The Daily Beast Podcast - Elon Was Right: Trump is Compromised and Knows It

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Joanna Coles is joined by Anthony Scaramucci, the infamously short-lived Trump first term White House communications director and longtime Trump confidant-turned-critic. The Mooch brings a blisteringly informed look into what happens to those, like Elon Musk, who get too close to Donald Trump—and why Musk is the latest casualty. Scaramucci explains why Ro Khanna is the only Democrat with the foresight to try and win Musk back, how Potomac fever has infected Silicon Valley, and why Trump's orbit inevitably burns anyone drawn into it. He reveals how Trump really fired him and why Howard Lutnick may be the next domino to fall. Plus, Scaramucci argues that a Musk-backed centrist third party won't be able to win the presidency—it could break the political duopoly for good. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And today we're going to be talking to someone else who worked for Donald Trump in the White House. He only lasted 10 days. That's Anthony Scaramucci. He was on the podcast two weeks ago. He solicited thousands of comments from you. Some of you agreeing with him. Some of you saying, why on earth did we have him on? We have him on because he has great opinions. He's been up close to Donald Trump and he's seen what it's like. And he knows what it's like to be fired by Trump and also to leave the fulcrum of. global power and whether or not that does leave you with PTSD. So let's get into it. Well, thank you for bringing me back, Joanne. Well, I'm very pleased to have you back. And one of the things, I mean, many things you said on our last podcast with me, but in particular was the foolishness of the Democrats to let Elon Musk go. Is there a moment where the Democrats could now invite him back?

Well, certainly. There's certainly a moment. I mean, it would require good leadership. Roe Kana understands this. Roe has already suggested this. I'm sure he's going to try to reach out to Elon. Roe is the congressman. Yes, Roe is a congressman from Silicon Valley. He actually controls that district. And he's a very bright guy. He's been around a long time. And he's got maturity enough to see that having Elon on your side is better than not having him on your side. Right. I think the relationship with Trump is permanently damaged, but it's not, let me just explain to people, Trump world. You're in, you're out, you can get back in, but you're never back in in the same way. Okay. So, and again, there's a differentiation between elected leadership and non-elected leadership. And so Marco Rubio can say that he has like little stained Cheeto hands, but he can become the secretary of the state because he's an elected official.

I can get through the Senate. And so you can get back in. But in that way, but he's never going to be like this with Trump, meaning super close, because he did call him, you know, little hands. You see, I know Trump's personality. So somebody like Bannon is back in. He was sloppy Steve Bannon when he was jettisoned. And now he's back in on the periphery.

He's never fully back in. I know that Musk is telling people that he wants to de-escalate. He probably went a little bit too far with the Epstein. file declaration. Which he withdrew, right? He took that tweet down. Yes, he took the tweet down, but I think the damage has been done. And I think that if to remember, in Trump world, Elon got too close to Trump.

Okay, so there's an Icarus situation. If you get too close to Trump, Trump world will burn you. Okay, that frankly happened to me, you know. Right. Okay, so you've already upturned the conversation I was planning to have because I want to I'm sorry, but I want to explain to your viewers what this is because I have eight years of experience. I know. Okay. So let's go back to, I want to come back to the Elon of it all, but I do want to understand Trump world. You were at the center of it, admittedly for 11 days. When Trump said that, and there seems to be some truth to this, that when people leave the White House, they basically become hostile to him.

They miss the glamour. They miss being at the center of it all. Can you talk as. through what it was like when you left. Yeah. Well, I mean, well, okay, so I think it's important for your viewers and listeners. I was on the campaign for 11 months. I was one of 16 people on the executive transition team. So I helped build the cabinet over the 12 weeks after the president. It was not like I just showed up one day.

And Trump said, hey, how are you? Come in and be my comms director. And then I'm going to fire you after 11 days. You have a year of looking at this. Yeah. And Cushner said to me, Jared said to me that he likes hanging out with you because you remind him of Fred Trump. You don't give a shit.

