Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Trump AKA the Lucky Loser

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

In this conversation, New York Times’ investigative reporters Russell Buettner and Susanne Craig discuss their instant bestseller 'Lucky Loser,' which explores how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created an illusion of success.  They delve into Trump's financial history, the influence of his father Fred Trump, and the media's role in shaping public perception. The discussion highlights the complexities of Trump's character, his obsession with status, and the surprising revelations uncovered during their reporting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Conditions apply. Hello, I'm Anthony Scaramucci, and this is Open Book, where I talk with some of the brightest mind's 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. Lucky loser. What a great title from the New York Times investigative reporters Russell Butner and Suzanne Craig. And what's even greater is that it's describing Donald Trump. Russell and Suzanne's book reveals the true accounting and myths of Trump and his money, what he had, what he lost, and what he has left. We delve into everything from Trump's time at the Military Academy to the influence of his father, Fred Trump, their complex relationship and his ultimate obsession with wealth and status. Let's get into it. I'd like to take a second to recommend my friend Andy Astroy's great podcast, The Back Room. Every episode is a fun, incredibly honest take on our society and the political situation, along with some brilliant guests. I've been honored

to join Andy on the show, and you know anywhere that accepts me with no filter deserves a shout. out. Okay, a big delight for me. Joining us now is Russell Butner and Suzanne Craig. They are both world-famous investigative reporters for The New York Times. The title of the book is Lucky Loser. What great alliteration. I just hope no one ever calls me the lucky loser. But the title of this book is Lucky Luser, how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success. And boy, are we living with the yoke of all that now, guys. So I want to to go to the first question and sort of these are for both of you and we can switch back and forth. But since 2016, you've both been focused on the personal finances of Mr. Trump. Susan, specifically,

I've seen some of your interviews. I think you've got some of this information from the Trump family articulating how much money he was given, what he did to divide out and conquer his other relatives, to keep a lot of that money. And then what he did with it, you know? But let's go to both of you with this central question, why did you take this on? So let's start with you, Suzanne, and then I'll ask for us the same question. Why did you, why did you get involved with this? Well, it started because an editor just asked me if I could look into Donald Trump and his money. And that was back in 2016. I was actually, I'd been covering Governor Cuomo in Albany. I just arrived at City Hall. I was going to be the Bureau Chief for the New York Times covering then Mayor Bill de Blasie.

I was super excited about it. I'd been in the seat three weeks. And I get a call from the Metro editor and he says, hey, can you just come out for a few weeks? Donald Trump is, you know, just announced he's running for president. Nobody really thought he was going to be in very long and I was told you'll be back at City Hall in a few months. I never went back. And we started just writing on his finances back then. Very little was known about his finances. There's been this, you know, discussion in New York and the tabloids. He was this billionaire and, you know, all the noise that went around with that, but we really didn't know much about how much he was worth, even in some cases, what he owned. It was a privately held company, and it was sort of just shrouded and mystery

and mainly his myth-making about it, which was false. So Russ and I started writing on it. We'd each did, you know, kind of separate stories prior to the election, and then six weeks before the election, I went to check my mailbox one Friday afternoon, and I found in my mailbox, it was incredible. A manila envelope addressed to me, it had three pages of what looked like Donald Trump's 1995 tax returns. And when I went to the line about how much, we would assume he had losses, it looked like he had a billion dollars in accumulated losses in 1995. We couldn't believe it. We worked round the clock to try and confirm that. We ended up getting it confirmed from an on-the-record source accountant that had signed the document. And from there, we just, we kept,

working, you know, just trying to uncover more information. And we started looking at how much Donald Trump had inherited from his father, Fred Trump. And that story, we just started digging into property records and calling people. And that story that ran in 2018, you know, we discovered Donald Trump, you know, he long claimed that he had inherited almost nothing from his father. In fact, he'd inherited hundreds of millions of dollars from his father. And it was enhanced through tax fraud. That was the story. You mentioned some Trump family members, helped us with us. Mary Trump had given some really important documents that helped us get to that story. Then we just kept digging and we got it later on. Another source gave us 20 plus years of Donald Trump's personal and corporate tax

