What I have learnt

 

What I have learnt ………

Anthony Scaramouch, aka the mooch, 6 lasted ten days as white house director of communication in 2017. He was fired making comments about Trump to the New Yorker which he believed to be off the record. He has five children and lives with his second wife on Long Island.

I am like a nuclear cockroach. Drop several atom bombs on my and I will figure out a way to crawl out of the rubble. This is very different election to 2016. Then, Donald Trump was running as an insurgent, disruptive candidate. Now he is got four years of failure as president, while hijacking the Republican Party and establishing the cult of Trump.

I would never dishonor my dad by telling you that I grew up poor, but there was financial anxiety in the house. My grandmother was a housewife. I had a paper round and gave half the money to my parents. I was very motivated to make my own money. I ended up going to Harvard, I worked at Goldman such and built two businesses.

I needed to construct a network of influential and affluent people to be successful. But I wasn’t a member of social club. I had never hit a golf ball. I had never swung a tennis racket. One entry into those spheres of influence was through politics – the first political Cheques that I wrote was to Rudy Giuliani in 1989. And it is like being Michael Corleoe in the Godfather part III – once you are in, you can’t get out.

Trump is ridiculous liar. And a bully. There is nothing more un-American than being a bully, particularly a bully with power. This is a great culture war. And Trump is the last white man standing, believing that he is preventing the latte-sipping black transvestites from taking over your culture and ruining your country. I don’t regret working for Trump. But the notion of going to war for him in the White House was too intoxicating for me. I have been on speaking engagements around the world I never would have had access to; I have met new clients. There was a silver lining to working for him. I am tougher now. I don’t mind when people write excoriating things about me. But when you are not ready for it, it can be painful. But I think worked out some kinks in my personality. You know the shawshank Redemption? I was going through that sewer pipe in 2017.

You can be right or you can be married. When I was in the White House, my wife filed for divorce. There were misunderstandings about our goals as a couple. The good news is we have reconciled and our relationship is stronger as a result. If you really love somebody you don’t always have to be right. There is no way I’d have got from my blue collar family to where I am today if I wasn’t willing to take extraordinary levels of risk. The problem with Trump is when you get close enough and you are observing the incompetence and you are observing the abhorrent behavior, it is not something that you can unseen. And your silence makes you an accomplice.

My dad said I was a republican, so I became a Republican. But I am a moderate one and I am socially liberal. I worked on legalizing gay marriage here in New York. I have become more empathetic, more aware of the pain Trump is inflicting, more aware of the racial tension that he is strengthening.

 Special thanks to Times

this was published in the Time Newyork Magazine.