Anthony Scaramucci tells Columbia students: ‘The Russians likely interfered in the election’
He also praised Bernie Sanders
Anthony Scaramucci, former White House Communications Director, spoke at Columbia this evening at the request of the Columbia University College Republicans (CUCR). Unlike previous high profile events hosted by the group, this speech faced relatively few interruptions and the overall tone of the event was cordial. Scaramucci began his speech with a criticism of the polarization, from both sides of the political spectrum, of the media and press. He further emphasized the crucial role of social media and then proceeded to criticize globalization arguing that policies such as NAFTA created a base of voters who felt left behind and turned to Trump.
Furthermore, Scaramucci touched on both of these previous themes in a retelling of his experience on the Trump campaign which positioned Trump as the dark-horse champion of the working class. He claimed that the "aspirational working class, […] has transitioned into the desperational [sic] working class. If you don't believe me, invite Bernie Sanders here. There are only two people in the presidential campaign who saw this, it was Donald J. Trump (you might like or dislike him) and Bernie Sanders. They both saw the same exact thing. 70 thousand factories moving out of the United States […] we accepted steel imports from the rest of the rest of the world but we also accepted steel dumping".
When asked about his thoughts on a possible collusion by the President in the Russia investigation, Scaramucci replied: "the Russians likely interfered in the election but they weren't doing it on behalf of Trump or on behalf of Clinton, they were doing it to disrupt, despoil and destabilize our democracy. […] They care about crushing the American system".
When a spectator inquired about the plight of the American blue collar worker and President Trump's vision of attenuating this by bringing jobs back to America, the former Communications Director said: "many of the jobs are never coming back […] however, the change in tax policy has made the corporate tax rate in the US way more competitive […] which will cause a migration of additional activity by small and large corporations into America".
To watch Anthony Scaramucci's full speech see video below: