Brian Karem’s “Reporter’s Notebook”

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The Playboy Interview w/Anthony Scaramucci

He lasted only 11 days in the White House. Now, Anthony Scaramucci tells his side of the story

Brian J Karem Oct 25

Originally published in Playboy 4/09/2025

In a presidential administration known for its volatility and a president who openly embraces conflict, no one has streaked across the political sky and burned brighter (and quicker) than Anthony Scaramucci. The former hedge fund investor was a sensation for years on Wall Street, passing through Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers before launching SkyBridge Capital, which led him to becoming a member of Donald Trump’s inner circle. That ultimately turned into his polarizing, shooting-star turn as the president’s White House communications director, which brought him into the national conscience with all the subtly of a sledgehammer on a windowpane.

For 11 days, Scaramucci, better known as the Mooch to his friends, ran the most high-profile communications office in the country. He turned the cameras back on after they’d been turned off for two weeks. He came up with a detailed plan to revamp the department and he named Sarah Huckabee Sanders White House Press Secretary after Sean Spicer quit; Spicer reportedly did so because of Scaramucci’s hiring. At first, the Mooch was a breath of fresh air—the kind of rock star a moribund and scandal-ridden administration needed. But the reverie didn’t last long.

In a city where people routinely refer to their staunchest rivals and most bitter of enemies as “my friend,” Scaramucci’s street-fighting style wasn’t welcomed warmly. As such, his opening successes were quickly overcome by his cowboy behavior. He talked smack about Reince Preibus. He mocked Steve Bannon. Talking to The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza, Scaramucci dropped some hot-and-heavy expletives describing the aforementioned men. The term auto-fellatio dominated headlines for 24 hours.

Trump, we were told, loved Scaramucci for his outspoken, blunt and brutal nature—traits akin to the president himself. After all, it isn’t every day someone calls Reince Priebus “rancid penis” or accuses Bannon of “sucking his own cock.” And so, newly appointed White House Chief of Staff John Kelly used his expletive-ridden interview with Lizza as a reason to fire him.

Scaramucci left the White House in July 2017 with the same subtlety in which he entered: replete with rumors of cocaine usage and anger management issues. He admits his short tenure and abrupt departure chafed. He’s also learned from his mistakes. “I made a telephone book number of mistakes in my short tenure,” he says today. And he still isn’t fond of Kelly.

Because of his polarizing nature, many view him as the last breath of fresh air of the Trump administration; a small bit of understandable dysfunction in an otherwise bizarre White House. But who is Anthony Scaramucci, really? In his new role as the loud and loyal outsider, Scaramucci has publicly questioned morale in the White House and chides Kelly. With new exits from the White House seemingly every week, most recently that of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Secretary of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin, some see Scaramucci as a good bet to land back in the White House, in a senior advisor role.

To find out more about the Trump lightning rod, we sent Playboy’s White House correspondent Brian Karem to spend two days with Scaramucci between Los Angeles and New York, meeting first at the Beverly Hills Hotel and a Manhattan restaurant the second time around. Karem reports, “Anthony Scaramucci is not what many believe him to be. Beyond the blustering outbursts, he is a thoughtful man who grew up in a working-class family. He can quote Lord Acton and Howard Stern in the same sentence—and does. Even the biggest knock against him, from those who know him, is that he has great ideas but is politically naïve. Or if you prefer, they say he has a great engine but a lousy transmission. To that, Scaramucci says he agrees.”

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PLAYBOY: So, you got in trouble talking with a reporter and John Kelly fired you. Does that still rankle you? ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI: Here’s the thing: I talked a little smack and I got fired. I’m fine with it. But I’m not a misogynist and I’m not a wife-beater. Kelly decided to get rid of the smack talker and to defend and protect the wife beater [former Trump aide Rob Porter]. You know that was just General Kelly’s way of asserting order in the White House. I had no problem with it at the time. I find it hypocritical because I was talking a little bit of smack on the television, a little bit of smack about people we’re trying to get rid of, and he’s allowing people to smack up their wives. He exposed that he can’t really run a civilian operation just using his rank and fear and intimidation. He’s basically a joke, and he’s hurt the presidency and he’s hurt President Trump.

