In a rare conversation with Reason, Anthony Scaramucci points to three Washington policy choices that fed the anger Donald Trump rode to power.
President Donald Trump ascended by addressing the worries of desperate, wary, and furious Americans. In a chat with Reason, Anthony Scaramucci outlines three pivotal missteps that helped cultivate this mood.
Trump presently holds some of the lowest approvals ever recorded for a president ahead of a midterm election, sitting at roughly 39.5 percent according to RealClearPolitics. Yet the fault isn’t entirely his own. A February 1999 poll by Gallup indicated that 71 percent of the country approved of how things were progressing in the U.S., but that confidence has trended downward for most of the last quarter-century and now rests around 21 percent.
Trump’s unpopularity mirrors a broader weariness with American politics. There is a deep sense that something in the system isn’t working.
During an appearance on The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie, financier and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci—who famously served only 11 days in Trump’s first term—offers some explanations for how we arrived here and what might lie ahead for the country.
1. The Erosion of American Industry
The standard explanation for Trump’s 2016 victory is that he drew in a traditionally Democratic coalition of rural and manufacturing workers. Scaramucci describes this base as “once-hopeful white blue-collar workers, now facing economic strain. [Trump] became a symbol of their anger, and many turned up to vote.”
Exit polls from the 2016 election showed a nine-point swing away from Democrats among voters without a college degree. Scaramucci pins much of the shift to the Clinton administration’s 2000 move to lower tariffs with China, calling it a crucial error that accelerated the hollowing-out of American manufacturing.
The data are not entirely clear-cut. Factory employment had been shrinking for decades before China’s globalization, peaking in 1979. While intensified competition with Chinese production certainly intensified parts of the decline, it also dramatically reduced the cost of goods for American consumers.
Whether China’s globalization deserves sole blame, one thing is evident: although median income and household wealth have generally risen since the 1970s, the gains have not been shared evenly. Non-college-educated workers have seen income stagnation, while those with a college education have witnessed wealth surge. Decades of stagnant finances help explain how a voter can swing from aspirational to resentful.
2. Misguided Wars in the Middle East
There was a brief moment in the 1990s when it seemed America had its approach figured out. Satisfaction peaked; 1998 ended with the first federal budget surplus in 30 years. Then 9/11 occurred, and the U.S. military embarked on decades of conflicts in the Middle East. As a financier, Scaramucci quickly links the budget to these campaigns abroad: “We cut taxes twice…in March ’01, and in March ’03.” The combination of climbing defense spending and shrinking tax revenues placed the budget deficit on an unsustainable path. By the end of George W. Bush’s presidency, the national debt stood at $10.7 trillion; since then, another $28 trillion has been added.
Scaramucci argues that America’s capacity to absorb this debt is thinning: “If we keep this trajectory, reaching a debt-to-GDP ratio around 200 percent…that isn’t sustainable.” The debt burden has become chronic; with interest payments near 19 percent of federal revenue, it is at the highest share the country has ever faced.
But the Middle East wars also carried a subtler cost: a deep erosion of trust in the government. After 9/11 there was a brief rise in trust, but the Bush administration’s misstatements about the Iraq War and the loss of 7,000 soldiers rapidly chipped away at that confidence. From the immediate aftermath of 9/11 to the end of the Bush era, trust in government to do the right thing fell by about half—roughly from 50 percent to 25 percent, according to Pew Research Center data. It has barely reached 30 percent since.
3. The Financial Crisis
In 2008, the United States faced a major crisis. As banks teetered on the brink due to reckless practices, the federal government authorized $700 billion to directly stabilize the financial sector. Though controversial, Scaramucci defends it as a necessary move to avert a deeper economic collapse.
He also views the third misstep as the inequitable bailout settlement: funds were funneled to banks rather than ordinary people. Of the $475 billion distributed through the rescue, 85 percent flowed to the finance, insurance, and automotive sectors. The crisis and the ensuing recession damaged most Americans’ net worth, with poorer, non-college-educated individuals bearing a disproportionately heavier burden.
Beyond the material impact, the perception that the bailout favored elites energized populism and has cast a long shadow over American politics ever since. “That would piss somebody off!” Scaramucci remarks.
In a poll taken just a month after Trump’s 2016 victory, 43 percent of Americans still opposed the 2008 bank bailout. Anger toward the elites who mismanaged the crisis helped ignite populist movements on the right in 2009 (the Tea Party) and on the left in 2011 (Occupy Wall Street).
When the 2016 election arrived, Trump managed to harness these currents of mistrust, dissatisfaction, and disdain. On the campaign trail, he explicitly condemned the Iraq War, blamed Wall Street for inequality, and targeted voters in the Rust Belt. With communities exhausted by industrial decay, deceived by the wars, and squeezed by banks, they were primed to back someone who would listen to them.
But anger and Trump’s rhetoric alone are not enough to alter policy outcomes. The national debt continues to rise; optimism about the future dwindles. And once again, the United States finds itself entangled in conflict abroad.
“This anger-driven populism isn’t solving the problems,” Scaramucci asserts. When pressed for remedies, he offers a broad slate: “You have to end gerrymandering, or at least curb it. You must restore pay-as-you-go budgeting.” He also signals support for means-testing Social Security.
It’s a wide-ranging reform agenda, with many other ideas that could join the list. Yet the root issue isn’t a shortage of good proposals; it’s a lack of active involvement. Scaramucci describes a climate in which many voters have slipped into a kind of apathy, a “psychosis where nobody cares about the direction we’re heading in.”
Indeed, Trump’s most significant victory to date occurred in 2024, yet it drew less than a third of eligible voters to the polls. It’s possible to win an election with anger, but anger alone cannot repair a nation.
