O'REILLY Eleven days, what the deuce happened? 

SCARAMUCCI I'm fired by President Trump. 

SCARAMUCCI I was not the right guy for that job. 

SCARAMUCCI I'm not a bulls— I wasn't kissing Trump's ass like these sycophants. 

SCARAMUCCI I'm a Republican. I've always been a Republican.

O'REILLY I'm not calling you a sellout. 

SCARAMUCCI No, no, no, I got it. 

O'REILLY We have the choir. Don't upset the quiet in it. 

O'REILLY You see the light. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay, I mean, you're fantastic by the way, but go ahead, keep going. 

O'REILLY Hey, Bill O'Reilly here. Welcome to another long form. We'll Do It Live. Our guest today is an interesting guy. I know him. He lives in my hometown on Long Island. His name is Anthony Scaramucci. And I've got, I usually don't do note, extended notes in interviews, but I have to do it because he's got a resume. It's all over the place, and I don't want to get it wrong. He's got a book coming out in September. All the Wrong Moves, an economic book. Anyway, he's a rich guy, so he's worth listening to. Unfortunately for Anthony, his book comes out the same day my book comes out, Confronting America. So, you know, he has got to compete with me. 

SCARAMUCCI Collaborate, collaborate. 

O'REILLY You know. All right, so here he is, Anthony Scaramucci. Very impressive resume, a Long Island boy. What town? 

SCARAMUCCI So I was raised in Port Washington. I was born in Mineola, Nassau Hospital. I think you remember Nassau Hospital, right? And my dad was the crane operator out on West Shore Road in Port Washington. And if you remember McCormick Sand and Stone and Gotham Sand and Stone down there, there's a beautiful golf course there now. And Ken Langone, someone you and I know well, put a monument there to all of the Irish and Italian immigrants that- 

O'REILLY It's still an ethic area. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, still an ethic area. So my dad was a union guy, and he was a crane operator there. 

O'REILLY I didn't get over to that area until very late in life. I was a Levittown boy. 

SCARAMUCCI Levittown, yeah, I remember that. 

O'REILLY So you got a law degree from Harvard, that's impressive, BA in economics at Tufts. And then you start your climb in the financial world, Goldman Sachs, you start your own company, SkyBridge Capital, you become a very successful, wealthy individual. What would you attribute your success to, first of all, before we get into the politics, which I think are fascinating, but why are you successful? Why? 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, I would say in the beginning, I'd say reasonably high IQ. My mother went to the 6th grade, and she came back from the parent-teacher and said, you have some kind of Q thing, I don't know what it is. My mother was uneducated, and I went back to the school, he was a Navy vet, his name was George Kestner, he told me I had a high IQ, so I think that was number one. 

O'REILLY Okay. 

SCARAMUCCI Number two, there was a lot of financial anxiety in my house. Which I think you experienced, because I've read some of your books. 

O'REILLY We didn't have any money. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. And so I had a paper route, a Newsday paper route early, I worked at the local Key Food, the supermarket is now North Shore Farms, because you're from the area, it's right by DiMaggio's. I worked there from age 13 to age 18, and I was a hustler. 

O'REILLY You're a smart guy born with it, work hard, as many Long Islanders had to do. And then you develop an interest in finance. Obviously, we're tapings in New York City, the capital of finance in the world. You develop an interest in this, and you become successful. Were you a good stock picker? I mean, what was the basis of success? 

SCARAMUCCI It's a great question, but I have to go back a second because I think you'll appreciate this. I was clueless and sheltered by my parents. I was in a blue-collar Italian family. We did certain things at certain times, and everybody in the neighborhood, Bill, were putting in sheetrock, clamming, delis, pizzerias, landscaping. That was the neighborhood I grew up in. Okay. And so John Zanetti, my guidance counselor at Shriver High School, Port Washington, went to my parents, I mean, and this is old school stuff, they were drinking espresso out of a cast iron pot one night, smoking cigarillos in the kitchen. And he told them, send your son to the private school, Tufts University, not to the state school, Binghamton. 

O'REILLY Okay. 

SCARAMUCCI And my father didn't have any money. And so he said, Anthony will figure it out and so forth. And then my dad did something for me, which I think you would admire. He cashed his union life insurance policy. 

O'REILLY To pay your tuition. 

SCARAMUCCI He gave me a $10,000 check in April of 1982, and that did change my life, because I said, oh my God, this is so important to my mom and dad. 

O'REILLY That they would do this. 

SCARAMUCCI That they would do this, and they had so much pressure on them financially. It really set a light bulb off in me, and I worked very hard at Tufts, and that was a piece of luck, because Tufts was right down the block from Harvard, because, you know the area, you went to Harvard. And the provost of Tufts was very close to some of the people at Harvard. I had high test scores, high grades, got into Harvard Law School, which enabled me to be even considered for a job interview at Goldman Sachs, because they typically weren't at that time hiring people. 

O'REILLY Yeah, sure. You saw what the upper echelon. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, but I went to Harvard in polyester, just need you to know that. I was in- 

O'REILLY Oof. That's not good. 

SCARAMUCCI I was all poly. Yeah, that's not. I didn't know better. Yeah. Okay. So I had to learn those lessons. 

