Extract from ABC News
The last thing I expect to get sitting in Anthony Scaramucci's Manhattan boardroom is a lesson in astrology. But when you're talking Donald Trump, the conversation can veer in any direction.
"He fits his astrological sign, the Gemini, where there's like two people inside of one body," says Scaramucci, who is wearing white sneakers with his investment banker business suit.
"He has a soft side to him and can be charitable. And then the flip side is a man that's loaded up with a lot of anger and mendacity, also some self-loathing and high levels of narcissism."
Scaramucci is one of several former White House insiders from Trump's first term as president who I've sat down with in recent months in a bid to understand more about the man — and his next mission.
The United States is fast approaching what could be a pivotal moment in its democracy if Trump is re-elected in November, and those who had a front row seat the first time around aren't holding back.
'He'll run you over with the car'
Scaramucci has known The Donald for two decades. The New Yorkers hit it off while working at TV network NBC; investment guru Scaramucci was a finance commentator, billionaire businessman Trump was hosting hit reality show The Apprentice.
"He lives in a triplex apartment, this sort of garish, triplex apartment. It'd be like if [King of France] Louis the 14th smoked crystal meth and then decorated," Scaramucci says.
"You would think that with that kind of wealth, he would be an insider. But he's sort of shunned by the establishment, so this gives him this huge chip on his shoulder."
Scaramucci cites a story he says he heard about Trump "where he wasn't invited to a country club that he was desperate to get into … one of these famous golf clubs out here. And so then he went on to build 18 golf courses". Trump's companies currently own 15 golf courses and have three more planned.
When Trump won the Republican nomination for president in 2016, he convinced Scaramucci to join his team.
"My wife didn't want me to go work for him … But I didn't listen."
"I engaged my ego and my pride, which are obviously your enemies in life. When I got fired, unceremoniously, I stayed loyal to him."
After being part of Trump's transition team, the president appointed Scaramucci as White House director of communications, reporting directly to him. He lasted just 11 days. He was sacked after having what he thought was an off-the-record chat with a journalist in which he proffered expletive-filled character assessments of his colleagues.
"He's incredibly transactional," Scaramucci says of Trump. "He'll socialise with you and be charming and gregarious and get you to do something for him. And then if it serves his interest to run you over with the car, he'll run you over with the car."
Scaramucci's loyalty only stretched so far. Trump labelled him a disgruntled former employee, tweeting: "I barely knew him until his 11 days of gross incompetence."
Today Scaramucci points to a report by The Washington Post's Fact Checker team that Trump made more than 30,000 false or misleading claims over his four-year term.
"Mr Trump has practised the big lie for five decades, and it works for him," he says.
"We're living in a … post-truth society … and he represents that"
'He was winging it'
Miles Taylor isn't so eloquent in his assessment of Trump.
"He's just a f***ing idiot," he says.
Taylor was chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security but he's more famous for being "Anonymous", the unnamed senior official who penned an excoriating portrait of the dysfunction inside the Trump administration for The New York Times in 2018.
As we meet in Virginia, he tells me Trump wasn't up to the top job.
"When Donald Trump was president, I remember crossing that threshold into the Oval Office, and not only was this guy not bringing his A game, he didn't have a game. He was winging it," he says.
"We would often find him in meetings completely distracted. He would go off on tangents and tirades. He would often repeat himself."
Taylor says Trump's office was "like a crowded New York bagel shop". "You might be talking about a classified issue and someone who doesn't have a security clearance comes walking through … and he's getting phone calls and he's telling people to tweet things out."
Taylor's most bizarre interaction with Trump was when he says the president phoned with an idea to build a moat along the southern border with Mexico in a bid to stop migrants crossing into the US.
"And he goes off on this tangent talking about how we should actually get snakes and alligators and fill this 2000-mile moat on the border so that if someone falls into the moat … they're facing the threat of snakes and alligators who might come after them."
"He's just a f***ing idiot."
Taylor says the team provided a back-of-the-envelope cost estimate for the project, which Trump then said was too expensive. Trump has previously called the moat story and the New York Times article "fake news".
Taylor says he's a lifelong conservative and "more Republican than Donald Trump". "But putting politics aside, engaging with the man, you realise he's an idiot. He is highly incompetent."
Two years after writing the New York Times article — which Trump had previously suggested was an act of "treason" — Taylor resigned and outed himself. Trump tweeted that he'd never heard of him (despite them being photographed together in the Oval Office) before saying he should be prosecuted.
'Jealous of Putin'
Taylor isn't the only former senior administration official reportedly labelled a traitor by Trump and his supporters. Of the six men who served as Trump's national security adviser, John Bolton lasted the longest, at 17 months.