returns that led to a series of stories in 2020. And there were other stories along the way. So it was really an organic journalism effort that just kind of kept going and now ended up with this book. So this is the heart of Mr. Trump. If there's an Achilles heel for Mr. Trump, it's this book. And so, Russ, let me go to that. I mean, he believes his political power comes from the Celebrity Apprentice, as you guys pointed out in New York Times Sunday article this weekend, and that it comes from his wealth. He is a genius, multi-billionaire. He's the only person that the four, 400 people say tries to boost his record. A lot of people are trying to get themselves off that list. He's trying to get himself higher up on it. And so this strikes right at the heart of him.

And so, Russ, you know, why give yourself this agitaph? You know, you seem like a nice guy and probably have a nice family and everything. Why would you want to be antagonized by him? Because I'm sure he's antagonizing. Yeah. The world is full of unpleasant people and we don't pick our subjects, usually based on how fun they are. But this one is particularly unique because, as you know, he pops on to the political scene in 2016 with nothing much behind him but years as a television celebrity. And this business record that he says shows he's an incredible genius, that he's a multi-billionaire, and that he's promising he can now do the same thing for the country that he had done for his businesses. But this was a very small, privately held family company. To try to do the usual vetting that we and the public would do of a candidate for president

was very difficult because those records are not there. Even compared to say Mitt Romney, you could look back at the funds he'd been involved with and tell something about that. And most people running for office are government officials who have a long public track record. Mitt DeVold's tax returns, though, right? It didn't. All of these. First thing.

And Trump went out of his way to hide all that. So that to like investigative reporters is just like a magnet. Come, come to me, right? And everything that we found out just sort of upended another element of his myth of who he was. And when we get to the end of it, we've done sort of three large stories over a five-year period. But there was so much more to tell and just connecting all that and trying to figure out where it was that he became the person that he was, what it was that American culture sort of enabled him to tell these lies about what he was doing and still be credible. There were changes in the media ecosystem in those years that were a big role.

And so it just felt like as a long narrative exploring sort of an American century in the Trump family, it really had weight and helped us get to understand where we had gotten to. So, I mean, the title of your book is awesome. I mean, I love the alliteration and I applaud you guys for the title. But the title I was thinking of when I closed your book was unchecked. bully. And throughout his life, he's an unchecked bully. And this book is providing the checks on a lot of things that have gone on. And I want to go right to the adolescent Trump. You guys have new interviews. You've went to his former classmates and friends, as well as some details about

his high school years at New York Military Academy. The lore is that his father found him recalcitrant and found him to be very difficult. So he sent him to Military Academy for grooming. but he was unruly at the academy and was shirking some of his duties yet continued to rise in the rank. So tell us what you learned in these new interviews about this young man, Donald Trump. Russ, do you want to start that one? Sure. It's an interesting thing. There's a split between, as you would see throughout his life, between sort of the way he portrayed himself and then the realities of the situation.

So he gets there and it's a military hierarchy, but it's not really a military operation. Of course, these are young kids. and their main thing is wearing uniforms, marching, playing sports, making their beds in a certain way, cleaning the bathrooms. And there's this hierarchy of authority that develops. There's some adults that set the overall temperature of the place. But then most of that enforcement of those things falls to senior cadets, to high school kids who are managing the people below them. And Donald Trump right away seems to recognize that he wants to be in those upper ranks of people. And he tries to do that, but he has a problem. He doesn't actually manage the people that he's associated with.

In fact, one of his captains beats up a young cadet, and they decide he's just been too inattentive to managing the sort of power structure there. So they move him off. A lot of the cadets there thought he would be pushed out of leadership altogether, but they put him in a supply role. And he was sort of at that level, but not really part of the overall kind of hierarchy of authority. And then this like weird thing happens as they're taking the pictures for the yearbook in his senior year he wants that authority still he's still craving or that that that sort of the honor of that he wants the credibility of having done really well there so he has this friend michael scadron who has all these medals from various things he's accomplished during his years there and donald asked to borrow his dress uniform

so he can sit in the yearbook photo with all of those medals and that sort of gets to the split between what he wanted to be, how he presented himself, and then the reality of the situation. But it also speaks to his general mendacity, right? So he's able to, you know, when you play golf with him, it's known as the Donald Trump foot wedge, where the foot comes out and kicks the ball everywhere. And, or, you know, I have buddies of mine play golf with them. And he races up. He takes their ball off the fairway, throws it in the rough, kicks his ball, 50, 60 years down the fairway. And so, so he's been doing that his whole life. That's why I say, He's an unchecked bully.

