The Rest Is Politics: US

Snapshot · The Rest Is Politics: US

200. Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Will Backfire

Explore episode Jun 29, 2026

Where this was said

Wealth Tax, Monopolies and the Right Way to Fix Inequality

At 33:33 · chapter starts 29:20

Gavin Newsom's national wealth tax enters the discussion as a live fault-line in the Democratic Party. Scaramucci acknowledges the social-engineering impulse behind it — the system is wildly unfair and something must signal that — but argues the politics are suicidal. Americans already pay 50% income tax, sales tax, and property tax, keeping only about 34 cents of every dollar earned. Telling savers the government is in the 'confiscation business' will cost Democrats the election. The right model, he argues, is Teddy Roosevelt: break up trusts, defeat monopolies, splinter special-interest groups, and unplug Citizens United money from the system. Katty Kay, however, notes a generational shift: only 22% of under-30 Americans believe the American dream holds for them. They are not getting the returns the system promised, and their frustration is creating an opening — for the first time in 250 years — for something that looks like socialism in American politics. Scaramucci warns this 'wreck it' tendency never ends well.

Business
Breaking Up AT&T Unlocked the Internet

200. Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Will Backfire · Jun 29, 2026 Business

AT&T, the largest monopoly in American history, was sitting on the technology that created Netflix, Facebook, and the entire internet. It had no incentive to release it while charging $4 a minute for long-distance calls. Judge Harold Greene's 1984 breakup freed it all. The lesson: monopolies kill innovation, and today's tech giants are doing the same thing.

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