Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - 2024, This Is It Says Marianne Williamson

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

With the 2024 presidential Election Day fast approaching, Anthony talks with Democratic candidate Marianne Williamson. Marianne outlines her fight for the Presidency, why she's the person for it, and what she will do to win... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci and this is Open book where I talk with some of the brightest minds out there about everything surrounding the written word from authors and historians to figures and entertainment, neuroscientists, political activists, and of course, Wall Street. Sorry, I can't resist. Before we get into today's episode, if you haven't already, please hit follow or subscribe, wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review. We all love a review, even the bad ones. I want to hear the parts you're

enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punch. So let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. Election Day is nearly upon us in 2024, arguably our most important presidential race yet. With neither Trump nor Biden budging, Marianne Williamson joins me today to tell us why she decided to put her hat in the ring. I'm not a Democrat, but I'm certainly a fan of Marianne and loved what she had to say on today's show.

So I'm delighted to have an open book today, Marianne Williamson. She's a best-selling author, spiritual leader, and a 2024 presidential candidate. She's run for president before. And when I say a best-selling author, you've written 15 books, Marianne, four of which have made number one on the New York Times list. The only way I could get one of my books on that list, I'd have to buy all of them, Marianne. But I think they're on to people that try to do that.

So I've never done that either. Like someone else, we know. Well, exactly. Well, it's great to have you here. And you ran for the presidency in 2020. I always looked at that and said, wow, that's got to be an incredibly tough thing to do. Let's start there. Why did you decide?

I mean, I sort of know the answer to this, but I want our viewers and listeners who may not be as familiar with you. Why did you decide to run? And listen, I think it's one of the toughest things to do in America. It's run for president. You know, the travel, the scrubbing that you get from the media, the throbbing, all that other stuff. So tell me why this brilliant, wonderful career you're transitioning into politics. I think certain things need to be said, and I think certain things need to be done. And I think our political establishment is dominated by a conversation in which the most important things are not usually said,

and the most important things are certainly not being done. Rather, the political establishment, the corporatist elements in both major parties, are enabling forces that are actually destroying our democracy. And I look around and I go, is anybody else going to run for president who's going to say this? and I didn't see anyone else coming across the hill. And I said, then I will. Okay, so I have this theory, having been close to it, been burnt by it, and, you know, and came into a relatively naive, which is hard for me to admit. You like to think of yourself as street smart and season, but the world of politics is so different, at least in my opinion, than the world of business. There are different incentives, different angles of attack.

But I feel like the American leadership now has totally lost the plot. They're there in this sort of fever bed of capitalism and cronyism, where lobbyists are paying them to do certain things. They only respond to you if you have bags of money. And if you have bags of money, you can get things done like put fertilizer into our food, overly process our food, add food dyes and different things to our food that you couldn't get done at a place like Europe, for example. Big Pharma has its way now with the FDA. The military industrial complex, we are running wars now, 50 years worth of war, These wars are great for a very small group of people at the top, and they're very ungrate for the rest of the people, particularly the lower and middle class. And oh, by the way, if you're super wealthy and you get in trouble, it's no problem.

We're going to lower interest rates and we're going to give you unlimited amounts of capital from our treasury so your bank can survive or you can stay rich. But we won't do that for the middle or lower income people. But what we do do for them, though, is we cripple them with inflation and devaluation of our money. So if you're getting paid with your time and energy is going towards work, as opposed to you owning assets, the dollar that we put in your pocket is worth 92 cents a year later, and it makes it harder and harder for you to catch up. And so what have I missed, Marian? Tell me what I've missed or did I get that wrong? These are all public servants that are serving the American public and the policies that they're coming up with are actually working for the average American.

You were 100% correct. And the only thing that I would modify was your first sentence. You said they've lost the plot. No, they haven't. They've changed the plot. They have changed the plot from democracy to oligarchy because everything that you just described as an oligarchic system, you described a system in which of relatively few people with a lot of money get to govern according to their goal, which is short-term profit maximization for themselves. And that is at the expense of democracy. And you described that situation perfectly. I think it's letting them off the hook too easily to say they've lost the plot. They have intentionally changed the plot and they continue to do so. And they would have the American people think that qualified

leadership is people qualified in maintaining and perpetuating what is essentially that scam. Okay, so I ask people about you all the time. I say, well, what if somebody like Marianne Williamson was to run the government? And invariably, people say that would be wonderful if we had somebody like Marion Williamson because you would be doing it to serve people. You would not be doing it to serve yourself. I mean, I've read your books. I understand where you're coming from from a spiritual point of view and where you're coming from a human welfare point of view and from a place of kindness. So I don't want to be overly cynical, but I want to just point this out, why can't somebody like you crack through those atmospherics? Like, why are we choosing between dementia,

