Anthony Scaramucci and Tina Brown on How To Fix America, Live in London

Mia Sorrenti (0:00)

Welcome to Intelligence Squared, Where Great Minds Meet. I'm Senior Producer Mia Sorrenti.

Today's episode is the full recording of our recent event with former White House Communications Director, outspoken Trump critic and co-host of The Rest Is Politics US, Anthony Scaramucci. Scaramucci kicked off his nationwide Intelligence Squared tour in style, on stage at the Lyceum Theatre in London.

Then conversation with former editor-in-chief of Tatler, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker, Tina Brown. Scaramucci shared his insider's account of how America reached Trumpism and where it goes next. Drawing on his new book, All The Wrong Moves, the pair discussed how decades of mistakes by both Republicans and Democrats paved the way for Trump's rise and how America could chart a different course. Let's join our host, Tina Brown, now live from the Lyceum.

Tina Brown (1:00)

Well, welcome, everybody, ladies and gentlemen. And I want now to talk about the man that we're about to meet, because he holds the record for the shortest tenure in modern White House history.

11 days. He was fired before his office furniture arrived. Okay? That's not a job. That's a very expensive cameo. And if this was Trump the musical, I'd have him crossing the stage left to right juggling. That's how he would be. Well, of course, he's Anthony Scaramucci, Wall Street financier, founder of SkyBridge Capital, which he built from scratch in 2005, and a man known to absolutely everybody as The Mooch. But here, you'll all know him best as the wildly successful podcast on the Goalhanger Network, The Rest Is Politics US, that he co-hosts with the BBC's Katy Kay.

This evening, he's here to talk about what he calls the money view of history in his provocative and really compelling new book, All The Wrong Moves, How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump. Marina Hyde calls it deliciously compelling. Historian Neil Ferguson calls the book smart, sharp, and self-aware.

Mr. Scaramucci is brash. He's Long Island. He drives a Lamborghini and a Rolls Royce, and he's never met a soundbite that he didn't like. Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together for the one and only Mooch.

Anthony Scaramucci (2:46)

Hi, guys. Thank you, guys.

And before we start, do you want to drive the Lamborghini one day out on Long Island with me?

Tina Brown (2:56)

I won't do this poll.

Anthony Scaramucci (2:57)

I put Caddy in the Lamborghini. She broke the license plate off the front of it, but go ahead.

Tina Brown (3:02)

So before we start talking, we have a poll from everybody here, which I want us all to just focus on for a minute. Where is that poll question? Here it is. So can you please answer it if you wish? And we're going to talk about the answer.

How long do we have to wait for that? I wonder.

Anthony Scaramucci (3:24)

I'm not sure. I don't want to influence the election, but what do you think?

Tina Brown (3:30)

I don't know. Okay.

Anthony Scaramucci (3:32)

All right. There's no mail-in ballots allowed, just so you know.

Tina Brown (3:35)

No mail-in ballots allowed. All right. So are we going to get this answer now?

Anthony Scaramucci (3:39)

There you go.

Tina Brown (3:40)

There it is. Okay.

Anthony Scaramucci (3:42)

Oh, wow.

Tina Brown (3:43)

Yes.

After Trump leaves office. Okay. No, magazine. Too early to tell.

Okay, great. So that's an optimistic answer, right? It is an optimistic answer.

Anthony Scaramucci (3:53)

That's also something that Tina predicted. I said to Tina, this audience, we're going to present this poll. How do you think the audience will render the poll? And you more or less got it correct. You said it would be two-thirds that were optimistic. And obviously a lot of people understand what you're saying. It's too early to tell.

Tina Brown (4:11)

But the thing about this idea about will America move beyond?

I mean, does it concern you, Anthony, just how long now we've had Trumpism? Because this has not been four years, another four years with Biden, four years. We've really had ten years now of Trump. Ten years, because the four years with Biden was all about Trump. I mean, all they were doing was prosecuting Trump, impeaching Trump, charging Trump. It was all Trump. So, you know, his kind of vile personality, essentially, has been sort of imprinted on the American psyche now for really ten years. Do you think it has made a difference?

Anthony Scaramucci (4:49)

I do. I do think it's made a difference. But, you know, we did some research on this. And in the four years of Joe Biden, if you looked at the news cycle, it was almost identical newsprint, meaning Trump was in the cycle every day, saying something ridiculous or saying something outlandish to grab the news cycle. And President Biden was acting more like an American traditional president. I mean, his tweets were very professional by a staff member, and he was not in the fray or the scrum the way Trump was. And so, yes, he's loomed over us for 10 years. But I said something to Tina backstage that I'll share with everybody.