The Daily Beast Podcast - This Is What Greedy Trump's Really Up To With Oil

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

Anthony Scaramucci joins Joanna Coles for a frank conversation about what Donald Trump is really doing in Venezuela—and why the chaos is the point. Scaramucci argues that the Venezuela move is driven less by democracy or security than by oil, money, and self-enrichment, and is shaped by conspiracy thinking and political pressure. He also breaks down Trump’s appetite for cruelty and spectacle, the warning signs in ICE’s escalating violence, the quiet sidelining of allies like Marco Rubio and JD Vance, and why Republicans who know better still fall in line. The takeaway: Trump isn’t unraveling—he’s focused, transactional, and increasingly willing to burn institutions to stay powerful. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Vance probably thinks that if he has distance from Trump, that's good for him because if it doesn't work, you can say, well, I had distance from him. And of course, if it works, he can tag himself part of the administration. But, I mean, that's not going to work for Vance because the only thing you can see dangling from Trump's ass are Vance's ankles. He's a colonoscopy. He's so far up there. He's a colonoscope of Trump's ass. And he's in there. And he's got to own everything that Trump does. And so his political future is over. I'm Joanna Coles. This is the Daily Beast podcast. And there is so much to unpack ICE, Venezuela, Trump's physical and mental health. J.D. Vance, Marco Rubio, who's a great Kremlinologist. So sit down and figure this out with, you know who? Anthony Scaramucci. And guess where he is? He's here right now in the studio to unpack what has been a crazy start to 2026. Anthony Scaramucci, happy new year. Is it a happy year? Well, I was just going to say. I mean, it's a happy new year for me, but I mean, for some people, it's sort of like a mixed new year so far. We've had a year transpire of history in eight days.

Right, right, right, right. So can we begin with, I mean, where do we begin? There's so much to talk about. We're recording this on, I don't even know what day it is. It's the 8th of January. Okay, 8th of January, Thursday. So five Republicans have just joined with the Democratic. Democrats in the Senate to say they don't want to authorize U.S. troops in Venezuela. But let's

step back what the hell is going on in Venezuela. What is this all about? Well, I think before we got on the air, I think you pointed out correctly, it's probably just a show vote, if you will. They've got constituents that they're probably trying to please, and they know it's ineffectual, and I'm sure the president will probably ignore that because it doesn't have any impact on anything. Right. But what's Venezuela about? Why is he doing this? I mean, so if you listen to my podcast, I said, six weeks ago that they were going to launch a strike against Venezuela, they were going to bring them a lot of narco

terrorism, and then they were going to snatch Maduro. And people said, why are you saying that? I said, because that is their plan, and that is their plan because they're being influenced by Venezuelan expats who want to return to their country. And these are the expats living in Florida?

Some are in Florida. Some of them are other parts of the America, some are in Europe. But you had a very vibrant, very flourishing economic prosperity prior to the Chavez Maduro regime. So they've had 30 years now of this failed socialist, communist, communist experiment. They've become a satellite rogue state. They are narco-terrorists. I think if you had Obama, Biden, you want to pick the group of people that are going to present you with the facts. There's a tremendous amount of drug trafficking and terrorism

and terrorist training that comes out of Venezuela. And so you would say to yourself, should we do something there or not? I think past presidents have said we don't want to do anything there because of the rules-based society and sovereign integrity and things like that, but we're going to sanction them and players that don't act in the interests of the United States. We're going to use economic sanctions, use the U.S. dollar against them. We're not going to have a military incursion or military invasion. So this is sort of a step.

into that Noriega realm where they decided to arrest him and bring charges against them. They can look you straight in the face and say it's not a regime change because Delsey Rodriguez is replacing him. She's in the current regime. But they are putting a tremendous amount of U.S. muscle, U.S. big stick influence in the region. And so you could say if you're asking me, was it the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do, I'm a realist, but I will tell you that it was the wrong thing to do. If I were in the position to make that decision, I would have never sanctioned that. I don't think a Harris, a Biden, a George W. Bush would have sanctioned that. Of course, all of those people had the opportunity to do that. But I think Trump looks at this and sees

this, there's a possible self-enrichment angle for him. I think that's pretty obvious. I think the second thing that he sees where somebody went to him because he's a great conspiratorialist. I said, okay, listen, you've got 46. billion or so barrels of known reserves. They've got 300 plus. You take them. Canada, us, we're roughly 50% of the known reserves. You can put a herd on potentially people in the Soviet Union, now known as Russia, but it still acts like the Soviet Union. You could put another big herd on people in the Middle East. You might be able to change our geo-strategic footprint because a lot of it's related to oil and petro dollars. That's what they said to him, right?

