Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Advice to Democrats Today with Charles Gasparino

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

This week, Anthony talks with bestselling author and financial journalist Charles Gasparino about his new book 'Go Woke, Go Broke,' which critiques the influence of wokeness in corporate America.  Charles argues that corporate entities have strayed from their primary responsibility of profit-making to engage in cultural and political issues, leading to backlash and financial consequences. They also touch on the current political landscape, the Democratic Party's strategies, and what needs to change.  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 punches. So let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. My guest today, Charles Gasparino, is the only person that I still love, even though he often writes bad things about me. Sorry, Charlie, I had to get that in there. You are pain in the ass, by the way, and I want that on the record. I want people to know. But your new book, Charlie's new book, Go Woke, Go Broke, is an important read, particularly for those on the left. This is a conversation about embracing inclusivity whilst finding a balance. Charlie and I love to disagree, of course, so there's some of that in there, too. Let's go to the conversation. Joining us now on Open Book is a bestselling author, veteran financial

journalist Charles Gasperino. The title of the book is Go Woke, Go Broke. And by the way, I actually agree with a lot of what you're saying in this book, and I enjoyed reading it. And I am actually proud to call you a friend, Charlie Gasperino, even though you do take shots at me in the press. And I just want to point out that that's what true Italians do to each other. Okay, if you're not in a ball-breaking exercise, what's the sense of living? That's my personal view. Yeah. Listen, I call them as I see them.

I think you're a good guy and I like you. I don't like all your politics, but, you know. You don't have to like all my politics. When Trump goes after your wife, we'll see what you act like when Trump goes after your wife. Because you're not an Italian from the neighborhood. So we'll see what Charlie Gasperino does when Trump was. after his wife. But that's...

Jesus, you know, Trump goes after me. Right. I mean, he called me... Well, that's fine. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Going after you is fine. Going after me is fine.

You don't go after civilians, okay? You know that. I don't talk about people's wives. I actually adore your wife. Yeah, right. She's a very nice person. You never bothered anybody. Right, exactly.

And she loves you. All right, let's go to the book, okay? I mean, this is this is why you got to have a few Italians on the pockets, okay? All right, let's go to the book. book, okay? So you wrote a great book. I mean, this book, I would tell every Democrat that I know from the top to the bottom, including AOC, please read the book. And when you're done reading the book, tell me what you guys are doing right and wrong. Because if they lose this election, okay, and this is being recorded about five or six days before the election, if they lose the

election, betting markets are for Trump. If they lose the election, what you're saying in this book, in my opinion is the reason why they will have lost the election. They may not lose the election. Who the hell knows? But explain why you decided to write this. And, of course, well, explain the premise of Go Woke, Go Broke. And then explain why you decided to write this. And then we'll talk a little more about what's in the book.

I should premise this is this is not like some sort of a pro-Trump book, just so you know. Even though Trump is always in the background of everything we wrote, I'm fairly critical of him and how he comported him. as president, which I will continue to do, even though, you know, I guess you could say net, Ned, I'm kind of leaning towards him as opposed to the other side. And he called, and he did call me a never Trump or recently because I was critical of his spending and things of that nature. But be that as I say, and I actually know the guy a long time. I know him longer than you. I remember telling you it's not going to end well with you and him. I told you that. I know. I remember you telling me. I was not. And I like the guy.

And I like the guy, but I was like, I was always like, just be careful. Be that as it may, let's get to the book. Yeah. Okay, so this is how I kind of stumbled on this in a weird way. I was covering the regional banking crisis, Silicon Valley Bank, and I had an agent that came to me and said, you know, you should really write about all these banks that are blowing up. But this is in early 2023. There's a, you know, you're a financial writer.

