Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci - Two Peas on a Pod: The Mooch and Amb. Gordon Sondland, Both Fired by Trump

Episode Date: February 8, 2023

This week, Anthony talks with Gordon Sondland, former US Ambassador to the EU and author of The Envoy: Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World.  A self-defined “quid pro quo” guy, Ambassador Sondland gets personal with Anthony about his time working for former President Trump. He recalls the Trump-Ukraine phone call which spurred the first impeachment inquiry, and reflects on the fallout from his own testimony.  Together they give their take on the Trump years and the future of the Republican party, sharing their hopes and predictions for the GOP in 2024, and what would make a successful candidate. Having worked closely with President Zelensky during his ambassadorship, Sondland shares his thoughts on the war in Ukraine; why Zelensky was always a “baller” in his eyes; and what the United States needs to do to end the war. 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 former United States

ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. All of us remember Ambassador Sondland as a pivotal witness in Trump's first impeachment hearing. His new book, The Envoy, Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World is a great read. It reveals what really went on in matters of Ukraine, U.S. EU relations, Iran, Israel, and the first impeachment trial. We discuss what Donald Trump is like behind closed doors, something we both know well. The famous phone call that spurred the impeachment inquiry and Ambassador Sondland's testimony. President Zelensky and the current situation in Ukraine, the state of American politics and our 2024 predictions, and how to limit the future threat of China, Russia, and Iran. Joining us now is Ambassador Gordon Sondland. He is a former U.S.

ambassador to the EU, who's appointed by Donald J. Trump in 2018, and he wrote an incredible story about his journey. And it's called The Envoy, Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the world. This is a great book on a number of different levels. There's a real human story about your life here and the situation that you got placed in as a result of the Ukrainian situation and the testimony that you had to provide. But I want to go right to the parts of the book that I'm not. I want to go right to the parts of the book that I loved, if you don't mind. And that is your family. Tell us about your family and your background. We'll get into the Trump stuff later, but I think it's such a beautiful story. I grew up in Seattle. I was the first U.S. citizen in my family born on American soil.

And by the way, before I continue, thanks for having me on, Anthony. I appreciate it. My parents were both Holocaust survivors. They essentially came here with nothing. I have a sister from the same two parents that's 20 years older than me. So when I was one, she was getting married. It was almost like having two mothers. And I grew up in a very sort of lower, lower, middle class, small portion of a very wealthy neighborhood. And it really motivated me because everyone around me was rich. All the kids drove new cars when they turned 16.

Their families went to Hawaii and Europe and elsewhere on vacation. And mine couldn't afford that. And it really motivated me and made me envious. And envy as an incredible driver. Tell us how you got started. Okay, you built a beautiful, amazingly successful business. You've lodging, the hospitality business, among other things that you did. So give us the transition.

You come out of college. What's your first job? Well, I dropped out of college. I did about a year and a half, two years in college. I was bored and I was restless and I wanted to make money. I was singularly focused on that. So I started in the commercial real estate business and I started selling small apartment buildings. I kind of sucked at it for about a year.

And then I finally decided to shoot for the moon instead of at the time, you know, an apartment building was small apartment building in Seattle was $3,000, $600,000. I decided to sell a full city block in downtown Seattle for at the time was $15,000. million dollars and this was in 1979 so that was a lot of money and you know I almost ran out of money while I was trying to do it but lo and behold after about 10 months I closed the deal I made a little over a quarter of a million dollars again in 1979 which was my first commission my bank account was almost at zero so walking in and depositing that $250,000 check was sort of an uplifting experience All right. So now we're moving along. You got yourself involved in Republican Party politics. What attracted you to Donald Trump? And I'm going to tell people how you and I first met, which I think is an interesting part of the story. But what attracted you to Donald J. Trump? Well, as I say in the envoy, I didn't know Trump, other than a sort of fateful meeting with him in 1988 at the Republican Convention in New Orleans when George H.W. Bush gave his famous.

Peggy Noonanen 10th Point of Light speech. And as I say, I ran into him in the elevator lobby. He was a total dick. I was asking him about an issue he had confronted in his business that we were facing as well, that was very well publicized. I wasn't bothering him. No one was around. And he was very dismissive of me because he didn't know who I was.

He'd never heard of me. I was young, et cetera, et cetera. The next day, I'm sitting in the bar with two other people whom he knew quite well. and he came over and he said, you know, tell me more about the hotel thing. And he couldn't have been nicer. Right. And when I reminded him of that in 2016, I said, you were a real dick, but then the next day you were nice. Why is that? He said, well, of course I was nice the second day, because you were with very important people. Right. Well, I mean, the transparency is weirdly refreshing. It's almost like so transparent. It is. Who says that? Right. No, because he's a dick of dicks. And so that's why it's so

interesting. That's why I wanted to bring it up. But we met, and I'm going to tell you where we met, see if you test your memory. We happened. I had the good fortune of sitting next to you at what was my first fundraiser. And so what I did was I traveled with Mr. Trump to New Mexico. And then we boarded his plane to L.A. And we went to, was it Tom's house? I think it was Tom Barrack's house. We went to Tom Barrett's house. It was a tent outside. We had Wolfgang Puck cooking the meal. And it was a fundraiser.

