who come in to the cabinet meetings and to overall office meetings and bring something extra.

He soaks up the praise like a sponge, but he does apparently want people to bring extra ideas.

And that was why he liked Elon Musk, who came in with kind of these other ideas and and also managed to do the praise.

We're going to speak about Elon after the break a bit more.

But

in this cabinet meeting, you're not hearing any form of people who are saying no.

And Congress has been an incredible disappointment.

So Congress is not saying no.

So I don't think you're getting anyone at the moment who's going to stand up and say to Donald Trump, actually, you know what?

That's a really dumbass idea.

One thing I will say, the other thing I took away from this week, listening to hours of tape of Donald Trump, is he is conflicted on the tariffs.

I think you're right.

I mean, this is the series two of Trump in the White House, and the tariffs episode bombed.

The public didn't like it, terribly low ratings, and they are trying to fast-track their way out of this storyline without it looking like they've taken a huge loss and been weak in the process.

But you can hear in the interviews that he did, I mean, in that News Nation interview he did with Chris Cuomo, in the Atlantic interview he did, he really is gripped by this notion of tariffs.

I mean, he really believes that tariffs are kind of a central tool of a strong economic policy and that America has been ripped off for the past decades and he is the man that's going to change that.

So I took away from his interviews this week, yeah, everything I hear from inside the White House is they're trying to find a way on the, to the off-ramp of the tariff wars because they realize whatever he says, there is actually a red line and he doesn't want to cross it.

But he personally still really believes in tariffs as a weapon and would like to use them.

Caddy, but I just want to say that

not just courageous, Caddy.

You're actually fearless.

Oh, thank you.

Okay.

Thank you.

And that is an exact direct quote from the Interior Secretary, Doug Bergman.

Said it yesterday.

I just thought I would try it before Gary Lineker sends me to like a mental health clinic for saying crazy shit.

I just thought I would try it on you, Caddy.

That makes me blush, even in the context of a joke on our podcast and a screen.

How would you possibly feel if that was in a cabinet meeting with adults where it actually really mattered?

But I know Trump.

I know, I know Trump.

When people used to say that shit to him on the plane in 2016, he would then go like into the private office and he's like, can you believe this?

He's literally making fun of them in their own mind.

So news flash to over

flattering cabinet secretaries.

He's laughing in your face while you're saying it.

He's laughing.

And yeah, he sits there with a straight.

He sits there with that little, that, yeah, that little Cheshire cat look, exposing his triple chin when he's doing it.

Yeah, no, I, yeah, but I'm just telling you, he's laughing at them.

He's laughing.

You brought up Doug Bergen before we go to the break.

I just have to leave with this one, guys, from the cabinet meeting.

It's so good.

Everybody I've met, whether it's at a coal mine or the border, law enforcement, the one thing they say is, please thank President Trump from all of us.

The change that you're making.

There you go.

That, my friends, is what counts for critical thinking in a cabinet meeting in the White House at the moment.

We're going to take a break and talk about somebody who had their last cabinet meeting, it looks like, and is making a run out of town.

Elon Musk Zero, Washington 1.

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics US with me, Katie.

And I am the very not just courageous but the very fearless anthony scaramucci i should have really said that about you shouldn't i i was missing a trick there you're not flattering me enough i mean i'm watching marco rubio and i just think that you're just not measuring up catty i'm telling you i know we're gonna have a midterm review i'm gonna go to tony and gary and say you know she just doesn't flatter me enough on the podcast i feel like you know i need more inflation let's talk about some inflation which is doge can we get into doge okay so I'm trying to think

you predicted,

initially you predicted it would last six weeks, but then I think both of us predicted that the relationship would be somewhere around summer the fall that they would break up, Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

I think we both thought it would be because there wasn't room for two alpha males in the White House.

It does look like this kind of has been Elon Musk's last cabinet meeting.

He's kind of leaving town.

Washington got the better of him, who knew the swamp was stronger than Elon Musk.

