days to go how would you rate the presidential race well obviously you know the vice president is ahead there's less undecided voters this time larry than there wasn't 2016 but remember i did work for the president so i know how capable he is i think that the it would be important for the vice president and the people that want to defeat president trump to run through the tape here and play to the last seconds of the game and so i don't think there could be any let up. mr trump is a formidable guy how could anyone still be undecided. that's a good question but you know there's a 50 by my grandfather had a great expression about polling there's 15 feet between you waiting in the polling booth at least that's what it used to be in new york and it's in those last 15 feet were some people make their decisions and oftentimes their workers or their low

information voters are not as focused on it as you and i are and apparently according to rachel by coffer who's a pretty talented pollster there's still about 6 and a half percent of the american electorate that's undecided about the election there's a believable bob woodward's new book revealing that trump knew how serious covert 19 was and didn't reveal it what do you make of that. well i have the book here on my desk i finished reading that book last night. it's a it's a pretty damning book obviously the recordings of the president or hurtful as well but i think you know of bob 7750 plus years as the investigative journalist he finishes the book by basically saying a distillation of his interviews and his fact finding the president is not fit donald trump doesn't have the right personality for that office and so i think that's something that i believe is something that jim maddest believes general

kelly believes rex tillerson believes h.r. mcmaster is coming out with a book next week on i'm sure we should try to get him on politicking i mean he's got a lot to say about this as well you've got a circle of sycophants around the president now that will probably do and say whatever he wants but if you just look at his decision making and you look at the bill to casa de of his rhetoric and you look at the impetuosity of what he's doing i think is very very dangerous and i think that responsible people that i work for him it's miles taylor at the department of homeland security people like myself or at least trying to offer a patriotic warning to our fellow citizens. who i know him for 40 years i still can't figure out can you get all i did he call woodward widely speak with woodward more of them a dozen times knowing what words passed. well i think it's the same way you would

speak to larry king you know i mean you you had the highest rated show on c.n.n. i think forever frankly and that tracks president trump it he's somebody that struck by stars bob woodward is the investigative journalist of record frankly for 9 presidents and what was fascinating about the book if you read it larry it wasn't bob woodward just initializing the calls of the president gave bob woodward his cell phone number and he was also calling bob woodward late into the evening at his home to talk with him so it was a total of 18 times approximately 18 hours worth of interviews. and you know it's literally like the president created his own october surprise on himself and he had tapes and the tapes have to be of him self and he turned them over to bob woodward that's what it actually reads like and that's what it looks like he

also told bob woodward that he does not understand the anger and pain of black americans he feels no responsibility for it no association then that surprise you or not. it did surprise me because he lived here in new york like you lived in brooklyn and i lived out here on long island and it just demonstrates a lack of empathy or a lack of feeling for other human beings and you know he does admit to woodward though that he does believe that there is systemic racism he's just a bit callous about the effect that it has on communities have what it has on families. priest police brutality and prison sentences frankly i mean you know listen i mean it's been a disaster in the last 6 months for a number of different reasons well let's just talk candidly to lead to viewers the

president has mishandled the. pandemic the president has lied about the science related to the bin demick the president has politicized things like mass wearing which we know if we followed those protocols that have been followed in europe and asia we would have had less fatalities less the number of cases remember we're tracking at about $600.00 cases per 1000000 and in south korea they're tracking in about 20 cases per 1000000 so this is been a unmitigated disaster for the president and it's hobbled the economy and so these are the reasons why i think he's going to lose that proverbial question are you better off than you were 4 years ago even those the undecided voters they get 15 feet closer that polling booth they recognize that they're not better off and i think we'll switch jockeys here like americans have done over the last 100 years when we've gone into recessions like this are you surprised that he reportedly had

a military cemetery called the big losers and suckers. i am not surprised by that and i and i have said that you know i was on the campaign plane with the president and i was telling him about my trip to afghanistan and a trip that i took to iraq for troop support mission purposes and he looked incredulous to me he was like you know why would you do that and he had that sort of philosophical opinion related to the troops and so i think it's very telling i think it's very telling that. general kelly has not been asked to issue a statement moreover when jeff mason the white house correspondent asked the president 2 weeks ago well why don't you have general kelly issue a statement he was with you the whole time if what you're saying is not true let's have general kelly issue a statement of course the president said no way to that because you know that the

