Anthony Scaramucci Shared Advice For Democrats Trying To Win Back Trump Voters

"Some people say my 15 minutes of fame are over. My 15 minutes of fame haven’t even begun yet."

Hedge fund investor and former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci has been on a media tour recently after his latest book, Trump, the Blue-Collar President, was released in October.

On Sunday, he joined host Audie Cornish on Profile, BuzzFeed News' interview show on Facebook Watch, and talked about his brief time in the White House, his views on Trump and the media, and his Long Island roots.

When Cornish asked him about the references in his book to The Great Gatsby, Scaramucci launched into an explanation of the meaning of the book.

"For someone who in the book describes himself in the book as a striver," Cornish asked, "is there a sense of, like, maybe, 'I've finally made it'?"

"Actually, no, Gatsby is actually not my favorite character," Scaramucci replied. "The reason I bring up Gatsby is because I grew up in the town that F. Scott Fitzgerald was talking about."

"But he conjures up a very specific kind of image of a person," Cornish said.

"He's actually a flawed version of the American dream, Gatsby," Scaramucci continued. "And so the reason I write about Gatsby in the book is that what Fitzgerald was saying in Gatsby and part of his life — he died at the age of 44 from diseases related to alcoholism — is that he said that there were no second acts in American life," he said.

"And what we've proven since Gatsby's death is that there are many second acts in American life. So many people can rebuild themselves," he said, adding that Trump, for example, had four bankruptcies in the early ’90s but went on to be president.

"But I can give you hundreds of examples of that. But that was the point of bringing up Gatsby," he said.

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He went on to say that Trump is "not a nationalist in the elite description of the word, the Orwellian description."

However, he said, Trump portrays himself as a nationalist because "he knows it's sticking a finger directly in the eye of liberal elites and particularly liberal elites in the liberal media in a way that galvanizes the people that dislike those people."

Scaramucci said he had some advice for "liberal elites" on how they should be treating Trump supporters.

"What I would say to them is: Dial back the rhetoric against these people, stop calling them the names, don't refer to them as 'deplorable,' figure out a way to re-embrace them, and we should be doing that in a bipartisan way," he said.

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Addressing his brief 10-day stint in the White House as communications director, he said, "I let my pride and my ego take advantage of the situation."

But, he said, "I wouldn't be meeting all of you if I hadn’t been bounced so hard from the White House ... Some people say my 15 minutes of fame are over. My 15 minutes of fame haven’t even begun yet."

Toward the end of the interview, Scaramucci joked to Cornish that he was glad she had taken the time to read his book.

"You and my mom could be the only two people," he joked.


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