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Trump’s first four years in office were exhausting.

Five years later, his second term is much worse.

It is relentless tiredness mixed with a great dread that decent people feel down into their bones and which makes everything — even the most quotidian tasks — much more difficult.

Each day there is more cruelty, more corruption, more violence, more destruction, more lawlessness, more death, more suffering, more deprivation, more evil, more lying, more assaults on reality and truth, and more fascism.

Individuals and societies have a limited “cognitive load”: the amount of information that working memory can process at one time before the brain and decision-making become overwhelmed and cease to function properly.

Trump’s second presidency is pushing the American people’s cognitive load to the breaking point — and beyond.

To that point: A 2026 report from Pew Research Center found that 53% of Americans view their fellow Americans as being morally bankrupt. Even more worrisome: compared to people in the 25 other countries surveyed, Americans are much more likely to view their fellow citizens and neighbors this way.

Last month, CNN’s Stephen Collinson documented one of these maddening and exhausting days.

On Monday, August 10, in the Oval Office, Appeals Court Judge Emil Bove — one of Trump’s former personal attorneys — swore in Todd Blanche, another former Trump attorney, as the new Attorney General. Blanche and Trump have repeatedly demonstrated that they believe the Department of Justice’s main job is serving as the president’s personal law firm. The collapse of the rule of law in America lurches forward.

Trump then signed an executive order to reduce the number of vaccinations that children receive to protect them from such diseases as the measles. Public health experts warn that reducing the number of vaccinations will likely lead to many tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the United States and around the world.

In the same Oval Office meeting, Trump then attacked progressive and democratic socialist candidates who won recent Democratic primaries as “jihadists,” which, for him, means terrorists and enemies of the state.

Collinson tried to make sense of this day in the following way:

Just one of the wild actions and comments on Donald Trump’s manic Monday would rank among the most notorious things another president ever did.

By close of business, Trump had taken strides toward the presidency he’s always wanted: one of unfiltered authority flowing from the presidential Sharpie, shredding traditional institutions and providing a platform for demagoguery.

Often, the round-the-clock cacophony from the White House seems expressly designed to stifle public comprehension of each individual act planned to irrevocably change the country and the world….

“Nothing bad can happen from what we’re doing,” he said. “Nothing bad can happen.”

In the month or so since Collinson wrote the above essay, the maddening and exhausting days continue, collapsing into one big blur.

There’s the losing war against Iran and Trump’s continued threats to annihilate and destroy it; the naked self-dealing of a crypto business part-owned by the Trump family, now chartered as a legal bank by Donald Trump's own regulators; an apparent influence-peddling scheme where Trump sells early access to his Truth Social posts for up to $100,000 a month; a comedic escape in which Trump hid in a catering truck and was spirited onto a military flight while the press corps and senior cabinet officials were left on Air Force One as human decoys for a possible assassination attempt by the Iranian government.

And still it goes on a twenty-first-century Red Scare targeting the "enemy within" and the "Commies"; the ongoing purge of the military's senior leadership; the replacement of independent inspectors general with political loyalists; a MAGAified Supreme Court issuing rulings in service to its patron in the White House; the continuing destruction of the East Wing to build an estimated $600 million ballroom and a secret bunker for Trump to burrow into; ICE and other federal agents being equipped with electric shock gloves; the arrests of approximately 50,000 "illegal aliens" by ICE and other federal agents in August; an executive order renaming Lake Ontario "Lake America"; an unrelenting campaign to use the Big Lie to stop Americans who oppose Trump and MAGA from voting; and the continued smothering of America's multiracial democracy.

The Trump-controlled John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts took down the beloved “Blue” statue without warning or explanation. I read this as an act of spiteful vandalism.

And Trump is now de facto holding the Kennedy Center hostage and threatening to have it closed down or even demolished if the building is not renamed to honor him.

Some technology CEOs, software engineers, and other experts — most notably Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher who resigned from Anthropic — are warning that Artificial Intelligence may decide to destroy the human race by the end of the decade. How did President Trump respond to this apparent threat?

