Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Two Lefts Don’t Make a Right: Anand Giridharadas on Democracy, Dystopia & Becoming American

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

In this episode, Anthony talks with Anand Giridharadas, journalist, and author of The Persuaders: At the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, Minds and Democracy. With so many factors causing divisions in our society, Anand’s book explores how America's crisis of faith in persuasion is putting democracy and the planet at risk.  Hailing from either side of the political spectrum, Anthony and Anand have a frank conversation about what we can learn from the best persuaders out there, discussing why the Right, for all its dystopia, is better at messaging right now, and stressing why clear and concise messaging could save American democracy.  Anand describes the powers of manipulation with the art of persuasion, and the danger of contempt and dismissal in politics. They unpack various characters, from AOC to Putin, and Elizabeth Warren. Anthony shares his own insights into our current political climate, and why to succeed, we must be honest, offer equal opportunities and give a little on each side.  Finally, Anand recalls his contrasting experiences as an immigrant to America and France, discussing how you can “become American," unlike anywhere else. He emphasizes why it’s one of the most radical ideas out there, yet worth defending at all costs.  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. I'm Anthony Scaramucci and welcome. to open book, where I talk with some of the most interesting and brilliant minds in our world today. In this show, I'll bring on guests in business, politics, entertainment, and more to go deep into a piece of their work, whether it's a highly anticipated book, an in-depth feature story, or an opinion piece that has captured my attention. We'll dig into why it matters to you and how their work is shaping our future. On today's episode, I talk with writer,

and best-selling author, Anan Geertadaz. There is so much tribalism and divisiveness between the left and right in America, but really we share more common ground than we realize. Despite the ideological differences, we need to put our country before party to fix things and save our democracy. Anon's latest book, The Persuaders, at the front lines of the fight for hearts, minds, and democracy, shows the way we get real change in America. In this conversation, we cover the need to build a democratic movement that is better at persuasion. Why the right for all its narrowness and dystopia is better at messaging right now. The danger of contempt and dismissal in politics.

And Putin's calculation of this when meddling with America. And why AOC is one of the best politicians in America today. Even though I don't agree with AOC's policies, I do agree with Anon on this. If we want to fix things in America, we must be honest, offer equal opportunities, and give a little on each side. So joining us on Open Book, the author of The Persuaders at the Front Lines of the Fight for Hearts, minds and democracy, Anon Girdadas. Now, I got to, come on, that's not so bad for an Italian from Long Island, the pronunciation, right?

Yeah, I mean, you should just make like an Italian version of the name. That's what happens. When I go to Europe, what's amazing is they just make their own version of the name in every country, and it's great. Right. Well, how would you pronounce the name? Go ahead. Anand Gerdardadas.

Gerdadas. All right, I'm getting closer, okay, but I got to tell you, I am. My Italian name is Andy Girideli. All right. I like that. See that? You see that? You would have hung out with me, okay? I would have thought you were founder of the chocolate company if you said that about yourself. You and I go back a long ways. The book is brilliant. Okay. I read it over the weekend and I'm going to tell you something I said and I want you to react to it. I turned to my wife and I said, Anon has once again written a great

book. There's scintillating truth in this book about what is actually going on in America, but not just America. We're going to talk about this because I think it's going on to the UK, France, other Western democracies. And yet it's so truthful that I think there's too much pain in it for people to really listen. What am I getting wrong about that? I think that's probably true, whether that serves me or not. And I think it is what I think of the function as a writer to be. You know, I think one of the reasons societies keep writers around or should keep writers around is that writers are, people who maybe are a little bit unaffiliated when, you know, most people have jobs or work for big organizations or part of political parties or companies. As you know, as someone who's been

part of many companies, you sign a lot of paperwork saying you can't entirely say what you think. You've probably broken a lot of those contracts in your own life. I mean, it's the reason why I got fired. I mean, you know, General Kelly told me, yeah, you didn't get fired for the comment about Steve Bannon. You got fired. because you were telling the truth. It was uncomfortable for people. They didn't want to hear it. I think it just seems to me that that's the job of the writer. The writer is, you know, I think Tom Wolfe said that kind of the village gossip who says publicly the things that everyone is whispering to them but can't say because of the positions that those people have. And I think this book is no

exception. I think there were a lot of truths. These are not my truths from the depths of my soul. These are reported truths that I was hearing from a lot of people in the fight for democracy, in different phases of the fight for democracy right now, because we are in an existential fight for democracy. And a lot of the people in that fight who I talked to had this concern that the pro-democracy cause, although it's fighting a righteous fight, isn't really as interested as it should be

