60. Trump vs. The Middle East

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Hello and welcome to the Restless Politics U.S. with me, Anthony Scaramucci, and a big thanks to Katty Kay for allowing me to bring us in today. That's because you're having the hardship posting. You are in the nice sunny Caribbean. I am in six inches of snow in Virginia. So I'm hunkering down. You think that that bothers me that you're exposing my bougie lifestyle to people? And I'm American. I don't care. Because, you know, when you're traveling to Rome and you're going to all these different places and you're hiding under the table trying to pretend that you're not like a champagne socialist, you know, it's fine. I'm enjoying my bougie life.

OK, I'm going to bring you since today we're going to talk about Trump's plan for the Middle East, how he wants to relocate the entire Palestinian population of Gaza. He's pressuring Jordan and Egypt with USAID to accept refugees. And he's even taking ownership of Gaza to redevelop it. And he's calling it a, quote, unquote, beautiful piece of land. There were three or four times, Katty, where he actually said he himself, I guess, owned Gaza.

And then in the second half, let's get into Trump's shock and awe strategy, the tariffs he's imposing on steel and aluminum and what he's really hoping to achieve with U.S. trade policy and tariffs. But first, Katty, Elon Musk is bringing his child, his four year old son, into the Oval Office. You live in Washington. How is that going down in Washington?

OK, so Tuesday was one of the weirdest days in the Oval Office that I've ever seen. First of all, you had and we'll talk about this in a minute. You had King Abdullah looking looking like he's in a hostage video, looking like he would rather be anywhere else than sitting there next to Donald Trump. He could not have blinked harder if he had tried. That was the most excruciating Oval Office visit I think I've ever seen. And we can explain why in just a second, because he's looking at the prospect of his monarchy being overthrown potentially.

And then a couple of hours later, you have Elon Musk bringing four year old X, who's what his his accessory or something into the Oval Office. I mean, you've worked in the Oval Office, Anthony. I've watched now reported on four American presidents. I have never seen somebody hold a kind of serious meeting in the Oval Office with a press briefing who brings their has the presumption to bring their child into the Oval to kind of lull on the resolute desk. Donald Trump is looking at this kid like, Christ, is this what I have to put up with? OK, well, he gave me 300 million dollars for my campaign. So, yes, I guess I do. But he looked like he was furious about it. I mean, what did you make of that? What's what's he doing in there?

Well, first of all, it's a different Oval Office. Let's just talk about the difference between Trump one and Trump two. Trump one.

He was like, OK, what do presidents do? And they gave him a list of things the presidents do. And one of the things they didn't do is have a press gaggle every single day in the Oval Office. So Trump didn't have a press gaggle in the Oval Office. He he sent out Spicer and different people to talk to the press. And he was actually trying to figure out a way to do the job. Now he's decided that it's an instrument of his attention. And this is the number one thing I consistently say about Donald Trump. He's addicted to the attention. He likes the attention. And so he's going to have a press gaggle.

Now, it's interesting, his communications team is using it as, well, look how accessible he is. Right. He's standing there or sitting there behind the Resolute desk. You're standing in front of him and he's taking your questions. But it's really just a lot of blather. There's not really a lot going on.

I watched like it was a car crash, the signing of the executive order on paper straws. I mean, I had to watch it like seven times because he's talking about paper straws. They blow up if you put them in a hot drink. They're terrible. And you remember the whole thing with the shower and the water dripping? And yeah, I'm like, I'm like looking at the guy going, OK, some of it is like really funny and I get it. He's just probably the most famous stand up comedian in the world. And he's actually quite funny when he's doing this stuff. But it's not it's not serious, Katty K. And this is this is the problem.

It's about owning the libs, right? He's going to own the libs with the windmills that I guess are, I don't know. Right. I don't know. Windmills have killed whales. They've killed trees. I mean, he says all kinds of crazy stuff.

But but but the weirdest thing about it yesterday was King Abdullah, if you don't mind me just saying this, because he's a very smart guy. King Abdullah went to school here in the United States. He's done a very good job of running that country. And as you know, he's in a very delicate, very sensitive part of the world. He's tried to manage a huge Palestinian population alongside of the Jordanian people. He's tried to develop and bridge a good relationship that his father sort of handed him with the Israelis after lots of fighting. And so he's got he is vexed now with a very big dilemma because he's got nationalism in Jordan, the same way the UK has nationalism, the same way the U.S. has nationalism.

So how does King Abdullah square the circle of keeping the U.S. aid without taking in? You tell me, Katty, is it eight hundred thousand refugees that Trump wants him to take in? You know, he mentioned casually that he would take in a few thousand people. But how is he going to do that, Katty?

Briefly, here's what Donald Trump is proposing. He's proposing relocating the entire Palestinian population of Gaza, a couple of million people to other countries, particularly, as you've suggested, Jordan and Egypt, and then redeveloping the territory to make it, as he said in the past, the Riviera of the Middle East and getting Middle Eastern countries to contribute to that process. He has suggested, although he's rode back from this a little bit, that he would be willing to use the billions of dollars that America sends in aid to Jordan and Egypt as a kind of pressure point to get the Jordanians and the Egyptians to agree to that. And then he would, as he said yesterday, cherish Gaza and own Gaza. Initially, he said the Palestinians would lead permanently. Then the White House rode that back and said, no, no, no, they'd be able to go back again after it was redeveloped. And then yesterday he reiterated that, no, he was asked in a question, would they be able to come back again?

He said, no, they would leave permanently and they would be very happy to do so because where they're living now is a disaster zone and it would be much better off for them to live somewhere else. I mean, so that's what he's proposing. It's an incredibly audacious proposal for America to own and, as he says, cherish the Gaza Strip. And the question I think that foreign policy people that I've spoken to in the last couple of days have is, is he proposing this seriously, that he really is thinking of America taking over and redeveloping? Is he thinking like a real estate developer? And he sees this strip of land. And again, like you've always said, there's a kind of glimmer of truth to this. He's seen people at work, senior foreign policy people in the Biden administration have said to me, look, you know, you sit in Tel Aviv and it's this fantastic beachfront and you know that the Gaza Strip is a few miles down the road and could be equally a fantastic bit of Mediterranean real estate.