In a series of posts on Truth Social, he proclaimed: “We already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power over these companies! There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China. WHOEVER WINS AI, WINS! We are leading China, and all others, and will continue to do so. Conspiracy Theorists, Treasonists, Traitors, and Leakers, BEWARE!” and “AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX.”

How do you feel?

Here are two stories from last month. By the time you read this essay, both will have been long lost in the churn of the 24/7 news media and attention economy.

The Trump regime is deporting thousands of people to de facto gulags and other hellholes in Africa and other parts of the world.

In an August 12 New York Times story, journalist Nicholas Casey detailed the following Kafkaesque nightmare:

The Trump administration is building a growing detention archipelago overseas, often in unstable or autocratic countries. And in cases like Mosquera’s, it’s turning deportation into a form of indefinite imprisonment with no legal recourse.

“Can I ask you a question?” Mosquera asked me on a WhatsApp video call in June, using a phone he obtained after a hunger strike. “Do you think I’ll ever get out of here?”…

The deportations — whether they involve immigrants with criminal histories or not — often happen before deportees can argue their cases before a judge….

More than a year after his arrival, Mosquera still sits in that same maximum-security prison. No charges have been brought against him. He has no way to appeal his predicament. And there is no sign that he will ever be released from prison. “It’s like you wake up, and you’re in this place, and there’s no way out,” his lawyer said.

In Springfield, Ohio, thousands of Haitian refugees are now being fitted with GPS ankle monitors by ICE — like they are human cargo — and sent back to a country that is so dangerous American citizens are banned from traveling there. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is now producing terror videos — with a soundtrack of happy music — of Black Haitian men in handcuffs and leg shackles being put on deportation flights.

Beginning in August 1791, Black enslaved people rose up against French colonial rule, in a revolt that would win independence for Haiti. This was the largest and most successful slave rebellion in history. The DHS propaganda video’s summoning of White on Black chattel slavery is so obvious that it does not merit exhaustive explanation.

A 20-year-old man named Pierre Damas Bell was forced to wear one of these ankle monitors. The shame and anxiety led to desperation and an extreme mental health crisis. He committed suicide on August 31. For all intents and purposes, the intentional cruelty of the Trump regime’s mass deportation campaign killed him. Pierre Damas Bell was, by all accounts, a good young man — a college student, member of the JROTC (Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps), an athlete, and a striver.

Mother Jones magazine shared Pierre Damas Bell’s words that foreshadowed his death:

Pierre Damas Bell uploaded a picture of the ankle monitor on Instagram in late July. “I came to this country to pursue my education. I didn’t come here to commit a crime or hurt anyone,” he wrote in the caption. “Yet now I’m walking through the streets of the United States with a GPS monitor on my leg, carrying a feeling of shame and humiliation that I never imagined I would experience.”

“I came here to study, to build my future, and to live a better [life] not to be treated like criminal,” he wrote. “So now, how am I supposed play college sports with a GPS monitor on my leg?”

This is a difficult essay about hard truths and grappling with “political depression” — mine included.

At this point, an editor might request — or demand — that the writer pivot to “public service journalism” and offer solutions or some other upbeat ending to keep the reader engaged.

Or a writer may independently feel an obligation to leave the reader feeling hopeful and not filled with despair or dread.

And in the worst example, a writer will just become a hope peddler who promises that everything will turn out fine in the end because…. America.

In a 2018 conversation with writer Michael Lewis, Steve Bannon, right-wing imagineer and former chief advisor for Donald Trump, infamously explained that "The Democrats don't matter... The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with sh*t."

Bannon’s strategy worked.

In the late 19^th and early 20^th century, steamships exploded on the Mississippi with terrible regularity.

I see these horrible accidents as metaphors for a culture of death and violence and an America that was bursting at the seams with energy and anxiety about a changing country and world.

Psychologists of the era described this collective anxiety as neurasthenia or Americanitis. Today, it would be called generalized anxiety disorder or some other nervous condition.

We are on those exploding steamships and riverboats, being thrown overboard by the blast, and swimming in a river of foul things, trying to survive. Swimming in filth is exhausting.

Trump’s return to power has afflicted tens of millions of people — if not many more — with a 21^st century Americanitis: severe anxiety, exhaustion, and discontent without end.

