Democrats would be wise to swallow their pride and open up their ranks to MAGA figures including Elon Musk and RFK Jr., former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci argued on The Daily Beast Podcast.
“This guy was a lifelong Democrat,” Scaramucci said of Musk. “He was a builder of electric cars.”
Before Musk’s right-wing turn, he supported the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and even Joe Biden in 2020.
Yet the world’s richest person was “led” out of the party—something that Democrats of old wouldn’t have allowed to happen, Scaramucci told host Joanna Coles.
“There is no way Lyndon Johnson would have led Elon Musk or Bobby Kennedy Jr. out of his party,” he said. “Johnson had a great line: I want all the elephants in the tent. This way, when they’ve got to piss, they’ll piss outside the tent. Don’t let an elephant outside the tent.”
Democrats shouldn’t consider Musk damaged goods due to his work with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Scaramucci added. But this may not come easily.
Democrats are “so self-righteous and they’re so quick to cancel everybody‚” argued Scaramucci, who was infamously ‘canceled’ after just 11 days serving in Trump’s first administration.
“Say, ‘Elon, okay, you screwed up with DOGE, but you are delivering transformative cars and transformative rocketry, and we made a mistake by not inviting you to the electric vehicle summit,’” Scaramucci suggested.
Democrats, he added, should use a similar tactic for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the vaccine skeptic head of the Department of Health and Human Services who briefly ran in 2024 as a Democrat, and then an independent, only to end up endorsing Trump.
“What the hell’s wrong with you guys?” Scaramucci said, before referring to how Kamala Harris’ campaign declined to hear Kennedy out when he floated endorsing her in exchange for a role in her administration. “They wouldn’t even take the guy’s call.”
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