and dementia. I mean, those are basically our choices for 2024, where if you ask 80% of the American people, you know, I really don't want demented or dementia. I would like to have somebody that, you know, cares about where we're going and would be focused on right or wrong. Okay, so go ahead. What am I getting wrong? Why can't we get somebody like you to break through that haze, if you will? First of all, we can, but we're going to have to rise to the challenge. I think the majority of people, Anthony, are just processing all of this. I think a critical mass on both left and right are as we speak waking up to what you've said here, what I've agreed with, about the depth of corruption that now infuses our political system

and waking up to the fact that the institutional realities, namely public parties, which we were brought up to believe could be trusted to protect and, expand our democratic pillars are in fact the very problem in too many cases. So I think there has not been apathy. I think there's been confusion and an almost paralysis. But this is no different than our own personal lives. If you go through something really big, you don't immediately jump into solution. You often say, wait, I got to think this through. Wait a minute. I got to think about this. And I think that's where the American people have been. It's like, wait, we've got to think about this. No, we can't have her. We can't have her because she's.

She doesn't have all the like, you know, she's not a political car mechanic. And then you realize, well, no, but the problem is that we're on the wrong row. So that doesn't have to do with the political car mechanic. Well, could she actually do that? And then we go there because we've been sold that it's almost like a Wizard of Oz quality. You have to be one of them, like a Wizard of Olives. But then you realize, no, the Wizard was just this guy with a mask on. We've got to tear down the curtain.

I'm reminded of a line from Franklin Roosevelt where he said, that the primary responsibility of the presidency is not administrative, but moral vision, moral leadership. And even when you say, can she run the government, the most important aspect of running the government at this moment is aligning the values that dominate policy back to our original values, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln said was an eternal rebuke to forces of tyranny and oppression. Right now, we're living in a country which is dominated by a system of economic tyranny. That is what you described. It's economic tyranny except for a few people. So we don't need someone who's been for years involved in that system to continue to drive the car

so much as we need to disrupt that system because the status quo will not disrupt itself. Okay. So how do we do that? You are a visionary, you're an entrepreneur, you're a writer. you rebuilt yourself, Marianne. I mean, maybe we should tell people about your personal story, which I find to be so American. Yeah, it is very American. You're the product of your own discipline and your own decision to restart, recreate yourself, which is very emblematic to what the country sort of needs in terms of this American renewal. So let's go to your personal story for a minute. Tell our viewers and listeners a little bit about yourself and this transformation that you made over the course of your life to where you are now and how it could be impactful

as a political leader. Well, I think that the only, there's really nothing unique about my story, actually. I think my story, the only thing interesting about it is that it's not unique. But it just so happens that my career and my life have taken me to so many different corners of our society, so many corners socioeconomically, so many corners socioeconomically, so many corners geographically and so many corners of human experience. There's nothing special about that. There's just something so varied about that. Now, I didn't so much transform myself. I just got very lucky, Anthony. I wrote a book and Oprah Winfrey liked it. You can't, that is, and she opened the world

for me. So what that meant is I had access. Now, once I had that access, yes, I've worked very hard. I have work very hard. And I think just as you've worked very hard and everybody listening right now, I mean, we, you know, we understand that. You have to, even if you're given opportunity, but you can't overstay what it means. And I think what I got from the Oprah experience, just as I got old enough to look back at my parents, old enough to look back at the fact that I went to decent public schools, old enough to look back and to realize what it means that there were good public libraries, old enough to look back and realize that when I was growing up, there was the minimum level of economic opportunity. I think what I've learned is that I got help. I've worked

hard and I got help. I got help. And we don't give enough people. You know, Martin Luther King said, if they give it to the poor, they call it a handout. If they give it to the rich, they call it a subsidy. You mentioned earlier, you articulated beautifully. You're rich, we got to handle. But if there are too many people locked out, who have just as much entrepreneurial spirit as I've had, who want to work as hard as I, but people are locked out. And that's unsusely. And that's what I've learned from my experience, is that I got help and I worked hard, but you can't leave out that I got help. And I want a society in which enough people are given the minimum help, particularly as children, that then it's reasonable to talk about them being