general would tell the truth that what the president is reported to be saying is just the tip of the iceberg of what he's actually said and so what he did was he went out and got 15 sycophants who were directly associated with the story to lie on his behalf and so that's where we are right now but he does feel that way about the troops you can ask michael cohen you can ask. anybody close to him over the last 10 years about his feelings about people that serve in the military you and i both know he's a transactional ist and he doesn't see money associated with that type of service and so that's one of the reasons why he's turned off by it do you do you find him easy just lies easily. arwa larry you know i'm a long period of time you know he was lying on your show 20 years ago he said 22000

lies you know there was one moment which i think i may have expressed to you but oh it's worth repeating we were preparing something for him i was only in the white house 11 days were preparing something for him we told them the number was 86 percent he walked into the rose garden and said well 90 percent of the such and such and then he came back in and we looked at him like why did you say 90 percent it was it was 86 percent well you know 90 percent sounded better and so he's done that his whole life there's a pathology to that i think he laughs at the fact that he gets away with so much and he's able to double and triple down on his lies moreover i think some of these sycophants in the news media i know we laughed about them i've seen him do that he ridicules the people that are so in the tank for him frankly so yes you and i both know that he's a sociopathic liar and it's been proven you know just by documenting what he's

saying on a daily basis you originally said that a vote for joe biden will save the republican party how. well i think the party has been captured by the personality cult of donald trump and a lot of these former republicans have been morphed into trump this and so if you really follow the principles a long standing principles of the party dating back to link in passing through people like eisenhower and reagan the president clearly is not a republican by the brand of republicanism and so we have a very big schism in the party right now if the president is reelected he's going to to new to narrow down the part that party is aging demographic it's a group of people that are frankly buying catheters on fox news commercial breaks no offense to the h i'm on i'm over 55 myself but i do think that that is not where we need to go as

a republican party we need to expand the tent we need to include those people for sure but we need to expand the tent of the republican party demographically across . income strata and we need to have that party be looking more like the american people and more colorful mosaic of american people that can't be a are a party of aging white people larry why did you join his administration. well you know listen i think that's one of my flaws i joined the administration because i was a lifelong republican i had worked for jeb bush i transitioned over to work for the republican nominee as i thought most people would be willing to do you had a choice between secretary clinton and donald trump i was a republican so i went to go work as campaign when he wore one. i was on his

transition team i was originally slated to be the o.p.l. director of the office of public liaison but steve benen writes priebus blocked that job on me i called president trump and said hey those guys are bad guys if you if you ever want to get rid of them and you need my help just give me a call come down and i'll do it and so he did he called me in mid july and told me i was right about then the asked me to come work for him the communications director's job was open and so he gave me that job and that's my shortcoming and larry i have to own that. i allowed my pride in my ego to cause me to make irrational judgment on the situation and so what i tell younger people when i talk about that decision if you put your pride and ego into your decision making your emotions go up in your intelligence goes down and you could put yourself in a spot that you should be and that was the case for me but i think it's worth

pointing out though that there's a silver lining to that story i got fired by john kelly 11 days after i started to jump ministration that probably want a long way to help me save my marriage it probably went to long with help me save my reputation and my career and subsequently i've become very good friends with general kelly so there's a silver lining in all these things but there were some misjudgments by me. we'll be right back with more politicking with anthony scaramucci right after this. was a pandemic no certainly no borders to tease. the summer with the we don't look like world.

commentary. we can do better we should be. everyone is contributing way but we also know that this crisis will not go on forever the challenges created the response has been masked so many good people are helping us. it makes us feel very proud that we're in it together. i'm going with a post. from the. last

time we chased. each one of them carrying 20 kilos 'd of drugs. first offense. they just stepped right. into the fray and we have maintained the money. they have. for me. like it was. i don't know maybe they'll get a. break right. now while i'm. over the last 3 presidential election cycles there is clear evidence voters are attracted to the message of not interventionism and are very weary before and this

is most certainly true in 2065 his time in office is spotty at best buy appears to embrace the same form policies as bush. i guess he believes will fundamentally change. we're back with anthony scaramucci former communications director for a brief time in the republican administration now actively seeking to defeat donald trump you signed on to help the lincoln project though some republicans biden how's that doing. well lincoln project is raises storch amount of money i think that they have gained popularity and strength since they started initializing their advertising these are very hard knuckle very tough republican operatives and i