It's been selling the oil in Rennb, and if you're a petro-dollar enthusiast like Trump is, you don't want that to happen either. So essentially we're reducing our reliance on foreign actors and helping ourselves to Venezuela's oil coffers. It's imperialism is what it is. Yeah, that's what he's doing. And how does this play with the Maga base? Well, again, he's lost some people. I think his poll numbers are down because of ICE. We can talk about that as well.

Yeah, well, we must talk about that. lost some people, but he's got 25% of the people come hell or high water. He was right in 2016. 10 years ago, he said, I can shoot people on Fifth Avenue, no problem. And they'll stay with me. I've never really understood that thing about I can shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. Because you don't understand the culture war then. So the culture war is the whites ran the country.

We can have a pluralistic democracy as long as the whites are running the country. Wait a minute. the population of brown and black people are, it's exploding. Right. And because of a pluralistic democracy, black and brown people may run the country. Well, we don't want that. So we want the last great white hope, Donald Trump, to run the country. We want to watch Fox News being interrupted by like catheters and like walkers on the advertising.

But in between the catheter and Walker advertising, we're going to watch people talk about white supremacy and all types of creativity. Z theology, and Trump is the Napoleon of that cultural war. He understands that better than anybody. And so they don't care. They'll stay with him because he said, no, forever wars. He's now prosecuting forever wars, no problem. They said, you know, we want the Epstein files. There's a lot of pedophilia out there, and there's pizza rings and all this other nonsense. I said, okay, we're going to give that all to you. Now, we're not going to give it to you. Elon Musk told you why, because he's in the file. And they said, okay, all right, no problem.

But he did lose some people. He went from 36 to 25, okay, with the core, core base. And, you know, he only won the last election because they, you know, remember, the Democrats lost the election. Yeah, the Democrats imploded. So did you watch the press conference where he talked about Venezuela? I did. Okay.

Was that the Trump you recognized and knew? Do you think he, there's been so much conversation about his health and his mental health and his mental state. Is he as bright as he was during the first term? Well, he's not as bad as the people that hate him want to suggest. He doesn't have dementia. He's not exhibiting that to me. He's still pretty sharp. He looks very, very tired.

He's walking with a very weird limp, which they have an, fully explained. He tried to straighten it out on New Year's Eve when the cameras came on him. And he's manifesting signs of aging that an 80-year-old person would. It's interesting about him because of his detachment, he doesn't take on the normal stresses of that job. He doesn't, he treats people like objects. He's a full-on narcissist, so everybody's just an object in his field of vision. So he doesn't get as stressed as, say, other politicians who age dramatically in that job. but he is aging, but I think people are making a mistake if they're like, oh, he's ready to kick the bucket, he's got one foot on a banana peel

and the other one in the coffin. I don't see it. I mean, you know, I just don't see that. Did you notice him standing, and his eyes appeared to be closed, when he was standing behind Marco Rubio here. I mean, someone pointed out he always looks as if he's asleep when Marco Rubio is speaking. And in fact, I think he actually fell asleep during one of the cabinet meetings when Marco Rubio was speaking.

He's not sleeping at night. You know, he's up at night calling people. He's still doing that. You know, I was actually part of that rotissary. You know, he starts his phone calls at 11 o'clock at night. They probably end between 1 and 1.30. And what was it like when he called you? How long would he talk for?

Well, remember, with Trump, he talks at you. He doesn't talk with you. Right. Okay. The only way you can get him to listen to you, and I think everyone's figured this out, is what is in his best interest. So you have to say, you know, Joanna, move that cup. It's in your best interest.