At the end of the Age of Trump and American fascism, few — if any — of us, will be clean. That is not fatalism or a surrender to learned helplessness. It is reality and the truth.

How do you feel?Chauncey DeVega is widely regarded as a leading analytical voice on the rise of authoritarianism, the MAGA movement, and what he frequently terms the "Age of Trump". His sharp, commentary-driven essays and interviews are regularly republished across progressive networks like AlterNet.

When President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, and then reelected in 2024, Americans who opposed him asked a simple and understandable question: What went wrong?

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump's communications director during his first term, offers a compelling and highly readable answer to that question in his new book, "All the Wrong Moves." At once brisk and thought-provoking, "All the Wrong Moves" avoids appealing strictly to either Democrats or Republicans and instead digs into the deeper systemic problems that Scaramucci argues led America to the Age of Trump. From America's trade deals with China and forever wars waged without paying for them to bailing out the Wall Street banks that caused the Great Recession, policymakers on both sides created economic conditions that systematically disempowered and alienated the working class.

Trump, Scaramucci asserts, was the political consequence of these profound socioeconomic errors. Even if one doesn't fully agree with his arguments, "All the Wrong Moves" is still a Must Read, since it raises and logically supports observations about recent American history that pervasively resonate today. For those who do mostly agree with Scaramucci's points, of course, "All the Wrong Moves" will help them flesh out their positions in future conversations.

I interviewed Scaramucci for AlterNet about his book.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity, length and context.

Profiting off the White House

Rozsa: What is Trump's endgame? In your opinion, how does all of this end in terms of what Trump is trying to do to America right now?

Scaramucci: It's a really good question. I think his endgame is to see if he can make another $10 to $20 billion for himself and then pardon himself and his family members. I think that's his endgame. I don't think he has a policy endgame. I don't think he cares a wick about any person that voted for him or even anybody in America. He certainly would like to leave some monuments to himself in Washington. I don't think he'll be successful in knocking down the Kennedy Center. He'll certainly be successful at building that ballroom. It'll remain indeterminate about the Trump arc, the triumph. But Trump wants to name things after himself, he wants to make money, and he wants attention. So look to see those people restored to the White House, Politico, CNN. He'll have to get them restored because they cut his air supply off. Even though he supposedly hates the journalists, he wants them there so he can get eyeballs and attention. But that's it. He doesn't have a policy endgame. He doesn't care about any of that stuff.

Rozsa: This makes me think of how you described, in your own words, a Potomac bubble, and how the Potomac bubble insulates people in Washington from the consequences of their actions. How does that bode in terms of people standing up to Trump when they work for him? His White House staff, Republicans in Congress, frankly, the Supreme Court justices who are conservative. Can they break out of that Potomac bubble and stop what Trump is doing to this country? Or based on your experience, is that bubble too thick?

Scaramucci: No, they can't do it. This is a failed political class of leaders. This is baby boomers, unfortunately, which I happen to be among. I was born at the tail end. They're a failed group of political leaders, and they only care about their own self-aggrandizement, and they only care about putting their personal power first. If they cared, Kevin McCarthy would've gotten them impeached and he would've gotten McConnell to convict him, and he would've never stood for office in 2024. And again, remember that Trump's rise is concomitant with the failure of the Democratic Party to put up good candidates. They put up a mediocre candidate and they lost to a sitting president, Donald Trump. And Joe Biden. They put up two very disastrous presidential candidates and they lost to him.

He's not a popular figure, and very rarely, except for the November '24 election, where he had the consensus of the popular vote, generally he's been below 50 percent. And now look at him today: lowest approval ratings in modern presidential history, or close to right where Richard Nixon was when he resigned. So listen, they won't do it. They're afraid of him. They don't want to get dislodged by somebody at Trump's support. He does have power in the right-leaning primary voting bloc, and those guys are worried about that.

What motivates Trump voters

Rozsa: And what you said right now is part of why I'm going to recommend your book. I'm letting you know upfront, I read it in less than a day. It is a fast read, and it's insights like that, particularly how the Democratic Party has failed its own voters, that I think people on both sides need to hear, because I 100 percent agree.

