President Donald Trump is bragging about his corruption but the media is not reporting it, according to Trump’s former communications director.
“Trump said something outside a press gaggle that I don’t think enough people caught,” Anthony Scaramucci posted on X on Tuesday. “A reporter called him out on the corruption. He gave three responses.”
He then summarized Trump’s replies as being “1. I have the right to do it. 2. He’s not stealing that much. A billion or two billion dollars. Not that much money. Classic Trump. 3. People don’t care.”
Scaramucci concluded, “That’s the permission structure. Our collective apathy is what they’re using to justify everything happening in Washington right now.”
The former communications director is referring to Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund, which he created as a settlement to his lawsuit against the IRS. Trump sued the IRS because a contractor associated with the agency leaked his tax returns in 2018, proving that he had not paid taxes for many years and had a number of undisclosed business failures. Even though cases of leaked tax returns have never resulted in financial settlements, Trump demanded $10 billion.
The case was controversial because Trump controls both the IRS and the Department of Justice, which in theory is supposed to defend the IRS from litigation. When a judge ordered Trump and all parties involved to meet before her court on May 20th, he rushed to create a $1.8 billion settlement that would go to Trump-affiliated agencies and Trump supporters who have complaints about the federal government. The agreement also protected Trump and his family from IRS audits. He and all the involved parties were quickly accused of self-dealing, and although they initially walked back the settlement, Trump has since expressed interest in reviving it.
Scaramucci has frequently criticized Trump in his second term, often focusing on economic and financial issues. For example, in May he argued that Trump has “no economic philosophy” and that his spending on the Iran war, tax cuts for the rich and special favors for his preferred interest groups will cause spending to reach $9 to $10 trillion by the start of 2029.
“If Barack Obama had done half of what Trump is doing now, Fox News would have been calling for impeachment,” Scaramucci posted on X at the time.
“Trump has no economic philosophy,” he added. “He spent $8.2 trillion in his first term and he's on pace for $9 to $10 trillion in this one. We're at 100 percent debt to GDP held by investors — 122 percent if you count the Fed's balance sheet. Ray Dalio will tell you those numbers put you in sovereign debt crisis territory. And when that happens, the only way politicians are willing to pay for it is through inflation. Which is the cruelest possible outcome, because inflation is the worst tax you can impose on lower and middle income people.”
Earlier in May, Scaramucci pointed out that many on Wall Street are frightened of Trump’s economic policies.
"Trump is too dangerous,” Scaramucci said at the time. “It’s funny, all my Wall Street buddies voted for him and now they’re regretting the fact," then clarifying that "most of the people are.”
He continued, "I’m of the belief that prices are higher. We have an oil crisis. He imposed illegal tariffs, which raised the pricing umbrella for all the lower-middle-income people that voted for him. He’s put us in a very vulnerable state as a country and an economy. If you want to make the case that the banks have record profits in the short term, sure — but he’s also suing some of the banking executives. You are losing the predictive capability of our justice system — what our civil rights are, what our free speech rights are. It’s very, very bad for business."
Speaking with this author for Salon in 2018, Scaramucci argued that Trump’s appeal was in part based on his promises to working class families.
“What I saw was in a generation we went from aspirational working class families, like the one I grew up in, to [desperate] working class families,” Scaramucci said. “What I saw is a decline in wages causing some level of economic asphyxiation for a very large group of people. And so Trump being out there, going into those areas, explaining the policies that he’s going to put in place, and then executing on some of those policies. I mean it’s not me saying, it’s just go look at ‘The Wall Street Journal.’”