2.⁠ ⁠How to buy the White House
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Hello and welcome to the second episode of the Rest is Politics U.S. with

with me, Anthony Scaramucci. And me, Katty Kay. So Katty, we're recording on Thursday morning, the day after we met in person for the first time ever on Morning Joe yesterday. It was nice to finally meet you, Katty, after all these years. See that? I was wondering whether we finally met, which is a weird way to meet somebody, right? You meet them on a TV set in a live program for about 10 minutes, but I was wondering whether you were slightly regretting your decision to go into this venture together, Anthony. No, obviously you leave a very good first and

pressure. I was very happy to have makeup on when I met you, Kat. You see that? I could hide the bags under my eyes for 10 minutes, but it was great to be with you. What are we going to talk about today? I want to pick up on something that you had referenced last week that caught my attention about this idea that

Everything in America, and particularly in American politics, can be traced back to money and to donations. So in the first half of this program this week, we're going to discuss the millions, actually, you know what, let's make that billions of dollars because this election is going to cost billions of dollars, that are pumped into presidential campaigns today.

this year's race expected to be the most expensive race ever. And we're going to get a better idea of the kind of mysterious, murky, dark world of campaign financing and political mega donations. We'll get into PACs and super PACs and Anthony's going to tell you what they mean because he has a great history in this. And then in the second half, I want to go south of the border and look at Mexico where there is an election coming up next month that

Honestly, hardly anyone here in America is talking about, but of course it could have huge consequences for this election in November because whoever is elected the next president of Mexico is going to control, to some extent, the border with the United States and we know that that's a big issue in the US election. So before that though, Anthony, campaign financing. I think we should declare your own background and interest in this and tell our listeners

how you became a mover and shaker, not just in the world of Republican campaigns, but also in the world of Democratic fundraising as well. Okay. So I think I've told you my background, but I'll just repeat it for this podcast briefly. I am not even an outer borough person. So Trump is an outer borough person. So what does that mean in New York parlance?

Well, Caddy, I'm sitting in my office right now, which is in Midtown Manhattan. You could probably hear the traffic going by. Well, he wasn't born where the action is in the island of Manhattan. He was born in Queens.

Okay. I'm from Nassau County, so that's even further out. Okay. So maybe that's the Midlands for the UK or something like that. I just want to explain how out of it I actually am. And I had my first job interview at Goldman Sachs. I was wearing 100% polyester caddy K. And the partner at Goldman Sachs said, I can't bring you to Goldman like this. You got to go buy natural fiber clothing. I was fully-

flammable for my first job interview. So yes, I went to Harvard posh school, but my dad was a crane operator. So you have to understand my connection into all of this came through politics. When I got the job at Goldman Sachs, they said, we want to go meet rich people and we want you to open accounts for rich people. Well, I had never been inside a country club, never swung a golf club or a tennis racket. And so the way to do this caddy was through politics and

And I made my first political donation at the age of 29 in 1993 to Rudolph Giuliani for mayor. I was young Republicans for mayor. Why is this important? Because wealthy people gravitate to politics. They go to these events.

It helped me build my business. When Rudy won, I got a parking pass on my car. I could park on two wheels on Madison Avenue on a fire hydrant. No problem. I had the most exclusive parking pass in New York City. You'd made the big time with your natural fiber. I had made the big time.

Now, Trump has a chip on his shoulder for being an outer borough person. I could care less if they don't want to let me into a country club or anything like that. It doesn't bother me. Trump didn't get into the exclusive country club out here on Long Island. He built 18 golf courses there.

you don't like me, I'm going to go run for president so that you have to deal with me. Okay. Try to explain to the differences in people's personalities. But what's important about this as it relates to fundraising is that is where the action is in the United States. Very wealthy people go to these fundraisers to name drop politicians, but also to influence politicians. And so we had

limits in fundraising back in the day. In January of 2010, the Supreme Court passed a very famous case in the United States. It was Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission. And in that decision, Justice Scalia said, well, you know, it's a First Amendment right. You've got a billion dollars. You can spend all of it.

on a political campaign. That's your exercise of your First Amendment right. And so we set up these things called political action committees and people like me, Katty Kay, a billionaire, Elon Musk can dump tens of billions of dollars theoretically into a political action committee to do whatever we want to affect policy. Now, the nuance is there has to be a Chinese wall between that

and the political campaign itself. And the campaign is still limited in terms of hard dollar donations to the campaign. Why this is monumental is that it has absolutely skewed the policies and the legislation over the last 14 years. If you want chlorinated chicken in the United States, and you don't have that in the UK, but if you want it, you go to these fundraisers,