But this is even better. I mean, this Silicon Valley Bank, if you look at who ran it while they were mismanaging their balance sheet or, you know, look like they were mismanaging. managing tabalogy. They clearly didn't understand their asset and liability matches. They, they were engaging in all this weird stuff, like DEI training. And, you know, they were, they were really obsessed with ESG and all these sort of extraneous things. These, this woke stuff. And, you know, we can maybe write a book about how wokeness on a corporate level, which people just started looking at, you know, destroyed a bank. And I said, okay, so I started looking at it. And then

a confluence of things happened. I mean, you know, you had Disney blowing up getting into a big fight with Rhonda Sanders. Oh, the sex education for toddlers law, Bob Chapick using shareholder money to oppose that. And, you know, like a sort of outrage and a backlash to that. You had the Dillamovaney thing, this crazy thing where a Budweigh, you know, a trans woman, you know, was drinking a beer half naked in a bubble bath to try to appeal to God knows what customer base. But they did it. Target with their flamboyant displays of.

during Pride Month, ESG and Larry Fink. Larry thinks the guy I like a lot, but, you know, he got embroiled in this mess with ESG, became a sort of lightning rod for the conservative movement. And it all coalesced at once. And I said, there's a bigger book here. And what I wanted to do with this is say, you know, why did corporate America do something kind of like absurd? I mean, if you think about it, within the bounds of ethics and legality,

I'm not saying that, you know, that you should maximize, profits by dumping, you know, toxigens in the Hudson River. But you're a CEO, you should be worrying about making money, not being, you know, not being a sort of helper of the progressive movement on all these various cultural issues. These things should be hashed out in Congress, you know, in a public debate, as you're a presidential election, at the kitchen table, what your kids, what you want to teach your kids, it should not be Jamie Diamond, you know, weighing in on this stuff and Bob Chapic. And what I wanted to do is a journalistic account to this.

I spent a lot of time with Larry Fink. Again, someone I respect and like, try to get his side of the story. I spent a lot of time with the people at Budweiser. It's a company called MBEV, A.B. Inbev, which owns Anheuser-B. Inbev, which owns Anheuser-Busch now. The old Bush family doesn't own it. I spent some time with their representatives trying to understand how this whole thing, where how did Dylan Mulvaney get it? It went from the Clydesdales, literally one of the most poignant commercials. ever seen was after 9-11, the Clydesdale's walk up and look at the Twin Towers being missing

and take a knee. And if you look at this iconic commercial, Budweiser commercial, you can't help but get shivers. You went from that to Dillamovaney giggling in a bubble bath. And, you know, how did this happen? And that's kind of what the book tried to do. I tried to do it like, uh, journalistically, Anthony, I tried to do it as somebody who is, I, I'm not an answer. I'm not an answer. asshole when it comes to this stuff. I don't hate trans people. A friend of mine is essentially living with a trans woman. I think adults should be what they want to be. I'm a libertarian when it comes to all this stuff. I don't think companies should be part of this coercive business trying to change the culture of the country. That's my POV. Within the bounds of that POV,

I tried to be journalistic here. And you can see, I don't pull punches on anybody, anybody. I read the book, and I'm going to summarize for you my thoughts. I want you to say, I got this right. I got this wrong. Okay. So the premise of the book is that we have social and cultural disagreement in the society, and certain parts of the society want their culture imposed on the entire society. So as an example, they want my seven-year-old that's in the second grade to be told that if he's transgender, you're okay telling the teacher.

are not telling the parent. And many people in the country, and by the way, including myself, I actually don't want that. Okay. So, and I'm all for transgenderism and I'm all for sexual orientations that are different from mine. I have no problem with that. But I don't want that imposed on me culturally. I agree. And so a result of which when you start to do that, you start to lose fans, you start to lose consumers. You start to lose, what I would say is probably the center of America. Is that the premise of the book? It is, but it goes beyond. that, it raises the question why companies got involved in this, why public companies, the last place you would think this culture war would be thought is the boardroom of Bank of America,

or J.B. Morgan, or Larry Fink's BlackRock, why did they go there, what were, or Target, or Budweiser in particular, right? Why did they go there? What were the forces that forced them to go there? And, you know, Anthony, this is not a textbook, as you know. I use anecdotes. I try to write it narratively, try to make it lively. The stuff with Larry Fink is awesome because you do what I love about Larry Fink, okay? If Larry Fink gets something wrong, Charles, he's got something wrong and he switches topic. I was with Larry Fink in the lobby.