accountable for their own circumstances because they had a shot at it. And to me, that's the American dream. The American dream is not that you can make it or I can make it or Barbara can make it or anybody else we know can make it. It's that we are responsible for a sacred trust, this sacred trust that there would be a possibility within a society of a place where anybody, if they worked hard enough, had a shot at it. I mean, it's beautifully stated. And we are in a total agreement because even my very rich friends who seem either ignorant or knowingly ignorant, wilfully ignorant, or just uninterested, there is a level of the starting blocks now are so ridiculously unequal. You know, the public

school that I attended is still quite a good public school system, but frankly, it's in an affluent community. My dad was the crane operator out here on Long Island in a very affluent community. And so if you tell me the zip code of the kid, I can tell you whether or not they're getting a good public school education, right? But you and I both know that all of this is very uneven and very unfair, and we don't choose our parents. And so therefore, the country is rich enough where we could create a platform of equal opportunity for people where there could be a package of things we provide to our citizens, whether it's health care or quality education, K through 12, so that they can at least get to the starting line. Exactly. But why the callous indifference, though? You know, you're a very empathic

person. I've read several of your books, Return to Love, the book on Miracles that you wrote. Why, why, why have we grown callous? Why, if I make that a conversation piece with somebody at a Hoy-Polloy cocktail party, they groan and rolled their eyes and tell me, yeah, well, that's not going to happen, you know, and why, you know, if we're not careful, Marianne, we're going to be living, the wealthy at least, are going to be living in these bob-wired security compounds like they do in South America. Even to go to the grocery store. You're absolutely correct.

Correct. So why are we so, and why don't we want to help our neighbor like we did 100 plus years ago, where Henry Ford, bad guy, I mean, you know, obviously a racist and so forth. But he was like, you know what, I'm going to pay these workers enough money. that they can afford the car they're making and I'm going to put them in a house and they're going to have a good public school. This way they don't come after me with a tiki torch and a pitchfork while I'm trying to have my caviar in my mansion. Why are we, how do we lose sight of that, you know? Okay, so what we lost sight of was the power of democracy. So let's talk about this for a minute.

Jefferson said that the only safe repository for power in this country is in the hands of the people. I believe that the majority of American people would agree with what you and I were saying. So when you say, how did we, everything you described was the people at those fancy cocktail parties. I'm sorry. Not every rich person is a greedy bastard. But the group of people that you're talking about who have lost so much empathy who are living in this bubble that emotionally buffers them from the suffering that is so endemic in this society today, they should not be in control to the extent to which they are controlled. In control, that is what an oligarchy is. I believe that the majority of American people would agree with everything you and I have said.

The American people are not the problem. We are decent people. The majority of American people want our kids to go to decent schools, where they're not worried about getting shot at school, where there's not carcinogens in our food, and forever chemicals in our water and pesticides in our food, and all the things that you've described. The problem is we have a sclerotic political system that is sitting on top of the will of the people. that the will of the people is being suppressed. And instead, the will of the people at the cocktail parties you're talking about is holding sway because of the money that they're undue of financial influence. How they lost the plot. They, they, you know, somebody told me the other day, there's this term. If you're this term, ethical fading. I haven't, but explain it, explain it to me.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. It's when people, either they get too powerful or they get too much money, or there's too much concentration on stockholder value or whatever it is in somebody's life, and they start making an ethical compromise. And it's usually not a big ethical compromise. It's a little ethical compromise. And it's just ethical fading until you've got a situation where nobody's just saying, hey, wait a minute, we can't do this. It could hurt a child.

But I go back to what I said before, and I think this is so important. I think the majority of American people are in touch with human suffering and human empathy. The problem is the political system that does not now work to serve the will of the people. And the only way to override this, and I say this is a candidate because I've seen this so up close and personal, is with a revolution at the ballot box because otherwise the system is locked up by everything that you've described here. That's fascinating. Let's talk about return to love for a second, if you don't mind.

I love that book. And I think you are basically, was I look through your presidential platform and watch your interviews, you're basically applying that book, okay, to your presidential campaign. And what I love about your campaign, by the way, and the reason why I wanted to have you on is if we can just get your message out there to more candidates. You know, it doesn't just have to be candidates for the presidency, but candidates for town's supervisor or candidates for the senator of the house, it could have a transitional. positive effect. You know, it could reverse some of the trends that you're describing. So let's talk about return to love and applying those lessons and give our listeners and viewers a sense for what I mean. Before I do that, if I may, you said it could have a transitional positive effect. We don't have time for a transitional positive effect. I think part of the characterological shift that is necessary at this point is a recognition of the urgency of this moment. That's number one. Number two, so the bottom line is simply that we're here to love one another. You see a hungry child, you feed them. You see carcinogens in the

food. You remove them. You see somebody who is rationing their insulin. You pass universal health care. You see people who are burdened in their 20s with tens of thousands of college loan debts that should never have even existed. You canceled the debt. You see people wanting an education to better their lives to pursue life liberty in the pursuit of happiness. You have tuition free college and tech school, like every other advanced democracy. You see people who are working at jobs that they hate because it's the only way that they can even imagine being able to pay for child care. You have such nice child care. You have mothers crying, depressed, and anxiety because millions of years of evolution have told it's too early to leave the baby after the birth of the child. You have paid family leave.