O'REILLY Yeah. Track suits are not good at Harvard law. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, it wasn't track suits, but it was definitely like a Brooklyn undertaker look, Bill. 

O'REILLY Okay, how many others siblings were there? 

SCARAMUCCI So I have an older brother, and I have a younger sister. My older brother got an MBA from NYU. 

O'REILLY And they're all gifted. 

SCARAMUCCI He's a hard worker. He's a good guy. My sister has a fashion business. 

O'REILLY Okay, so then you're a prince of the city, or a wolf of Wall Street, or whatever, whatever it is. Yeah. 

SCARAMUCCI Goldman wasn't like that, to be honest, but if you know the guys at Goldman or not? 

O'REILLY I don't know any of these people. My whole career has been journalism. I know finance only because of trial and error, but I don't know them, and I don't hang with them. But you become very well known in the city among the big money makers. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, Rudy Giuliani made my, so I'll tell you this story. So I'm at Goldman. They give me a desk and a telephone, and they want me to be in the wealth management practice. I don't know anybody. My dad wears a greenie to work. He's a crane operator. 

O'REILLY You don't know any rich people. How can you be in wealth management? 

SCARAMUCCI How could you be in wealth management, okay? Also, I don't hit a golf ball, and I don't swing a tennis racket. 

O'REILLY Right, right. 

SCARAMUCCI But I have a degree and reasonably well spoken, reasonably well read, so now what am I going to do? Well, it turns out if you go to political fundraisers, Bill, you meet a lot of wealthy influential people. 

O'REILLY So you start crashing the fundraisers. 

SCARAMUCCI Start crashing the fundraisers. And do you remember Joe Margiata? Yeah. Okay. So Joe Margiata controlled my father's union. And so when I signed up at the Port Washington Post Office for the selective service at age 18 and to register for the draft, I turned to my pops, I said, Dad, am I a Republican or a Democrat? What am I? I don't know what I am. No, no. You're a Republican. You know, Margiata controls this union. And so I became a registered Republican, a lifelong Republican. Rudy is running for mayor. I go to work for him. He loses. I'm young Republicans for Rudy Giuliani. This is 1989. He loses the election, he goes to Whiting case, which is not too far from here, and he's gonna run again, and I start building a relationship with him, and he is introducing me to people. And then Rudy... 

O'REILLY Were you a fundraiser for him? 

SCARAMUCCI I was, I was a young fundraiser. My first political check bill was 250 US dollars to Young Republicans for Rudy Giuliani. 

O'REILLY So then he gets elected mayor, and you do you stay with him? 

SCARAMUCCI Oh, it was the best. Oh, no, that was the best. So Rudy gets elected Mayor. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI I have like the best parking pass in New York city. I mean, I can park the car on two wheels on a fire hydrant in front of like Radio City. And you know, I meet Tony Carbonetti and meet all these different guys. There's another gentleman that I know, you know. He goes to church with my father, St. Peter's church, 5pm mass, every Saturday. And that's Ken Langone. And so my father says, you know, my son is a young Wall Street guy. Could he come meet you? And so, okay, come and meet me. I go to 399 Park, the Seagram's building. I think it's the other building. Anyway, I go upstairs to see Kenny, and he helps me with my relationship. He introduced me to Dick Grasso. I think he also...

O'REILLY Are you with Giuliani still, or what are you doing there? 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, I'm with Giuliani. 

O'REILLY You're building contacts now. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. So I'm with Giuliani as a volunteer. I'm with Giuliani doing some projects for him as a fundraiser. He's going to run for mayor again. He wins the mayor's race in '93. He is going to run again in '97. I am with him, I am with his team. And now the city is open. I worked for Bob Dole because of Mayor Giuliani. And this is the weird thing about Rudy. 

O'REILLY Why did you want to get into politics when you are making all this money in the private sector? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, because I wasn't at the time. I was getting my. I was drawing resources from the political game, and it's networking to create a clientele at Goldman Sachs. That's the way I built it. 

O'REILLY So, you were melding the politics and the money. Not unusual in America.

SCARAMUCCI Not unusual in America, but also for somebody like me, with that limited upbringing, not tied to a boarding school, didn't know people in that genre, and I wasn't a country club member. 

O'REILLY Alright, so let's then go into politics. So you get a profile in New York, and then you get involved with Barack Obama's campaign. How did that happen? 

SCARAMUCCI So I'm with Dole, I work for Dole. I'm with Pataki, even though Rudy left Pataki to go to Cuomo, and I think you probably would remember that. I am with George W. Bush, but I'm not as politically active as a senior fundraiser. Barack Obama is a fellow Harvard Law School, not my classmate, I'm class of '89. He's class of 1991, he's two years behind me. But I know him. We're playing hoops in the Hemingway gym together. 

O'REILLY So you knew him in school? 

SCARAMUCCI Knew him in School. Not well, I'm not gonna BS you and say I knew him well, but we knew each other. And one of my buddies was working for him and said, you know, come to the university club and write him a check, help us out. And I said to myself, well, I'll never know a president, I'll ever meet a president in the United States, let me go and see him. And so I went to go see him at the university club, it was July of 2007. I handed him a check. I said, you know, we sort of knew each other in law school. I said, I want to be able to tell people that we knew each other really well. Are you okay with that? And Obama looks at me and says, hey, if you double the amount of the check, we'll take it back to Hawaii. Okay, and I ripped up the check, and I doubled it. He was a... 

