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- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The jobs of tomorrow are not the jobs of yesterday.

- Look at this.

You get this?

- Life without dance is boring.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- Do you enjoy talking politics?

- No.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

- Our culture, I don't think has ever been tested in the way it's being tested right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) Hi, I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you so much for watching and if you've been following us we're doing a series called, "Democracy at a Crossroads."

we're taping... Talk about a crossroads we're taping on the 13th of January, historic day in our nation's history.

There's an impeachment vote taking place.

It'll be seen after that.

We're honored to be joined by Anthony Scaramucci, who's a former White House communications director also managing partner at SkyBridge Capital.

Anthony, thank you so much for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- It's great to be here, Steve.

Thank you.

I'm loving your room rating.

I mean, you've got the Emmy back there and everything I'm trying to virtual signal here with all these liberal books behind me but I mean, you got an exceptional room rating.

- By the way, I'm in the middle of reading your book from 2018.

Is it called working?

Give me the title of it.

- That one is probably "Blue-Collar President."

- "Blue-Collar President," that's right.

Let me ask you this because you have a perspective that very few people have, right?

People see you on a whole range of programs particularly with our good friend, Chris Cuomo, who's been on with us many times, put this in perspective.

What drew you to Donald Trump in the beginning?

And what do you believe the longer term legacy of his presidency would be complicated question, I know.

The floor is yours, Anthony.

- Well, listen.

I mean, I don't wanna over-complicate the answer.

What drew me to him, was a little bit of a lackadaisicalness on my part.

I was working for Jeb Bush.

He looked like he was heading for the win.

I was normalizing him.

I'd known him for a very long period of time.

He called me, recruited me in a flattering way.

I was the garden variety political fundraiser prior to my arrival in the White House.

and so, I said okay I wanna be loyal to the Republican Party.

This'll help set me up for 2020, for the next candidacy.

Mr. Trump, at that time, we'll call him that because he wasn't president at that time didn't think he was gonna win.

I can verify that, I was flying around with him.

71 campaign stops with him on his plane.

He was playing to win, Stephen, but he didn't think he was gonna win.

I said, okay, this will be wrapped up in November and I will have been a good loyal Republican, done what I thought was appropriate for the party.

And he went out and he won.

And so now once he won the complexion of things changed, he offered me a job.

People don't remember this, but he offered me the OPL job, which was to be the chief networking officer in the White House.

I thought that was a good job for me.

When Priebus and Bannon blocked that job using the Washington gamesmanship, that you and I are now very familiar with.

I let my ego get to me and that's my mistake.

I have to own that for the rest of my life.

I basically said, these guys did a number on me, I'm gonna go do a number on them.

And that was an absolutely stupid thing.

So people watching this broadcast do not let your pride and ego get in the way of your decision-making.

Once you do that, your intelligence is going into the opposite direction of your emotions.

Emotions are going high intelligence is going low.

So I joined the administration as the comms director basically with the ticket to remove Bannon and Priebus.

Of course, I got that done in the 11 days that I was there but I also got blown out with them.

So that's my entry.

That was my observation.

I wrote about it in "Blue-Collar President."

President Trump did not like that book.

It was too balanced.

He didn't like my criticism of him related to the press.

He didn't like what I was saying about our alliances.

But I was trying to write a very fair appraisal of what was going on.

And his legacy now is one of the disaster and nihilism and megalomania.

He'll go down as probably the worst president of the modern era.

I'm not a presidential historian so I can't go back through the 44 people.

Obviously, Grover Cleveland was president twice so we've had 44 people that have been president of United States.

But I can tell you probably from 1900 to 2021 he's the worst apple in the bunch.

- But I think there's something that I believe that you're in a really good position to answer.

We come from, our backgrounds are not too dissimilar.

We come from working class, ethnic, otherwise known as Italian-American in our case, families.

I've been trying to figure this out.

A high percentage of my friends who I grew up with are not only, we're not only supporters of Donald Trump, but he could do no wrong.

No matter what he did the whole Fifth Avenue and go out and shoot somebody, after the sixth in January, they didn't seem too upset about it.

We are the enemy of the people, the whole bit.

Here's my question to you.