You call yourself a loyal friend of the president.
Yeah, I’m loyal. I think loyalty has to be symmetrical. I don’t believe in asymmetrical loyalty. I tell my kids, you want to be loyal, you have to be loyal up to the fault line. You don’t want to be loyal to a fault or over the fault line.

Is it still loyal if you call people on their shit when you’re their friend?
I think so, yeah.

Would you do that to the president? Or have you?
I’ve always said a conversation with the president is a privilege. I think it’s very hard to talk to the president as a friend. I don’t care who you are, people who tell you they talk to the president straight are lying. You take an obsequious pill when you walk into the Oval Office. Maybe you’re taking half of one, maybe you’re taking three quarters of one, maybe you’re not taking a full one, but everybody takes an obsequious pill when they walk into the office.

When you were in Washington, D.C., you complained about the backstabbing and said you were a front-stabber. What’s a front-stabber?
A front-stabber is somebody who’s going to tell to the truth about a situation. So what happens in Washington is you work there and there’s internecine warfare. There’s a backstabbing culture. For example, I don’t like you, Brian, so I’m going to talk to this Starbucks cup. I’m going to say, “Brian is a terrible person, here’s information I have on Brian. He’s cheating on his wife, he cheated on his taxes, he’s a horrific human. By the way, you can’t use my name, but here’s the sourcing. Please write a negative story on Brian.” That’s a back stabber.

That’s the back-stabbing culture of Washington. I’m an entrepreneur, so I’m trying to disrupt that level of communication in Washington. I’d like to front-stab people. I’d like to be on the record, tell you exactly how I feel about you. You can feel that way about me, you can dislike me, but what happened to me in Washington is I got the Howdy Doody smile. I got the Richie Cunningham, “ha ha, he he, I love you.” And then they were putting the shivs in my back, and they were running around trying to do nefarious, dishonest things.

Remember, they’re not stupid, the American people. They saw that this is something that is unsustainable for their system. They know that these are pernicious people, they know that these are very dishonest people. I thought that was the funniest part about my experience in Washington. Guys like Rancid Penis were out there trying to do research on me, they were trying to bag me. I’m an Italian, I worked on Wall Street for 30 years, I had to do something dishonest. Well good luck, guys. Good luck finding it, because that’s not my personality.

Have you testified before Robert Mueller?
No. I have never been called to testify. But I have no problem. Ask me anything. I’ll testify.

Do you still talk to the president now that you’re not in the office?
Honestly, I’ve talked to him about six times since I left. But I still have a very healthy respect for him.

Do you think Mueller’s investigation will reach the president?
I honestly don’t think it will on the collusion side. I don’t think it will on the things he was originally tasked with. But what I always worry about with these investigations is that they go open-ended and take forever.

But do you think the president is guilty of obstruction of justice? Collusion is a silly word.
I don’t think so. But I do know enough about the law where even if you didn’t commit the illegal act, if you blockaded people from finding out whether you did, that’s illegal. I predict that he is probably not guilty of that either. I don’t necessarily know, but the president is well intended. He is a New Yorker. He wears his heart on his sleeve. This is a tough guy not to see through. He’s got a level of transparency about him, so I don’t think he has done anything that dishonest. I actually believe that.

In early March, you went on CNN and said the morale has never been lower in the White House and it was going to get worse.
I wasn’t lying. You know that. You’re there. And I know it. The president knows it.

Still, that’s pretty harsh coming from Trump’s former communications director.
It was the truth.