You have people who are one third of your workforce living on less than $15 an hour and half of them unable to find a place to live, you have a guaranteed living wage. And I also want to point out, Anthony, but everything that I just described is considered in every advanced European democracy except ours, which is not European, obviously, a moderate position. People do not realize how far the Overton window has moved from that first principle, which is that the government's job is to broker a balance between individual liberty, which includes economic liberty, and the concern for the common good. We now have policy after policy that is passed in ways that you have mentioned to help those

who have already accumulated capital, accumulate more, at the expense of the majority of Americans who are literally struggling just to make it at all. And the level of personal and societal dysfunction that inevitably arises from this and is arising, our suicide rates, our lower life expectancy, people dying from lack of health care, deaths of despair, diseases of despair, people's lives are falling apart. And that system does not care in the same way that you describe that cocktail party. They roll their eyes at what you and I are saying. That's fine. They shouldn't be in charge. They should have the same weight of influence that every other citizen. That's what democracy is supposed to be. That

whether you're rich or you're poor, you get to weigh in and have the same influence. And that is what we've lost in this country. And that is why we are where we are. It's very, very well said. And when I listen to you, I'm like, okay, that's exactly the right message or the right vision. So how do we convert that into winning? Tell me how we're going to win the campaign. Well, I want to point out that I was just before I got on, I saw the latest poll that said, I'm at 11%.

The Emerson poll the other day said, I'm at 10. In politics, I'm sure you know this. It's kind of like when you're in elementary school and you turn 10 years old. And they said, ooh, you're double digits now. For whatever reason, double digits really matters in politics, right? when you consider the complete media blackout. So what Foxes to the GOP, CNN and MSNBC are to the Democratic Party, there's been a complete media blackout. They won't have me on CNN. They won't have me on MSNBC. So even though I'm higher in the polls and let's say Nikki Haley or even Vivek Ramoswamy,

they are regularly on the Sunday news shows. They are regularly on MSN, CNN. So what I have to do is I have to override that with BOP Media. and independent media, such as things, you know, and I'm grateful to be on your show today. So I need a quick million, you know, if a thousand people will give $1,000 or if 2,000 people will give $500, I know that you know. A lot of this is, it's not mystery, it's math, do I have the money? I have the campaign. We just need to scale up. I'll have one staff member on something where I should have three.

I'll have one office when we should have three. I'll have two people on a team that should have six. It's not mysterious. But wherever I go, you know, we get the entrance. We get the standing oversions. We get all that. My problem is that too many people don't even know that my campaign exists. So the answer to your question is it's happening.

It's happening despite that. But obviously, we don't have a lot of time. And we need people to volunteer. We need people to go to Marianne. 2024.com. Volunteers, spread the work, get on social media. And obviously give financial support. they can. And give us the website just so everybody has it. Marianne, that's M-A-R-I-A-N-E-24-com.

Okay. Again, I want to go back to this era, this age of cynicism that we're in. So you're not being put on. So that obviously is a material block, but that fits the oligarch narrative, right? And by the way, Vivik Ravish and no offense to Vivik, you know, I've listened to him. I think he's inexperienced. He doesn't have like the, you have something that we're sorely needed. You have something called Savoyaffair, okay? You're going to do the right thing in any circumstance or at least try to do the right thing in every circumstance. So, you know, Vivek, I'm going to give him the opportunity to come on the show as they

given all presidential candidates come on the show. But I would say this right to his face. He lacks experience and he lacks touch and empathy for people. But they put him on. They put him on because he's a person of color, okay? And they put him on because he's not at 20 percent of the. the polls. If he was at 25% in the polls, Marion, they would knock him with a ray gun as hard as they possibly could. And so I guess what I'm wondering is this oligarchal system that we have now,