O'REILLY Charming guy, yeah. 

SCARAMUCCI Let me tell you something, Bill. You helped him immeasurably. I'm gonna tell you how you helped him. He accepted an invitation from you to be interviewed by you during the Republican convention in 2008. And by the way, that viewership made him attractive to a very large group of independents. 

O'REILLY That was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. You remember that? It was a shrewd move because he had to pull me out of Minneapolis to do it, but I had to take it. I treated Obama fairly, I mean, I'm not sure what anybody says, but I understood that he was a liberal man who believed that, unlike your background and my background, which are similar, but the... The government really helped us, because he said to me one time during an interview, a Super Bowl interview, you know, you didn't do this on your own, Bill, you had help from the government. 

SCARAMUCCI Oh, that's Elizabeth Warren nonsense, yeah. 

O'REILLY No, I didn't. I know government helped me do it. I mean, you might have the road out here, but I paid for that road with my tax money. So that was...

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, that's a misnomer, that bad philosophy. 

O'REILLY But I never bought into his vision of how the country should be run. You apparently did. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay. So this is, again, doesn't reflect well on me, but we're having a very honest interview. I wrote checks to the following people: Chuck Schumer, Hillary Clinton in 2000, and Barack Obama. I was a lifelong Republican, but like Donald Trump writing checks to Kamala Harris or to Chuck Schumer, I lived in New York. It's a democratic city. 

O'REILLY Okay, we know what you're doing. 

SCARAMUCCI I've got clients that are saying, hey, you got to write this check or write that check. So the buy-in was not there, Bill, but the check was there to fulfill an obligation to the client. 

O'REILLY And this is a Democratic town. 

SCARAMUCCI And it's a Democratic Town. And so that's the political reality of it. My fundamental philosophy, if you're asking me about it, is more grounded on the side of the Republicans. I'm probably more socially libertarian than the average Republican. 

O'REILLY Yeah, because your buddy Ken Langone, the founder of Home Depot, who helped you a lot, he's a self-made guy. I didn't want to hear any of this. 

SCARAMUCCI It's a phenomenal book. I love capitalism. Kenny wrote a phenomenal book. 

O'REILLY He doesn't want to hear any of this, right? 

SCARAMUCCI So I'm a Republican. I've always been a Republican. 

O'REILLY which you kind of sold out a little bit. 

SCARAMUCCI Tell me how I did that. 

O'REILLY Well, by giving money...

SCARAMUCCI I probably did, but tell me how I did it. 

O'REILLY Given money to the opposition, but it was going to help you achieve what you wanted to do. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay. So if you-

O'REILLY Is that a fair statement? 

SCARAMUCCI I think so. 

O'REILLY I'm not calling you a sellout. 

SCARAMUCCI No, no, no. I got it. No. I think you're being fair in the way you're measuring it. I would just say if you were a business executive in New York- 

O'REILLY Which I never would have been. 

SCARAMUCCI Right? Which includes Donald Trump because he-

O'REILLY No, he's there. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. He talked about it with me. You know, he wrote checks to Kamala Harris. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI He wrote to the Senate. A lot of American businessmen that are Republicans have written checks to Democrats in this- 

O'REILLY You bet. 

SCARAMUCCI If that's a sellout by definition, then I am one, but that's practicality in some ways. 

O'REILLY My standards are pretty up there. I never gave a dime to any politician, not even George Santos. All right. I never gave a dime to anybody because my job is to watch them, not support them in financial matters. All right, you're with Obama, all right, but then you see the light. 

SCARAMUCCI Now, okay, I mean, you're fantastic by the way, but go ahead. Keep going. 

O'REILLY All right, and you're not with Obama. 

SCARAMUCCI I'm not really with Obama. 

O'REILLY You switch over to Romney. 

SCARAMUCCI I gave Obama money, but I'm a lifelong Republican. I didn't know McCain. 

O'REILLY Tell me about the switch, though. So you're with Obama. Obama wins, he beats McCain, and then all of a sudden Anthony Scaramucci, who has now a reputation- you're not some anonymous guy anymore- he goes, I'm going to go and support Romney against Obama. Why? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, listen, first of all, I'm a lifelong Republican. Secondarily, there was one thing that Obama did that I said, wow, if we go in this direction, it'll be very bad for the country. There was a bankruptcy. General Motors had a bankruptcy. There was a restructuring that included the American government, and the government took equity in the company. Don't have a problem with that, but they jilted the bondholders of a portion of what they were obligated to. And that could have been a huge lawsuit, and maybe those bondholders would have won against the government. They didn't sue, of course. But it was a... You didn't like it. It was a taking. You know the Constitution, and the most important sacred thing for our economy is our property rights. 

O'REILLY So now you're over back in the Republican side with Romney, who gets waxed, and it was largely his fault he lost, and then '16 rolls around. How well do you know Trump? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, I don't think anybody super well knows him. You know him better than most anybody that I know. I would say that I have a relationship with him. I'm invited. I'm at CNBC as a contributor. He builds The Apprentice. I get invited to those parties. 

