Anthony Scaramucci, Executive Committee, US President-elect's Transition Team HARDtalk

Welcome to Hardtalk, I am Stephen Sackur.

Wherever you live in the world the election of Donald Trump

as America's next president is a very big deal.

He has promised to take the world's most powerful nation in a very

My guest today is Anthony Scaramucci, a New York headge

My guest today is Anthony Scaramucci, a New York hedge

fund boss, a Trump ally, and right now a member

What are Team Trump's priorities for America?

Anthony Scaramucci, welcome to Hardtalk.

Let's start with transition, you are one of 16 on the board

organising the transition, we have characterised

it from the outside as chaotic, some use the word disarray.

Can you tell me what it is like the inside?

I don't know why people are saying that, I can't even find

the people who suggest that, I think what happens is that people

who are not on the inside feel bitter or upset about that,

leak out to the press nasty things about the transition

but in fact the transition has gone incredibly well,

the committee itself has worked well together,

many of us worked together on the campaign.

Governor Pence is someone I've known forever and have a great

It is not only going well but the President-elect has done

a great job reaching out, Democrats, Republicans who worked for him,

for me it has been orderly, and the only problem for me

with this transition is we have to outwork the President-elect.

He is a tireless worker so we are drinking lots of Red Bull

Fully one quarter of the transition team, 25%, is made up

Three children and his son-in-law, Jarrod Kushner.

It is clear they wield an awful lot of influence,

He has worked with them for their adult lives,

whether they were on the television programme with him or the real

I told my oldest son, may you have the arrogance

of Donald Trump Junior, which is frankly,

These are people who can relate to people...

They have the ear of the President-elect in a way

Most people have the ear of their own people.

What I like about the President-elect is he is a very

upfront guy, he won the election because of his authenticity, these

people are business partners of his, they happen to be family members,

so you're getting three or four for the price of one.

But he ran as an anti-elitist, the guy who's going

It is hard to understand how appointing your own family

to your transition team is anything but perpetuating his

I got you, that is a British thing, the peerage, if you will, and...

There is some sort of hereditary thing going on.

I see it as super-smart advisers he has relied

I campaigned with Donnie all throughout Pennsylvania,

if this was the president I would ask him for advice,

the fact that these are family members, I don't

Did Jarrod Kushner, son-in-law, did he feel very strongly

about Chris Christie and get him fired, as the first chief

I think they related that his father, Charlie,

and now Governor Christie, he was the Attorney General,

Jarrod has been focused on advising the President-elect,

on the campaign and strategy, but has had nothing to do

with the relationship with Governor Christie.

The President-elect made a decision, and this is something your viewers

are probably interested in, he did not want to focus

on the campaign's transition until he was done winning,

he felt that Governor Romney spent too much time and that in 2012.

Once he got there he realised he had to put his number

two person in place, Governor Christie met with him

on Sunday in Bedminster, he is loyal to Governor Christie,

my guess is that Governor Christie is so contributing a fairly decent

amount, but Governor Pence, Vice President elect Pence,

he will be the number two person in the government,

he is the right person to be at the head of the transition team.

You said after the election victory became clear

now that he is President-elect of the USA I think he's

going to handle himself in a way more measured way.

No other President-elect would be firing tweets about criticising

the way he was characterised on Saturday Night Live,

or the way that a cast member of Hamilton treated

Donald Trump with his use of Twitter is clearly is thin-skinned today

I spend a lot of time with him, I have known him 20 years,

I have been in the cauldron with him for the last six months, I don't

He is a regular guy, he doesn't like certain things,

he is a little bit of a culture warrior, there is a culture war

going on in the United States, I don't know if there's one

going on here, but when you have paid for your seat and you're

sitting in a theatre, even left-leaning drama professors

around the United States said that was not an appropriate venue

for you to give out a political diatribe.

The President-elect, whether you liked this part

of his personality or not, 60 million-plus people voted for him

All I am getting at is that, yes she is raw and authentic

All I am getting at is that, yes he is raw and authentic

as you put it, but he is not acting more measured.

The speech after he won, I thought it was very measured,

very gracious, he has invited Governor Mitt Romney over,

he had Ari Emanuel, a Democrat, over the weekend,

he has made a huge outreach to people above and

All of that is presidential, or Churchillian, in

Let's not talk Churchillian, let's just talk about the incredible

journey that Mitt Romney and yourself have been on.

Mitt Romney ran in 2012 when you supported him.

Just a few weeks ago he was describing Donald Trump

as a phoney, a fraud, his promises, he said,

are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.

Mitt Romney is a good friend of yours.

You said just a few months ago on Fox News, I don't like the way

He is a class divider from the Obama, Hillary Clinton playbook.

Im just trying to get to it, you have been with Mitt Romney.

I was with Governor Walker at the time and Mr Romney

was railing against the hedge fund industry and I have tired of that,

I don't like the unnecessary demonisation of my industry

and Wall Street, when Wall Street and Main Street are in harmony

with each other in the USA the economy does better.

