Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Trump's Toxic Masculinity with Nina Burleigh

Episode Date: October 31, 2024

This week, Anthony talks with bestselling author and investigative journalist Nina Burleigh about the current political landscape, focusing on the upcoming election, the impact of disinformation, and the role of gender in politics. They explore how toxic masculinity influences political dynamics and the media's role in shaping public perception. Burleigh also delves into Trump's background and how it affects his political persona, concluding with reflections on societal trends and the future of American democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

parts you're enjoying or how we can do better. You know, I can roll with the punch. You know, I can roll with the punches. So let me know. Anyways, let's get to it. There was a lot of ground to cover with my guest today, Nina Burleigh, from the flood of disinformation and Trump's toxic masculinity to the divide in voting patterns and gender dynamics. The clock is ticking, and election day is upon us. So let's get into it. Joining us now on Open Book is Nina Burleigh. She's a bestselling author, an investigative journalist. A couple of books. Zero visibility possible. and the Trump women, among others. Okay, so this is a lot to talk about with you.

And, okay, who's going to win the election? Let's start there. Oh, you know, my gut is not feeling good about it, but my brain is holding out for believing in our fellow Americans that there are more of us than them. Okay, so you're in my camp then. So you are a Harris supporter, but you're looking around at some of your friends that are not our supporters and you're saying,

okay, there may be more of them than us, but then you're saying maybe not, right? Yeah, I mean, you... And again, it doesn't matter because it's the swing stays, right, Neen? So, you know... Yeah, I mean, I'm right here. I'm in New York State, but I'm up, I'm looking out the window at Pennsylvania. I'm right on the Delaware River. And so I go over there.

I bike over there all the time because they don't maintain their roads as well as we do. So it's easier to... They're not so many cars. And so many of those little rural roads... are just Trump sign after Trump sign. I don't have as many friends in the party as you do, but I do have acquaintances up here, and I have a conservative, I would say,

a pen pal out in Oklahoma who I've become friendly with over the years. And I get updates from him. He doesn't like Trump, but he's absolutely going to vote for him. And I get updates from him regularly now about the way that they reinvent history, history when they talk about, you know, oh, Trump is a fascist. Well, you know, do we, Truman called do we a fascist or, you know, Harris is using joy as a logo or the Harris fans are using

joy as a logo as a logo. Well, look here. The Nazis use joy as a logo in Germany. You know what I mean? So it's just this constant what aboutism and there's there's always an answer to the allegations. And then, you know, what we saw last night was, you know, it's always with them, well, gosh, can't you take a joke? I mean, come on. What we saw last night you're referring to is the Madison Square Garden rally, where among other things that were said that Puerto Rico was an island, floating island of garbage. It's basically what the comedian said, but it felt like in the arena people laughed, but it felt like outside of the arena didn't go over. well, so much so that the Trump campaign had to retracted and reemphasize Donald Trump's support and blah, blah, blah. But, you know, he creates that, right? He creates space for people to really

show you their true colors. And so I guess one has to wonder, you know, if he gets in, right? I mean, you've got, you've got billionaires that are cowering to him, right? They're telling their newspapers that they own, they can't write endorsements. You've got somebody that owns, formerly known as Twitter, no problem. It's become a magistream. So I don't know. What does that say to you about the society we're living in right now, Neen? Well, I mean, you know, I saw in my book, the novel that you mentioned. I'm a nonfiction writer. So I've written many, many nonfiction books. I've been covering politics for many years. But I'm an English major and I always wanted to write fiction. I read literature all the time. And I wrote this novel. It's very short. I planned it as a part of a trilogy. And it's about disinquent. information and what happens to people when they start to be flooded with, with bullshit. And it opens with the Vegas shooting, which is one of the, you know, many, many, many, many horrible, hideous tragedies with too many guns in this country, but it's the worst mass

