Written By: Michael D. McClellan |
As America began to try and come to terms with the surprising results of the presidential race of 2016, the subsequent rapid-fire speed of events and jam-packed news cycles meant that nobody would ever have the opportunity to truly and properly reflect on what exactly just happened — and how did it?
THE ACCIDENTAL PRESIDENT is British filmmaker/journalist James Fletcher’s quest for those answers. In it, he not only uncovers a detailed play-by-play from all angles on how it all went down, but also the state of America that led to the results, what the electorate was really motivated by, and how a former game show host with an elevated understanding of
the media and entertainment was able to connect with others from all walks of life and stage a takeover of Washington D.C. — whether he meant to or not.
Michael D. McClellan sat down with former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci to discuss Fletcher’s timely documentary, The Accidental President, which will be released in November, 2020. What follows are candid insights from the man who was fired by Trump after 11 days on the job. Links to the socials appear below.
“The Accidental President” – Web and Socials     |
You briefly served as the White House Director of Communications, so let’s start there. What was it that initially drew you to President Donald Trump? And what happened?
I’ll put it very simply to you, I was a lifelong Republican fundraiser. I interviewed Jeb Bush recently and I yelled at him. I said, “Goddamn it Jeb, if you would have only won the nomination I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near the White House. So you have this non-traditional candidate who wins, and then he asks me to go work for him. And then [White House advisor] Steve Bannon and [Chief of Staff] Reince Priebus blocked my job. Then my stupidity kicked in because you had my ego involved. Once you put your ego into something, your intelligence is going down and your emotions are going up. So I took the job that the president offered. I got Steve Bannon out of the White House, which I’m convinced is my single greatest accomplishment in American history thus far [laughs]. But there I was, I was a lifelong moderate Republican and a Jeb Bush supporter. I didn’t want to break loyalty from the party, so I got sucked into the Trump orbit. He won, I took the job out of temptation and over-enthusiasm and ego. I made a mistake doing that. I’ve owned that mistake. And then after three years of objectively looking at his presidency, I said, “Okay, if we had voted him in as CEO of our publicly traded company, and we had this magnitude of nastiness that’s going on, we would vote to seek his removal.” In fact, our outside council would come running in and say, “You’ve gotta get rid of the guy.”
The Accidental President does a good job of pointing out that Hillary Clinton may have taken the Rust Belt for granted. Looking back on it now, what is your take?
As I’ve shared with James Fletcher when he was making this documentary, I was moved by the president’s campaign. Even after we’ve had his presidency, and after I’ve evaluated it as objectively as I can and saying that I don’t feel that he’s fit to serve as president, and that we should move on from him, during the campaign I was moved by him and how it was being run. I’m the product of a blue collar environment, and I went on 71 campaign stops with him. Say what you want, feel how you want, but I saw the energy and excitement around him.
Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
The flipside is that Secretary Clinton had spent 30 years in Washington. Rightly or wrongly — and James points this out — she was arguably the most overexposed political candidate in our history. Therefore, people already had an opinion of her. Frankly it turned out to be a polarizing opinion of her, and so many people went out and voted against her more than anything else. And so you had that combination going. So I actually thought that then-candidate Trump had a chance of winning even though the polls were somewhat lopsided.
I’m actually mad at James, because he’s offered an objective, unbiased assessment of what was going on. Of course I wanted him to be biased and knock Trump around a little bit, but he’s a good guy and I think his decisions will serve this documentary very well, both internationally, and as an historic, academic treatment of what went on leading up to the 2016 election. It’s an accurate assessment, and it’s a clear-eyed study from both perspectives. What was great was that James was able to get a whole buffet table of people from different perspectives and ideological ranges, and he did a brilliant job editing it.
President Trump has taken politics and turned it into entertainment.
For a little bit of historical perspective here, I think that John F. Kennedy sort of magnetized the television market for politics. As Richard Nixon said, ruefully, “Oh my god, now we’re stuck with this box called a TV, and we’re going to have to deal with it now.” And then, obviously, President Reagan had a Hollywood element to him. Everything he did was always so well-staged. But I think Donald Trump brought politics into the smash-mouth era, where now you almost have a shock-jock as a political candidate. In some ways Howard Stern is not going to like this comparison, but Donald Trump is the Howard Stern of politicians. He’s out there smashing and breaking all of the totems, so I think that’s where we are now. He’s certainly extended the line of entertainment, and he continues to take it to the edge. Just when you think, “Okay, there’s no way he could go lower, or do something that is even more norm shattering,” he does it. His base loves that, actually. They are entertained because it’s an avatar of anger to the elites that they despise, and to the media that they despise. They feel left out of the system, and they feel disenfranchised, and Mr. Trump represents their avatar, if you will.
Do you think Donald Trump reflects our society today, or do you think he’s the instigator?
James is more objective than me, but I think that even if Mr. Trump exits the stage this coming January, there is a systemic crisis in our country. And the leadership is such that it reflects a swath of the population. So, even if he departs, you still have to deal with the systemic dilemma that we have in this society, where so many people are angry and so many people feel left out.
At what point did you personally feel that you weren’t on the same page with President Trump?
The moment for me was when he went after “The Squad.” These were African-American, Hispanic, and Muslim American women, and he told them to go back to the country they originally came from. That is a racist, nativist trope. My grandmother produced three children, two served in the Second World War, and one of them was my mom. My Uncle Anthony, who I’m named after, got the Purple Heart from our country. He was on the beach at Normandy in 1944. These were American patriots. Should they have gone back to the country that they originally came from? They believed in and love the country more than anybody. So my grandmother was always sore about that. And even though I don’t agree from a policy perspective with those four women known as “The Squad,” they have a right to be here in the country. I would like to debate with them in the intellectual marketplace of ideas, but I don’t need them to go back to the country that they originally came from. So, I said, “That’s racist. That’s American nativism.” And as a result, I’ve disavowed my support. I can’t take any more.
Photo Courtesy: “US Weekly”
Donald Trump is a master marketer. How can a rich New Yorker connect with so many of the blue collar voters who make up his base?
I don’t want to demonize Mr. Trump. He’s got great communication skills. James does a great job of pointing out how gravitating that sort of smash-mouth talking is to people. But here’s what I would say: He’s using idioms, and you can feel from his ethos that he feels left out. You can feel that he doesn’t have a chip on his shoulder, he has a wedge removed from his shoulder. Therefore, when he’s speaking, a lot of people who feel that way about themselves or their families can identify with it. So, there’s irony to that. He may be a billionaire living on Fifth Avenue in Trump Tower, but he feels left out. So, there is a pathos and an ethos to that, that people who feel the way that he does can identify with.
Last Question: Any regrets when it comes to being fired by Donald Trump?
None whatsoever. If I wasn’t blown from the White House like that, people wouldn’t even know who I am [laughs].