O'REILLY But you know him, hi Anthony, hi Donald. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, I'll tell you, we did three fundraisers in his triplex apartment for Mitt Romney in 2012. 

O'REILLY So you conversed with him. 

SCARAMUCCI I went to a Yankee game with him in Regis Philbin one night at House of I'm Better's box. Got it. Yeah. I have a relationship with him, I wouldn't call us friends. 

O'REILLY But you support Jeb Bush over Trump when Trump makes the run in '16. Why?  

SCARAMUCCI Okay, great quick story. I get invited to breakfast at Trump Tower the day after The Apprentice. And so I'm already with Bush. And you've been in that office, so Trump's desk is here. I'm sitting here looking up at him. And he says to me, I was great on The Apprentice last night. And I'm like, well, I was watching Bill O'Reilly last night, I wasn't watching The Apprentice. And he's, oh, you were the only one. My ratings were fantastic, blah, blah. You know how he talks over this. And then he says, but I'm done. It's my last show, I'm running for president, and I looked at him in the same way we're talking, I laughed at him. I said, you're not running for President. 

O'REILLY That's what I said to him. 

SCARAMUCCI You're just doing this for publicity. And by the way, that night on your show, because I watched your show every night, he was at 2% in the polls. You were showing the polls, and I said, you're at 2% in the polls. And then he said something that I will never forget, Bill. He looked at me, he said, you know, I am at 2 percent in the polls, guys like you and O'Reilly, you think I'm not running. But I'm serious. I'm going to go right to the top of the polls, and I'm gonna win. And he goes, you're good on TV, and you're a New Yorker. You should come work for me. I don't need a lot of money from you. 

O'REILLY So he recruited you. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, he recruited me. And I said to him, I said, Mr. Trump, I'm with the Bushes. I'm Jeb. Don't you think Jeb has low energy? It's how he talks, right? I said no, I don't think so. Turned out he did. And then he said, okay, tell you what, if he comes out of the race, I want you to come work with me. And I leaned over. I shook his hand. And I think you remember his assistant, Rona. He came out of the race. I think Bush lost the South Carolina primary, if I remember correctly. Trump called me. I had Romney's deck of all the donors with me. 

O'REILLY Ah, yeah. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay. And I went to Trump Tower with Scott Brown. You remember Scott Brown? 

O'REILLY Sure. The Massachusetts guy. 

SCARAMUCCI And he was senator from Massachusetts. So Scott and I were at Tufts together. So I arrived at Trump Tower with my Romney deck, and Scott Brown and I said, Mr. Trump, this is what we can do. Here's what we could do. Here's the reach that we have. I'll start calling these people. He wanted me to be finance chair, but I was working at Fox News at the time as the host of Wall Street Week. So I don't know if you remember that show. It was on Fox Business. I bought the show from the Rukeyser family. I went to Roger Ailes with the show. And I said, you know, I would like to be the interviewer to all of these business people. We put it on Friday nights at eight o'clock, and then we ran reruns on the weekend, and Roger took the show from me. And I said, Mr. Trump, if I do that, I won't be able to host the show. I wanted to stay hosting the show, so we recruited Steven Mnuchin. I was on the finance committee, and then I went to work for Mr. Trump. I raised him a lot of money. I provided...

O'REILLY And he didn't hold it against you that you were a Jeb supporter or anything. 

SCARAMUCCI Again, I want to be fair here. In fairness to him, he respected the loyalty to Jeb. He knew he was coming into the race late. And he was like, when he's out of the race, I want you to come over to work for me. And I did. I shook his hand, and I went and did that. 

O'REILLY So then he wins. 

SCARAMUCCI He wins, yeah. Surprisingly. 

O'REILLY You were shocked? 

SCARAMUCCI I think he was, too. You know, I'll tell you. 

O'REILLY Were you surprised? 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, 6 p.m. I can tell you exactly where I was, sir, 6 p.m., November the 8th. 24th floor, Trump Tower. I was standing outside his office in the portico there, and he looked at me. So what are you doing tomorrow? So what do you mean? I'm doing he told me he was going to play golf. He thought for sure he was losing, and I looked at him. I said, well, okay, if you're going to play golf, I'm going back to work. And by three o'clock in the morning Wednesday, you know, he was the president-elect of the United States, and he was giving speeches...

O'REILLY I was shocked, and I wrote about that in Confronting the Presidents and also in the United States of Trump because Hillary had set up this big Jacob Javits thing that she was kind of a big blowout there.

SCARAMUCCI By the way, she was so shocked. She didn't make a concession speech that night. 

O'REILLY I know. 

SCARAMUCCI I remember that. Oh, she waited. She waited till the next day. But you know what, sir? We didn't sleep that night. I was with Trump at 11 a.m. in his office. 

O'REILLY He never sleeps. 

SCARAMUCCI The next day, but none of us did that night, and we were all standing there, and you know, he got double the Secret Service detail. It was a very exciting period of time 

O'REILLY Okay, so a couple of months later, he's inaugurated, and you're down in DC, and you get appointed Office of Public Liaison, I don't know what that is. What is that? What do you do? 