shooting in America. And it's hardly ever discussed anymore, right? Because we don't, like, we're becoming immune and inured to this kind of violence. So, but it has provoked a ton of conspiracy theories on the right. And so the book is really about a few people in the mainstream legacy dying media trying to figure out what happened. And it's fictionalized from there forward. And, you know, I was trying to sort of investigate and talk about what happens when, you know, when the Steve Bannon, I would say, a pretty brilliant strategy of flooding the zone with shit. What happens to people in a society? which is flooded with shit, with bullshit, and the amount of disinformation that we become used to

in this country and that, you know, people after the hurricane, you know, talking about, well, FEMA is going to come and get your house. Or, gee, you know, Biden administration and NOAA or NASA, they created this hurricane. It's not climate change. I mean, I've got climate change scientists who say, hey, they're almost getting it. They're almost getting that this is manmade, but they've just taken like a two steps farther, right? So the what happens to a society when there is no longer this kind of central square where everybody kind of agrees that well, you know, we disagree with each other, but the color red is red. And other people say, no, but I saw it, you know, that's great, right? So when you have no longer got an agreed upon reality, what happens to people? And that's what

the novel is really about. It's just about a very small slice of media people trying to work through a flood of conspiracy theories. And I think it's very relevant to what we've been dealing with here for the last eight years. I don't know about you, but I mean, it may have been already started when Bush and W and Carl Rove were doing their alternate reality, or I can't remember what the term was that one of their faith leader, maybe it was Roe, said to that journalist, Ron Susskind, I can't remember the term, but it was basically, look, some people believe this, and that, you know, it may not be true, it may not be scientifically factual, but we have to give them their due. And that's their alternate reality. That started dead. I mean, it's, and now we're

into where the Supreme Court has actually in the Hobby Lobby case, literally legalized. put into the law that people can, that basically privileges faith over science. If you believe that a certain medication does something to you that it actually doesn't, that's okay, you know, because that's what you believe, right? And, you know, that's where you get Bobby Kennedy, who was also at the Madison Square Garden gathering last night. So a couple things. So obviously the book is awesome because it's a allegory-based.

based on truth. So it's a fiction, but it's sort of a nonfiction of what's really going on, right? It's almost like historical fiction at some point. But my thing, and I just want to test this on you and get your reaction, my thing is there's always been out there, but it's now been amplified and exaggerated by social media. So we've, we had wartime propaganda in World War II. We had disinformation that the U.S. put out. We were dehumanizing Japanese. and we were dehumanizing Germans, and we were explaining the American people our virtues versus their vices. And, you know, Himmler was doing this, and Goebbels was doing this for Hitler. And so we've always had levels of disinformation. We've always had good and bad levels of it.

But am I wrong to think that it's gotten completely amplified now? And I'll just tell this quick story. Henry Luce, the founder of Time magazine, he interviewed Joe Stalin in the 1930s. And Stalin said, you know, I'm going to destroy the United States. He said, well, how are you going to do that? He said, well, you guys are a mongrel nation. You've got a lot of different ethnic backgrounds there.

We're going to insert a tremendous amount of disinformation inside the country, and we're going to destroy you from within. But what he got wrong is he didn't have the vehicle to do that need, right? But Donald Trump is this useful idiot for Putin, and they've dumped all of that GRU stuff that Joe Stalin was talking about 100 years ago into the system. Okay, so what did I get wrong there? because it ties back to your book. Well, I don't think, the only thing that I would disagree with is that I don't think that it's just the Russians.

I don't think this is GRU, right? I mean, I'm with like Craig Unger and, you know, other friends of mine who are down with the Russians are engaged in meddling in our society big time, especially using digital media, social media and the internet. But I also think that there are traits in our own country that make us particularly susceptible to these things. And part of it is that we're a heterogeneous society. And that, you know, that's the big problem with Trump, that, you know, we're a heterogeneous society. And for him to ride down that escalator in the summer of 15 and just out of the blue, I still remember where I was when I heard him saying, it's Mexican rapists that are causing your problems. I can still remember that. I'm thinking, did I miss like a news story about a Mexican rapist?

Like, what is he talking about? Right? And now we're eight or nine years down the road from that. We're a heterogeneous society. The country depends on people trusting each other. Democracy depends on trust. It doesn't work. I mean, people have done studies on this, the Norwegians.

