Trump's AI Accusations, Cable TV Challenges, and Guest Anthony Scaramucci

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Kara Swisher: Hi, everyone. This is Pivot from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. I'm Cara Swisher. Scott will be back for the DNC next week. But in the meantime, I'm joined by another outstanding guest co-host, Mehdi Hassan, the editor-in-chief and CEO of a new media company, Zateo. Did I pronounce that right, Mehdi?

Mehdi Hasan: You did, Cara. Well done.

Kara Swisher: I know. I know. I've heard you say it. But you say it better. Can you just say it in British, please?

Mehdi Hasan: In British, it's Zateo, for the ancient Greek meaning to seek out.

Kara Swisher: Yes, exactly. Talk to me a little bit about what you've been doing. I was there when you, I did a little interview with you when you launched it. Explain what you're doing, because just this week, Oliver Darcy started one. Obviously, there's been lots of these going on all over the place. I was the original, but we won't go into that. But why don't you talk a little bit about what you're doing?

Mehdi Hasan: You're the original on everything, Cara.

Kara Swisher: That's true.

Mehdi Hasan: You were there at the launch, yes, of Zateo. Thank you very much with AOC at the Spy Museum in DC back in April. I think we are, we're only what, four months old. We're a baby of a company. We are doing very well. We launched this media company. I launched it in April formally. The idea is to provide a platform, both video, print, streaming, podcast for people who want to speak a little bit more freely than our mainstream media may allow on topics like Gaza or Trump fascism or whatever it is. It's kind of modeled on my own approach to the media, which is not to do a both sides approach, to speak a little more bluntly and categorically about what's happening in front of our eyes. It's a platform for me to be able to do my shows again after I left MSNBC. But we have a bunch of great contributors from around the world, you know, Fatima Bhutto in Pakistan, Naomi Klein in Canada, Greta Thunberg in Sweden, Bassem Youssef. So it's a great bunch of people contributing content.

Kara Swisher: So explain to me this, you wanted to say what you want. It's very Elon Musk of you to say so. But you know what I mean? Like, people can say what they want. But talk about, you were at MSNBC. Now, Oliver was at CNN, obviously. The reason I left is because I wanted to do what I wanted to do. I never put it in those terms. It was like, I just don't like working for people. And it wasn't so much that I felt I couldn't say what I wanted. It's that I wanted to do what I wanted to do, which was a slightly different bent.

Mehdi Hasan: No, I think that's a fair summary as well of where I'm coming from. Obviously, we're only a few minutes in and you've already compared me to Elon Musk, so that hurts.

Kara Swisher: Well, no, he just goes on about it. You know, I want to say what I want to say. I don't think he wants to.

Mehdi Hasan: I'm sure we'll talk about Musk.

Kara Swisher: We shall. We shall.

Mehdi Hasan: But I think it's more to do with the fact that, yes, it is this freedom that I'm thoroughly enjoying for the last few months. It's not that I was censored before or there was someone behind me with like a whip stopping me from saying what I wanted to say. But the idea is, of course, you are part of a huge corporation. You know your place in that corporation. There are rules and regulations, some of which I agreed with, some of which I didn't always agree with. And, you know, one of my criticisms, not just of MSNBC, but the media in general, is there is a very cautious approach to covering people like Trump.

Kara Swisher: Cautious, that is correct.

Mehdi Hasan: I believe the media is broken right now because it isn't designed and equipped to deal with a character like Trump and some of the minions around him.

Kara Swisher: So when you say that they're not cautious, I think is much more to the point. And I think this sort of right-wing fever dream is all this planning is going on behind the scenes and this and that. And it just isn't. It's laughable when I think about it. I don't mean to say that corporate people don't have their problems, right, that they don't want you not to do that. I have never once felt that except one time with the Murdochs. And it was clottish, right, because they were very out to get tech companies. And they wanted me to be more aggressive. And I didn't find it annoying. I found it just clottish in more ways. And one of the things that I think people don't realize, it's not organized, it's caution that's the problem. The not knowing, trying to be as anodyne as possible in some ways.

Mehdi Hasan: 100%. And also trying to cling to this mythical imaginary center which no longer exists. You saw that with the NBC decision to try and get Ronna McDaniel because we have to have a Republican. We have to have someone close to the Trump camp going into an election, not understanding that, A, that's not where the American public is on someone like Ronna McDaniel, but B, journalism doesn't allow you to hire someone like Ronna McDaniel. And if you are truly journalists, and of course, some of these decisions, Cara, you know better than me, are not made by journalists, of course. So there you're in situations where somebody there thought it was a bright idea to bring on board this person who is fundamentally anti-democratic, has smeared the media, et cetera, as a kind of analyst to provide the content. And that was a disaster. But I think that was driven by this desperation to be somewhere in this imaginary middle, this bullshit, you know, view from nowhere bullshit stuff.

Kara Swisher: Sure, but I do think there is a longing for not partisanship, right? I do think, like, you can have, I mean, I was just watching Kamala Harris just talk, and she was doing something that's very difficult, which is threading this needle, right? Like, we support Israel, and yet they're brutal, and yet the people in Palestine are suffering, and yet, you know, the Hamas is terrible. I mean, I think one of the things is everyone feels that they have to take sides all the time. Correct? Like this idea, or not? Maybe you don't think that.

Mehdi Hasan: Well, I actually think we should take sides, but I don't think the side should be D or R or Israel or Palestine. I think the side should be, sorry to sound cliche, truth, facts, historical context. I think we should, you know, I've said this for a while, that journalists have skin in the game. We are not disinterested observers as democracy is under fire. There is no democracy without journalism and vice versa. So I think we should take sides in certain things. We should be calling out objectively true things that are in front of our eyes, not hiding from the consequences of that. And I think, you know, I was at MSNBC and I grilled people like Jen Psaki, good friend of mine when she was White House press secretary, Ron Klain and others. I think that's where the respective journalists could think a bit more about partisanship, which is how about doing tougher interviews? How about holding people to account without fear or favor? I think that would help us more than this idea of, well, are you pro-Democrat or pro-Republican? I mean, look, clearly I don't want Donald Trump to win the next election, but I don't consider myself a Democrat or a card-carrying Democrat of any kind. I'm very critical of the Democratic Party.

Kara Swisher: Is there an editorial point of view for Zateo?

Mehdi Hasan: That's a good question. I think there is. I don't know how I would define it because, of course, people will say to me, well, your definition of truth is not mine to get into a kind of a Kellyanne Conway. I wouldn't see a, you know, a Netanyahu rocks piece on Zateo, would I?

Kara Swisher: Correct.

Mehdi Hasan: No, you wouldn't see a Netanyahu rocks piece on Zateo. I don't think you'd see a Netanyahu rocks piece on many media platforms. Thankfully these days.

Kara Swisher: I get that. But I take your point.

Mehdi Hasan: No, look, clearly if we're going to take the Middle Eastern situation, we are coming in from a perspective of trying to cover the situation of the Palestinian people who have been occupied for decades and deserve freedom and are suffering what I consider to be a genocide right now. But then again, Cara, how do you compare that to, for example, American mainstream media coverage of Ukraine, where we all took a side and no one was disinterested on Ukraine? I think any sane person could look at the coverage in 2022, the wall-to-wall coverage, and it wasn't anything other than, rah, rah, rah, we must stand with the Ukrainian people, which I don't disagree with. I think we should stand with occupied peoples. So I think it's kind of easy to say, well, Israel-Palestine, we must take a middle ground. Funny we don't apply that to other conflicts.

Kara Swisher: Right. That's a fair point. That's a fair point. Well, we do sometimes. It just depends on the conflict, right? This particular conflict is very fraught, I would say, compared to that one, right? It's Putin.

Mehdi Hasan: I think there are similar issues with Israel-Palestine that there are to Donald Trump, which is there is a particular side involved in some of these conflicts which is trying to play the refs, which is us. And I think the media failed miserably in both cases in standing up to the pressure that's applied to them by one side in this quote-unquote conflict.

Kara Swisher: So you feel you're more free to do things. Although I do think at MSNBC, you had some tough interviews. I don't feel like you were...

Mehdi Hasan: No, I'm very grateful to MSNBC for the freedom they did offer me during my first few years there. And I did get to do a lot. And I'm sure they weren't always comfortable with some of the interviews that I did. But yes, I do appreciate that platform. But look, right now, there's no sense. A, it's not just that I'm free of MSNBC. It's without it sounding like a megalomania, I'm also the boss, which is kind of cool.

Kara Swisher: And how's that going from a business point of view?

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, that, the business point of view is the part where I don't like being the boss. I wish someone would take that over from me, which may happen soon. But I think the bigger issue is editorially, it is this idea that we can say, all right, somebody comes to a pitch, we're doing it. I don't have to run it up a chain. I don't have to check with the standards department. I don't have to, you know, I'll get a lawyer involved if it's legally questionable.

Kara Swisher: I used to have like a penis lead and I'd be like, Kara Swisher thinks it's a good idea as the editor. And then Kara Swisher, the writer, just wrote it. It was great. Yeah, wear different hats. It's the best way to think, coming in from all angles. But business, get back to business. You moved that along very quickly. How's that going?