It was our first real fundraiser that I had organized with Stephen Mnuchin, who went on to become the Secretary of Treasury. And you and I sat next to each other, built a nice rapport with each other. And then I saw your name pop up in the transition. So I was on the executive transition team, and you had had your hand raised, I believe. you'll correct me if we're wrong, but it's more or less in the record to be an ambassador. And so we were looking for different spots for you. And then, which I think is arguably one of the most prestigious ambassadorships in the world, because people thought so well of you.

You ended up as the ambassador to the EU. But you had to go through a very tough vetting process because of the partisanship going on in Washington. So tell us a little bit about that and tell us how you ended up in the job. Well, I almost wound up with no job. I mean, while I greatly appreciated your advocacy and that of Stephen Mnuchin's, I created, or I committed, I should say, the unpardonable sin of dropping out of the campaign toward the end. And the reason I dropped out of the campaign, which I go through in the envoy, was that one of my key employees, who is Muslim, said he was very unhappy with President Trump's characterization during

the Khazir Khan incident. Not to interrupt you, but the Qazir Khan incident, the family lost their son in the military. Okay, tell us the story. Yeah, their family lost their son. And instead of being an empathetic person, President Trump, was highly critical of the family and the father in particular. It really turned off a lot of the Muslim American community, as well as the greater American community. It was one of those milestones in the campaign, which, you know, included the remarks coming down, the escalator, the TMZ tape, and now this. And I was put in a very difficult position. So I said,

listen, you're more important to me than a political campaign. I will step down. I had already raised some money for the campaign. I had done my part. So when Trump finally became the nominee and then became president of the United States, this employee came back to me and said, listen, we have to support the president of our party. This guy was also a Republican. And he said, I'll get over it. If you want to participate, go ahead. You won't have any issues with me. So at that point, the campaign was over. He had already won. And I decided the only way to reengage in the campaign was to essentially attend the inauguration and reconnect with all the people that I, you know, lost contact with in those last three months, which I did. Yeah. And one of the best parts of this for me is, and I'll tell the story

quickly, we were raising money for Mr. Trump. The establishment hated them. I mean, let's just be honest about it. None of the large-scale donors that I was successful at raising money for Governor Romney in 2012 wanted to give Mr. Trump any money. And so we did an event at Chippriani's in Midtown at 42nd Street in June of 2016. So a few months before the election and it was obviously a month before the nomination and I think only scaramucci's were there, Gordon. I think I had to get my mother there.

I had to get my cousins. I was bringing them in from Long Island. We had to fill the seas because, you know, Trump would go crazy on us. But the venue was almost big enough to house all the scaramucci. Yeah, exactly. It was almost big enough,

but we had every scaramucci that known to mankind in the room and he was yapping away about his Twitter strategy and so forth, but we literally raised them no money. Mnuchin and I were sort of embarrassed. And then fast forward to December, so I think you'll remember this, we had a fundraiser there for the transition team.

And for the inauguration itself. I'm sorry, for the inauguration. And the line was out the door. It was completely packed. And of course, Trump being Trump, he says, hey, now you love me. Yeah, where are you guys like? Last time, yeah, he loved it.

He loved it. How you love me. Decided at that point, the only way I would get back into good graces was to make an impact. So when this employee of mine came to me and said, you can re-engage, I said, how about this? Would you and your family like to join my family and me at the inauguration? And he said, wow, that would be great. I've never been to a presidential inauguration. So I bought the big ticket.

And the big ticket at the time was a million dollars. And that got a lot of attention because the, you know, the way. And the press said, oh, you wrote a million dollar check and got an ambassadorship, which tells me that the press really doesn't understand how the process work. There were about 60 people who wrote checks for a million dollars and none of them got an ambassador. Of course. So go into that. So you get, you write the check. And of course, what's interesting is for some reason, when Democrats are writing checks like that, the press is not writing about it and they don't care.