SCARAMUCCI So the OPL job is effectively like, you're like a mini commerce secretary inside the White House. And what Trump wanted me to do is be his chief networking officer. He saw me as having good networking skills, and it's public and private. So you're helping the president liaison to governmental officials, and you're helping him liaison to CEOs. 

O'REILLY Then you get appointed White House communications...

SCARAMUCCI Okay, so I'm not- so, to be clear, I don't get the job. So Priebus blocks the job. 

O'REILLY The liaison job? 

SCARAMUCCI Yes, I don't get it. So he puts some other person in the job. Trump calls me, I have a blue badge. Okay, that means I have access to the residence. I have access to the West Wing. And I have to lanyard the whole thing. And Trump tells me to keep the badge. I said, keep the badge? He said, he didn't give me the job? Yeah, I know, keep that badge. You've got the security clearance. Keep the badge, we're gonna find something for you. I want you to come down and work for me. 

O'REILLY Okay. 

SCARAMUCCI And my wife didn't want me to do it, but I did, and so I let my ego get the better of me. 

O'REILLY White House Communications Director, Anthony Scaramucci. Was your father still alive by that? 

SCARAMUCCI He was, yes. 

O'REILLY Must've been very proud of you. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, it was a big moment for my family. The big moment was they were invited by the president to the January 21st swearing-in as OPL director, and then Wright's previous office called them and said that they were disinvited because I wasn't getting that job. Okay, so that was a secondary moment. And that probably, again, since we're having this very open conversation, the way I was snubbed in the first job. Probably motivated me and got my pride and ego in place to take the second job, which I was unqualified for, by the way. 

O'REILLY White House Communications Director. 

SCARAMUCCI Yep. 

O'REILLY Now that's basically somebody who keeps the trains running. You're not the White House press spokesperson. 

SCARAMUCCI No. 

O'REILLY Although you can appear. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, I did a press conference. 

O'REILLY Right, and do that, but you're communications, who wants to talk to the president, who wants to do this, who wants to do that. You're in charge. Then you're out of there in a lightning fast. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, 11 days. 

O'REILLY 11 days, you're communications are acting. 

SCARAMUCCI That was rough. 

O'REILLY 11 days, what the deuce happened? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, there were a couple of things that happened, and again, I always own the mistakes. I never blame the president or... 

O'REILLY Yeah, you cursed at somebody, right? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, they blamed it on that. There were other things that happened, you know, but they blamed it on a New Yorker interview that I had where I said that Steve was committing auto-fellatio in his office. It was a little more graphic than that. And you know I was funny, but anyway, you know they blamed it on that, but it was more, I was not the right guy for that job. And I told the president that. So you've been there. 

O'REILLY You weren't right because you're not diplomatic enough? 

SCARAMUCCI No, I wasn't right because I didn't understand Washington culture. You just brought up Washington culture, the way we treat each other. I'm more of a New Yorker. I said that I was a front stabber as opposed to a back stabber. I'm a more upfront person. I was naive about the culture, if we're being brutally honest, but I also wasn't an experienced comms person. I can speak on television, I'm articulate, I'm well-trained at Harvard, but I'm not a comms person. When Trump and I were having the conversation on the 20th of July, I recommended Bill Shine, who's a friend of yours, and you know him well. 

O'REILLY And he did a good job. 

SCARAMUCCI He did eventually, because he got recruited after. 

O'REILLY And he was a good, good communicator. 

SCARAMUCCI He did a very good job. He was the right person for that job. I was the wrong person. 

O'REILLY Okay. So... 

SCARAMUCCI So I got fired. 

O'REILLY You get fired by who? Who fired you? 

SCARAMUCCI General Kelly. 

O'REILLY Kelly, the chief of staff. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. I thought I made it. Okay. So here's what happened on Friday. Kushner told me, okay, if you can survive this, you're going to make it. Okay. I said, well, survive it until when? He says, until Monday. Okay, so I flew with the president to Long Island, MacArthur Airport. The president was giving a speech on MS-13 on that Friday. And I said, okay, looks like I'm gonna make it. Okay, Saturday, I was still online. Sunday. On Monday, the White House gives you that bat phone that's encrypted with all the anti-spyware, something that Pete Hegseth, I guess, didn't use and was using WhatsApp, Pete Hegseth says. But anyway, you're supposed to communicate with each other with the bat phone. I turned it on. And there was nothing coming in, Bill, and there was nothing going out. They had cut my air supply at 6 AM in the morning on that Monday, so I knew I was going to...

O'REILLY But you still had access to Trump because he was on a plane, planning on giving the speech. Did you ask him what the deuce was going on? 

SCARAMUCCI He told me not to worry about it. He told me not to worry about it. He said he's a conflict avoider. I think you know that. He didn't fire me himself. He wanted me fired, but he didn't fire me. 

O'REILLY You think that Trump wanted you out of there? 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, no question. 

O'REILLY Why? 

SCARAMUCCI I think he felt that...He told Sean Hannity that he made a mistake hiring me for that job. It was the wrong job for me. That's what he told Sean Hannity. And I believe that. I take that at face. Sean's a pretty straight-up guy. 

O'REILLY Because, I mean, you're cursing at a New Yorker reporter. 

