119. Has Trump’s Madman Diplomacy Worked?

This episode is brought to you by Revolut Business, the all-in-one business account to manage your finances.

Nothing makes you feel like a sucker faster than bad exchange rates.

Revolut Business, though, keeps it simple.

Over 30 currencies at the same interbank rates that banks use with plan allowance and during market hours.

Don't want to trap markets?

Set automatic orders and price alerts to time your deal.

Paying salaries in places like Dublin or suppliers in Sydney, no problem.

Revolut gets it there fast to more than 150 destinations and without blowing your budget.

Yeah, it really is global business without fine print headaches.

It's transparent, it's quick, and it's reliable.

Exchange like an expert, open a Revolut business account today by scanning the QR code on screen or using this link in this episode's description.

Add money by the 31st of December 2025, and you'll get a 200 British pound welcome bonus or the equivalent in your local currency.

Feature availability varies by plan.

This offer for new business customers in the US, UK, Australia, and Ireland.

Fees and terms and conditions apply.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance.

Trucking is a big job, so Progressive is proud to offer truckers the coverage they need and discounts to help them save.

Quote Truck Insurance in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Discounts not available in all states or situations.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

I'm Catty Kaye.

And I'm Antari Scaramucci.

Good morning, Anthony.

Good Monday morning.

Very exciting news from Israel.

I found the scenes of the hostages being released very moving.

That's where we're going to start.

I think ending the war in Gaza may be a little strong for today, but he's got the hostages home.

Phase one is complete in this hostage and prisoner swap.

Now some of the hard work continues.

We've seen Donald Trump give an hour-long speech in the Israeli Knesset to lots of applause.

He was basking in a victory round in Israel.

So we're going to talk about that, how he really got it done, what it says about his peacemaking abilities, the deals he wants to do.

He says he wants to quickly move on to Ukraine next.

So he's racking up those deals that he needs to do ahead of the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize.

We'll talk about that.

Then in the second half, we'll come back and talk about how Donald Trump is using tariffs to manipulate the market.

We saw extraordinary events on Friday.

after Donald Trump truthed that he was not going to meet Xi Jinping and he was going to put 100% tariffs on China.

Marcus didn't love that, not surprisingly.

So over the weekend, what do you know?

He truthed something else.

And we'll talk about these market manipulations.

But first of all, Mr.

Scaramucci, it is Monday.

I don't know if you went to church yesterday.

I know you are a churchgoer.

I am not a churchgoer, but you are a churchgoer, which is very nice.

My daughter is a churchgoer.

So I'm assuming that you have a good chance of going to heaven.

And then I'll leave that up to God, obviously.

I've been to enough enough confessions, so who knows?

But I usually

have done your confession time.

I usually go to Mass at 5 p.m.

on a Saturday because

it's a more convenient time.

But anyway, Donald Trump,

we have some tape, right?

So let's roll the tape.

Go ahead.

You had talked a couple weeks ago.

You were doing an interview and you talked about how you hope to end the war in Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven.

How does this help?

Does this help?

I mean, you know, I'm being a little cute.

I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven.

Okay, I really don't.

I think I'm not maybe heaven bound.

I may be in heaven right now as we fly an Air Force one.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven.

All right.

First of all, the guy deserves a tremendous amount of credit.

Some of our viewers obviously despise Trump.

You know my feelings.

I've been pretty open about it, but he deserves credit for putting the pressure.

And I'm going to allow you to analyze that for us, how he put that pressure, because you know that the same, it's roughly the same peace deal as Blinken and President Biden put together, couldn't get it done, couldn't pressurize B.B.

Netanyahu.

But

Mr.

Projection, Donald Trump is worried about something, Caddy.

There could be an Epstein bomb in his midst, right?

Eric Swalwell is tweeting last week.

I've talked to the members of the Republican caucus here in the House, and they're ready to split from Trump.

They have seen the Epstein files, do not like the Epstein files, and he's signaling.

You know, he signaled to the generals, I'm out of shape and something's wrong with my leg.

I can barely get down the steps at Air Force One.

Now he's telling Deucey from Fox News he's not going to heaven.

And who would know better than Donald Trump whether or not he's going to heaven, Caddy?

You just said it was up to God whether he's going to heaven or anybody's going to heaven.

But what's your reaction to him saying it?

I leave it up to God whether or not I'm heading there, but go ahead.

I think you're right.

With Donald Trump, a wise Trump ally once said to me, you know, it's either projection or confession.

And in this case, there could be some projection.

I heard it and I also thought one other thing, which is that, is there an element of Trump blaming the libs again?

You know, that however much I bring peace to the world, I can't get the Nobel Peace Prize.

The liberals are never going to...

say that I should go to heaven.

He has this kind of, you know, I can save the world, but I'm still a victim thing a little bit going on so i wondered if there was a touch of that but it could just be this could just be confession so i'm going to move over to the peace process and and so forth but i i wanted to bring this up at the beginning of the show because

There's deflation there.

He looks deflated.

Yes, he gave a rousing speech.

I'm sure he was energized by that, but he's heading into Israel deflated.

He deserves credit for this, Caddy.

I'm an objective enough person to tell people he deserves credit.

We can take people through the ways he deserves credit.

I've said on this program before, there's good Trump and there's bad Trump.

And this is the good parts of Trump.

He was able to put enough pressure on Netanyahu and he was able to use his relationships with the other leaders in the region to really push this peace process.

And again, it's a ceasefire.

Just reminding everybody, it is a ceasefire.

Hamas may or may not go easily here.

I don't think there's any, when I've read through the 20 points, I don't think there's any real outcome where Hamas has lots of political power in the region anymore.