It works in Norway because everybody's white and everybody trusts each other. This is a heterogeneous society. And when you start poking those differences, and provoking divisiveness between subgroups, and it becomes a pillar of your ideology or your political movement, then you've got a problem. This country depends on the kind of trust that he is literally, he and his people are literally taking aim at,

and it's all scapegoating, right? And so I don't think that it's 100% GRU Russian stuff. I think, I don't think Stephen Miller is a Russian agent. I think he's just a horrible, you know, as somebody said on Twitter the other day, he's like literally the DNA reincarnation of gerbils. I mean, he just looks like him. He actually looks like nos ferratu. But like to actually come out and be, you know, to say to the American people, look, all your problems, which we do have a lot of problems. There did need to be some kind of a revolt and a revolution against certain things that are going on here that we see now coming out of the right. But to blame all the problems,

to scapegoat onto people who are these beleaguered, tired people coming up here who are literally going to ride bikes around New York City in any weather delivering food to you, or working all night at a freaking dishwashing in a restaurant in New York, washing dishes, or selling can bars on the subway to people who no longer carry cash. And that's who you're going to blame for your problems because you're feeling disgruntled and jealous about what, you know, how other, you know, billionaires have all the money or, you know, you don't live like them or you can't afford a Tesla. Or, you know, you don't like it that you can't call people names that your granddaddy used to call people who weren't white, that you don't like that you can't do that anymore. You don't

like that there are more women in college than you because you're, you didn't study. enough or you didn't get through school right? You know, all of these grievances, well, let's just put them all on these brown people and these newcomers. Instead of saying, let's fix some of the problems here. You know, let's make sure that everybody's got health care. Pretty simple thing, actually. What did they do with ACA, right? What do they do? 40 or 50 lawsuits. Some of those people are still in the house, most of them. What? For what? How much money do they save? Are they saving? To, you know, to take your, just to give the society, give people some relief. You know, again, all those people over in Pennsylvania, I'm looking out the window at that

ridge where they've got their signs up. They don't have dental care. The doctors are few and far between. It costs a lot of money. You know, basic needs. This country is rich enough to provide people with medical care. And that would take a lot of the stress and strain off people, right? So anyway, I can go on forever, Anthony.

No, I mean, no, I'm listening because it's legit. You know, weave into your narrative the piece that you wrote about Trump and toxic masculinity. Okay, because to me, bravery and strength is not bullying. I find that that's not being an alpha male or whatever that term means. You know, taking care of people and being willing to help people and being subtle with you. your life is more strength than bullying and bravado and all of this sort of nonsense. Tell us about that and gender playing a big role in this election. Yeah, well, I mean, everybody knows this is the most gendered, gender separated election in history, I think, where, you know, women are

voting for Paris and men are voting for Trump and by huge numbers. There's a divide. And, well, I mean, there's some damn good reasons for that. I mean, he got elected by cynically taking, you know, getting preyed over. He can't, so did germaphobe. I love those pictures of him where they've got their hands on him. And he's just like cringing. You know, they're praying over it. But, yeah, he gets elected because he, and he carries through with the promise and he gets those judges in.

And then they outlaw, you know, abortion and basic female reproductive people. care. And now you've got women all over in these states. I mean, I've been doing research down in Texas. You've got to drive to 11 hours one way to get this surgical procedure and then drive back. Like, how, like the cruelty of it is nuts. And this is happening. And if you get, you know, if you start to have a problem and you go to the hospital, if you've taken those pills, that that's the only way you can get an abortion down there without doing the 11 hour drive. There, you're doing that in your house. And you know what? When I was 20 years old and if I took one of those pills and the things that happen to your body when you take those things, you want to be like able to talk to a doctor. It's a

scary thing. And they're sitting there told, well, no, don't go to the emergency room because if you go to the emergency room, you better not tell them what you did. It's insane. It's complete lunacy. So, and it's cruel. And it's, it's demoralizing and is degrading women. And so what's happened is that kind of behavior. It's 21 states now, right? A lot of American women are in this situation, and that has a knock-on effect on women and girls in society culturally. So that opens the door to, you know, the Andrew Tates and the Jordan Peterson's and the Donald Trumps who basically are coming out of this incredibly, I don't want to use the word misogynistic, but it's like a, it's a way of looking at women that is so degrading and limiting women's reproductive care. And I think the next thing they're going to do is take away, you know, contraception. That is opening the door to this kind of really, really retrograde situation for American women.