SCARAMUCCI I think that was a big deal that Trump did not... 

O'REILLY But he curses at everybody, Trump. 

SCARAMUCCI I don't think...

O'REILLY I never thought that was a big deal. 

SCARAMUCCI I don't think it was that as much as everything. You know, there was a couple of things that he wanted to do that I was uncomfortable with. 

O'REILLY Like? 

SCARAMUCCI Well, you know, he likes, you know, I'll give you an example. If you, if I gave you something to read, you're a very precise guy. I've watched you for 20 years, and I listened to your podcast, and I watched your O'Reilly Factor, you're a very precise guy. So I gave you something, and it was factually accurate. See, I said, gave you something and said it was 86%. And you would say 86%. You'd look in the camera, I don't think you would say 96%. I don't think you would need to. You're a fact-based guy. He does, he's not like... 

O'REILLY He exaggerates.

SCARAMUCCI He exaggerates. So he wanted to say certain things, and he wanted me to say it's certain things and...

O'REILLY And you didn't want to exaggerate. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. So if you're Sean Spicer and you're getting into...this is the largest crowd that's ever been at any inauguration, and actually look at the crowd, and it's not the largest crowd. 

O'REILLY But everybody knows that of him. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay, but I'm not that. 

O'REILLY Okay, so then you become...You go back to finance, making money, right? 

SCARAMUCCI Yes, but there's a Shawshank Redemption going on. I got to go through the sewer pipe, right? Because I'm lit up by all the cable news pundits. I'm beaten pretty badly by the late-night comedians. I'm parodied on Saturday Night Live. 

O'REILLY That lasted, what, three days? Not a lot. 

SCARAMUCCI No, I get it. Well, you're a tough-skinned guy, so am I. So that wasn't that big of a deal. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI You know, my wife and I were fighting, you've met my wife. My wife and I were fighting with each other at the time. 

O'REILLY About this? 

SCARAMUCCI Yes, she doesn't like politics, and she didn't want me to do it, and she thought it was too ego-based. I missed the birth of my son, Bill. 

O'REILLY Because you were doing some politics. 

SCARAMUCCI My son was born on the 24th of July that Monday, and I was with the president in West Virginia at the Boy Scouts event, and there's, as you know, there's a 60-mile no-fly zone around. 

O'REILLY Couldn't get out. 

SCARAMUCCI Couldn't get out. 

O'REILLY But your son will understand that. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, yeah, listen, the whole thing has been healed. Deirdre and I are closer than ever, but there was a strain. 

O'REILLY Don't worry about that. 

SCARAMUCCI There was a strain going on in our marriage, let's put it that way, which thankfully we healed. 

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O'REILLY All right. So, so far the narrative holds together. Makes perfect sense. Here's where it goes off the rails for me a little bit. All right, because I know you, and that's one of the reasons you're on this program, because I got you. I want to get people to tell the truth. You then become a Biden supporter. 

SCARAMUCCI Not it. Well, that's unfair. That's unfair. 

O'REILLY You voted for him? 

SCARAMUCCI Okay, well, let's go back. I'm fired by President Trump. Right. I'm loyal to President Trump. I go on the Stephanopoulos show and say, hey, I deserve to be fired, serve at the leisure of the president. I'm loyal to the president, I'm loyal to his cause, I wanna help the president. I do a couple other shows. I'm on the Bill Maher show. You go look at the tape, Bill, cause you're a tape sort of a guy. I am defending the president on taxes, on judges, on policy. One thing comes up about the four women from the squad, and these are the African American and Hispanic women that are ultra left. They're in the Congress. The president puts out on Twitter, it's topical for that week, they should go back to the countries they originally came from. Bill Maher turns to me on the set, I'm defending Trump. He says, well, what about this tweet about these women going back to, now, three of them were born in the U.S. One naturalized from Africa. I flippantly say to him, Well, I don't like that. You know, I'm an Italian American. My grandmother used to cry about that in the 1920s when nativists told her to go back to the country she originally came from. He's the president of the United States. It's nativist. He should not talk like that. I'm going for a soda pop with Bill Maher at the end of the show. I'm backstage with me says something to me I'll never forget. He said, yeah. You're going to get lit up by Trump tomorrow on Twitter. I'm going to be lit up by Trump tomorrow? What the hell are you talking about? He said, I-No, no. You were seven for eight for Trump tonight. You got to go 13 for 10. And he's not going to like the thing you said about the nativism, and he's going to light you up tomorrow on Twitter. And I said, there is no way. And I bet him- 

O'REILLY And he did. 

SCARAMUCCI And then he did, and by the way, I'm a New Yorker. So if you're gonna light me up, I'm gonna light you up. I'm not a pansy like these other guys. 

O'REILLY Sometimes that's not the way to play it, particularly in the short term. I'm more interested in...Look, I know, and you- 

SCARAMUCCI But you want to keep going because there's a thread here. Then he starts attacking my wife. He goes after my wife on Twitter. He knows I'm having marital problems with her when I get fired, and he says ridiculous things about my wife, like he did about Ted Cruz's wife, like he did about Jeb Bush's wife. And that is a red line item for a guy like me. That is a Red Line item. By the way, Ivanka, deal with me. I never say anything about her or Don Jr. or Eric. I like them. They never say nothing about me, and they would never say anything about my wife. And I would never say anything about Mrs. Trump, the first lady, nor have you ever seen me say anything about them. 