Mehdi Hasan: The business stuff is tricky. I'm getting used to all... It's funny, I was talking to someone earlier about all the rules and regulations. They said, oh, you're already becoming a right-wing capitalist. I said, no, no, I have no problem paying the taxes I have to pay and follow. It's just a general act of form-filling and dealing with the paperwork. That is not something I enjoy.

Kara Swisher: Beyond the paperwork, is it you getting a lot of a pickup of subscriptions and different things? Is there something that surprised you?

Mehdi Hasan: So we just had a very good week where we are fast approaching, and I'm going to say it, we don't normally give our paid numbers, but I'm very pleased to say we're fast approaching 30,000 paid subs four months in because we just had a very big push of our new documentary. We've commissioned an original documentary made by Basement Films in the UK, Emmy award winning Oscar nominated filmmakers who went out to Israel and made a film about, you know, you've seen those soldiers, Cara, on TikTok and Instagram posting crazy shit from inside of Gaza, wearing women's lingerie and blowing up houses and stealing kids toys. We actually got some of those soldiers to talk to us, and it's a film about the move of Israeli society to the far right through the prism of these soldiers' videos going viral. It's a fascinating film. I urge some of your listeners to watch it. But that's given us a big push. We've been marketing that a lot, and that's brought in a lot of new paid subs. So we're doing very well for months. We're very pleased where we are. We've got over 225,000 subscribers globally, of which nearly 30,000 are paid. So we're in a good place.

Kara Swisher: And you've got to think of other revenue streams, right? No merch yet?

Mehdi Hasan: Yes, we do. We've done a couple of events. We're enjoying doing public events. We did a fun live taping of the podcast, We're Not Kidding, recently in D.C. We've got plans for one more big public event, hopefully before the election. So that's a bit of fun as well, and hopefully some revenue raising.

Kara Swisher: Well, good. Well, good. Well, good luck. I've always loved doing it, and it's a pleasure to run your own business. It really is, ultimately. And you'll figure it out along the way.

Mehdi Hasan: It is indeed. And thank you for being there at the launch.

Kara Swisher: You'll figure out what doesn't work, actually, and what doesn't.

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, that's an ongoing process.

Kara Swisher: How to move quickly away from it. And you'll be surprised by things that do work. That's the thing. But it's all part of the same thing, I think. As long as you have great product, that's my feeling always. Anyway, we've got a lot to get to today, including speaking of a business that's not doing very well. Latest numbers from Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery reveal about the future of cable. You may be glad to be out of there, Matty. And what new polls are telling us about the presidential race. Plus, our friend of Pivot is Anthony Scaramucci, former White House communications director under Donald Trump and the founder of the managing partner of Skybridge Capital. I sent Maddie a note yesterday saying, we should have a guess. We don't have a guess. And you put it on the list. And I said, oh, I'll get the mooch. But first, a follow up to last week's story about ex-suing advertisers for antitrust. The Global Alliance for Responsible Media Initiative will discontinue following the lawsuit. The group said, well, it's confident the outcome will show no wrongdoing as a nonprofit with limited resources. It cannot continue to operate while fighting in court. GARM, it's called, is a group that has provided common definitions around things like hate speech, brand safety and misinformation. I have a different take on this but I love your take. Has Elon done real lasting damage with this silly lawsuit?

Mehdi Hasan: I think he's doing damage across the board, Cara, in the sense of the litigiousness from the great free speech champion where anyone he doesn't like, he did this to Media Matters for America, which is going on right now. They've had to lay off a bunch of people. This is a liberal media watchdog group, MMFA. And he didn't like what they said about his advertising. He said they were trying to ruin him. I can't remember what it was, fraud, whatever it was he accused them of. And he sued them in a Texas court. He's got a favorite judge. And now he's going after these advertisers. I don't know if you saw the Daily Show parody of this, which was hilarious, of Linda Iaccarino's video of like, you must, we're going to make you.

Kara Swisher: Yes, Desi lighting.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah. And this idea, first of all, as usual, everything he does is so beyond parody. This idea that you put your CEO up to say, you must advertise with us or we will destroy you. And now he's literally trying to destroy them. And at the end of the day, we can laugh at Elon Musk, but ultimately everything he does, even the dumb, weird, hilarious stuff, he's still the richest man in the world. So he's able to make a difference while doing that dumb, hilarious, bizarre stuff. And that's what the GARM folks are saying, right, is that we don't think we did anything wrong, but we can't afford to go up against this guy.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, what's interesting, though, is they had kept this little group sequestered away from the organization at large. And so there's very little exposure for them financially, from what I understand, except for paying for lawyers, right? And the other part is that I think it brings out how ridiculous—I think it hasn't helped him. A lot of advertisers were like, it's fine if that goes away, but now we hate him even more. Like, we're not, we're really not. Like, he looks like a horse's ass. And so Linda Giaccarino looks like a ridiculous, unctuous toady that she has become and is.

Mehdi Hasan: It was slightly hostage video-esque.

Kara Swisher: It was, but come on, let's give her responsibility for her ridiculous behavior.

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, 100%. I'm not one of these people who says, yeah, she went there, eyes wide open.

Kara Swisher: It did look, I called it a hostage video and people thought I was like positive towards her. I'm like, I think she's an idiot.

Mehdi Hasan: No, I agree. And people say that about Melania too, right, Cara? Oh, it's a hostage video.

Kara Swisher: No, Melania Trump knows what she's doing and Linda Gaccarino knows what she's doing. Although I do enjoy her not holding his hand. That's a little moment that's good with me. This was Trump, not Linda. So one of the things I think that it will do is it's made advertisers more determined than ever not to advertise. And they don't have to organize to do that. They just don't like this behavior. They don't want to be part of it. It has no efficacy. He's always suing someone. He's gone back and forth on suing different people. He's lost several times, by the way.

Mehdi Hasan: It's a very Trumpy move, right?

Kara Swisher: Of course it is.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah, it's like, I'm not going to pay my bills, come sue me kind of thing.

Kara Swisher: Speaking of which, a former Twitter board member who I know very well actually is suing the company claiming Elon refused to cash out over million in shares. Omid Kordesani received most of his compensation in stock, which is supposed to be paid out within five days of Musk closing the deal to buy Twitter. Kordesani is hardly the first to sue. Twitter's former CEO, CFO, and top lawyers have also sued for unpaid compensation. So have regular people. They haven't been getting the severance that was owed to them. And Omid is, he's a lovely guy. I don't know what else to say. He really is. It's not, this is, I was surprised. I texted him. I'm like, you're suing, like, he has so much money from Google and everything else. I guess it's a principal thing? And I just think he's fucking irritated, right? It's his money. That's a lot of money, right? And he's not one of these people who sticks his head up above the crowd. So I was like, huh, he's suing. That's bad. Like, he's one of these guys who might let it go. Like, whatever. But I think they're all irritated. And I think Elon doesn't want to pay them because they made him buy the company. They forced him into buying it as he promised.

Mehdi Hasan: You know, he's got a lot of lawsuits in this area, like a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot. He's also got, I don't know if you've seen, Cara, the former Scottish first minister Hamza Yusuf threatening to sue him, right? He's still fighting with everybody there. And by the way, also his daughter Vivian, and she's doing an amazing job over on Threads making the case against him. My god, she's, you know, I hate to even say this, but he this what used to be a little bit of a sense of humor, she's so witty and so funny. And so just in the moment of knowing how to communicate on these platforms, she's enormously talented in that regard. Clearly in a way that he's not.

Kara Swisher: He's not. He's not, exactly. He's such a clod now. But she's really putting through very strong messaging about his behavior and in a way that doesn't feel like a child scorned. I don't know what else to say. She's just making the case. She really, truly is.

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, and some of that case, Cara, is fascinating. You think you've heard everything about Elon Musk, all the stuff that's come out. And then she's saying, oh, by the way, he thinks Arabic is the language of the enemy. And I'm like, oh, hmm, okay. And then you look at all the Islamophobic stuff he's been pushing in recent days in relation to the UK and the riots there, and you're like, that makes sense.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, exactly. She really is a very good, you know, there's something called an unreliable narrator. She's a reliable narrator. And I'm curious when he starts going at her, but maybe has not so far. Apparently, you know, and Grimes of course is fighting him in court over the other kids, some other kids they have. He's facing courtroom drama everywhere. And Vivian just went after Walter Isaacson for the depiction of her. I had done one of the few tough interviews on Walter about the shoddiness of some of that reporting in that book. And she just went after him. Although very kindly said, please don't attack him personally. I just, he never called me, right? That kind of thing, like to talk to me about this. Anyway, kudos to Vivian. Before we tape this, by the way, tonight, Elon and Trump are going to talk tonight. How do you think that's going to go?

Mehdi Hasan: Interview?

Kara Swisher: Yeah, interview, whatever. Yeah, interview.

Mehdi Hasan: I've been using that term. Can you imagine what that's going to be like? I mean, could be bad for Trump. Trump will say something terrible, don't you think?

Kara Swisher: I'm like trying to decide if he'll call or... I mean, for years now, I've been comparing Musk and Trump. And it'll be interesting to see them side by side. Who will be the more offensive, the more narcissistic, the more unselfaware, the more bigoted, the more hilarious, hilariously bad. I'll be fast.