And if he thinks it is, he'll move the cup. You know, it's that sort of thing. He, other than that, it's just a, you know, stream of consciousness rant. And he goes through a list of people that he looks for reaffirmation for. You know, Sean Haddon's on the list, but Sents on the list. Lutnik is on the list now. Rubio goes on and off the list. I don't think Vance is really on the list.

Oh, that's interesting. Rubio, let's unpack that. So Rubio is on and off the list. What does that mean? He doesn't 100% trust Rubio. Remember, he had a big fight with Rubio. Rubio was a little Marco. Trump had orange small hands and that whole fight that took place.

He doesn't 100% trust Rubio. You know, Susie Wiles really pushed Rubio on him. Because she used to work for him. Yeah, exactly. And remember, he went 99 to 0 in his confirmation, you know, the confirmation vote last year. Right, right. Because he seemed normal. Right?

You seem normal. He's not normal. You know, he has what they all get. They get that Potomac fever. They get that aphrodisiac of power. And then they start moving in the weather vane direction that Trump's wind is pointing in. And they've got to be careful because Trump can blow in another direction. And then they have to go run in that direction.

I mean, the most despicable of all is Lindsey Graham. I mean, I've never seen anything like it, the poor guy. I mean, he doesn't know which way to go depending on the breeze behind Trump, you know, the poor guy. Right. Well, and even when he's tooting to Trump, he gets slapped down. He doesn't trust Rubio because Vance is his successor in a Shakespearean way he hates Vance and will put Vance in the wood chipper. And so Vance was conspicuously absent from the Maduro thing and they blamed it on all this other nonsense. But the truth of the matter is he would prefer Vance to be out of the picture because he wants spotlight on him. So it was very noticeable that J.D. Vance wasn't in that press conference talking about Venezuela.

Was that deliberate performance from Trump to not have him there? Combination. Right. Combination. So it's Trump doesn't want him there. Vance was the most outspoken non-interventionalist. Okay. Five years ago, he was where Ram Paul was.

Okay, we're going to revise history. That's fine. But seven years ago, Trump was Hitler. Five years ago, I'm an anti-interventionist. I'm a former military veteran, no more forever worse. Right. Now we're having forever wars. You know, Vance probably thinks that if he has distance from Trump, that's good for him because if it doesn't work, he can say, well, I had distance from him.

And, of course, if it works, he can tag himself part of the administration. But, I mean, that's not going to work for Vance because the only thing you can see dangling from Trump's ass are Vance's ankles. He's a colonoscopy here so far up there. He is in Trump's. He is a colonoscope of Trump's ass. And he's in there and he's got to own everything that Trump does. And so his political future is over. Rubio's future is over.

And Rubio did something in the last two weeks that has completely finished him in Washington. So let's talk about what he did. He went to the Congress and he went in the private cloak room where they're supposed to be chums and in the same club. And he lied to everybody. And you can't do that in Washington. You can think you can do that in Washington. but I can tell you as a person that has a PhD in Washington scumbaggery, 11-day Ph.D. That you actually can't do that.

Because there are certain things. There's certain code of conduct among pirates. We're all on the pirate ship together. Tell me what's really going on. And Ruby will lie to them. You know that and you've reported that here at The Daily Beast. I know that because I talk to a lot of these people. And you can't do that.

And so Rubio and Vance, despite their perception of power right now, have been dramatically weakened by all this. Let's just talk about the ice killing in Minnesota. And this, I mean, the Supreme Court's pushed back on him being able to deploy the National Guard in various places. What is his obsession with militarized groups and police forces? Pain. Cruelty. Those are the things that he wants. He gets off on that. Stephen Miller gets off on that. And so I just, I'll just say this, I'm not

here to debate whether this was a cold-blooded murderer or an act of self-defense by an ICE office. I'm not here to debate that. What I am here to say, I think there should be a universality of opinion on this, that this was an unspeakably tragic event, that a 37-year-old woman lost her life as a result of what happened. But, you know, the fish stinks from the head down, it's an old Italian expression. If you're an evil doer at the top and you're telling your henchmen, get rough with these people and let's train them for six weeks rather than six months, and let's deploy them and let's knock heads and do all the stuff they're telling. You know, I have, remember, I'm a law school graduate. I have buddies of mine that are immigration lawyers

for three decades, and they tell me that privately homeland security people tell them, hey, man, I'm sorry about this, but I've been told from the top of I don't get rough and I don't start these deportations and I don't rough up a few people. I could get demoted and potentially lose my pension. Look what they did to Senator Kelly this past week. So these are horrific human beings. They're horrific human beings. And the fish stinks from the head down. You got this, you know, Dickweed, Bill Pulte calling Senator Warren Pocahontas on TV today.