And it's obvious why women would vote for Harris and not him. Now, let's just remember, they're not all women, not all women are voting for Harris. Some of them are voting for Trump. And I actually in my column last week interviewed Salinda Lake, who's a really interesting, knowledgeable expert. on women's political leanings in the United States. And I asked her, you know, what's the deal? Like, people are always wondering, like, why are white women, there's a certain segment of white women that have voted for Trump. What are they doing? And she said, well, there's still, there are a couple things. There's still women out there who will say, well, first of all,

they don't want conflict with the husbands. And the husbands are voting for Trump. So they just sort of capitulate. And they'll, they say, well, if the pollster calls, they'll say, there's this presumption that the man has more information. So they'll say to the pollster, well, I don't know anything about politics. Talk to my husband. And it's hard for me to imagine that kind of person because I'll literally live in this community where we spend all of our dinners and social events with other people talking about politics. That's another thing. And I'm sure you do too, Anthony. So it's really hard to, like, imagine who these people are. But they're out there. There are a lot of them. There are fellow Americans and they aren't sitting around talking about this stuff 24-7.

They're not paying attention. That's who is the undecided voter. And so what's fascinating, I'm getting way off the topic here. But let's get back to the women thing. What's interesting about the women thing is that you're not off topic. You're explaining something that everybody's trying to figure out. And by the way, yes, there are low information voters that are not going to listen to you. You're in my podcast.

I understand that. But there are curious people that are trying to understand this. there are students of history that are trying to understand why Jeff Bezos would quake in front of a leader like Donald Trump. Like this toxic masculinity, which you find offensive, I find offensive, is it working for Trump? Because he's got Elon Musk roof roof, roof. He's got Jeff Bezos, roof, roof. I mean, you know, is it working? I like that roof, roof, that puppy dog. Did you see Elon at the behind the podium yesterday? bad for him in some ways. I feel like he's got like as smart as he is and as rich as he is. I think there's like a little bit of a programming chip off related to emotional intelligence

and actually empathy for other people. So a lot of those Silicon Valley guys do have that problem. Sorry to say. I'm going with forgivable on him. Bezos is definitely in my mind not a forgivable thing. Offensible. But whatever. I mean, look, I mean, look, I told somebody today, if you're a billionaire, you're rational and you're ruthless. So if you kowtow to Trump, you're protected if he gets elected. And if you couch out of Trump and she gets elected, she's an abider to the system. So she's not coming after you. Exactly. You know what I mean? And so they're rational. They're not, none of them are Churchillian, where they're going to call him out on his nonsense. You don't know what I mean? You don't get to be a billionaire being Churchillian.

Right. It's a great point. Yeah. Right. It's a great point. Well, go ahead. Keep going. I was I mean, is it working? Is the toxic masculinity working for this man? I think it is. Absolutely working. I mean, look at the younger men. I mean, there's a whole daily podcast on this a few days ago with the women and young women and young men. And these younger men are really going all in for him. You know, the Gen Z or, you know, late, early, what do you call it? Late millennial, yeah, the younger men, 20-somethings are like, you know, they're attracted to this. Again, because the problem, that they're facing, if you're all, you know, non-college educated, are systemic with our economy and the problems have not been addressed. So let's blame the women and blame the girls. You know,

that's because the girls, the women don't want to have babies with you or they want, they don't want to buy a house with you. They won't, you know, they won't marry you. And you can't afford a house. So, you know, blame them. And it's working. And I think also on the world stage, I think about this a lot because, you know, Trump, some of the, some of the he says about Harris are kind of, well, you know, our enemies won't respect her. Remember in the beginning? And he said, and you know why. Remember that? They're not going to respect her. And you know why. And he wouldn't, you know, well, like, I can't say it. And you know why. And it's sort of this assumption that like you have to be a bully. You have to be like the biggest lion in the,