So is he proposing this because he's serious or is he proposing this as a way to force Arab countries and the Israelis to get over the line to some sort of political settlement? And I think we don't know the answer to that. At the moment, but clearly what King Abdullah knows, who has a population that is already majority Palestinian, during the early days of the Gaza war, that caused him a lot of problems. There was unrest amongst those Palestinians. If he was suddenly to have a population that was even more Palestinian, not only would that threaten his regime, and I think the reason he looks uncomfortable and was blinking away there yesterday is because he knows that if he were to sign on to what Donald Trump is suggesting and take a million more Palestinian refugees into his country, that's potentially the end of the Hashemite monarchy.

And remember, these are people who have gone through hell the last couple of years. You think they, you think this is a quiescent population Donald Trump is talking about that would suddenly be fine. Okay. Yeah, fine. We'll give up Gaza and we'll go and live in and cause no problems at all. Even though my mother, my father, my grandparents, my kids were just being killed, right? This is going to be a population that is furious at the other Arab countries that they feel didn't support them and furious at the Israelis. I mean, this is a very, going to be a potentially a very radicalized population.

And so I've heard that the Israelis don't really want Jordan to suddenly be an even more majority Palestinian country because they worry about Jordan becoming destabilized. So you know, Donald Trump, is he using this to get other Arab countries and the Israelis to a political settlement of their own? Or is he really thinking this is a great idea? Well, I mean, I'll start by saying that he really thinks it's a great idea, but I want to, I want to step back if you don't mind and just talk a little bit about the Gulf and a little bit about the situation there. And we have a lot of young listeners. And so some of our older listeners may know all of this already, but just 30 seconds on this, the the Ottoman Empire leaving the Middle East and Palestine, the British and the French empires leaving the Middle East and Palestine right around the end of the Second World War. And of course, there's two very famous bureaucrats named Sykes and Picos that develop a treaty. And in this treaty, there's a lot of belief in the Arab world, at least, and there's some books been written about this, that the treaty incited a lot of border disagreements. They put tribes in different areas that looked at historical ancestry of the different tribes in the area, and they cross border lines. You know, there's been a border dispute with the Kuwaitis and the Iraqis engendered that war. Iraq and Syria were imaginary countries that were made by this treaty.

And if you go look at Google Maps, you can see they literally took a ruler, and they drew a line to show you where the differential was between the two countries. And so why is this important part of the conversation? Because the leadership there historically and the students in school are taught that the foreign invasions, the colonialism, and so forth, left the area in disarray, and it was up to the good monarchs and the good leaders in these countries to try to form peace. Why is this important? Because now you have an imperial president. It's coming into the game now, 100 plus years after the Sykes-Picos treaty, and he's saying, we're going to put this American strip of land, we're going to take it from you. So what is this? The Trump-Bibi treaty? Yeah. So this has got to send bombs going off everywhere in terms of the history of the area and the ideology.

Okay, now let me give you the other side. The other side is, hmm, I'm a monarch here. Typically as a monarch, there's some fragility to my reign. I have to make sure I stay in power, and I've got to make sure the masses are fed. I mean, the Saudis did something brilliant in 2008. They flooded the zone of capital into the lower and middle-income people during the crisis. They wanted to make sure everybody was as happy as could be in the country, preserve the monarchy. The monarchs know in the area that the strategic defense alliance with the United States keeps them safely defended from the Iranians. It also gives them some arms shipments. It equalizes the balance, and as you know, the State Department, since the end of World War II, if you're a friend of ours, we don't care if you're a democracy or not. We just want you to be on our side. And so if you're a monarch, we'll help you perpetuate your monarchy as long as you're on our side.

Okay, so all of this stuff is now in the cauldron. So weirdly, there are monarchs in the area, and there are people in politics in the area that quietly like the proposal. They can never say it. They'd have to go out there and say they hate the proposal. But if they had American troop support in the area... Well, because American troops in the Middle East have gone down so well in the past, right? Just saying. I'm just telling you that there's two sides to every argument.

Now, where I come down on it is that you'll have, I don't know what the percentage ratio is, but if there's 1.8 million people being displaced, you will create a lot of terrorists. You'll create a lot of suicide bombings. You'll create a lot of people that are like, okay, this is so unfair to us. On top of what they've just been through, right? On top of what they've just been through. So to me, I think it's a nonsensical idea. It's a non-starter idea.

But you're asking a question, does Donald Trump think it is a good idea, and does Donald Trump want to do that? And the answer is Donald Trump absolutely wants to do it, and he thinks it's a good idea. This four-dimensional chess stuff that's always being said is a bunch of nonsense. Now, the idea won't materialize into that. Something else will happen. The Trump people will claim victory, and they'll say, well, Donald Trump really didn't want to do that. But he does want to do that, Cady. He wants to own Greenland. He wants the Canadians to be the 51st state. He told Brett Baier at the Super Bowl, yeah, let's not pretend he doesn't want to do it.

You know, one thing that is emerging is that Donald Trump has this view of foreign policy and America's role in the world, which is very, as you said, imperial in a way, spheres of influence, right? I can have my sphere of influence, which is Canada and Greenland and Panama, this area of the world. And really, I don't really mind that much if China expands its sphere of influence even potentially to Taiwan and in the Asia Pacific.

And OK, so I know that the Egyptians would love to step into Russia, which I have been told by people who are senior officials in the Biden administration. They were in this constant tug of war with the Egyptians over Russia. I mean, the Russians want another base in the Mediterranean. They're very prepared to step in if the Americans step back from aid. I mean, similarly with the Chinese, the Chinese want to have there's been this struggle with the UAE over China's tech footprint in the UAE and they constant negotiation who has the sphere of influence there.