You tell them exactly what you think. You made your money on your own so you're not tied to anything. And so he always called you to ask you your opinion because you're not going to kiss his ass. That didn't work in the White House, by the way, but it did work on the campaign. And so I think it's important for people to understand this. So I was in the orbit, okay, for a while. I got sucked in and I think I've explained this to people. I let my ego get the best mission.

could have never gone to work for him. And that's exactly what happened to Elon. You get sucked into the orbit. And then you start to have a love affair with power. You get Potomac fever. What are the symptoms of Potomac fever? Well, the first symptom of Potomac fever is you don't know you have it. By the way, because I've had Potomac fever.

Bees symptomatic. Right. Well, you don't know you have it. But here's what goes on in your head. I am coming from New York and Washington is broken. I've heard this from the media. They've chanted this to me for three decades. I am going to descend on to Washington and fix Washington.

I'm coming from Silicon Valley. I've made billions of dollars. I'm a genius. The people in Washington are stupid. I'm coming into Washington to fix Washington. And you get some level of arrogance and you get some level of lack of self-doubt. These are all symptoms of Potomac fever. either. Musk has it. Lutnik has it. Bacent has done better than those two, frankly, if we're just

calling balls and strikes. He has less of it. He is, he's more grounded. Well, and people are saying that Lutnik will be the next one out. Well, I'm surprised by Howard. I know Howard a long time. Howard, the way he talks to people, go, go watch his interviews, the high level of petulance, the high level of arrogance. And he's also very condescending to global officials. So, you know, you bring in a trade contingent and he's like barking at them like he's Donald Trump and he's over-exaggerating Trumpism. He's not helping the cause at all. So, so yeah, I mean, if he gets balanced, it wouldn't surprise me. I was also in a room recently where he took credit for hiring Elon actually. He said, I hired Elon Musk. I tell him what to do. And I thought,

oh, goodness, you shouldn't say those two lines out loud because A, the, the, president wants credit for hiring Elon Musk and B. Elon Musk doesn't want to have been hired by Howard Lucknick. Joanna, you forget your teachings. You know, you forget Euripides. You forget Sophocles and Escalis when you go to the White House. Right. And what would, what would they all say to you? They would say your pride and your ego is your nemesis. And once you get involved with this, you will go over your skis and you'll get burnt up. You know, with me, I cross Trump. by embarrassing. And people think I got fired because of the reporter and the interview.

Trump called me after that. He loved that. If you know Trump's personality, he loved the interview. He didn't have any problem with the interview. I mean, I'm a New Yorker. He's a New Yorker. A lot of people won't know what the interview was. It was an interview in the New Yorker that you gave to Ryan Lizzer, correct?

Yeah. I mean, I don't even like bringing up the guy's name because he's such a loser. You know, I was off the record. I told Remnick that. He says that I was on the record. It doesn't matter at this point. But I told that reporter, you know, okay, I'll never talk to you again. We had a, our families had a relationship that dated back to 1966.

His father was personal friends with my dad. Everyone forgets that part of the story. So I didn't think he was going to do that to me. But of course, he did that to me. But that didn't get me fired. Trump sort of liked that. He thought it was funny. And he thought I was, you know, and he didn't really like Bannon at that moment.

And so we were trying to push Bannon out. So he didn't really mind that. What got me in trouble with Trump is I said something to him in front of other people that he didn't know that caught him off guard. And he's an insecure guy. You can't do that with Trump. You can't tell him something that he does not know. And by the way, if you're going to tell him something he doesn't know, you've got to do it very privately. And you got to do it with stories as opposed to any type of tutoring because he'll flip out on you.

You know, he knows he's got intellectual deficits, but he likes to flex on people using his intimidation tactics. You see what I mean? Right. And so I made the mistake of telling him something you didn't know in front of a few people, a few cabin members. He looked at me and said, I was wrong. I said, well, I'm not wrong, you know. And then he checked and found out I was right. And then he got pissed at me and said that I embarrassed them.