has it made it impossible for a reformer? Absolutely. Because of the media conglomeratization, you know, when I was a child, the same company could not own the newspaper and the radio and the television because it was guaranteed, they codified it into law that there would be a diversification of opinion. Today, we have a matrix of corporate overlords, and part of that matrix is major media empires. Now, I used to think that the political parties chopped wood and carried water for these multibillion-dollar industries, and I've come to realize, no, they are one of those multibillion dollar industries. So you're right, there's a blockage and everything that you and I have been talking about. I think this is important. The majority of Republicans as well as Democrats want

universal health care. Poll after poll shows that. The majorities of Republicans as well as Democrats want tuition-free college and tech school, which we had until the 1970s. Polls show that. The majority of Republicans as well as Democrats, and including the majority of gun owners, want more common sense gun laws. The problem is they don't want anybody speaking a message like this because they know it could start a political wildfire and it overthrows their perch. This really is a second American revolution. It's a revolution consciousness. It's a revolution that's a revolution that's the ballot box. But anybody who thinks we can just continue to vote for the status quo of either major party and make these incremental changes, then it's simply a matter of whether your democracy

is in a nosedive or in a managed decline. Many issues right now. We have global issues. We have domestic issues. Take me through the top two or three domestically and the top two or three internationally that you would work on immediately. Domestically, we need an economic bill of rights. You know, Franklin Mosevelt said there are four freedoms and two of them are freedom from want. They're the freedoms of speech, religion, protest, etc. And then there's freedoms from. He said the freedoms from want and from fear. One in four Americans live with medical debt. Sixty-eight thousand dying every year because they have no health care. 18 million Americans can't afford to pay the prescription drugs that their doctors give them 85 million Americans underinsured or uninsured. So we need Medicare for all, universal health care like in every other advanced democracy. We need a guaranteed living wage. Our minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. People talk about lifting it to 15, but we have in every major city in America, the living wage is at least $20 an hour.

So the Economic Bill of Rights would include the things I mentioned before. And that's, of course, on my website. It's the issue of the tuition-free college, paid family leave, a guaranteed sick pay, etc. I also think we need to end the war on drugs. We've spent a trillion dollars on that since 1971. We know that Richard Nixon knew that it was not public enemy number one. It has not helped this country. It has actually exacerbated the problem of drug addiction.

We had 300,000 people in prison when I was in college. Today there are 2.3 million and 46% of our federal prisoners are nonviolent drug offenders. For the $100 billion that we spend right now every year, we could spend a fraction of that money on, a world-class network of recovery options. We should be treating drug addiction, which is an ubiquitous problem in this country. However, we should be treating it not as a criminal issue, but as a health issue like they do in countries like Portugal. I also think we need a department of children in youth. We have children, Anthony, who are traumatized before preschool. I have met principals at elementary schools who say that they have elementary school students on suicide watch. In public schools

around this country, we have what they call trauma rooms. We're talking about trauma-informed education. But I talk about root causes. Why are so many American children traumatized to begin with? I think that America's children, because they're not old enough to vote, they have no constituency, they're not old enough to work, so they have no financial leverage. And I see them as the biggest collateral damage of this unfettered vulture crony capitalism that we have today. I also, think we need to declare a climate emergency. This is the time to be ramping down, not ramping up fossil fuel extraction. And as we make a just transition from a dirty economy to a clean economy, we will actually create millions of jobs. And I think that no matter what you're talking about,

whether you're talking about criminal justice issues, whether you're talking about racial justice issues, whether you're talking about drugs, whether you're talking about food, no matter what, you cannot overstate the role that economic insecurity and anxiety is playing as a root cause. And people's lives are falling apart. And when people's lives are falling apart, you're talking about large groups of desperate people. That's a national security risk. Because when you have large groups of desperate people in any system, they become a petri dish. And out of that petri dish, all manner of personal and societal dysfunction is almost inevitable, including vulnerability to genuinely psychotic forces. And that's what fascism represents. And that's what fascism

represents in this country. Franklin Roosevelt said we wouldn't have to worry about a fascist takeover as long as democracy delivered on its promises. So the biggest problem is that democracy is not delivering on its promises. And if the Democrats do not offer a real alternative to fascism in 2024, a more inspiring agenda that viscerally improves their lives immediately, then we're going to be in terrible, terrible problem. And it could even be the end of our democracy. You know, it's interesting, you've mentioned Roosevelt a number of times. And one of my favorite presidents for so many different reasons, but the main reason was he was a leader in the sense that he was setting a course. That's exactly. Not to use a rough metaphor, but there are now thermometers. They're testing the

temperature of the country and then they're reflecting the heat or the rhetoric in the country. Roosevelt was like, okay, we got to get the temperature from 90 to 72. We're going to do it because I said so. And I'm going to take you there. And I'm going to explain to you how to get there. And it's very famous fireside chats and the whole discussion about Len Lees and giving the garden hose to somebody who had their house on fire and all of these great common analogies. And of course, he had his great struggle with paralysis. You know, some people actually think it was Gillian Barre syndrome and not polio because he got it so late in life. There's a big discussion medically about what it was that he was actually afflicted with, but the point was he spent...