Donald Trump seems to think that, you know what, if you pull back from USAID, we alienate the Jordanians, we alienate the Egyptians, it doesn't really matter that much so long as I have my sphere of influence in America is so powerful that it will be able to protect its sphere of influence. It's a very different way of seeing the world from the world that we've had since the Second World War.

And I think that what worries some people about this proposal is that even putting it out there, I don't know if you managed to see from your very exciting luxurious Caribbean retreat if you had the time to see King Abdullah sitting in the Oval Office yesterday, because you were on the beach. I mean, it's very, very uncomfortable. This looks like a man who knows that if this goes ahead, that's it. His monarchy is potentially over, right?

I think Trump doesn't seem, maybe he just thinks that something positive will come out of this and a better deal will, you know, the Biden administration got kind of 80% of the way there with some kind of deal for post-war Gaza. And he thinks this is what's going to get them the rest of the way there. But the risks involved in this, we're not living in a world where America is the only possibility anymore for these countries.

And you're right, I don't think MBS cares about the Palestinians, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, cares about the Palestinians or probably even personally cares very much. I've been told about a Palestinian state. You're quite right. But he has a young population that does care and they are pretty exercised about it. So whether he cares personally or not, he has to keep pushing for that. Listen, he wants to stay in power. He's a very shrewd guy and he needs the Americans to stay in power.

But let me ask you this, okay, Gaza, how did the Biden administration do in Gaza? How would you grade the Biden administration?

Yeah, they didn't. They didn't get there. I mean, I suppose you could argue, no, I think they, I think the problem with the Biden administration is they didn't pick a lane. They gave the Israelis the weapons. They never actually held back apart from once the weapon supply. But they also tried to get Bibi to do more on the humanitarian front. And by trying to do both of those things, I'm not sure they ended up doing either of them very well.

We should recognize, Anthony, we're talking at a moment that's very precarious, right? Because we don't know how this Saturday deadline is going to go for the hostages to be released and whether the war is about to resume, whether the ceasefire is over.

Let's go to the Ukraine for a second, Biden administration on the Ukraine. So we just gave him a C or an incomplete sort of a middish to almost failing grade in Gaza and an incomplete. What about the Ukraine?

I think they get a better grade on Ukraine because of the way they rallied the international community. Without Biden's effort, Europeans and NATO would not have stepped up to the degree to which they did in supporting the Ukrainians early on in the war. Now, again, did they try to do a middle course? Should they have been far more, you know, should they have given them the jets earlier? Should they have trained the pilots earlier? Should they have given the attack comes the long range weaponry earlier to hit into Russia? But that was not just American concerns. There were quite a lot of European concerns.

I mean, there were real genuine concerns from my conversations with people in the Biden administration about Russia using a nuclear weapon. And they were trying desperately to make sure that didn't happen. I think you can give him a B on Ukraine. I got him at a C, actually.

And this is the thing about Trump. Again, people are going to I get in trouble with everybody, right? Because I say some things about Trump, which are true and anti Trumpers hate me for it. And then I say some things about Trump that are true. And Trumpers hate me for it. Right. I mean, there's just me because there's some truth in Trump and you have to look at it.

So does the madman theory work in geopolitics because people thought Reagan was a little mad, right? They thought he was a little mad. And this is Nixon's theory, right? That he would play the madman and so the Chinese would. Yeah.

I don't know that the madman theory was and this is what I was saying about we don't live in a world where America is the only game in town. I think the madman theory works better when you are the only game in town. But at the moment, the Egyptians do have the options of going to the Russians. Other countries in the Middle East do have the option of going to the Chinese.

And if the madman theory were to lead to a world in which we are carved up between America's sphere of influence, Russia's sphere of influence and China's sphere of influence. But do those authoritarian countries are they ever really satisfied with just having their sphere of influence? You know, you put them in a little box. They want a bigger box, right? I want the box next door. I want that box as well as my box.

I've had people who are full supporters of Donald Trump who have seriously said, listen, there is a risk in this Trump presidency that we lead to something like a third world war because the spheres of influence theory, which is slightly your madman theory, right? Don't mess with us. And anyway, we're so big that you have to do what we want. You have to bend to our will because we're so big and powerful. And I don't know that that theory works as well when we're in a multipolar world.

All right. I mean, it's all it's a brilliant analysis. I guess the thing that I'm wondering about, if Trump were president and he said to Putin, listen, you're going to go in there just letting you know I'm going to go to the Europeans and we're going to bomb the daylights out of you and we're not going to just let you do this. Was it a historically bad decision by the Biden administration and the Europeans to hold back the Ukrainians? I think it was. Okay. Probably was.

Right. So in other words, the madman theory would have been Vladimir. Hey, giving you the heads up. You're the size of Italy. You have the GDP of Italy. Yeah. Okay. Don't mess with us. We're going to demolish you if you do this. Right. Would that have stopped him from doing it?

Well, that's the kind of, you know, tough guy theory. I'm the biggest guy on the block. But I'm also a little mad. I'm going to I'm going to do things. Yeah. You're going to drop. You're going to nuke us. Why don't you hit us with a nuclear bomb somewhere and see what happens to the Russian state if you do that? Right. I mean, I mean, again, again, I'm not I don't want that because these are people and people are emotional. And if they trip a wire or they get their pride involved, hundreds of millions of people can die.

Right. I mean, Curtis LeMay turned to Jack Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and he says, let's bomb Cuba. And he says, well, you're going to irradiate part of South Florida. Well, that's OK. He said, well, what if they start sending bombs here? And let me say, well, that's OK. And then Kennedy looked at him and said, well, how many people do you think are going to die? He said, well, about one hundred and sixty million. That's what Curtis LeMay said. Kennedy got out of the cabinet room.

He walked outside with his brother and he says, OK, we can't rely on these people. This guy wants to blow up one hundred and sixty million people. We can't do that. Yeah. Right. So I'm not I'm not I'm not calling for that. I'm just I'm just trying to explain to people I want people to think about. There is some things that Trump is doing that you have to look at and say, OK, wait a minute. He's forcing rational people to bend a little bit at the at the decision making.