And then, you know, can I tell you how I got fired? I don't really talk about this. but I knew I knew I got fired. I knew I got fired at 6 a.m. I got actually officially fired at 9.30, but Joanna, when I turned on the White House bat phone, you know, this like super encrypted phone to where you communicate with other people in the White House, not the signal program that Heck Seth is using, you know, I turned on the phone and I couldn't call out on the phone and I wasn't getting any incoming messages, you know, so they had already

cut my White House operations that already come. out my air supply at 6 a.m. in the morning. So, you know, it was a sinking feeling. You know, I knew I was getting fired. And, but, you know, look, when you get fired from a place like that, you take it like a man, you know, where Trump fired Elon, he 100% fired him. Elon got upset about it. He also got upset about the NASA administrator. He wanted that a NASA administrator. And so what happens is you got a big ego. You built these very successful companies. You're worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And he backed. And, you know, I'm not saying it's not normal, but you have to remember the cabinet didn't like him.

Susie Wiles hated him. Rubio didn't like him. They were fighting with him because he's not a Washington. He didn't understand the rules of Washington. And you have to understand how the game works. And by the way, by the way, Joanna, I didn't understand it. Okay. So I'm not going to BS you here on your own show. I didn't understand it. I understand it today eight years later, which is, And why I predicted Elon would get ejected and there would be a very rough outcome for both of these guys because of their egos. Do you think that Elon is seriously interested in disrupting politics or was he just after policies that would support his business? I mean, as you saw, he put out a tweet saying, is it time for a third party?

So I do. So I, you know, if you ask my podcast co-hosts on the rest of politics U.S. Caddy Kay, she does not. Okay. she's more seasoned than Washington. You know, Bloomberg tried to start a third party. You looked at it carefully and said, no, it's not viable. But Elon Musk is a different beast than Mayor Bloomberg.

And he's also a lot younger. And he's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. And he's got buddies of his in Silicon Valley that are still beholden to and tight with him. Could he put an endowment structure together, funded with several hundred, you know, million dollars, maybe even a few billion dollars and create a third of a row of bust third party. Yeah, I mean, these guys have done a very good job since the Ross Perrault election of 1992 to stripe in their duopoly. But could you get some radical centrists in there who flummox these guys, right? Because they've got these very tight margins, Republican and Democrats.

If you put 10 centrists into the Congress, into the Senate, you've now got a real problem on both sides. They have to come to the center. Same thing in the House of Representatives. So Elon is studying this. You could pull this off. I don't think you could win the presidency from a third party. And remember, Donald Trump created a third party. It's now known as the Republicans. Okay, it's not the Republican Party I grew up in.

He did an M&A transaction with his own party called MAGA. He decapitated the Republican Party, installed MAGA. He, you know, he's the Republican in name only, not me. I'm an old school Republican. And he's, he's, that's the MAGA party. So Trump knew he couldn't run as a third party guy. So he took over one of the two parties. What Elon could do is create this sort of buffer party.

And I think it could really upset the apple card of the current status quo that's going on in Washington. And again, I think Elon's capable of doing that. He's not going to do it today. People don't understand this, but I will suggest this to you. Trump is the decaying political asset. His decay is already started. It will ramp up and accelerate into the midterms. It will be a lame duck presidency after the midterms.

Well, and we also saw him falling up the steps of Air Force One yesterday, which felt like a metaphor for very much to your point, he is a decaying asset. Yeah, I mean, you just have to understand. He's not going to be able to run again. The system in America has blocked a lot of the things that do not. was trying to do. And remember, the system is not just the courts, Joanna. It's the people. So the people went and protested Tesla. The Tesla board members said, Elon, get back to work,

cut it that, knock it off. The system in this case for somebody like Donald Trump is the people. You know, like they're jumping the shark right now, which is an American expression that they have, they don't understand the plot. Yes, the Americans are for securing the border. The Americans are for limiting the illegal immigration. But what they're not for is a neighbor who got here illegally that's paying their taxes, that is a law-abiding citizen that's raised two children in their neighborhood. They don't want that person ripped out of the neighborhood by Tom Homan. They don't want that. Okay. And so the battle that's going on in L.A., they are mis-sizing that. Now, Trump's got great political instincts. He may pull back. Okay. He said yesterday,

that it's not an insurrection. He won't invoke the insurrection law because he's got, he's smarter than people will give him credit for. He's looking at the situation. He's like, wait a minute, I'm giving an advantage here to Gavin. I'm putting Gavin in an underdog position. I'm threatening to arrest Gavin says, come on, come in and arrest me. And I'm putting him in an underdog position. And California, all things start in California and they traveled the world.