You light up these congressional representatives, the senators, et cetera, and then they'll show up and they'll pass legislation to help big food, big pharma, big military. And the little guy, Caddy, has been left out of this equation over the last 14 years. And I'll just leave you with this one last thought. Harry Truman said when he got the job at the presidency-

He said, you know, this is the only job that every single eligible voter in the United States actually votes on. You know, the other jobs are a representative in my district, a senator in my state or local politicians. The presidency is the one job where everybody votes on it. And Truman said that he was a lobbyist, therefore, for everybody. We don't have that anymore. There's no lobbyists for the little guy in the country. And it has affected the political system.

So that is a great explanation of why Citizens United is so important. And I think it's also worth looking at some of the numbers that have resulted in that. Because what happens, my understanding, Anthony, is that with these superbacks, you get all of these wealthy billionaires, right, who can dump, as you say, all of that money there. And in America, it's called dark money, right? We don't really know where it comes from. It doesn't have to be declared.

It's not like campaign funds that have to be declared. You have to say, "Has this come from small donors? Has this come from other people?"

The dark money in America has increased by 900% since Citizens United was passed. And I think that gives people some sense of the impact on the political system of these wealthy individuals. But it's also, I don't think Americans even understand how out of whack the sums are in their politics today.

compared to other countries. Donald Trump raising $50 million at one fundraiser in Florida last month almost seems kind of normal by American standards.

You look at other countries, though, and you look at 2019, and Alistair's going to jump on me because I've probably got this number wrong, but as far as my research tells me, Boris Johnson spent $21 million in today's money, the equivalent of 20%.

2019. A year later, Joe Biden, in his presidential campaign, not even the super PACs, this is just his presidential committee, spent $1.6 billion. That is a multiple of 76 times. So I don't know whether the United Kingdom has bargain basement democracy,

or whether the US is spending a whole lot of money on something that is not necessarily working any better. But that's 76 times. You know what the difference is? It's the difference between buying a latte at Starbucks and buying a De'Longhi Italian espresso machine. That's the difference. That's how out of whack American politics is in terms of its money. No wonder that... So let's say you're running for...

neighborhood dog walker. Anthony Scaramucci wants to become the town dog walker. The day before the interview, I go and buy you a cup of coffee. But my wealthy neighbor down the road, he buys you a freaking DeLonghi espresso machine. Whose dog are you going to look after better? Is he going to operate the DeLonghi espresso machine for me? Because I would be absolutely clueless on how to operate it. But if he's operating it for me, I'm going with him. But

But let me make this point to UK listeners, and perhaps some of the American listeners will get this as well. There are 535 people in our Congress, 100 in the Senate, 435 in the House, one president. There are 536 people that are controlling 26% of

of the GDP of the United States, 8% of the world's GDP. So I just want to put that into perspective for people. You've got 536 people that are descended on every year. You said it's 900%. There's $26 billion in lobbying spent on descending on Washington,

Boeing started in Seattle. They moved their headquarters to Chicago. Caddy wasn't close enough. So they brought it to Virginia to sit outside the Pentagon and lobby that government. Okay. And why is it going up exponentially? Because it works, Caddy. And these people, unfortunately, they want to stay in power more than they necessarily want to serve the public.

And so the public is getting processed food, seed oils, chlorinated chicken. It's getting drug therapies that some are working, some are not working, but there's been a laxity in standards by the FDA. At least most people feel that way.

And there's been no audit of the Pentagon in 50 years, Katty. And so we have trillions of dollars going into the Pentagon, but we don't account for it. And all of this can be traced back to campaign finance spending and lobbying. And I think it's very, very important for people to understand this because

Because these are the things that go on inside of Washington that the average American or the average British citizen perhaps is cynical about or disinterested or apathetic. But if they understood it, they would say, okay, you know what? We probably could come up with better ideas and more efficient incentives for our politicians. The incentives are so misaligned to

to treat the man on the street or the woman on the street properly in the current society? I mean, they must be, you know, every member of Congress I speak to

pulls their hair out about campaign finance as well, because members of Congress, because of the large sums of money, you have to raise a lot of money. Unless you have your own money and you're willing to spend it, you have to raise a lot of money. And it's taking up to about 30% to 40% of their time, is what members tell me, routinely is spent on raising money. Not

on legislating for the American people, not on doing the job they were elected to do. I don't want to interrupt you, Katty, but I think they're underselling that. I think it's closer to 50 or 60, but they're embarrassed to tell you that larger number. Yeah, I think you may be right. But what it means as well is it's not just...