Mehdi Hasan: I don't know, to be honest, anymore. I honestly think one of them will say a very bad thing. And it probably will be Trump, right? And it will be bad for Trump in general. Because he can't, apparently behind the scenes, the New York Times was reporting he was calling Kamala Harris a bitch. Something's coming out of his mouth tonight.

Kara Swisher: He would never use such language, Cara Houdet.

Mehdi Hasan: I don't know if you saw Elon Musk's interview with Jordan Peterson, where there's a great moment where Peterson starts ranting about something and Musk looks noticeably uncomfortable. He's like, oh, wow, there's a guy who's so extreme, even Musk feels like he's gone too far. So maybe there's a moment like that with Trump.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, he suddenly becomes cogent again after all those years. But speaking of Trump, the former president of Trump's campaign says it's been hacked. Politico reported it received emails from an anonymous account with documents from inside Trump's campaign operation. Trump campaign spokesperson blamed, quote, foreign sources hostile to the United States. Oh, really? You're kidding. Among the documents Politico received was a research dossier on J.D. Vance, along with legal documents and internal campaign discussions. A lot of it was public information. It's really interesting. This is coming to bite them after the Hillary email debacle of 2016.

Mehdi Hasan: It's interesting that Politico had this since July, Cara, and, you know, a lot of liberals are very unhappy with Politico and pointing out, quote unquote, the double standard. Obviously, things have changed a lot since then. People are taking, media organizations are taking hacks and foreign government interference in US elections much more seriously, given everything we've seen. But, you know, you can't blame a lot of liberals for being upset about the fact that Politico were all over the John Podesta emails back in 2016. And now when they reported this out, they reported it out as their summaries and paraphrasing of what they have. But they're not showing us screenshots of the J.D. Vance dossier. Like the Sony hack? What do you think of that? Do you think they should?

Kara Swisher: I, you know, this is, look, this is my feeling. I don't mind, you know, right now the Democrats are being accused of using the term weird and, you know, you know, when they go low, we go low, that kind of thing. I think that's perfectly fine. Like, we don't have to be nice to them. I do think a lot of this hacking is done to hurt our entire country and that we should call like we should be following up on these things. What drove me crazy was the Republicans pretending this wasn't happening, right? That it wasn't, you know, not caring that it was happening when it benefited them, and then when it's hurting them, being all, you know, righteous about it. I don't love this idea of foreign powers hacking things. That said, these campaigns are probably porous as all get out, and that surprises me that it was so easy to get in there.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah, that's a big question about their security on their campaign. I also think, you know, it wasn't just John Podesta. Let's just remind everyone listening. It was the Hunter Biden laptop. Remember that? The cover-up. There are people today who tell me, you know, Vivek Ramaswamy and others who will swear that the real election interference, the real rigging of the election was the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop. Had that come out, Donald Trump would have won. So there's a lot of hypocrisy and double standards going on.

Kara Swisher: Agreed. Agreed. I don't love a foreign body doing this, but I'm not in any way surprised. Do we know it's a foreign body? Do we even know it's a hack?

Mehdi Hasan: I'll be honest with you, Cara. I don't know. I don't trust anything the Trump campaign say on face. So I want to see much more. I mean, I'm still waiting for the medical records from that shooting of his ear.

Kara Swisher: I see your point. I get your point. I accept your point. I think it's really, I've always thought they're always hacking, right? Someone was like, you can't prove they're hacking. I'm like, they're always hacking. We're hacking. Stop it. And this is the field of play in 2024. But yes, I agree. Their hypocrisy is massive. It's a massive hypocrisy. That all it is. We'll see what happens. And they should investigate these things. I think Iran, Russia, and China are all up in our grill everywhere across our country. And so, and as you say, vice versa, it's the game.

Mehdi Hasan: That is correct.

Kara Swisher: I think they're doing quite a good job of it, though. And it's worrisome. But even very people I really respect are like, this is another worrisome example of the same thing. OK, let's get to our first big story. It's being called Cablepocalypse. I think I pronounce that right. Warner Brothers Discovery announced a $9 billion write-down on its TV networks last week, while Paramount Global reported a $6 billion write-down of its cable TV business. Might as well write it down. Start from fresh. Parliament also said it's cutting 15% of its U.S. workforce in an attempt to trim $500 million ahead of a merger with Skydance Media. Again, not a surprise. This happens when we need to clean things up ahead of a sale. But Warner Brothers Discovery and Paramount did show signs of improvement in streaming in their latest earnings. Disney also shared its streaming service was profitable for the first time. They're moving towards profitability. But these are high cost businesses that take a while to get there as they try to sort of work it out. Mehdi, as someone who was on cable TV and is now streaming as part of your new venture, how are your thoughts?

Kara Swisher: Now, you don't have all these costs, you don't have everything else, but talk a little bit about this.

Mehdi Hasan: So I'm not of the school of thought that says, you know, when I left MSNBC and launched Zeteo, one of the things I was tempted to do was the kind of Tucker Carlson approach, which was "corporate media is dead, join us." And I'm like, A, I don't think that's a wise PR strategy. But yeah, I don't think it's true.

Kara Swisher: Right.

Mehdi Hasan: There's a lot of people on the left who want to wishcast and say corporate media is dead. Cable news is dead. Maybe in a few years. Not right now. I'm not one of those people who thinks it's about to die. Clearly, it's suffering. I was at MSNBC for three years. We all know about the obsession with ratings. We all know what's happened to the numbers, both Trump related and generally structurally over the course of time. I always found it fascinating, Kara, how many members of my team, how many producers on my own team, people in their 20s, didn't have cable, but were working at a cable news company. I always thought that was a fascinating disconnect, that the people who are making cable news don't have a cable news subscription.

Kara Swisher: That's when I got out of newspapers. That's exactly the same thing. I don't read a newspaper. I'm going to do something on digital. Indeed.

Mehdi Hasan: And that's the problem. But look, people are living longer, right? We have a lot of old people in this country who aren't going anywhere anytime soon. And I think Axios in their reporting on this story mentioned, I think they estimated 50 million. As long as there's 50 million paying customers still, that's enough. And there's a loyal cadre of kind of old white people, basically old white men, who are watching cable, especially cable news. That's enough to get by. And obviously, as long as you have sports, as long as you have ESPN and the sports rights, that's going to continue. So it's not dying tomorrow, next week, next month. Clearly, it's on a negative trend and in a decline. And to be fair, people at these companies, from my experience, do take this stuff seriously. You saw that with Peacock at NBC. You've seen it with CNN's failed attempts at streaming. I guess the time is not on their side. People want results straight away.

Kara Swisher: I think it's, look, these will get to profitability at some point because this is where people are going, right? But not tomorrow. It's just a different way of watching. And it's very costly. And so they're competing with giants like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, who have tons of money. And it doesn't matter if they make money. They have the ability to invest now. You see Disney moving towards profitability. Eventually it will. They've just got to get there. One of the things, when I have a contract with CNN, as you know, I was talking to someone there and I said, your issue is just costs are not in line with revenues. And if you understand if revenues are in line with costs, you're fine. I know I sound like an idiot here. One plus one equals two. But you can't pay anchors $20 million anymore unless they can bring back $40 million. Right. I don't understand the economics of it. And I don't think you all do. You can't make a link. And I know as a new media company, I'm much scaled back, but I still run one. But I know exactly how much I'm worth because I know how much I make. And that's one of the refreshing parts of running your own little company, correct? You know what you're worth. You're much more concerned about your costs. You're much more cognizant of future revenue opportunities, as we discussed earlier.

Mehdi Hasan: As someone who worked in cable but didn't make $20 million a year, I can agree that there is a disconnect between some of the salaries and some of the expenditures and what you get back for it, both at a micro level on a day-to-day kind of costing of how much you spend on a show or on guests or whatever it is, and how much you spend, as you say, on talent and on the industry. So yeah, I 100% agree with this as a cost issue. But look, long term, if people are cutting the cord, and people are cutting the cord, you're going to have to compete, as you say, with the Netflixes. They also have the first mover advantage, right? You can see that. I was there when we launched News MSNBC on Peacock. People who've already been there and doing it have an advantage. They just have an organic relationship with the market, with the audience, with the technology that some of us clunkier folks coming to it later did not. And I think as you say, they will get profitable. It takes time. People don't have time, right? A lot of these people who are making the decisions, Kara, they are in musical chairs in corporate land. They also, I hate to say it, older. They don't consume like that.

Kara Swisher: And that's what's fascinating to me. Years ago when I said streaming is where it's going, it's going to be really costly, valley of death situation, just like it is with cars or anything else, like electric cars or whatever. And when you have those costs, to not do it was disastrous. Because you could see the fall off in broadcast network advertising and everything else. And that's done. That's pretty much done. But to me, you're either smaller like yourself or stuff I've done, or you're quite big and rich like the Apples and Amazons. And one thing that was sort of a bright light and I thought they did a great job was NBC during these Olympics. I thought the Peacock stuff was superb. Like superb. Like well done. It made sense on every level. It was valuable. It was a product people liked. Obviously, the Olympics were a lot of fun for people. Not for Republicans, but yes.