McDonald's started in California. Okay, fads started in California. the beach boys, okay? And Reagan started, the movement of conservatism started in California. Trump could start something in California if he's not careful. And that is a centrist rebellion against MAGA policies. Anthony, hold that thought. We just need to go for some messages.

We love our sponsors. We're now back with Anthony Scaramucci. So I'm hearing two things from Friends in Silicon Valley that Elon Musk wants Trump impeached and he wants J.D. Vance in the role. If you were taking it one step further with what you've just said, Trump is actually trying to set things up for a Democratic win if he makes a martyr of Gavin Newsom, that he's setting Gavin up to be a leader to undermine the Republicans that would follow him. Yeah, he doesn't want to, trust me, he does not want to do that. He sees Gavin as a arch nebiscist. Gavin is the American Trudeau to somebody like Donald Trump. He

He does not want to set Gavin up for a victory. And I think he's going to be more cautious as he watches this thing unfold in California. I think Gavin has surprised him with his metal. Gavin's tougher than people think. And remember, again, repeating this, but it's worth repeating, it's the fourth largest economy in the world. It's a very complex state. The right-wing media gets a lot wrong about California.

Yes, there is homelessness. Yes, they may have made a mistake on bail reform. but California has a vibrancy that you've got to live in California to fully understand. And it's a very complex situation. And remember, we took California from Mexico. And don't ever forget that. And so there's a lot of Mexican influences in California. And there's a Mexican population in California that has to be delicately managed and governed.

And so people forget the complexity of all that. They just like the right-wing jingo is. that there's homelessness and it's burning and all this other nonsense. But it's also a state that's given us tech too. I mean, the power, the form of tech in Silicon Valley is world-changing. Well, Reagan deserves credit for that because remember, in the mid-60s, Reagan passed tax legislation in the state that favored the creation of venture capital and favored the creation of early-stage tech.

investments, it formed around Stanford and ultimately it became Silicon Valley. But to really understand the evolution of Silicon Valley was actually a right-leaning idea. Okay, this is the irony of the whole thing. There are good ideas on the right and there are good ideas on the left rather than going after each other. Why don't we stop with the left and the right and the right and focus on right or wrong? So Reagan had the right idea. He formed Silicon Valley. It led to a huge boon in California and the rest of the world. Well, one of the godfathers of Silicon Valley, too, came out this weekend. Mike Moritz and said that those who, and he obviously ran Sequoia for a long time, early investor in Google, a veteran of Silicon Valley wrote a piece in the FT saying that

those from the tech industry who'd gone to work for Donald Trump in the White House should now pull out. They should come back. So you've got David Sachs, you've got Strum Krishna, and you've got various people there trying trying to work on the future of AI. And he's saying, no, you should leave. it alone now, leave politics alone, come and do what you do best. What do you think of that? Well, they won't do that, but they should do that.

He's right, but they won't do that because they don't want to admit defeat, and they also don't want to, you know, they think that they're going to do some good things while they're there. I mean, that's always the intention. Speaking about those two guys, you probably noticed this. There's a very famous podcast called the All In podcast. They canceled their episode this week. So their parents have just gotten a divorce.

Okay, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, this has become a MAGA tech festival, this all-in podcast. But the two parents have gotten divorced. It's like Disney's parent trap. Okay, the kids don't know where to go. So they canceled the podcast. They can't, right. Yeah, so they, yeah, what are they going to do? They're going to want to the podcast and shit on Elon Musk or not doing that because they love him and they can't shit on Trump because they've gone full MAGA.

