Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci shared his evaluation of some CEOs who met with Donald Trump last week for a private gathering where the former president was reportedly “all over the map.”
“Would fears of another chaotic Trump presidency discourage corporate leaders from backing him this time around or are they coming back around to him?” asked MSNBC’s Alex Witt in an interview with Scaramucci on Saturday.
“It’s a little bit of Trump-nesia, if you will,” Scaramucci replied.
“I mean these guys denounced him several times.”
The presumptive GOP presidential nominee met with business leaders — including Walmart’s Doug McMillon, Apple’s Tim Cook and JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon — and spoke of his desire for tax cuts on Thursday.
CEOs at the meeting who spoke with CNBC found Trump to be “remarkably meandering” and unable to keep a “straight thought” during the gathering that left a number of business leaders “shaking their head” at one point when he explained why he wanted to reduce the corporate tax rate.
Scaramucci pointed to CEOs’ responses to Trump in the wake of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally and other times when they “all pulled their support” including Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group.
Schwarzman, who came out against Trump and declared that it was time for the GOP to “turn to a new generation of leaders” in 2022, has since signaled his support for the former president ahead of November.
“And so for some reason now they’ve decided for these little policy promises that he’s offering, they’re going to switch over to him,” said Scaramucci, a frequent Trump critic since a 10-day gig as his White House communications director in 2017.
“But, you know, Jeb Bush ultimately was right, Alex. He is the chaos candidate, it was a chaos presidency and I would just remind these people that they weren’t happy when he was president. Yes they got their tax cuts but we’ve also ballooned the deficit and that is gonna come home to roost for these CEOs.”
The former White House communications director, in response to CNBC’s report on CEOs’ takeaways, said it wasn’t a “great meeting” for Trump.
“He tries to put on a big charm offensive to those people who don’t like him, it’s sort’ve like the bully that’s trying to shine for a moment,” Scaramucci said.
He continued, “He’s better in those rallies where he can talk about electric boats and shark attacks, exactly. He’s way better at that than he would be actually articulating economic policy in front of Fortune 500 CEOs.”