Mehdi Hasan: Not for Republicans.

Kara Swisher: But it was good fun. It was good stuff.

Mehdi Hasan: No, it's a true water cooler moment, right? The Olympics are very rare moments in our partisan polarized world where everything is political, where people aren't able to come together at the water cooler or wherever it is to talk about Simone Biles or whoever it is.

Kara Swisher: But they did it. They did it with the streaming service. I watched wall climbing one night all night. They've made a ton of money. Ratings are 79 percent, some crazy amount. But a lot of it is on Peacock, which, you having been at Peacock, it was sort of like, who's on Peacock? I think this gives them a real shot in the arm to show people what they can do.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah, and the sports rights that they handled at Peacock, the World Cup, the Olympics, etc. That was always a big advantage. News was always more problematic for them because, again, they couldn't work out who wants to do appointment-to-view programming on that streaming network. And that was always a problem where they ended up cancelling all of the Peacock shows. I was the last man standing up until November 2023. Colleagues of mine who had launched shows on that, all those shows went away. And they realised that's not where they want to invest their money.

Kara Swisher: And look, will they revisit that in the future as they move away from cable? Who knows? The original plan, I guess, was to go, you know, that goes there and this goes there and they meet in the middle. That meet in the middle hasn't happened. Is there room for news in there? Do you think in any way? Because you said you're the last man standing.

Mehdi Hasan: I think there is, but I think you've got to find the right way to do it. You made a good point earlier, which is the people who are producing the stuff are not consuming it, right? So there's a disconnect. So unless you have a 22-year-old executive running the news division on Peacock, you're going to struggle. And I don't think even the 22-year-olds quite have figured out how to do it. At Zeteo right now, I've got a team of people who are all ages. I've got people out of university. I've got people who are in their 40s and 50s. And we're still experimenting. And sometimes there's no rhyme or reason on this stuff. What works, what doesn't work. And we're almost working backwards sometimes, reverse engineering.

Kara Swisher: What have you found has worked? YouTube is my guess.

Mehdi Hasan: I think experimentation is the only way forward. And this goes back to our earlier conversation, Kara, which is the people who run this stuff are super cautious. They're not fans of experimentation. If they do experiment, they're not Chinese Communist Party experimenters, right? They're not doing five-year, 10-year plans. They want it by the next advertising revenue window, the next profits announcement. And that's a problem.

Kara Swisher: Is there any traditional media company or network you think is doing a good job?

Mehdi Hasan: The BBC is so big and has had so much time that they've been able to plant their flags on various patches of soil. In the UK, the iPlayer, when I was there, and I haven't lived in the UK for nearly eight, nine years, but the iPlayer was a revolutionary thing where you could watch all the BBC content on one website using your same kind of access that you had to the TV services. And they use a lot of that money to invest in wonderful drama. So in that sense, online technology-wise, the BBC has been able to use its sheer size and experience to do very well. But in terms of winning on TikTok, Instagram, no, I don't think anyone is really doing that well because no one's really doing it organically. They're all doing it in a very kind of linear manner.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, I'm not sure that's winning. That's not a business necessarily. It's marketing to me, but we'll see. All right, Mehdi, let's go on a quick break. When we come back, Donald Trump falsely claims photos of Kamala Harris rallies are AI generated. I don't think he knows what AI is. We'll speak with a friend of Pivot, Anthony Scaramucci, after that.

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Kara Swisher: Mehdi, we're back. Vice President Kamala Harris is leading former President Donald Trump in battleground states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to the latest New York Times Siena poll. The poll also shows voters prefer Trump on the economy and immigration still, but go for Harris on democracy and abortion rights. Not a surprise on either thing. She's polling closely in some other states. I think just today, North Carolina, Nevada, she's polling closely. And do you think these poll numbers reflect Kamala Harris's honeymoon period? Or it seems like a very long honeymoon here. The Financial Times also has a new poll with Harris beating Trump on the economy by a razor thin margin of one percentage point. But all signs point to directionally, she's got the mo.

Mehdi Hasan: She has got the mo. And the economy number is possibly the most fascinating because that's the one Joe Biden could not budge for months on end, even when amazing economic numbers were coming in on jobs and growth and all of the rest, small business investment. He just could not shift that number. People were insistent that the economy was doing badly, that we were in a recession, even as we were growing faster than other G7 countries. So that's fascinating. It's also a reminder that people don't tell pollsters what they, you know, they don't look at their little pocket books and do the calculations and then give an answer to the pollster. It's vibes. Those of us who talked about vibes, I think have been vindicated here. And Kamala has the vibe right now because she's not Joe Biden and she's not Donald Trump, right? Nikki Haley said something very wise. I'll say this only once, then I'll take a shower. Nikki Haley said something very wise a few months ago. She said, "People are desperate for an alternative to Trump and Biden. Whichever party decides to give them an alternative to Trump or Biden will win." Right now, I'm not saying Kamala Harris will win. I don't make predictions like that anymore. But clearly she is in that pole position right now because people were desperate for an alternative to these two old dudes who they'd seen before and didn't want to run again. So that's why it's more than just a honeymoon, because as long as she's not Biden, she continues to enjoy that bump.

Kara Swisher: Right. And I don't get this honeymoon thing. I don't think there's enough time to not have a honeymoon. You know what I mean? It's like you're already into September. She's going to have some mo after the momentum after the Democratic convention, clearly, especially if it's good, which I think it's going to be good TV. That's my guess. They'll probably pull out a star or two. Simone Biles will leap on the stage and introduce her, whatever. They'll do something fantastic.

Mehdi Hasan: No, but come on. But Simone Biles can't match Kid Rock.

Kara Swisher: That's not fair, Cara. That's not fair.

Mehdi Hasan: But look, what I would say about the honeymoon thing is I went on, I did a, I was on Pod Save America live show the day after the debate, the infamous debate. And I went there very worried that the kind of Biden fans in the audience would boo me when I said he should step aside. It was a disastrous debate. They didn't boo. They all got it and understood that he needs to step aside. And one thing I said at the time was, if you put in a new candidate, Americans will love that person. Because why? Americans love new shit. It's not about honeymoons. They just like new products. And the idea of having Kamala Harris as someone new, someone different, automatically you get that bump. And with someone who's also a history-making candidate, first woman president, first black woman president, it's huge. It gives Democrats, liberals, and non-political folks something to rally around, something to talk about, something to feel excited about. Those rallies are astonishing. I predicted a lot of things to do with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and Tim Walz. I did not predict this kind of Obama effect, "Oh wait, rally starts." It's been phenomenal.

Kara Swisher: Why do you think that is?

Mehdi Hasan: Again, I think it is, A, the energy, the pent-up energy that comes from people who thought they were in a wake, but now are at a party, right? The Democratic base was convinced after that debate, we're heading for a landslide defeat at the hands of Donald J. Trump, now thinking, wow, we can win this, and we can win this with this candidate, a woman. I think Democrats have long wanted to be able to say, we can get a woman president in this country. There's a lot of 2016 Hillary Clinton unresolved issues where she won the popular vote, but of course lost in the Electoral College. And I just think the Walz pick, which I was advocating for, is a great pick. The man brings huge energy, likability to the campaign. And Donald Trump has picked the worst possible running mate since Sarah Palin, which hasn't helped him either. So I think the stars are aligned for the Democrats right now. I'm not going to go further than that. It's still a very, very long time till the election. We talked about October surprises in the past. I wouldn't put anything past this Republican Party in terms of them throwing the kitchen sink at Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. So let's see. But clearly the momentum is with Harris and those rallies are pissing off Donald Trump, which in and of itself makes me laugh.

Kara Swisher: I note your caution. Tell me about your caution. That's interesting. You're like, who knows what they're going to do? You just don't want to hope, right? Is that correct?

Mehdi Hasan: No, no. I always hope. I'm a hopeful person. I'm not optimistic. There's a difference between optimism and hope. I'm a very pessimistic person, but I keep hope alive inside. Look, I know this Republican Party is ruthless in a way that the Democratic Party is not. I know that there are tens of millions of people in this country who will vote for Donald Trump no matter what. I know that there are millions of people who are probably telling pollsters that they're going to vote for Kamala Harris, who may not, right? We've had the shy Republican effect before. Polls tend to understate Donald Trump's support, which was so ironic because when Joe Biden was going around in the summer saying, being a poll denier, saying, "I'm doing really well. The polls are understating my support." Actually, it's the reverse. Democratic candidates tend to get higher polling than they get on election day in recent years. So that's why I'm worried about all these things. I think America still contains a lot of racism and a lot of misogyny and a lot of people who just won't cast their ballots for Harris. But I also have hope that the majority will, or at least the plurality will, that gets her across the electoral college. Look, he was shot, Kara, a few weeks ago. And that's not even a news story in our cycle. That's not a liberal anti-Trump conspiracy. That's just testament to the news cycle is insane right now. We couldn't have predicted where we were a month ago.

Kara Swisher: I think it's interesting. I think she's a lot more appealing than you think.

Mehdi Hasan: I agree.

Kara Swisher: She's not quite as offensive once you see her, right? That's the thing. And I have a lot of conservative people that are like, oh, she's okay. And I was always saying that. I'm like, you think she's really liberal? I know her from San Francisco. She's not that liberal for San Francisco. Or do you think her laugh is going to cost her the election?