So, again, I can't speak for the leadership in the Middle East about what they really, really think. I know they put out communiques and said they've denounced the plan and I know they've put out communique saying that they're not going to move the Palestinians and so on and so forth. And I know that Zelensky wants to end the war. And I predict that the war will end the way the Finnish war ended with Stalin. The Finns lost territory. They ceded almost 20 percent of their territory to the Russians and they got peace. And that's roughly what I think will happen here.

But as it relates to Gaza, you know, Trump pushing the way he's pushing, he's either going to be wildly ignored or 12 noon on Saturday, those hostages are going to be released one or the other. And it's a it's a level of brinksmanship now that the Biden administration never engaged in. And again, you know, where would Kamala Harris be today on those two topics? And I would say very different from where Donald Trump is. And then the question is, would she have been more effective and her team than Donald Trump's team? And it's not clear to me because they didn't succeed in the first four years.

Right. And, you know, I've spoken to senior Jordanian officials who are actually pretty optimistic and positive about Donald Trump and do think he has the ability to bring about some kind of big peace deal, which I think is his ultimate goal is some kind of big deal between the Saudis and the Israelis. And I get your madman theory. I don't know that it holds up when Russia has China as its backer. Right. I just kind of distort the equation a little bit in the madman calculations.

But the question is whether he you know, whether he he can get there without kind of destabilizing Egypt, destabilizing Jordan, and whether actually he is underestimating the leverage that America has when these people have very real national interests of their own. You know, King Abdullah wants to stay King Abdullah. He does not want to be deposed King Abdullah living in Monaco. I mean, maybe he does. Maybe he likes Monaco. He certainly doesn't want that because he's loves his country, loves his dad. He wants to keep the monarchy going.

Here are four things I wrote down before this podcast started. I want you to react to all of them. This is like my little your equivalent of a pop quiz for me. Can I just tell you my my blood pressure always rises a little bit at the beginning of these. I feel like I'm, you know, under the spotlight. I value your insight. I want to I want to hear what you're going to say about these four issues. OK, so Marco Rubio. And I said I had to achieve four things in the Middle East. OK, what would I really want? I would want Gaza without Hamas. True or false? True.

OK, so I want the elimination of Hamas. OK, now that's going to be very hard because 80 percent of the people that live in Gaza support Hamas and they made Hamas their political engine, their political organization to control that area. So how do you get Hamas out of Gaza? Don't answer the question yet. I'm going to go to the next one.

OK. OK. It's like Jeopardy. Yeah. The second one is I want Israel and I want Saudi Arabia to sign the Abraham Accords and I want there to be air flights between Jerusalem and Riyadh. Right. What a masterstroke that would be. Right. Someone would probably get the middle Nobel Peace Prize for that. I certainly want that. OK.

And that sends a big signal to the Iranians about how the Gulf, including Israel, is going to be very stabilized and they're going to work with each other economically. Right. So do I want that? I'm assuming the answer to that is yes. Right. Yes. Yes. Definitely. That was lovely. I love the idea of a Nobel Peace Prize.

OK. So the third thing that I want is I want massive economic development in the area.

OK. And this is something that Jared Kushner was pushing in 2018. He hosted an event in Bahrain in 2018, which I attended. Steve Schwartzman was there and others and they were talking about a 50 billion dollar infusion of capital into the West Bank and into Gaza. OK. There were no Palestinians that showed up at this event in Bahrain and all the Palestinian leadership decried it. But Jared was trying to make the point, we'll pump the area with money, Western money, if you drop your arms, OK, we'll give you T-shirts and iPhones and whatever the hell you need, not to kill each other. OK. But they said no. They didn't want that. OK.

So the point is the U.S. is ready in this administration to dump hundreds of billions of dollars into the region. And the question is, is that palatable to anybody?

And then the last point, and I think this is the one that I think I'm hung up on the most, is that they want the Iranian regime to topple. They would like and you have to be careful what you wish for in the Middle East because they wanted the Iraqi regime to topple. Look what they got there. But they want the Iranian regime to topple. OK. So those four things. Let's start. I know we've got to go to a break, but let's start with Hamas.

How do you get Hamas out of Gaza, Katty Kay? Well, Donald Trump's thinking seems to be you don't get it's less that you don't focus on taking the terrorists away from the population. You focus on taking the population away from the terrorists. And that's what the plan is. Right. You get the Palestinian population out of the area and then you decimate who's left. But the logistics of doing that, I think, are almost impossible. That's not a solution. OK.

Number two. Number two. Obviously, that's the big goal. It was the big goal for Trump one. It was actually a goal for Biden. And it's a goal for Trump, too. I think not dealing with the Palestinians the first time around was a mistake in the Abraham Accords. And the realization now for MBS, whatever he feels personally, is that he has to stay committed to a two state solution. Yeah. He's got to be like, look, I'll sign this thing, but let's give them some sovereignty of representation in the UN and let's put a peacekeeping, multilateral peacekeeping force in the area. And and let's see if we can get that done. OK.

And it's probably inconsistent with point one. But anyway, well, it's inconsistent with point one. And also the political leadership has never really accepted the two state solution. I'm talking about the Palestinian political leadership. And why is that, Katty Kay? Why won't they accept the two state political solution? That would be then a permanent recognition of the fact that they're never going to get Israel. Israel has to exist. OK, right. There's a very large group of people in the area that does not want Israel to exist under any circumstances. It's almost an 80 year old nation and they don't want that nation in the in the area. Right.

So said differently, it's one third as old as the United States. But they don't want that. They don't want that nation in the area. So it's going to be this is a tough problem. Right.

So, yeah. Donald Trump is going to solve the Ukrainian war in 24 hours, but he's going to solve this in five minutes. But I think we both agree. You're the only Arab speaker on this podcast, by the way, I can barely speak English. You're the only Arab speaker on the podcast. So we both know there's a problem. OK, so let's go to the economic plan. That's a nonstarter for the same reasons. Right. There's a.