in bringing people in, in being bigger tomorrow than it is today. And that has to change. Is this a white person's problem? And just hear me out for a second, okay? The whites were in charge, let's call it 1770. to today, but brown and black people are now going to be in the majority as it relates to the democracy. So if the whites are in charge, no problem. Let's have the rules of democracy. Oh, wait a minute. Black and brown people could be in charge. So let's change the rules. What do I got wrong

about that? There's no question that if you had to pick like one fundamental force in American public life today. And of course, there's a lot of things going on. But if you had to pick one, I think you'd say this was a country founded, you know, with on paper some very sweeping ideals for all mankind. But in practice, as you know, they only really applied to propertyed white men at the beginning. And then the property, you know, requirement was relaxed. And then the male requirement was relaxed. And only in the 20th century was the kind of requirement around whiteness relaxed. And it is absolutely the case that as this country has opened up its meaning and institutions and rights to more and more people, a shrinking minority of white

Americans. And to be clear, it's not all white Americans by any means. A shrinking minority of white Americans has concluded that they would rather break the republic than share it. That's the choice, right? We can share it or we can break it. And I think we're not unique in this experience around the world as you were, as you were talking about. It is easier to share resources and believe in a democracy when everybody looks the same, right? I mean, you know, we talk about Sweden and Norway and they're having all these great safety nets. Well, if you ever been to those countries, you know, it's easy to look around and say these people, these are people I'm willing to share with. These are people I'm willing to be in a safety net with. We are trying to do something in this country that is quite different.

with all due respect to Sweden and Norway, with all due respect to France and Germany, with all due respect to India and China, none of those countries are actually on the path we are to creating a truly plural country made of the world, forged of the world, people from every kind of background. And I sometimes think those of us who want to live in that world, who want to live in a future of continued, expanded liberal democracy, multiracial democracy, we don't do enough of a good job of reminding ourselves that we're trying to do a really hard thing, a thing that maybe has not quite been proven out in the world. And so this revolt against the future, which is what I regard the kind of Trumpist, increasingly fascist movement as being, this revolt against the future,

in some ways, is a natural movement of resistance to progress that is happening. And I wrote the book because I want the forces of progress to get their shit together and figure out how to not just warn about the far right extremists, not just complain about them, not just be outraged by them, not just be reacting to them all the time and pointing at them, but actually to out-compete them, to build a movement that is bigger, better, feistyer, more fiery, more magnanimous, more merciful, and more effective. Well, I got something out of the book, all of that, but I also got a little bit of a restatement of the founding fathers out of this book in a weird.

really, just let me test this on you because this is what I heard in your book, that they got it right, but they were too exclusionary. And so we've had all this amendments and all this social progress to make it more inclusionary. And now it's probably time to restate the ideals of what a republic is and self-government is and recognize that if we become less tribal, less black and right, brown versus black, black versus white, white versus brown, et cetera. And we've become more inclusive, the diversity of those ideas and the ability to learn from each other's life experiences would just lead to a better quality of life for all of us. Is that what I'm getting from your book? Yeah, absolutely. And look, you know, not to make this about some places

versus other places, but like you and I live in New York City, right? So you and I already live in this world, right? If you're living in much of California, you're already living in this world. actually in a lot of places in this country. You're living in this world, right? When you and I walk, step outside in New York City, you are hearing languages from all over. You are encountering people. You work with people.

I work with people who represent the most intelligent, passionate, committed, creative people from around the world, kind of cherry-picked by the United States to come here and invest their talents and dreams here, build their families here. You and I live in that world, and I don't think we would have it any of. other way, right? I don't think you, whether you're white like you or brown like me, I don't think

I would go or you would go trade it to live in a place of a monoculture, right? I could go live in India or everybody, you know, comes from a background I do. You could go, there's a reason we're not living in those places, right? Is it a reason our ancestors chose to come here? Couldn't agree with you more. And I'm laughing a little bit because I'm white now. I can tell you that my grandmother did not feel white. Correct. It took your people, it took your people some time to become white in the American imagination. But what I'm laughing about is my Italian American buddies that I live with, they're all pro-Trump. And I'm like, look at him, okay, your grandmother was told that she couldn't get a job anywhere. There were signs that said no Italians need apply. And they told my

grandmother to go back to the countries they originally came from. And that was the fight I got into with Donald Trump because he was saying that to the four Congresswomen, ironically, three of which were born here in the United States. So it's just nativism. this racism. I want to let me let's talk about your let's talk about your Italian American friends for a second because yeah on the one level I would say and I recognize that that kind of type you're talking about exactly right and there's so many versions of it in this country right now on the one hand I would hold them responsible for their own views and and and hold them responsible for no quite no

quite a kind of it's so misguided and it's so lax context and an understanding of our history it's so misguided But let me make a second point. I also would hold what I call the pro-democracy movement, because this is not just about Democrats and Republicans, right? This is like, do you believe in democracy this point? Do you not? Yeah, 100%.