Scaramucci: Well, first of all, I appreciate you bringing that up, Matthew, because that's exactly what I wanted to write: a book that could be read in a day. There's some humor in it, and it's a nonpartisan observation. Somebody said on Amazon, and I was very grateful for it, that it's an apolitical book. I'm not taking it into the world of tribalism. I'm not taking it into the world of partisan rancor. I'm just saying, "Hey, mistakes were made on both sides. Well-meaning, well-intended people can make mistakes. This is how they go about doing it." And if you can understand what the mistakes are, then we can begin the process of trying to fix them.

Rozsa: I would absolutely agree that your book is bipartisan in its approach. There are a couple of points where I want to push back on your book, not in an uncivil way, but simply to spark an interesting conversation.

Scaramucci: Please. Let's do it.

Rozsa: So at one point, you write, "I know many liberal Democrats who assume that Trump came to power only because his voters are racist, sexist, and homophobic, et cetera. And sure, those qualities exist in this country, obviously, but they're not really what brought us to this point." When I interviewed you for Salon eight years ago, you had a similar observation. I would argue, based on my observation, that a lot of people who support Trump do so primarily because he validates their hatred of trans people, their hatred of gay people, their hatred of women and Black people and immigrants. I do not think that's all of them. I don't even think that's a majority of them, but I would argue it is a sizable minority. What are your thoughts?

Scaramucci: Okay. So you might be right. I would have to look at granular data, and you and I would have to hire focus groups and do some polling and then some cross-data. I would say that you're more right today than perhaps in 2018 when we had the interview. I think that the racial divides, the xenophobia, the isolationism have gotten worse. I finished the manuscript of this last summer. I did make some revisions before we went into print. If there were a second edition of this book that I could update instantaneously, I would probably take out what I wrote, because I think you are more right now than what I was feeling maybe a year ago when I was writing that. And I think, to your point, it has gotten worse.

Rozsa: Why have your opinions changed on the subject?

Scaramucci: Because I'm out in the field and listening, and I try to meet as many pro-Trump supporters as possible. Some of it is racially tinged. Some of it is in what I would call the culture-war bucket: the anti-trans bucket, if you will, the anti-pronoun-usage bucket, the anti-woke bucket, which is intolerant. There's an intolerant strand. I think the first vote was, "Okay, let's try something new. He's an outsider and the current system isn't working for us." And I think the second vote was, "Okay, it wasn't really that bad when he was president, and we don't know who Kamala Harris is," so it was a lesser-of-two-evils vote. But I think what he's done over the last two years has opened up a Pandora's box of intolerance, way, way more so recently than ever before.

Trump and Israel

Rozsa: I agree with your analysis. I now want to go to a quote from Chapter 8 that I thought was very insightful. You discussed neoconservatives and how their belief that, quote, "the US was now in a historically unique position to exercise immense control over events" and "revived old dreams of US nation-building abroad and injected the dreams with new juice," and was responsible for the second war in Iraq, which was obviously a disaster and which set the precedent for, as you described it, "wars without taxes, wars that we're not paying for." My question is, to what extent do you view Israel and its influence over American politics, and, sadly, its massive human rights violations in Gaza, as contributing to this tendency in American foreign policy?

Scaramucci: Okay, it's a very complex question. So I'm going to say that Netanyahu clearly influenced Donald Trump to unilaterally strike Iran. And so we can then say, is it Netanyahu's fault or is it Donald Trump's fault? Let me just say that it's Donald Trump's fault that we struck Iran. I don't think the war's working, and I don't even think it met the Israeli interests or the American interest. The outcome that was promised is not happening, which is that we would decapitate the regime and the regime would fall and then the country would secularize. As it relates to Israel, not to sound overly cynical, but Israel has done better in terms of surviving with failed bordering states. If you have a failed state in Syria, a failed state in Lebanon, it seems to work for Israel. Having a failed Iran, in their minds, is probably better than having a radicalized Iran.