When we demonise Wall Street and big people like Elizabeth Warren

throw firebombs at Wall Street, it's not good for the economy.

You called Donald Trump a class divider.

You said, his nonsense campaign will be ended before Thanksgiving.

I ran out of holidays because I said it would be done in Thanksgiving,

then I said Christmas, I got it completely wrong.

This is the beauty of American politics and maybe this is true

in the UK, I got it wrong, but I kept my pledge,

which was that I would support the eventual Republican nominee.

So when Jeb Bush came out of the race I went to see Mr Trump

and we got together and I pledge my support to him

The big distinction between me and Governor Romney,

Mr Trump was throwing firebombs at the hedge fund industry

What Governor Romney did however was unilateral.

To me, I did not think it was necessary.

He probably wishes he walked it back.

But I made my peace with Mr Trump, he was throwing bombs at others,

and I was throwing them at him, but he respects people

People who are willing to tell him if he is right or wrong.

And I got very close to him over six months because when he was going

through the roller-coaster of the polling, and some

of the obnoxiousness in the media, guys like me stayed in the foxhole.

Once you've decided to come on-board and what you said since the election

is that what you think is so important for people

to understand, and you claim the media fails to understand,

is that this guy, Donald Trump, is not ideological.

He will do whatever it takes, to use the phrase, to make

I put it to you that the picks the transition team has come out

with, involving you, we are not seeing

a nonideological Trump, we are seeing a very ideological

I would say that he is a common-sense problem solver

Some of the stuff will be right-leaning, some of it

will be surprisingly less than right-leaning.

For example the infrastructure plan which a Democrat

senator is embracing, that is probably not the standard

fare for conservative Republican politics in the USA.

So he is an ideologically expressing some right-leaning and left-leaning

stuff but he is not looking at the world.

And the last two presidents in my opinion, one came

from neo-conservatism, prosecuted a war in Iraq

and tried to promote democracy, it was a failure, President Obama

came at it from an economic progressivism filter,

they brought us the Affordable care act which according to Mr Trump

has been a disaster, Mr Trump will be more

about what is right or wrong for the American people

I want to make it clear to your views.

I want to make it clear to your viewers.

But on the picks, let's talk about the picks,

A guy who is a hero to the alt-right movement.

Breitbart news, you are aware of the sort of stuff

Here is the thing that is going on, as part of the culture war,

we have to make a decision on this, there is stuff on Breitbart that

I don't agree with but the individual liberty,

to go back to John Stuart Mill, the concept of individual

liberty, is the acceptance of the ideas of other people.

What the left likes about the first Amendment is when you are agreeing

with them it is OK to have the first Amendment, when you disagree

Steve Bannon is a brilliant strategist to understand the common

cause of all people of colour in the working class,

the lower-middle-class, and the middle class.

And so that is one of the reasons we won the election.

But you said to me that one of the most important things

Donald Trump did was give what you describe as a very gracious

speech after his victory, talking about bringing the nation

together, binding the wounds, in Stephen Bannon we are talking

about a guy who ran a news website which, and to take a few other

headlines, said things like this, of Bill Kristol, Republican

Birth control makes women unattractive and crazy.

And you decided, this guy should be the chief strategist

It is an intellectual debate, that is not his byline.

It is a blogging site where people can log on their opinions

What he and Breitbart said at the top of that thing is that

you are going to be able to express yourself,

that is what first Amendment rights are about.

What the left does in our society is they want to censor and make

politically correct everything in society and the average person

So I don't agree with that headline you said, I am also a gay rights

activist, I have given to the American unity pact,

And this will be the first American president in US history

entering the White House with a pro-gay rights stance.

Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mole

Elton John is going to be doing our concert on the mall

So listen, Steve Bannon, he is actually, the weird thing

about him is he is actually a Zionist, so there is now

anti-Semitism, there is not one aspect of his life that has any

anti-Semitism in it, and like me, who is not a jew, and we will go

back to Winston Churchill, all three of us are secular Zionist.

So he is not an anti-Semite, let's take it off the table.

You don't like the language on the website, but I love

I want to put one other name out there.

I understand where you're coming from, sitting on this

transition team, you are not the only member on it,

but I want to know how comfortable you are with, for example,

General Michael Flynn, who will now be national security

adviser, a man who described Islam as a malignant cancer,

and has said that the fear of muslims is rational.

Now, you are just one member of the transition team,

Yes, I like the general a great deal, I have an enormous

His service of the country, the book that he just wrote,

a bestselling New York Times book, and I spent a lot of time with him

during the transition, and I have also been to Afghanistan

and Iraq on troop support missions, so I think, again, this stuff

is getting filtered in certain ways in the media and it gets spun a bit,

which is fine, but what the general is basically saying

is that the religion is being hijacked by a group

of people that we would like to call radical Islamic terrorists.

President Obama does not like the word.

Secretary Clinton and Susan Rice don't like the word but we need

When you read the Koran and you read the text in the Koran that

call for the bombing and desecration of infidels,

I don't know if you are a practising Muslim, I am not,

I am Roman Catholic, I would really not like Christians

to be wiped out in what is now a caliphate known as Isis.