I've never heard that before. What syndrome? Gillian Bahre. Gillian Bahre. G-I-U-L-L-I-A-N-B-A-R-E syndrome, which sometimes is a, it's a syndrome post-virus, where the body, the autoimmune system attacks, the nervous system. Yeah. Of course, when you think about it, the medical testing and the level of medical testing,

We do know that he went to a park that day for political rally that he felt he wasn't supposed to go to. He didn't listen to his own inner guidance. And he used a public water fountain. He came home that day. He took a nap and basically he was never able to walk again after that. Yeah. Yeah. So again, Jay Winick in the book, 1944, it was interesting because he suggested in that book that because because of his age, age 39, it may not have been infantile paralysis because that seemed to be

disease that was afflicting people at younger ages. I'm not saying it wasn't polio. That was the idea of it. But the reason I'm bringing it up is just that if you think of what he had to overcome as a human being and to rise to the presidency, it was monumental, but he was up to monumental tasks. And so that's the reason why I find you, I find what you're saying and your messaging so interesting because we need somebody monumental right at this moment who's up for this sort of monumental task. Well, you know, I'm, it's wonderful talking to someone who shares my deep interest in Roosevelt because there's so much to what you're saying. You know, he was tall, dark, handsome, governor of New York. I mean, he, Teddy Roosevelt's nephew, a Roosevelt, a Dellen, I mean,

he had, you know, he was not, he was more one of those people at the cocktail party that you described. And his having to triumph over polio and also, or whatever it was. And then his going down to Georgia and people who had never even heard of him who didn't see him as a fancy person, Roosevelt, because they didn't even know what that meant at that time particularly. They saw him just as another sufferer and the empathy that they showed to him. There are so many ways that we can see his life experience prepared him to have the hugeness of heart and the hugeness and strength of character to show up for that moment in history the way he did. It's so fascinating. This is a moment when we need a Rooseveltian figure, absolutely.

And also, I'd like to say something else of what you were saying. When you were talking before about thermometers, I was reading the other day about the German poet Heinrich Heaney. And somebody was talking to him about the fact that the old cathedrals in Europe took hundreds of years to build. And so that meant that people spent their entire lives working on a project that they knew they would never see completed in their lifetime. And somebody was asking Heinrich Heine about what force or fact? asset of character does it take for someone to be willing to work their entire lives on something that will give them personally no particular satisfaction other than that they participated? And he said, and he was talking about the 1800s, what he called the modern age, the 1800s, think how much

this applies today. He said it's the difference between men of conviction, which they had, and what we have today, he said, which is men who only have opinions. And that's exactly what you were talking about. Well, I'm a huge Rooseveltian fan, and you may have read these books. I'm going to offer them up as a suggestion to you. Nigel Hamilton, there's been so many great biography of Roosevelt, but Nigel Hamilton decided that he would write the war memoirs. And so, unfortunately, Franklin Roosevelt did not get a chance to write his own memoirs the way Winston Churchill did.

And so he started at the beginning of the war. He took all of his documents, all of his papers. He got access to his diary, the presidential diary. that his two assistants were taking short end in stenography. And he put together a three-volume series, which is a box set now, but it's a brilliant series. Started in 14. Last book, I think, was written in 2019. But it really talked about the decisions that he had to make during the war and also the

illness that he was faced with and how he picked his leaders and how he made decisions about who, you know, I mean, the very famous one. I know you're familiar with it, because I just tell by the way you're thinking of Roosevelt. The way he asked George Marshall, he felt that George Marshall deserved to run Operation Overlord, which was the D-Day invasion. But he felt more comfortable with him in Washington. He felt he needed him in Washington. And he went to him and told him, I'm sorry, I need you here.