the little person, me with my latte trying to get you to walk my dog properly up against my wealthy neighbor. If I'm running for politics, there is starting to be a kind of favoritism, if you like, amongst the party to have wealthy candidates running, right? Because if you are a wealthy candidate running and you're prepared to give your own money and

then the party's not going to have to support you with its own finances in order to get you to win that election that you're in. So you look at, there's a good case of this actually just across the border from DC in Maryland, where there's a democratic primary going on for the Senate.

There's Congressman David Trone, who is super wealthy and has made it very clear to voters that he is prepared to spend his own money if they elect him as the Democratic candidate. He's up against an African-American woman, Angela Also Brooks, who is the kind of darling of the Democratic establishment in Maryland, but she doesn't have money. You can see

see if you're Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, you're thinking to yourself, if I get this wealthy guy when it comes to November, then I'm not going to have to support him so much with campaign funds. So the little guy is being squeezed out in terms of representation with elected officials. The little guy is being squeezed out in terms of being able to run for politics potentially because they have to raise so much money. And you wonder whether, I mean, I

I hear your point about if Americans thought about this more, they would lobby to change the system. But there is such an entrenched value. And look at the degree to which, I mean, soon that DeLonghi Express machine is going to be a Lamborghini because this is just going up. Now you're talking because I'm a Long Island guy that loves cars. So, yeah, I want the Lamborghini. I knew I'd get you there. But this is going up, Anthony. There's no record of

You look at the curves, it's a curve that is rising. It's not a curve that shows any signs of the American public saying we have to change this. And the Roberts Court, by the way, doesn't look like it's a court that sees anything other than out bribery as a form of campaign finance violation. Well, my short-lived experience in Washington, somebody said to me, well, how did you like the swamp? I said, well, it's not a swamp. It's a gold-plated hot tub.

These guys sit in the hot tub together. And if you're willing to play with them, they'll drop you two champagne bottles and Cuban cigars. And if you're not willing to play with them, they'll make up stories to get you out of Washington. And so we have to at least explain it to people so that they know about it, at which point they can at least ask their politicians about it.

And how do you get reform? If you think like an entrepreneur, which I happen to be, entrepreneurs think zero to one. How do you take something that is nothing and turn it into something? And in our politics right now, we need entrepreneurial politicians to think about

how to reset the system or how to reform the system. And I'll submit this to you. There are 27 amendments to that constitution. That constitution is approximately 230 years old, which means that you should be getting an amendment every seven to eight years.

And yet we've only had two amendments in the last 30 years. One was a procedural one in 1993. And of course, the big Kahuna amendment was in 1965, the Voting Rights Act. But if we're going to have a constitutional Republican democracy or representative democracy in the United States,

with a living document known as the Constitution, we have to reset that social contract every generation for a new group of Americans. And some of the things that we would need to do, in my opinion, is to reform this outlandish spending. We have created a separate but equal democracy, and I think it's really going to hurt the country long term. I love your Long Island optimism, Anthony, that this is actually going to happen, because...

I don't see either of the parties, and we should make this clear, people I think associate money with the Republican Party, and that is not the case. If you look at the current state of the election, actually it's

Joe Biden has a lot more money on hand that is money ready to spend than Donald Trump does. And I know because I had a conversation with two Democratic donors last night who had just hosted a fundraiser where they raised $1.4 million for the Biden campaign, and they were surprised they hadn't been asked before. They said it was easy to raise $1.4 million. This is as much on the Democratic side as it is on the Republican side. And I don't see the lobbying happening.

In the country to change. I don't see the political will in either party, which is in a kind of arms race of money at the moment to try and change this. I mean, maybe you're right. Maybe that, maybe that is great. No, no, listen, I agree with you. Uh, I, but what I am suggesting is,

It is changeable. I think what happens in our society is the cynicism pervades and we look at it and say, okay, they have no incentive to change it. I'm just talking about the potentiality of having a reformer that could come in and honestly explain the situation to the American people.