"If they don't want the state. They want to annihilate Israel. So Golda Meir is right, Katty Kay. We won't have peace. They hate us more than they love their children. And as long as that's the case, we won't have any peace. They want us off the face of the earth and we're not going anywhere. So too bad."

"And then the last piece is the Iranians. Has the Iranian state been weakened? Definitely. And I think there is an opportunity here, except that Iran is getting closer to Russia and China. And I think Donald Trump does have an opportunity, particularly, you know, look at why did why did as our friends Alastair Rory know well, having just returned from Damascus, which I'm very jealous of because I have not been to Damascus since I was a teenager and it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world."

"You Brits, you guys roam around your imperial history. I'd rather be in the Bahamas than Damascus. OK, I'll just put that out there."

"OK, so when I was a child, I drove along the railway that Lawrence of Arabia blew up through Saudi Arabia. And I have photographs of myself standing on the railway carriages that were still lying in the desert because the air was so dry. This was my crazy mother took me up and down, you know, that's why you guys are the British. I mean, God bless you."

"But my point, my point in this topic is that a weaker Iran gets closer to China and Russia. But I do believe a weaker Iran weakens some of these terrorist organizations that are state-sponsored by Iran. I do believe that. So I do. I do believe that these these people are in a weaker position today than they were prior to October 7th. There are absolutely opportunities here. And Donald Trump has leverage that Joe Biden didn't have. And the question is, how does he use that leverage and does he use it with a clear purpose in mind? And can he get all of the other nations in the area to agree to whatever big deal it is that he's going to come to? And we'll find out."

"At the moment, he's just making King Abdullah look very awkward in the I would watch that for for a lesson in how to look awkward in a meeting with Donald Trump. That is number one."

"So before we go, there was a zero option in Europe in the 1980s. We were putting missiles up, purging missiles in Western Europe. And Reagan got to the table and said, how about a zero option? We'll pull our missiles. You guys pull your missiles. And it shocked everybody. People didn't anticipate that. What if Trump said to people, listen, I need to give these people sovereignty, whether you like it or not, and they're going to be under the protection of America? There's going to be an American protectorate in the Gaza Strip. And we are going to talk to leaders in Gaza that are not affiliated with Hamas and don't want to be affiliated with Hamas. And we're going to help them redevelop this area. They're going to be in control of it. They're going to govern it. But they're going to be under the protection of America. And we're going to help the non-Hamas-associated Palestinians to help us destroy, frankly, destroy the Hamas cause of terrorism in the area."

"And we're going to make it so beautiful, to use a Trumpian expression, and so wonderful. Let me just move my hand like this so people on YouTube can see it. We're going to make it so beautiful and so wonderful that there won't be a need for terrorism. I think they have to come at it from a different angle, is my point. And I think Trump is saying, get them out of there, we'll redevelop it, and we'll push them into other countries. No. Let them stay there. Let's work with non-Hamas Palestinians to redevelop the area and to protect them and to get security guarantees from the Middle East and from the Saudis that they're going to be protected and safe."

"If terrorism were just a function of economics, you probably wouldn't have had 9-11. Osama bin Laden was not a poor person."

He didn't come from a background in Saudi Arabia where his family had no wealth and this was an economic prospect. Just because you give them the Ritz-Carlton in Gaza doesn't mean you're going to suddenly wish away. And I think that's how Donald Trump is thinking. Give them a swimming pool and a beautiful resort and suddenly they won't be terrorists anymore. I mean, I think that's, I get your point, think about this differently, but that is not where terrorism comes from. Again, again, it hasn't been solved for 80 years. I'm not saying it's going to be solved. No, and you're saying think about it differently. I get it.

Kicking out the Palestinians, which is a non-starter globally, and it's literally, definitionally, ethnic cleansing, I don't think that's the right thing to do. I think it's going to impede progress for people. He's taking it seriously, but if others in his administration take it seriously, it's going to impede whatever potential progress there could be in the area. Let's see how long this idea lives. And with that, we'll take a break.

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Now politics is full of so-called red flags. These are signs that something is about to go wrong. And part of my job when I was working for Donald Trump was to spot these before anyone else did and make sure that we had a plan in place. I got so many different crises, but at the end of the day, it was really Donald Trump's lying that we were trying to get our arms around. And of course, we spent so much time focusing on the negative, it can really get you down. Therapy has helped me to think not just about red flags, but also about green flags.

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Welcome back to the rest is politics us. I'm Anthony Scaramucci. Yeah, I'm Katty Kay. So Katty, we have another live stream for our founding members this Monday. It's going to be 8pm UK time, 3pm New York time. So keep an eye on it in your inbox for the link. If you signed up on YouTube, we'll share the live stream link in the community channel. And if you want to become a founding member and watch these episodes live, sign up at therestispoliticsus.com. For everyone else, the episode will be available on Tuesday morning, wherever you get your podcast. But we do appreciate you guys chiming in with us and Katty and I love the questions and we love the insight that we get from our founding members. So please think about becoming a founding member.

I'm not as good of a salesperson and I don't have Katty Kay's accent, but I think that was pretty good. How was that Katty Kay? Was that okay?

You are officially promoted to chairperson for this week only. I may have to take the chair back. Alright. That's usually what happens to me. I'm able to do a job for about a week and then some bad shit starts happening to me. But you're not quite making a Scaramucci on the chairperson front.

Yeah. Okay. Seven elevenths of a Scaramucci. Thank you, Katty.

Yes. I'm making it even shorter. And there is just so much going on, as you all may have noticed at the moment in the Trump administration that we feel it is worth giving you a little update more frequently. And actually, that's what we wanted to talk about this half, Antony, is at what point, because I had an interesting conversation with somebody who was senior in the first Trump administration and worked pretty much throughout that period, who said something to me.