But when the Republicans are doing it, they try to point it out. This is the reason why there's so much dishonesty in the media at this point and why many Americans, I would say citizens globally, are really starting to distrust the media. I mean, we have the media out there right now propping up a fraud in the cryptocurrency market. It's very hard to understand that. Well, we can get into this, you know, a little later, but one of the things I advocate for, Anthony, very strongly, which is completely counterintuitive to what you hear in the media is for more political appointees representing the United States, not less. I want to try. And I think it's the right thing to do because you need alternative thought. You need to get out of the artifice of Washington and the State Department. And you need fresh eyes on problems. And you need experienced business people like you that really love the country or a product of the country, have lived the American dream, want to further the goals of the country. You write so beautifully about all this stuff. Before I go into that, though, I'd like you to share your views of Jet Bush and Mitt Romney. Both of those people, I I consider personal friends. I know them both very well. Work for both of their presidential campaigns. You write about them. Why do you think they were both underrated by the Republican

Party and the Republican Party voters? Well, I think the Republican Party was really looking for a complete upstart. Both Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush, both of whom I care for a great deal, They're both good friends. In fact, full disclosure, I'm an investor with Jeb in some of his private equity investments. They're great guys, but they definitely drive in the middle of the lane. They don't veer outside the lines. They're very decent people. And I think the frustration with the Obama years in the Republican Party, particularly in the more conservative wing of our party, was so great. They wanted a flamethrower. They wanted someone to put a turd in the punch bowl, however you want to describe it. And they did not think that either Jeb or Mitt, in his case,

would be that man. In the case of Donald, there's no question. All right. Well, we agree with that. So it's interesting. We're in an age now where experience, policy, wonkishness, intellectual curiosity to do the job is perhaps less interesting to the voter, what's more interesting to the voter is express the anger that they're feeling. They feel disassociated with the American dream. Many people feel disaffected from the establishment. And so Mr. Trump, I think we would both agree, represented that. And he represented that in a very strong and powerful way, upsetting at times to people like your employee. But by and large, that's why he was able to galvanize the Republican Party. Is that fair to say? It is. And, you know, in fairness,

you worked for a short time for him in this job, in the White House. I worked a little longer. To give him some credit, he was very restless about getting things done, and he was one of these people who checked his watch, not his calendar. I remember clearly many times when in the morning he would want something done, and he wondered why three o'clock in the afternoon, it wasn't already underway. When some presidents wouldn't even turn to that issue for months, if not years, he was added relentlessly. And frankly, that's how I think we got the FDA to approve those vaccines so quickly, was because he would not take no for an answer. He was relentless. And I think that's what the American people saw in him when they voted to elect him president. I mean, it's unfortunate

because, you know, the Operation Warspeed, which you're referring to, he does deserve credit for that. Of course, now Vice President Kamala Harris said she would never take the Trump vaccine under no circumstances. Until she did. And then it didn't become the Trump vaccine. And so there's a little bit of this nonsense that goes on with the partisanship of even our scientific establishment. We've got a lot of people in our country that don't believe in these vaccines. Some people think that they're making them sick and all this stuff.

So there's wild amounts of disinformation out there. But let's go to you because I think you had one of the more interesting jobs. You write about this in the book. You're the ambassador to the EU. you're in Brussels. The ambassador to NATO is there. The ambassador to Belgium is there. You have three U.S. ambassadors in one European city. So describe it to us. Describe what your life was like, how you interacted with those ambassadors, how you interacted with NATO, the EU, country of Belgium. Well, it was a very touchy ambassadorship, as you point out, in that in some cases, those three ambassadors,

it would be hard to find a room big enough to contain the three egos that each ambassador. had, you know, who's the alpha in the, in the relationship. In my case, I was very fortunate. My colleagues included Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who was the ambassador to NATO, and my friend Ron Gidwitz, who was the ambassador to Belgium. And we really did a great job of dancing together. We each stayed in our lane when it came to our respective missions, but we operated the city as a tri-mission, and we used each other's resources and assets to accomplish the tasks we needed to accomplish. Yeah, I love that.

I love the collaborate, and this is another reason why I'm in your camp that more business people, entrepreneurs, they need to get involved with the process because you can help lubricate the diplomatic system, if you will, and you also realize that it's a collaboration. It doesn't have to be an ego-bashing festival.

Do you feel like you succeeded in your role, Gordon? I do. In fact, when the whistleblower complaint, surfaced and everything got sidelined, not just in my role, but in the entire administration, focusing on that first impeachment. We were on the cusp of closing so many deals. We had already closed a few, and we were on the cusp of closing so many, which literally got washed down the river as Congress started to focus on the impeachment, and I really couldn't be effective in my job after that. It was very difficult. Right. Well, you're a man. You did a great job. You test

honestly and when you felt like you couldn't do the job because of all the different circumstances, you bowed out gracefully. And fortunately, that happens in politics. You know, I got fired after 11 days. I said something really stupid, which was regrettable, but I owned it. I mean, and I didn't blame anybody else but myself. I accepted the firing. And I think you know, because you've seen me with General Kelly. We're very close friends today. No harm, no foul. That's the nature of politics. I think you're a total gentleman. You come across as a total gentleman in the book, I admire. I want to talk about President Zelensky for a second. Because you had the opportunity to build a relationship with him and you hosted him in 2019. Tell us your opinion of President Zelensky.