And remember, think like an entrepreneur for one second. There's one voting block in the United States, 144 million people. They vote the exact same way in every single election. You know who that is? The non-voter, Caddy. They don't vote. They don't show up at the polls. Imagine an entrepreneurial politician who could go after that market and create a new market of voters.

And you don't have to get that many of them to scare the daylights out of the current political establishment. Which, by the way, is what your old boss said he was going to do and did do to some extent in 2016. He brought a whole load of people that hadn't voted before into the electorate. Let's see if he does it this time around. Okay, take us a little bit behind the scenes, Anthony. We've given people a history and the kind of politics of this, but you've been there. You've been there on campaigns where people were fundraising. You've donated to campaigns elsewhere.

yourself. What's it like when you're being tapped up for money or what's it like when you're asking for people to... How hard is it to get this cash? It's about as horrifying as you would imagine it to be. It is literally like a first century brothel. It's like...

the stuff that you see- Never been in one, but I can just imagine. I just say, just go to Pompeii and look at the murals. I mean, this is as horrifying of an experience as you can imagine because they're all loosey-goosey with you and they're all flirtatious and flattering. The money gets wired or the check gets right and it's bye-bye onto the next transaction. And

Whether we like it or not, that's exactly what happens. However, why do people do it? Okay, well, some people are idealists. They do it because they think they're going to affect change, but other people do it because they want the relationship with their political leaders or they have a big business incentive where they're going to sit before those leaders and

and lobby for a policy or lobby for a deregulation or make it easier for a plane to get up in the air when they should be making it harder for a plane to get up in the air, or they should make it harder for a drug to pass through the FDA. And so that's why they do it. And it's very unseemly. And by the way, I've done it. I admit to it. You can see all of my donations on

Go on, tell us. Were those donations you made, like Obama in 2008, you donated to? Was that idealism when you donated the Romney campaign? Was that idealism? Or were you hoping to get something out of these campaigns that would serve your own business interests, for example?

So I think this will either make this podcast incredibly successful, Katty, or people will be horrified and they'll shut it off right now because I'm going to be very real with you. The Obama donation, I had gone to law school with President Obama. We were not classmates. I was a few years ahead of him, even though he's older than me. And one of my closest friends knew him.

It was 2007. I went to one of the social clubs here in New York to meet him. I think it was the university club. And we were behind stage before he gave his formal remarks. He was then Senator Obama. I had a check in my breast pocket. I went over to the Senator. I said, Senator, I said, you and I didn't really know each other in law school, but I'm about to hand you a big check to

Can I lie to my friends and tell them that you and I knew each other in law school? Well, Obama looks at me, had the best smile in American politics since Jack Kennedy. Forever. Yeah. He lights up.

He looks at me, said, I'll tell you what, if you double the amount of the check, we'll take it back to Hawaii. Okay. And I looked at him. I said, you're done. I had another check in my pocket. I ripped it up. I doubled the amount of the check. And I'm going to tell you right now, I've been to more White House Christmas parties during the Obama administration than the Trump administration because I've been to zero Trump administration Christmas parties. But that was total idealism. And that was total naivete on my part. I was 44 years old at the time.

And I said, I'm never going to meet a president. I'm never going to know somebody personally that's running for the presidency. So I'm going to write this guy a check and then I'm going to tell people I did it.

And that's how superficial it was. Let's just take from that, you know, the message of what you've just been saying. You wrote President Obama a check. You even doubled it. You had a good joke about it. And then you got access. You got invitations to White House Christmas parties. Now, maybe that helped your business. Maybe it didn't help your business. It was great name dropping. Exactly. It made you look great with your friends, right? So actually, you have just given us a prime example of how the system works. Yeah.

For a wealthy individual. Just remember, significance matters to a lot of people, not just for their own personal ego, but they want someone to walk into their office and see a picture of them with the president and think, oh, they must be somebody, right? Dom, our producer, is asking me, did I play basketball with him?

and my friends swear that we did. Okay. My friends swear that we did, but you know, I don't remember it a hundred percent, but my friend, Jeff Maslow is like, Mooch, what are you talking about? Obama had that great outside shot. I used to foul the daylights out of him. I said, okay, I don't remember it. Okay. And by the way, every professor at Harvard,

has said that they taught the guy. Now, that was also mathematically impossible, okay? But I apparently played basketball with him, God bless, but I wrote that check for very superficial reasons. The Romney stuff was different. I was a lifelong Republican. I wasn't in love with some of the policies that Obama had put together in the first term. And so I returned to my Republican roots and I got heavy into the Romney campaign. I

I was on his finance team. I got heavy into his campaign so much so that by the time 2016 came around, I was one of the guys. I was the chairman of the finance committee for Walker. When he dropped out of the race, I rolled into Bush.