He's unchecked. He's allowed to do this or something about the American culture that is allowing for this. You know, before I read your book, I saw Trump as Logan Roy, and I saw him as the Patriarch and Secession. When I finished your book, I actually now see him as Kendall Roy. I didn't realize that distinction, but Logan Roy is Fred Trump. Wow. Okay.

And he's actually Kendall Roy, and there's this weird relationship. There's a combination of loyalty, but also manipulative. relation in that relationship based on your reporting based on the way you describe it. And so tell us about Fred Trump and the power that he had over Donald Trump. Well, I hadn't thought about it that way, but it's a really interesting story. Donald Trump looms so large in our life. But when you actually go back and you look at it, it was Fred Trump, who really was the power. You taught me that, Suzanne.

I didn't get that on my own. Yeah, I just hadn't thought about that Liligan cat because, you know, there's a lot of succession. Yeah, I saw him as the Patriarch, but he's really not. He's the oldest son dies of alcoholism. He becomes the heir apparent to the oldest son and he has all of this

but he's been hit hard by the dad and so there's a lot of that Kendall Roy insecurity in Donald Trump. There's so much of it and when you see what happened there was another brother, Fred Senior, Mary Trump's father. And it's just a tragic story.

Initially, not surprisingly, he was the eldest son. There was a time when Fred saw him as the heir apparent. And we talked to people who went to school with Freddie, the young son, the eldest son. And it sounded like he planned to go into the family business at one point, but he also had other interests. And he just became inadequate to Fred, the father. And it just never worked.

He quickly fell away. He ended up dying of alcoholism when he was in his early 40s. And Fred Trump did he did an heir. He wasn't going to pick his daughter. you know, they were just, that was not a path for them. They even went to different schools than the boys. So Fred Trump put his chips on Donald, and it's really fascinating when you think about that

because whatever you think about Fred Trump, he was a good businessman, and he didn't believe in debt, he didn't believe in giving personal obligations to banks. He believed that cash was king. There were so many things that he, you know, just the disciplines of business that he had that Donald Trump broke. famously the debt Donald Trump would take on just all of it. And no matter what we never saw a moment where Fred Trump, once he had made the decision

that Donald Trump was his man to take over the company, that he wavered in that decision. So it is fascinating. And we've thought a lot about it. It's quite surprising. And we talked to people who knew real estate moguls at that time. And they knew the sons. There's a lot of instances in New York where the son would be coming up the ranks to take over the father's company, and those men, for the most part, seem to be really hard on their sons. And one of the people

we talked to in the books that he'd run into Fred Trump, and Fred Trump would just be like, isn't my Donnie great? You know, and, you know, Donald was basically a black hole for Fred Trump's money, but he just never seemed to question it. So there's manipulation, though, there too, right? I mean, he's manipulating his son. Tell us a little bit about that. Sometimes I think, Anthony, it's the other way around that Donald was manipulating his father. I think a bit of both, though, maybe. Actually, now that I think about it, Do you agree with my Kendall Roy analogy or no? I mean, I got that out of your book, actually.

So that was one comment. But the second comment, I felt like the father wanted Trump to be a certain way. And he was going to push and shove him. And the money was incentivization to get him to do things a certain way. Do I have that wrong? Or maybe I have that wrong. I mean, it's hard to say, like, I don't know if we can get into the relationship that much. I'm sure that that was a component of it as well.