Mehdi Hasan: No, people quite like a human being.

Kara Swisher: No, people like it now because people want to laugh, right? And they've made it into something delightful. All these things...

Mehdi Hasan: Joy, Kara. The word joy keeps popping up.

Kara Swisher: I know they keep putting it out. I'm not sure that it's joy. I think she's just a lot of fun. And if you know her, actually, she is a lot of fun. And it didn't get through because she had that prosecutorial lady thing going on too, which I think a lot of people repel some types of people, not me.

Mehdi Hasan: I think it's even more basic than that. It became one of these kind of almost meme things on the internet, which got destroyed very quickly. For several years, I would meet people who are not political at all. And they would say, "Oh, it can't be Biden. Can it, Mehdi? You follow this stuff. Who's it going to be?" And I'd say, "It'll be Kamala Harris." "No, no, no, it can't be Kamala Harris. She's useless. Nobody likes her." And it became a thing where everyone just told themselves, nobody likes her. Nobody likes her. On the basis of nothing. And when I wrote the piece for The Guardian early July saying Biden should step aside for Harris, I got so much hate from that, even from liberals saying, "Don't be silly. Can't be Kamala. Kamala Harris can't win in Pennsylvania. She can't win with white working class people. She needs Josh Shapiro on the ticket. Otherwise, no." Actually, the latest poll shows she's leading in Pennsylvania.

Kara Swisher: Can I ask you what you think of Walz very quickly?

Mehdi Hasan: I'm a huge Walz fan. I got Walz pilled very early on. I wrote a piece making the case for Walz. I was one of the people demanding they pick Walz, not Shapiro, because I do think he has got that everyman appeal. He's America's fun uncle.

Kara Swisher: Were you surprised?

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, super surprised. I woke up that day stunned because I thought the Democrats are going to screw this up. They're not going to go with the obvious right guy for this moment. But actually, again, that's what's impressive about Harris. They do seem to listen. The Harris campaign, I don't know if you saw last week on Wednesday, she was heckled in Michigan by pro-Palestine protesters. She did a great job, and she shut them down. A lot of us criticized her that wasn't the right way to do it. And then by Friday, when she got heckled again in Arizona, she did a much more empathetic and smarter response. And I just feel like, okay, these are people, not just her campaign, who are listening, absorbing, adapting. The Biden campaign problem was it was super stubborn, right? They refused to budge on anything.

Kara Swisher: No, the surrogate response every moment of the day is so fast right now. It's crazy. And Biden was glacial. I don't know what else to say. Like you have Pete Buttigieg out there with a hysterical comment in seconds or whoever's doing their social media is quite fast on everything, in a way that I haven't seen. And clever, not just fast. The "drill" press release was very clever.

Mehdi Hasan: Yes, all of them are really good.

Kara Swisher: I will see if it matters, but I do think it does. It creates a sort of positivity around someone. But speaking of negativity, though, we've seen Donald Trump in the far right try all sorts of attacks and conspiracy theories on Harris. Most recent is Trump falsely claiming photos and videos of crowded rallies are AI generated. Is it all just desperate fumbling? Ezra Klein has a line in his latest piece, "Trump is starved for the resource he craves the most, attention." There's also what I call shameless sexism direct from some members of the media. That was a Kathleen Parker piece that was over the weekend, "Without her beauty, Harris might be joining Biden in retirement." I literally don't know what to say about that piece, except that it's heinous. Kathleen Parker, who said, "Don't worry, Trump will be fine" on the eve of the 2016 election. In any case, heinous. Can you talk about this AI thing? It's kind of insane. He seems insane at this point.

Mehdi Hasan: So I think that's something we haven't discussed while discussing Harris and her appeal, which is let's not forget the Republicans did a fantastic job, Kara, a fantastic job of making the election about Biden's age and mental competence, right? Not just with the doctored videos, but with the reaction to the debate where he truly was, to people like me who had been defending him, "Whoa, he's not all there." They did a very good job of making it about age and mental health. The problem is they never thought it through because the moment Biden stepped aside, they realized, "Oh, shit, we've gone too far. He's actually now they're going to get rid of him." I thought they, when they got rid of him automatically, Trump becomes the old mentally incompetent person in the race and Harris automatically benefits from that. And you see that in the polling now. A lot of polls are now saying, "Well, does Trump have the energy, age, vigor to compete?" And Trump's not helping himself by being as insane as he's ever been and also disappearing. He's phoning in interviews to Fox while Harris is doing rallies with 10,000 people. Everything is coming back to haunt them now, all of those attack lines. And he doesn't have any good attack lines on Harris. All of his campaign was built around attacking Joe Biden. Even now he's attacking Joe Biden while Joe Biden's no longer running.

Kara Swisher: Why doesn't he have good attack lines? There are good attack lines, right? There are.

Mehdi Hasan: Well, he's got some racist stuff, obviously. He already is kind of making fun of her name.

Kara Swisher: What are the good attack lines right now? I'm not sure what the obvious ones are.

Mehdi Hasan: Trying to tie her to the economy. The polling shows that the public are willing to give Kamala Harris the benefit of the doubt on inflation and say she's not responsible for stuff Biden did. Rightly or wrongly, that's what the polling suggests, that she gets a fresh start. He, yeah, they are flailing. Do you remember when Walz was announced, Kara? Trump put out a statement saying, "With Walz, there'll be hell on earth." Have you seen the guy? He's kissing piglets in his arms, right? Nobody believes that Tim Walz is going to produce hell on earth. So they're kind of always going to max 10 nonsense. Doesn't work on these two candidates right now. The AI stuff, I would love a reporter to ask Donald Trump, "Can you define what AI is?" And by the way, we laugh about this shit and it's the same thing with Elon Musk. What pisses me off about our media is we can't just laugh about it. We need to hold them to account for it. There needs to be consequences for saying mad shit.

Kara Swisher: Although I don't agree with you. I think laughing matters a lot to nothing at these people. I can laugh but also say to a bunch of Republican proxies, "What the hell are you doing working for a man who thinks that crowds aren't real? How can we trust him with the nuclear..."

Mehdi Hasan: Well, I mean, look, add to the list of crazy. That's what they do. If you have so much crazy, which crazy do you want to look at? Flood the zone with shit, as Steve Bannon would. So they're sending in Senator J.D. Vance. He's been leading the charge on the stolen valor claims against Governor Walz. The Harris campaign says false stolen valor. I agree. He misspoke in 2018 when he gave the impression he served in combat. Vance also did several interviews on Sunday, each of which was more strange than the other, where he continued to call Democrats anti, defended Donald Trump's abortion policies, refused to acknowledge that Kamala Harris is black. I think this military thing is not working, obviously, and seems untoward and gross. Although you never know, if you keep at it, sometimes it gets in people's brains.

Kara Swisher: Yeah, John Kerry knows about that.

Mehdi Hasan: Yeah.

Kara Swisher: Someone was making the point to me that that was at the center of his campaign, by the way, his military service. This is not at the center of this guy's campaign. And he's also the vice president. But he's doing everything. He's sort of playing the Bob Dole character, if you recall. Unlikable. Does it work?

Kara Swisher: Because he's broadly viewed as unfavorable by independent voters across the ballot. He has a creepy, he has a lukewarm support from Republican voters. Zeteo recently published a piece on Peter Thiel and his role in creating J.D. Vance's We Know It Today. Talk a little bit about him, because sometimes attack dogs do work, even if they're icky, right, or creepy in this case.

Mehdi Hasan: I think the problem with Vance's attack dog is he doesn't believe anything he says. I think Pete Buttigieg, who you mentioned a moment ago, has been very good at tearing apart J.D. Vance as a fraud that he is, that he grew up going to Harvard and Ivy League with a lot of kids like this who just morph into whatever needs to be for the moment. And we know that J.D. Vance hated Donald Trump. I interviewed J.D. Vance when I was at Al Jazeera host in 2016, and he told me about how Trump was leading people to a dark place and inciting racism against Muslims. And I thought he was more liberal than me. I think at the time I had a thing with and I was like, it's a little too liberal for me. And well, who knows what he was then, what he believed then. But, you know, these are my beliefs. If you don't like them, I've got another set for you. And that's J.D. Vance, who now, you know, and there's a moment where Dana Bash on Sunday in the CNN interview asked him about calling Trump America's Hitler. So, well, I didn't I didn't quite say that. You know, he did say that. And that's in the dossier that was hacked, apparently. All the stuff I get that J.D. Vance said. The problem it has is he's a bit weird and creepy. He is super uncomfortable in his own skin. And I can only think of one other politician who comes close to that same level of discomfort, which is Ron DeSantis. This idea that he was the heir apparent is bullshit to the MAGA movement. This was Don Jr. whispering in his father's ear and others pushing J.D. Vance. Peter Thiel, obviously, we talked about the billionaire tech guy. But Vance himself, he's all over the place. You mentioned Kamala Harris being black. He is the father of biracial children. He's married to a brown Indian-American lady, right? And yet he can't come to Kamala Harris' defense because he's stuck with Trump. There's a moment on Sunday, Cara, where Jonathan Karl in the ABC interview asked about Nick Fuentes, the Holocaust denier, being hosted for dinner at Mar-a-Lago. He likes to hear all kinds of thoughts. Oh, not only did he say, well, he likes to talk to everyone. Oh, Holocaust denier, great. But also he then segued into, and he loves talking to my wife too. He calls her beautiful. A, I wouldn't be comfortable about a man who, you know. He does that to everybody. Who's been found liable of sexual abuse, saying my wife's beautiful. But separately, imagine segueing to your wife as a comparison to Nick Fuentes. Just a bizarre performance as a media performer. You're supposed to be an attack dog, but he's under attack all the time. I actually am looking forward to the Waltz-Vance debate if it happens as much as I'm looking forward to the Trump-Harris debate. It should be interesting. Waltz is going to clean his clock. He's so unlikable. You know that, remember, the expression, Hillary's likable enough and Obama did what I thought was a terrible comment. He's not likable enough. Like, that's what it is. He's unlikable. I don't think Obama is like him. And I think it's important. Away from looks, I mean, from everything else, he's unlikable. And I think people get that. I think especially women.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, we are going to get to where Trump's mind is now with an interview with Anthony Scaramucci, who is the White House communications director under Donald Trump and is the founder and managing partner of SkyBridge Capital. Let's bring in our friend of Pivot. Welcome, Anthony. How you doing?