think that their. advertising is that impact on president trump it has filled it's got some free rent in president trump's mind because he's viciously attacking them on twitter which means he's occupied by them i think he also they also cause the trump campaign to spend over a $1000000.00 in the d.c. market to play trump advertising during fox news programming in prime time so they're they're doing a number on trump in terms of pushing back on the false woods of his narrative about his presidency and i think that they are expanding the voter registration drive that's been done at the lincoln project has been legendary and i think that's all to believe where this is going to shake out remember you've got a 1.4 to one advantage democratic registrations over republicans the president

has not done a good job of expanding red registrations over the last 3 years these guys were schmeiser sted in the midterm elections and 2018 they're about to get chalak here in 2020 and the lincoln project has been a very big part of that i think they're doing quite well what happens to the party if trump loses. well i think good things will happen to the party i think that this will be a reckoning very similar to the nixon ford departure in the mid seventy's and i think it will offer the party an opportunity to heal from the schism arguably this is a worse schism than the 1976 ford reagan schism and i think if the party works towards expanding the tent which i predict it will once the personality cult dies off i'm a big believer with david frum the former george bush speechwriter has said about this party once the personality cope earns off people will forget that they were

even supporting president trump and hopefully we can remain at the party in something more formidable like reagan did in 1900 do you think as a so-called trump supporter that we don't know about that is lying to the polls. well i think the polls have got a lot smarter remember these polls are interested in and i think they've built in what they thought were the secret trump supporters and 16 and they have feathered those people into trump's support in terms of the way the polls are now currently demarcated so i don't think so the way there once was i know the president that's his narrative he lives in his own reality distortion field so he probably needs to believe that but i don't believe that if you ask the polars today those polls are way more sophisticated and they are calibrated for what you and i would to describe

as a secret from supporter or a hidden trump supporter how well well if not well will he take defeat. why i think he's a coward i mean at the end of the day all of this nonsense about him staying on after he's defeated is a bunch of nonsense and so you don't have this sort of overcompensation of bullying and all this blustering and this bella casa de if you're sort of a stand up sort of a guy so he'll get defeated he'll be a 1000000 aided and he will leave unceremoniously but he is certainly leaving the white house you know the secret service and the marines have already talked about who's going to be the one peeling a matter of the air if he if he begins a process of resistance willy's say it was rigged well he's already saying that it's rigged last so i yes of course if he wins it's

not rigged and if the other guy wins it's rigged he was saying a 3 or 4 days prior to the 2 $1016.00 campaign that it was rigged and he's saying right now on his twitter feed that this is rigged and the only way that he could lose this election is if it's rigged so course he's going to say that. and he and biden are going to debate september 29th in cleveland what do you expect from that. well i think the vice president is on a very good job of ignoring the president's barbs as a result of which none of these nicknames or no the nonsense that the president deployed in 2016 is really landed a poncho on the vice president and i think the vice president in a one on one setting is a formidable debater we could go back to the paul ryan debate in 2012 we could go to the the debates that he had with sarah palin in 2008 or we could look at the

bernie sanders the more current debates the bird sanders debates that he had as recently as march of this year and one on one he does a very good job he was having difficulty in my opinion when you had 6 or 7 people on stage and he was trying to break through i think that was a harder harder debating format for him but one on one i think he's going to surprise people and i'll tell you something which is a mistake by president trump he talks about. the vice president's incompetence or his slogan is that all this sort of stuff and so he's decidedly lowered expectations for these debates for the vice president so that's really good news for the vice president will surprise on the upside in the expectations are lower than they should be michael cohen president trumps form a personal lawyer someone you know very well has

a memoir out called just soil he predicts that of trump loses the election he will resign before election day secure a pledge that his successor mike pence will preemptively pardon him and members of his family probably to avoid criminal indictments you think that's going too far. well i only think that's going too far because i don't think that that would be acceptable to mike pence but if you read michael's book he elicited a that there was a conversation between trump and roger stone that that would be a preventive preemptive course of action to prevent mr trump from going to jail so you know the weird thing about this i actually think the the if the president were to win i would i think that one or 2 years after that when he would kick vice president pence off of the the ticket so to speak or out of the administration and appoint a vodka trump to be the vice president and then he would resign shortly prior to