What do you think the appeal is after all we have seen going into 2021 where, it'll be seen in February, March, et cetera.

For those who just believe deeply in him who come from backgrounds similar to ours, Anthony?

- Well, listen, the Italian-American community by and large are preservationists, in addition to be being somewhat conservative.

And so what I mean by preservation is is they want to preserve the society of their grandparents and their parents.

And so, like it or not, Mr. Trump represented that in the great culture war that we're living in.

And so there's a, I think that culture war, by the way, is a falsehood.

No one's telling me how to live, Stephen, no one's telling you how to live.

And I certainly don't tell the people in Peoria how to live any more than they tell us here in New York.

But that's a figment of the imagination of the media that's been driven by cable news, that's been driven by social media, driven by Russian weapons grade propaganda, in terms of the robotic technology on the internet.

And so Mr. Trump plays into that and the people from our culture because they are by and large preservationists, and they have a nostalgic look back to their parents and their grandparents or my uncle playing the accordion in 1971, they hark back to that.

And so Mr. Trump represents that for them and that's why they'll stick with him no matter what he does.

- But here's the thing that is hard for me.

Law and order, the rule of law.

The Trump presidency as it relates to the rule of law and playing by the rules which our people believe in.

There's an inconsistency there.

Is there not, Anthony?

- Well, but there's so many inconsistencies.

Is not only his personal behavior, his personal situation with his wives and the divorces and- - Excuse me, Anthony, how about not playing... How about not paying?

And this, I know people are gonna say, "Why are you bringing this up?"

It goes to character.

Not paying a plumber who did work.

Not paying a contractor.

Givng people the shaft to a working class people.

Those same people voted for him.

- He won North Carolina but as you know, he can't order furniture from North Carolina because he never paid any of those furniture distributors for a lot of the furniture that he ordered.

So yeah, listen, that is...

He's in the rogues' gallery of miscreant behavior but you have to understand something.

If you're in a war, people sort of blur the lines.

All's fair in love and war and people are like, "Well, he's my guy, "defending my culture."

- Is it war, Anthony?

- I'm sorry.

- Is it war?

- No, I think it's a falsehood.

No, I do not think it's war.

I think that we have this beautiful, colorful, mosaic known as America.

We have this libertarian streak by and large.

I'm not telling people how to live in certain areas of country.

They're not telling me how to live, but for some reason we fall into the trap of that identity politics.

We fall into the trap of tribalism and we've fallen into the trap of obsessing over our fears.

You mentioning our neighborhoods, well, they don't like socialism.

And so, Oh my God, the radical left is coming in.

They're gonna descend like hoards the latte drinking transvestites are gonna come up over the transom and they're gonna descend into the White House.

That's what they're thinking in their minds.

And that's not true.

It's a falsehood- - Democrats understand that, Anthony sorry for interrupting.

Do you think the Democratic Party and Democratic leadership and Joe Biden in particular understand that fear of the very, very, very far left?

- Of course they do.

Representative Kleiber, you go through the list of people, nobody wants to defund the police.

Everybody understands that we have to have a capitalist system.

I think in the case of a vice president, now president elect Joe Biden, he's looking for fairness in the system.

I'll tell my Republican friends this our entire society has shifted and changed over the 40 years since Ronald Reagan's electoral success.

And they better start thinking about a platform of opportunity for people.

I'm all about uneven outcomes.

I'm all about your industry or my industry creating economic rent for ourselves and our families and uncapping it for the likes of a Jeff Bezos or a Bill Gates.

But what I'm telling you is very harrowing right now in our society, is the uneven starts that we're getting.

You can tell me the zip code of the kid, I can tell you if they can get a good public school education or not.

We have to put an end to that if we wanna heal the rift in this society and we want to close the gap between the haves and the have nots.

We have to reignite aspirational opportunity for middle and lower middle-class Americans.

My father, Stephen, was a working class guy, 42 years on a crane, hourly worker out here on Long Island.

But he had an aspirational job and he felt like he was living in an aspirational working class family.

And one of his kids was gonna go on and live the American dream.

And he would drive to the houses on the coast of long Island.

He would say, "Hey, Ant, someday you're gonna "live in one of those houses.