I think that's where the interests diverged between the United States and Israel. I don't think the United States wants a failed state in Iran. They would like something that's more akin to being in the family of nations. So Israel has had an influence on us. I think the AIPAC lobby has been a strong lobby. AIPAC has the right, by the way; these are US citizens, and they do have the right to lobby the Congress. And so we could then debate whether or not... if you don't like that lobby and you don't like the influence that they've had with these political leaders, then vote for the people that are opposing them who are not influenced by that lobby. But to me, the broader point on Israel is that we have a long-term strategic alliance, and of course the United States under Harry Truman was very helpful in terms of making sure there was a formation of the state of Israel.

And Netanyahu would not like me to say this, and this could perhaps even be controversial, but I think that the Prime Minister of Israel has more than one role. Yes, it's to protect the safety and the sovereignty of the state of Israel, but whether he likes it or not, he's almost like an international brand representative for international Jewry. And so this humanitarian crisis that has been caused in Gaza has hurt the brand. Listen, I grew up in a Jewish neighborhood. I see myself as a philo-Semite. I have supported Jewish causes and charities related to Jewish causes my whole life. But I'm a realist. Has the brand been hurt by what's going on in Gaza? Yes, it has. If people want to pretend that it hasn't, they can, but I would be more interested in figuring out how to fix the brand. And this is the last point that I would make: antisemitism, broadly and historically, when measured and examined over 5,000 years, invariably is a precursor to mass violence.

And the people that want to scapegoat Jews, when the Jewish domino falls, it tips into other dominoes. Many people think, "Oh, well, they're going after the Jews. I'm not a Jew, that's okay for me." But it isn't, because you're hitting a minority class and you're knocking a domino eventually into another minority class. You think they're going after other people, but the way this stuff works is they come after you too. And so we need to stop it. So I'm not a big fan of antisemitism. I don't love Bibi Netanyahu's strategy in Gaza. We can debate the definitions of what happened there. I just think it has caused a humanitarian crisis and it's hurt the brand.

Rozsa: I agree with what you said. Personally, the term that I would use is genocide. I know many Jews find that upsetting, but my response is, I agree with what you said about Netanyahu being, whether he likes it or not, a brand representative for Jews. And unfortunately, he is a terrible representative, not only because he's perpetrating a genocide, but because he is corrupt, and in my opinion has intentionally lengthened this war because he knows as soon as it's over, he faces corruption charges. In my opinion, just as America needs to elect Democrats in the upcoming midterms to put a check on Trump, Israel needs to replace Netanyahu with Gadi Eisenkot. I'm sure you're familiar with him. He's the head of the Yashar! party.

Scaramucci: Yep. I've actually met him. I met him way back in 2018.

Rozsa: Do you think he'd be a good prime minister, or at least a better one than Netanyahu?

Scaramucci: Better. I think he's more cognizant of what I'm saying and you're saying. I'm more careful with the word, the definition of genocide, because of the triggering effects of it. I'll tell you something, and you know this from your political reporting: let's say I'm fiscally conservative and socially liberal. If I use those words, I've now turned off 50 percent of the people, because the Republicans spent billions of dollars on the word "liberal" to spoil it for the group of people, and the Democrats have spent billions of dollars on the word "conservative." So if I say I'm socially inclusive and fiscally responsible, I'm able to reach people better. Do you see what I'm saying? And so I don't use the word genocide, because the minute you use it, you're polarizing both sides.

I would rather say that it's a humanitarian crisis, which I think is factually accurate. And I would like to say that the humanitarian crisis has gotten out of hand, and as a result it's hurt the brand. The minute I use the word genocide, given my profile, it'll raise lots of consternation. And I'll tell you something, and you can see this: my podcast partner, Katty Kay, whom you may often see on Morning Joe, used the word genocide. The Israeli government listens to the show. They wrote to the BBC, which she's an employee of, which is linked to the British government, and made her apologize on the air and issue a retraction, because she's not allowed to make statements like that as a, quote-unquote, quasi-governmental employee of the United Kingdom. She made the statement, she issued the retraction, but let's not take away from what the problem is, which is why I focus on the words "humanitarian crisis."