But I don't think the reason he's leaving is that Donald Trump and Elon Musk have had a big falling out.

I think actually I watched that cabinet meeting and there was Donald Trump thanking Musk, saying that he'd been treated very unfairly, that he had sacrificed a lot, referring to Tesla's, you know, plummeting sales.

I get the impression that Elon Musk is leaving town.

Partly really because his business is suffering enormously.

He's lost, what, like $100 billion or something on Tesla Tesla shares and sales.

But he's also leaving town because perhaps because Elon Musk's approval ratings and what he's done with Doge and how he's handled Doge going so far, so fast, that's actually been very unpopular around the country.

But I didn't get the sense that there was kind of bad blood between the two of them, did you?

No, I didn't get that sense.

I guess here's what I would say.

Alistair always is teasing me about this, Alistair Campbell.

I did say six weeks.

I got that wrong.

I then revised it to Labor Day.

It's come in before Labor Day.

It was longer than six weeks.

But I did get right that they wouldn't have this explosive, puric disaster.

He wasn't coming out of there as sloppy Steve Bannon, or he wasn't coming out of there as Mark Yesper.

He wasn't coming out of there as that sort of thing or the way I got treated on the way out.

He was coming out of there easy because he's got a $44 billion bullhorn and Trump wants deals with him.

Trump wants money from him.

Trump sees himself as immortal.

He sees himself, I mean, assuming if he can't get martial law done and he doesn't cancel elections, he sees himself back in the private sector at age 100 doing deals with Elon Musk.

And he doesn't want to jeopardize that, Caddy.

But the Musk

fever

in Washington is over.

to the great relief of Susie Wiles and the great relief of the other cabinet people.

And And just to go into Doge for a second, and I want to push this back to you.

Did Doge work, Katie?

Did they really save any money?

Did they help the government?

What do you think of Doge in the 100 days here?

What did it really achieve?

Before the inauguration or around the inauguration, Elon Musk, with the creation of Doge, said that he was going to save $2 trillion.

There wasn't $2 trillion to be saved.

Then there were suggestions that he was going to save $1 trillion.

Doge is now a bit more sober about its actual savings, and they put it at $160 billion for the fiscal year,

this fiscal year.

But other people who have done quite extensive reporting and kind of analysing of the data on this say that set against that $160 billion, which may be too high, it may be more like $100, $120 billion.

You've also got to put the costs because it turns out that firing people en masse is pretty expensive in America.

You have to pay them severance.

There are legal fees.

They've had to hire back.

I know from speaking to people in the federal government, departments like NIH and EPA, quite a lot of places where they fired people initially.

They are now hiring back as many people.

That is expensive as well.

And it could actually be that the costs that Doja's incurred run to about $130 billion.

So you're looking at a net zero.

And in the meantime, there are a ton of services to the American people that have been affected by this disruption.

So we know federal worker salaries are only 4% of the American annual government's budget every year.

Anyway, most of it is interest payments on the debt and the social welfare programs, health programs of Medicare and Medicaid, which they won't cut, and Social Security.

So Doge's court came in, broke a whole load of stuff.

You and I have been thinking a lot about Elon Musk recently.

We see he has he's very good at breaking stuff, but the actual savings could be pretty much flat for Doge.

And in the meantime, a ton of damage may have done.

I mean, you literally may have people.

You've had rural hospitals that have had to close because of the Doge savings.

You have national parks that won't open this summer because of the Doge savings.

You have people who were on therapeutic trials.

I know of a woman who was on the therapeutic trial for a cancer drug who has actually been taken off that trial because of the Doge savings.

So people's, in a very, very real way, lives have been impacted and people's health has been impacted around the country for what at the moment looks like negligible and possibly zero savings.

Is there a reckoning for that?

Or, you know, I mean, there's no reckoning for the Trump meme coin stuff.

There's no reckoning for the, we're going to have a donation to our meme coin and having parties.

