With less than five weeks to go before Americans take to the polls to decide their 47th US President, all eyes are on Donald Trump and Kamala Harris as they ramp up their election campaign.
When it comes to predicting the outcome, who better to speak to than former White House comms director Anthony Scaramucci?
Scaramucci initially made his mark in finance, founding the investment firm SkyBridge Capital, which focuses on hedge fund investment. But his rise to prominence in the political arena came during the Trump administration, where he gained media attention for his outspoken and often controversial remarks.
Scaramucci’s time in the White House was notably short – lasting only ten days – yet it sparked significant discussion about communication strategies and the inner workings of the Trump administration.
Our friends at investment platform Saxo helped hook us up with the man himself. Here’s what he had to say…
SM: Of all the things you learnt in your brief tenure at the White House, what shocked you the most?
AS: I'll say after going through a presidential briefing, it shocked me. It shocked me to get an idea of the issues that are facing the United States, which are monumental. They are also facing the United Kingdom, of course. Terrorism, migration, foreign adversaries that are infiltrating our social media, drug trafficking, Fentanyl, for example.
I wasn’t in the intelligence briefing itself, but if I listed all of the things that we were faced with then you would understand how organised our adversaries actually are.
Your people are being undermined by Vladimir Putin. He's trying to undermine your democracy. You have, unfortunately, willing and useful idiots in your government who are helping him. Mr. Brexit, Nigel Farage. He's a useful dope and a useful idiot, for a lot of reasons. Tucker Carlson. Donald Trump. Matt Gates, these are useful idiots for Vladimir Putin.
Nigel Farage is a useful dope and a useful idiot, for a lot of reasons
So, the irony of the situation is that in these countries, we do have free speech. But in totalitarian countries, they know how to manipulate us and if we don't have the right principled people around, it's a very dangerous situation. You have people in the United States that are being paid to say certain things.
We're disrupting lots of terrorist activity in the West. The NSA has the capability of identifying threats and keeping things from getting out of hand. There is a reason why the United States has not had a terrorist attack of consequence since 2001 and that's because we've intercepted countless terrorist attacks. We're working alongside our European allies, New Zealand, Australia [and], Canada to try to resolve that but when I read the first presidential daily brief, I was very concerned.
When I got fired from the White House, George W. Bush said to me, “Did you have access to the brief?”
“Yes, sir, I did.”
“That's a game changer. Isn't it? Is that a life changer?”
And I said “Yes, sir. It's a life changer, yes.” He said It's hard not to have a change in your life when you read it for the first time.
This was another problem with Trump. He didn't take the stuff seriously. You need leadership.
SM: If the election was tomorrow? How likely do you think that would be for Harris to win that blue wall?
AS: The Siena New York Times poll said Harris is currently sat at plus three. In the last two years, Trump has under-polled so Harris will need to be at plus five in the polls for her to win comfortably. If the latest polling has any error in it, Trump will win. At this point in the last cycle in 2020, Joe Biden was at plus 10, so Harris is behind where Biden was in 2020 at the moment.
It looks like Trump is going to win Georgia. It feels like it's toss up in Pennsylvania and places like Wisconsin but of course, Trump wants to win one of those states. So Harris has to win the blue wall which includes Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan; she's gotta win those three.
SM: The Harris early bounce has stalled a little and the polls are not shifting much either way. What does Kamala have to do in the last four weeks to gain the edge?
AS: I want to start by saying that I believe the polls are accurate this time. They were behind, meaning they were under polling Trump support in 2016 and 2020. But I think they're accurate this time because when you go through the methodology, they're building two to three points for Donald Trump before they post up the final number. So I think the race is currently too close to call. And I think the race is definitely winnable for both sides.
Whether you like him or not, Trump is out there. He's going to do one rally a day or two rallies a day now until election day.
Kamala Harris is doing more work than her predecessors. I like her hand better because she has momentum
Kamala Harris’s positive is that in addition to not being Donald Trump, she has a very broad team. And she's doing more work than her predecessors. As an example, Hillary didn't go to Wisconsin once. Kamala showed up in Wisconsin recently with Liz Cheaney. She has 2,000 people on the campaign staff and tens of thousands of volunteers. The last time we counted the volunteer numbers, she had 200,000 people but they were working effectively 300,000 peoples’ worth of shifts, meaning, many of those 200,000 people were working two, eight hour shifts. So she's got 320 campaigns, this is an unprecedented number – nobody has that. From the Hillary Clinton perspective, this is very different from 2016 because they're in the field, they are working, and she is showing up the campaign so she's got all that going for her.
But Trump has something that she doesn't have. He has a hundred percent brand name saturation. Now, Harris started on this real assault for the presidency on the 21st of July, but I would say that she's still somewhat unknown. That's a problem for her. Someone may say, ‘I'll take the devil that I know versus the devil I don't.’
So, for me, this is the question. Whose hand would I like right now? Nate Silver says Trump's hand. He's got a 60% chance to win because if you look at the seven states, the battleground states, he's better than Harris on most of the margin metrics.
But I like her hand better because she has momentum. She's doing more media and she's raising more money than him. We're gonna spend almost two billion dollars to elect a president. So she's gonna have a two to one money advantage on him and she's gonna have a two to one personnel advantage on him as well. He has a name advantage and he's a former president. But she's got something she can build on. Trump has a high floor but he has a low ceiling - he caps out at 47 and a half percent.
SM: Donald Trump is 78 years old. Should age be a contributing factor in voters making their decision at the ballot box? Is Trump’s cognition to be brought into question?
AS: I think there are two ways to hit Donald Trump: 1). You can hit him on the cowardice argument that he is not debating or 2) You can hit him on his age and the fact his mental faculties are shot.
A recent New York Times article described the dementia that he's facing. You can see it in the incoherence of his sentence structure and the way he's handling himself. I think they've [the Democrats] got to hit him very hard on that, and they haven’t.
SM: Does Donald Trump have any redeeming features - either personally or professionally?
AS: What I would say is that he's got great political instincts. He's identified the economic desperation of large swaths of working-class people. He can be incredibly charming in person. And I would say that he has some good policy instincts when it comes to regulation and tax policy for businesses.
Up against that, though, he doesn't like America's position in the world. He doesn't like America oversharing its resources with other countries. He doesn't like the way the alliances are set up because they're all leaning on America.
But if you understand power and the balance of power, you have to go back to Thomas Hobbes in The Leviathan. Hobbes says that we have our greatest level of peace when there is one large behemoth, one large hegemonic power, and through its military power can deal with conflicts and tribal differences around the world.
And remember, the US wanted to have military supremacy so they were less anxious about getting to the 2% GDP spending threshold for NATO members. For other members, they were less anxious about all this. They figured less military power in places like Germany is better for the US long-term.
This interview was facilitated by investment platform Saxo. See more at home.saxo