So how were you raised?
I was raised in a Catholic family, a Roman Catholic, Italian family. My mother and grandmother are avid churchgoers as is my father. I grew up with—and I’ve tried to live my life by this and I’ve tried to instill this in my kids: Have no fear. My grandparents told me that this is a bus stop. Do the right thing, be remembered for the right reasons, but grow up with no fear. We talk about clichés—there’s that great line Mel Brooks came up with: “Relax, none of us are getting out of here alive.” It will sort itself out. Be confident. Don’t be afraid of your shadow and don’t be intimidated by people, because you’re just as good as anybody, if not better than most.

What do you think is wrong with D.C.? You think it’s fear?__
Well, remember, D.C. is a byproduct of personal incentives. So when people say that Congress isn’t smart, or politicians aren’t smart, that’s a bunch of malarkey. I want to stay in power, so there’s gerrymandering. I want to stay in power, so I need to set up polemics to make me money. If I rail on Hillary Clinton in a certain way, money comes in to the conservative caucus. If I rail on Donald J. Trump in a certain way, money comes in to the liberal caucus.

Do you think money has ruined politics?
There’s a paradox to the money. People think money has ruined politics, but I actually think that the money is sort of even up on both sides. After the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, I wrote an op-ed about how ideas are going to matter way more than the money. The Trump campaign is a perfect illustration of that. He was outspent, you can get the data—maybe it was two to one, I can’t remember the exact numbers—but he was outspent and he was out-manned, and Clinton probably had a coalition of corporate sponsors, and a coalition of multinational communities in favor of her, and she still lost the election. So that shows you that ideas and personality matter way more. But money does matters, because you have to have a base level of money to be in that game.

Some would say Russian influence on the election may have had something to do with Clinton losing.
The Russians are a danger, and this president is doing more to fight them than previous administrations. But I don’t think the Russians won the election. The thing that most people haven’t come to grips with—and I didn’t see it but Donald Trump did—is that the president has tapped into the discontent of the working class and the middle class. He and Bernie Sanders were the two candidates who tapped into it. I missed it; I got so wound up in climbing the spiral of wealth, I missed it.

I like to tell people I grew up in a working class family and my parents didn’t go to college, but they built a system around me and they gave me tough skin. They told us to go to school and work hard and then we could rise in class and become financially independent. We were living in an area with a very good public school system, and I’m the product of a very good public school education.

Thirty years later, those working class families do not have the same chance at success. There’s the access to labor from the global market, the extra competition for America and the movement of factories out of the country—all of this is contributing to anxiety in the working class. And the president correctly identified that, as did Bernie Sanders. They were probably the only two candidates of 18 who actually tapped into the pulse of that. That’s why Donald Trump won. Not the Russians. And people in both parties continue to miss it. But the working man gets it. That’s why he’s having success. That’s why people still like him, despite every bad thing said.

We have a divisive culture in the country right now, and some accuse the president of feeding into it with his base. How can that be fixed?
The president is fully capable of that with the right staff around him and the right group of friends who are smart and understand politics and strategy. People who are not trying to build their own brand and aren’t talking nonsense. The president is totally capable of that. He’s a mediator. He’s a deal-cutter. He’s a negotiator…

But he flip-flops at the end of the day, easily influenced by the last person he talked to.
When push comes to shove, I’ve seen him in action. He’ll try to make the right decision for the American people. In Washington he’ll walk into a gun-control meeting and say some things that offend the Democrats and some that offend the Republicans and they all flip out because they’re used to this swamp culture. The president is shaking it up. If you change the incentives in the system, it will get better. You’ll get better outcomes. You’ll get better policy. The system right now, the way it’s designed, you get worse outcomes worst people or policy. You got to change the system, hack the system, stay true to the original intent of the founders but hack the system.

Do you think the president is aware of that?
I do. I think he’s probably blown away at how corrupt the system is. He’s in a tangle and it’s the strength of his personality versus the swamp. The swamp was like, okay, good we got another guy who was going to try to disrupt us. Let’s slow down and try to decimate his compatriots and absorb him.