I would also hold the pro-democracy, pro-inclusion movement that wants that future. I would hold them accountable for failing to organize and win over people like that also, right? Because I imagine, maybe I'm wrong, I imagine your friends you're talking about. These are not clan robes people, right? These are probably decent people who would treat people of color very nicely in their personal life, right? All of that, right? I know exactly who you're talking about. And so what I think has happened there, as at the heart of the story of the persuaders, is we have failed to tell those people a better story about how to think of America, right?

The right for all of its narrowness and kind of dystopianness right now, I think is better at message. It's better at narrative. It's better at telling a story about America that is easy to access that plays into the fears and anxieties people have. And I think what we need to do is to build a pro-democracy movement that is better at persuasion so that guys exactly like who you're talking about are not only interpersonally kind to people of color who are their neighbors or. they work with, but are able to go from that personal interaction and that personal decency they have to supporting a vision of a country that operates like that at scale for everyone. I mean, I made these very well said. You're also talking about the condescension of some people. You know, frankly, on the left, there's a lot of condescension towards the people on the right.

And that's why the right tries to own the libs and all this sort of nonsense that goes on. I want to test two things on you. When I got done reading your book, I wrote some notes to myself. And I was like, I'd just love to ask Anand these questions. Okay. So in the 1930s, Henry Luce went to Moscow and he interviewed Joseph Stalin. And Stalin said that he would wreck the United States. It would take him 10 years. And Luce, of course, was a staunch American, you know, pro, you know, sort of a conservative Republican. He said, well, what do you mean? He said, well, you're a tribal nation. You're a polyglot. You are not a melting pot, but you're just a series of tribes. And with the forces of the KGB and all of the disinformation techniques we have here in Russia,

we're going to split your tribes and we're going to cause a second civil war and destroy your nation. And so what Stalin got wrong was the love that our grandparents had for the country, even if they were being discriminated against, it was still way better than where they came from. And then, of course, the advent of the Second World War galvanized the whole country. But what he also got wrong, though, Anon, was they didn't have the social media mechanisms in place to do what they were saying because the media was controlled by some corporations that were mostly pro-American. Okay. Now, fast forward to Vladimir Putin. He's got those mechanisms. He can put that pipe of disinformation into the social media sewage system and he can create havoc inside the country. Okay, so don't react to that yet because I'm going to another quote. And I want you to sense. the size both. So while we have that going on, Lee Kuan Yew before he died, the founder of Singapore, in one of his last interviews, they said, well, so are you optimistic or pessimistic about America?

In his 90s, Mr. Lee said, oh, no, I'm very optimistic about America because America can draw from the whole world. You can come to America in five short years. You are American, Singapore and American, Italian American, Indian American, and a result of which they can have this reservoir of intellectual capital that's never ending. That is not true for Germany, Japan, China, etc. You don't have that level of assimilation. And so synthesize these things for me. Is Stalin right? Are we too tribal and our enemies can break us up? Is Lee right? Where if we get the immigration policies right, we can continually renew America, version 3.0 and 4.0 America. Who's right? I think in certain ways, they're both telling an important truth and what is not resolved is which of those truths is going to

nominate the 21st century in America. Which one in your opinion is? Let me take each one in turn, though, because I lived the Lee Kuan Yew truth personally in a way that I want to share with you because I think it has really informed my understanding of America in a way that sometimes makes me think about this a little bit differently than a lot of my own allies on the political left, which is I am, as you know, I'm critical of a whole bunch of things in this country, as are you, and critical of fundamental structures and systems in this country that do not treat certain people well. However,

I'm also the son of immigrants who came to this country from India, chose this country, became American. And we had a very interesting experience when I was seven years old, living in Shaker Heights, Ohio. My parents got kind of bored of their adrenaline-fueled immigrant adventure. First, it was hard. It was challenging. How did you figure out the video game of a new country? And then they got it. Two cars, house, and the suburbs, two kids. It kind of got easy and they crashed and they were like, let's do it again. Let's immigrate again, right? Very kind of unusual thing. So they choose to immigrate to France this time when I'm seven. Now you got to remember, they're now 10 years, my dad's 10 years further into his

career. They have more money at this point. They have more stability. They have more wherewithal. And from the first day we arrived in France, and I remember this is a seven-year-old watching my parents experience France in this way. It was so clear that this will never belong. to you. You will never be part of this. You will never become one of us. It wasn't outright discrimination. It wasn't like you can't be here. It wasn't being treated like crap in restaurants, anything like that. It was just like there is no idea here native to this country of people becoming French. It's not a thing. Why? Becoming German is not a thing. Becoming Swedish is not a thing. Becoming Indian is not a thing. Becoming Chinese is not a thing. My friend Eric Liu wrote a great book called The China Man's Chance.