I was trying, I had a conversation with him to try and kind of determine, you know, how should we be thinking about everything that's going on? And he reiterated something that you have said, which is that the way to think about this, all of these executive orders, everything that Trump is doing is that it's really about the ratings. It's really about keeping the public's attention. It's not about changing America, because if he wanted to change America, he would have to do this through Congress. I mean, he has a Republican majority in Congress. So if you really wanted to change the federal bureaucracy in a permanent way, get rid of American aid in perpetuity, you'd have to do it through Congress, right? And potentially he could go to Congress. But that would take time. It would move slowly. What he wants in these early stages of his administration is pretty simple. He wants an enormous amount of attention, an enormous amount of eyeballs. And I think that, you know, that kind of it's an interesting way of thinking almost about everything that he's doing at the moment. This is a ratings grab and God, I mean, they're doing an amazing job of using these incredibly slick videos that they've started producing.

One of our producers at Goldhanger sent us this, these very slick Instagram videos, social media videos that they're producing at the end of the day with Caroline Leavitt, the press secretary standing there talking about everything that he's done. I mean, it's like a one minute daily resume ad for the White House. We've done this, this, this, this and this. And I think it's it's so far it's been effective. The question for me is how long can he maintain people's attention? You know, I, I hear you. I hear you. And I think that that's what he wants to do. And he's he's decided that he's going to have the press in the Oval Office every single day. Very different from the first term. And I understand that as well. But I guess, you know, our sister podcast or brother podcast, however you want to call it, Alistair, always says something that I think is important. When will the media, when will the media stop covering? Like when will the media. OK, you've said the same thing 150 times. Yes, it was slightly crazier than the last thing you said. So we have to cover it, you know? I mean, like when will the batshit crazy meter at the media, you know, like the Geiger counter, the radioactivity and Cady or will that go on for four years?

I mean, you had a turn of phrase at the FTU. What was that turn of phrase? Oh, yeah, that was good. Yeah. That was my friend Ed Luce, who was writing in the FTU shout out to him this week. And he said, at the moment, it's boringly shocking. But what happens when it becomes shockingly boring? I think that's a real question for Trump, because you can see that you saw it this week. Right. So the signing of the executive orders is his moment to get the press in every time there's an executive order signed. And by the way, one thing that we should say this week for one of the executive orders that was signed on Tuesday, the one about expanding Doge's powers, the Associated Press was not allowed into the room for the signing of that, because the Associated Press is still calling the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of Mexico, not the Gulf of America. And their argument is that we are a global news organization. America now calls it Gulf of America, but the rest of the world still calls it the Gulf of Mexico. Therefore, we are protocol is that we are still calling it the Gulf of Mexico. And they were banned. We're talking about the Associated Press, not kind of, you know, Marxist daily. I mean, he's going to be he's going to be upset with Apple. I mean, you know, he calls him Tim Apple, but it's really Tim Cook. He's going to be really upset with Tim Cook, because Tim Cook, if you go to Apple Maps, it says the Gulf of Mexico. So so I guess, you know, I don't know, does the U.N. still call it the Gulf of Mexico?

I imagine so. Yeah, we know that the Arabs call the Arabian Gulf the Arabian Gulf and the Persians call it the Persian Gulf. And we know we know that. And so if we're going to do that here, that's fine. You know, people it's just funny to me that people don't really even understand what happened during the Mexican war. They don't understand the number of Mexicans that were killed by the Americans and they don't understand the force out where we took their land and we pushed the Mexicans back below the Rio Grande. And the notion that that was called the Gulf of Mexico was totally acceptable, given the magnitude that everything that happened on the North American continent.

But, you know, some orange man has showed up. He wants to call it the Gulf of America and he wants to be America first. You know, there was an interesting thing the other day where he's he wants reciprocal tariffs. And so he's gone through the list. Wherever your tariffs are, we're going to have ours right where yours are. And so that negates eighty five years of U.S. history. And it fails to recognize that the United States was trying to help these developing countries and we were accepting tariffs on our goods and services and we're allowing theirs to flow into the country so that we could raise living standards. And you're sitting there. You want to end the migrant crisis and the border crisis. Well, how about helping your neighbors in South and Central America? But now we're going to have reciprocal tariffs with them. That's not going to help them.

Richer neighbors to our South, Katie Kay, less migrants. OK, everybody understood that. We ended lots of economic development ideas, lots of economic aid to those areas. And you could have kept those people in their countries. But now we have a 800 mile run to the border where you've got young women with their newborn babies running for the border. Think about the economic desperation that they may feel in their own country.

So I get where Trump is coming from, but it is so naive and it shows such a lack of the substantial history that has taken place here in the new world over the last 500 years and over the last 250 years that the United States has been a nation. So OK, we can do all these things, but without the historical context, OK, I think it's very, very dangerous. And if you said to Trump what I'm saying, he looks at you like you're nuts and he gets a little pissed that, you know, something that he doesn't know. But he doesn't he doesn't respond. He would say what you think he would say, well, this is good for ratings. So bring bring in the cameras. Let me sign these things are good for ratings.

I think it's also that he genuinely believes on the tariffs front that America has been ripped off by other countries. He has this thing about trade deficits, that trade deficits are inherently unfair to the United States, not that Americans just like buying stuff like sofas and washing machines, but also that countries should pay to have access to the extraordinary American market. And this is something that he's always said. And again, a bit like we said in the first half, and this is always the thing I think that I'm trying to understand what's going on in Washington at the moment.

What's a genuine belief and a proposition and is something he's going to stick to and what is a negotiating strategy? And the question around tariffs has been that is he using tariffs as leverage? Is that why he delayed the tariffs on Mexico and Canada? My understanding is that he may have delayed them for legal reasons in order to reimpose them in 30 days in a way that is more structurally sound for the White House and is less likely to get overturned by the courts. Or does he genuinely believe that he wants to impose these tariffs? And even if it precipitates a trade war with potentially even America's allies, that's okay, because America is the biggest, strongest, most lucrative market in the world.