We're going to have an exclusive club now.

My son and his buddies from the private equity firm are going to have a $500,000 membership fee for an exclusive club.

And our cabinet members and our White House staff are going to be over there with Donald Trump.

You can mix and mingle with them if you want, but you've got to pay the fee.

We're all good with all that.

I understand that.

There's just shameless, bold-faced corruption.

But the Doge thing goes what?

Into what bin does the Doge thing go into?

That we tried the Doge.

We did get this right, by the way, because I said that.

You're not going to be able to cut as much as they think and the government's not a business.

We did say that.

And by the way, you could have done it the way Clinton did it, you know, and the way Gore did it.

Actually balance the budget.

Yes, and you would have gotten more savings if you did it that way instead of what the chain saw coming in, people losing their health care.

Is that what we want?

And the Democrats, they don't say anything.

They march out Bernie Sanders.

I mean, the Democrats are really out the lunch, if you don't mind me saying so.

They march out Bernie Sanders and AOC.

You know, we didn't get the communism perfectly right last time.

So let's search for a more perfect form of communism and socialism, which the Americans are not up for.

So tell me, what's the response to all this?

If you and I are right about our assessment that it sucked and it didn't work,

is there's no cannon fodder for the opposition?

It sucked, by the way, is a technical economics term that you learn in a little while.

A little bit more cursey than you this time, I thought.

Profane

myself.

Our next episode, I will be biting my tongue.

But go ahead, you be the play democratic strategist.

Tell me what you're going to do.

I think that's a great question.

I don't think any of us know what the long-term impact of Doge cuts has been on the health of the country.

I happen to think there are things that have been cut in Doge, particularly around, and we did a whole episode on this, scientific research funding, healthcare research funding, that could have material impacts on America for

years to come, because you fall behind in the competitiveness race pretty quickly.

There are clearly impacts.

We feel this particularly in Washington, but in Georgia, Atlanta, in Nebraska, in Iowa, all around the country, there are federal workers who have young children, who are paying mortgages, who have lost their jobs, who are now struggling to find another way to make a living.

So very real things have happened.

And the silence from the Democratic Party has been so stunning on this.

And I think partly it's because this happened so early on.

I mean, the most prolific of the Doge cuts happened in the first few weeks of the Trump administration, literally in the first kind of week or two of the the Trump administration, at a time when the Democrats were totally on the back foot, out of town, having this, you know, heart attack about what had happened to them in the election, and they weren't able to respond.

And now you're starting to see a few more Democrats.

You know, you mentioned Chris Murphy in the first half, the senator from Connecticut, who was talking about the level of corruption in this administration.

You've seen J.B.

Pritzker, the governor of Illinois, speaking up.

You have seen AOC and Bernie Sanders getting these big rallies.

But this is now three months into the administration.

And I think because because Doge happened early, they just, they were like hit by a psychological hurricane and they didn't know how to respond.

And it's been surprising to me the degree to which the Doge cuts have just, I know Washington's unpopular.

Is there anything that you cut in Washington you can sell as a win around the country?

But this is not just Washington.

And I'm surprised that there hasn't been more outrage about vets having their benefits cuts, people not getting their social security checks on time.

Maybe we'll see more of that as people see the impact of these cuts, but I think they've really missed a trick on this.

And if you can then say, look, all of this happened and didn't save any money.

How is that a difficult message?

How is that?

I can make that message.

I mean, if I was a strategist, that seems like a pretty clear message for me to make, but they're just not making it.

Let me push back on you, but I don't have my Golf of America hat with the 45 and 47 on it anywhere.

And you don't have your Trump 2028 hat?

I don't have that either.

But let me just want you to manifest that I'm channeling my Golf of America Trump 2028, 2032 hat.

And I'll say, Katie, where you have it wrong is we're winning because people want the government cut.

People don't like the XX spending.

They have to balance their checkbooks.

They have to manage their credit card debt.

