‘Donald Trump would refuse to give up on his quest to become US President for the second time.’ (Image: Getty)
Donald Trump will continue his bid for the White House when he is 82 if he fails to defeat Joe Biden this year, his former communications director claims.
Anthony Scaramucci said Mr Trump would refuse to give up on his quest to become US President for the second time although he claimed the larger donors no longer wish to be associated with the Republican.
The Wall Street financier, who was fired from his role after 10 days, said the number of court cases levelled against the former president had led some party supporters to turn away from Mr Trump, 77, as he is the first former president in US history to be criminally charged.
Mr Scaramucci told the Express: “I don’t see him leaving the stage, Mr Trump is addicted to the attention.
“I think this is a little facetious but I think when he is defeated in November if he can stay healthy that he will run again aged 82.
“In my view Mr Trump is addicted to the pursuit of money and he has figured out that he can raise money from rubes, although the rubes are slowly shrinking.
“I think he either ends up convicted and sidelined or he ends up losing the election and then tries to run again in 2028 – God only knows what could happen then. If he retakes the Presidency as anything is possible in the US.
“I think the systems of the American democracy would be under great stress more than 2017 into 2021.”
In relation to the court cases, Mr Scaramucci added: “He’s been quite lucky, he’s been able to manage his way through all of this.
“There’s already been an $83 million judgement against him civilly.
“There’s the criminal trial that’s started on March 25th, you have the insurrection case – there is going to be a ruling from the Supreme Court relating to immunity. I think he is in trouble. I think this will happen very quickly if he is in trouble.
“He will be very very badly wounded if a criminal conviction happens before the election and so I want you to imagine this – a criminal conviction – we have one candidate that has been criminally convicted in the United States it does not bode well for Mr Trump on that.
“He would be more wounded than people think if he was to be convicted.
“The other thing I would say to you is, I think this is very very important for the campaign – is the money. The money is drying up for him. It is reported some of the largest donors do not want to be affiliated with him.
“They do not want his name on their donor list. They think it’s going to hurt their businesses or hurt their families and so the money is drying up. RNC (Republican National Committee) wants to take out a short-term loan because they are under the gun.
“So don’t underestimate the court cases’ impact on large donors on very wealthy donors who want nothing to do with Donald Trump.”
Mr Trump now faces dozens of charges across four separate cases, including the New York Hush Money case in which he is alleged to have falsify records to hide that he paid £103,000 to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels to stay quiet after she claims she had sex with Mr Trump.
But he denies they ever had an affair.
Mr Trump has been charged with four criminal counts, including conspiracy to defraud the US and conspiracy against the rights of citizens after federal prosecutors allege he pressured officials to reverse the results of the 2020 election defeat.
He is also accused of seeking to exploit the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 to delay the certification of Mr Biden’s victory and stay in power.
But he is appealing the case leading for the trial to be postponed, while justices will hear the case on April 25 and decide by June.
Mr Trump and around 18 other defendants are accused of criminally conspiring to overturn his very narrow defeat in the state of Georgia in the 2020 election.
The former president has entered a not guilty plea and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in the case, which has seen his 13 criminal counts, subsequently reduced to 10.
Prosecutors want the case to get underway in August but a date has yet to be decided.
Mr Trump who also stands accused of mishandling classified documents by taking them from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago residence after leaving office and the case looks at whether or not he obstructed the FBI’s efforts to retrieve the files.
The majority of the counts against him include the wilful retention of national defence information, which falls under the Espionage Act, which Mr Trump has pleaded not guilty on all counts.
Mr Trump and his lawyers want the hearing to be pushed back until after the November presidential election but prosecutors are fighting for it to start in July.
Mr Scaramucci, who lost his role in the White House following a strongly worded attack on his colleagues, revealed he last spoke to Mr Trump in April 2019.
But he said: “There’s been more than one person from the Trump camp who has reached out to me to see if there was a rapprochement possible.
“I have no interest in that frankly – he’s just too dangerous. Not an equivocator – also I think he has severely damaged the Republican party.
“He’s turned the Republican Party, which used to be a strong backboned party, the party of Ronald Reagan into a group of jellyfish.”
The founder and co-managing partner of SkyBridge Capital said he believed if Mr Trump won the US election it would also be a win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, although Putin has previously suggested he had hoped for a Biden victory.