I think what one thing that struck us is interesting and surprise us was the degree to which As Sue said, once Freddie, the older son is out of the picture and Donald Trump emerges, Donald Trump is in many ways the polar opposite of Fred Trump. He brags about doing projects that he never does. Fred Trump never did that. He doesn't pay attention to the bottom line. And so he runs huge deficits. Fred Trump never did that in his entire career. And he doesn't pay his bills. Fred Trump never did not pay a bill. And he was incredibly braggadocious. But Fred Trump embraced those things and he would defend them. And by the time, around 1984 when Trump Tower is starting to open up, there's this weird scene where they're having the capping ceremony at the top of the tower. And Fred is there. He's now 80 years old. But suddenly he sounds like Donald Trump. Somebody asks him how sales are going. And he said, stupendous, fabulous, best ever in the history of New York City. He had never spoken like that. We had watched interviews for him. It was very dry and precise when he talked about things, even when he was in trouble and irritated by the line of questioning, but all of a sudden he's like a chain of superlatives,

just like his son. And even as Donald Trump lied about his father's accomplishment to elevate his own, saying my father was small time, my father built little projects in Brooklyn and Queens, not acknowledging those projects would be worth a billion dollars in the course of Fred Trump's lifetime. Fred Trump didn't object to that. He said, yes, he surpassed me in every way possible. So it is a really weird and dynamic relationship. And I'm sure what you're saying was a a major component of it as well. So I asked one of my, you know, I got my career started at Goldman Sachs after I left law school. And I asked my, one of my mentors who's now 80, he would insist on being nameless because he'll choke me if I put his name out there. But I asked him about this because he knew

Trump. And I, he knew Fred. Okay. Remember, I started in the real estate department at Goldman. And so I, and I met, the first time I met Donald Trump, I was an associate at Goldman Sachs. And this is obviously Trump would have never remembered that meeting because it was, I was probably in my late 20s at the time. And obviously he was famous. I wasn't. But my old mentor said that he got away with the big lie because people actually want to believe the big lie. And so when he said things like I borrowed in 1975 a small amount of money from my dad and I converted it into billions of dollars, it sounds good. And so people are like okay with it. When the story comes out that you accurately report and you've got the tax returns that he lost billions of dollars and he

inherited $400 million from his dad. If he just put it in the S&B 500, he would have done way better that he's literally squandered the treasure that his father gave him and he blocked his family members from getting it. It's not a good story. So Suzanne, so what ends up happening is people don't believe it. They like hearing the other story. You know, there are people at his MAGA rallies that would read your book and say fake news, not believable. Donald Trump is a mega genius, a startup billionaire. What do you say about that? What's your reaction to what I'm saying?

Do you believe anything I'm saying? Or do you think? I think people love a hard scrabble story. And I think Donald Trump actually was born into wealth and he was probably upset that he was robbed of the opportunity to tell a hard scrabble story. So he's made one up. I mean, it's really, it really is something. I think people do want to believe it.

And then I also think we have to remember the time that Donald Trump sort of came of age in New York. It was a celebrity. He was known more as a celebrity as a businessman. You know, I worked at the Wall Street Journal. I covered Goldman Sachs for years. Those were publicly traded companies that had to report it in every quarter. Donald Trump reported into Donald Trump. We could never really get inside it. But his company also wasn't consequential in a way that big publicly traded companies like Goldman were. When I covered Goldman, you know, it was a full-time job at the top, at the Wall Street.

Journal, was just covering Goldman Sach. And so he sort of was on this celebrity kind of specter in New York. And so I just think there were some reporters who did incredible work on him. Neil Barski is one at the Wall Street Journal when Donald Trump had the casinos and there was publicly traded companies involved. And he did puncture some of the lies. But I think that, you know, just, it still amazes me in one of the things about the book that he was able to rise for 20-some years with, you know, claim, first of all, appropriating his father's wealth, his own, then just lying about his wealth, and it was just repeated over and over and over by the New York Times, by 60 minutes. It almost defied belief when you actually just sort of looking at some of the basic facts back then that we could find, but it just kept going.