Trump wanted me to be the finance chairman. I told him I couldn't do it because I was hosting Wall Street Week at the time for Fox, and I would have to leave the show, and I didn't want to do that. And so Mnuchin took the job, and Stephen is a very good friend, and still to this day,

This is the great thing about politics in America. And you know this, Caddy, I still talk to Trump campaign staffers, current staffers. In fact, I called one last week and he got on the phone. He says, Mooch, is this a butt dial? What the hell are you doing? I said, no, I'm calling you because I need a favor. Okay. So you know how it works. Okay. In the war zone of politics, I still have friends on the campaign. I still have friends in the Obama quarters.

the Trump quarters. And money is a liquid asset to these politicians. If you give $5 million to Joe Biden, the Republicans light up because they're like, okay, this guy's rich enough. Maybe he'll give me 5 million. And that's how it works. That's the inside baseball or the inside football of the system. Just before everybody wants to go and slit their wrists because American politics looks like it's just mired in corruption and money and

that everybody's doing us from Anthony getting to the Christmas parties to chlorinated chicken. I think it is worth reminding people that in 2016, Hillary Clinton outspent Donald Trump by a ratio of two to one. No question. She was also, she had twice the personnel. Big.

Because she had more money, right? She did. She had more money, so she could have more offices. She had more of the infrastructure. She spent more on advertising. She did more of all of those things that that cash allows you to do, and yet she still lost the 2016 election. So I'm just wondering, are we getting into a world where not just because of television advertising, which takes up an awful lot of the spending of these political action committees, and television advertising isn't where people are getting their news anymore, and

And so Joe Biden, look at his campaign. He's actually doing a lot more on TikTok than he is on traditional advertising because that's where he thinks he can reach young voters. Are we getting into a world where it's not that the laws will change, but maybe because the mechanism of reaching voters becomes cheaper or maybe because voters themselves are less easily bought and

these huge amounts of money that you raise just might not be as determinative of your potential for actually winning an election? Or am I being optimistic? No, I think it's very insightful. And I think that is the future. I think it's going to be cheaper the same way technology has allowed us to deliver things for

lower cost. But one thing quickly before we go to break, Hillary Clinton, what she lacked in that campaign was her presence. She had the money, but she didn't go to Wisconsin one time after the convention. And it was felt in Wisconsin and she lost it. One thought for our American audience, just

just look at Norway, where they don't allow any political ads on radio and television. Elections are cheap. And I don't know, I'd argue Norway's democracy functions pretty well. What do you reckon, Anthony? Maybe that's just a little thought out there. Hey, I'm not going anywhere. Okay. I'm a New Yorker. I love America, but Norway seems pretty good place to travel to. We'll record this podcast in Oslo before the end of the year. It'll be chilly, but we'll

be there. Okay, we're going to take a break and we'll be back talking about a little trip I just did down to Mexico and an election that people here in the United States aren't even really aware is happening very much. Hey, we're invited to the Johnson Summer Pool Party this Saturday. Oh, Saturday? But that's when the Blinds guys come in to give us a quote. Oh, I already found everything we need at Blinds.com. They're totally online, so we don't have to wait around all day just to get a quote. And they're sending us free samples. Well, Blinds.com sounds like a no-brainer.

Shop Blinds.com now for summer savings up to 40% off sitewide. Up to 40% off at Blinds.com. Blinds.com. Rules and restrictions may apply. Well, welcome back to the Rest is Politics U.S. edition. I'm Anthony Scaramucci with Cady Kaye.