I was watching that on CNBC and I'm like, this little dickweed, this little nepo baby dickweed is calling a senator from Massachusetts Pocahontas. That's from Trump. The fish thinks from the head down. So the little minions are going to want to do what the big bad boy father wants them to do. And so this is a tross. This is a human tragedy and it's an atrocity. And I'm going to tell you something, Joanna, it's going to get worse.

It's not going to get better. It's going to be worse. There was no political leader that stood up yesterday and said, wow, this is an unspeakable tragedy. We're going to launch an investigation and to make sure our protocols. I do believe it was self-defense, but we're going to launch protocols to make sure this never happens again. First of all, it's in the instruction manual. Don't shoot at a moving car. Okay.

And if you look at the woman, she was wobbling and nervous. She turned towards him and then turned away from him, and he stole fired the gun in her face a couple of times. So listen, it's an unspeakable tragedy, but these people want this. Anthony, hold on. We just have to take a pause for some abs. And I'm back with Anthony Scaramucci. So let's have a happy recap, okay, or an unhappy one, right? We took out a Venezuelan dictator.

We could debate that. We're speaking with Belakasia rhetoric about potential war with Cuba, Denmark and Greenland. We've got Belakasia rhetoric now going towards Iran. We put up a website for massive disinformation related to January 6th, and we're shooting people in towns in the United States, and we've got a domestic junta going around the United States despite the recriminations from the court. Now, you Brits don't like to use the fascist word, and I get all that.

We really don't like to use it. Yeah, you don't like to use it. But I just want to think about the level of disinformation, the nonsense about imperial conquest, and using military or other things to take Greenland and we deserve to have Greenland and all this like puny, insecure nonsense that these idiots are spewing. Okay. And I want you to think about the disinformation, the disinformation in the lies. Okay. And they started lying about the ice situation yesterday, lying now about January 6th, which took place five years ago. And the lying when you can see the videos. I mean, the thing I find so extraordinary is we are all seeing these videos.

But Trump gets that, don't watch your lying eyes. Trump gets that better. than anybody. Don't watch your lying eyes. What are the Republicans that you know saying in private that we don't get to hear? How are they reacting to all this? And how are they reacting to Trump and his temper and his quixotic nature, which is getting more exaggerated? The Republicans that show up in my office looking for donations all say generally the same thing. I've got to be with Trump because he's got the power. He's only going to be there for a couple of more years. I'm a long-term senator, a long-term congressman or congressional leader, and I will go against him if I really have to, like if he tries to stop an election or he declares martial law in the civilization,

you're going to want me, Anthony, to be here so that I can then use the Article I powers that are endowed to the Congress from the Constitution. I'm not ready to deploy that now because these are minor things, but when the real fight starts, you're going to want a person like me who's more moderate in my position. Could you please write me the $7,000 check? And do you say yes? Yeah, I do. I have these, like, grow some balls, like novelty things that I hand out. Right. You put them in water and they grow to six times larger. And I hand them to all the politicians. And I say, you know, you probably should grow some balls, but here's the money. Right. Because I'm a realist. Okay. And I recognize.

that some of these people probably will step up. Ram Paul has done that. Now, you could dislike Rand Paul and you could say he was a cipher of Donald Trump's for a period of time, but he's not anymore. No, he seems clearly independent. He has basically spoken out against a big, beautiful spill, too much deficit spending. He's against the interventionism. He didn't want the attack in Iran. He certainly doesn't want the attack on Venezuela. He said he would use every fiber of his body and any power that he had to stop a potential invasion of Greenland. It's unthinkable that we're talking about it, but that's Donald Trump's world, and so now we're talking about it.