the end of the term so that a vodka could be the 1st woman president and then stand for election as an incumbent i definitely think as you know from mr trump's unpredictable behavior and his recklessness and his wrist aching these are things that people have to consider you can't say oh no way that's going to happen because he's he's he's put everybody at least in the media in that unbelievable situation where everybody says ok wait a minute that's unbelievable how could that be apennine so anything could happen with him but i don't think mike pence given how well i know him and what his character traits or that he would find that acceptable that would certainly be something that would be on mr trump's radar screen as mike been tense been kind of a lapdog through all of this it's almost we sort of seen standing there always nodding in agreement do you believe the agrees with president trump that much.

you know listen i don't believe that i that the let the vice president speak for himself i genuinely like mike pence i think he's a good person i think he's put in a very difficult situation with president trump and you know he's been loyal in my opinion to a fault but i also understand why he's been that way there are certain people inside the administration that are safe pairs of hands if you will and are very competent and some of them have had to co-opt their behavior and personality to help keep the the administration on the equilibrium and so i had tribute some of. what's going on in the positive side of the administration to mike. do you expect any more major republicans to come forward before november 3rd and support biden. so if you're saying a lack to republicans i think that that's less likely if you're saying everything

about former trump cabinet officials senior cabinet officials i think that is likely we will see cabinet level and sub-cabinet level people coming out over the next couple of weeks remember there was a book written by somebody so-called anonymous who has promised to come out in october and explain who they are what they are and why they wrote that book and so i think that's coming as well and so yes i think that responsible patriotic americans who have worked with this man that know how psychologically unfit he is for the job and understand his intellectual of acuity are going to speak out i think that like i said they have a patriotic duty their fellow americans to explain the danger. do you think there's any possibility we know you doesn't like him maybe you can even stand

i'm a president george w. bush would come forward. while i know that there are people in the republican party let's say former us stablish me people that are hoping that that would happen and of course if that did happen it would be a fairly formidable blow to president trump because remember what steve bannon said larry if you can just hive off 3 to 5 percent of the republican electorate it's over for president trump he is a unpopular president he didn't win the popular vote in 2016 his party wish my state in 2018 and he's only numbers that are above 50 percent or the disapproval of his job performance and how he's handled the cove in 1000 crisis so he's never ticked a number that's positive on his behalf above 50 percent we're almost out of someone

you think trump will do if he loses will he stay in public life or is going to do i think he retreats from public life if he loses i think there are a the loss will be a 1000000 for him he will have been a one term presidential failure and i think will be very hard to start a trump t.v. or degenerate these rallies and remember you know what happens when the power's gone the dimmer switch hits the the light bulb and it's going from 100 watts down to 5 and so i think he retreats into ignominy if you will. and then to me always great talking with you thanks for your time and same here yeah appreciate being on it's always an honor to be on with you. and thank you audience for joining me on this edition of politicking room he can join the facebook join our conversation on the facebook page or tweet me at kings things you don't forget use the politicking hash tag that's all for this edition of politicking.

maximizers financial survival guide stacey let's learn a salad fill out let's say i'm a strike at any earthly andris the fight 'd spot thank you for helping. destroy that's right. that's slavery. join me every thursday on the alex simon show and i'll be speaking to guest on the world of politics sports business i'm show business i'll see you then.

look at the believe the kiss near those who really can show you. these just be suitably. proud that i suppose you noticed us they have something. you know none of the stupina bull episodes didn't go to see you just you sure the. during your post where you could be near my stuff mr with another spirit i pity you it was more sinister experiment then you know. if de gea could. show. for you to. sort of move to. a story kick your butt is. ringback

not. so slams the e.u. for jumping to conclusions with quote little regard for the truth i thought the european lawmakers passed a resolution for tougher sanctions on russia alleging there was a clear risk of the nation attempt against opposition figurehead alexei navalny. just about himself he's claiming on social media he was poisoned in his hotel room in the siberian city of tomsk we'll assess how possible that could be. there's been a new twist in a decade long and warsaw got between russia and poland in a band called the polish presidential plane crash in 2010 of the west and russia as moscow rules out extraditing the air traffic controllers on duty that day. and a survey finds most young adult americans don't know how many people died last fall

of course to wall.