USA TODAY International Edition
In Davos, Scaramucci ‘ translates’ Trump
President- elect’s aide wants forum to see ‘ how smart ( Trump) is’
“I want to put your mind at ease that this is a super-compassionate man, he’s a generous man, he has wonderful children, he loves people.” Anthony Scaramucci
Anthony Scaramucci, the smooth- talking entrepreneur, financier and now senior aide to President- elect Donald Trump, took on the Herculean task of “Trump translator” at the World Economic Forum that kicked off here Tuesday.
“You probably like it the way I’m explaining it because it sounds more sensible,” the 53year- old Goldman Sachs alumnus and founder of hedge- fund firm SkyBridge Capital said in comments to delegates and media at the annual meeting.
Scaramucci was speaking about Trump’s allure for voters, his well- known use of Twitter at 3 a. m., NATO, Brexit, the European Union, Russia, the pitfalls of globalization and other hot- button topics being discussed by several thousand people in this cozy Alpine ski town.
Many of the delegates appearing here have expressed concerns over Trump’s electoral victory and the theme of the meeting — “Responsive and Responsible Leadership” — is a veiled reference to a number of anti- establishment shake- ups taking place across the world from the U. S. to the Philippines.
“If you guys get a little upset about the tweeting or some of the things that he’s saying, I want to put your mind at ease that this is a super- compassionate man, he’s a generous man, he has wonderful children, he loves people. He’s not necessarily communicating in a way that the people in ( Davos) love, but he is communicating very effectively,” Scaramucci said.
For example, on NATO, which the president- elect has criticized, Trump was “simply trying to find common cause, let’s try to find a way to get along better,” Scaramucci said. “He’s saying that if you look at NATO in 2017 the way it is currently architected, maybe we need to focus less on combating Communism and more on rejecting Islamic terrorism.”
“So when he uses the world ‘ obsolete’ and everyone runs around and says he is going to bust up NATO, that’s not what he’s saying. When he says, ‘ Hey, wait a minute, there’s a 2 or 3%, per GDP, per country, for defense expenditure, and a lot of those guys are not paying those bills,’ well, he’s a real estate developer, what do you think he’s going to do? He’s going to go to those guys and say, ‘ You signed this thing, you owe the money, start paying up.’ I don’t understand why people would be upset by that.”
Scaramucci is the sole representative of Trump’s transition team appearing at the forum, a gathering of business and political leaders that runs through Friday, when the president- elect officially takes office.
Along with defending his new boss — Scaramucci has been given a business outreach role in the office of public liaison ( previously the office of public engagement) — he announced that he sold SkyBridge Capital to RON Transat- lantic EG and HNA Capital Holding, a move that clears the way for his transition from Wall Street to public life in the White House.
Terms of Tuesday’s transaction were not disclosed. SkyBridge Capital’s price tag could be as high as $ 225 million.
In a separate development, Russian news agency Tass reported Scaramucci and Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a $ 10 billion state- run wealth fund, met in Davos to discuss possible business cooperation. No details about the meeting were disclosed, and Scaramucci did not discuss it beyond confirming the meeting took place. The investment vehicle is on the list of entities for which Russia has been sanctioned over its illegal annexation of the Black Sea peninsula, Crimea.
Even though Scaramucci has been a regular attendee at this event for the past decade, his participation this year has drawn considerably more interest than usual because of his close ties to the incoming U. S. administration. Yet despite expectations — including, apparently, Scaramucci’s own — that his role as a Davos envoy for anti- establishment, populist Trump would rankle many of the conference’s global elite, little immediate evidence of that emerged on the first day.
Scaramucci was the most pop- ular guy in the room on a walk through the event’s crowded, power- filled corridors Tuesday filled with royalty, CEOs, actors and big- league movers and shakers.
Heads turned, and he frequently was stopped by people who wanted to speak with him or shake his hand.
“A lot of people ( in Davos) don’t understand the Donald J. Trump movement or Brexit in the United Kingdom, and that’s primarily because they isolated themselves.
“I would tell people here to take a pause in their lives, gain some intellectual curiosity and go meet with people that are not similarly situated to the way they are,” Scaramucci said.
“At the end of the day, I am here to give a message to people: Let’s not be out of touch with the common struggle that’s going on. There are some very wealthy, very successful people here. But we are all just human beings. We’re drinking the same water, breathing the same air.”
Asked how he was feeling about his upcoming move from Wall Street to Washington, Scaramucci said that in the financial world, “they only stab you in the front.”
Scaramucci said his job is to get people to see Trump in the way that his family, staff and the entire administration see him.
“Not just in terms of his political and strategic instincts, but in terms of how smart he is in building his relationships with people.”