He observed brilliantly. He says, you know, my family. has been in China for all of recorded human history, right? Like we've, five thousand years, how many thousands of years, Eric Liu's family has been in China? For one generation, out of those hundreds of generations, his family was not in China.

He, I think his parents moved here, right? Maybe his grandparents. Right? So one or two generations, out of hundreds, they broke the chain of their Chinese citizenship. And Eric made the observation that he could never become a Chinese citizen again, right?

I think he was born as an American citizen. There's no way for, Eric Liu, who's only been missing from China, his family, for one generation. No way he could ever become Chinese. No way his kids could ever become Chinese. And so my sense of America is that this idea of being able to become an American is one of the most radical ideas in the history of the world. It is an idea we have in many ways failed to extend to all the people we were supposed to for all of our history. But it is a powerful idea worth defending. And we are trying to become something, and I think it's easier if you think about it as trying to become a process, a journey.

We are trying to become something really fucking cool for lack of a more technical term. I'm all about it, by the way. I love your met. We may not agree ideologically on everything you and me. We may not, okay, but I love the message. Keep going. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I'm... So I think that part is very real.

And I wish more of my friends on the political left would say that part, because I think we need to make sure we are coming. across to Americans as people who love the country and love the ideals of the country and understand why they're special and cool. And to make clear, as James Baldwin did, that we are criticizing precisely because we love the country. I totally appreciate that. I think the second part of what you're saying, which is what Stalin attempted to do and Vladimir Putin has done, is to make a gamble that the same phenomenon, I just described, a country made of all the world instead of, you know, a nation of people who look like each other's cousins, that this is

too hard. That was what Stalin. That's what Stalin was telling Henry Luce. That's what Vladimir Putin gamble. It's too hard. This is not a workable model, right? And so Lee Kuan Yu is stating an aspirational at admiring notion, but it's aspirational. It's predictive. We have not quite there yet. We haven't tested it out. We're heading to be this kind of majority, minority country, the superpower of color within your and my lifetimes. And it's not tested, whether it's tenable, whether it can hold together, whether people's desire to keep the republic will overwhelm their desire kind of not to share what feels with people who feel alien to them. And so what Putin did, and I start the book with this for a reason. I start the book with these two women, this kind of

Russian intelligence officer Thelma and Louise kind of duo, who came to America in June of 2014, did a road trip around a whole bunch of states, picked up research, trying to kind of absorb the political system the way a reporter, you know, or travel writer would, and then went back to Russia and informed this troll farm in St. Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency,

which exactly as you say, didn't just try to make us angrier, specifically inflamed these tribal divisions. And, you know, as someone who has been adjacent to the political, world, you know, like, countries, countries have a lot of ways of messing with each other, right? And the U.S. and Russia have, like, a whole bunch of different arrows in the quiver, right? It's really significant, like, you can, you can take out someone's power grid. You can sabotage some bank. You can do sanctions.

No lack of, no lack of options of sabotage in this ongoing adversary relationship. Think about this for a second. Vladimir Putin, imagine the meetings that were going on 2012, 2013, 2014. Vladimir Putin presumably orders that the big Russian effort to undercut its greatest adversary of the United States is getting into our social media and altering and inflaming how we talk to each other. Like, think of the brilliance of that, right? Of all the things you could do, they can fix the power grid in Houston, right? Like, what his calculation was, was that that's something we can't fix. If we go down the road of what I would call contempt and dismissal, right, which is different from anger and division. I actually think anger and division are fine in

politics. Like, politics is about really hard issues. Like, it's going to get real, right? Contempt and dismissal is different from anger and division. Contempt and dismissal is, there's no point bothering with the mooch. There's no point. Someone like him is never going to X, Y, Z. There's no point. Right? I am angry that the mooch thinks this about taxes, leads me to further engagement. Makes me want to vote and argue with you, right? Write an op-ed. Demonize me, though, demonize me.

Make me into a two-dimensional character. But when you get to that contempt and dismissal place, of course someone would say that. Those people will always think that. And we're all doing this to each other right now. And I just think it was so interesting. Having participated in this culture myself, I don't know if you feel like you've also,

and I think we've all in many ways participated in an increasingly inflammatory particularly online culture that spills offline, of course. It's interesting to me. Let's just think for a second that we were playing into Vladimir Putin's wet dream of how we should relate to each other as Americans to undermine the goal of that kind of country made of the world that Likwan U was talking about. I think it's a brilliant assessment.

