“I Never Bought Into This Garbage”

The 55-year-old Scaramucci grew up in the Long Island, New York town of Port Washington, seventeen miles from Manhattan.  The neighborhood was blue collar.  His parents spoke mainly Italian in the house.  But wanting their children to assimilate, Scaramucci and his siblings were not permitted to.  His father, in addition to working in the sandpits, held a second job for most of his early adult life.  “My parents didn’t even know it was Harvard Law School,” he says.  “They thought it was Hartford Law School.  There were no books in my house, you got that?”  

Scaramucci understood early-on his family’s finances.  It led to a paper route that would alter his life.  His memory for this four decades ago experience is remarkable.  Scaramucci explains that he arranged with his manager to get some free papers that he would deliver to non-subscribers. The next day he knocked on the recipients’ doors and sought to close the deal: “Mrs. Smith, how are you.  It’s Anthony again. You know, Marie’s kid.  How did you like the paper?  And, by the way, do you want it daily or daily and Sunday or Sunday only?” 

Scaramucci also saw an opportunity to increase his sales of “Newsday” by expanding into apartment buildings.  “I used to go into the apartment buildings,” he explained.  “My friends weren’t going into the apartment buildings.  . . .  The apartment buildings were a little lower class.  But so what.  I’d knock on the doors. ‘You guys need the paper.’” 

Such entrepreneurship led Scaramucci to grow his paper route into the largest in town.  But it offered more than just some money:  “There was no better feeling than converting one of these people into a first time customer.  . . . I loved the sense of pride I felt in building something.  Of hustling day-in and day-out to earn my keep.  Of being my own boss.”

Scaramucci’s White House financial disclosure form reveals a man who is wildly rich.  But his blue collar roots are not for sale.  On wealth, Scaramucci tells me, “your brain gets distorted.  What happens is you think you’re grounded, you’re not an elitist, but you’re becoming an elitist    because you’re hanging out with rich people.  You have to be really careful.”    

“I live two miles from my parents.  I never bought into this garbage.  It’s the way you stay grounded,” Scaramucci says.  “I can’t have [my children] turn out like some of these people,” he says, pointing to the affluence outside his Madison Avenue office.  “I don’t want my kids to be entitled train wrecks.”  They need to work hard so they don’t end up as “rich dilettantes.”      

Scaramucci speaks about his parents with reverence.  But he can’t help poking a little fun at his 82-year-old mother.  He tells me he renovated his parents’ house.  But his mother wouldn’t let him take down the paneling in the living room.  “Carol Brady called from The Brady Bunch,” Scaramucci says.  “She wants her paneling back.”  Scaramucci picks up his phone to show me a picture of his mother with President Trump.  It’s in a frame hanging on her living room wall.  Paneling. 
                 
Harvard Law School

Scaramucci entered Harvard Law School in 1986.  It was a short trip from Tufts where he graduated with a degree in economics.

But despite signing up at the nation’s most renowned law school, Scaramucci had no interest in being a lawyer.  Indeed, he has described his summer at Hughes Hubbard & Reed in New York, between Tufts and Harvard, where he did document review, as “a mind-numbing, soul crushing and career-questioning experience.”           

So I ask Scaramucci the obvious question.  “Survival.”  That’s the reason he went.  “It wasn’t like I was this intellectual genius.  Oh I’m going to become Antonin Scalia.”   
           
In 1985 Scaramucci had seen an article in Time that Cravath, Swaine & Moore was paying lawyers, right out of law school, $65,000 per year.  Despite having always wanted to run his own business, he had experienced a lifetime of “financial anxiety.”  He now knew what he’d be doing after Tufts.  “I anchored myself to law school because I figured if I’m a professional, and everything goes bad for me, and I have this law degree and bar exam passed, I’ll be able to practice law somewhere.”  Borrowing an investment term, Scaramucci descried law school as a “financial put” on his future career.   

While Scaramucci figured out how to tackle Professor Tribe’s Con Law final, he shares the story of a very smart, conservative friend, who didn’t.  Scaramucci starts out by calling him “genius guy.”  Unlike Scaramucci, who gave Tribe what he thought the legendary Constitutional scholar wanted to hear, “genius guy,” he explains, “is writing constitutional originalism.”  Scaramucci shares the fate of his friend:  “My poor genius guy, he gets a B and it says ‘a hopeless equivocation,’ on the top of his essay.  And I got an A- and it said ‘quite a few good points.’”                 