Tell us why you were hoping for closer U.S.-Ukraine cooperation and maybe you can give us some of your insight into the current debacle that's taking place between the Russians and the Ukrainians. Well, President Zelensky was an unconventional candidate and successful candidate. He was very much like a Ronald Reagan where people criticized his show business background. What business does this guy have running Ukraine? He's an actor. And I think we've seen with 2020 hindsight that not only is the guy smart and tough, but he's a baller. I mean, he really is. Most people in his position would have had a Swiss bank account and would have been on a, you know, on a global express high-tailing out of Ukraine the minute the bullets started flying, and he's there in a flack jacket

while missiles are flying over his head. Are you surprised by that? Some of the people in the conventional press were, but after you meeting him and getting to know him, were you surprised by that? Well, first of all, it's a difficult question, because when we met him, we knew right away that he and the president, President Trump, would get along really well. And we were just trying to get the two of them together in the same room to shoot the shit, nothing more. No asks, no gives, just get to know one another.

Because we thought once Trump met Zelensky, good things would happen for Ukraine. And of course, Giuliani pokes his nose in the middle of this and ruin that entire strategy. And both Secretary Perry and Ambassador Volker were frustrated by that. But no, to get back to Zelensky, we thought he was smart. We thought he was tough. But until the bullets started flying, no one even knew what kind of toughness the guy had. What do you think happens? I think, unfortunately, it's totally up to us as to what happens.

It's not up to Europe. It's not up to Japan. It's not up to Australia. It's up to us. We can put our foot further down on the gas and end this war quickly, or we can continue to pretend that we don't want it escalated, that the Russians are giving us some sort of deference because we have. haven't gone further in in terms of both the armaments we're supplying, the intelligence

we're supplying, clearing the airspace in Ukraine, all of the different things that we would do over our fight rather than the Ukrainians fight. Because it's the doorstep to Europe, I think we have to put our foot down on the gas and finish this war quickly. I think any negotiations prior to a decisive military victory would be an enormous mistake. Okay, and so you believe that the Ukrainians can beat the Russians? Only with our help. Right. But we are helping them. So I mean, we are helping them, but we're helping them judiciously and tentatively. And we're trying to walk this tightrope, which I think created this sort of face-saving pretext for the Russians. I think the Russian economy is in shambles. I think that Putin is on the ropes. I think if there is ever a time

to finish this, it's now. Okay, so how would you finish it? Give me the policy prescription to finishing it. What would you do? I think the way I would finish it, and, you know, you can have multiple military experts on your show that can give you chapter and verse better than I. But the lethality of the weapons that we provide the Ukrainians, the intelligence we provide them, and the fact that we need to own the airspace over Ukraine, which may in fact cause us to have to get into a direct shooting war with Russian migs, I don't think we have a choice. I think if this drags out, you're going to wind up in a sloppily negotiated settlement which will reward the Russians for their behavior and only strengthen Putin's hand inside of Russia. I think Putin needs to be punched

hard in the nose, and I think our allies need to be brought along with us, even if it means leveraging some of our trade levers that we have to insist that they join us in this effort. We don't have a choice. Putin started it. We have to end it. I think it's well said and I appreciate it. I want to go back to the impeachment hearings. You agreed to cooperate, but you also had some opinions related to the quote-unquote Trump famous conversation. Tell us about that. Tell us why you agreed to cooperate. Tell us your thoughts about your testimony. Give us a sense for what you wrote in the book. Well, just a little correction, Anthony. I didn't really agree to cooperate. They asked me to come voluntarily.

to testify, I of course turned to my employer, who was the State Department at the time, and said, what do you want me to do? I work for you. They said, don't go. So we turned back to the committee and said, we're not coming. And they immediately followed the polite request up with a subpoena. At that point, we thought the White House was going to run cover and say, we're not letting you go until the Supreme Court tells you you have to go. So stand down. And they wouldn't do anything of the kind. They basically said you're on your own. So I had no choice. My attorneys told me I had to honor the subpoena. Otherwise, I would be liable for being in contempt of Congress. I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to spend the money to fight it on my own. So I came and testified because I was compelled.