"You're gonna go to school.

"You're gonna go to college, maybe law school.

"You're going to work super hard, live the American dream "and you're gonna have a different living standard and lots of class mobility."

Those very same families do not feel that way anymore.

I saw that on the campaign with Mr. Trump.

They have gone from aspirational opportunity to desperational stagnation and they've done that in about 40 years.

We have to fix that.

- You know, Anthony, I saw you, I believe on CNN and it struck me that there was in spite of all the challenges you just raised and again, this will be seen in January, February, March et cetera, into the new year into the 2021.

What struck me is that there was a degree of optimism that you expressed.

You sounded confident that we have the ability if not to come together, pretty polarized as we are, but that things will be significantly better.

Where does that optimism come from in light of everything we're seeing around us?

- Because it's an amazingly versatile, amazingly flexible country.

This is a country that has a tremendous amount of neuro-plasticity.

And so we know we're off the rails right now.

And I think leadership, one of the great things about Donald Trump, he's a unifier.

It just happens to be unifying all of us against him.

And so, yes, he'll have a small percentage of the people that will be with them no matter what but the majority of the people, 81 million on November 3rd, as an example, wanna get it together and they wanna come together.

And so I think you're gonna see Mitch McConnell signaling that he's going to allow for all these cabinets selections that Joe Biden has selected to go through the Senate.

I think that's a very good sign.

Obviously, the president is up against an impeachment trial.

This'll be his second impeachment trial.

I think he gets convicted this time, I think he'll be absolutely unmitigatedly disgraced.

Yeah, it'll remove the opportunity for him to ever run again, not that that was a possibility anyway but when I step back and I look at America and I see the resources of the country, the flexibility of the country, the fact that we're 50 state free trading block with a single currency.

And I think about the flexibility of the us dollar being the reserve currency for the world which is really good policy.

We could turn this whole thing around, but what I would say to my fellow Americans, is not a short term solution.

We need a five to 15 year plan on the industrial policy, manufacturing policy, jobs trainings policy and we need to right-size the educational programs in America.

And I believe we're gonna do that.

I think we don't have a choice.

Last point I wanna make on this, Stephen, civic virtue, we have to return Americans to the idea that we are Americans first.

We're not part of a tribe or not hyphenated.

We did a better job of that in the '60s and '70s frankly, because of all the civic lessons that we were taking back then.

Those civic lessons are in decline.

Our national service commitment is in decline if you look at our all volunteer army and so we need to reboot those things and I predict that we will.

I mean, this is an amazing country.

- Anthony Scaramucci, we appreciate you not only joining us but offering a prescription for how we move forward.

And again, I'll remind people, we are taping on the 13th of January historic day, so much going on, we'll follow this.

Anthony, all the best to you and your family.

Stay safe and be well.

- Same to you.

Happy new year.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, we'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by John Farmer Junior.

Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, at the great Rutgers University.

Also, former Attorney General in the state.

Let me disclose John, that I am a proud alumni, of the Eagleton Institute.

Barely got out, but proud to.

(laughing) - One of my more distinguished alumni.

That's good.

Good to see you, Steven.

Good to be here.

- Yeah, it's an important day.

And again, we are taping on the 13th of January.

This will be seen January, February, March, et cetera.

Assume in fact that as we speak, the president is, President Trump.

Joe Biden will be president, when you see this.

Is impeached for a second time.

What is the historical significance of that, John?

- Well, it's unprecedented.

No president has been impeached more than once.

And it speaks to the sort of the tenor of his term, and the way it's ended.

That he's ended up being impeached twice.

My suspicion is that, I guess a lot can change by the time it goes to trial in the Senate.

But my suspicion is, he'll also be the first president, not convicted twice.

And so, I don't know what make of that.

But it is unprecedented, for this to happen twice.

- Let me ask you this, John.

You wrote a piece.

By the way check out John Farmer's piece on NJ.com.

"This failed revolution has been brewing for years."

You talked about the horrific events, the insurrection.

The riot on January 6th of 2021.

You said it wasn't surprising.

You said the hypocrisy there was about people saying, "Their, blue lives matter."

"And were there for, we believe in law and order."

And it was the opposite of all that.

