Scaramucci: Trump's Playing to His Base With Immigration Rhetoric
*By Carlo Versano*
Anthony Scaramucci, the colorful former adviser to President Trump who was unceremoniously fired after 10 days as White House communications director, said that Trump's latest hard-line immigration rhetoric is a ploy to energize members of his base who otherwise may be complacent and stay home on Election Day.
"This narrow-casting idea may make sense" given that the economy is strong, Scaramucci said Monday in an interview on Cheddar. Trump is hitting the "hot buttons of his base" to get them to vote.
Scaramucci ー who said he's still regularly in touch with the president despite his abrupt departure from a short, but tumultuous tenure in the summer of 2017 ー is promoting a book "Trump, The Blue-Collar President," in which he attempts to explain how, despite the trappings of his public life as a New York billionaire, the president was able to resonate with working-class voters who had strayed from the Democratic party.
"He was born with a golden toilet seat," Scaramucci said. "His apartment looks like Louis XIV decorated it after smoking crystal meth."
And yet, Scaramucci said, his voters don't care.
"It's about him being able to galvanize blue-collar people to his message."
It's a well-worn truism of the last two years that Trump was able to peel off longtime Democratic voters in the Rust Belt who had felt neglected by the party, which had becoming unmoored from its working-class roots. Trump came in ー he "hijacked the Republican party," Scaramucci said ー and built a base that has stuck with him through [thick and thin](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/08/01/trumps-approval-ratings-so-far-are-unusually-stable-and-deeply-partisan/).
"It's an historic political achievement whether you like the guy or not," Scaramucci said.
His advice to Democrats: "Go back and return to your roots and you'll have a fairer fight with the president in 2020."
But the "Mooch," while generally supportive of Trump, admitted he thought the inflammatory rhetoric and policies around immigration is becoming problematic for the administration's agenda. He blamed a cohort of current and former top White House officials ー Steve Bannon, John Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen, among them ー that have promulgated the hard-line nationalist strain that Trump has embraced for Election Day.
"I'm not in love with it," said Scaramucci. "A lot of the president's family members are not in love with it."
The book has been [received](https://www.ft.com/content/e1cfca66-de86-11e8-9f04-38d397e6661c) by some as a job re-application for a position in the White House, but Scaramucci said he's not interested in that kind of comeback.
"I'm not a big fan of Washington," he said.
"However bad you think these people are ー trust me ー they're way worse."
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/scaramucci-on-midterms-washington-and-trump).
China's largest ride-hailing company will no longer be listed on the world's largest stock exchange. Didi shareholders voted on Monday to delist from the New York Stock Exchange, less than a year after launching a $4.4 billion IPO with the most significant U.S. share offering by a Chinese company since Alibaba debuted in 2014. Since going public in June of last year, around $70 billion has been wiped from Didi's market value and shares of the company have dropped nearly 90%. Now, Didi is expected to begin preparations to list in Hong Kong. Kevin T. Carter, founder and Chief Investment Officer of EMQQ Global, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
This episode of On The Job presented by ADP: Cheddar takes a deep dive into how offices in Silicon Valley are handling return-to-office policies with Jesse Levinson, Cofounder and CTO of Zoox; Bob Lockett, Chief Diversity & Talent Officer at ADP breaks down the importance of flexibility at work and how to approach compensation in order to improve retention; Pamela Rucker, CIO Advisor and Instructor for Harvard Professional Development, explains how A.I. can play a role in sustainability efforts and what business leaders need to know about ESG.
Jeremy Kim and Wootak Kim, content creators and the stars of the ‘Under the Influence’ podcast and YouTube series, joined Cheddar News to talk about using their platform to help other Asian American creators. "When we were kind of like coming up with the show idea, there's like so many other people that we really respect or look up to or that interesting stories that will never get the chance to be seen by anybody else," said Jeremy Kim. "And so that's the kind of the platform that we wanted to create."
Chantel Powell, Co-Founder and CEO of Play Pits, joins Cheddar News to discuss how she's grown her business from making it in her very own home to being sold on the shelves in Target stores across the nation, and break down how her business remained resilient throughout the pandemic.
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Catching you up on the entertainment headlines of the day with the new "Thor: Love and Thunder" trailer, Tom Cruise saying that he sees every movie that's in theaters, Lucasfilm warning Black actor Moses Ingram starring in "Obi-Wan Kenobi" about a potential racist backlash, and more.