I was probably, Anthony, the only witness that didn't have an agenda there. A lot of those witnesses really wanted to take the opportunity to undermine the administration because they were disgruntled. I just wanted to get back to Brussels and go back to work. I wasn't there to hurt. To her. Trump. I wasn't there to help Trump. I just wanted to tell what I knew, under oath, the truth, as I could best recall it, and then move on. And the others that testified before and after me clearly didn't have that agenda at all. Why did you think that the conversation wasn't that big of a deal, or let's describe it as a red herring, as you referenced? Because I didn't think it was an impeachable offense. And again, just for viewers and listeners, this is the conversation between

Trump and Zelensky, the whistleblower called BS. on. When you parse the word and read the transcript of the call, which again, with 2020 hindsight, I didn't see that until the hearings had already begun because no one produced that readout and no one told any of us, including Ambassador Volker and Secretary Perry, what had actually gone on on the call. It would have informed a lot of other things that we said and did afterwards had we seen what President Trump was trying to express to President Zelensky. But when I read the transcript, there was nothing there that I thought was impeachable. Did I think it was properly phrased? Did I think he should have used that conversation to try and get, you know,

the leader of another country to investigate potentially a political opponent? No, there are other ways to do that a little more deftly, and all presidents have done it to one degree or another. Obama's done it, Biden has done it, everyone's done it. I thought it was a little too blatant. And frankly, once it was exposed to the public, Anthony, I thought the proper place to handle all of that was the ballot box. You don't like what he said. Don't vote for him again. But an impeachment was ridiculous. Okay. I mean, listen, you make it you make a good case. I, again, you know, I dislike President Trump. Him and I have gotten into a row. There was no reason for him to go after my wife on Twitter. Obviously, there's something psychologically damaged about the guy in my opinion. And I appreciate your point of view. And I didn't totally understand the first. impeachment either so we can debate whether it was the right thing to do or not. But I do appreciate

your point of view. And that's why I wanted to bring you on my podcast. I want to switch a little bit to talk about Rudolph Giuliani, Mayor Rudy Giuliani. I had the political reporter Andrew Kurtzman on who just wrote a biography of Rudy. And he said in the biography, which I thought was interesting, he said, Rudy created the template for the Trump presidency in terms of some of the bombast and some of the drama and the closest of the two of them, they sort of like worked off of each other and feed it off of each other. I want to get your opinion of that. Do you think that that's true? You write in the book, obviously, you believe that Mr. Giuliani, Mayor Giuliani hurt the process. I think that biographer had it backwards. I think, you know, Trump created the template for

the Rudy Giuliani postmajoral life, not the other way around. Okay. Tell us why. Well, I think Trump used Rudy Giuliani as sort of a fungible tool. Volker, Perry and I come back from Kiev. We're all excited. We had spent, you know, a day and a half with Zelensky. We said Trump's got to meet this guy. He'll really like him. And we go into the Oval Office and we sit down, all excited. And Trump wants to hear none of it. He goes, I don't want to talk about Ukraine. I got other things to deal with. You want to deal with Ukraine. Talk to Rudy. And we're looking at each other. And one of us, it might have been me. It might have been Perry. He said, Rudy. What the hell does Rudy have to do with Ukraine? And he said, well, Well, Rudy's been involved. He's spent a lot of time there. He knows what's going on. I trust Rudy. You talk to Rudy.

And, you know, he said, wait a minute. He's not with a state department. He's not with the U.S. government. We're trying to get you and a foreign leader together. What the hell does Rudy Giuliani have to do with all of that? And Rudy Giuliani was basically, at the time, sort of Trump's dustbin. If he didn't want to deal with something rather than throw it in the garbage, he would give it to Rudy to deal with.

And then once Rudy was off and running, you never know whether Rudy was making the policy or Trump was making the policy. And so a lot of what Rudy said to the members of my team, to Volker and to Perry, we never really knew whether those things were coming from Rudy or whether they were coming from Trump. Well, I mean, and that's another thing about Mr. Trump, the president. He was an outsider. He liked Rudy's outsiderness. He had a distrust for establishment players and people in the State Department. I was in the meetings. Rudy put his hand up to be the Secretary of State. And Trump was very interested in making him the Secretary of State, which would have been a colossal disaster. And so I know that there were players that were undermining that for Rudy. I could never figure this out.

You know, all Wright's previous had to do is go to Rudy and Trump would say, hey, you'd be a disaster. And we can't do that. But he would act like he was Ritchie Gunning him. And then he would stab him in the back in the New York Times. It was like sort of nonsensical stuff. That's probably why we don't hear much about. about Ryan's previous anymore because of the way he disgraced himself. But let's go to Trump behind closed doors. You write about that. He's a complicated person. We both know he's an attention

seeker. What was your relationship with him behind closed doors as an ambassador, State Department official, et cetera? You know, it was, it's an interesting question. And the only way I can really gauge my relationship with him was to watch him interact with others. And I'm not talking about necessarily people that are low-level staff in the White House. He was actually quite, you know, friendly to them and seemed to be a fairly congenial boss. What I'm talking about are people who have four stars on their shoulders, who've spent a lifetime in military service. I'm talking about senior members of Senate leadership. I'm talking about other ambassadors like me. And it was interesting. You kind of put people in two categories. They were either supplicate.