And I, this is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring you on. There's something else going on in your book, which, to me is the book is loaded with emotion. You make the point, which I agree with, you can't force people through condensation, making them feel bad through pedantry, pedantic sermonizing. They're not going to change their point of view. You're sitting there on a righteous high horse, explaining to them how wrong they are. I think you bring up AOC, Alexandra Ocasio-C, who to me, I think is one of the more brilliant politicians of our time. I don't agree with a lot of her policies. But man, what a workhorse, what a charismatic, and what a force of nature. Tell us about

the emotion that's out there and blended in with your observation of AOC. I'll tell you, whether she realized it or not, she kind of wrote herself into the book. I started this book right at the beginning of the pandemic, April, April 2020. And I actually briefly had a TV show at that time on Vice. And she was my first guest, kind enough to be my first guest on that show. I think either in the run-up to the taping or right after the taping, I was texting with her and thanking her for coming on the show. And I mentioned that I was just starting this new book on Persuasion. And she said something to me, which took me aback. She said, you know, I think of myself as a persuader, as someone who's really, but that's not how the world sees me.

The world has come to see me as a kind of strident ideological warrior. And she's like, I get that, but my self-conception is almost completely the opposite of that. And I'm always attracted in storytelling to those kinds of things where people's, you know, self-conception is at war with how the world sees them. We all have that, but that makes such interesting narrative. And so I set out to write this chapter about her, which has become a third of the book. It means 100 pages just about her story. And the reason I dwelled on her story so long, and we spent a lot of time talking to each other is that I think she embodies some of the difficulties and complications and contradictions and new thinking around persuasion. in the 21st century. So I think a lot, if you look particularly at the Democratic Party, a lot of the old model of persuasion was just like reach out to the middle by diluting what you stand for, right? So you start with universal health care as an aspiration,

but then if you're Obama or Clinton, you kind of water it down to do sort of private insurance, this, that, and you sort of feel like that way you'll keep a broad coalition. The problem with this for Democrats is that this often, it often fails to win over those people in the middle that you're reaching for. They don't go with you anyway. and then you leave your base coal and like no one is for you. And this has often happened to Democrats, as you know.

So I think AOC represents a very different model of persuasion for the left, which is actually stand for the bold thing. Stand firmly in your feet for the most ambitious version of a thing. Call it the Green New Deal. Call it, you know, certain kinds of democracy reform, whatever. Stand far ahead of where the consensus is. provoke, provoke the conversation, right? This is what the right is so good at, and that she is also very good at.

Hijack the narrative. Provoke, make people go wild. You remember, I'm sure a lot of your friends, remember, when she proposed that 70% marginal tax on people making $10 million a year or more. Whether it's a good idea or bad idea, every person in this country was talking about it the next day. That's power, right? The right gets that. Most of the left don't know how to do that.

She knows how to do it. No question. But then she is also good at how to, having taken the bold stance, having anchored yourself in an ambitious vision, in a way that someone like Joe Biden has been less comfortable doing, then you have to work people into your vision with a kind of open heart in a way that the left often struggles to do. So you don't reach out by standing for nothing.

You reach out by standing firmly for something, something exciting and thrilling, and then meeting people where they are in terms of pulling them into the vision, right? And so to give you a practical example, if I were trying to persuade you on something where we probably have a disagreement, universal health care finance through a wealth tax or something like that, right? I think what Democrats would do to try to reach you is just have like a kind of very weak offering and be like maybe the moot should come along with that as someone coming out of the business and finance world. I think what I would say to you, I would try to stick to my universal health care, single payer kind of demand, but I would try to sell you on it based on my understanding of what

you care about, what your values are, right? I would say to you, it is an incredible burden on businesses to have businesses have to administer health care systems for their employees and for CEOs to be worrying about whether or not they're going to get a plan that their employee's son's leukemia will be taken care of or not. That that's actually a burden that would be very nice to lift from businesses and that my business friends in France and Germany feel very relieved that they don't have to think about. They can actually focus on their business and not like what Aetna plan they're offering their employees and whether they should grant it to people who work 30 hours or 31 hours or 29 hours, right? That would be the kind of argument I'm making,

taking a clear stand, but trying to appeal to your moral frame. Or saying, Mooch, you're a freedom guy. You like the idea of freedom, right? A lot of your allies in business like that idea of individual freedom. Well, health care in this country, the way it functions for a lot of people is like a big Soviet bureaucracy that dictates your life and it's un-American, right? It is, you are, are not free if you can't quit your job and pursue a brilliant idea you wrote in a napkin in a coffee shop because your kids are not going to have health care if you pursue that idea, right? What I'm doing right now is making arguments to you that are empathetic, I think, to how you see the world, but I'm still standing for something firm, right? And I'm with you philosophically, so let me just say

a couple of things, which I think you'll appreciate, because I'm more of a realist than I am an ideologue. Number one, I'm for a woman's right to choose, even though I'm Roman Catholic, and I personally am pro-life. But that's my choice. I'm not imposing that on anybody else. So don't judge me for my choice. I won't judge you for your choice. If you look at the First Amendment,

my religious freedom allows me to be pro-life, but it doesn't allow me to push my religion onto you. Okay, so that's my view there, and people can like me or just like me for that. Number two, I am pro-gay marriage. I was just on Andrew Cuomo's podcast talking about how myself, a Republican, Cliff Asness, may not know him,