Well, your colleague Maggie Haberman in the book The Con Man, she writes about the headline, the best sex ever, who was a total manifestation of his mind, and he was able to get it into the front page of the New York Post. was never said by his second wife. Okay, let me go to this. I'm going to ask you this, Russ. Obsessed. He's absolutely obsessed and possessed about status. And rich people in my lifetime, and again, maybe you guys have had a different experience,

but super rich people are not obsessed about that. You know, and so, you know, striving rich people are, but not really rich people. Like when Trump says I'm really, really, really. rich. First thing I think of is Shakespeare. Doubt does protest too much, meaning he's not really, really rich. So why, Russ? Why the obsession? What do you think it is? It's an excellent question. I mean, I think it's part of the definition you see in narcissism. I'm not a psychologist, but you have to believe that you're superior to everybody else in the world, right? And that seems to have been the main mission of his life is to portray himself as superior. And that's a benchmark that he used.

I think in our book, Fred Trump is a great sort of juxtaposition for that again because he lived a modest life. He built a house for his family in the early 1950s and they lived the rest of his life in that in that house and never took its driving vacations once to Florida, never took a cruise, bought his wife a minc coat once a year every once in a while. Bauder Roles Royce every couple of years. But that was that was it. Donald Trump immediately becomes obsessed with symbols of status and wealth as a symbol of his excellence. And I think that's part of what the book has to say about how we got here and America, American culture's sort of role in his rise is that the qualities that we imbue and people who show signs of wealth, right?

He was right, it turns out, to want it, because people did assume he was excellent. People did assume he must be really good at whatever he says he's good at because, look, he's got a jet, right? That's all you need. And that has sustained itself. And you combine that America's sort of acceptance of excellence when there's signs of money and not wanting to challenge those people, not feeling comfortable to say, I'm as smart as them to question what they're doing, with somebody who, as you said, is built on mendacity, who has no shame about lying right to your face, even when he knows that you know it's not true at that very second, right? You could have the object in your hand. He'll tell you this object is green.

Right. And you're staring at the object, but he's telling you it's green. And then you start to, okay, I'm being gaslit, but he's like, okay. You're making such a good point, too, about, you know, people who are actually rich don't want the attention. And I remember in 2016, I started doing some stories on his planes. One of them was one of the big 757. Kind of how crap it is. And I got on this because somebody who I covered on Wall Street, one of the CEOs,

who's quite wealthy. I was talking to him one day on the phone and Trump was running and he said, you should really look at that plane because it's an awful condition. He goes, I wouldn't step on it. Like people in New York sort of saw through it. He was buying the accoutrements of wealth and often didn't keep them up. And I think people who actually had money, they don't want the attention and they saw through. Oh, I mean, that plane is loud. The plane is a gas guzzler, but it's a, but it's a size of the plane. He's trying to impress the Hoy-Polloy with that plane. You know, and he's already made a decision begrudgingly that the ultra-rich will never really accept him. You know, the posers will.

But the super-rich, you know, whether they're in Palm Beach up here in New York or you pick them, are disgusted by him. They won't let him into their country clubs. They won't let them into their private New York clubs. And all of this stuff is a chip on his shoulder, which he's now, society wants to take out on the rest of us by being our president. I want to ask you about, and I'll ask Suzanne this, what was it in the reporting on this book that you uncovered that surprised or shocked you the most? I think two things. As a reporter, day in and day out, we spent a couple years on it, which is how many people hadn't been called about Trump and just how much fresh information we were able to surface in a book about somebody who's arguably the best known person in the world. That was really exciting for me as a reporter. But when would I step back and I think about just, it's still, we've talked about it.

It's still, I still can't believe that in the 1970s and the 1980s, just how he was immediately as a 20-something year old, able to say he was worth $200 million. And that went on for a couple of decades. And there was very few people who questioned it. We were just amazed at how many talk shows he went on and Larry King and we talked about 60 minutes, that how very few people, question that I remember one of my favorite anecdotes. He was on this lifestyles of the rich and famous show, Robin Leach was the host. And they loved him. A lot of people, a lot of rich people wouldn't go on that show because they didn't want the attention. But Donald Trump was tailor-made for that. He had all these accoutrements of wealth. He had the airplane, the yacht. You know,

he would take Robin Leach to the casinos. And one trip, he went on to the casinos and the casinos weren't doing well and they're filming something fabulous to do with Donald Trump. And one of the producers gets called over by a couple of the people that work there. And they're like, hey, by the way, he's not paying his contractors. And this guy was kind of shocked by this. And he talked to Robin Leach, and they decided to cut him off the show. And the producer said to me, you know, we've milked that cow. And we'd milk that cow and we're moving on.