O'REILLY Not to justify anybody doing anything, but Bill Maher had it nailed, and you didn't. 

SCARAMUCCI Which was what? 

O'REILLY He's gonna get you. President's gonna get you. 

SCARAMUCCI Yes, he was right. Yeah, you're correct. I got that wrong. 

O'REILLY See, look, I've known him for 35 years. I know exactly what he's capable of doing. 

SCARAMUCCI But you're critical of him. 

O'REILLY I am. 

SCARAMUCCI But he doesn't come after you. 

O'REILLY Well, I think he understands that I cloak my criticism in the country, not him. There's a difference. 

SCARAMUCCI Let me tell you something, okay? I worked for the guy. I gave the guy a million dollars on my personal dough, and you know, that's after-tax money. I gave him hundreds of hours...

O'REILLY So this was a revenge play. 

SCARAMUCCI I gave him hundreds of hours...It's not even a revenge play. It's about having respect for myself and being able to go to a restaurant like Rao's or even in my neighborhood. You're coming after my wife after I asymmetrically did all of these things for you? 

O'REILLY So you had to punch back? 

SCARAMUCCI No question. No question, and by the way, I have five children, four sons. And let me tell you something, I want my sons to stick up for themselves. And last time I checked, we're in a free country with a First Amendment right. And these people work for us. We don't work for them. And if you're going to come after me and attack my family that I'm trying to repair, I mean, I'm on the verge of getting a divorce, Bill. And you know this. And I said something that I probably did say to him, that you break the bro code like that and you go after my wife on the presidential Twitter feed, that's a red line item for a guy like me. And by the way, you know guys like me...

O'REILLY Did he ever respond? Did the president ever respond to your argument about why you went into the Biden camp? Did he ever respond?

SCARAMUCCI Never. He's not an apologetic person. 

O'REILLY Okay. 

SCARAMUCCI His family did. His family did. 

O'REILLY But you know what? If he were here right now, I think you guys would get along. Because he's not vindictive in the sense that he harbors... 

SCARAMUCCI Always got along with him. I'm not a bullshitter, Bill. You know, you can tell. 

O'REILLY No, no, no. But if you, you, me, and him went to the Knicks playoff game. 

SCARAMUCCI We'd get along with each other, yeah. 

O'REILLY Yeah. 

SCARAMUCCI Bill, I did 71 campaign stops with him. 

O'REILLY I understand that. But that's why it makes it hard for me. 

SCARAMCCI You know what pissed off Priebus about him is the way I'm talking to you. I talk to Trump. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI I'm not a bulls- I wasn't kissing Trump's ass like these sycophants. I was talking to him. 

O'REILLY What Biden and Harris did in the four years that they were in office was against everything you stand for, everything. Capitalism. 

SCARAMUCCI The crypto stuff, in particular. 

O'REILLY Traditional stuff, open border stuff. 

SCARAMUCCI I was honest about all that. 

O'REILLY But the criticism of Trump that you levied overrode the criticism of Biden and Harris. 

SCARAMUCCI So, yes... 

O'REILLY And let me tell you why it's important. Because CNN and others used you as a cudgel... 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, now you sound like Hannity, okay, yeah. 

O'REILLY Right, they hit Trump. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. 

O'REILLY They used you. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. Maybe, maybe. But I, you know, I think you got to give me a little bit of a benefit of the out of my intellect that maybe I wanted to be used. It was not like they used me... 

O'REILLY That's up to you. 

SCARAMUCCI They use me without me being aware that they were using me. 

O'REILLY No, no, no. I mean, you were a co-conspirator. 

SCARAMUCCI I think I have to give you a little of a, you know, self-awareness judgment. Okay, you have to look at me that way. 

O'REILLY But when I used to watch that stuff, and they do it all the time, by the way, if you are a person that gets into a beef with Trump, you're going to get booked like that. Whereas I'm the best-selling nonfiction author in the world, I can't get on the show because I might say something good about Trump and they don't want to hear that. 

SCARAMUCCI I don't get booked on Fox anymore. 

O'REILLY What? 

SCARAMUCCI They book me all the time on Fox. They won't book me on Fox, you know, because I-

O'REILLY Because you're a critic now. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, but I can also debate, and I also can come with some facts.

O'REILLY Nobody wants that anymore. That's got, you saw it with me, you'll never see it again. 

SCARAMUCCI But you say nobody wants it, but your podcast is flourishing because everybody wants it. 

O'REILLY That's true. 

SCARAMUCCI They don't want it on corporate media. The reason why you're doing well, you found an audience that actually wants it.

O'REILLY Right. The marching orders from corporate media is, we have the choir. Don't upset the choir, and that's why they book all of this. 

SCARAMUCCI A hundred percent. 

O'REILLY Okay. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. 

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O'REILLY But I know you, and I know you don't believe what Kamala Harris believes. 

SCARAMUCCI It was very critical of her. I told her to her face the mistakes that they were making. 

O'REILLY Like what? 