on the belt or have the biggest dick or whatever. And that's what's, that. That's what's, That's what, you know, Putin and the Saudis and, and, and, you know, and Kim Jong-on, you know, that because they're like that, which we know they are, Putin is for sure, that they're not going to respect to Harris because she's not that person. She's not that. But, you know, you can remember, like, a lot of countries with macho, and macho countries in South America have had female presidents. I mean, Italy right now has a female leader, right?

Germany. Angela Merkel was one of the great leaders of that era. I mean, NATO, the UK, British, Britain has had female leaders. What's wrong with us? You know? And I think that it's, yes, it plays, it does work for him. I think it does work for him. And I think that, you know, we've got a long way to go, especially if we can become a country where you can legislate into women's private medical care. Like, what they've done here is, is just so whack, you know. And I'm just say, as an aside, I did a big piece for New York Magazine recently on Opus Daye Catholicism, that the sect that, weirdly, Anthony, has been extremely effective in Washington. They sent some, they sent some of their people in there around the early 90s, and they converted like Gingrich and

Larry Kudlow. And, you know, J.D. V. Vance is all mobbed up with these people. And Alito and, you know, Leonard Leo, they're all tied in with this hard, right Catholic. I mean, I have no problem with Catholics. And most of my friends, when I was growing up, I grew up around Catholics in the Midwest. Most American Catholics are not down with this program. These people are hard, core, extremist. Like, they want to go back to medieval era, monarchy, papal states. It's absolutely nuts. And that's where J.D. Vance comes in. And J.D. Vance is tied in with these people who are literally starting to say the stuff that you would never have thought in my lifetime as a, you know, I mean, again, my whole lifetime is spent with legal abortion being legal.

Nobody would say, oh, you know what, maybe American women shouldn't vote. You know, the single cat ladies, they're not really contributing to society because they didn't make any babies. So maybe they shouldn't vote. And those are people that J.D. Vance is hanging out with. Yeah, well, let me go to Joe Rogan for a second because it's in the category. Now, I listen to Joe, and I'm going to share with you my opinion, but I don't want it to color yours, okay? I find what Joe has built to be an incredible franchise. And if you actually listen, okay, he's an inquisitive guy, and, you know, he gives you space.

He could disagree with you. You have space on his podcast. He doesn't have to be intellectually in sync with you to go on his podcast. You know, and I thought it was a mistake that Vice President Harris did not take up his invitation because, you know, I listened to the Rogan podcast with Trump and even Joe was having a hard time following what he was saying. I mean, I saw that. I mean, I saw that. Yeah.

It's like, okay, your weave is getting a little bit too wide. Don't bring it back in. And so is Joe in your mind? toxicly masculine? Is he part of the problem, potentially a part of the solution? Where do you see him? And what type of impact do you think that Trump had by being on there? I'm going to start first. I think it heard him. A lot of people said, whoa, this guy sounds nuts on this thing. I don't know how many people watched, like, watched Joe. I watched clips of it online. Okay. I don't see the whole thing. But I know, I know a little bit about him. I mean, my brother is a

Bernie bro, like way out on that side. And he's all influenced by Joe Rogan. He thinks that that, you know, that stuff is that, you know, so Joe appeals to all to the spectrum, I think, or ends of the spectrum. Anyway, I don't listen to him because I don't have that much interest in him right now, but I absolutely agree with you. I cannot believe that Harris turned him down. In fact, I didn't know that she, I thought that they were still discussing it. I think it was a terrible mistake that she, if she's not doing that. Absolutely. You know, like, Like, what's his name, Howard Stern? I mean, Howard Stern was really toxic, masculine, okay?