A Democrat who was a better fiscal conservative than Trump

Rozsa: I appreciate you being so thorough. I now want to move on to another subject from your book. You discussed President Bill Clinton and his administration and the various ways that he disempowered the working class and helped facilitate the housing crisis. At the same time, when I interviewed one of his top economic advisers, Dr. Robert Shapiro, he pointed out, and this is a quote, "Bill Clinton is the only president in 50 years who actually governed based on mainstream economics." And in an article accompanying that interview, he pointed out that Clinton was able to deliver a balanced budget, create four large surpluses, and nearly 23 million jobs, more than any other president before or since, and, quote, "convinced Democrats in Congress to double down with larger tax increases for wealthy people, raised the corporate tax rate, increased Medicare taxes for wealthy people, and hiked the federal gasoline tax." I would argue that in many ways, Clinton's economic legacy is something that Americans from both parties can look at and admire. What are your thoughts?

Scaramucci: Well, listen, I hope I made that case in the book with the whole PAYGO legislation. If you remember that piece of the book, where the guardrails get put on the Congress and Clinton actually adheres to them. I guess it was maybe March or May, I can't remember the exact dates, in 1993, he puts through, at least at that time, one of the largest tax increases in US history to pay for everything. So to me, I love President Clinton. I hope it comes across that way, that I applaud all of those things. I'm simply saying, in the doctrine-of-unintended-consequences category, in the second term he's pushing for more home ownership, okay? Andrew Cuomo is his HUD secretary. I don't know if you remember that. They would like families to own their homes, and so they're pushing for broader credit applications with the money-center banks, which they get.

And that is the precursor. And by the way, it gets amplified by George W. Bush. It wasn't him; it was sort of a bipartisan commitment. What we've learned is the country can sustain 60, 65 percent of the people owning their homes. When you get into the 70s, which is where we were heading, there's instability at the bottom end of the income scale, and you end up getting unstable income, which causes people to miss their mortgages. When you're missing rent, you can get moved out of your house. But when you're missing mortgages, you get more mortgage foreclosures, and that was the problem. So again, he gets an A+ from me. I wish George Walker Bush had adhered to his economic policies. I say that in the book. My colossal mistake number two is that we go to the war, and he unclips us from Clinton's and his father's PAYGO legislation, which leads to this monumental deficit spending.

And I point out that we do that without, for the first time in our history, going to wars of that magnitude with big tax increases. So he did a great job. But that fire of subprime starts in the Clinton administration. It's the doctrine of unintended consequences, and well-intended people trying to push people to have more ownership and to have a part of the American dream, it goes haywire.

Scaramucci and Trump before the White House

Rozsa: I now want to go to the part of your book that was personally the most interesting for me. It was the section where you describe working for Mitt Romney's finance committee in 2012, and I'm going to read the quote: "Trump arrives, [top coat?], accompanied by his lawyer, Michael Cohen, who would later become a household name for paying hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels on Trump's behalf. After about an hour, it becomes clear that Romney is going to lose. This is going to be a concession speech. Trump abruptly and angrily leaves the room to fly back to New York. He's mumbling under his breath words to this effect: 'These guys don't know what they're doing. I should be running for president. I could straighten this whole thing out.'" You then say that, in a way, that might have been a key moment when Trump decided to run for president, right alongside his being roasted at the Correspondents' Dinner in 2011. After all, he did endorse Romney, which I had not remembered until I read your book. Can you elaborate on what it was like?

Scaramucci: Yeah. So I'm trying to make the point to remind people that despite getting roasted at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, he didn't make a decision to run for president. He endorsed Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, you know, didn't ascend to the presidency. And I remember that night; it was election night in 2012. We were all together, and Trump came to the Romney event and he left. And he left saying that, because I was standing right next to him.

And by the way, Romney did accept money from Trump, and we did two campaign stops at Trump's apartment. Not campaign stops; I would call them fundraisers more than campaign stops. We did two fundraisers at Donald Trump's apartment in New York City for Romney, where I, as a member of his finance committee, was raising money.

Rozsa: So my question is, what kind of observations do you think Trump had about the Romney campaign? If Romney could have done things differently by following Trump's advice, what do you think Trump's advice would have been?