I'm not making this up. Four Seasons Hotel in Abu Dhabi. He walked over to me, you know, Bitcoin sucks. Right. I don't know why you own Bitcoin. And I own a lot of circle. I own a lot of U.S.D. I said, well, I'm sorry.

I just don't think it sucks. Three years later, he's like, okay, you know what? I got that wrong. And I'm launching a Bitcoin, E Tee. Yeah. I think the guy, I love the guy for that reason. I wish more Americans, if they get something wrong, just say, look, I got it wrong. I'm changing course. Yeah. And, you know, when he changed course with Bitcoin, he changed course away from woke. It was part of that transformation where he realized he went way too far, proselytizing too much on ESG, environmental social government

investing. He tried to change attitudes. And I talked to him in the book. He says, listen, I probably should have focused not so much on the S and the G, which involves very controversial stuff, like diversity, equity and inclusion, which is essentially quotas, a lot of the sort of far left wokeism. It should have focused on this, the E part, which is, you know, is there a transformational economy around something known as zero, you know, not a coercive economy, but a transfer made, something like the internet around this whole notion of net zero. Like, can you, and I, listen, I, I, as, as. As a journalist, I can see where there could, right? I mean, is there something transformational about alternative power, ways to generate power? Because we're going to need as much power as we can if we're going to, you know, do AI and Bitcoin mine, you know. Larry's very much open to advances in nuclear power, which we need. It's clean.

I mean, that's the sort of stuff I think he recognizes he should have focused on and not in a sort of nanny state way. And I give him credit in the book for going that way. last quarter of the book is about how woke is breaking. You know, I use Larry Fink as an example of that, but many others. I mean, listen, Bob Chappek gets blown out of Disney. Bob Iger now is back running it. You know, he's the guy that brought wokeness to Disney is now doing a 180 on wokeness. When was the last time you saw, you know, in a, in a cartoon, Disney cartoon for children, you know, two same-sex characters kissing? Now, again, I don't pay, you know, here's a weird thing about this. I don't pay attention. If I was walking in a target,

And I saw rows upon rows of pride displays. I would just, like, walk by there, go to the place that I want to buy my sneakers or wherever and go home. I wouldn't care. But, you know, I'm not a parent with two kids and targets audiences. It's target group that it markets to. It's very middle class. You know, mom with two kids in the stroller.

And, you know, you have to explain what a tough friendly baby suit is to little Johnny. You know what I'm saying? I mean, that's not me. And that's the revulsion. I had. The other thing is, Anthony, what really. kind of stoked me on this thing, was how billionaire CEOs were literally sort of chastising Middle America in so many ways, and particularly after George Floyd. I mean, I get into that.

I quoted Brian Moynihan directly, Jamie Diamond directly, David Solomon. I mean, let's be really clear here. A cop in Minneapolis killed somebody, George Floyd, who was in a convenience store, you know, doing something illegal. He was trying to pass a check. He did not. deserved a death penalty, okay? Did not. You know, we can debate all day whether Derek Chauvin and company used excessive force. I don't, I wouldn't have handled it that way, but I'm not a cop, okay? I'm just telling you that, that single instance, which occurred when the country was locked down and losing its mind caused some of the biggest riots and social disturbances ever. We had we had mayhem in the streets. We had the left trying to

frame that as evidence that the entire nation is systemically racist, that there's something wrong with a, with a nation that is so much less systemically racist than any other nation that it's, I'm not saying there's zero problems here, but, you know, just because of that one instance. And then you just see Jamie Diamond, oh, we have all these problems. I need to do $30 billion for, you know, racial equity and Brian Moynihan and this one, and David Solomon, when he's not spinning records in the, in the Hamptons is lecturing, you know, construction workers are about their white privilege. And I thought that was the most disgusting display of virtue signaling I ever saw my life.