You know, if you said to me in 2025, at the beginning of 2025, are things going to get ridiculous and things are going to go very awry during the Trump administration? I would say, yes. You said to me that the Danes are going to be preparing for a U.S. invasion of their territory. Right. I said, okay, there's probably a bridge too far, but they are preparing for an invasion, Okay, and the Canadians from a military perspective are now thinking about what would happen if the U.S. entered their country to make it the 51st state and how they would defend themselves. And we're now booing each other's, if you go to a hockey game or you go to a playoff game, you know, they're booing each other's anthems now.

This is all because of the monage of Donald Trump. This is all because of his craziness. Very repressed guy, very angry guy. and he's taken it out on the rest of us. So nevertheless, why are, why is Congress so weak in the face of him? Why aren't they able to assert themselves better? Why are they so slavish to him? Well, it's a really good question, but it requires historical context.

So they set up procedures to make themselves slavish and weak. They started doing that after the Vietnam War. And so when they had a vote on the Vietnam War and they voted yes on the war, they all got voted out. Sort of like, well, we can't do that anymore. Let's cede more of these powers to the president. We'll give him emergency powers. We'll give him military authorization on police actions, on things like that. And so this way we won't get caught in a vote.

And if we get caught in a vote, we could lose our seat. And we don't want to do that. So the less power we have to make consequential decisions, that could knock us out of office, we're not going to make those decisions. Let's give those decisions to the president. And that created what I would describe and what Arthur Sessionser wrote about, the imperial presidency. And so most presidents have used those powers with some level of discretion. Some would argue Bush didn't, but we can have that debate, but it's 20 years later, so let's not. Well, then there's more urgent things to worry about.

Right. And Trump has basically said, I got this now. I'm going to flex on these people. and I'm going to use the historical president that they set up. I'm going to use the policies and the procedures that they set up, and they've been outmaneuvered by him. You know, he's willing to cross the line. So here's a line that no president crosses. Here are the reasons why no president crossed that line. Okay, let me come 10 feet over that line.

He's willing to cross lines as it relates to what's going on with ICE, the National Guard, what's going on with Greenland, what's going on with our allies, what's going on with the tariffs. I mean, we're sitting here right now. The Supreme Court is going to render a decision on the tariffs. Now, I think they're going to rule against Trump. And I think Trump thinks they're going to rule against him because he's been pulling back some of the tariffs as well.

But that's what he's doing. Well, he's also been raising his rhetoric against the Supreme Court, too. He's raising his rhetoric against the Supreme Court, but he delayed the tariffs on the furniture and the upholstery because he knows if it's not going to go through, he doesn't want to be hassled with the rebates. And the other thing, you know, maybe the court will split the baby and allow the government to keep the current revenues that came in. but tell him he has to go to the Congress for additional taxation authority. I don't know. We'll see what happens, but I predict he loses that case.

But that's what he does. So tell me a rule and I will break that rule. That's how Trump thinks. You know, by the way, it's about me. You know, enough of you talking about me. Let's get the conversation back on me. And so what am I going to do to self-enrich myself? What am I going to do to capture your imagination and your,

attention. And what am I going to do to inflict some level of pain on you and some angst? Because I get a kick out of that. I enjoy that. My cohort and lackey, Steve Miller, he totally enjoys that. And so we're going to do that together and we're going to laugh at you while you're sitting there stewing over the stuff that we're doing. So where does actual opposition come from, do you think? I mean, how does this play out? Because his behavior is getting more and more erratic. It seemed very clear when he was standing on the stage at the Venezuela press conference. And certainly Michael Wolfe said this is what he heard from people in the White House. He just made this stuff up as he's going along.