After you left the White House, a lot of rumors floated around about you. Drugs, strange behavior, marital problems.
I have never on the Bible, before my god, I’ve never smoked pot or snorted a line of coke. You can ask anybody who knows me. Everyone was saying I was coked up in the White House. Go look at my interviews. I was there for 11 days and I think I was pretty articulate in interviews. I made one mistake with Ryan Lizza.

What happened there?
I thought I was off the record. He said I was on the record and I didn’t say that I was on or off the record, so that’s a mistake on my part. I have to be accountable for it. You know, at the end of the day, people think I’m coked up, not hooked up. I don’t give a shit. I know my truth.

At the same time your wife also filed for divorce.
Yes. That was painful.

And you all reconciled?
Yeah, I said this at an event a few days ago. Maybe people in this room haven’t had problems in relationships, but unfortunately we did. Rather than making the relationship disposable, we are trying to repair it. I love her and I think she loves me. So part of that repairing is mutuality, forgiveness and commitment, and that’s what we are trying to do.

You think we have double standards in this country?__
This is still the remnant and the byproduct of the John Calvin work ethic, this whole thing that imbued our system, made the country very successful. But there was this Puritanical chastity that somebody like Hugh Hefner broke through. He was speaking more truth to power as to what people were really like as opposed to what they ought to be like. Right?

Unfortunately, what happens in our society is that we have this overlay of moralism but really the standards or moralism don’t match how people actually interact. So the Europeans are a little more thoughtful and realistic about it. So are the Asians. But in North America, we still we have this Puritanical culture. So for me, I don’t judge people, I don’t judge people for their personal lives, I judge people on their actions and how they treat others.

A good Christian would say “Judge not lest ye’ be judged.”
Amen. I’m not throwing any stones at anybody. You enter the political arena, you’re going to get rolled in broken glass. So the last year of my life I’ve been rolled in broken glass. It turns out that my blood clots quickly. I’ve heard every name used against me. Italians are still allowed to be racially stereotyped and profiled in our country. Seth Meyers called me a human pinkie ring, Jim-Tan laundry, Pauly in the Press Room, Tony Goomba takes over the Press Shop…I’ve heard everything. I don’t care, I’m a First Amendment guy. I’m one of the Italians who doesn’t care about The Sopranos or Goodfellas or any of that other stuff. My attitude is, you know I’m educated, I worked my ass off, I want to honor my mom and dad.

So who do you like in music?
Here’s the thing about being a Republican. Some of these bands, I like them more than they like me. I had that problem with Bruce Springsteen. But I like Billy Joel. There’s a family connection. Bad Company. Steely Dan. I’m more a product of the 1970s.

Who’s your favorite Beatle?
Paul McCartney. He was in it for the long haul. He created great music and I think he was more about the music than the ego.

Let’s talk about public relations. The president moves impulsively. People say you can’t hold him accountable and you can’t craft a message.
I think it’s a matched sailing race. I think you can get your sailboat to match up with the president’s sail boat pretty well. But at his age he’s going to do what he likes to do. He likes to tweet and jump over the mainstream media and do some disruptive things and attention getting. You cannot curtail it. I’m suggesting the opposite. Let him be himself. I think when he feels well defended and well advocated for, he dials back the disruptive stuff and puts it more into policy thinking. I think his reaction to social media got him elected. He’s asked if I think it’s a non-presidential tweet and I’ll say don’t do it. He tells me if it were a presidential tweet, he wouldn’t be in office. He’s the first shock jock president. He owes a lot to Howard Stern.

But now that he is president, doesn’t he owe the office the respect of restraining some of his instincts?
He would say he started out with that intention until he realized how nefarious the swamp is and how it works in concert with the media.