And a lot worse.

And God forbid!

We don't know what could happen, from that date until when this is seen and after.

Talk about the significance of January 6th, John.

- Well, I think January 6th.

Obviously was shocking to everybody who witnessed it.

And very dismaying for those of us who, really believe in this country.

And support it.

But looking at it realistically, it's the culmination of events and trends that have been brewing for decades.

And not simply an aberration.

If you go back 20... Go back a generation.

When president Clinton was elected president, there were those who never accepted his legitimacy.

And I think, I sorta traced the beginnings of what we saw January 6th to that.

There were those who were dogging him throughout his presidency.

Ended up impeaching him, and failing to convict him.

And, but then we had Bush versus Gore.

And there were... And the Supreme Court decided that election.

There were many Democrats who never recognized legitimacy of President Bush.

And it proceeded through Obama, and now to Trump.

And the polarization has gotten worse and worse.

Social media.

The advent of that in 2005, has just accelerated the polarization.

So it culminates in this, really horrible situation where, we have American citizens, storming their own Capitol.

- Yeah.

But John, isn't there something different about this?

Yes, division, polarization, different media.

You believe what you believe.

So you go to a media source, that tells you that you're right.

And so we're bifurcated, and chopped up in the media as well.

Except those of us in public broadcasting.

As I often say, we have no horse in the race.

Other than trying to play a meaningful role, in the effective functioning of a representative democracy.

That being said, John.

Isn't this different?

The Trump presidency, will have what effect on "The functioning of democracy?"

This series is called, "Democracy at a Crossroads."

What do you believe the longer term effect will be, of the Trump presidency connected to that event on the sixth and beyond?

- Well, I'm hoping that the long-term effect has been to shock Americans into realizing that we can't allow this polarization to continue.

And continue to be exacerbated by, the structure of our politics.

Where everything's about money.

And so, the social media companies, basically curate everybody's beliefs.

Until the little cul-de-sacs of their own prejudices.

So you end up, not even recognizing the humanity of the people that you're talking to anymore.

I'm hoping that those events were sufficiently shocking.

That will take everybody... Make everybody take a pause and say, "Wait a minute."

"We've got to do something about this."

"We've got to change this."

That's gonna take time though.

Because, we've seen in the last week.

Some of the rhetoric is continuing to be, aggravating in nature.

And there are rumors of events happening, around the country on January 17th In many state capitals.

And even on inauguration day.

So I'm hoping that the long-term effect is to make everybody take a step back.

And say, "we have to change the structure of our politics."

But in the short term, I think we're gonna continue to deal with this potentially violent polarization that we're experiencing now.

- As you listen to John Farmer, he's talking about January 17.

And then, the inauguration if you will, of President Biden.

Who will be president, when this is seen.

You know what's scary about this John?

We're taping on the date, we're taping on the 13th.

And we don't know what violence.

And I'm hoping and praying that just... Well, I'm wrong.

But I don't know if I'm gonna be wrong.

Because the security experts, the folks of the FBI and other places.

Have picked up all sorts of information about planned violence.

What do you believe the response should be?

On the part, just not a law enforcement, or government overall to such violent insurrection efforts.

And to the point where Members of Congress, are saying they're afraid for themselves, and their families, and their safety.

And God forbid!

That's just a fear that is unfounded.

But we don't know.

Go ahead, John.

- Look, I think they should be afraid for their safety.

I mean, if you look at what happened on January 6th.

The woman who was shot.

The one person who was shot, during the rioting and the insurrection that occurred.

They were shot while a group that she was with, was trying to actually smash the door open, and get to Nancy Pelosi.

And where she had been hidden out.

Look, every Member of Congress and the Vice President's life was in danger last Wednesday.

And so, they're justified in feeling that their lives were in danger.

I mean, my own take on, what's happened since is; I understand the impeachment.

I think it was impeachable, what the president did.

I would've started though, with a bipartisan center of the president.

To get both parties to get to Congress as a whole saying, "This was an affront to our branch of government."

And what the demonstration that you basically stirred up.

It was an affront to our form of government, to our branch of government.

And threatened the life of your vice president.

The crowd was chanting, "hang Mike Pence."

And I don't think they were kidding.