But we'll see.

But what's your reaction to it?

How did he get this done, Caddy?

And do you think he deserves credit as well?

Yeah, I think he absolutely deserves credit.

And you see that in the response to him in Israel today, not just in the Knesset, but out on the streets of Tel Aviv today.

It was an interesting moment during the speeches preceding Donald Trump, Bibi Netanyahu, who gave a very long speech as well, which, by the way, Trump kind of criticized him for saying, I didn't know you were going to speak for so long.

Hold on a second.

This is all meant to be about me.

And in Hostage Square, they started playing Bibi's speech on a loudspeaker and there were boos.

Donald Trump is not getting booed.

He is getting welcomed.

As Air Force One flew over Tel Aviv, there were cheers from people on the ground.

So Trump is popular.

Bibi is not popular.

How did he get it done?

And Joe Biden didn't get it done.

I think there were a few things.

First of all, it was interesting listening to J.D.

Vance, who was on all of the Sunday shows yesterday, who talked about the unconventional nature of Donald Trump's diplomacy.

He said, you know, diplomats have always done it a certain way.

It's this, again, it's this slightly populist message of

the experts are wrong is effectively what J.D.

Vance was saying.

And the experts have got this wrong and the Biden team did it.

the conventional way, even though this is kind of the same plan.

And Donald Trump comes in and he uses unconventional means.

and the unconventional means he used in this instance was getting his son-in-law Jared Kushner who has close business relationships with many of the Arab leaders in business deals that some people may raise an eyebrow at because he is the president's son-in-law and he's making a lot of money in the Middle East.

But Trump realized he could use his son Jared Kushner, who is trusted by Gulf leaders, to also come to the table and put pressure on Hamas.

So he managed to work this from both sides.

The key moment, as we said on the podcast last week, was the bombing of Doha, which was a mistake by the Israeli government.

And that also gave Donald Trump a window when Netanyahu was vulnerable and weaker because this had been a mistake.

And he was also furious because he had not really been given a heads up.

And he didn't scold Bibi Netanyahu in public as Joe Biden had done.

So he managed to keep that relationship going.

And it was, I think Vance was right.

This was an unconventional approach to diplomacy that many people thought wouldn't work.

But Donald Trump managed to bring this together.

And it was by finding the right ways to put pressure on both parties.

I think it's also worth pointing out that you have an interview with the Qatari Prime Minister saying, listen, we deliberately separated off the hostage deal, which...

swap the hostage prisoner swap from the long-term stuff because if we tried to get this all done all together, the hostage prisoner deal wouldn't have happened.

So there's also a realization from people in the region and in the White House is my understanding that this is not the easy part.

Hostage negotiations are difficult, but this was the easier part.

And now the question everybody has is, does Donald Trump's focus stay on this?

Because this is going to take months or years.

I mean, we're seeing the pictures of Gaza, right?

We see, there's already fighting today, day one

of this so-called peace process.

27 people have been killed by Hamas in Hamas fighting against Klans in Gaza City.

There are reports that Hamas is executing Palestinians in order to reassert their authority.

They've called up 7,000 Gazan citizens to be part of a security force.

You're right, Hamas is not necessarily going anywhere fast, and that means the continued attention of Donald Trump.

And do you think he's going to do that?

I mean, what's, you know, what do you think he is now, having got this moment, his applause in the Knesset,

the cheers in the streets of Tel Aviv, does he stick with this?

What do you reckon?

You know, it's unclear.

It's the Middle East, so it's very hard to predict things.

It's going well right now.

We should savor that moment.

These lives that were returned after two years, two years.

It's just extraordinary pain.

750

750 plus days.

So I want to ask you this question, though.

Jared Kushner has a $55 billion deal.

He's teamed up with the Saudis, and he's going to buy and take private the video game maker, Electronic Arts, Electronic Arts Media.

Fine, no problem there.

He's spent four years in the administration building terrific relationships with the Middle East.

I was at a dinner

three years ago, I guess was 2022, at the palace with MBS was there.

Jared sat right next to him.

I was at another table, but it was a beautiful dinner.

I applaud Jared Kushner's ability to build these relationships.

And I also believe Jared Kushner is a very smart guy.

I've listened to more than one podcast that he's been on describing the Middle East.

He's well read on it.

And he's done a very good job, in my opinion, as an envoy.

But my question to you, is the world of separating business and politics in the United States now over?

Because I know that there are righteous sniffing ethicists that would look at this and they would say, okay, this is bad news.

You can't have the politicians and the business leaders this close together because that will create tremendous amounts of corruption and the common person in the United States will lose faith in the process, which is why we've always tried to separate the business from the politics.

But is that over, Katie?

Because when you poll this stuff, by the way, because I looked over the weekend at the polling on this stuff, the Americans seem indifferent to Donald Trump making a couple of billion dollars.

You're shaking your head, so you're agreeing with me.

Yeah, and the Americans seem indifferent.

Hey, if Jared Kushner can help bring home the hostages and he's getting a $55 billion deal with the Saudis, NBZ told Jared

three years ago,

Muhammad Bazayed.

Yes, MBZ,

the United Arab Emirates, the president of the UAE, personal friend of mine, known forever.

He said to Jared, and I quote, you're going to be the guy that helps to deliver the peace.

You have the subtlety, you have the understanding, and more important than all of that, you have the trust of all these people.

So I want to give Jared the credit for all this, but the question I have is,

are we going in a direction now where the politics and the business, so people are going to look at the politics and say, hey, this is a way for me to make several billion dollars for myself.

And Caddy, what are your thoughts on that?

And where do you think we're going from here?