[I reached out to Professor Tribe for comment.  He provided the following: “Mr. Scaramucci is making things up if he says what you quote him as saying.  In the late 1980s and early 1990s I studied my grading patterns carefully to see whether there was any correlation between the ideological slant of a student’s answer (to the extent any such slant was evident in what the student wrote) and how high a grade I awarded and found that there was none at all.  That’s why right-leaning students of mine like Ted Cruz tended to do every bit as well on my blindly graded exams as did more liberal students like Barack Obama.  An exam filled with what Anthony Scaramucci told you was ‘left-leaning judicial activism and tons of pablum and liberal shibboleths’ wouldn’t have received a grade as high as an A-, and exams that did a good job explicating an originalist position would’ve received very high grades. More to the point, my exams always emphasized technical mastery of Supreme Court doctrine and left little or no room for ideological posturing.”]

At one time Scaramucci clearly had a good grasp on Con Law.  But that was 30 years ago.  What about today, I wonder.  “What’s the Commerce Clause?,” I ask the former Constitutional law expert.  I was thinking I might get hopeless equivocation.  After all, it’s been a very long time.  I had to look it up myself on Wikipedia.  But Scaramucci didn’t need a lifeline.  He dove into a lengthy lecture of the Constitutional provision, followed by its impact on national economics, and concluding with a study of Russian versus Western economics.  Hmmm, quite a few good points, I’m left thinking.  It’s hard to believe the guy needed three tries to pass the bar exam.         

Scaramucci’s time at Harvard overlapped with that of Barack Obama.  But he was two years older than the would-be President and has no recollection of him.  Scaramucci tells me about a fundraiser he attended for Obama.  He was about to hand the candidate a big check.  But before doing so he asked the future President if he could tell people that the two were tight in law school.  “If you double the check we’ll take it right back to Hawaii,” Obama replied.  “Like we were in high school together.”   

While Scaramucci never practiced a day of law, Harvard taught him plenty of lessons he tells me.  Among others, “avoid law suits.  In thirty years on Wall Street I’ve never had a law suit.”  Law school, Scaramucci explains, also taught him “that there are very smart people on both sides of an argument. . . . I have to understand [the other side] of the argument and I have to really crystalize it in my head so I can either debate it, refine it or change my opinion.  That’s what I learned in law school -- that mental flexibility.”    

Scaramucci’s roots were on display at Harvard.  “I used to tell my buddies in law school, these elites that had these fancy-pants parents: ‘You think you guys in your neighborhood were that much smarter than the kids in my neighborhood? They weren’t.  The only difference was, the kids in your neighborhood, the parents ingrained studying, the father was a doctor, he pushed you.  And this kid, his father was clamming all day out in Oyster Bay so he was too tired.  When he got home he was laying on the couch.  So that kid ended up not studying.  He’s not stupider than you kid.’”

And his views on education have not changed.  “You can’t systematize an equal outcome,” Scaramucci explains.  “However, we should be smart enough to help people create equal opportunity.  It shouldn’t matter what your skin color is, your sexual preference, your sex, none of that should matter, religion, or your economic upbringing.  What should matter is, you’re an American, let’s get you a great education.  And if you’re smart you won’t vape, and smoke and drink.  You’ll go to work.”  

Walking Away From A Million Bucks

Despite a sheepskin from Harvard Law School, Scaramucci experienced some early bumps.  In addition to the bar exam failures, his first job, at Goldman Sachs, ended after just a year and a half.  It was early 1991 and the first Gulf War had led to an economic downturn.  Goldman responded with layoffs.  Scaramucci included.  But he knew he lacked the skills for the job and it was a terrible fit.

Scaramucci was hired back at Goldman two months later – in a positon that better fit his skill set.  Human Resources told him that his re-hiring could be classified as an interdepartmental transfer and he wouldn’t have to tell people that he had been fired.  All he had to do was return the $11,000 severance payment.  “That’s OK,” Scaramucci replied.  “I’d rather tell them I was fired.”  

Scaramucci left Goldman in 1996 and started his own hedge fund.  It was sold to another company.  That company was then sold to Lehman Brothers.  But the Lehman culture didn’t suit him.  He left in 2004, despite having an annual compensation at the time of $1.1 million.  In 2005 he founded SkyBridge Capital.  