We're going to let Ike run this. And it was just this wonderful command of the English language, but this sentiment of understanding human beings and his ability to interact with them in a way. where they admired him. What did Oliver Wendell Holmes say about Franklin Roosevelt? He said he had a Oliver Wendell Holmes' joke. He may have had a second rate intellect, but he had a first-rate temperament. It was a first-class temperament. And of course, Roosevelt responded to that by saying, well, that's because I wasn't trying at Harvard. And he clearly had a first-rate intellect as well. But, yeah, it's just so sorely needed today. I mean, just people that can't even talk in

complete sentences. Okay, so unfortunately, I'm in overtime. I promise to get you out of here in 30 minutes, but I'm already in overtime. So I want to go to the five words that I leave all my authors with, and basically I've chosen these five words with my production team. You react to them. You give me a one word, a sentence, five words, whatever you want a paragraph. May I just say one more thing about Roosevelt? There's another wonderful book by Doris Burns Good One, called No Ordinary Time, Which I totally love. And what you just said about the ordinary intellect but the first rate temperament, I think also was true of Eisenhower.

That's number one. And also one of the things that they said about Roosevelt, which I think also relates to what you and I were talking about before, what he had to triumph over in his own life. So many of the people around him said, even when things are the worst, when it looks like there's no hope. And if you think we, and this person was saying,

we in the room thought there was no hope. and he probably knew so much more information even than we did about how there was no hope. He said he always left you at every meeting thinking it was going to be okay and we were going to make it. Yeah, I mean, I love it. I love it. And what an interesting dynamic. You mentioned no ordinary time. So what an interesting dynamic he and his wife had. Of course, they had their ups and downs and their marriage and more or less live separate lives after Lucy Rutherford and the affair that he had at the early part of his life. But the truth does the matter is they were together and they respected and admired each other. and he used her successfully politically. She got, she used her legs to get around the country and the world, frankly, in a way that he couldn't because of his invalid status. And it's just a

it's a fascinating group of people. And America has always had that person, Marianne. We had Washington at its inception. We had Lincoln at the point of breakage, when the country needed to be re-sacified and reunified. We had Roosevelt during the Depression and the Great Second World War. And we need that now. We need somebody now. So this is why I'm so delighted that you decided to come on. So here are the five words. Okay, you ready?

I'm going to say the word Democrat, and you react by saying what? It doesn't now seem to be the party that I grew up with. And I think of myself as a Roosevelt Democrat, and I'm running as a Democrat because I hope for the Democratic Party as well as for the Republican Party, that the parties can return to their own souls to the high-minded principles that at one point infuse them. Today, the corporatist perspective has completely taken over the Republican Party. It dominates the establishment leadership of the Democratic Party. So when I think Democrat, I think hope that the Democratic Party will retrieve its role as it was under Roosevelt of unequivocal advocacy for the working people of the United States.

And I hope the DNC will stop messing with me so that I can have a fair shot at this primary. Yeah, that's part of the oligal nature of the old thing. When you hear the word Republican, you think corporatists? I want you to take that down the line of Republican. Listen, Eisenhower said that the American mind, at its best, is both liberal and conservative. When I was growing up more than not, you know, there were liberal Republicans when I was growing up. And so there was a time when the Republican Party, more than not,

was a home for high-minded conservative values. And the Democratic Party was the home more than not for high-minded liberal values. And so my hope for the Republican Party, as well as for the Democratic, is that it retrieves their souls. Right now, I have very, very little respect for the Republican Party. Okay. I got to use this word, Biden. Incremental. Credit where credit is due. He defeated Trump in 2020. I believe he's a very weak candidate going forward. His numbers are dropping as we speak. Even with all of Trump's indictments, the president has had a hard time even consistently breaking even with Trump in the polls. I believe his greatest service to the country right now would be to bow out, as he had said

that he would, and to let a different crop of candidates come in, of which I obviously believe I would be the wisest choice. Okay. 2024. Decisive, critical. This is it. If you were going to describe a woman by the name of Marianne Williamson, what would you say? Trying my best, decent, with the help of people and God, capable of doing great things.

I would add aspirational. I think ultimately for the country to succeed, we need aspiration for all people. And I think you represent that, Marianne. I'm very, very happy that you join me today on Open Book. I want to thank you. And hopefully I can get you back on as we get into it. the campaign season, which is going to start the heat up here. Real honor for me to have you on.