or they tried to treat him as a peer. I was in the latter category. He was the president of the United States. I was an ambassador. I owed him, first of all, I owed him my job, number one, and number two, I owed him the deference that the office calls for. He is the president after all. But I really didn't need the job, and I told him early on, don't tweet about me. If you don't like what I'm doing, just have someone call me and tell me you don't like what I'm doing, and I'll go home. I mean, I don't need the drama. And he said, no, no, no, I would never do that. You know, I'm so grateful that you're willing to serve and take time from your business and, you know, told me everything I wanted to hear. And we sort of had that relationship.

And I wasn't bashful about telling him when I thought he was wrong. And again, I would always be deferential in the fact that, hey, this is your call. You're running the show. If you want to do that, go ahead. But here's what's going to happen. And I'm just telling you. If you don't want to hear it, sorry. So do you think that that worked?

Do you think he ultimately got incensed by that? or do you think he respected that in you? I think he respected it in me and in others who treated him similarly. I think what created my firing was that once the hearing was over, he put me in the same category as a lot of the other witnesses who I just said previously had an agenda to undermine him. I wasn't trying to do that. But he also knew that if I was going to go around Europe, I got a lot of media in Europe,

if I was going to be giving speeches, the number one thing that would be on every reporter's mind would have been the impeachment and the thing would never go away. So he wanted me gone in order to make the story go away because the story was attached to me. They tried to get me to resign. I said, I'm not resigning. I didn't do anything wrong. In fact, I had been receiving lotatory emails from Secretary Pompeo and others about what a great job I had been doing. So I said, if you want me gone, you're going to have to fire me. I'm not resigning. And that's what happened. Good for you. Well, you're one of a legion of people, including myself, that were fired by the Trump administration. So perhaps that's a medal of honor for you to wear.

A badge of honor, yeah. Listen, you're a very straight shooter guy. I mean, the book is great. You talk very candidly about your life. You talk very candidly about the ups and downs of the Trump administration, the trials and tribulations of being an ambassador. You also, despite the complexity of Donald Trump, you supported him, even after you got fired. By the way, for two years after I got fired, I did support President Trump.

It's when I said something that he didn't like on the Bill Maher show and somehow it ricocheted off of my wife, which I will never ever be able to understand. That's just something off about the man's personality. But you said that January 6th was the last straw for you. So tell us why. The way I explain it simply is I put the Trump presidency in two buckets. Bucket one started at the escalator in Trump Tower and went all the way to January 6th. It included U.C. It included the pussy tapes. It included Kazir Khan. Anything you want to mention that people had issue with. To me, I thought all of those were ballot box issues. Okay? You don't like it. Don't vote for the guy the next time. Once we got to January 6th, I thought that was a game changer. Because the one thing that I point out in the envoy is whether it's an autocracy that wants to be a democracy or whether it's a nascent democracy that's trying to, become a real democracy. They look to us for the way we turn the keys over in the United States. Nobody turns the keys over from one leader to another like we do. Partly it's ceremony, partly it's legal, but we do it better than anyone. And Trump really fucked that up. And as a result, I can't forgive that. And that to me was an impeachable offense. Okay. And, you know, obviously I had already swore off them months prior to that. But let me push you.

back for a second. Let me be his advocate here. But the election was a fraud. And so he was cheated out of the election and that these election machines were misstabulating the votes. And clearly, he's a way more popular guy than Sleepy Joe Biden. So he won the election. And this is the reason why he reacted that way. And what do you say to that? Well, I say two things. Let me just stop and let you know, I don't fucking believe any of that, but I just had to test you on this. So go ahead. I hear what you're saying. The question is, was there fraud in the election? Were there abnormalities? Were there bad machines? Of course there were. But the real question is, did it make a difference in the outcome? And the answer is no. The second thing is these issues on a state and

local level were heard by numerous, numerous judges. And surprisingly, a lot of the judges that heard a lot of these issues dealing with the minutia that you just described were Trump appointees. Now, don't you think everything being equal, if a Trump appointee, all things being equal, could rule in favor of the person who gave them their judgeship, would probably want to do so if they could legally justify it? Of course they would. Most of them were grateful. But unanimously, he got ruling after ruling after ruling around the country, including from Trump appointees and Bush appointees that no, there was a big nothing burger there when it came to changing the outcome of the election.