And in the end, a bit like we were saying with the kind of Middle Eastern countries, in the end, other countries will bow to Donald Trump's demand and carry on. They won't try and trade with China or Europe or the global South, because actually, it's the American market that's the most important market. I think this time around, even though the first Trump administration, he imposed tariffs and there were a ton of exemptions, what he's done with the steel and aluminum tariffs that he imposed this week, the 25% that will come into effect on the 12th of March. He's actually kind of done away with the exceptions and the exemptions that he had in the first administration. So I think actually this time around, he's much more determined to really go ahead with the tariff regime.

Let me ask you a family question, Katty Kay. Yeah. It's a family question. It's a family show, right? Do we think we have a lot of kids that watch the show? I don't know that there are very many, not like Elon. I don't think Elon Musk's son, four-year-old son is watching the show. I don't think he's watching. Elon would probably like shadow ban us probably because of some of the stuff we say. But let me just ask you this question.

You have a rich guy in the family, very wealthy guy in the family, and then you have a lot of poor people in the family. I'm going to give you two fact sets and you tell me which family is doing better. So you have a very wealthy guy in the family. He's done very, very well. He's benefited from the natural resources around him. He's benefited from a really good system in place. He's done very well. There's a lot of poor people in the family. And so the rich guy makes a decision, wow, I'm a very rich guy and yes, I've got to take care of the people right in here in my backyard, but I've also got to take care of other family members. If I take care of other family members holistically, the entire family is going to do better and everyone, there'll be a better sense of calm and there'll be better sense of peace. That's one fact set.

Let's say another fact set. I've got a very rich guy and you know, it's about me and I made it all on my own and there's no luck involved. There's no anything involved other than me and it's me and me and me that I mentioned that it was me, the result of which is you're not rich. And even though you're in my family, I really want nothing to do with you. And if anything, if you want to come to my swimming pool, because I've got this gorgeous Olympic size swimming pool and I've got this gigantic American style TV, not a European floaty flamingos and the floaty dolphins. And yes, exactly. And not a European eyeglass dropper TV, the cocktails with the umbrellas. Yes, everything. I've got everything. But you've got to pay. I'm a very rich guy. But you know what? I've got such a luxury, luxe, it's not an open bar. You've got to pay to come in.

So let me ask you this question. Which family is going to do better? Go ahead. You tell me. If you said the second family, you'd say you ninny. That's the wrong answer. Obviously, the first family. I know. If you said the second family, I would get orange hair dye. I know exactly where to buy the orange bronzer and I would deliver it to you in D.C. Yeah.

Didn't Donald Trump try to get his brother's kids cut out of the family inheritance? Well, exactly. Yeah. There's a big there's a big book. One of his nephews wrote a book about that. But my point is, is that when we had this neoclassical, neovictorian group of people who believed in and I don't even know how to pronounce it right. But it's like no police oblige or however a great Brit like you would say it. There was an obligation. Actually, a French person would say it, but anyway. OK. But maybe it was a French person. But my point is, you know, and again, maybe it was a religious context to it, too. Maybe there was like a Christian context to it or J. Dale Christian context.

It's like, OK, listen, we've got this. But for the grace of God. OK. And happy is the man that is happy or happy is the woman that's happy with their own lot in life. But there's something about us that we have to do. We have to help other people. I grew up in a blue collar neighborhood. I did make some money. I try to take care of my family members in that neighborhood. I paid college tuitions. I bought cars and I'm not patting myself on the back. It's a necessary thing to do to help the functionality and the harmony of the people around you.

And I think and I think that's a micro that's a micro conversation. But there's a macro conversation happening geopolitically. And Mr. Trump, President Trump, he doesn't see it the way the neo Victorians like Marshall, Atkinson, Truman, Eisenhower, the way they saw it. You know, I was in your beautiful country, the U.K. last week. I got I got the opportunity to speak at the Atlantic Council. I was there for breakfast. The Americans need to understand something. The world sees America very differently than the Americans see themselves. OK, they're looking for help from America. They're looking for America, the kind America, the benevolent.

And I'm not saying that everybody likes America. Sure, there are people that don't like us and they want to knock our block off. And I get all of that. But in general, Western nations and aspirational people in Western nations, they look to America for the ideals of America. And yes, all of its imperfections and so forth. But what Donald Trump is basically saying to people, hey, man, that's over. You're going to come to my swimming pool and drink my cocktails with the umbrellas in them. You're going to pay me for them.

And if we're going into that society, if he's successful in doing that, I think it's going to be a more callous world. I think it'll be a world that'll be tougher. It'll be tougher on America and Americans than Donald Trump and his minions that surround him at the White House actually think. It's also contradictory with what we were talking about in the first half, which is Donald Trump's idea that there are spheres of influence, because to protect a sphere of influence, you've got to protect your allies.

The largest sources of imports of U.S. steel that have just been hit by tariffs, Canada, Mexico, Australia, America imports from. That's another ally. I mean, if you really want this kind of idea of, right, we're carving the world up into kind of great power spheres of influence, then you, well, I guess Donald Trump thinks he's going to own those countries, so maybe they wouldn't be subject to tariffs anymore. But it seems contradictory with the sphere of influence idea. I mean, in that in that model, you really do have to protect your allies.

It's so well said what you're saying. If you want to have a sphere of influence, you've got to work with and protect your allies. It's just so well said what you're saying. But I don't know why we're forgetting that, Katty Kay. But it's one man and the bellicose of his rhetoric and his bullying style. And it's one man's political polling. He's done very well. There's a group of people in the country that believe what this one man is saying to the point where he scared other people.

And by the way, I don't know where the Democrats are. There's no nobody's articulating what I'm saying on the side of the Democrats. Nobody's getting organized. There's no organized dissent to what he's doing. I mean, you got an old folks home in the Senate. Let's just be honest about it. And so they're not up for it and not ready for it. I think the only dissent is going to come from the courts. And we're starting to see that happen quite aggressively. The courts are pushing back on a lot of what Donald Trump is trying to do and potentially from the financial markets.