Katty, I heard you had a wonderful trip last week to Mexico. And you and I both know Mexico has huge implications for the United States and for the November presidential election. Tell us a little bit about what you've learned down there and the significance of that.

of the presidential election going on in Mexico right now. Yeah, well, full disclosure. First off, I was down there entirely for pleasure with my daughter. I took her for a long weekend. It was a very good way, by the way, to escape nerd prom, White House correspondents' dinner weekend, which I'm always happy to get away. I'm sure you love that

fest of journalists and politicians schmoozing it up in Washington, but I'm always happy to get away. I get an allergic reaction when I enter Washington. Okay. Just so you know, but go ahead. Go ahead. So my daughter who just defended her PhD thesis is called Maya. And so she wanted to go to Mexico and I thought, well, we'll go to the land of the Maya and

we went down to Merida, which is this very cool city in the Yucatan. And to be completely honest, full disclosure, I knew there was a Mexican election going on this year. I kind of wasn't aware that I was going to land there in full election campaign season. And the great thing about Mexico is you land, you drive around this...

tons of political ads painted on every wall. And Mexico, on June the 2nd, is about to elect its first female president. So it's way ahead of the United States on that one. And the reason it's got these two women, there's the candidate who is 25 points ahead, who's the candidate from the ruling Morena party. She's the successors to the current president. Her name is Claudia Scheinbaum. And she's up against a sitting senator called

I'm sure I've mangled that pronunciation, Galvez. You see the signs for Scheinbaum and Galvez all over Mexico. The current president, AMLO, had a policy of bringing women into his cabinet. He had a 50% female cabinet. He upped the number of women in parliament to 50%.

he wanted a woman to succeed him. Mexican presidents are term limited. They only get one term. AMLO has served his term. He's up. He wants his successor, Claudia Scheinbaum, from the Morena party to succeed him. And so the opposition group from the right, which is a coalition of opposition parties, more from the center-right, have decided that the only way they can beat this female candidate is to field a female candidate of their own, which is

kind of an interesting, it's kind of fun, the idea that you've got two women running for president of Mexico. So I think you're right that Americans are not very aware of this election, which has enormous implications because of the border. That the current president, AMLO, has actually stopped

stopped border crossing since December. They've declined by something like 40% since December. And he's done that by instituting new visa rules and by sending people back from the border and by deporting people. So the Biden administration is happy, but what they're worried about is that AMLO, who's a sort of populist and who is very much an incredibly popular figure in Mexico, and even if he's about to be

out of the presidency and his successor, Scheinbaum, is going to take over. He's still going to be a huge force in American politics. What the Biden campaign is kind of worried about is, is he going to turn back the spigot of migrants crossing the border in October? Because AMLO sort of likes Trump. I mean, they're both populists. They both feel they're up against the establishment.

they both kind of rolled back some of the democratic norms and customs that we're used to. And that's why the Biden administration has been very quiet on some of the things that AMLO has done around human rights, around institutions of democracy, around the flood of fentanyl into the United States. And the border has become a kind of political football between these two countries. And now it's caught in the middle of

two enormous elections. This is going to be the biggest ever election in Mexico. 100 million Mexicans are going to go to the polls next month. They're going to go to the polls to elect a woman, and they're going to go to the polls in a way that's going to have a consequence, I think. I mean, we've talked about this, the border issue, Anthony. It's going to have a consequence in America's own election in November, and Americans are kind of not even really aware that it's happening. So I want to play strategist with you for a second. So

If you were on the Trump campaign, what would you like to see happen in Mexico? And then conversely, if you were on the Biden campaign, what would you like to see happen? And what do you think their strategies are in terms of dealing with this situation? I mean, you would assume that the Trump campaign would like to see Galvez, who is more from the center-right, win, right? Because Republican Party, Republican Coalition, right?

But actually, I think because everybody in Mexico seems to think that AMLO, who's this big popular force in American politics, is still going to be there with a lot of influence, and that AMLO seems to like Trump in this strange, paradoxical, wonderful way that politics works.

Maybe actually Trump would be kind of happy to have Scheinbaum win next month and assume that AMLO is going to do him a solid when it comes to the border in October. Now, all of this...

This shouldn't be the way that they're thinking, but I think if I was a Republican strategist on the Trump campaign, that's probably how I'd be positioning myself. Either way, they're going to have to deal with the Mexican border. This is America's biggest trading partner. It's a huge in route for fentanyl, which is killing Americans all over the country. The border crisis is a crisis and whoever becomes president of Mexico, the United States is going to have to deal with that.