So he even got cut off lifestyles of the rich and famous during this. But that myth continued to grow even after that. All right. So we're going to go at the end of my podcast, I always ask our authors, We pick out five words from the book. But before I go there, this is not who you want to win the presidency. It's a yes or no question. Is Donald Trump going to return to the presidency, Russ?

Oh, my God, crystal ball, yes or no? Yeah. No. Suzanne? No. Okay, so that's three noes. It's interesting. And that's just not me talking my book.

That's my observation. I think people are exhausted. And I think, you know, I don't know. Do you think Herbert Hoover said that he hated Rudy Valley on Twitter in 1929. Do you think he did at 28? I don't know. That is excellent.

That's great. I don't know. I mean, it probably didn't. I don't think, right, probably didn't. Okay. So we got five words, okay? And I'm going to read you these words and then you're each going to give me a one or two word or a sentence reaction.

Okay. We'll start with you, Russ. I say the words, lucky loser. You think what? I think a guy who benefits from things he doesn't control and the things he does control. don't turn out well. Okay.

Suzanne, anything you want to add? That was great. He was born to lack, found it through Mark Burnett, the television producer, and pretty much everything he invested that money in. There you go. Okay, so you want to go to Suzanne first. Now, Trump Organization. I said the two words, Trump Organization. You think what?

Small group of advisors with a fair bit of turnover over the years. Okay. And Russ? The wheel of a bicycle. Few spokes all going to one person in the middle. Yeah, interesting. And also, you know, you guys do point out in the book that they're found guilty of criminal tax fraud for avoiding payroll taxes. So there was a lot of stuff going on there even before he runs for president, which is even more glaring that he had the gall to run despite all of this stuff in his baggage. He's the first person that can run with tremendous baggage, wives, affairs, porn stars, and he keeps running. I say the words Fred Trump, Russ. You think what? A serious businessman. Okay.

Suzanne, anything to add there? A serious real estate builder and a tough dad. Yeah, see, that's what I think tough dad. I think ultimately you, me, and Russ are being punished because Fred was a tough dad. Unfortunately, it's not just the three of us. It's the global society is being punished. Okay. I say the words Donald Trump.

Suzanne, what do you think? A lot of things. showman and confidence man okay all right Russ yeah I was going to say magic act I see a very sad figure there you know when I hear the words Donald Trump I see a a very vacuous hole that is not going to be there's just no level of healing that's going to ever take place there it's a there's a sadness there that I see anyway that's my thing is a really important part of it yeah oh yeah because that's that's why he's still striving the way he is uh the word Trump which is ubiquitous. So, Suzanne, I say the word Trump. What do you think of?

A diminished brand. Diminished brand. Yeah. See, that's interesting. So that's exactly what I thought. So let me flip it over to Russ. I think it's pure vanity. And I don't mean just his putting his name on it. I mean that he just wanted to everything that he felt he was attracted to. He wanted to put his name on, whether it was a golf course one day or an airline. It was like it became sort of. the hobby of the day. So, you know, if you guys didn't do this work, I mean, if he didn't run for president, in 2015-16, you know, I had to work with him on the Romney campaign. We raised some money for Mitt. I saw a brand in ascendancy. I know that sounds probably crazy today, but he was, you know, the show was doing well. He was producing some real estate and some golf course product. People liked and they were buying and, you know, he had covered over whatever the losses were. He had done a good job of that.