So what are they going to do? But you see, here's the thing. Okay, Musk knows the malevolence of Donald Trump. And whatever you think of Musk and whatever the criticisms are of Musk, I have a soft spot for him because, you know, he came into the world fairly damaged. He's pretty open about the abuse that he faced in South Africa, the bullying, his father, all the different things. He's manifested in his life a huge success and not just for himself, but he has done.

dented the world. He's met echo-friendly cars, one of the largest car producers now. He's shooting, he's shooting rockets into space, which are helping us in telecommunications, helping us the American military, other great things. And so you can shit all over Musk because he sided with Donald Trump, or you can look at him objectively. He sided with Donald Trump because he got kicked out of the Democratic Party. A UAW president called Joe Biden and said he can't come to the EV summit. And since we now know that it was weekend at Joe Biden's, some staffer made the decision to disinvite Elon Musk. That was a terrible political decision. So if you're the Democrats, if you want to be a leading Democrat, how should they bring him back under the House? He's already

out there saying he wants to start a third party. That could be disruptive in itself, even if he has said, first off, if I were a Republican, I try to get the neutral with him and Trump. He's already taken down his tweets. He doesn't want to start a fight with the president. And remember when Elon's brain kicks in, his rational brain, he'll be like, this is a decaying political asset. I got to wait this guy out. He sent a tell on Twitter last week or on X. He said, I'm going to be around the next 40. This guy's cooked after three and a half years. But he's actually cooked after one and a half years, Joanna. He's not cooked after three and a half. And so all Elon wants to do is wait him out. there'll be more normal Republicans that he can he can join alliances with if he wants the smarter

Democrats will bring them back in but the big problem with the Democrats they want to cancel everybody right right I helped the vice president on debate prep and she had a very successful debate there was a group of moderate Democrats that wanted me on the campaign plane with her and there were hard left Democrats on the campaign that said NFW he wants to work for Donald Trump he is to be canceled he's not to be seen or heard from again. And so when they do that, they make it harder for themselves to win. They should be putting down their petty disagreements with people, and they should put up a fight for America and a fight for the democracy and a fight against authoritarianism.

And if they did that, they would call Elon and say, let's get a cup of coffee. What did you learn? And we screwed up with the EV summit and we screwed up with other things with you. But you're naturally predisposed towards us. How can we get you back in the camp? See, Trump knows this, which is why he's threatening Elon. He's saying there will be consequences if you fund Democrats. You see, he's trying to scare Elon.

Well, this is the biggest problem I have with Trump. That's an authoritarian thing to say in a free country. Okay. In a free country, you can choose how you want to spend your money politically. If Trump as a political leader is threatening a private citizen, that's the creeping of authoritarianism, and it has to be rejected. And so this would be something I would be saying to Elon. I would say, don't listen to that nonsense.

The system's going to hold. Trump's threats are idle. They're immature. Just the bellicasse of rhetoric as he fears you. But come back into the fold. We need you in our party. I know he's now taken it down, but Elon made a big deal of throwing down the Epstein, what he called bomb and saying that Trump is.

in the Epstein files, and that's why they haven't been released. Do you have any information on what there is supposed to be around Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein? I don't. I think, I mean, listen, I can't stand Donald Trump. I think it's pretty obvious. I think he's a malevolent guy. I think he's hurt our country. I think he's got great political instincts, but he's used them for a force for bad and a force for evil, not for good. But I don't, I don't. I don't. I don't. I think if that stuff was out, they're just just me saying this. I don't have any sources. But my gut tells me if that stuff was out there, the Democrats would have played that in 2020. They would have played that in 2024. I mean, they controlled the FBI, didn't they?

You know, in the last administration, Merrick Garland could have found that. Steve Bannon, the first time he met Jeffrey Epstein, which was, I think, in 2017, apparently said to him, you were the only person I was afraid of in the whole campaign. And Jeffrey Epstein has felt extraordinary, I mean, you know, head of MIT went down, Bill Gates has been fair. I mean, his wife said that his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein was one of the reason she wanted a divorce. The Epstein taint has lingered on many people.

I just wondered if the White House had a sort of, when you were there, whether or not there was a sort of general feeling at the White House that this was not an issue for Donald Trump. Joanna, I don't know the answer, so I want to be very clear on that. But my gut tells me I don't think it is an issue. Right. Was he at parties with him? Did he do certain things with him?