Trump just gave this fascinating, I don't know if you read it, Anthony, this great interview in Time magazine, which by the way, anyone who ever interviews Trump, do it in print and not on television because you get a lot more out of him and it's a lot more nuanced. And he gave this interview in Time magazine this week in which he says that he's going to deport millions of undocumented migrants.

migrants in the United States. He's going to use the US military to round them up, put them in camps, send them back home. All pretty base play stuff for Donald Trump. It'd be interesting to see how that goes down with whoever is the next Mexican president and whether if it's

the woman from the right, Galvez, whether she would actually have more sympathy for Trump on dealing with his hardline tactics. A couple of things. I just want to mention to people if they're interested in the Mexican-American relationship, the Mexicans see the relationship differently than the Americans. The Mexican-American war, which took place in the 1830s and led to a monstrous land grab by

United States, where we pushed the Mexican government south of the Rio Grande, millions of casualties to citizens of Mexico, and the pain is still felt in that country. So it's just an interesting thing. The Americans don't think about it that much. There's a great book written about this 10 years ago called The Wicked War by

And it'll give you some contrast and comparison between the way the Mexicans look at it and the Americans. But on the Time magazine, Mr. Trump is basically unapologetically tell people that, hey, people like dictatorships and I like dictatorships and I can see myself acting somewhat dictatorial. Isn't that what he more or less said? I mean, it took me 26 minutes to read that article and I read it very carefully.

Yeah, I would recommend everyone to read it because there's really interesting stuff that he says on abortion and whether he would allow... He basically says, hands off the state. It's up to states whether they prosecute a pregnant woman who terminates a pregnancy or a doctor who terminates a pregnancy. He says that would be up to the states to decide.

As I said, he says he's going to round up illegal migrants and send them back. He's talked about millions of them. And when he's asked, well, is the military not actually allowed to act against citizens in the United States? He says, well, these people aren't citizens. He kind of describes them as a combating force.

He talks about, obviously he talks about NATO. He doesn't say that he wouldn't pull out of NATO. He says it's legitimate to try and use tactics just to try and get them to spend more money and use the threat of pulling out. He doesn't seem to be very inclined to supporting Taiwan. So there's a whole load of kind of American foreign policy stuff that he's interesting on. Interestingly, he's pretty tough on Bibi Netanyahu in the interview, more than you might think so. You're right

By the way, just before we finish up on the Mexico stuff, you're right on the Mexico stuff. It seemed very differently from that side of the border. And there is a lot of criticism in Mexico of the fact that it's American demand that makes Mexico the conduit country for drugs into the United States.

And if the US could tackle the demand side of things, Mexico wouldn't be this violent country that was messed up because of the drug cartels. And that's a very commonly held perception in Mexico. It's fascinating, but you brought up Netanyahu, so I just have to interject because 11 days in the White House, but a year on the campaign with Trump, so I can tell you exactly how he operates.

Netanyahu praised President Biden, and he also congratulated President Biden after the election. And that's all you need to do with that borderline personality known as Donald Trump. Those are two eggshells that cracked inside of Trump's brain. And now he's on the warpath against Bibi Netanyahu.

Okay. And so that happens to everybody that comes in contact with Mr. Trump, just so you know. Yeah. So if you are looking to be the next president of Mexico or the next prime minister of the United Kingdom or any other leader that is being elected,

in the whatever it is, biggest election year in global history, you have got to figure out how you're going to deal with Donald Trump. And that is why you see a stream of foreign leaders, including David Cameron, go down to Mar-a-Lago to figure out if Donald Trump gets elected, what does that mean for my country? And how am I going to manage to deal with him? Well, the only thing that works, Gaddy, is all praise all the time.

That's the only thing that works. And as political leaders know, particularly foreign leaders that have their own interests in their own countries, that's an impossibility. All praise all the time. You know who figured this out was Shinzo Abe, the late prime minister of Japan.

Japan, who in his memoirs that were published posthumously, wrote that the way to deal with Trump is to give him the food he likes, hamburgers, give him lots of expensive gifts, gold-plated golf clubs, and give him entertainment like...

karaoke and whatever so that he actually feels that he's having a good time and make the diplomacy totally transactional. Don't make it about ideology. Don't make it about America's leadership role in the world. Don't make it about democracy or autocracy. Just make it a transaction and keep it economics.

and then you can deal with Donald Trump. Well, if Goal Hanger would let us do a podcast exclusively on Trump's insecurities, it would be a 24-hour podcast, Katty, okay? We could spend 24 hours on that topic. Well, I think we've gone right around the world there, Anthony. So we're going to leave it there for this week and we will see you all next week. Okay, well, it's always great to be with you, Katty. Hopefully I get the chance to see you again in person soon. Please join us again this coming Friday.