When people said, well, who's going to run Venezuela? He was like, well, he is. He is pointing at Marco Rubio and then Hexarth. And then later he said, I'm in charge, I'm in charge. Where does this, is there an end to it? Well, let's step back. So the plan, because there are people inside the State Department and inside the Venagon, I do have a plan. The plan is to have Delci Rodriguez run the country for a 24 to 30 month

period of time, this interregnum period of time, see if they can get some foreign investment, some relaxation of the sanctions, bring expats back into the country that they like and trust, and then see if they can set up some type of democratic government that goes back to some working form of capitalism for the Venezuelan people. That's the plan. Okay, so whatever Trump is saying those are the people working under Trump, that's the plan. But you're saying, but you're- And who put that plan together? Was that a Rubio plan? I think people working for Rubio, and I think some of the Venezuelan expats that are

are keen to return to the country and love their country and generally by and large, very good people. Some of these people I've worked with in prior Republican administrations. And so, listen, I wouldn't have done it. They've done it. All I can say on your program is I pray for the Venezuelan people. that it improves their living standards. They're very rich country.

If they can get the right system in place and the right level of predictable legal activity, et cetera, they can have a very nice prosperous country. I hope that for them. But back on Trump, I think it's very important to understand that he doesn't care. He wants to make $20 billion. He's clipping $5 billion this past year. He wants to make another $15. He tells people that all time.

He doesn't care. He tells people all the time. Who's he telling? Anthony, hold on, we're going to take a quick break for some messages from our sponsors. And Anthony Scaramucci and I are back discussing what else, Donald Trump, and it's Donald Trump's world. Because he hasn't told the American public that. Oh, he tells his buddies. He tells his buddies that he's, you know, hey, you know, this is peanuts compared to what Elon Musk has.

It's peanuts compared to what Jeff Bezos. Jensen Wang has. I'm going to, what's the big deal? You know, I put up a meme coin, make a $500 million shot from it. He was in the Roosevelt room. He turned to the press when they asked him about that, that's peanuts compared to these guys over here. That's how he thinks.

And he says that privately. So that's what he wants. So is that why he likes being surrounded by them by billionaires? Because lots of presidents choose to be surrounded by people who are less fortunate and the messages we're trying to lift everybody up. This is a president who barricades himself with billionaires. I just want you to think about this. He went to speak to the congressional Republican leadership.

this past week. Did he say we got to win the midterms because we're going to help the American people? You're the policies that we're going to put in place to help the American people? Of course not. Okay, he said, we've got to make sure I don't get impeached. So the conversation is always Trump-centric. And so focus on what is in Trump's best interests, not anybody else's best interest. The havoc that's being wreaked in Venezuela fits the conspiracy plots in Trump's mind. I can control the oil. I can control the Western Hemisphere. I'm signaling to Putin and Xi that this is my backyard and it's more or less going to give them flexibility in their backyards. The very predictable long-term thinking Chinese are looking at this saying this is so much better than we

thought because this guy's acting with arbitrariness, capriciousness, impetuosity, and people may not like our system, but they like the predictability of our multilateral agreements. Well, then it's a better, right, and you can plan. Which we adhere to. Yeah, which we adhere to. So here's our multilateral agreement. This is what we adhere to. And if you subscribe to be our ally, our economic trading partner, we're going to more or less abide by this agreement. Look at what the nonsense is going on with the Americans. And they're winning that argument. And so this has been a boon for them. This has been a windfall for them.

But you asked the question before, and I want to go back to it, until you get a transformational coalition builder on the Democratic Party, you're not going to have any forceful rebuttal to Donald Trump. So you're just going to hope that Trump fades, that the Republicans actually push him out of power. When it's time for him to go, they force him out. And then there's a food fight in the Republican Party of lesser personality. to fight it out, and then the Democrats will pick somebody and they'll have a fight, and we'll see if somebody wins, and then what happens after that, that'll be interesting. Because I don't think anybody can carry off the mantle of what Trump is doing. I don't think anybody can get away with that. Okay, just look at the way Vance was rebuked by the senators eight weeks ago about

Argentinian beef prices. They would have never said any of that to Trump on C-SPAN, but they were beating him up over that because he doesn't have Trump's muscle. He doesn't have his influence. He doesn't have his staunch. Whatever Trump's approval rating is, who's ever left with Trump is immovable. Those people could go against those senators in a primary, right? But that's going to come off of the, the bloom is going to come off the rose come November of next year, this coming year, excuse me, November of this coming year. So, so, but, you know, the Democrats are the best thing that the Republicans have going for them because they're in disarranted. They fight with each other. They don't want a coalition.