If he really does believe in tariffs and it's not just a leveraging negotiating tactic, then I think although the markets have been pretty resilient so far, you could see a real market response on both of those. I think if you're looking for containment, it's not going to come from the Democrats. It's going to come from the courts and the markets. I know we have to go, but I have to just play this out with you before we leave.

So the courts say, you know, Mr. Trump, there's three Marbury vs Madison. There's three separate but equal branches of government. And we're the branch that rules on whether or not you're breaking the Constitution. And you are. You are breaking the Constitution. And so we'd like you to stop breaking the Constitution. President Trump says, I'm not going to stop breaking the Constitution. And he goes to the Department of Justice, his admin there and says, we're going to continue to do exactly what we're doing.

Now the court has the right to hold President Trump in contempt of court. So what do they do? And they say, sir, we have to arrest you. You're in contempt of court. So is that going to happen? No, I don't think that's going to happen. I think the court will choose very carefully which of these cases to say no on because they want to avoid precisely the scene of marshals going to knock on the door of the White House.

Let's say they take birthright citizenship, for example, and that's the one they say, OK, we're ruling against you, Mr. President, you're wrong. You have to stop. I think on that one, probably Donald Trump would say, OK, fine. But I mean, is there one he would say no on? I'm just not going to accept the court's ruling. I don't know that the court doesn't have the power to enforce this short of U.S. marshals. And I just don't see the Roberts court wanting to send U.S. marshals. Do you? I mean, knock on the door. Good morning. Hello. This is the U.S. Marshals Service. I mean, they did it in Mar-a-Lago, I suppose.

Cady, Cicero once said we are slaves to the law in order to be free. And Jefferson said, I will accept the document over my own personal judgment, because if I do that, we are going to create predictability in our laws. We're going to create a structure. We're going to create a foundation, which is going to lead to phenomenal credit for the country. Hamilton and Jefferson understood this. And we're going to be a platform for economic growth.

And so when you go down this slope where you have one leader that wants to break the system because he thinks he's right and the system is wrong, you hurt the capital markets in that country. You hurt the legal system in that country. You get people scared about the arbitrary nature of what autocrats do in a country where they start to make up the laws and they make the laws fit them as opposed to relying on the system.

This is why the blockchain works, Cady, because it's decentralized and you don't have to trust any one individual. That was a brilliant, almost pitch for Bitcoin, just slipped in at the end. I'm not pitching anything on this podcast. I'm just pointing out that decentralized systems like the American government, remarkably decentralized, they last a long time. It's the longest lasting government in current service right now because they are not beholden to one person. This person wants to break that system.

We're going to leave it, but I'm going to just ask one question of you before we go because I had a very interesting conversation this week in which somebody said to me that people around Mike Pence have suggested to him in the context of January the 6th, that if he had not done his constitutional duty on January the 6th, but had done Donald Trump's bidding and had refused to certify the election results of 2020, what would have happened? Donald Trump might have refused to leave the White House. You could have had the U.S. Marshals turning up. The Supreme Court would have ruled against Donald Trump.

And paradoxically, in certifying the results of the 2020 election, Mike Pence kind of squashed down an explosion that was about to happen. And if that explosion had been left to happen and had unfolded to its fullest extent, then Donald Trump would never have been reelected because the courts would have moved in in a way that would have prevented him from running again.

Yeah. And the American military under General Milley would have helped the marshals and the military would have said we're behind the Constitution.

Yeah. It was an interesting idea. I mean, obviously, Mike Pence did it because that was his constitutional duty. Mike Pence would have been disgraced. But he could have. He could have prevented Donald Trump from ever running again. And he was clearly not thinking of that on January the 6th and nobody was.

That's the irony of the whole thing, because McCarthy, McConnell, they all thought the actions of January 6th finished Donald Trump. You know, McCarthy got back from Mar-a-Lago. He told his buddies, Kevin McCarthy did, that Trump's finished. I just went down there to, you know, break bread and shake hands, but he's finished.

He's back in the White House and he's you know, you see, the thing about this is that maybe the system's going to hold, but he's going to press the system. And the question is, he doesn't have Mark Milley at the military anymore. He doesn't have certain people in place that would fight him. And we'll have to see if there's people, there's people, ethical, patriotic people that really actually understand the system that they lived under, that created this great prosperity in this great nation, if they're willing to sustain it or they're going to side with one man.

We'll have to see, Katie Kay. We're going to leave it there. Thank you so much for listening. Our founding members, of course, will be back with a Q&A on Sunday morning. So do listen to that and join us on Monday for our live stream on YouTube, 3 p.m. Eastern time, 8 p.m. UK time. That will air again on Tuesday for everybody else. If you're not a founding member, you can catch that extra episode on Tuesday morning. And we will be back next week. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you guys for listening. We'll be back to you soon.

Wow, brilliant work. You've listened right up to the end of the episode. Very impressive commitment. But can I ask you something? Have you heard an advert on today's episode and thought, you know what, I'm sure the listeners would rather hear about my brand instead of the other things they're promoting on here? Well, you might be right. And there's only one way to find out.

What do you say about that, Katie? You could be the next fuse and put your brand in front of millions of like-minded listeners by advertising on The Rest is Politics US and other shows across the Goalhanger network.

So who are Goalhanger, this mysterious Goalhanger that we keep talking about? Well, they are the company behind this very show. And if you're in the market to increase the value of your brand, they want to hear from you. In fact, Goalhanger is going to be hosting a special get-together for prospective advertisers on all of their shows in March. It's taking place in the fashionable London district of Holborn. Is that fashionable, Caddy Bay, Holborn? We'll say it's fashionable.

All right. But you're going to be fashionable because you know why? We're going to be there. OK, exactly. You're going to meet Caddy Kaye and Gary Lineker. And you're going to have to put up with the presence of Alistair Campbell. Of course, you may hear Dominic Sandbrook. He may also be there. And he is a brilliant renditioner of adverts, Caddy. He bested me on election night, which I'm still upset about.

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