And I'm glad I documented it in this book. Okay. So, I mean, I, you know, this is where you and I have a violent agreement, Charles, violent agreement. So, so what, let me let me put my strategist's hat on for a second. And I want you to be a Democratic strategy. and you're in the boardroom and you have all the powers that be in the Democratic Party in the room. And you wanted to help them. I'm not saying you want to, Charlie Gassbrino, but I want you to roleplay with me. What would you say from your research for this book to them? And how would you try to resonate with them?

What would you try to do? Well, I think they wouldn't need my advice because if you notice how Kamala Harris is handling their campaign, You know, back in 2019, she was the second coming of Bernie Sanders. Now, if you take her out of word, and you know, you might take her out of word, I wouldn't. She's like this moderate, you know, Bill Clinton-esque Democrat. She's not woke. She once said, we need to be more woke. She wants, you know, opined about the great need for diversity, equity, and inclusion.

And, you know, you know, it's, and it was a little grading to see somebody, Like Kamala Harris talk about diversity, equity, inclusion, how we should, you know, divide up the pie based on intersectionality when, you know, she's a woman of color, but came from a very privileged background, you know, PhD father, biologist, mom. I mean, my old man worked three jobs, you know, and you're telling me that, you know, I have white privileged. I mean, you know, I don't know, he's a construction worker, a bartender, that's some privilege there, right? Got me my first job, by the way, at the Silver Moon restaurant in Yorktown Heights washing dishes. There's some white. I remember the Silver Moon. You were washing the dishes. That's the reason why I got tomein poisoning. You were washing the dishes. I poisoned your food. But, you know, that's what I'm saying. I mean, this is so ridiculous on its face.

But she's not engaging in that right now. And that's the reason. And if she pulls this out, one of the reasons why is because she didn't go there. And she didn't embrace wholeness. She sees it's a loser. By the way, wokeness might sell. And by the way, part of the book, as you know, I interviewed Mark Cuban.

I mean, we have a long conversation, which he explains why wokeness sells. And I was like, well, you know, Mark, she goes, well, look, these big companies. You're, look at Apple's woke. And, you know, look how much profit. I said, so I said, Mark, you know, when I download Joe Rogan on, on my Spotify and my iPhone, I'm essentially virtue signaling, you're saying. That's a political statement, pro woke. And, you know, he couldn't really answer that question.

Yeah, well, he's making a different point. I read that part of the book, and I wanted to ask you about that. So he's trying to say something different, which I would like you to try to intersect your thoughts and his. I think what he's trying to say in my conversations with him is that we want to be inclusive. You know, ultimately, I mean, you agree with this. The way you and I grew up, we don't have it. We don't see color, you and me. We want to be inclusive.

We're trying to figure out a way to add to diversity in employment, add to diversity in a business. And I know if I hire somebody, regardless of race, color, creed, sexual orientation, I've got a bigger pool of talent that I'm drawing from. I think that's what he's trying to say. But it doesn't translate. And so I'm wondering why it's not translating, I guess is my question, too. Because in the land of the woke, you know, intersectionality trumps your economic disadvantage, particularly if you're a white guy.

And it's patently unfair. It's right now it's illegal based on what the Supreme Court ruled. And it's stupid. I mean, the fact that a matter is, you know, we're way beyond. like saying a PhD from from Harvard who is black you know we're going to ignore him and you know he's he can he can figure out differential equations in his sleep but let's hire some some stupid white guy I mean that's not what that doesn't happen on any sort of competitive business that I've ever seen and I've been covering competitive businesses now for 35 years and you know it and I know it

the diversity that he seeks is racial bean counting which is bad for the country and and it's It's bad for business, and it's irrational, and it doesn't work, and it's sowing the seeds of incredible amounts of divisiveness, and it's allowing people, if you think Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy, it's electing him as president. And, you know, if you go there, this is what you're going to get. And they went there, meaning the Democratic Party, people like Cuban, and now they're getting what, you know, they may literally have on Tuesday, they may have their worst nightmare as president.