Paul Singer, a Republican, of Republicans, Dan Loeb, we all worked with Andrew Cuomo to move Republican state senators over to the right to gay-haining. As the Dick Cheney. Well, I'm a libertarian. So I always tell my conservative friends, so you want a smaller government except in my bedroom. For some reason, you want a larger government in my bedroom. Okay, so it's just antithetical and philosophically absurd. But let me keep going, okay? You're at a point in the society whether you like it or not, okay? The Reagan days are over, you're in a point in the society right now where we have a wide income gap. We have a wide wealth gap. You wrote about it in your last book. And it's painful for me because I grew up like

that. I grew up in an aspirational working class family. Those very same working class families are now desperation. So the wealthy in America, whether they like it or not, they have to come up with a package of services almost like a suite of equal opportunity. I am not for equal outcomes, like some of your socialist friends. I think that would be a disaster for our society. And I think equal outcomes would do things that are, look at Venezuela. But who in American life is actually advocating for equal outcomes?

I don't know. Bernie Sanders doesn't like rich people. You know, what's her face? What policy? What's her face? The professor that beats up on me all time, Elizabeth Warren, she's not in love with rich people, but she likes to fly around on the private plane,

but she's not in love of rich people. She's in love with her own riches. I think they make a critique of rich people, but I don't think there's a single Bernie Sanders or Warren proposal that would get anywhere close to equal outcomes, right? And look at the evidence that her wealth tax. It was two cents for 50 million and up, three cents on the dollar. You can't execute that.

So what are you going to? I'm saying, 100 bucks. You're going to tax me there. It just dropped to 50. Now what are we doing? Am I getting the money back? Here's what I'm saying to you. Here's what I'm saying to you.

If they wanted to equalize outcomes, they'd propose like a 90% tax or a 90% tax. or a 95% tax on wealth over a billion. If you're proposing a three cent tax on wealth over a billion, you're not trying to equalize. I know, it's not, it's not practical. Whether it's practical is a different issue. I'm just saying they're not trying to equalize outcomes. I don't think anybody in American life is trying to equalize out.

Don't cut the top of the ladder, the rungs of the top of the ladder. You're better off lowering the ladder. Create a platform of equal opportunity, a package of service. I think that was part of the idea that you- Education, universal income, education. But then Republicans will say, how do you pay for it, right? And what they were doing with the wealth tax is saying, here's how you pay for it. Well, I would rather a VAT because the VAT is a consumption-based tax and the rich are spending the money.

And also, a lot of people are spending green in the economy. There's a black market economy, as you know, just like there is in Europe. And you would pick up an enormous amount of tax revenues through a VAT. My Republican friends hate the VAT because you can. turn the dial on it and it can be confiscatory. But you got to do something. You can't just be, you know, who's the biggest spender ever? How about Donald Trump? Okay, Mr. Conservative of the conservative of the conservative party racked up $8.4 trillion of debt in four years. Okay, so I mean, this is total hypocrisy at this point. So if you want to fix it, you got to be honest about it,

but you got to offer the equal opportunity. And that includes health care. One last point about health care. Ronald Reagan created universal health care in 1986. And let me just explain this obscure fact. In 1986, he signed legislation that required every emergency room, doctor and nurse, to service somebody if they walked through the door. And so you had people with no health care getting treated for sore throats in emergency rooms all over the country. And what did Mitt Romney say? Mitt Romney said, okay, we can't do that. Okay, Ronald Reagan was right to pass that legislation. We already have universal health care. Let's figure out a way to make it economically efficient. And let's figure out a way to distribute the capital fairly through the system so everybody can get a reasonable amount of

health care. If you want Lux health care because you're a gillianer, no problem. But we got to give a base level of reasonable health care to every citizen. So we agree on that. You don't have to convince a guy like me. What we have to do, is we have to give a little on both sides. This is why I love the book. I'm just going to hold it up again. At the front lines of the fight for the hearts and minds of democracy, the main title is persuaders.