I think that's, you know, super interesting points, Anthony.

I mean, it's a very interesting way of framing this moment.

Ironically, I interviewed Jared early on in the first Trump administration.

He said to me, you know, the only person that can bring peace to the Middle East is my father-in-law because he has negotiating skills like nobody else does.

We're going to do the thing that no one else has managed to do because he is a unique person.

So it's kind of ironic if actually it turns out to be Jared and his relationships that actually have brought this home.

And I think we need to caveat this whole conversation with peace in the Middle East.

We're on day one.

This is a long process.

Let's see what happens next.

But on the business stuff, when, do you remember when the the Qataris gave the plane to Donald Trump?

You and I were both quite critical of that.

And a lot of people were critical of that because it was such overt

transactionalism.

And how do you know America's national security interests are best served by the Qataris giving large gifts to the president?

And this is not exactly the same, but there are, it's in the same family of business politics.

negotiations and deals, right?

Jared Kushner makes an awful lot of money because he is Donald Trump's son-in-law from the Middle East.

Maybe he's a very good businessman and he would have made some of that money anyway.

But he leaves the White House after the first term.

And even before he's left the White House, he's already announced a very big investment from the Saudis for his investment fund.

And now he's used that to help bring these hostages home.

And I think nobody, certainly nobody in Israel,

Nobody in the Middle East in this instance is going to look too finely closely at the fine print there.

But what happens if those countries suddenly don't have America's best interests at heart or want the White House to do something that is not in America's best interests or regional security's best interests?

It is a complicated

and sensitive way to conduct negotiations.

Now, the White House would say, hold on a second, Hunter Biden.

on the board of Burisma, exactly the same thing, making money out of his president.

And I think that's a fair, a totally fair criticism.

Hunter Biden should never have been, I think, on the board of barisma.

But if Hunter Biden shouldn't have been on the board of Burisma, should Jared Kushner be making lots of money out of his connections to the White House, even though in this instance he was managing to leverage them?

And I say this as a mother, you know, that if I was the mother of one of those hostages, I would have sold my soul to the devil to bring my child home without a question.

So

it is complicated, but it's in this instance, it worked.

It doesn't mean that it's in America's best interest always, or that this should ideally be the long-term way that America conducts diplomacy.

Is that too pious of me?

I think it's wrong, Caddy.

I couldn't do it.

Okay, there's a reason why I'll never be as rich as these guys because I look at these certain situations, okay, say, I'm not going there, I'm not doing that.

But there's certain other people that are like, hey, this doesn't bother me at all.

And there's a real politic to it, meaning that this is the way the world works now.

And

drop your piety and just work with the world the way the world works.

What do you think the downside is?

Paint the scenario for me that is that this doesn't work out.

The image of America.

And,

you know, I've...

you know, as you know, I've been writing a book.

I've been spending some time on what the image was for America.

And they say this also about the United Kingdom, that it's an experiment of shopkeepers rising.

It's the experiment of the ordinary individual rising to power in a government to do extraordinary things.

And there's an expectation in these countries of some level of fairness.

And so when you are conjoining the business aspects with the politics, you're going to lose a lot of people.

A lot of people are going to look up from their places in life.

But the place I started, started as an example.

You're going to look up and say, oh, okay, wow, it's really not fair at the top.

There's a feeding frenzy at the top, and they're going to leave me behind.

They're not going to give me the chance based on my merit to make it there.

Now, somebody could then come in, the chorus could then come in, Anthony, you're incredibly naive.

This is how it works.

This is how it's worked for centuries.

Caddy just gave you the example of Hunter Biden and Burisma.

This is how it works.

Maybe so,

but it is better when it works in the underground, Caddy.

It's better because the aura of America and what America really represents to the world and to its own people, we're going to lose something that I personally don't want to lose in America.

And that is that little kid's belief that

he or she

can make it, he or she can rise in America.

And so when we have this funnel at the top, and this is something our founders are very worried about, hey man, you got to watch the corruption because when you get the corruption, then you get the cynicism, and when you get the cynicism, then you slow down the economic growth, you slow down the aspirations.

I look at it also from the other point of view, not just, I think you're right,

the message it sends around the country, but also from America's allies and adversaries' point of view, that it's the kind of Oval Office on eBay, right?

If you can pay enough, you can buy your way in.

And maybe that's, you know, what governments have always done.

But when it's done personally like this around family members, I think everyone in this White House would say Hunter Biden was corrupt.

And I think we're seeing the same thing happening.

We're going to have the what about is, by the way, how many Palestinian prisoners were freed?

in exchange for the 20 living hostages?

It was close to 2,000.

I think it's 1,950.

And that's some of those are in the West Bank and they've gone back to Ramallah and some will go back to Gaza.

I want to react to that, okay?

So in a free

people, in free nations that have democratically elected officials, the life is more sacred and the life is more valued.

And so think about what Americans have done to get their hostages back or Americans have done to get their servicemen back, democratically elected elected leaders.

You just gave a wonderful rendition of what you would do as a mother, but then contrast that into totalitarian nations in terms of how they deal with hostage situations or how they deal with prisoner exchanges.

And so you just told me we went 100 to one, 100 people to one person.

of the free nation of Israel, the democratically elected leaders.

And there's another thing that's being said there is that these hostages are getting taken for a reason.

These hostages have huge value, particularly when they're taken from free nations.

And so there's a lot there, Caddy.

And so to me, let's not forget that the Israelis

let go people that were serving life sentences.

Some of them were involved in terrorist activity.

Some of them were involved in murder of their citizens.

But they value the life of those 20 people in a way that I would want my leaders to value me or you or our children.