Whether he is going to be a nightmare or not, we can debate. I don't think so. I think there's going to be some smart people around him. I think he's going to be, he's going to be okay on certain issues, on certain issues, not so okay. He's going to be, but remember what happened. This is a backlash to what the sort of absurdity that, that Cuban was pushing on people. Listen, if you're Ben and Jerry's, you can virtue signal all you want. It's a niche products of ice cream. If you're target and you're going to try to change the cultural values of your core audience, which, by the way, is multicultural middle class, and it may skew heavily working class white, but it's still multicultural. They don't have those same values. And you proselytizing to them

is ridiculous. It's not your job. Your job is to enhance shareholder value, not to be part of the cultural wars. And if you go there, you face the backlash, which Brian Cornell, as you saw in my book, did, and they still are. Budweiser is still the number three beer, I believe, or Bud Light. It's not number one anymore. Disney stock hasn't moved in 10 years. Look up a chart. It might even be down over the past 10 years. That's pretty amazing for a company stock that was the darling of the markets for many years. Also, I wanted to point out, Anthony in the book, this is a much more difficult story to tell than just woke is bad, unwoke is good. I can see the notion of diversity why it's good, okay? Not at the heavy hand of a gun, but diversity. Openness to this.

You know, trans people are friends, our neighbors, our employees. They deserve every right that we have. Don't care what they, and they deserve it. By the way, not just deserve it. Law requires it. Just remember that. That said, the sort of cultural Marxism of corporate America. And at times, particularly after 2020, it was almost Marxist.

It was revolting. And somebody had to call them out on it. I know Vec did a book about it. It was, you know, I read it. it was much more theoretical. This book is really, you know, this is anecdote. I'm sending your book to lots of people. Okay, Senator Gillibrand, I'm sending it to Schumer. They won't read it, probably, Charlie, but they should read it because, you know, there's something in the book that I think resonates. They can embrace inclusivity without jamming it down somebody's throat to the point

where they turn them into a Trump supporter. Do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah. You know, I've got people that say to me, hey, I understand your issues with Donald Trump, but I don't want this stuff jam down my throat, and he's not going to jam it down my throat. And that's it. It's weird because, you know, you and I study the economy. Economy's not doing that badly, okay? Certain sectors of the economy are hurting. I'm not saying they're not. I understand. Lower and middle income people are hurting because of what happened with the inflation, but it's improving. And a lot of that was systemic to COVID. If you live through the 70s, which I'm a little older than you, I have. And I remember. I was there with you, buddy.

Okay, so, you know, economies improved during times of inflation and high prices. But, you know, you don't, you have to work harder to keep up. And I think there's two economies here. You know, we have a mutual friend, Max Myers at CNBC. And he would, oh, we'd be at Ilios restaurant and he'd be like, how can you say the economy is horrible? Look at this place. Look at it's packed. You know, people are buying $1,000 dollars in which is true.

And by the, I mean, it's a great place. I love it. It's a great vibe. And people are like spending there. I said, yeah, this is the speculator economy. If you know even the basics of economics, you know what happened in Argentina and places where they had rampant inflation, you can speculate, you can hedge the inflation to speculation in the markets.

If you're rich, if you're poor, you can't, or working class you can't. It's tougher. And I think that's another thing that wholeness sort of blinded the media to what was transitory inflation, which really wasn't. And, you know, there's a great scene in the book, I think, with James Gorman, who I think is one of the smartest guys on Wall Street. He was the head of Morgan Stanley, which, you know, Morgan Stanley's broke for. Yeah, I love James. He's now the chairman of the board of Disney. He's going to pick Bob Iger's successor. And I was having dinner with James, and he said, you know, and this was early on. This was right after the lockdowns