The response of law enforcement I think, needs to be severe.

I think the people who stormed the Capitol, committed federal crimes.

It needs to be investigated thoroughly.

They need to be prosecuted.

It needs to be made clear to people that our institutions must be respected.

Regardless of the rhetoric coming, even from the President of the United States.

- So free speech.

Again, as we speak.

As we do this program, Twitter taking lots of people off.

Let's start with, as when the show is seen, former President Trump.

People who say, "Wait a minute, "what's up with these social media companies."

Twitter takes Trump off.

They're gonna take somebody else off.

Now what if my point of view, is something they disagree with.

Help people understand the difference between having different points of view.

And by the way, I want to make it clear for people who go on my Facebook page.

And our great social media team manages it.

You personally demonize someone.

You threaten violence.

You make excuses for violence and insurrection.

You'd make an attack on me, my family.

Or... You're not welcome.

That's not a political point of view.

I'll get off my soap box here, John.

Help people understand the difference between free speech around a political point of view, versus something very different.

John Farmer?

- Well, free speech is not absolute.

And the Supreme Court has held that, on numerous occasions.

And the classic example is yelling fire in a movie house causing a stampede.

And having people die.

And so the decisions of the social media companies, to take the president off.

At least temporarily, is as a result of their view.

That he essentially, that's what he did last week.

He created a clear and present danger of a collapse of our government.

And therefore... - What about others, John?

What about others who say, "It was a good thing that happened."

And they advocated in New Jersey, or in New York, or Connecticut.

Is the role of social media companies, and those of us in the media, not to have those voices heard?

- Well.

Listen, if you view it in the abstract.

The idea that a few moguls, essentially can censor the President of United States is pretty outrageous, right?

I think there's a short term solution, to a much bigger long-term structural problem.

So in the abstract, it is outrageous that social media companies, have that much power.

That they can essentially censor, an entire point of view.

On the other hand, violence is never appropriate.

They're viewed him as advocating violence.

That's certainly resulted in violence last week.

So I understand their decisions.

But I think, one of the things that has to come out of this.

Is a long look, at how these social media companies are structured.

How their algorithms that are designed, really for commercial purposes, have had the effect of basically driving people apart.

To the point where, they can't even talk to each other anymore.

And that needs to be reformed.

Even the social media companies themselves, have on occasion said, "There needs to be some sort of regulation."

My own view is that, is there's a public trust involved, in these platforms?

That is akin to radio and television when they first came into existence.

And there was a recognition, that any kind of monopoly, on information was dangerous.

And the results of that, was the Federal Communications Act.

I think that act needs to be looked at, and sort of amended to a deal with, the presence of these enormous social media platforms that have outsized power to control the shape of opinion.

- 30 seconds.

By the way, when I remember being at Eagleton.

The late great Dr. Alan Rosenthal, my mentor there.

I remember we'd bring people together, have spirited conversations.

Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, others.

Real quick, 30 seconds.

Our role in public broadcasting, to have different views heard.

How important are we?

And I'm trying not to be self-serving.

But how important are we?

- Look.

I just think it's a basic truth that, public broadcasting right now, is about the only neutral fact finder you can go to.

To get the news straight.

So, I mean.

That's what I watch.

That's what I encourage people to watch.

And I think PBS plays an enormously important role in sort of making sure, that the public square is one of integrity.

And I frankly think Eagleton, is playing the same role.

- Yeah.

And by the way, for those who think I just tried to turn it into commercial.

I assure you, that was not the intent.

(John chuckles) It's because as as often say, we don't have a horse in the race.

We just want to play a meaningful role, in the effective functioning of a representative democracy.

John Farmer, Jr. Director of the great Eagleton Institute of Politics, at Rutgers University.

And former AG, Attorney General in the state.

Thank you, John.

All the best to you, and everyone at Eagleton.

Thanks, John.

- Thank you, Steve.

Great to see you.

And thanks for having me.

You got it, I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you so much, for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by NJM Insurance Group.

PSE&G.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

Holy Name Medical Center.

Fedway Associates, Inc. Valley Bank.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

And by United Airlines.

Promotional support provided by New Jersey Globe.

And by Insider NJ.

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