Anthony Scaramucci: I'm doing well. How are you?

Kara Swisher: Good. You know, let me just say, I'm going to let Mehdi start because he requested you. Okay. So I want him to start on this. We're obviously going to talk about where Donald Trump's head is at. So, Maddy, take it away.

Mehdi Hasan: Anthony, good to see you. I thought you'd be a great person to talk to this week after Donald Trump's rambling press conference, insane, dishonest press conference, after his AI accusations against Kamala Harris's rally crowds. I know you've been asked this many times before over the years, but let me ask it again. Is Donald Trump in the middle of a meltdown?

Anthony Scaramucci: Well, I mean, he's in a rolling meltdown on most days and most times. So, yes, he's in the middle of a meltdown, but it's not unusual for him to be in a meltdown. But, you know, Kara brought something up. She says, you know, Mehdi requested you. I think Mehdi, I would like to think this, respects my evolution and my honesty. You know, I was on the wrong side of this. I had to look at it very crystal clear. I had to own the fact that I was on the wrong side of it. And then I had to actually explain what happened. And so you have guys like Mike Pompeo. You have guys like McConnell, Kevin McCarthy. You know from your journalistic reporting, these guys absolutely cannot stand Donald Trump, but they're still supporting him due to moral cowardice and political expediency. I've had senators, I've had one senator hand me, and he promised me not to use his name, so I won't use it, but he handed me a book that's Snakes in Suits. He says, read this. I've read this. This is how I deal with Donald Trump. Okay. Snakes in Suits. So, so many, I tried to be very honest about this. I love my country. I don't agree with a lot of the policies that are coming out of the Democrats. Cara knows this, the crypto policies I don't agree with, but I love my country. OK, and the democracy and the civilization and the order of things, the predictability of our judiciary, the lack of a Project 2025, which is a hegemonic control by a group of anarcho-Christians. OK, I don't want that for my country. And so here we are. But, yeah, so he's in a rolling thing. Can I give you some insight? Because I've talked to some people inside the campaign. He's in a full on temper tantrum over what is going on. His tried and true Rubik's Cube. Cara, you're a nasty girl, Cara. You're a nasty girl. It's not working. You see what I mean? And he's trying it. It's a 2016 playbook. Oh, I'm running against a woman. So let me get the Rubik's Cube to look like the following things. Here comes the word salad out of my mouth and it's going to work. But what he's missing, guys, is that the demographics of the voting constituency has moved. Baby boomers have died. Generation Zs have risen. And so they don't like it. OK, if you're going to tell me that the presidential candidate for the Democrats turned black and I'm that's not my words. And I again, I literally almost apologize on your podcast for using these words, but they're not my words. This is the words of the Republican presidential nominee turned black. I'm sorry. Most normal people don't like that. But I can tell you who really doesn't like that are younger people. They do not like it. And so he's flummoxed.

Kara Swisher: Does he have no other moves? Because everyone has, and he's a very talented political figure.

Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, so that exactly right. So he now in a bunker. He now doing what he does. He on his phone. He calling supposed friends. He calling allies. I tell you who not helping him right now is Steve Bannon but would be helping him because Cara and Mighty you know how smart Steve is. He's a malevolent MF, but all three of us know how smart he is. He'd be on the phone with Steve right now. Steve is a super smart guy. And Steve would be like, okay, here's what you need to do. Here's how you have to do it. Here's what you need to say. And here's how we're going to make this go from here and Trump would be recalibrating. But he hasn't found the...

Kara Swisher: Well, Steve's in prison, so that's an issue.

Anthony Scaramucci: Yes, yes, exactly. Steve's in prison until November 1st, okay? And that's tough because you only have four days. Talk to the Trumpster. I'm surprised we haven't come up with the Trumpster dumpster, you know, the Trumpster dumpster, because that's what's going on right now.

Kara Swisher: We've seen that.

Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, you have seen that?

Kara Swisher: Anthony's got the political genius that is Don Jr. advising him from the sidelines, giving him J.D. Vance and other gold dust attacks.

Anthony Scaramucci: Okay, so you guys know this. He is furious over this. And he is absolutely furious over this. He made that decision. And I don't care if you're superhuman or you think he's superhuman. He's not. A bullet whizzed by his head. He was this close to death. And he was traumatized by that. And we can pretend that it's a video game, but guys, it's not a video game. He made the decision to pick J.D. Vance in the 72 hours after he was almost killed. Now what happened in those 72 hours? His poll number shot up, his victorious Iwo Jima picture with the flag behind him and the blood on his ear. And so he's like, okay, it's not gonna matter, I'm gonna pick whoever. And then the narcissism also creeps in. Okay, so I can't pick Nikki Haley. First of all, she said mean things about me, and I don't like that. Secondarily, people will say she helped me win the race. I can't pick her. I have to win this race 100% on my own, all attention on me. I can't pick Marco Rubio, little Marco, because he said mean things about my hands, and I don't like that. Okay, J.D. Vance, he said mean things about me a few years ago, but there's nothing that Trump likes more than a conversion. Okay? Okay, there's nothing he hates more than a guy like me. I've seen the evil. I'm speaking to the evil. J.D. Vance is like, I've seen the evil, but I'm a politically motivated, super ambitious son of a bitch. And I'm going with the evil. Trump loves that because that Trump knows they have no moral anchor so he can do anything he wants with them.

Mehdi Hasan: You say he furious. You posted a few days ago on Exit you believe Trump recent behavior means changes are coming to campaign. What do changes mean from your perspective?

Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, he wants to fire LaCivita. He doesn't want to fire Susie Wiles. He's blaming LaCivita for a lot of this stuff. Chris is a good guy. I know him forever. Chris is very tight. They've done a good job getting him until recently. They have. He's been disciplined. He's been on message. But let me explain to you why he wants to fire these guys, okay? I put 85, let's think like Donald Trump for a second. I put 85 of my super loyalists, my maggots, my M-A-G-A-T-S's into Project 2025. I then took the president of the Heritage Foundation around on the plane with me. I told him, you make up a great plan for me to take over America, liquidate the judiciary branch and the legislative branch. I really want an oligarchic America. You have to really understand this. This is why those billionaire bros are with them. They want an oligarchy. They see how the oligarchs have flourished in other dictatorships. And it's cleaner. It's neater. They can get more things done for their businesses. They have less restrictions, less checks and balances. They want this. They don't want the messiness of the democracy. Peter Thiel has said publicly that the democracy is probably obsolete. Right? You've heard him say it? He said it a decade ago. So what is he going to do with these people? So now he has a civil war going on. Okay. The 85 people he jettisoned and said, I hate Project 2025. They're like, well, wait a minute. You told us to go over there. So this is like in The Sopranos where they ran over the guy's head in the gas station. Okay. And now they're sitting there saying, okay, now what do we want to do? And he says, well, Jesus Christ, those are my friends. Why did you make me run them over? And so he's blaming it on La Cevita. You see what's going on? So now he's on the phone. He's calling around to people, not the two of you because you hate him and not me because I hate him. Hello. What should I do? What should I do? And he hasn't found the right word salad. So he's off the campaign trail. He doesn't want to go on the campaign trail where she's got 10,000 people and he has 3,000 people and he's got the wrong word salad. And that's what's going on right now. And I know this son of a bitch so well. I have the decoder ring. You guys, I can save you the cracker box. Okay, Maddie, go ahead.

Mehdi Hasan: So on La Sevilla, obviously you're friends with him. I'm not. I wouldn't describe anyone who works for Donald Trump as a good person. That's just me. I know you said he's a good guy. The guy running like a swift boat operation against Waltz. He ran the original swift boat against John Kerry. But on the staffing issues, just putting La Sevilla to one side, explain to us Anthony, you mentioned that the Project 2025 people got thrown under the bus. How are there still people who saw what happened to you and saw what happened to everyone, saw what happened to all these people, Nikki Haley, and still think, wow, he'll be loyal to me, he'll stick with me. And then they're like, oh, wow, he screwed me over. How are there still people who are shocked at being screwed over by Donald J. Trump?