And so I applaud the Israeli leadership for that.

Yes, but that is where the criticism from the Israeli public of Bibi Netanyahu is the strongest, right?

Because what they are saying is: hold on a second, yes, you do value, we've got the hostages back, but you could have done this earlier, Mr.

Prime Minister.

You could have brought our loved ones home, and there would be more more of them who were still alive.

So the Israelis are still waiting for the remains.

Some of those hostages could have come home alive if this deal had been done earlier.

And the criticism in Israel is that Bibi Netanyahu, who kept this war going, didn't bring the hostages home, didn't do this deal with Hamas because he wants to stay in power, because the right wing of his government wouldn't accept doing a deal with Hamas, and because he's afraid of indictment.

And one of the most fascinating bits of Donald Trump's speech in the Knesset was where he turned to the president and said, okay, I think it's time you pardon him.

Getting directly involved, again, could be projection confession, right?

Getting directly involved in Israeli politics.

Will Bibi Netanyahu get pardoned?

It was interesting watching the president.

A lot of people from Bibi's side were clapping.

Herzog was not clapping at that point.

He was standing there slightly stone-faced.

So I think it would be, I imagine that they'll try and see the jitter.

I don't know.

I don't know whether BB will get pardoned, but I just thought it was fascinating to hear Donald Trump.

And as Trump said in that wonderful kind of transparent way of Trump's, he then kind of laughed and said, okay, that's enough with the controversial stuff.

Let's get back to celebrating what a good day this is.

He knew exactly what he was doing.

when he said that.

The other thing I thought that was interesting in the speech, just to kind of wrap up on the speech before we go to a break and talk about Trump and tariffs, the other interesting bit I thought the other headline from the speech was where he extended an open hand of friendship to Iran and said actually that there are a lot of good people in Iran and we are ready when you are ready.

He said, I'm here to make deals.

All I want to do is make deals.

That's what my life is and there is a deal to be made in Iran.

They might pretend there isn't one, but I know that they would like to have a deal.

That didn't get any applause in the Knesset at all actually, by the way.

There was a lot of applause today for Donald Trump, which he was lapping up, but that didn't get applause.

But he said it anyway.

He stood up in the Israeli parliament and said, listen, we're prepared to make a deal with Iran.

You know, he's on a roll.

He called Zelensky twice this weekend.

Zelensky nominated for him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Netanyahu will nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize for next year.

He feels he is on a peacemaking role at the moment.

You texted me that, and you said the isolationist president is making calls.

He's calling around.

He's become an interventionist president in a different way.

There's something about Trump's personality that has enabled people.

There's a space that gets created where people are like, a normal president, I'm not doing it.

An abnormal president, I'm doing it.

Why did Netanyahu give the bird to Joe Biden, but he relented for Donald Trump?

Why is he able to flex on the Iranians?

He's dropping bunker buster bombs on them.

The Iranians are praising his peace initiative and God.

He says he might send Tomahawks to Ukraine to start bombing into Russia.

Okay, but they did clear several ICBMs went into Russian territory and blew up electrical facilities

with American intelligence help.

Exactly.

And the Russians are super pissed off about that.

So he did clear that.

Okay, so go ahead.

What is it about Trump?

Because I think there's an important historical point to be made here.

I mean, Trump would say...

and has said in public, it's the madman theory of diplomacy, that you want your rivals to be so on edge about what you're going to do that they're happy to make a deal with you in case you go to the max.

That's what his whole operating method is.

It's the kind of Nixon approach.

And I think to some extent, the fact that you have 20 world leaders in Sharm al-Sheikh, they're there for the Middle East, but they're also there because they know Donald Trump wants to see their face around the table.

Because they want to get face time with him and they want to make him happy.

Because if he's not happy, what's he going to do?

He's going to leverage his tariff regime that we're going to talk about in the second half and hit them with the most punitive punitive tariffs.

He might not bomb them as he bombed Israel, but he might tariff the heck out of them, which is an economic equivalent of bombing them.

So I think that's what it is.

But I think there's something else that I suggested earlier, which is that the whole essence of populism is that experts are wrong.

And there was an interesting article by Bob Lighthizer, the former trade

negotiator for Donald Trump from his first term in the FT this weekend, in which he said exactly that.

The economists have got it wrong for years.

And that is the premise of populism is that we're against the establishment and the establishment includes the experts.

And we are the people that are going to break things and do things differently.

And one of the really interesting lines that Netanyahu

used today was, we were right.

There were all these naysayers.

about bombing Gaza City, but we were right.

I mean, one of the sad things today was that nobody really mentioned the Palestinians.

I mean, Trump mentioned them in a sentence or two.

And I think it is worth remembering that hopefully we'll get journalists into Gaza now.

And there has been so much devastation

in that city and so much suffering against Palestinians.

And I fear that it's not over for them in Gaza.

But I think that if I was to kind of put it in a theory, that's where I would put it.

I mean, I think it's well said.

Reagan was able to do that.

Nixon was able to do that.

Carter not able to do that.

Biden not able to do that.

You know, Clinton actually couldn't do that, but he sent so many cruise missiles into the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict that they finally relented.

But there's something about nihilism and there's something about being a nihilist where others look at it rationally and say, shit, this guy's crazy.

He may pull something on me that I'm not ready to tolerate.

And they start negotiating.

I think I said last week that if Trump pulls this off, he deserves a peace prize.

And I want to make it clear that what I mean by pulling this off is more than just what we saw today.

It's the hostage exchange, which was the hostage exchange.

I think the peace prize would come to any American president who manages to see through a real and lasting peace with a solution for the Palestinians.