where people were saying, is this inflation transitory or not? And James said, don't believe the bullshit. This is not transitory. We went wicked on this thing. And, you know, it was interesting that the media didn't buy it because it was so woke. It was afraid of attacking Biden on this thing. And then all of a sudden, everybody woke up and they realized that, you know, prices were, you know, we had 9% of $1. It was just so nuts. And you see unwoken now, fast forward, in the media playing out in interesting ways. Jeff Bezos, I think, wrote, listen, I've written critically about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I don't believe they should be broken up

like we in a con. But I mean, you know, listen, he wrote something really sort of, I thought, sensible. Yeah. Why should I, we need more we need more reporting. And by the way, I thought Bob Woodward, who I know a little bit, I actually know Carl Bernstein a lot better, say that this is

horrible that he did that. But in their heart of heart, those guys would write about anybody. They know there's a new woke type of reporter out there that's populating the Washington post that is activist. They know it. They just don't want to say it, I believe. And Bezos is basically saying, let's get back to the middle. And by the way, if I was to write, you know, a last, an epilogue, the unwokening of media might be part of that. So I've got to transition to my five words as I'm

going to ask in a second, but I just want to ask this last question. You believe that the world is changing, meaning you said unwoke. So you believe that the Bay, The realization by somebody like James Gorman, Larry Think, were going back to the middle? I think so. Okay. All right. Me too. I think so as well.

I'm just curious with you. Anthony, a lot of this will have to be, if Kamala Harris gets elected, will the real Kamala emerge, the woke one or the one that doesn't mention that now? Because a lot of this is directed from the White House to the administrative state. That said, I think you're, even if she does go there and, you know, lying for the last three months, if she does go there, there's going to be a pushback from business because you can't have a mass product and they sell to the masses and pick a side like this. You're going to inevitably piss off at least 50 percent of the population or more who doesn't like this. I mean, listen, people, I'm sure there are people voting for Kamala Harris to hate wokeness. You know, they just buys Donald Trump even more. I mean, that's kind of where we are. stuff and I think you might be in that category. Yeah. I mean,

look, to me it's very personal with Trump. You don't go after my family members. I got you. You know, I'm living in the neighborhood I grew up in. I've had a great life because I live in America. I tried to help you,

gave you a million dollars to your campaign, hundreds of hours of media. So you fired me, had no problem with it, was loyalty after you fired me. I said, one thing you don't like, you start attacking my wife.

Yeah, forget it. Forget it. I get it. It's not even, it's not even in the conference. conversation. You know, it's not even a conversation. I'll give you my example. I've known this guy forever. I like his kids. I know Eric. Charlie, he's a jerk off, okay? You know what a jerkoff is?

He's a jerk. He shouldn't be a jerk off like him should not be the president of the United States. I know you're probably voting for him. But he's a jerk off, Charlie. I'm probably not going to vote. But here's a thing. He's not a jerk off. He's a guy that, you know, his mouth runs before his brain stops it from running. And I know his kids. He's got good kids. He's basically a decent person. You know what his kids said to me? I'm sorry that he did that to you. Please don't make it a fight with us.

You want to fight with my father, no problem. I like his kids. You never hear me say a bad word about any of his kids. I like his kids. He flies off the handle. Yeah, sure. They don't want somebody that flies off the handle to be president, Charles. I'm just letting you know, okay?

I've got to leap or someone who doesn't know where, I mean, you know, we're dealing with bad absolutes here in some respects. But I'm just saying that he flies off the handle. Okay. I don't want this to be about, I think he's a jerk off and you don't think he's a jerk off. Let's go to the book, okay? I think he's a jerk off. You don't think he's a jerk off. That's what makes America.

Okay, so I have five words that me and my producer called from your book. And I want you, it's almost like a raw shot test. I want you to react to them. Give me one or two sentences. Okay. Ready? Yep. I'd say the two words, corporates.

America, you say what? Too big. Too big and too powerful. Yeah, but you don't want Amazon broken up, but you just said too big problem. Okay. No, no. I want them to go back to doing what they should do, which was make profits, employ people, and not engage in the cultural wars. Stay out of the culture.

Okay, God. So this is a good second question then. Ready? Responsibility, Charles. Your responsibility is to make money within the boundaries of ethics and legality. You shouldn't be polluting the Hudson River to save money disposing waste.