It's a very mature way to look at it because, you know, having been around politics a long period of time, there's no system of vote tabulation that's perfect. And so I think we both agree on that. But what you're looking for is the totality test, and he lost the totality of that election. It was very, very clear and very convincing. I wish he hadn't. Now with 2020 hindsight, looking at what Biden has done to our country, I wish he hadn't lost, but he did. We would probably disagree with that. I don't like President Biden's policies, but the January 6th is a tell that Mr. Trump is not in love with the democracy. He's not in love with the system that we have in place. But remember, I wish that he had not lost prior to January 6th.

No, I understand that, but he's a threat, he's a threat to the American democracy. So for me, I would, I'm a Republican ambassador. I would like to see a Ron DeSantis. a Mike Pompeo, a Nikki Haley, somebody different from President Biden, but I voted for President Biden because I saw the risk that Mr. Trump was to the American democracy. Prior to January 6th, if you asked me, is Mr. Trump a threat to the American democracy? I would have said yes. And I'm glad he didn't win because I do think he represents that threat. Those other people, Nikki Haley, men and women, Mike Pompeo, Ron DeSantis, I don't think they represent that. And I just think they're better messengers.

for the Republican Party and for the movement of those values and ideas. That's my opinion. Well, what I think we have to do is we have to convince some of the more diehard supporters of President Trump that the policies are what they should be focused on. And three of the candidates of the ostensible candidates, Pompeo, Haley, and Pence, basically move those policies forward. So I think, as you say, there are better people to take the Trump policies in 2024 and move them forward. Here's another thing I think we're missing. In 2024, if Trump were fortunate to actually be elected president again, I'm really afraid that he would not be able to govern for four years and that those policies would languish and suffer as a result. There's too much,

too much hate. I agree with you, Ambassador. Because he would be so tied up in investigations and litigation and so on. And if what we want is we want to turn the country back around, we need someone who can execute. I don't think Trump can execute at this point. All right, well, you're, you're a phenomenal guess. I just have a few more questions. And I agree, I agree with everything that you're saying there. At the end of the book, you say something that I want to address. You say that China, Russia, in Iran, they present the biggest threats to global peace and prosperity in that order. What does the U.S. and the EU need to do to limit these threats? Well, what we need to do, first of all, is to identify things vis-a-vis China that we have no daylight between us, because the one

thing that scares the shit out of China is when they see the U.S. and the EU acting in concert without any daylight on an issue, because they know together we're unstoppable from an economic standpoint, from a military standpoint, and frankly from a political standpoint. And they love to exploit daylight. We can't have daylight. Huawei was a classic example of that, where the Trump administration was trying to kill Huawei expansion, but the Europeans love the price, they love the deal, and their economics were taking priority over their long-term strategy. We have to focus on that with the EU. And that's why I think the ambassador, whoever the new ambassador is going to be under the next administration really needs to be plugged into the top four or five people at the White House

in order to move that agenda forward. Last question. We've just talked about Donald Trump. I think we're both in general agreement that I'll say it. You agree or disagree. We wouldn't support him to be the nominee in 2024 for the Republican Party. I agree. I agree. I would not support him. Okay. So what are your hopes and predictions then for 2024 for the Republicans? Well, I think we have an outstanding field of people. If you go to the ones that have already made their desires known, whether they're formal candidates or clearly signaling that, DeSantis, Yonkin, Haley, Pence, Pompeo, Tim Scott, there's some outstanding people out there. And all of whom,

I think, would return the country back to a more conservative, small government, lower taxes, strong military, border security, you can go down the list. Any one of those candidates would be great. I haven't yet made a decision personally. I'm getting to know each candidate that I don't happen to know well now. And over the next few months, I plan to get behind someone. But I'm really pleased with our field. I think the Democrats have a real deficit in terms of a field like we do. Okay. And obviously, I agree with you. So you are not dissuaded. You were fired by President Trump. You had to withstand the heat of that congressional testimony, but you're still locked in the cockpit for Republican Party fundraising.

You're still ready to go. With the right candidate, absolutely. No question about it. And I do this job. And I would do the job I had in a heartbeat, you know, if I were asked again. Because now my, you know, my subject matter knowledge and my learning curve, you know, I could hit the ground running. as could many of my colleagues in their respective jobs. Well, listen, you are terrific.

And I love your straightforwardness. You know, I mean, you grew up in Seattle, but you could be a New Yorker. Okay, you have a much better accent than me. But, Ambassador, I love your straightforwardness. I admire you a great deal. The title of the book is The Envoy, Mastering the Art of Diplomacy with Trump and the World. It is an excellent read. It's a fresh writing style that you have.