All of the hard work is still to be done.

The issue of Hamas's weapons, the issue of who governs the place, the issue of who keeps the place secure, the issue of what to do about the tunnels,

what do you do with the Israeli, how far do the Israelis withdraw and for how long?

What do you do with the enormous amount of anger and hatred that people in Gaza now feel towards Israel?

None of that has been resolved.

And I have real questions about whether Donald Trump has the patience to follow this through and the commitment to keep going.

There is not much track record of Donald Trump having the patience to see things through that get hard.

Today was the great day for him.

He loved the optimism in the Knesset.

But that peace prize is contingent on real peace.

And that's not what we yet have.

Listen, I said last week they'll never give it to him, but let me stipulate this.

If he figures out a way to resolve the Ukrainian conflict,

he figures out a way to get to what you're talking about, something more lasting in the Middle East with Hamas and Israel.

And now that he's been praised by the Nobel Peace Prize recipient,

works on Venezuela, and we're sitting here in October of 2026.

He's going to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

He will.

Okay, so obviously the facts are fluid and smart people change their minds when they get presented different facts.

There's good Trump and there's bad Trump.

After the break, we're going to talk about bad Trump, but this is good Trump.

He deserves the credit for this.

And people that are not willing to give him the credit for this are blindsided.

They're either overly partisan or they just hate the MF so much that they can't give them the credit.

That is the Trump derangement syndrome.

And one other thing that people are pointing out is that they wish that what Trump was doing abroad with these efforts around peace in the Middle East, he could do a little bit more of at home.

We're going to talk about the tariffs, but if you look at the situation with ICE in Chicago, in Portland over the course of this weekend, the use of the National Guard, I drove back from work this morning.

The National Guard is still on the troops of Washington, D.C.

The retribution campaign against his enemies-not not just Jim Comey now, but Letitia James, the prosecutor in New York as well.

That is not the peacemaking Donald Trump that we're seeing on the international stage.

We're going to take a break and come back and talk more about tariffs and China, because it's also super interesting.

If you've been watching the markets the last couple of days, you will have noticed.

Okay, we'll be right back.

This is an ad by BetterHelp.

October the 10th is World Mental Health Day, a moment to pause and reflect not just on our own well-being, but on the people who help us navigate it.

And my goodness, don't we need that moment of reflection here in America?

Yeah, and advice is everywhere.

Friends, headlines, social media, but sometimes it takes real counsel, the kind that cuts through the noise and asks the right questions.

That's the counsel that can change everything.

That's the craft of therapists not shouting over the storm, but showing you the way through it.

BetterHelp has been creating those turning points for more than 12 years.

With over 30,000 qualified professionals worldwide, they've supported more than 5 million people in helping them move forward.

And finding the right fit, Caddy, I mean, that also matters.

So, BetterHelp begins with a short questionnaire.

It matches you with someone who fits.

And if it doesn't, you can keep switching until it does.

If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey.

Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com/slash tripus.

That is better h lp.com slash t-r-i-p us.

If you used Babel, you would.

Babel's conversation-based techniques teach you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world.

With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babel is like having a private tutor in your pocket.

Start speaking with Babel today.

Get up to 55% off your Babel subscription right now at babel.com slash Spotify.

Spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Spotify.

Rules and restrictions may apply.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Commercial Insurance.

Trucking is a big job.

So Progressive is proud to offer truckers the coverage they need and discounts to help them save.

Quote Truck Insurance in as little as eight minutes at progressivecommercial.com.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates.

Discounts Discounts not available in all states or situations.

Welcome back to The Rest is Politics U.S.

We wanted to talk about things that have been happening in the markets and Donald Trump's making economic policy that is globally important with Truth Socials.

On Friday, Donald Trump tweeted that he was going to hit China with 100% tariffs in retaliation for China saying they were going to restrict exports of Chinese rare earth minerals.

So Trump tweets out Truth Social's out.

I can't say that word, Truth Social's out, that he's going to hit them with 100% tariffs.

He says there's no reason to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month.

He said that China is being very hostile.

All of this comes down in a Truth Social post on Friday, and immediately you see this sell-off in the markets.

The markets are not happy about it.

And then on Sunday, Trump truths out something totally different.

Don't worry about China.

It will all be fine.

Highly respected President Xi just had a bad moment.

I love that bit of it.

Just had a bad moment.

He doesn't want depression for his country and neither do I.

The USA wants to help China, not hurt it.

So in the space of two days, you have market makers completely spinning, thinking, what is going on?

This ongoing battle in the tariff wars between China and the United States.

There is still no tariff deal between China and the U.S.

China is still the only country that is standing up to the United States, refusing to make a deal until they feel it's right for them.

And I think Donald Trump has been a little flawed by the resistance he's met in China.

I've been hearing from business people who operate in China that the Chinese really have kind of wargamed this all out.

They were ready for these threats of tariffs.

They knew that the rare earth minerals were the way to hit back.

So you've got this kind of, you know, tension, but then he deflates all of the tension on Sunday and leaves markets and investors scratching their heads.

So I imagine, Anthony, you had a pretty busy day on Friday.

And I wanted to know because you texted me about this, and there was something specific that you wanted to talk about that is going on behind the scenes.

So tell us about it.

Well, I mean,

the market was down a couple of percent, but the crypto markets imploded.

Okay, so we had a $19 billion liquidation in the cryptocurrency markets, which is the largest, I think, in the history of the cryptocurrency markets.

It was a full-on implosion.

But one of the things about the blockchain, and a lot of viewers and listeners probably don't follow the blockchain that closely, but on the blockchain, you can do a full forensic detail of what's going on.