But Howard Stern also, it was an excellent interviewer of Donald Trump. And a couple of years ago, a source of mine downloaded and transcribed all of Trump's appearances on Howard Stern. Now, Stern went nuts and tried to litigate it back, but I still have, we wrote about them. I still have the printouts. And if you read them, it's like he was like Trump's psychoanalyst. And Trump said things to him that you can't believe what he's saying to him. You know, he's talking about his mother and he's talking about sex with Melania. I mean, you know, stuff that, yes, you expect him to do, but also very telling.

And he was really open with him. And I think some of those, I mean, for sure, Joe Rogan is, you know, he's an important element in the, in the, in the, in the, go in the media ecosystem, let's say. And in fact, in some ways, more important than the Washington Post and the L.A. Times, right? I mean, one of these, last week when they were, I do agree that Bezos, it's a craven, a craven decision and not, not a good. Yeah, I mean, it's ruthless and rational. You don't get the worth, be worth $100 billion if you don't do that. I know, but once you have $100 billion, really do you care at that point? Like how much they might clawing? back in Texas. That's what I don't understand. Does Lauren Sanchez need more helicopters? I mean, like, why?

It's the scorpion with the frog. Come on. The scorpion is on the back of a frog. Stings the frog. The frog said, why you do that? I was trying to help you get across the river. I'm a scorpion. This is what we do. We don't act like we're not scorpions when we're scorpions. It is what it is. I mean, I'm not even, to me, it's the reason why I'll never be that wealthy. I've taken a principled stand. and I find this stuff reprehensible and despicable. And I don't mind telling people why. And I don't mind framing it in the context of history. And I'm also somebody that's been a lifelong Republican. I got Trump wrong.

I'm willing to admit that I supported him. I went to go work for him. People told me that I was wrong to do that. They were right. And I was wrong. But at least I'm a man willing to admit that I made a mistake. Okay. I mean, come on.

And you know how many people that are elected, Republicans that can't stand this guy and then they go and support him anyway, Nina? You know more of them? You can't add him up. McConnell, McConnell just wrote a book. Now, Mitch's book, no one will read, but he just wrote a book and he damned Trump in the book. I guess he wants that there for historical reference, but he didn't do anything to damn Trump. He could have knocked him out with an impeachment conviction. They impeached them twice. Go to go to the Trump women. You said something that has left a mark on me, and I want you to explain it to these viewers and listeners, you said that Trump was deeply affected by both his mother and grandmother,

that they, in fact, had greater impact on him and people realize. So tell us what that is and why. Well, grandmother came over, you know, they're all immigrants. The women closest to him are immigrants, all four. Grandma, mom, first wife, third wife. Marla, Georgia, kind of an immigrant to New York, but, I mean, four women speaking with accents, white immigrants. Okay. Grandma comes over. She's the beautiful wife, a younger wife of Fred Trump, senior, whatever is name. I can't remember his first name, Grandpa Trump. And he's the guy who made the fortune with a brothel out in the UCon, went back to Germany, brought his wife over to the United States, promptly dies of the Spanish flu. She's got two or three kids living alone in Queens,

and he's left her a piece of property in Queens, which she manages. to convert into a corporation. The Trump, she calls it the Trump Corporation. She incorporates and builds on it. And this is an incredible thing to do in that era. Women couldn't even have bank accounts. I don't know how she did it. But she's in the 20s.

She started the Trump organization. And then Fred, the son worked like an aunt to build it. So yes, Fred Trump built it. But the grandma started it. And grandma was old school, you know, probably Nazi-aligned Germans. The dad sure was. He showed up at KKK rallies and so on.

Grandma spoke with an accident. She was in post-World War I Germans in the United States did not have an easy time, right, because they were our enemy. So that's grandma. And mom comes over. Mom came from a Scottish island closer to Iceland than to the UK. She, her island had a lot of their men died in World War. one. She was the youngest of like 10 fishermen children, comes over, goes to work. All of these

yielded age families in New York in those days wanted to have British, you know, people from the British Isles working as nannies and butlers and maids. And so there was this whole community of people who worked for the rich. She got a job. Unbelievably, I found her in the New York census. she was a maid in the Carnegie Mansion when she was 18 years old. So a maid in one of the richest homes in America, that's his mother. And those two things together. Oh, and then the mother, when she had him, he was the second to the last child, and she had her last child, Robert, and she had a terrible pregnancy or birth