Anthony Scaramucci: I don't even think they're shocked anymore. I think they want power. I think this is about power. This is like, OK, you know what? This son of a bitch is going to blow me up. But is he going to blow me up now? Is it we're going to measure it in Scaramucci's 11 day units like Scaramucci or is he going to blow me up in 200 Scaramucci's? But in the 200 Scaramucci's, I'm going to get a lot done. He's a vehicle for these white Christian anarcho and these oligarchs. Get him in power. He's not that ideological. We'll impose our ideology on everybody else. We'll see if we can do so much damage to the system that no one, the system will be in shambles. And so maybe this will be our last election.

Kara Swisher: So it's a vehicle. He's hinted at that, hasn't he? You know, just vote for me this time. You won't ever have to vote again. You heard him say that, right?

Anthony Scaramucci: Right. Yes, we did.

Mehdi Hasan: But you predicted a couple of weeks ago that he might leave the race. Do you still believe that's an actual possibility?

Anthony Scaramucci: So it's not just me saying that. There are other people saying that that really know him. He does not want to go to jail. OK, the three things that are going on in his head. I love money. How can I get do more deals when I'm president? Number two, I love attention. I want to be on the top page of the of the broadsheet newspapers. Number three, I really don't want to go to jail under any circumstances. I'm a frightened child, which is why I'm expressing it with orange war paint on and all this hyper masculinity. So if he sees himself potentially going to jail, he could say, OK, get me out of the race, put Haley at the top of the ticket or DeSantis, DeSantis, Vance, Haley, Vance, or maybe even Vance goes and it's Haley, DeSantis, let them take on Kamala. OK, he may even go to Biden, and say, hey, I'll come out of the race, but I need a pardon, and I need you to call Kathy Hochul and get me a pardon there. Now, he blew himself up with Brian Kemp, but I guarantee you Brian Kemp would give him a pardon in Georgia. Guaranteed.

Kara Swisher: Wow, that's a lot of activity. This is kind of so—in 90 days, he's going to get pardons from everyone and get out of the race, and they're going to have a viable candidate? I think they—okay. guaranteed. Wow. That's a lot of activity. This is kind of so in 90 days, he's going to get pardons from everyone and get out of the race and they're going to have, I think they, okay. You guys can, you guys can think otherwise, but I'm just telling you what I know and I know what he's like. And, and, and, and, and, you know, how do I get out of this jam is what you're saying? How can I get out? You know, many times in nine years, I've said, can you believe he's doing this? And now he's saying that the crowds are AI generated for Kamala Harris. This is hard to believe. It's no longer hard to believe. There's no surprises anymore. Okay. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Mehdi Hasan: I do. But as long as, as long as he thinks he can win. And as I said to Cara earlier in the show, like he can win, right? It's a 50, 50 election. Anyone who thinks he can't win is absurd. Either of them could win at this point. As long as he thinks he could win, there's no reason for him to step aside. He wants power. As you say, he wants that attention and he's got a very good chance of getting it in 90 days.

Anthony Scaramucci: So again, you guys are not going to believe me, but I talked to a lot of insiders in the campaign. He's less interested in the power. He's more interested in the retribution. Okay, so he will go play golf. He will hand the government over to the Project 2025 people to wreak havoc. He has an enemies list. It's 350 people. I'm on it. I'm just disappointed I'm not ranked higher. Okay, I had dinner with Esper and I had dinner with Millie a few weeks ago. They're like three and seven on the list. And yeah, it's Liz Cheney, Mike Pence. You go down the list. I'm like 48th. I'm like, guys, what am I not doing? I really should be in the top 10.

Mehdi Hasan: But you think he could win. That is a point. He still has a very good chance of winning.

Anthony Scaramucci: He has a chance to win, but he's rolling off of a waterfall. You've got Plouffe on the campaign. You've got Obama. Kamala Harris, I've said this on my podcast. Kamala, you said it right. Kamala, I apologize. I'm from New York. All right. I don't mean any disrespect by saying it the way I say it. Let me rephrase it. Kamala Harris. Okay. I'm not saying it with any disrespect. You know how you can remember it? Kama-la. But go ahead.

Kara Swisher: Okay, I will remember. She's my speech therapist.

Anthony Scaramucci: See, if I had her in second grade, I would have been, people would have thought I was a lost. If we'd all had Kara in second grade, we'd be in different places.

Kara Swisher: You can also call her Madam President if you need to, but go ahead.

Anthony Scaramucci: Maddie, if I only had her in second grade, right? I mean, you know.

Kara Swisher: Move along, Anthony. Answer the question.

Anthony Scaramucci: This accent cost me a lot of money in my life. I just want you to know that. But let me just say this to you, okay? If she stays on message which I believe she will and they build her help with her help build her the coalition which I believe they going to do. OK and here what he here what he should do. Call her nasty. Call her stupid. OK, keep doing that. You'll have women lining up and they'll stay online for 15 hours. They won't need any water. They'll stay online for 15. So, look, I'm going to take your reproductive freedoms away. She's nasty and she's stupid. Keep saying that, okay? And you will see him lose by 11 points, okay?

Mehdi Hasan: I don't think he's going to lose. And I believe that. I don't think any Republican's ever going to lose by 11 points in America ever again. We're never going to have those kind of-

Anthony Scaramucci: Oh, no, no, no, no. The popular vote for sure. The electoral college vote will be closer.

Kara Swisher: Can I ask a question about Trump himself that's really bothering me right now, which is, again, we've done the walls closing in, losing his mind. He's in a meltdown for eight, nine years now. But at this point, where he is age, you know, he's an old guy. He's the oldest man to ever run for president now that Joe Biden stepped aside. Do you think we should have more conversation? You mentioned the senator who gave you a book about him being a sociopath. I remember John Kelly reportedly went out and bought the book about by a bunch of psychiatrists saying he was a danger to the Constitution, the case against Donald Trump. And Kelly brought that, you know, people around him who know him best. They know he's got mental health issues. Right. So why aren't we talking about that more as a media, as a political debate? And do you think that's going to hurt him now? Because I was saying to Cara earlier, now that Kamala's in the race, all of that Biden is old, Biden has got dementia, does that all just transfer to him?

Anthony Scaramucci: A lot of it does and they're obviously working on that, but here's what he has, okay? There is no Nancy Pelosi in the Republican Party. If there was a Nancy Pelosi in the Republican Party, hey man, you got to go, okay? We're going to lose this race with you and you got to go and if you don't go, this is what we're going to do to you. Okay. And they are so afraid of, okay. And the biggest fraidy cat of all time in American history that I'm aware of, and I know him personally, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy could have put him right to the ropes on the 7th of January, 2021. And he would have been the most popular figure in the Republican, but he'd probably be running for president right now. He'd probably be the nominee, but he's a baby and he's a fraidy cat and he has the spine of a jellyfish and he quivered at Donald Trump. Okay, so he's the weakest person I've met in politics. But the other guys are a bunch of babies. So they won't do anything.

Mehdi Hasan: By the way they won do anything. But let me tell you if they did if they did it would be a close race. Yeah. If you swapped him out for Haley or DeSantis right now 100. It would be a close race 100. Nikki Haley was always my biggest fear.

Anthony Scaramucci: Yeah, I agree.

Kara Swisher: If he does want to win, what should he do at the debate? You've been a proponent of them having the debate. Of course, I always said he was going to have it. There's one schedule, possibly more on the way. What does he need to do if he actually wants to win?

Anthony Scaramucci: Okay. He needs to do something he's almost incapable of doing. I hope you guys like my cheese. This is from Bad News Bears. Remember Chico Bale Bonds? OK, so what he needs to do, which he's not going to do, OK, because he's not he doesn't like doing it. He needs to shut up and he needs to make this an issues based campaign. And he needs to go out there and he needs to say these are the issues. This is where I am. This is where she is. Now, the reason he's not going to do that is he's one inch deep on the issues. He's not even a foot deep, okay, on the issues. So he can't really do that. He can say they're pouring over the border. You know all those syntax that he uses. They're doing this. They're doing that. The rapists. Well, he thought the asylum thing was like an insane asylum. He didn't realize it was a political asylum. So that's him, right? But let me tell you, he's really good at it. He is the Frank Sinatra of elocution. You say, what the hell do I mean by that? Study Frank the way Frank sung. Frank would pause at certain places where the average singer wouldn't. Trump copied that from Frank Sinatra, okay? He won't eat before he gets to a microphone. Why? He told me Frank Sinatra told him, never eat before you get before a microphone. Okay, he studied all of these things, okay? And so he's in a loop. He's in a word salad loop that's not working with this demography. He needs to find somebody way smarter than him to say, okay, stop doing that. I know you're not going to focus on the policies, but let's focus on the aspirational hope of America that you're going to provide. So why can't Susie Wiles get him to do this? She can't get him to do this because he's still making the mental adjustment that he's not running against an 81-year-old fossil. See, he's now running against a 60-year-old, very capable person. And I hope you guys don't mind me saying this on your podcast. And if you do, you can cut it out. But when he says that she dumb that as close as he can get to the N without saying the N. I sorry to say it this way. It true. But it a racist trope. So is DEI president. This woman, yes, this woman is a prosecutor. This woman won the attorney general's race. This woman won the Senate. This woman was elected vice president. This is an extremely capable, extremely competent person. And when he's doing that, you think Susie Wiles is not saying, Kara Swisher, you think Susie Wiles is not saying, Mr. President, please stop doing that. You can't do that because that's a code word. And you've got the world on fire doing that. The question is, are we going back to 1947 before Jackie Robinson took the field or are we living in 2024? Now, I believe we're in 2024. Trump wants to take you back to 1947. OK, and and I don't know if he's capable of making the adjustment, Mehdi and Cara. I don't know if he is. I know he wants to. I know he wants to, but he doesn't have somebody. He doesn't have a shaman. It doesn't have a Cyrano de Bergeac whispering in his ear. And Bannon's in prison.

