Anthony Scaramucci: How America Got Trump

Today’s guest on The Reason Interview is Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, former White House communications director, and host of The Rest Is Politics. In his new book, All the Wrong Moves: How Three Catastrophic Decisions Led to the Rise of Trump, Scaramucci argues that decades of bipartisan policy failures helped fuel the populist anger behind Donald Trump’s rise.

Scaramucci tells Nick Gillespie why he thinks Washington failed to protect American workers from China’s rise and how the War on Terror helped destroy fiscal restraint. He also explains why the response to the 2008 financial crisis fueled anger on both the left and right. They discuss what Trump understood about economically frustrated voters, why Scaramucci thinks anger-based populism isn’t solving their problems, and what it would take to restore a sense of economic opportunity in America.

0:00–Scaramucci’s beginnings
6:12–Economic narratives and living standards
14:58–The Clinton administration, China, and the WTO
29:45–George W. Bush and the Global War on Terror
34:20–When did Republicans abandon fiscal conservatism?
39:04–Barack Obama, TARP, and the rise of populism
43:11–Donald Trump’s realization about the GOP
49:24–Joe Biden’s failures
54:18–How do we return to an aspirational narrative?
1:02:55–The future of Bitcoin

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