Are the media the enemy of the people?
No. And you know I believe that. The first thing I did in my short tenure as communications director was to turn the cameras back on and announce we’re open for business. I also shared with the press my understanding that people who are in power need to be held accountable. Lord Acton was right: power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And so what the founders wanted was a free and critical press—a fourth estate to check the branches of government. Cutting the phones off and calling you guys the enemy of the people? That was Steve Bannon. I made a full phonebook of mistakes in my 11 days, but Bannon made a half a phone book of mistakes in his seven months there, and that was one of them. Declaring war on the media and saying you guys are the opposition party wasn’t his finest moment.

You don’t sound like a Tea Party conservative.
Well, let me ask you if this is conservative: Budget targeting for fiscal stability; the lack of deficit spending pursuant to what goes on in state and local governments; a strong military; free-market, principle-based economics so that we can raise living standards? Capitalism is the only thing that actually helps the lives of people.

Do you believe in equal rights? Racial equality?
Racial equality, yeah. If Republicans don’t believe in racial equality and equal rights then I don’t want any part of them. I’m also pro gay marriage. I don’t care who you’re with in your bedroom. I call my Republican friends and tell them they’re for smaller government everywhere in my life except my bedroom. Now as it relates to the abortion issue, I am a Catholic. Personally, I’m opposed to abortion. But if you look at the law, there’s a legal right for somebody to have an abortion. I can tell you I’m for fewer abortions. I think we should try for fewer abortions. But religious policy doesn’t mix with our social policy, and people have their rights. I’m also for labor-organizing. I definitely see a need for organization in order for labor to get their fair share of the economic pie. I’m not saying just unions. Unions may not be the right thing anymore. There has to be some mechanism in the system where we say we get an equal amount of the economic pie.

You sound more like you’re fiscally conservative and socially liberal.
I’m fiscally responsible and socially inclusive. Because if you’ve used the term fiscal conservative, you’ve lost half the country because we spend billions of dollars. If I say I’m socially liberal, now I’ve lost half the country too. So I like to say I’m fiscally responsible and socially inclusive. I believe that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness should be for everybody. I don’t think I should just be for straight people or for people of a certain color or of certain religious backgrounds. The American experience is based on equality.

I’ve heard it said of Anthony Scaramucci that he has…”
Yeah?

“…a great engine but a lousy transmission.”
I’ll take that. I love the way it sounds. That’s my problem. If you really understood my background, the nature of the family I grew up in, and you knew the area I grew up in and the people I grew up with, most did not go to college. Only my brother went to college. There’s no way you’re getting to where I’ve gotten to in my life otherwise. You’ve got to have a faulty transmission.

Well some also say you’re just politically naïve.
I think that’s an unfair characterization. I think I’m politically naive to the tenth power. I’m going to be totally honest. I always saw myself as an entrepreneur. I always felt my calling was going to be a capital artist. Or I was going to use a business as my canvas and I was going to paint on that canvas. I never saw myself as a guy that could be a partner at Goldman Sachs or a big investment bank. There’s too many quirks and tics to my personality. That’s why I find the president so relatable. He’s got tics and quirks to his personality. But, political naiveté I do have. I have lived by a philosophy that people work with me, they don’t work for me. I’ve lived by a philosophy that we do better when we’re collaborating. I live by a philosophy that you don’t have to necessarily like me or my personality. You know I was the captain of my football team…

What position?
Quarterback. And I was about making everybody around me better. What can I do for you? How do we make the team better? We’re wearing the same jersey. I mean this gets people upset, but I don’t like necessarily hiring Navy pilots and I don’t like hiring tennis players. But I love hiring baseball, football, basketball or lacrosse players. Why is that? Because you know the guy who can fly the plane is a hot shot—a solo artist. He’s not necessarily the best team player.

Are we talking about General John Kelly?
Well, not just him, but yeah. I want to build a team. And I think Kelly is just ill-suited to build that type of civilian team. Like I said, he’s a hero. He’s a Gold Star family member. He’s just not able to do the current job he’s doing for the country.