And so, of course, the sleuths on the blockchain discovered that minutes before Trump made the announcement, there was a short position put on by a very big whale, a very large crypto person, betting to short the market.

And sure enough, after the announcement, the market imploded.

And then shortly after that, the person covered for a $213 million profit.

Now, we don't know whose wallet it is because that's anonymous, but you can actually see the wallet and you can see.

I'm assuming it wasn't you, Mr.

Scaramucci.

It wasn't me.

First of all, I haven't talked to Trump in a while.

And secondarily.

He didn't give you the little tip off.

Yeah, and secondarily, it's just not my MO, unfortunately, which is why I'm never going to be as rich as these people.

But I point this out because there are no coincidences in the market, and I point this out that this is not the first time that this has happened.

And there are people in the know that are betting the Trump on again, off again, the Trump taco.

Two days later, Trump is tweeting on Sunday that he's going to everything's going to be fine with China.

And he's doing this.

And underneath this, there's a current right now heading towards the Supreme Court.

And what is that current, Caddy?

The laws that Trump is citing to put these tariffs on, to take these tariffs off, well, it doesn't look like he has

the jurisdiction from that law, and that the tariffs are effectively a consumption tax on the American consumer.

And we broke from you guys

250 years ago because there was no taxation without representation.

Okay.

And so now the court has before it, he's taxing you without any of your representatives in the Congress approving the taxation.

And is that going to stand?

Now, I don't know if it's going to stand or not.

I've heard legal experts tell me they think it is going to stand, by the way.

And what's the theory behind that?

I don't know what the legal theory is, but that in the end they will decide that, you know,

the executive should have power and that they will deem this a foreign policy issue, a national security issue, even if Canada is not necessarily a national security threat to the United States, as I understand it.

But maybe I'm wrong.

This is what makes our podcast fun.

I've gotten at 70%

that they are going to lose this case, meaning the administration.

Okay.

And I and I don't want to be obscure with our people, but there's a law.

The letters are I-E-E-P-A.

It's basically the authority that Trump is using.

It's basically the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, okay, that he's using to impose reciprocal tariffs.

And when you read that law, it is very, very narrow.

And there's nothing in the language definitively that gives Trump this power.

Now,

they could split the baby.

And they could say, okay, for a period of time, we're going to give Trump these emergency powers, but but he's going to have to go back to the Congress.

Maybe they'll say, okay, listen, we're going to let Trump have these powers in place for three months, six months, but after three months or six months, he's going to have to go back to the power.

And by the way, the court is doing a lot of that, right?

A lot of baby splitting is happening in the court at the moment, making short-term rulings and then saying we'll go back for the longer case.

There's a rumor.

And again, I'm highlighting that this is a rumor because I understand libel laws, but I just want to point this out.

There is a rumor that some, and I'm not going to name the people, but some cabinet member families are buying tariff claims at 10 cents on a dollar.

So, let me explain that.

Caddy K, you've got a big business.

You're bringing goods into the port and you're getting taxed on them.

And you've now paid the levy to the American government of the tax, but you have a tariff claim now.

So, if the court rules against the administration, you can submit your claim.

They charged you a million dollars at the port.

Here you go.

Give me me the million dollars back.

But there's a rumor going around

that family members of cabinet members of the United States are buying tariff claims.

So they're saying, you know, Caddy, how are you?

You paid a million dollars.

Great.

I'm going to give you $100,000, $0.10 on a dollar for your tariff claim.

And I'll take the million.

And hard-up companies are actually selling their tariff claims.

Okay.

And so

the reason I'm mentioning this is because I want our viewers and listeners, when they read about it in three months, when the Supreme Court makes the decision, okay, I want them, oh, I heard about that on the Rest is Politics U.S.

So I'm just saying, and I'll finish with three things.

Number one,

people are

manipulating the market off of the information that they're getting from the president before the president releases the information.

That's incontrovertible.

That is a fact.

I've seen it before.

Number two,

your legal experts are telling you that they're going to give Trump this jurisdiction.

I don't believe that they will.

I think we've got nine justices.

We've got three hacks, three conservative hacks, and we've got three Democratic hacks.

And whatever the Democrats want, the three hacks are going to say yes.

And whatever the Republicans want, the three hacks are going to say yes.

But Coney, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Roberts, I think, will be in the middle because they're actually conservatives, but they also are very worried about the legacy of the court, particularly Roberts.

And they're very worried about the interpretation of the Constitution.

So they'll split the baby and give Trump something, but I don't think they're going to give him everything.

And this is going to cause a problem for the administration as the administration's going into the midterms.

Now, Trump would say to everybody that I, Of course, he's full of it, but he's saying that he solved the Indian-Pakistan situation by threatening tariffs, and he solved this and that by threatening tariffs.

And he has said that tariffs are a mechanism or tool that he's using to promote the peace by threatening them.

Again, I'm not saying that that's true or not.

I'm just pointing out all the different pieces that are out there.

Well, the one group of people that are not being threatened are the Chinese, great.

Well, they can't be.

They're the ones that he wants to do the deal with.

And so far...

They got too many cards.

Remember when Zelensky you've you've got no cards well you know what the chinese got all the cards they've got like a couple of packs of extra cards

but remember the americans have one big card and that is the dollar denomination and the swift banking system and you don't you know the chinese are not stupid they don't want an economic war with america no while america is still in a supreme position it may not be there forever but it's still in a supreme position in terms of dollar hegemony so they're not they're not gonna they're not going to overly push the Americans.

No.

But

they're not going to capitulate either.

Exactly.

But this is the good Trump, bad Trump stuff.

Good Trump.

