Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - The Formula That Made Donald Trump Unstoppable - Ian Reifowitz

Episode Date: October 23, 2025

Ian Reifowitz is SUNY Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at Empire State University of the State University of New York. His articles have appeared in the Daily News, Newsday, The New Republic, and In These Times, among other mainstream outlets. He has also published numerous academic articles. Get a copy of his book here Riling Up the Base: Examining Trump’s Use of Stereotypes through an Interdisciplinary Lens here: https://amzn.to/4noElPR Anthony Scaramucci is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, and founder and chairman of SALT, a global thought leadership forum and venture studio. He is the host of the podcast Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. A graduate of Tufts University and Harvard Law School, he lives in Manhasset, Long Island. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGEMGEMP operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. In communities across Canada, hourly Amazon employees can grow their skills and their paycheck by enrolling in free skills training programs for in-demand fields. Learn more at aboutamazon.ca. Even though he tells lies on facts, he also have attacked the media to the point where, at least for his followers,

there almost is no, this is the truth and this is a lie. It's just, well, this person says this and that person says that, and they're biased anyway. A lot of his supporters, not only do they not focus on his lies, but they say he's a truth teller. He's a truth bringer. Even if he'd get certain facts wrong. And some of them even say this. You know, he might get certain facts wrong. But he speaks the truth in a sort of capital T way because he says things other people are afraid to say. So they're more focused on that aspect of truth than on any individual fact. So he owns the Republican Party now. Republicans used to be for immigration reform, George W. Bush, Reagan. They used to be strongly pro free trade. Trump has moved them 360 degrees on both of those issues. It's his party. Well, welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Ian Rifeowitz. He is a distinguished professor at the State University of New York. And his book, Riling Up the Base. Does the Base need to be riled? That's the question. But riling up the base, examining Trump's use of stereotypes through an interdisciplinary lens. Quite the academic title. It's an academic book, but I enjoyed the book because it was a fairly brief book. by the way, but it was loaded with great anecdotes and loaded with lots of sociology. I felt like this was a little bit of a sociology book.

Jane Goodall, who studies Alpha Primates, could have wrote the foreword for you, late and great Jane Goodall. But welcome to the program and congratulations. Before we dive into the book, what led you and your co-author? I think it's Anastasia Churlow. Hopefully I'm getting that right into writing this book, Riling Up the Base. Ian. Well, first, thanks Anthony so much for having me on. It's a pleasure. And I think, yeah, we're all sad about the loss of Jane Goodall, a real giant in the world of science.

So, you know, the book really grew out of an idea that my wonderful co-author, Anastasia, had to study stereotypes. And, you know, she has a lot of knowledge in the areas of sociology, communication, psychology. And we were talking and I said, and we basically settled on the idea of looking at Trump's use of stereotypes because he was, you know, had the most powerful megaphone in the world, the most powerful position in the world. And he is using stereotypes and has been using stereotypes for years in a way that no other political figure who has reached anywhere close to his level has reached. So I think it started out in a sort of abstract and then moved into the specific area of Trump simply because of what he was doing. Well, is it something he did

and you address this? So I want you to address this for our viewers and listeners. Is it something he did intuitively? Is it something him and his campaign got together on and said, here's how we're going to manifest this? How did this come about? I think it's largely intuition. I don't see Donald Trump, you know, sitting there, you know, scratching his chin like a great thinker and saying,

what's the best way for me to express my rhetoric politically? I think he's somebody who has, and you would know this more personally than I would certainly, but he's somebody who has, I think, an individual style that he has been using now for four decades and that has worked for him. And I think it's almost naturalistic. The one thing that's really interesting, though, about because he mentioned talking with his strategists, when he was planning to run for president in 2015 and was going to make that speech coming down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his candidacy, he had some prepared remarks. Before he wrote or before he and his people put those remarks together, he asked, I believe it was Mr. Nunberg to look at or look into what was really animating talk radio listeners because I think he had a sense that that was where his audience was.

And they came back to them and they said immigration, immigration, immigration, borders, sovereignty and the sense that we had lost our borders and were losing our sovereignty. So they wrote these these remarks for him, and there was a line or two about immigration, but the remarks that really grabbed people, which were stereotype remarks, which we highlight, was, you know, the section where he talked about Mexican immigrants, people coming across the Rio Grande as being rapists and murderers and drug dealers. That was actually ad-libbed, which is interesting. I believe it was a Gabriel Sherman article, you know, did the research. So he had this idea from his research and to talk about immigration, but he just sort of ran with it. And I think,

I think he responds to the response he feels from an audience. And after that speech, and then in particular after the first Republican debate, when again he hammered Jeb Bush on immigration, used some, you know, some stereotypes that had immigrants. He shot right to the top of the polls for the Republican nomination, went from single digits to 25%. And he really never looked back. So his rhetoric around immigrants and specifically those stereotypes,

they may have been an ad limb, but they did come from research. And he stuck with them because they worked. Okay. And I agree with all that. But when I read the book, I want to test something on you. You said, when I read the book, something popped out at me that I didn't see prior to reading the book. And that is the populism was there for the plucking. And the fear of immigration, American nativism, xenophobia was there.