Well, final thoughts on, Marianne, no one has seen a race like the 2024 presidential election. There's a scenario here where one of the candidates could actually be convicted and possibly in jail, although my sense tells me that they won't bring a case against the candidate Trump until well after the election, but we'll have to see. But Marianne and I may not align politically on all things, but she certainly made some terrific points in today's show. She's a brilliant author, but she's also, you can tell from listening to her today that she's a wonderful historian and she has a great sense for what America is about and how America became this wonderful place and ultimately one of the most, if not the most powerful

nation in the history of the world. And I think Marianne is trying to explain that we've lost our way. We can get back there, but it's going to require a radical form of leadership. And when I say radical, I don't mean anything in terms of the radical tales of politics, but just disrupting the current status quo, which I frankly think most Americans do not think is working. So I appreciate you listening to her. I hope more people will listen to her thoughts on this big 2024 election coming up. Hello?

Ma, you're ready to come on the podcast? Yeah, why not? My guest today on Open Book is a woman by the name of Marianne, Williamson. She's a spiritualist and she is a Democratic candidate for president. She ran in 2000. You know what I'm talking about, right? She ran in 2020. And now she's going to run again in 2024. I just interviewed her. Okay. It's very intelligent, I think. Yeah, you like her, right? You've seen her speak. I do. I like her. Yeah. Okay. Tell me why you like her, Mom.

Well, she has a, she seems to be very forward when she speaks. She seems very, very, very knowledgeable, and I don't think she speaks that a line much. She speaks very well, and she speaks, to me, she speaks more for a country. She hasn't said anything dumb yet. Right. And she's also got common sense, right, when she talks, right? Right. Absolutely. And I think she's, like, very regal. Right. You know, she makes a good presence. Okay. And she's, she's written a couple books about spirituality and she's written a couple of books about love and forgiveness. Okay, you're a big proponent of all that, right? I'm a big what? You are a big proponent of love and forgiveness, right?

I don't forgive if someone hurts me really bad, but... Well, no, you're Italian, okay, that's Italian Alzheimer's, Ma. You know what Italian Alzheimer's is? We forget everything but... Yeah, you're vindictive a little bit. Yeah, you forget everything but the grudges, okay? Of course, I'm not going to... Of course you know... But I had an Italian mother who was my father was American, my mother was Italian, and my mother was very regal and she died young, and

when I was young, she used to say, do good and forget it money and do bad and remember it because when the world turns, you got to pay for what you did that was big. Right, so she believed in karma, right? She was like, okay, if you have good karma. Absolutely, believe in karma. Yep. So she used to say you have to

be good so that you don't have all of this stuff hanging on you. Right. Okay, so Mary Ann Williamson, is a big believer and all that. But do you think she has a chance to win the presidency, Ma? What do you think? Yeah, I do.

I think if the people get to know her, if the people get to really study her, yeah, I do. I think she does. So she got in your mind, she would actually do a good job if she could win it, right? Absolutely, because I just think that she's very caring, and she sees the world. The world right now, to me, is upside down. Right. I've never seen so many gun shootings and so many homeless and so many poor. And I think the mental institutions should be open.

And I think the people that are in the mental institutions should have people that are not abusive because they are human beings and they have skin on their bones. And I really firmly believe that. Right. Well, there's good charts on that. You know, they have the, they have slides where the mental institutions went in decline and then the inmates in the prisons when I'm, the upswing. So meaning that you got to put the people somewhere and it would be better to put them in a mental hospital than a prison. And so, you know, and certainly you don't want them on the street for so many different reasons. So the homeless issue is an addiction issue and it's a mental

illness issue. It's not just, quote, unquote, people being lazy or being homeless. Well, I take full of a very big mistake. I do, I go on reading big juice. Sometimes I read excessively, and then sometimes I don't read. You know, sometimes I read constantly, and I have read about that because I find the human mind interesting. But Rockefeller, that was Governor Rockefeller. All right. That makes sense to me. All right. So Ma, if you were going to run for president, what would your motto be? What would your campaign slogan be, Ma? My campaign slogan would be, do the best you can and try to make everything work the best way you know how and not be a showman. And I think you're a person.

for candidate to be perfect to write for president. Not because you're my son, but you have a humane to you that's undescribable. Okay. All right, ma. And that's how I feel. I really feel that. But I'm not really a politician, ma, because, you know, these people do really bad things to each other.

You know, I don't really like it. You wouldn't run for the limelight. You would run for the country. Yeah, well, I've had enough. And you would see the... I've had enough limelight and low light, ma. I've had a lot of that. I hear you. Okay. All right. I appreciate you joining me on Open Book, Ma. I love you.

I love you, baby. All right. All right. Bye. Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listening. If you like what you hear, tell your friends and make sure you hit follow or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast. While you're there, please leave us a rating or review. If you want to connect with me or chat more about the discussions, at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. You can also text me at plus one 911, 909-29-996. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.