But what I love about the book is you're making this wonderful observation that we're so close. If we just dial down some of the rhetoric and some of the emotion, we're so close. And if we give a little on each side, we could make the union more perfect. Did I get that right about the book? I think that's right. And I think there's more common ground than we realize we have been manipulated by Vladimir Putin, Rupert Murdoch, Donald Trump, the incentives of Mark Zuckerberg and, you know, Jack Dorsey and other social media barons platforms. A lot of these forces and sources have manipulated us in the direction of greater contempt for each other and greater. dismissal. How often do you and I hear just around you, people like that will never ex. These anti-vaxers will never get the vaccine. Well, a whole bunch of the anti-vaxers did eventually get the vaccine. Thank you to the people,

the organizers who kept pushing and didn't just quit in the first inning and pushed and pushed and found new arguments and went to the black community, went to the Latin community, went into white communities in rural areas and said, we don't accept that people won't do the vaccine. People will do what's right. They need to be educated. They need to not hear it just from the president or the CDC. They need to hear it from their pastors. And adjustments from made and a whole bunch of anti-vaxxers became people with shots in their arm. You know, you heard it with the Trump presidency, right? Like these people, these people voted for him, they'll never, they'll never defect. Well, I heard that kind of shrug a lot during those four years. And I'm very

thankful that a whole bunch of organizers didn't accept that shrug and organized the hell out of that era. And you know what? A bunch of people defected from Trump. A bunch of people. A bunch of people who loved him even after the Access Hollywood tape and everything else decided they didn't want to. And that's why you and I have not been living in the Trump presidency, blessedly, for the last couple years, right? The January 6th Commission, right? We think everything is baked. Everything's tribal. Well, through evidence, through care, by completely reinventing the congressional hearing narratively so that it's not 45 people giving statements. And it's clean, it's lean, it's efficient, you can understand it, you can tune in, it's appointment viewing. They have moved a lot of people in the direction of understanding the criminality of the Donald Trump kind of Donald Trump enterprise.

And so it is easy to be fatalistic about other people in this country. and it's easy to believe that people can't change. And I think there is a hardcore group of frankly fascists in this country right now who are not going to change, who really want to burn it all down. They were in the 1930s. They were there was Father Kaufflin, Charles Lindberg. They've always been here, right? You're never going to get those people.

You've seen these photos of lynching. But I also want to calm the people down on the left. You know, they want to cancel it. It's not enough that if you get accused of something, forget about it. It's not a death penalty. It's a professional death penalty. And it's not even innocent until proven guilty. You're not only guilty.

but your career is over. Go home and, you know, sell your house, put your house in foreclosure. And look, I want to be clear that I think a lot of what is sometimes called cancel culture is the rise of an accountability culture where people who have been on the margins of American society for a long time now have a voice. Women have a voice that they didn't have before to say, that's ridiculous behavior in a workplace. And women didn't have a easy way to, right?

I just interviewed this woman, Jamie Fiore Higgins, a baby. out her book, The Bulley Market. You know, she was surprised. She couldn't believe that I was willing to do it because Goldman is mother Goldman, all roads lead back to Goldman like in the Roman Empire. And Goldman did the wrong thing here. They should have read the book and invited her in and said, okay, how do we fix this rather than put their heads in the sand, which is a PR strategy and their lawyers did. See, this is why you're so good at what you do because you're bringing the stuff out. You're popping the Zit. You know, you're like Dr. Pimple Popper, okay? Probably wasn't the best nickname for you, but that's what you are.

And you're helping with something like this. And so I'm grateful for you for many different things, our friendship, but also joining me on Open Book. And, uh, oh, no, let's keep the dialogue going. Thank you so much for being a part of this. I love it. I love it. I need a Republican friend in my life. I'm staying. I'm staying as a Republican because it pisses Trump off that I'm a Republican, okay?

And I'm going to, I'm going to be out there fighting the good fight for normalcy. I love it. Thank you, man. Read The Persuaders. Phenomenal book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It's at the front lines of the fight for hearts, minds, and democracy. I think the clearest sentiment in the book, even though Anon and I have different political views,

we have many similarities and hopes for America. It's important to have an open, honest dialogue with people with opposing views and to not be dismissive, but to learn from each other. I think that is the most phenomenal thing about this book. What about the lost art of disagreement? How do we figure out a way to get back to disagreeing but still being agreeable and compromise, recognizing that I don't have to win 100% of the argument? Sometimes I'll get 80, sometimes you'll get 80, but we'll be in a better place and a less messy strain on the American democracy.

No, it's Anthony, Mo. Oh, Ann. She called and she had to get a call from Illinois. I'm going to have you back on the podcast. Are you ready to do your Marie Scaramucci bid or no? What are you doing it? Now you mean? Right now.

I'm going to ask you some questions. We're going to record you. Are you ready? Go ahead. All right. So I got a couple questions for you, Ma. Okay, so let's start with the first question. And I want you to think about it, Ma.

If you were trying to persuade someone to do something, how would you go about doing it? Go ahead. You have such a terrific way of talking. and if you try real hard, it won't work, but if you just use your head and protect yourself in the right fashion, you can do anything. Okay, yeah, I'm not talking about me, though. I'm talking about you.