There's film of that, obviously. Did he go over the line with Jeff Epstein and do something super malevolent and super nefarious? I don't believe that's the case because I think that would have come out. But again, I don't know. Okay. But the flip side is, while I'm saying that to you, I believe there is compromise on Donald Trump. I don't know what it is.

We all used to say, okay, what is it? What is the hold that Vladimir Putin has on this guy? Because, again, when the window's open and you hear clippity clop, it is a horse. It's not a zebra. Don't overthink the goddamn thing, okay? And so this guy is cowtowing to Putin. Putin has the GDP of Italy. He's in a failed state.

He's in a state that has a failing military. industrial complex. We all know this if we read intelligence briefings. We all know this if we observe the battlefield. He's going up against a smaller state that has better technology because it's been funded by the Europeans and the Americans and he can't defeat the smaller state because of this. And he's he's in a train wreck situation at home and yet he owns the president of the United States. How does he own the president of the United States? You tell me he has to have something on him, okay, that we don't understand. People could be mad at me and say, oh, that would have came out already.

No, it wouldn't. You know, if they tracked Trump, they tracked Trump in the 80s and 90s like the KGB did, and they've got real compromise on him, not a pee-p-tap, or where they have something related to something that would be too much for Trump, even Trump himself to deal with, he would kowtow to Putin. There's no other explanation. Somebody tells, oh, he loves authoritarian and all this. This is bullshit.

It's bullshit. Trump doesn't love authoritarian. He loves himself. Okay? And he would not be coutowing to Putin sitting in the biggest economy with the biggest military. Wouldn't be. He would be shoving Putin, but he doesn't shove Putin because they got something on him. That's my honest opinion.

But it's not the Epstein stuff. It's absolutely, okay, it's absolutely fascinating. Well, Elon has taken the tweet down now. So final question, and I love how you talk about the White House and how you got seduced by it and how this is about sort of one's ego getting in the way. Elon's father came out and said he's now got PTSD from working at the White House. Is that something you felt you had? I know you were there for a length of time, but it's a very intense period of time. It's a great question.

And if I had it, I'm not saying I didn't have it, but I don't have it now. But if I did have it, you know, I would probably say I didn't have it. Let me tell you why, because I had crisis management people telling me to go away, moved to Italy for five years, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, I'm not fucking doing that. I went right on the Colbert show. I think Colbert called me Tony Soprano on the Potomac or some shit. I didn't give a shit.

And then I went right on the Bill Maher show. I went to Saturday Live when they were parroting me. They called me human cocaine. My kids saw it was fucking great, even though I've never. That's quite a good description. Well, yeah, but I've never snorted a lot of cocaine, but I was like human cocaine. Bill Hayter was playing me. So in other words, like, if I had PTSD, I don't think I would have been able to do all that.

Right. But I went right back into the fray. I stayed, well, people don't remember this. I stayed loyal to the president for two years after my firing. I didn't want to be the baby that got fired and then turned on, Trump, even though I thought Trump was doing some maddening things, I thought it would be more respectful to lay low. It was when he started saying stuff that was, to me, I mean, look, everybody's got a limit

with Trump. He moves the goalposts on you to the point where you say, I'm done. Okay. And so he started saying that these women that are in the squad, who I don't agree with ideologically, should go back to the countries they originally came from. These are four Congresswomen. Yeah, exactly. Three are African-American.

One's Hispanic-American. Three of them are born in the U.S., one naturalized from Africa. They should go back to the countries they originally came from. This is a form of racism as old as the country, if not older. It's nativism. They told my Italian-American grandmother in the 1920s to go back to the country. She originally came from. It broke her heart.

She sent two of her sons to war, one of which ended up on Normandy Beach on the 6th of June and 44. And my grandmother loved this country. My grandmother saw this country, even though she started here as a maid turning beds for people, she saw this country as an opportunity for her grandchildren, people like me, and she had an undying, unconditional love affair for the country. Don't tell her to go back to where she originally came from. So that triggered me. I said on the Bill Marsh show, that's a form of racism. Trump tweeted at me some nonsense. Joanna, I'm a New Yorker. I'm a New Yorker. Do I look like Ted Cruz to you? Let's establish on your podcast.