It's concise. I learned a lot from the book. book, and I'm looking forward to helping you promote it. And thank you very much for joining us on Open Book with Anthony Scaramucci. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Anthony. I really appreciate it. Well, Gordon Sullen's book, The Envoy, was an incredible read. It was a quick read. It was very insightful. Not only did we learn about Gordon's life, but we learn about some of the inner workings of the Trump White House. And we also learned the fact that Mr. Trump was frankly intimidating everybody and a result of which a lot of protocols, diplomatic protocols, will

legal protocols, all sorts of things were breached because people were fearful and intimidated by Donald Trump. What I admire about Ambassador Sondland is that he followed the book. And when it was time to testify at the Trump impeachment hearing, even though he took flack from inside the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself, he stood there and he took the heat. Unfortunately, he was fired for it. He joins the ranks of many, many people that were fired from the Trump administration, including yours truly. I was recently at the Army Navy game. Mark Esper, the former Secretary of Defense, came over to me. He shook my hand. He said, is this the Trump support firing network? Did I come to the right meeting? I said, yes, you did, but I was fired way earlier than you. So Gordon's in that boat.

It's a very long list of people. And I think it really speaks volumes about Mr. Trump's lack of executive management skills. He could not hold a team together. He couldn't organize himself or empower his team. And unfortunately, his narcissism was such that it was so self-absorbing. He needed to be the star of every show and he needed to be the person where the spotlight was on, on center stage at all times, that it really wreaked havoc diplomatically and it wreaked havoc throughout the executive branch. And I think we got that from Mr. Sondland's book. Last thing I would say is the EU-US relationship, which was probably afraid by Donald Trump has never been stronger. And it's hard to imagine this, but it is a direct result of the actions of Vladimir Putin. Who would think that it would be President Putin that would

unify and solidify not only the U.S. EU relationship, but all of NATO as a result of his aggressive criminal actions in Ukraine? What are you doing? What are you doing, Ma? I'm laying on the couch with a bank yard on and I want to two, please. All right. Are you ready for your podcast to interview again? Yeah, well, let's say. Ask me some questions. So let's see. All right. So when's the last time you voted Republican, Ma? You voted for Trump in 2016, right? That's it. Right. You voted for Biden in 2020?

Yeah, only because of you, though. Okay, because you didn't really like Biden? I don't like either one of them. I like my son to run. All right. Let's stop with that, Ma, because that's not going to happen. Let's go to your political philosophy. So why do you vote for who and why? Well, I'm not a true Republican or true Democrat. I vote for whoever I want. I feel as though if you're an American, you can do whatever you want.

All right. But why would you vote for somebody? So did you vote for Obama? No. Did you vote for George Bush? Yeah, I did. Okay, so why did you vote for George Bush? I thought his father was good.

Okay, so you like the father. So that's the reason why you voted for the son. So you voted for the father, too, right? Yeah, I voted for the father, and I voted for Reagan. and I thought Truman was one of the best presidents that we had. He was a Democrat. Why did you like Truman? I remember Nana liked Truman, your mother liked Truman.

Why did you like Truman? I thought that he was very good. I think there was a war going on or war coming to an end, and he knew what they had to do with it. I thought he was very good. In hindsight, he made very good judgment. A lot of his decisions weren't popular at the time, but he's become very popular with hindsight

because a lot of his decisions turned out to be the right thing. Right. And that's why I liked him. All right. Do you remember when we were supposed to go to the White House after the inaugural? Do you remember that? And then Ryan's preb has canceled that on me. Remember that?

Right. Right. Yes, I do. You were upset about that or what? No, because I'm not really a true politician. I am a politician because of you. When you were in the White House, I was very, very proud. But I think that you speak.

better than Trump, and I think he was intimidated because he's feeling our sister, because he couldn't deal with the way you talked. You blew him away. All right. So I have a friend of mine that was a European ambassador. He was the ambassador to the European Union. He also got, he also got fired by Trump. So why do you think Trump is so quick to fire people, Ma?

Why was he so quick to fire? Because he tries to act like he's powerful, but when he fires people, it makes him to me. He's not good because he just fires people. people because he's very impulsive and he wants the limelight at all times. You remember Mike, my old boss, Mike Facitelli? Yeah, of course. Yeah, so his 80-year-old mother went down to Mar-a-Lago with Mike and she said, Donald, why are you so insecure?

What do you think he... Well, he didn't answer. He got mad at her, but why... I think his background made him insecure. You know, his father, Fred, I think his name was, right? Right. What was his name? Yeah, no, his father's name was Fred, yeah.

And I think his father was kind of like thoroughly. He thought his shit didn't sink in his thoughts, give him away. And his brother was an alcoholic. And he had to go, I think he went through a lot, honestly. And he's drunk with power. And the way he handles himself makes him stupid for me. All right. Mom, it's always great getting your take on things.

I love you very much. We'll be back next week with more from Mama Scaramuch. I am Anthony Scaramucci, and that was Open Book. Thank you for listen. 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 one, 911, 909-2996. 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.