SCARAMUCCI And well, the stuff on crypto was the most asinine stuff ever. You're blocking an industry from flourishing that could help transform technology. You don't have to believe in Bitcoin. You can say that's going to zero, but even Jamie Dimon would tell you that the blockchain technology is a valuable tool for creating permissionless transactions that are secure. And it would transform our economic innovation because you and I could go to a restaurant and we could bypass the three and a half percent credit card charge. There's so many different things we could do that would lead to innovation. So that's number one. The open border was ridiculous because I'm a Milton Friedman person, and I'll quote Milton Friedman here. You can't have a welfare state, which the United States does, and have an open border because free market forces dictate that people will cross the border to participate in your welfare state. So that's it, you know, to not understand that is asinine. But you see, what they did was whatever Trump was doing, and this is the problem with Trump, because he pisses people off in a way where their hair catches on fire. Whatever he was doing that was right, they did the opposite of just because Trump was doing it. You see what I mean? 

O'REILLY That's an interesting point. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah. So, hey man, he's got the border tight. We hate Trump. Let's open the border. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay, no American wants that. Oh, hey man, Trump is fighting the culture. You wrote a book maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, about the culture war. 

O'REILLY Culture Warrior. 

SCARAMUCCI Okay, so I bought that book in the Manhasset Barnes and Noble, and I read the book. And I said to myself, this guy, Bill O'Reilly, is a general in the culture war. He can see the battlefield that's out there. And if you go back to that book, which is 20 years old, probably by this time. You predicted a lot of things in that book that were going to happen, Bill. A lot. Let me tell you something about Trump. I told these people this. He is the General Napoleon of the culture war. Hear me out for a second. If you read Andrew Roberts' biography about Napoleon, he could see the whole battlefield, and he could anticipate where those generals were moving their troops before they even made the decision to move them. That's how he was a multi-dimensional thinker on that field. Trump does that. Trump understands the transgender thing in sports. He understands the woke culture. He gets the anti-woke culture. He understands The Bible Belt. He told me something once that I will never forget, and I'll share it with you. He said, you know, you're a Wall Street guy. I said, yes, I am. He goes, I bet you're fiscally conservative and socially liberal. And I said, I am. He goes, you what my base is? And I want you to think about this, Bill. Trump said that his base is socially conservative, but fiscally liberal, because a lot of his base are working-class people and they need the governmental help. They need the medication. 

O'REILLY Yeah, they need some assistance. 

SCARAMUCCI Which is why he never touches those items like Social Security or Medicare. He's not a cutter of those items because he's got very good political instincts, but it's also part of the culture. 

O'REILLY Right. 

SCARAMUCCI But he gets the culture, okay? 

O'REILLY Last question, and then we're going to hold you over for our Premium Members just for 10 minutes. Anything you regret in your life? 

SCARAMUCCI Oh my god, you don't have f***ing enough time for that. 

O'REILLY Oh, just give me one. Give me one regret, because you've done an amazing amount of things, which is, you know, in this book. 

SCARAMUCCI Well, that book is an economic tree. It's not a polemic on Trump. 

O'REILLY No, but economics is part of your profile. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, that my...That book is an observation of my years on Wall Street, growing up in a blue-collar family, working in politics. We've made some wrong moves, bipartisan, I'm not indicting anyone.  

O'REILLY No, but you, Anthony Scaramucci, anything you regret, like want to pull back? 

SCARAMUCCI I have a lot of regrets. The first one is my first wife, who I was married to for 20 years. The marriage wasn't going well, and I am a conflict avoider. I'm not like that anymore at 62, but in my early 40s, if you really want to know my biggest regret, I needed to have remediated that marriage more honestly. 

O'REILLY Okay, so personal stuff. 

SCARAMUCCI Yeah, no question. I needed to have been fairer to her to express the- 

O'REILLY That's noble. 

SCARAMUCCI ...Issues, okay? I grew up, my dad was a very tough guy. He was a blue-collar guy. He was rough in the house, frankly, on all of us. And I think it led to me being a little bit of a conflict avoider because I didn't want to replicate his behavior, Bill. 

O'REILLY Anything you did with your five kids you regret? 

SCARAMUCCI Yes. The way I handled that divorce, okay, I have kids with Deirdre. I have three adult kids.  

O'REILLY Yeah, coming out of it. 

SCARAMUCCI And so the way I handled that divorce, I think, hurt my children. I don't think I handled the divorce well. It took me probably seven or eight years to repair that. I think I've done generally a good job of repairing that, and I think that comes with reflection. 

O'REILLY Divorce is always rough on kids, no matter what happens. All right. 

SCARAMUCCI How's that for honesty? Okay, that's actually... 

O'REILLY That's why you're here, Anthony! 

SCARAMUCCI That's creating forehead sweat. 

O'REILLY Okay, I tell all of our guests, look, just don't lie to me, you know, Barney Frank passed away a couple of weeks ago. 

SCARAMUCCI Remember that. I remember that.

O'REILLY Barney lied, but I felt bad about it to this day. So we're going to hold Anthony over for 10 minutes for our Premium and Concierge Members. If you would like to become one, it will enhance your life in many different ways. BillOReilly.com, very easy, and it's very reasonable. Thank you for watching, and we'll see you next week.