And I submit to you, and I want to get your reaction to this, had Donald Trump run, against Barack Obama, even in 2008, possibly 2012, he might have beaten him. He might have had a more galvanized, more passionate voting base than a standard Republican like a Mitt Romney or John McCain. What say you? I mean, it's a good question. I'm not a great backwards prognosticator. You know, he did talk about running in 2012. and then ultimately decided not to. I think Obama was a better communicator than Hillary Clinton was.

I don't think that's a stretch to make that case. I think he's a better communicator than Kamala Harris and Joe Biden. So I don't think in the end that he would have been able to defeat Barack Obama. Because at that point, certainly in 2008, the country wanted to move away from Republicans. Now, Trump was a different kind of Republican. He could have run against the Bush establishment, although in some ways McCain had, you know, sort of positioned himself as a different kind of Republican. It's an interesting question. I think in 2008, the Republican brand was so badly tarnished by Bush's handling of the economy that I think any Republican

would have had a very difficult time. Could Trump have gotten in in 2012? You know, maybe, but I do think Obama was getting credit for the recovery that he had initiated. So I think, I can't give you a hard yes and a hard no, but go ahead. I'll give you an example. Okay, Trump endorsed Romney. And we were having a hard time in Michigan, believe it or not. And Trump made a series of robocalls into rural Michigan for Romney. Even though Romney grew up there, his father was a, you know, he was a CEO of AMC American Motors Corporation.

Romney was having a hard time with the populism that was rising in Michigan, and Trump boosted his support theory, ended up winning the Michigan primary. I just feel like the point that you're making, which I'd like for you to say in your own words, but the central argument I got from the book is that stereotypes more than policy secured the election and just these stereotypes that are giving him this ongoing support. So tell me if I'm right about that because that's more or less what I got from the book.

Yeah, it is. And the key is that we're talking about how he riled up the base. It helped him more in the Republican primary than anywhere else. And I think that's the argument that we're trying to make from a political standpoint. It's how he separated himself from 16 other, you know, most of whom were reasonably qualified Republicans in 2016. And it's the same thing that would explain why he would have helped Mitt Romney in the Republican primary in 2012. I don't think it helped him. as much in the general election. But, you know, he was the only one in the Republican primary in 2016, talking the way he did.

He was really, in many ways, the only populist. He was the only one running against trade. And our book is not about economic policy, but he's the only one running against, you know, the sort of Republican orthodoxy on free trade, which had gone over it. And many, you know, centrist Democrats had adopted going back to Bill Clinton and NAFTA. So I think it helped him in the Republican primary set himself apart. In the general election, at the end of the day, not to get all, you know, political and data driven, I think he probably would have lost had it not been for Komi, right?

In the end, Hillary won by two and a half percent and another 1 percent would have added enough in those three states. But he definitely needed that base to be riled up. And that base was dominant within the Republican Party. Maybe it's one third of the whole country, but it was a majority of Republicans. Okay. So give me the stereotype. Go ahead. Let me hear the stereotype. Right. So we mentioned one of them, which is around Mexican, like Mexican immigrants.

He also used stereotypes around urban crime, right? He talked about how, you know, people living in the suburbs would be, would see their, their suburbs ruined by Obama-Biden policies that would bring crime and gangs and people you wouldn't like into your neighborhoods, drawing on fear. about, you know, black youths, so to speak, coming into the cities. He used stereotypes around gender specifically with both Hillary and Kamala. He talked about them being weak, right? So, especially in 2024, he used a lot of sort of masculine, coded as strong stereotypes

to refer to himself. He talked about how tough bikers liked him. He talked about how, well, maybe they were white dudes for Harris, but their wives and their wives' lovers were for him because he was virile and strong. And then the Harris supporters are weak. So there's that whole strong, weak thing around gender. There's a whole crime thing around black and Latino immigrants. He talking about Muslims, he said Islam hates us.

And here's another interesting distinction, right? George W. Bush, another Republican. So forget about Democrats not using stereotypes. After 9-11, George Bush said, Islam is peace. We are not at war with Islam. Donald Trump says, Islam hates us. So even there you can see a strong contrast. That's not a left-right contrast.