If you're, I think GE got nailed on that back in the 80s, I remember. That's not what Milton Friedman, who's the founder, who's the founder, Cheryl DeCapitolism professed. That's go back, too. Okay. Left. I say the word

left. You say what? You know, that's a good question because it's changing so much. I mean, is the, you know, I grew up with liberals who were incredibly open-minded, who would be like, oh, Charlie's just another conservative.

Okay, explain yourself. The left right now, and that was when I was in college and journalism school at the University of Missouri, a lot of liberals there, but they were open-minded. The left is become totalitarian, and it's become progressive and woke,

and I think that's where this problem is sort of manifest itself, and it does start at the university level. Okay, I say right, right. I don't think, Nazis are right-winger. I think somebody on the right would be somebody comfortable with Bill Buckley. Okay. All right. Now, the last word, Charlie, and you have the last word. I say woke. A pernicious mind virus that needs to be, needs to be rooted out from American society tomorrow.

In the same way, and I'm not saying that there should be laws that prevent wholeness. I want to debate. but we should not be closing down the debate on wokeness. I think Elon Byan X has opened up the debate in ways that will eventually destroy whokeness as a governing philosophy. Okay. The title of the book is Go Woke, Go Broke. It's by Charlie Gasperino, who I consider a dear friend, even though he's a ball-breaking, MF.

I do love you, Charlie, and I appreciate you joining the show today. Thanks for having me. Good luck. Charlie wrote such an interesting book. As we said in the conversation, this is not a book against diversity. This is just a book about how if you go overboard in a society, you can get a backlash. I think, frankly, Donald Trump represents that backlash. Charlie spoke to so many great people for this book. And it's interesting to hear everybody's different perspective as Charlie goes through their thought process. But I do think this is an incredible read for Democrats. Democrats

need to know that their policies will be way better, way, way better if they take heed that there is a culture war going on in the United States and perhaps they need to mollify elements of how they feel about their position on the culture war. I think it'll be better for them on policy. So please read the book. She's out right now bullshitting with one of her. She's driven the Maserati over to one of her friend's houses and she's sitting there eating Entemans. Oh, Ma, you there? Yeah, where are you? I'm home.

I got Baltimore coming to fix the electrical outlet, okay? So you're all set, okay? All right, but I got it. I need you for the podcast because, you know, you're the store of the podcast, and I'm... One is it? I have to go to lunch with my friends. Two minutes. Two minutes.

You ready? My guest this week was a guy named Charlie Gasparino. I'm getting a lot of Italians on the show recently, but he hates the, the woke culture. So they had like a transit as an example, advertising for Bud Light, and then the beer sales dropped off. Do you think the culture war in the United States is making people miserable? I think that we're rocking. I think the United States is rocking.

And I think that Trump costs a lot of it when he won the election. And he's going to have this whole world upside down. That's my opinion. Okay. Because why? Because I think he's a bully. And I think that when bullies are so strong, he's a strong bully. There is an insecurity.

And that's why they're a bully because they want them. makes themselves think that they're strong, but they're not strong doing that. I don't think they're strong doing that. Okay. And so it's almost like, it's almost like toxic, right? Yeah, I think it's, I think he is toxic. Okay, so who'd you vote for, Ma? You know, he cares me, but I voted for Kamala, whatever the hell of name is.

Okay, whatever the hell of the name is. This is what I love about you, okay? But even, even the way you pronounce her name just makes it even more joyous. Okay. So, but, and you vote, you voted for her because you really just, okay, you think what? I think that she has a lot of intelligent people supporting her. I think it was dropped on her lap without her knowledge, and she got a little fumbling for a while. But I think that she's a good listener, and the people that really love her that have puts them,

they will guide her through it for the first year and after that she'll be perfect. All right. That's how I feel. All right. Good. So let's see what happens. Okay. Love you, my right.

All right. Love you, baby. All right. 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, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram.

I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here next week.