I put out on Twitter or X that they should get in touch with Elon Musk. I got out-ratioed on that. They don't understand. They don't understand that. And I think it's stupid. I think it's very, very damaging to them, frankly. So do you see any opposition at all to Trump right now? Do you think he's got another six months to a year of just doing what he wants?

He's got six more months. More Republicans will be. break from him. Some Republicans see themselves as the 48th president, so they'll have to differentiate themselves from him. And if they don't check him, though, unfortunately, this will, this will be a path towards great destruction and nihilism by Trump. It'll get way worse after the midterms. He will act crazier and crazier. He'll do more nefarious things. Again, I'm not comparing him to Hitler, but I just want to remind people that when the generals got around Hitler and they said, hey, man, this is not working, we got 12 years, not a thousand-year Reich. They said, okay, that's fine. Bring down the

electrical grid around Berlin and flood the coal mines. And they said, excuse me? They said, no, I want you to do that. That was a Michael Beschloss book, The Conquerors. And why do you want to do that? Well, if we're not going to have a thousand-year-Rike with me running it, I want to blow the whole thing up. Right. The nihilism. And that's Donald Trump. Donald Trump quietly does not want the Republicans to win that election because he wants to be able to say you guys were nobody before I got on the stage and you're nobody after I left the stage. He's not going to be out there campaigning for the successor to him. It's not his personality. Right. So Anthony, you've been in the room with Donald Trump and people talk about his magnetism and the allure of power. Can you put it into

words for us, what it's actually like? Because I still think a lot of people don't understand quite why people are so in his thrall. I don't think you should underestimate Trump's media persona, his diction, the way he talks. I'm going to tell you something that should startle you is that there's a very large percentage of the population of the United States that's comfortable with Trump being their president. Okay. And if you're not, wake up and find an alternative solution. But he has been on the stage as a television personality for 25 years. He's been in our faces for 40 or 50 years through other forms of media. And I think if you're with Trump and you're in his orbit, you do feel that celebrity status.

And whether we like it or not, people like that. They want to be attached to that. They want to name drop that. And, you know, it's a shortcoming of mind. It doesn't reflect well on me. but when I was on the campaign with him and I decided to go work for him, I got attracted to the power. You know, that's the Potomac fever that I often talk about. Right. You referenced it earlier. And Joanna, one of the things about Potomac fever, you know, one of the big sentence is you don't know you have it. You don't even know you have it.

Interesting. You're operating, you know, you're driving around, feeling significant about yourself and the limousine, and you're morally equivocating while you're doing it, and you're constantly talking yourself. into doing that because you want that flourish. You want that access. And, you know, I have to own that for the rest of my life. But I will tell you this, you know, there will be more people. Look at, he, he cycled through me and others like Kelly and others. But prior to us, it was a whole other battalion of people that he cycled through. Well, he went through four chiefs of staff in his first. And he's going to cycle through another group of people. And there will always be

people because of the nature of politics and power that will attach themselves to people like Donald Trump. I just, you know, the only thing I'm grateful for is ironically because of the unceremonious way that I got fired, he created a platform for me to at least speak out against him and to explain to people how dangerous he actually is. It's good to be with you. That's very nice to have you in the studio. I'm not sure everybody gets the benefit quite of how perfect you're.

noses. In person, your nose is absolutely perfect. Did you have it done? Did I have it done? No, I don't think you know. No chance. No. I've got some Botox on my forehead, but I've never had my nose on it. Okay, well, it's a very good nose. Mrs. Scaramucci, good job. I can't tell you how good his nose is in real life. It's just like the perfect nose. There must be plastic surgeons working, just trying to create the perfect model for that nose. Anyway, I see. sound obsessed with Anthony's nose. I'm really not, but Kevin Fallon is obsessed with all sorts of things for you to watch at home. Joanna, hi.

I have to tell you about something that we're obsessed with. I'm Kevin Fallon. And I'm Matt Wilstein. And we are hosting Obsessed the podcast about all the TV shows, movies, and entertainment newsmakers that we're all obsessed with. So make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube at the YouTube channel. Make sure you follow us wherever you get your podcast. Just search for us.

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