Would you go back?
How would I go back? Who would hire me? Kelly has to apologize to me. Look, forget about me. It’s the team. Forget about me. I’ve learned that there’s a move that I really, really don’t like. In my neighborhood, we were upfront with each other. You could tell me you didn’t like me. That’s fine. But in Washington, they don’t do that. They operate and slither behind your back. I didn’t see that. But I will say this: I’m a fighter. So if you’re going to hit me, you’ve got to expect to get hit. You know, I’m a nice guy, but I’m not the nicest guy. I got no problem hitting back and as long as you don’t fuck with me, I will not fuck with you.

Do you think the president is a racist?
I said publicly he treats all of us like shit—every race, color and creed. He’s not a racist. He’s an equal opportunity offender. He’s the furthest thing from a racist. If anything, I think he has a soft spot for people whom he sees are coming from different or underprivileged backgrounds. He wants to figure out a way to help them. So, I don’t see him as a racist. He’s a smash mouth president. He’s the Howard Stern of presidents. If Barack Obama was the Jackie Robinson of the American presidency, then Donald Trump is the Howard Stern.

Do you think America needs that type of shock?
The voters thought so. The American people voted him in. Do I think so? I think that they want the substance of Donald Trump. I think they would probably prefer him to alter his style. And so if they were giving him an employee evaluation, because he’s now working for the American people, they’d say this man who is working for no money, who gave up his billionaire lifestyle, needs to change his style a bit.

Some say he took on the role—he didn’t think he’d actually get it—and is now feathering his own nest at the expense of everyone else.
He’s not bought. He can’t be bought. He’s a very successful businessperson. Financially independent. What’s going on now is they set their hair on fire over Trump because he’s sitting in the Oval Office and he can’t be bought. And he’s going to try to end or eradicate or roll back the corruption of the system.

But again, some say some of his decisions are made to enhance his own bottom line.
I think they hate him too much. They are seething with hatred for him to such an extent that I don’t think they really believe that. But here’s the other thing. The way they attack you in Washington is to attack you at your strengths. John Kerry? War hero. Legitimate. They attack him right at that point. Your natural inclination is to just say, “Wow, you don’t know what you’re talking about.” And what Trump has done, he’s a street fighter. So they attack him at his strength—his wealth—and he fights back. As I’ve said, I’ve had a lot of respect for him. One thing that Ryan Lizza did say in his famous New Yorker article is that no one’s ever heard me say a bad word about him.

I thought when you were on [2016 presidential candidate] Scott Walker’s campaign you…
When I was with the Scott Walker campaign, I took a hit at him. But that was a three-minute hit, when we were fighting with each other. But he hit me first. So he likes to fight me. I genuinely like him and I want him to do well and I want him to do well for the country and I think his heart is in the right place. I really think I could have helped him, but I was a little politically naive. I wasn’t tuned into the nefarious dishonesty of the journalists. I wasn’t tuned into the predatory backstabbing that takes place in Washington. I wasn’t tuned into the Game of Thrones screenwriters getting together with the House of Cards screenwriters with The Hunger Games screenwriters, and then they stopped by Veep. And those four screenwriters get together and they create something called Washington D.C. So it’s miserable and brutish and it’s garish and ruthless. I’m no longer as politically naïve. I got kicked in the mouth by the universe.

How do you define yourself after you’ve been kicked in the mouth by the universe?
The answer is you know yourself better. I’m proud of myself because I didn’t lose my cool. I didn’t lose my substance. I didn’t lose my voice. I think after the firing I was supposed to live in a little shame box and slither away never to be heard from again. That’s far from my personality. So it’s seven months later and everything that I said has been spot on.

What has been the president’s biggest failure so far?
It’s not necessarily a failure, but there’s an evolving thing going on for him right now he is adapting to the swamp and he’s facing a learning curve. I’m talking about the very high turnover. If you understand entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs have high turnover. This is a new guy and entrepreneur entering the American presidency as an entrepreneur. He’s trying to mix and match and find the right players to play on the field with him.