“As you know that’s reverse psychology on Putin’s part,” Mr Scaramucci.
“He’s a former KGB agent, well-versed in all of these active measures.
“He would like Biden to win as a reverse psychology, he knows a Trump win is a win for him.
“He would do his best to provoke the treaty.
“A very successful 80-plus-year-old treaty known as NATO or 78-year-old treaty. He would be a scourge to Western Liberal democracies – you have to remember something is that when Trump is praising Putin and he’s praising Chi, when he is doing these things you have to remember that he’s sending them a message.
“You are regional dictators in your region, regional autocrats. I too would like to be a regional autocrat – so this is why I’m letting you know that’s why I’m praising you.
“Trump has a very well-organised team. If you are somebody who believes in democracy you should be worried about his team. I know his people, I have worked in Republican presidential politics for a generation – this is 25 years for me now and I know those people are organised and want to expand the executive powers of the United States presidency.”
Mr Scaramucci said he would far sooner see Democrat Joe Biden win the next election as opposed to Donald Trump.
He said: “For me, the United States, the West can survive bad policy decisions and a president that is age impaired more than they can survive a president that would represent an orange wrecking ball against the institutions of the democracy. So for me even though Joe Biden seems impaired – I would take him.
“Whatever you say about the Left, they do respect the separation of powers, the court system and the legislative branch of Government and Trump does not.
“You would have to be very worried about that.”
He said it was unlikely that he would ever make a return to the White House and that his political ambitions were elsewhere.
“I think there is no chance of that by the way. I’m very realistic about that,” he said. “There is no chance for many different reasons – I’m an entrepreneur and an independent thinker.
“People who work in the White House are very subordinate and they have to comport themselves in a certain way that I’m not capable of doing.
“What got me in trouble with Trump is people think my remarks about Steve Bannon got me in trouble with Trump and got me fired. That’s not true.
“He thought that stuff was funny. What got me fired was Trump didn’t like my press conference, I was getting too much attention. What got me fired is that I was fighting with him over certain things that were going on and in one of the conversations I said I’m here to serve the American people.
“He said you are not here to serve the American people, you are here to serve me. Well I said you are here to serve the American people – this job is the only job all eligible voters get a chance to vote on.”
“Trump didn’t see it that way.
“So I shortly lost my job after those conversations and so I don’t see any American president who would put me back in that seat.
“If I was ever going to run for office I would run for a local position not run for a national position, I would run for Governor of New York if I was ever going to run.
“That would be in 26. I’m open-minded to it but my wife is less open-minded to it, so we will have to see what happens.”
He praised Lord Cameron, who he has got to know over the years, for stepping in and calling on the US to push through $60bn in military aid for Ukraine through Congress.
The Foreign Secretary originally wrote an article for the Washington newspaper, The Hill, over the issue before holding a meeting with Mr Trump at his at his Mar-a-Lago home over the situation.
“I think it’s very good historically for him to weigh in on this,” Mr Scaramucci said.
“I think he’s insightful and he’s inviting wisdom and Mr Putin will stop at nothing. People who have been in the American government like me who are honest and can’t stand the danger of Vladimir Putin remember Barack Obama let him into Crimea.
“They didn’t stop him. He was told no problem. He’s just going to stop there at that warm water port. It was a very Chamberlainesque conversation – did that stop Vladimir Putin? No it didn’t.
“He had more ambition. He does.”
He added: “So if he were to retake the Ukraine, the next moves would be into the other republics because he has made it very clear that the worst thing that happened in the 20th century is the dissolution of the Soviet Union and so Mr Putin has political motivation to do this because he is upside down on his demography.”
Following the death of Putin’s political opponent Alexei Navalny, Mr Scaramucci tweeted: “Navalny is you.”
“Navalny is a symbol of liberty, individual liberty,” he said. “Navalny is a symbol of speaking your conscience and being moral and so when somebody like Navalny is struck down it has to be a reminder that you’re in the domino chain. Do you like it or not? If they are coming for Navalny and what is happening is that you lose the segregation of the Government and what I mean by the segregation of the Government, is the separation of powers here in the United States or what a constitutional monarchy would represent in a place like the United Kingdom.”
He added: “If you lose the separation of powers, then the people ultimately lose their freedom.”
- His book entitled From Wall Street to the White House and Back, published on by SALT books, is on sale now.