Scaramucci: Well, way more anti-immigration, way more ideological stridency. Remember, we came out of that campaign and the Republicans put together a white paper that said we were going to be more favorable towards immigrants. Trump took the party in a completely opposite direction of that. And here's something else, and I do reference it in the book: he helped Romney, and I didn't see it at the time, but reflecting back on it, 2012 was the early kernels of MAGA, the early kernels of right-leaning populism. Because we lost in South Carolina, and Romney asked Trump to make robocalls for him in Michigan. And so we went out and made those robocalls in Michigan, and I know it sounds crazy, but remember, that was still the early stages of things like Instagram. Facebook was available, Twitter was available, but it wasn't as robust as it is now. More people have smartphones today than ever before. Those robocalls, particularly to the older voters in Michigan, worked, and those were the MAGA people that showed up in 2016.

Rozsa: I have a quote from Mitt Romney gave me when I interviewed him in 2021. I interviewed him about his father, George Romney, and what he said about his dad, I think, indicates the old-fashioned Republican view on politics. I'm curious if you agree. He said, "I saw in my father a person without guile. He acted from principle, not politics. He was a man driven by what he thought was right and did not worry about the consequences. His commitment to civil rights put him ahead of his time. Throughout my personal and political life, I have tried to live by the example he set." That used to describe a lot of Republicans. What has changed? Because I'll be blunt, I don't think that describes Republicans today.

Scaramucci: No. I think Jacob Weisberg is writing a book right now called Profiles in Cowardice, and he's picked out eight Republicans who he thinks have failed the country, which is akin to what Jack Kennedy did in terms of picking out eight people who were promoting their principles, in Profiles in Courage. So, to make a long story short, I would say to you that they've become cowards. They've become self-aggrandizing. We started this interview by me saying that they only care about themselves and their own personal power, and they've become cowards. If they were not cowards, they would've sought Donald Trump's removal. If they were not cowards, they would've convicted Donald Trump in his second impeachment after the ridiculous, and I want to emphasize the ridiculous, Matthew, the ridiculous insurrection and the fomenting of that insurrection. If they were not cowards... But they're cowards. There are no George or Mitt Romneys left in that party.

Trump and the end of American democracy

Rozsa: That brings me to my last question. I'm glad you mentioned the insurrection, because it's literally what I'm asking about. There are a lot of people, myself included, who believe that Trump is going to try to steal the 2026 midterms, and if he succeeds, that democracy in America will effectively be over. Do you share that opinion? And either way, if you do or don't, why?

Scaramucci: Okay. Well, you could be right. So this is a calculus now. I have to assess the probability of what you're saying as above zero. Is there a 10, 20, 30 percent chance of that? If it happens, I'm not going to look at you and say I'm surprised. I think the more likely situation is where I would compare this to Viktor Orbán. Viktor Orbán had 16 years to corrupt the electoral process in Hungary, a smaller country. He is trying to corrupt the electoral process here, but I think he's going to be unsuccessful at doing it, primarily because it's incredibly decentralized. Moreover, General Caine said he's not putting military at any of the poll sites. Now, they could intimidate people at the polls, but you're not going to have the SAVE America Act. And remember, the SAVE America Act is designed to stop women from voting. It's really nothing to do with immigrants. They're anti-immigrants, or illegal aliens; they very rarely vote. They want people that have switched their names due to their marriages not to be able to vote, because most of those people don't vote for Republicans.

And so to me, I think we're going to survive Trump, because the courts have been hard on him and he's been forced to adhere to what goes on in the courts. So I think we end up surviving Trump. And by the way, if I'm wrong, it'll be tragic for you and me, our families, and for the country. So you could be right. I'm not giving [unclear] of what you're saying is zero probability. It could happen. That's the danger of where we are right now.

Rozsa: I mean, if you're wrong, both you and I, as outspoken critics of Trump, are going to have very big problems next year.

Scaramucci: Well, yeah, of course. He's Mr. Retribution. But I feel we have to do this. I feel we have a patriotic duty to denounce what he's doing.

Rozsa: We have the curse of living in interesting times.

Scaramucci: Amen.