“I’m Mayhem”

Scaramucci has said that “as soon as you stop acting like a Harvard alumnus, the better off your career will be.”  What does he mean?, I ask.  “What ends up happening you get this level of self-importance,” he explains.  But he sees a much greater downside, to a degree from the fabled law school, than just a change in personality.  “The worst thing that can happen to you in your life . . . is that you stop talking risks” he explains.  “I went to Harvard.  I can’t be perceived as a failure in anything.”      

But Scaramucci clearly does not suffer this affliction:  “I’m mayhem from the Allstate commercial,” he tells me, in an animated fashion.  “I’m coming through the roof and onto the car.  And I’m getting up and I’m dusting myself off.  What do I care?”   

I share with Scaramucci that maybe I’m too risk-averse in my life.  He looks me straight in the eye.  His face says “listen-up:”  “Hey, I got tabloided, boss.  Do you know what tabloided is?  I’m on the front page with my wife.  We’re fighting over our marriage.  We’re fighting over Trump.  We’re fighting over everything.  I’m tabloided.  And then the left-wing media roasted me.  It was in forty major newspapers around the country and non-stop for five, six, eight days in the American media.  I dusted myself off and got back to work.”     

Not the least bit surprisingly, Scaramucci’s White House departure was parodied by Saturday Night Live.  Bill Hader’s portrayal of the Mooch is hilarious.  But does the real Mooch think so?  “I thought it was fantastic,” he tells me, without hesitation.  “I can take a punch.  You want to roast me on Saturday Night Live, I find it funny.”       

Scaramucci jokes that he’s going to live to a hundred.  “You know why I’m gonna live to a hundred?,” he asks. “I gotta outlive these haters.  So I’m taking fish oil and anti-cholesterol medication.”   

New Book: Trump – The Blue Collar President

Late last year Scaramucci published “Trump – The Blue Collar President” (Center Street).  It’s his fourth literary effort.  But the book is misnamed.  While it discusses what he see as Trump’s awakening of the plight of the middle class, it is much more the story of Scaramucci – from his hardscrabble upbringing, to Harvard, his failure at Goldman and others and the risks and fears of starting his own businesses.

Scaramucci also chronicles in detail his eleven days in the White House.  And he blames nobody but himself for that fateful call to reporter Ryan Lizza at The New Yorker.  He says he was “politically naïve to the twentieth power.”  Scaramucci says he should have told the reporter that the call was off the record.  He thought it was implied, as he and Lizza were two Italian guys whose fathers knew each other from the construction business. 

On the subject of the President, Scaramucci tells me that he’s “not here as a Trump apologist.”  He calls him “a flawed guy.  The tweeting is nonsensical.  Don’t pick a fight with the media.  Believe in the First Amendment.”       

Those who don’t like Donald Trump probably don’t like the Mooch either.  His guilt by association will never go away.  They are most likely not rushing out to buy his book.  But whether you like the President or not, “Trump – The Blue Collar President” is a very enjoyable read.  It never gets slow.  Scaramucci’s personal story, told with humor and colorful Mooch-language, offers many lessons on life and business.  And his brutal honesty, about his time in Washington, is refreshing.

On that, Scaramucci puts it this way: “When my colleagues in finance ask me what it was like working in Washington, D.C., I tell them to imagine the worst, most manically ruthless person they ever worked with in business, Gordon Gekko with a genital rash, the kind of guy who would screw you over, burn your house down, rob you blind if it meant he would get ahead.  That person, I tell them, would be an Eagle Scout in Washington, D.C.     

SkyBridge Capital: Democratizing Hedge Funds

I have no idea what SkyBridge Capital does.  I read the “About” page on the company’s website.  I don’t understand a word of it.  I tell Scaramucci that I have an account at Vanguard.  In other words, keep it simple.  He does.  And he also sends me home with a copy of his 2012 book “The Little Book of Hedge Funds.”  

Now I think I got it.  A hedge fund, considered an alternative investment, holds assets that are not necessarily correlated to the equity and bond markets.  SkyBridge offers a portfolio of about twenty-four hedge funds.  So it’s a so-called fund of funds.  By investing with SkyBridge you are investing in several hedge funds.

But here’s the rub with SkyBridge.  Hedge funds typically require a very large minimum investment, in the range of $100,000 to $1 million.  But not Scaramucci’s.  “Because I’m a blue collar kid,” he tells me, “I have democratized the hedge fund industry.  I brought the minimums down to $25,000.  That allows dentists and doctors and lawyers and mass affluent people to have access to the most famous money managers in the world through my product.”

[Elizabeth Vandenberg, a student at the University of Iowa College of Law, assisted with this article.]