I'm not fucking Ted Cruz. Once he tweeted, I mean, I think I said he was like the fattest president since William Howard Taft because I know he hates being so fat. And then the fight started, you know? I mean, by the way, these people work for us in this country. Right. Well, we've forgotten that. We've forgotten that. Well, I'd share your grandmother's passion in America.

I also became nationalized. I think it's a great country. But the question is, what do we do in the aftermath? How do we handle the populism and the culture? country. How do we reconnect the establishment to the people I grew up with where the people I grew up with can trust them again? You know, my father trusted, he may not have voted for Johnson or Kennedy, but he trusted that they were trying to do the right thing. Right. You see, and even Nixon with all of his flaws, when they told him he had to step down, he, he abided to the Constitution.

You know, I mean, there's a different group of people today. And Trump has, and Trump has, This is like if Uie Long and Charles Lindberg had a baby and they named the baby Donald Trump and then they let Roy Cohn raise the baby. That's the shit we're dealing with. Raised by wolves. Right, right. That's the shit that we're dealing with today. All right. Well, Anthony, I want you to come back on the podcast in a couple of weeks and let's speculate about what will happen.

I'm happy to do that with you. But I see the Musk thing with Trump deescalating. Trump didn't go hard at him on Twitter or truth social. He did say that he thinks he's crazy and he does say that he's not thinking about him. He did send in the National Guard to change the story in California. I mean, he really moved the narrative on from Elon. That's Trump. He's a reality television producer.

So that story, that thread is already over. Trump did say something that I want to react to if you don't mind before we leave. Yeah, go ahead. Because he had me laughing the other. I was listening to him on the radio here in New York. He said, I don't know what it is. You know, people, they leave and they go crazy on me. You know, did you ever think it was you? I mean, he doesn't think it's him. Okay, this is the funny thing about him. And I'm laughing about this because I didn't actually go crazy on him until two years later. Musk went crazy on him ASAP. And I would just say this to people thinking, Trump's trying to say it's the intoxication of being in the power and being in the office and things like that. But it's not that. It's Trump's narcissism. Okay. So what Trump does see, have you ever been in a relationship with a narcissist?

They love bombed the shit out of you. You think you are the guy or the girl and you think that this is undying, unconditional love. And then they pulled the plug like a coal-hearted bastard like you never existed before. See, that's Trump's M.O. And you either see it and you laugh about it or you don't. You know, the day I got fired, I got fired at 2 p.m. At 4 p.m., Trump put out a tweet and said, this was a great day at the White House. House. Okay. I fucking laughed. I said, that is Donald Trump. Okay, you know, you could play golf

with Donald Trump for 40 years. You have a heart attack at the halfway house. He's like, who the hell was that Joanna person? And who's finishing the round with me? Like, you know, that's Donald Trump. You have to understand that about Trump. Okay. And that would also include family members, by the way. Everybody is an object in his field of vision. They're not people with personalities that deserve empathy. And I think the sooner you understand that, and that would be my message, the Musk, if you're bummed out about what happened, forget it, move on, go back and build rockets. Great.

Anthony, always good to have you on you. You're one of the few people that's managed to stay stable after working closely with Donald Trump, and I commend you for a while. I'm going to tell my wife, do you think I'm stable, Joanna, okay? I'm going to play, that's going to be my ringtone. When my phone goes off is going to say you've managed to stay stable. All right. Anthony, we will see you soon. Thank you very much. Good to be with you.

All right. Andrew, thank you. Anthony really is one of those few people who's been fired by Trump, attacked by Trump, and yet still has his tongue and his reputation intact. I love hearing from him. And also, it's just valuable to know what it's like to work with Donald Trump and to understand the degree of loyalty and flattery and obsequiousness that he demands. Thank you for watching if you have been. Don't forget to go to The Daily Beast to subscribe so you get constant updates from us on

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