They don't want the government overspending.

They don't even like the overspending.

You know, the Chinese and their propaganda video, Trump has his propaganda videos, but the Chinese has their propaganda videos.

It's like, where's all the money going in America?

You know, where's it going?

It's not going into your infrastructure.

Look at our fast trains.

Look at your subway system.

And so Americans are like, hey, where's all the money going?

So therefore, there has to be something to cut.

So again, Trump and Musk are getting the top line superficial idea right.

And everything you just said, which I agree with, is for the informed politicos out there.

But for the people that were looking up, and I quote, most searchable term the night of the, prior to the election, did Joe Biden drop out?

For those people who are Googling that before they cast their vote on the 5th of November, they're like, yeah, I want Musk to go in there and cut the stuff.

So again, it's a argument that Trump understands he is the Napoleon.

I'm going to put the people's faces.

It's very cruel and mean.

But my people like cruelty and meanness.

They want cuts.

I'm going to give them this superficial blather, okay, and they'll stay with me.

Do I have this wrong?

Have I have this wrong?

Tell me.

No, I think you're right.

I mean, obviously, the Democrats' response to that should be very clearly, yeah, but you haven't made any cuts.

You haven't actually saved any money.

In fact, you may have cost the American public money.

And in the meantime, here are the list of services that have been cut to you.

Oh, and by the way, as well as that, your private data has been scooped up by Doge and its use of AI when they get into the federal systems.

And you may well have actually just exposed your data and your income, your job, whether you've been fired, whether you've ever had a, you know, arrest from the police.

I mean, everything about you may have just been scooped up.

And I think that that could be a winning area for Democrats, but I don't hear anything on that either.

Let me try something on you.

What if I had a blue hat that said doggy on it?

D-O-G-I, Department of Governmental Inefficiency.

And I'm like, hey, man, this is the real hat.

It's not with an E, but it's with an I.

Point I'm making is these guys have got to learn how to fight like Donald Trump.

And they have no clue how to fight like Donald Trump.

That is where he is a 19D chess player, but still.

Yeah, he fights better.

He does.

He fights better.

I'm going to say one thing, though, before we wrap for this week.

And I do think at some point we should do a whole episode on corruption because there's been a lot of reporting that's been coming out recently, digging into some of the corruption stuff.

And I know you've got also great things to say on that, particularly on the crypto front.

So we'll do an episode on that.

But

you may see all of the Doge stuff come back to haunt Republicans when it gets to the midterm elections in 2026, particularly that image.

I mean, that was Peak Musk, was the image of him with that chainsaw and the sunglasses with Javier Mele, the president of Argentina, had given him on the stage and kind of going

with a chainsaw and taking the chainsaw to the federal government.

And then, of course, it was only a week or two later that he had a complete complete loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election where he went up there and poured millions of his own money into it and didn't win.

And that was it.

That was the moment.

You know, you have to have results in politics to stay in favor.

And he didn't have results politically.

He showed that he was fallible.

He showed that people could run against him and win against him despite his millions of dollars.

And I think he made the mistake of overreach as well.

And that image of him up on the stage, maybe he thought it was cool.

Maybe the people in that room thought it was cool.

But I think you're going to see that turn up in a whole load of Democratic campaign ads come the 2026 midterm election.

We are going to leave it there.

So much to talk about.

Thank you for joining us this week on this 100 days special with the fantastic, inimitable, amazing

Antonio Scaramucci.

I mean, really, his insight is just unparalleled.

It's not quite what I need.

It's sharp.

Not enough.

Listen, it's not quite what I need, but we're going to coach you.

Okay.

Expect more flattery next week.

Okay, guys, we will see you next week.

Thank you so much for listening.

And remember, of course, that we have a live show in July, July the 16th.

You can buy tickets for that at our website.

And if you would like to become a founding member to get our extra content, go to therestispoliticsus.com to sign up and become a founding member.

We will see you next week.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks, guys.