So those are a few examples from the book that we draw on. Hiring isn't just about finding someone willing to take the job. I need the right person with the right background who can move our business forward. If I wanted candidates who match what I'm looking for, join the 1.6 million companies that sponsor their jobs with Indeed. If I needed to hire a new editor, I'd go to Indeed. be super specific. Not just can edit audio, I'd say I need someone who's edited conversational podcast for the last three years, gets our style and knows our software, someone who's done this before. And here's the thing. With Indeed sponsored jobs, I'd get people who fit that description.

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We talk about political correctness. and then we talk about closer to the 2016 election microaggressions. People started to be called out, for lack of better word, even for saying things that they didn't intend to mean to be offensive. And then so you have people who are resentful about this whole trend in the culture. And then Trump comes along and says, not only he doesn't have to say this, but his words say, not only do you have to not worry, you know, you shouldn't even worry about these unintentional microaggressions.

Hell, you can use intentional stereotypes. And there's not going to be any punishment for you. In fact, I'm going to show you that it can be a reward. So I think the kind of person who was drawn to this is a person who was resentful of political correctness, resentful of what they saw as a stifling, perhaps liberal culture. And I can't get into, I don't know how you would stereotype those voters sort of demographically. That's not something I, you know, I'm familiar. with, but I would say that there is an ideological sort of component of people who are fed up

with being told not what not to say. It was sort of the same thing that you had sort of shock jocks doing. I mean, to some degree, Rush Limbaugh is a model for Trump. He used to love to tweak people on the left, by showing what you can get away with. And, you know, rebelliousness is fun, right? Breaking the rules is fun. So the people who found that appealing, I think, are the people in Trump's who found his rhetoric appealing. The Washington Post reported in the first term, Trump won, about 34,000 documented lies. He's on pace to tell 40,000 lies this time.

So he's just amped up the lies. The journalists have a real hard time with this, Ian, because when they interview him and one lie after that other is coming out of his mouth, they have to make a decision. Do we just spend the interview fact-checking him, calling him out on his lies, letting him talk, getting his words out there, they seem to have sided with the latter. They're just going to let him get his words out there.

Why is that so effective? I mean, other politicians that are caught in those bold-faced lies, people look at, okay, oh, my God, I mean, we know politicians lie, but this stuff is ridiculous. So how does he get away with it? I know. I think he is following something that Steve Bannon said, which is basically you flood the zone, right?

And if you flood the zone, it's impossible to focus on any one thing. But there's another piece to this, which is that even though he tells lies on facts, he also, and this is something that his allies are very good at, have attacked the media to the point where, at least for his followers, there almost is no, well, this is the truth and this is the lie. It's just, well, this person says this and that person says that, and they're biased anyway. One of the things that we found in doing the research is that a lot of his supporters, not only do they not focus on his lives, but they say he's a truth teller. He's a truth bringer, right? Even if he'd get certain facts wrong. And some of them even say this, you know, he might get certain facts wrong, but he speaks the truth in a sort of capital T way because he says things other people are afraid to say. So they're more focused on that aspect of truth than on any individual fact. So I don't know, maybe the journalists feel like this. that it's almost useless to try,

that they'll be branded as anti-Trump if they try to correct him and maybe they're intimidated. I mean, that's another possibility, certainly. Yeah, because he's a bully. And so when you bully people, a lot of people will fall in line so they won't face the wrath of the bully.

And of course, the bully's job is to pick out the people who are coming at the bully and crush the weak ones to scare the ones into continued compliance. So, you know, this stuff that has obviously worked for him. he's a formidable political figure, but you talk about his blunt and repetitive style. You talk about the dog whistles, the foghorns. How much of his success is about this formula?

In other words, he's found a formula. I can beat the following drumbeat of populism and prejudices and racial biases, and that's going to be enough for me to get to the presidency. or up against that, is it just the failure of the Democratic Party to field reasonable candidates because when you poll on Trump, he's not well white. Right. And then it doesn't have to be one or the other, right? It's all of these things.

When you talk about somebody who won an election in 2016 by a sliver, I mean, a true sliver, it's all the above. I do think he, even though he's not a traditionally polished presidential communicator, I do think, And I absolutely agree with you. He's an effective communicator. Repetition is a way of getting your point across, right? And not only repetition, but emphasis. You know, he uses hyperbole a lot.

He says, no, his constant refrain is nobody's ever seen anything like this before or nobody's ever been as good as this or as good as me. And that breaks through. It breaks through for his audience. And I mean, one of the things we talk about, in the book, and I don't want to get deep into the academic theories, is the idea that there are certain ways that communication is effective, and repetition is one of those ways, and he's very good at it. Now, having said that, could a more effective opponent have done better?