So how do you do it? Because you know you love the guilting, you love how you manipulate people. You told David that I was a half a mile closer to the house than him. Could he move closer? You know how you do it to people, right? I mean, didn't you tell me since I was like five years old that I couldn't move too far away?

Well, I like my children and my, nephews and nieces and everyone very close. I'm very family-oriented. Yeah, but you inundated us as kids with, like, massive amounts of propaganda and brainwashing, though, no? Oh, no? Yeah, but there's nothing like Port Washington planned down on. Here we go. Here we go.

See? There we go. That's what you've been saying for 50 years, right? Correct. But think about it. I mean, the school system and HACID is the plan. Oh, here we go. Now you're the head of the Chamber of Commerce.

Ma, what do you think of New York? though, right? How many times you tell me I can't move out of New York? How many times? Forever. Forever. You can't move out of New York. New York, when you're in New Yorker, no matter where you go, in the whole United States, it's different. And I've been pretty much all over. All right. So when you're trying to persuade somebody, then what's your number one move? You repeat yourself constantly, right? I repeat myself, and I try to show the people the light of how New York is. New York is a good place to live. It's got everything here. All right, but persuading people, it requires a little bit of subtlety, but lots of repetition, right?

Ma, you like to repeat yourself about what we should be doing and how we should be doing it, right? Well, when you were a little boy, you said, you used to say you were going to live right next door. Right, now I'm a mile away, and that's like too far, right? Tell the truth. Is it too far? Yeah, it's a little far. Yeah, see, a mile. One mile away is too far. Like, I need a passport to come back into the town, right? Well, we have the water. Manhattan doesn't have the water. We have the town dock.

I try to show my children what we have in Fort Washington. We have the town dock. You can sit there and look at the water at night. We have the beach. It's just a good place to live. All right. So let me ask you this, though, Ma, if you could change one thing about the country, about America right now, what would it be? Get rid of the guns.

Get rid of the guns. You don't like the guns, right? Right. They're very bad. for children, the schools. It's crazy. I would get rid of all the guns. Right.

So we'd have to figure out a way to get the people who are nuts, not to have guns like the other Western democracies do, right? I would like to tell you how I feel. Can I tell you how I feel? I thought about that. That's a very good question. Tell me how you feel. We have many, many homeless on the streets.

And some of them, for some odd reason, I can pick out people that are mental and people that are not mental. I have a knack for that. And I feel is so that Rockefeller made a mistake closing the mental institutions, and I think that we should reopen them. And we should have people that don't abuse them and they should be treated like human beings because God made them mentally ill. And I think that I think that that's what should happen. And I think our country will be better instead of having tents and people living on the street. They should have a hospital reopened, put them in there, and have people that treat them like human beings because they are human beings.

because they are human beings. They have skin on their bones, and they should be treated by human beings. Amen. We agree on that. I mean, and we both know that the homeless issue is one of mental illness, some of his related to addiction. All right. So those are really good, Maas. So let me ask you this.

Let's say somebody's doing something that you don't want them to do. How do you put the Marie Scaramucci spin into their brain? Go ahead. Because all your grandchildren say that you know what to say at the right time. So what do you do, what do you do, Ma? Well, first of all, I have deep loving me. I love my grandchildren and my children. I feel like they can't do wrong.

And if they do wrong, I would defend them no matter what. Right, so it's unconditional. But then what do you say to them to get them to do the right thing? Because you've talked them into doing stuff the right way sometimes when they're going in the wrong direction. I would say take a deep breath and look at life the right way. Everyone has a problem growing up, no matter if you have everything, or you don't have everything.

And it's a way of life, and you have to psychoanalyze yourself, that if you have everything, you have to help the people that are in need. And I think my son, Anthony, is like that. And I think that's a gift and a jewel to discriminate, color, people. He just does the right thing.

I'm nuts. I feel like I'm telling the truth. Well, that's sweet. If you mind, I do try to do that. You know that. I don't care what color people are, what the sexual orientation is. I try to treat everybody well.

That's very sweet. Let me ask you this question, though, Ma. All right? If I don't show up at the house on a Saturday or at least once a week, what type of guilt do you use? What's the guilt? Well, I feel very, I gave my children my all, no matter how they turned out or what happened, all three. I sacrificed my life for my children because I have reasons that I did that, and I put my all and to my kids, and I love my children to death,

and I think that they can give me one day. All right. Even if it's for an hour. Pretty persuasive, right? That's pretty persuasive, right? Yeah. I appreciate it, Ma. It's always fun to have you on the show.

Okay, thank you very much. I love you, ma'am. Thank you. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listen. 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 to chat more about the discussions, it's at Scaramucci on Twitter. It's also at Scaramucci on Instagram. You can text me at plus 1, 917, 909, 299, 296. I'd love to hear from you. Let me know what you think and who you'd like to see on our show next. I'll see you back here next week.