But the presidency isn’t a start up. He’s just the latest employee.
But the analogy holds. You start from scratch with each administration. It’s natural.

But doesn’t the turnover in the West Wing bother you?
People are missing the point that he’s an entrepreneur and you go through a spin cycle of personnel. And the first year or first two years of every entrepreneurial is a startup. I have worked on startups and I’ve gone through a spin cycle of people. I have been in the West Wing. They feel like it’s a start up in the context of Trump running it. And they feel like because he is such a different beast it’s going to have that rotational feel to it temporarily.

So you say we’re making too much out of the turnover in the West Wing?
We hired an entrepreneur. And if you are an entrepreneur, you recognize there’s a lot of disruption. I think we’re making too much of it.

Do you discount the misogyny or the accusations of misogyny against the president?
It’s not that I discount them. I see it very differently. The president had a Surgeon General’s warning label on him. And we bought it, and you bought it. So if I say to you, “listen, don’t smoke, smoking kills you.” You buy the cigarette and you’re getting the benefit of the nicotine while the smoking kills you. What do you do? It’s right there on the label: don’t buy it. But we bought it.

Seriously?
I’m not a fan of the misogyny and I’m obviously not a fan of wife-beating. I’m not a fan of taking advantage of women. If the president is like that, okay. And you close the curtain on the voting booth and you have a Surgeon General’s warning label stating your president is like the following. Here are the things that those are big enough hurdles for you not to vote for the president. Then don’t vote for the president and make somebody else the president. But if you vote for the guy, you can’t complain.

We can’t?
It’s like that scene in Casablanca where a guy walks in and he’s watching people gambling, and knows it. He knew there was gambling right. So to me I’m not condoning it. I’m not supporting it. But I do think unfortunately it’s a weighted average test. And the American people said okay, I want him to be the president.

When it comes to world leadership, whether it’s the Paris Agreement or nuclear disarmament or any other leadership role in the world, should the United States back away from our historical role?
No. The United States should not back down. The United States can’t. The United States is stuck in its position of benevolent super power.

Those opposed to the president say he cannot lead properly because he lies and flip flops too often.
They don’t know the president. He’s a good storyteller. Read the Scott Adams’ book. Sometimes the president doesn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. It’s what he does and people who really don’t know him over analyze him. He’s really not like anybody else that’s been elected president.

I don’t know anyone who would disagree with that statement.
He’s unusual. You know you don’t want to take those tics and quirks seriously. I think he would not have won the election if he didn’t have a handle on what people in this country want. That’s not a joke. He appealed to people who know the game has to change.

What do you think of the trade war? Do you think it’s good for the United States or bad?
I would hope we don’t end up in a trade war.

Do you think we’re witnessing the end of party politics with the president’s election?
Not yet. I think in 10 to 15 years from now my children will be moving past us into a post partisan world. Yes, they’ll be small groups of people that are extreme on the left and the right but by and large, most people in the middle of the bell curve will be more data-dependent. They’re more focused on decision making based on what’s right for the country or wrong for the country as opposed to what is left or right in terms of philosophical decisions.

How do you see the future?
I see an unbelievably optimistic future if we can get the policies right. Because there is an abundance coming. There’s automation. There is robotic technology. There’s artificial intelligence. There’s smart machine learning. There’s other advances in medicine. There will be discoveries outside of earth. There’s trips to the moon and Mars. But there’s also trapping asteroids that are loaded with minerals and bringing them back to earth. The first trillionaire will likely be created through space exploration. If you grab a five trillion dollar-piece of platinum and bring it down to the earth and you own it? You’re the first trillionaire. So I see all that great opportunity. The greatest thing about the human animal is our intellectual curiosity and our need and desire to improve itself. There will never be any equal outcome. And so that’s a phenomenal thing.

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