and was in the hospital for like a year afterwards. Little Donald was two. Grandma, who's this harsh, old world German. woman steps in. And my, I'm not a shrink, but my psychology friends say that at that age, when you lose your primary caretaker, you get really messed up. And that's part of what's happened to him. So, but basically it's his childhood, these women were speaking with these accents. And so, of course, he gravitates then to Ivana and then later to Melania. And I mean, just surrounded by immigrants, again, like the hypocrisy of blaming, and again, we know why, because they're white immigrants, so that's okay.

I don't know. I mean, Hitler didn't really look at Aryan. Did he? I mean, you know, this is what they do. They just need a scapegoat. I mean, I think they, if it was, you know, we lived in a different time and they were blaming the Germans for the problems or the Irish. I mean, look, the Italians, you're Italian, right? Every wave of incoming, newcoming Americans has faced the already here, Yankee.

up the ladder. And then they become part of our society and they change and they become, you know, that's the great thing. The beauty of our country is that we do have the Elon Musks who can build things and who come over here and do things. And we mix. And there's this fatality. And that's why we're having these problems in our politics. In one way, it's a healthy thing that we're constantly talking about. But again, a lot of people are not talking about it. they're just sort of imbibing the bullshit from the demagogue. Yeah. And we're very vulnerable to that.

Well, said. All right. Well, all right. So I'm at the point in the podcast. I'm going to read out five words. You're going to respond to the five words. I'm going to say the word. You're going to say whatever comes to your mind.

Okay. You ready? All right. I see you smiling. So I know you know this is going to be good. All right. So I say the word Harris. You think what?

Um, competent. Okay. Yeah, moderate to me. I say a moderate, actually, you know. Also, someone that builds a big tent, believe it or not, you know, if Bernie Sanders, Anthony Scaramucci and Liz and Dick Cheney walked into a bar. Now, I don't have the punchline, Nina, but you get the point, right? She's a tent builder.

Okay, I say November 5th. Now, my British friends would say Guy Fawkes Day, but November 5th is Election Day. You say what? Um, uh, tension. Tension. Tension. Okay, yeah, it's going to be, it's almost like a cold civil war happening on election day, right? We're going to see where the country ends up.

Uh, okay, this is sort of two words. J.D. Vance. Let's call it three words. J.D. Vance. Made up name, but he's running for, right, he's changed his name three or four times. J.D. Vance. Well, you gave me three, so I'm going to give you two. Hollow man.

Yeah. Yeah. You're going to get destroyed by Trump, by the way. You mark my words. Nobody survives being that close to Trump. Okay, Trump women. Say Trump women. You say what?

Stilettos. All right. Last word. And you're going to have the last word in this podcast, but the last word is one word. It's one syllable. I say Trump. You say what? One word.

Ork. No, you don't have to say one word. I'm giving you one word. You can give me a sentence or two. Go ahead. Oaf. Epstein. But the problem I have.

have with Trump, if you don't mind me saying, is that he's indicative of something that's happening in the society. There's something going on in the society that bubbles up and Trump is the leader of it. You see what I mean? I don't think Trump barked it down to the people. Maybe he barked it down to some of the people, but they were there. They were the Tea Party movement. They were the radicals in 2000, you know, they were there. Absolutely. They were Charles Lindbergh's followers in 1930s. Absolutely. And that's why I think, again, you know, it's not the Russians. Stop blaming the Russians for what we have in our own society. We have this movement.

We have this tendency. And he is just very good at picking up almost like with antennae. I mean, he is, I watched him last night. I don't know if you watched his rallies, but I watched last night the talk. It went on for a long time. But he is, you know, he's got this like Sinatra croon thing going on, right? That is so oleogenes. And it's sort of, it is weirdly charming when you're watching it in some ways.

But he's just picking up from the crowd. And he doesn't want to leave the stage. You could see it. Like I was sitting here falling asleep. I'm like, people must be wanting to stumble out of there. It's getting really boring. He doesn't know when to leave because he feeds on that love. You know, it's fascinating.