But he opened up a seam of exposure by running for president. And I think that brand is greatly diminished. And I would say permanently. It's a political brand now. You know, we talk to brand people about that and some of them aren't even tracking it anymore. It's really a political brand now. And it's a lightning rod. Yeah. You look at that year you're talking about that period of time. 2011 was his heyday of the apprentice and licensing. He made 50 million. from those two things for almost no real significant work. He put it into the Chicago Tower, which he declared totally worthless. He put it into the old post office, which lost money and he had to sell it. He put into the Scottish golf courses and British golf courses that are all

sucking money from everything else. It was a period, like you said, it was the height of his powers and again, a second fortune that sort of went away. Yes, it's interesting. So it's a, his angle of attack has not been the right one. So before I let you guys go, what are we investigating next? I think I'm ready to investigate a beach in the Caribbean somewhere. Okay, all right. So we're going to see, okay. I'll find another beach in the Caribbean. Okay, there you go.

All right. So you guys are going to take a little bit of a break. The title of the book, which is a, I mean, it's just a fantastic title. Lucky loser, how Donald Trump squandered his father's fortune and created the illusion of success. Russ Boutner, Suzanne Craig. Thank you so much for joining me today on Open Book. I look forward to your next work, whichever it will be, post. speech. But really, really great job on this book. Thank you. Thank you very much, Anthony.

Well, what a fantastic example of investigative journalism. What I love about these two reporters is that they're no nonsense. They're going for the truth. They're digging for the truth. And when it comes to Trump's finances, of course, it's very opaque. And it's laced and loaded with a lot of lies. So for me, I was very impressed that they were able to source 20 years of tax returns. as well as interview people from Trump's days in high school and several of his family members. So the big reveal for this book, however, is no matter how truthful, no matter how detailed, no matter how footnoted Trump's lies are and the total comprehensive nature of his mandacity from everything about his life, every achievement, every dollar in and out of his bank accounts,

to a very large group of Americans, it doesn't matter. And that's to tell. someday someone's going to write that book. Why did we know so much about Donald Trump that was true? And yet, why did so many of those people believe his lies? Anyway, fascinating book, lucky loser. I just hope and pray I've never called that in my life. But man, what a fun book. My guest today, Mom, were two New York Times journalists and they wrote a book about Donald Trump's finances. It turns out that he's not worth as much money as he says he's worth. They got a hold of his tax returns and they did a calculation. He got over $400 million from his dad,

but he really hasn't done a lot with it and he's lost a lot of money. So are you surprised by that due to the way he brags about everything that there might be something he's hiding? Or what do you think? Of course he's hiding something. Of course. Okay. Why is he overcompensating like that, Mom? Because he's insecure. That goes back to him being insecure. He wants the world to know this, that, and the other. And first of all, if you have to be braggatotious and what you have, that's one of your assets. To me, as my side, where you treat everyone equal, you don't look at color,

you don't look at who they are, and I think that's a gift. And you certainly didn't inherit it from me. Well, you're more of a Diablo, right? You're a little bit more edgy, right? Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. Mm-hmm.

All right, but Ma, why do so many people, stole support Trump if he's loaded with all these lies? What do you think the reason is? Because they look at him as being stronger than Kamalo. Okay. And he has like that demeanor of strength. And because he's unpredictable, I think that if someone was going to attack us, he would attack them before they do to us because he's got that vengeance. He's got a vengeance in him, what can I say? I think he's got a vengeance in him. It could be unpredictably dangerous though too, no? Yeah, he could end up setting a bomb off or doing something crazy too quick where he has a

world war. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. All right. I do. And he has a Slavic way of explaining it. He doesn't explain himself.

First of all, I'm going to say something. Son Anthony Scaramucci was fired is because you speak better than him. You power yourself better than him. And he felt inferior to you. All right. That's how I feel. And it's not because you're my son. Look at yourself in the mirror.

I used to tell my children, look at me, their self in the mirror and tell them that they're beautiful. It's a good self-esteem class, ma. All right. I appreciate you. I love you, ma'am. All right. What else? You're good otherwise?

Yeah. Uh-huh. All right. Anything else you want to say to your fans? I love you all and we got to make sure that our country's saved. And my son Anthony would have saved it, but he wouldn't listen to me. What can I say? All right, ma.

You would have saved. You don't want me doing that, ma. Okay, I love you, ma. All right. Love you very much, baby. All right, bye. All right, 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, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter or Instagram. I'd love to hear from you. I'll see you back here. next week.