I'm going to beat the daylights out of Netanyahu and get a deal done and free these hostages.

Bad Trump, guys, we've got three years left to go.

I want to make $20 billion for myself.

How are we going to do that?

Jared, no problem.

Hang out in the Middle East and collect hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars from people, no problem.

There's good Trump and bad Trump caddy cake.

So I had a conversation about this on Friday, a long conversation with a global economist, and he was talking about the China tariff stuff in particular, and not so much about what you were saying about manipulating the markets, but I'm sure that's happening too, and it plays into this idea.

And he speaks, this guy speaks to a lot of central bankers around the world.

And he says they have real questions about whether the U.S.

can manage the global economy still.

They've got questions about the supremacy of the dollar.

They don't know where else to go in particular.

It's why you've seen gold go up so much, but and crypto too.

But they don't know where else to go.

But there are questions being asked about the supremacy of the U.S., whether U.S.

consumers will carry on driving global growth in the way that they have been doing,

whether...

geoeconomics is now being determined almost entirely by politics and partisan politics in the United States and whether that is sustainable.

So for the moment, and I think what you are describing and policy around tariffs being made by tweet, one day Friday saying something, one day Sunday saying something else, drives into that, that there is a certain aura of fragility about the US economy, despite the massive AI-fueled growth that we're seeing and the boom around AI that we're seeing.

Underlying that, add into that America's huge deficit problem, the fact that neither Republicans nor Democrats want to deal with it.

There are real questions about the solidity of the US at the moment.

However much Donald Trump touts that this is the greatest economy there's ever been.

I'm picking up a lot of that, a lot of questions about.

And it's just, I think at the moment, people are looking, where else do we go?

They're trying crypto, they're trying gold,

trying other currencies.

Deals are being made.

in yuan that were previously being made in dollars.

Why is Russia managing to avoid the sanctions?

Partly because they have kind of shackled together an alternative to Swift.

I mean, it's cumbersome and it doesn't work very well, but people are looking for alternatives to America in a way right now that they were not doing a few years ago, that they were not even doing after the 2008 financial crash, by the way.

Well said.

We'll see.

But if you get the call next time, Anthony Scaramucci, of some little tip-off, if you could just like hand it my way as well, you know, if you get Donald's on the phone, Anthony, Anthony, Anthony, sell, sell, sell.

If you could just send that to me, that would be great.

Well, unfortunately for people like you and me, we'll be in shackles, Caddy.

The people that are around Trump are not in shackles, which was my earlier point about the developing creeping.

The little people and the little people.

My earlier point about the creeping cynicism that comes into play when you mix the politics and the business, it equals a broadspread grab bag of corruption.

But, you know, again, I'll just finish on this note.

If you're worried about economic hegemony,

you have a grab bag and you have a feeding frenzy at the top.

And people are like, I don't care about anybody else anymore.

Let's forget the social contract among ourselves.

What's in it for me and my family?

And so, weirdly, that's a vicious circle that contributes to the economic dislocation and the economic shortcomings of America, which I hope doesn't happen.

There's so many good things going on in America.

With the right political leadership, we could sort of restate and revisit all of this stuff for the better.

We want to tell you about a series we're doing for our founding members.

It's all about Stephen Miller, who is one of the most influential people in America right now.

He is nominally the deputy chief of staff, but he's way more than that.

And he is behind a lot of what is happening in Donald Trump's efforts to remake America.

And we're doing a little series of him.

We think you'd enjoy that.

Question: Is Stephen Miller the way he is because of his height?

He's not a very tall man.

AOC has said she thinks so.

This is what she put out on Twitter.

Stephen Miller is a clown.

I've never seen that guy in real life, but he looks like he's 4'10 and he looks angry about the fact that he's 4'10.

By the way, he's actually 5'8, but he does look angry quite a lot of the time.

And you had a run-in yourself with Stephen Miller, Anthony.

Talk to me.

More than one.

You know, he's a rude guy who doesn't pick up on social cues and

he has a tendency to be demeaning towards subordinates.

And so, yes, I did have a run-in with him where I had to get in his grill and tell him, at least while I'm around, that type of behavior is not going to be tolerated.

Now, you know, I'm gone and he's there.

And so maybe that behavior is being tolerated.

Maybe he's been empowered by the people around him that like meanness.

You know, if there's a culture of meanness, guess what happens?

People get meaner.

But, you know, look, he's a rude guy.

I am also 5'8 ⁇ , except only perhaps on my license, Caddy.

I could be shorter than that.

It could be a little bit of fake news on my license.

You do not look angry, though.

But I'm not angry because I don't have

the lack of seeded Chia Pet status of Stephen Miller.

You know, and I, thank God, I don't look like a bulb that hasn't bloomed properly like Stephen Miller.

But anyway,

AOC and I are, I'm sorry, I'm still going to go.

I'm still going.

No.

No.

No, I'm still going.

No, I'm still going.

I want to wrap up this episode.

We want to agree.

And AOC and I agree.

I just want to say to everybody, I don't agree with AOC on a lot, but we agree on Steve-O.

Go ahead, Ken.

If you want to listen, sign up at therestofpoliticsus.com.

Here's a clip from the episode.

So tell us what it's like to be the deputy chief of staff in the Trump White House in the second term.

I think it's important to have a comparison and contrast if you don't mind, because

in the first Trump White House, be the deputy chief of staff, not a biggie.

In a lot of other White Houses, Deputy Chief of Staff, you know, got some roles, but you're really taking full orchestration, full direction from the chief of staff.

Trust me, John Kelly's deputy chiefs of staff, whoever they may have been.

I don't even remember who they are.

Exactly, which is

more to my point.