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, well, J.D. Vance, give me an assessment. Very briefly. Grade. Few words.

Anthony Scaramucci: Well, he did better over the weekend. If we're just being objective, he did better over the weekend. But he's an unmitigated, well, you guys don't think he did. I'm talking about the conservatives. Okay, all right, okay. Hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. There's two countries. There's two sides of the brain in this country. He did better with the conservatives. He did. He did better with the conservatives over the weekend. You could like him or dislike him. I think he's an unmitigated disaster. And I think he's a net negative for Trump. And when he picked them, I was literally laughing out loud. I call him just Dol Vance, J.D. Vance, okay? So he's an unmitigated disaster for Trump. And Trump is so pissed right now. And he's yelling at all of the people that pushed him on this guy. And he wants to fire him like tonight, but he's afraid to fire him. So he probably won't get fired. But if he does get fired, here's my prediction. He will get fired the day after the Democratic National Convention. Now, why is that? He has to bigfoot them from immediate attention. And so he's going to let that go. And let me tell you something, if he pulls in Nikki Haley, which is possible, it'll be a much tighter race.

Kara Swisher: One line question, one line answer. What's your advice to Kamala Harris for a debate? What would you tell her to do to really get under his skin?

Anthony Scaramucci: Don't take debate. Why? Watch the first Joe Biden debate with Donald Trump and do not take debate. And if he's rambling, let him go because it'll show the insanity of the Mar-a-Lago press conference. And if the madam vice president is listening, go do a few interviews now. Now is time. You have to go do a few interviews. You can't wait till after the convention. I understand why you didn't do interviews. You didn't get acclimated to the new spotlight. Totally respect that. But it's now time to do a few interviews and practice. Get a son of a bitch to stand at the podium, okay, that's very white and six foot three and berate you and don't take the bait. Study what Joe Biden did in debate one, 2020.

Mehdi Hasan: All right. I agree with you. I agree with you. I have to say, she didn't take the bait when he did the black thing. She said she just ignored him when he said she was turned black. I think she's, and I've said this, Cara, I actually said this to you once. I've said it on my podcast. She is so underrated.

Kara Swisher: I agree.

Mehdi Hasan: Okay. And what politicians benefit from are low expectations.

Kara Swisher: A hundred percent. And so all she has to do is stay on discipline and message.

Anthony Scaramucci: And can I tell a quick Kamala Harris story before we go?

Kara Swisher: Yes, go ahead.

Anthony Scaramucci: Okay. So I'm with her and Doug Emhoff in Israel. We were on a bipartisan trip to Israel, July of 2018, having a very good time. The official photographer comes over and says, Senator Harris, yes, would you like to take a picture with the mooch? She goes, what are you kidding me?

Kara Swisher: I don't want to do that. I'm not ruining my political career. It was like, literally, I was looking at her like, okay. I said, "That's good judgment on your part." I'm just letting you guys know, if she took that picture, she wouldn't be in the position she's in right now.

Anthony Scaramucci: All right, okay.

Kara Swisher: All right, Anthony, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. All right, Matty, one more quick break. We'll be back for wins and fails.

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Kara Swisher: That guy cracks me up.

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Kara Swisher: Maddie, we're back. And I want to take just a second to talk about Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube who died of lung cancer at age 56 just a few days ago. Look, I'm not friends with a lot of people I cover. She's about the only one. And she was an amazing person. We had lots of debates about YouTube, about Google over the many, many years. And she was always able to understand the problems and tried her best to fix them in many ways. The only executive who, after I would strafe her, would have me in to talk to her whole staff about the shitty things I said about her tenure or things she was doing. It was unusual. She was also the badass mother of five, a devoted wife, sister, daughter. And again, Google would not have been there without her. Those two were nuts, and she got them into line. Of course, they started the company in her garage when she was an Intel executive. She was always the voice of reason at that company. All the best things that happened at that company were because of her, I would say. Just an astonishing person. I wrote in my memoir *Burn Book* that Susan was the normal person at Google who would talk to me and explain what was happening inside the carnival show that the company quickly became. She had a terrible year. She had been sick for several years. Not a lot of people knew about it. She tried very hard to come up with ways to get better, and I think was surprised by the illness. She's a very fit person. And then her son died, Marco, who is also a lovely young man. And I think it broke her. And I just miss her greatly. I saw her, we saw her at Christmas and she was doing great. And it's just a real tragedy. I do a lot of stuff where I insult Silicon Valley, but this was a very special and good, the best part of Silicon Valley. So I just, to her family, I'm so sorry. And for all of us, it's a real loss, more than you think. So that's my fail. Mehdi, why don't you do your win and fail and then I'll do my win.

Mehdi Hasan: Before I do that, Cara, sorry for your loss. I didn't know her personally. She sounds like a fascinating person. I'm pretty sad for our kids in particular. In terms of wins and fails, I've been watching a little bit of the Olympics, not as much as you probably, but I did enjoy seeing the last medal of the Paris Olympics Games go to Sifan Hassan, no relation, Dutch Ethiopian runner who won the marathon, got the gold. 36 hours after she got a bronze in the 10,000 meters and she got the 10,000 meter bronze after getting the 5,000 meter. She did a lot of running in France and she turned up for her final medal of the Olympics in a hijab, in a headscarf. And of course, the French hosts had banned all their Muslim athletes from wearing the hijab in the Olympics. It was a little bit of a badass move, I thought, by her to really make a statement as she accepted that medal. So that was a win for me on multiple levels. She can wear whatever the fuck she wants.

Kara Swisher: Your fail?

Mehdi Hasan: And the fail, I think, is the great fail son of Donald Trump. Donald Trump Jr. is having an awful week. The guy he picked for VP for his dad, J.D. Vance, as we've discussed, continues to self-immolate. Donald Trump Jr. is busy on social media trying to attack Tim Walz for not having a happy marriage. He is, of course, the son of a woman who was cheated on by Donald Trump with his half-sister's mother, who was then cheated on by his half-brother's mother. But anyways, and he's just not having a great time on social media. He's making a big issue of Tim Walz's military career. Meanwhile his father had five draft deferments. He's reminding everyone of President Bone Spurs. If he's the future of the Republican Party, great news for the Democrats. Right? Yeah. God, he's such a loser. He's such a... I mean, he makes Roger Clinton look like a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, my win, you're going to hate me for this. I did like the Olympics. I'm not a big sports fan, but I loved the Olympics. I thought it was very feel-good in a way that was really enjoyable, including all the craziness at the opening ceremonies. And Celine Dion, by the way, who really did a ratio Donald Trump very beautifully this week by saying, "You pick this song and stop using it," by the way. I know you're all going to hate me, but Tom Cruise jumping from the stadium top and then grabbing the flag from the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and then riding his motorcycle and ending up at the Hollywood sign. It's obviously Olympics 2028 are going to be in Los Angeles. I just, it was, I loved it. I loved it. I loved it. And I'm not apologizing for it. It was a win for Kara Swisher. Can they fix LAX before the Olympics, please? I hope so. But it's going to be exciting. Anyway, I loved it. Tom Cruise, you got my vote, even though the French were horrified by you.

Kara Swisher: Anyway, that's the show. We want to hear from you. Send us your questions about business tech or whatever's on your mind. Go to nymag.com slash pivot. Submit a question for the show or call 855-51-PIVOT. Mehdi, that's the show. This has been wonderful. And I wish you so much good luck with this detail. We'll have you on again. I love what you're doing. I think it's great. And I love more media entrepreneurs. You're a portrepreneur now.

Mehdi Hasan: Oh, my word.

Kara Swisher: I can't even say that word. But thank you so much, Cara. Appreciate it.

Mehdi Hasan: We coined it.

Kara Swisher: I'll be back on Friday more with another amazing co-host. I think, should we say who it is? No, we won't. It's someone great. I will read us out. Today's show was produced by Lara Naiman, Zoe Marcus and Taylor Griffin. Ernie Enderdot engineered this episode. Nishat Kerwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Make sure you subscribe to the show wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks for listening to Pivot from New York Magazine and Vox Media. You can subscribe to the magazine at nymag.com slash pod. We'll be back later this week for another breakdown of all things tech and business. And Mehdi, thank you again.

Mehdi Hasan: Thank you.