There is more Christian terror going on in the Middle East right

now than in the last seven or 800 years.

I think it is nonsense, and we have to stop,

and take a pause, and call right and wrong, and dial down

So General Flynn will have a very good plan, what your viewers need

to know is that he is a very deliberate, very thoughtful guy.

Wait till you see the rest of his team, the Defence Secretary picks.

The American people will think a lot about this the way we did

in 1980, that we will work on peace through strength.

You have had warmongers in past presidents, and you have had

warmongers as past secretaries of state, but none of these

Do you understand why so many people around the world are worried that

Donald Trump threatens two of the fundamental pillars

of America's International strategy, going back to the period before

That is, a multilateral involvement in security through the Nato

alliance and a multilateral commitment to free trade through

He just made positive statements about Nato.

Mr Trump has a really good handle on the practicality of what you need

to keep global peace, and we can go right back

to the three pillars, the first is, a strong military,

even Thomas Hobbes said in Leviathan that one great hegemonic power

will suppress the internecine conflict that happens

round the world, whether it is Pax Britannia or Pax Romana.

In the case of United States we have been a benevolent superpower

and so you have got to get the peace through strength pillar

On the alliance front we are very smart people and Mr Trump recognises

the need to strengthen alliances and not decentralise them.

The last piece of economic independence is trade,

and I think Mr Trump is going to end up becoming

He is the guy who accused China of raping the United States

In fact he has described several multilateral trade deals including

Is that language, you are a very successful businessman,

I think that word is probably strong.

I am not a politician, I am more of a business person.

The rhetoric, the bellicosity, is sometimes used in a campaign

to galvanise support and bring the voters out.

But let's talk about trade, I studied it on behalf

The United States since 1945, we unbalanced trade agreements

The State Department and the Treasury worked on it

so that we could create burgeoning middle classes

Every one of those trade agreements, the Marshall plan, $13.7 billion,

So, what we know as free trade, goods and services flow

into the United States freely, our goods and services

are embargoed in certain markets to protect the labour markets

That was a very smart strategy for the USA,

I'm not here to say it wasn't, but you get winners and losers

when you implement a strategy like that, NAFTA is an example,

we have lost 70,000 factories in the United States

So you are hollowing out these communities,

you are hollowing out, you are forcing people,

8 million Americans slipped below the poverty line

We just had Jason Furman on the programme, his

He said that the data is absolutely irrefutable,

immigration into the United States has been a driver of

Donald Trump is for very strict immigration controls,

you are a guy who wants to see continued economic growth,

Maybe I work in a different transition or a different campaign

What he has said publicly, and I have clips of it,

he has said he wants waves and waves of immigration.

Let's talk about immigration then we can talk about the wall.

But he said he wants waves of immigration, he would just

You have had bipartisan presidents and Congresses sign immigration

law and all he is saying is we have not enforced those laws,

for whatever reason, we have 11 million, 12 million

people living in the USA who came in without the legal process,

we have to resolve that one way or the other,

Democrat or Republican, Donald Trump or some other

Democrat or Republican, Donald Trump or some other politician,

My guess is he will be the guy to do it, a great person to do it.

On the wall, I think you need the President-elect on his word that

he's going to build a wall.

And he's going to get Mexico to pay for it?

Everybody in Mexico thinks that is absurd.

He can make Mexico pay for it if you want.

He can make Mexico pay for it if he wants.

If he wants Mexico to pay for it they will pay for it.

But what you need to understand is the relationship

Mexico is in desperate need of help from the United States

Mexico would probably also benefit from that wall

because of a reduction in drug trafficking into the United States

would delegitimise further the drug cartels and make them less economic.

The same way the USA during the Bush administration helped Colombia

we probably have to go down and help Mexico.

If we do that and we clean up some of this horrific stuff

going on then you are not going to have an immigration problem

The general point is you have to convince governments around

the world, you happen to be in London right now but we know that

Mr Trump has already seen the Japanese Prime Minister,

you have got to convince people that this guy, far from being

a danger to the world, is going to be somebody that

governments around the world can put trust in and can work with.

I think the Japanese Prime Minister came out of the meeting and said

he was a person he thought he could trust.

That was literally the statement that the Prime Minister of Japan

What I see happening is, like what happens in life,

there is a convergence between how the media presents somebody,

how the sound bites happen on a campaign, and then how,

when you interact with a person face-to-face,

there might be a spread between what your perception is and

I think is that gap closes then the world community will be very

happy to have him as the president of the United States.

As a final thought, you will be in the administration when it

If I am asked to do something for the President

of the United States, is an American patriot and somebody

lots people I will probably say yes to something like that,

but I also have a great business I am running,

I started from scratch, I grew up in a blue-collar family,

my parents did not go to college, and so I am very blessed with a good

American dream story and I am very happy where I am right now.

What I need to do in the next three months is focused on helping him

That is the principal focus right now.

We have to end there, but thank you.

Really appreciated, thank you very much indeed.