They took direction from John Kelly and they more or less kept their mouths shut.

They weren't on CNN all day and they weren't opining to the press and they certainly weren't using X or what was formerly known as Twitter.

So I think it's very important to point that out.

So with Stephen Miller,

number one, I think,

and I could be wrong, but I do think this,

and I sort of know this, Susie Wiles,

chief of staff.

If Donald Trump won the election last year, she was promised to be the chief of staff.

And Trump liked that because Trump likes confusing people about himself.

He'll say misogynist things, but he made Kellyanne Conway, the campaign manager, first campaign manager that happened to be a woman, presidential history, first White House chief of staff as a woman made by Donald Trump in history.

So

she has a role and she has a good relationship with the president.

She keeps him organized and

she sort of defends him in certain ways and blocks access from certain people.

She's definitely the one that firebombed Elon Musk

and she was the big culprit in that.

But with Stephen Miller, it's a different thing.

So Stephen Miller,

you've pointed this out to me.

Others have pointed this out to me.

He stayed true to Trump through everything.

It's very important for people on this program to know that many people disaffected from Trump, including Fox News anchors that used to text me in the third or fourth week of January 2021 as Joe Biden was rising to power.

Oh, you may be right.

Trump is unhinged.

The things that happened during the insurrection were unforgivable.

And again, we've said this on this program, but I think it's also worth mentioning, many established Republicans thought Trump was dead, which is why Kevin McCarthy said, I'm not going to impeach him.

I'm not going to give Mitch McConnell the votes he needs or Pelosi to impeach and then potentially convict him.

I'm going to fly down to Marga-Lago to kiss his ass a little bit because he still has a little bit of a base, but he's finished as a politician.

But not Stephen Miller, Caddy K.

Stephen Miller was with him through and through.

And Stephen Miller

is a dweep.

Okay, he looks like a chia pet.

Let me just talk about what he looks like.

Okay.

Okay, that is not where I was.

I was kind of expecting another sort of highbrow analysis of Stephen Miller.

I was not expecting you to go straight for how Stephen Miller looks.

No, it's very highbrow because I'm going to explain why it's so highbrow.

He's a dweeb,

and he looks like an unseeded chia pet.

You know what I mean?

Like the hair didn't grow in, and he's got that bulbous face, and he's sort of a ridiculous character, and he's not telegenic.

He's articulate, but he's not telegenic.

Good point.

And what's the point I'm making, Caddy?

Because you just got there.

So what's the point?

Go ahead.

Please make it for me.

So you're making the point that despite that Donald Trump likes to surround himself with people who are telegenic.

I mean, he judged, you know, Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, he has all of these people who he's drawn out of the ranks of Fox News.

And Stephen Miller really, I mean, it's weird to, I think it's kind of weird that we're even saying this, but Stephen Miller stands out for the fact that he's not remotely telegenic in fact he's not good on television at all because he comes across as this kind of quite harsh he's sort of like slightly got a sort of serpenty look about him i hate to say that about the poor guy but anyway he does he looks sort of odd and that is that is unusual in trump world yeah is that where you were going yes but also the others are puppets of donald trump stephen miller is a brainiac stephen miller is an implementer.

And because of the way he looks, he's of no threat to Donald Trump.

If Pete Hexeth had a 200 IQ, his IQ is probably 40, possibly 50.

I mean, he's, you know, I mean, I don't know.

Maybe there's certain domestic pets that are smarter than Pete Heckseth.

But if his IQ was Stephen Miller, he would have been fired in five minutes because Trump would never be able to handle that.

Pam Body's a woman, and so his women have to look Barbie-esque

because there's so many issues going on in the poor guy.

They have to look Barbie-esque.

There's relatively Barbie-esque if they're going to be on camera.

If they're not on camera, Susie Wiles, they can look any way they want.

I'm just trying to explain to people what Trump's personality is like because Stephen Miller is a very smart guy.

I think he's evil.

And I think he's a nefarious guy.

And I think he's a mean guy.

And I think he's a very repressed guy psychologically.

but he's got Trump's ear, but he would not have Trump's ear if he had the looks of Pete Hegseth and the brain of Stephen Miller.

Bye-bye.

Okay, so go ahead, Kat.

Interesting.

I mean, I think he is so influential in this second term.

You're right to make the point that deputy chief of staff, and I think he's, you know, senior advisor on Homeland Security, has another hat as well.

Everybody in this administration seems to wear multiple hats.

But I think he, you could almost make the case that Donald Trump wouldn't be where he is in electoral terms because Stephen Miller drove so much of Donald Trump's hardline rhetoric on immigration.

But certainly in terms of the influence that Donald Trump is wielding right now and the power grab that he has made to remake America and expand kind of MAGA as a movement across America, I think that rests with Stephen Miller.

And we'll get into all of that during the course of this episode.

For those of you listeners who haven't heard of Stephen Miller before, you've certainly heard of some of his policies.

He was the person who was behind the Muslim ban, the ill-fated Muslim ban in Trump's first term.

He was behind the policy of separating children from their parents who came across the border illegally in the first term.

He was the person behind Alligator Alcatraz, the detention center in Florida, in the second term.

And he is behind the attacks on birthright citizenship.

He is somebody who believes that the American Constitution should be overturned so that people who are born in America don't automatically get citizenship.

And if you run through those things, what is the common thread, Anthony?

The common thread is a deep conservatism,

specifically around the issue of immigration, right?

That he is super conservative when it comes to immigration.

Hope you enjoyed that clip.

To hear the rest, sign up at therestispoliticsus.com.

See you next Thursday.

Thanks, guys.

Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hurt.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.