I mean, it's fascinating and it's sad. And it's hopefully will end well for us. us. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I think we'll get through it one way or the other. I think we will too. Nina Burleigh, it's great to talk to you. Two books, the zero visibility possible and the Trump women. Thank you for joining Open Book. Thank you so much for having me. The Trump rally at MSG is something all voters need to watch. As Nina said, this is the most gender divided election in history. But the reason I want people to watch the Trump rally is there was a lot going on there. And a lot of it was actually disconnected from Trump's personality. And so what do I mean by that? Trump says things,

a lot of things he doesn't mean. But the people that are following him actually think he means what he says, and they mean what they say. So when they're calling Puerto Rico a pile of garbage, they mean that. When they're saying they want to slaughter their fellow Americans, they actually mean that. When they dehumanize immigrants, they actually mean that, although I do think Trump actually means that. And I want people to watch this thing because Trump is a rock. And when Trump is a rock. And And when Trump's rock gets dropped in a lake, the ripple effect creates this massive toxicity, which, of course, I'm super worried about. And I appreciate Nina's words today because I think she, as a very good journalist,

has a window into what this stuff is all about. My next guest, Ma, is a journalist. My guest today, Nina Burleigh, is a journalist who we had a conversation about the Madison Square Garden rally that Trump did. Did you watch any of that, Ma? Yeah, I think he said it, you know, it's a terrible thing to say, and I am going to be 88 in January, but spoke. Right. He said he did not, he did not look at the life of people.

He looked at himself. He's very narcissistic, very dictatorial when he spoke. I don't like that. Right. And so you're worried that he doesn't care about the little people, right? He really just only cares about himself, right? About himself. But I really believe that he, you outshined him, and that's why he fired you, that stupid jerk,

because Ryan Lizza has been in the paper. Oh, we're back on Ryan Lizzie. So my editor wanted to cut you out with the Ryan Liz and stuff, but I told her it was okay because you're an Italian mother. Of course you're going to go after Ryan Lizza, right? Of course. He's got a bad comment. He shows who he was.

Bad karma. And Trump magnified you instead of him. Does Trump have bad karma, Mom? Does Trump have bad karma? He will have bad karma, of course. Yeah, but he seems to be getting away with a lot of stuff, but you think at the end he's not going to get away with it. That's what you think, right?

Yeah, I think it will come back to him. You know, I don't know why he's so chauvinistic. Like, he's over the top. I mean, take it easy. You had your day in the sun. Take it easy. Give this woman a chance to do her job the right way. She's got a lot of people backing her and showing her the road.

She got hit with this, you know, unexpected, and she was fumbling in the beginning. But I don't think she's fumbling. anymore. She's already grown already into it. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I follow her very much because I think that she is, she is a female and she doesn't leave an abortion. And if my granddaughter came across Spain and raped her, I would want her to have an abortion. Okay. Okay. And I do believe in abortion. I'm Catholic, but I believe in abortion. You know, me too. I understand. Who you have a lunch with today, Ma, because, you know, you have your regular schedule. So what are we doing today?

I have a crowd of people that I have lunch with that I went to school with since kindergarten, some of them, and I have a very good time with them. And you have afforded me in December to take them all to your restaurant, and they're all jumping up and down. So you're getting a party bus, and people are going to be with their walkers and stuff, right? You know, I know what you like. Are you taking them to the hunting fish club, right, in the party bus? Right. Good. Go enjoy yourself.

Good. And you have awarded me a gift of being able to do that. But I think that in my lifetime, I'm not going to live forever. And I don't feel always so good lately. But I think you have let me live a life of wonderful life. You have supported me in every way. All right, Mom. Okay.

Not only about money, but about your love. Okay. And the other two kids love me too. So I feel very lucky that I am surrounded by love with my children. My shoulder and my grandchold. Definitely. I feel very lucky about that. Go enjoy lunch, okay?

All right, thank you. All right. Love you, Ma. I love you, honey. All right, bye. Bye. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was open book. Thank you for listening.

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