Absolutely. I mean, certainly Hillary Clinton made some serious communication mistakes. Most people are familiar with the deplorable's remark. That's going to go down in history is one of the worst gaffs the presidential candidate has ever made. Right? Because even there, she's stereotyping his opponents in that sense. And that was very alienating. And I've

read some research that says that that some focus groups that were done sort of over time tracking focus groups, that that statement cost her more votes than anything else in this one sort of tracking group a group that was tracked. Kamala Harris,

the trans ad was devastating. devastating, devastating, because he had her on tape, in her words, taking a position that I think most Americans found pretty extreme, that the government was going to pay for, I believe, undocumented immigrant prisoners, trans surgeries. Most Americans think that that is not something that the government should be doing, but she's on tape doing it. Why? Because Democratic groups put her on the spot and made her, not made her, but got her to say that. Well, this ad, which does draw on stereotypes. the ad has Kamala talking and then it has, I believe, some images of like a bald man with a mustache, a lipstick wearing a dress, like stereotypical, you know, images of what I think many people, and I think what Trump would say are people who are outside the mainstream. Well, those are the people that Kamala is for. She's for they, them. I'm for you, I believe he said.

Very effective. So it's effective communication, but it's also a bad job by Democrats in communicating their own ideas and finding candidates who can do well. I don't even know how they fall into his traps all the time. They looked at that end and said, well, there's only like 10 or 12 people who are identified as trans that have actually played in high school sports. How could this be a big deal? And so they miss these cultural totems.

I have told people on my podcast, Donald Trump is a Napoleon of the culture where he can see the whole battlefield. You can anticipate your moves. Why do you think the Democrats are always caught flat-footed? when we've now had 10 years of the same predictive algorithm emanating from Donald Trump. All right. So that's a great question. And it's a little bit of, you know, sort of prognostication, which I'm happy to engage in. I have actually written about this somewhat separate from this book, where I talked about how Democrats have lost the sense of Obama's more balanced vision of the way to talk about America.

I think they've become, you know, since certainly 2020, at least with George Floyd movement, you had a sense in the Democratic Party that the most marginalized groups should have the loudest platform and that it's wrong somehow to criticize what the most marginalized groups want or what they want you to say

or how they want you to talk. And it's a bit of an echo chamber, right? Because if the only people in the room are people who are all on you or on that same page, then nobody's going to stand up and say, hey, maybe Kamala, you shouldn't, you know, maybe Senator Harris,

you shouldn't support that position because if somebody says that, then other people in them are going to say, how dare you, those marginalized groups need our support? And certainly in a moral sense, they do need support, but that's not how you win a presidency. And it's certainly not how you run against somebody like Donald Trump, who is, as you said, really good at this. And I think he just clearly feels it in his gut. Right? He's, I don't know, lucky is the right word, but the feelings he has about culture issues are feelings that motivate a lot of people and motivate them strongly.

I'm now down to the last part of this podcast where we pick five words from your book. My producer and I go through the book. We come up with five words. I want the author to react to the five words. Okay. So if I say the word stereotypes, you say what? You give me a sentence or two. They're not true, right?

Or they're not accurate, I should say, right? But they're very powerful. Stereotypes are powerful. So there's three words for your one word. Okay. What if I say the word base? Base are people who are with Trump, ride or die. They're with Trump no matter what happens.

And they feel like he speaks for them. It's not about tariffs. It's not about any other policy. He is their guy. No problem. He can bunker buss the Iranians. He can withhold the Epstein files. It doesn't matter.

He's our guy. And we're riding or dying. very well said. I say the word Democrats. Cautious. They're cautious. And they're also confused. And they're divided. I think they're united around opposing Trump, but they're divided about how best to do it.

Yeah, they're in a civil war with themselves. And they are, if you said that to me, Democrats, is it the best thing that's ever happened to Donald Trump? Because that's exactly how he keeps winning. Okay, I say the word Republican. say what? Trump. He owns the Republican Party now. Think about this, right? Republicans, I was just going to say quickly, Republicans used to be for immigration reform, George W. Bush, Reagan. They used to be strongly pro-free trade. Trump has moved them, you know, 360 degrees on

both of those issues. It's his party. Okay. Very well, very well said. I'll give you the last word, but I'm going to give you my last word, Trump. The most important political and cultural figure in this century. Yes, no question about that. Well, we have no disagreement there. Like him or dislike him, no disagreement there. Riling up the base, Anastasia Curlow and Ian Reifkowitz. I'll tell you what, a great book. I really enjoyed reading it. Available on Amazon, that's where I found it. And I think people read this book, they'll have great insight into what happened, and it's incredibly well researched. Thank you so much for joining us today on Open Book. Thank you, Anthony. It's really a pleasure.