I've travelled to Washington DC to meet with Bolton, as well as several intelligence experts, former ambassadors and government officials.
Bolton says he thought the weight of the office of the president would instil discipline into Trump. He was wrong.
"Frequently, he was the one doing most of the talking during the intelligence briefings," he says. "He had huge gaps in his knowledge of international affairs.
"He once asked White House chief of staff John Kelly if Finland was still part of Russia. It went downhill from there."
Trump has accused Bolton of making up stories about their time working together.
Bolton recalls trying to brief Trump while they were flying on Air Force One to a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As Bolton was attempting to explain the comparative nuclear arsenals of Russia and the US, he claims Trump was transfixed on a FIFA World Cup football match on TV.
But of deeper concern to Bolton was Trump's apparent infatuation with Putin.
"I do think he felt envious of the autocrats, because they could do pretty much what they wanted without constraint," he says.
"They seemed like big guys. They were tough and confident, and I think he wanted to emulate them. Although he didn't exactly know how."
'Man of the people'
For every critic of Trump I meet in the US capital though, there's an ally with a different story.
Former senior Trump administration official Gordon Sondland scoffs at the idea that the former president was in awe of dictators and despots and wanted to be like them.
"I remember being with President Trump shortly after he met with [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un," says the former ambassador to the European Union. "And the media was excoriating him over being too friendly … as if he was seduced by this short Korean man who is a murderer and a thug."
"We were in the car, and I said, 'Mr President, cutting through the bullshit, tell me about Kim Jong Un.'"
"And he looked at me with a smile and he said, 'If that motherf***er had a knife, he could have gored me in the stomach.'"
"That told me everything I needed to know about his soberness when it came to these people."
Like many other senior administration officials, Sondland was eventually sacked by the president. He acknowledges Trump is not a conventional leader but says he can be a man of the people.
"A lot of presidents would stay up until the early hours reading thick briefing books," Sondland says. "That's not how Trump got his information. He got his information over the telephone and in person … in fact, the joke was he would ask the janitor who was mopping the floor, 'What do you think about this or that?'"
'A great boss'
Former acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf says his interactions with Trump were always about what was best for the American people.
"I don't know anyone who loves their country more and is more patriotic than the president," he says.
"He's a great boss. He's a challenging boss. He wants results at the end of the day. And I think he pushed us."
In 2020, The Washington Post reported that Wolf was one of Trump's favourite cabinet secretaries because he did not push back at the president's ideas like his predecessors did.
Wolf agrees that there needs to be people surrounding a leader who will challenge them when necessary, but says in Trump's first term some staffers and government agency personnel didn't understand how it works.
"Instead, they continue to say, 'Well, it's a bad idea,' and, 'My opinion's more important than yours, even though I wasn't elected,'" he says.
"If you're not on board with the president's agenda, you need to step aside."
Some tip that should Trump be re-elected, he will once again appoint Wolf to a senior post.
"You need people to salute and say, 'I got it,'" Wolf says.
'A counterintelligence nightmare'
Should he win back the presidency, Trump has vowed to pursue "retribution" for himself and the Americans who feel they've been left behind by wokeism and liberal politics.
But the plan for his second coming isn't all talk; he's supported by a coalition of conservative groups with a plan for power known as Project 2025, and has made dismantling institutions in Washington that he feels have wronged him, such as the Department of Justice, a top priority.
That sends a chill up the spine of Peter Strzok.
Strzok was a senior official in the FBI's Counterintelligence Division who led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election won by Trump. He was forced to resign when private texts that denigrated Trump were made public.
"According to The Washington Post, I was the first person — dubious honour — that he accused of treason," Strzok says. Treason carries the death penalty in the US.
The counterintelligence specialist, though, believes it's Trump who is a threat to the United States and the constitution.
"If you look at it from an intelligence professional's perspective, Trump is a counterintelligence nightmare," he says.
"He had very well-known alleged proclivities for pretty women. He had … susceptibility to flattery [and] a strange sort of affection for strong men and authoritarians … Trump hit so many of these different areas that were in fact intelligence vulnerabilities."
Then there's the fact Trump is now a convicted felon — in May he was found guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election campaign – and is facing the prospect of three more criminal trials.
The three trials will allege Trump conspired to overturn his 2020 election defeat to Joe Biden, unlawfully tried to change the outcome in Georgia, and mishandled classified documents after he left office. Trump denies any wrongdoing in the first trial and has pleaded not guilty in the other two.
"If you go back and you look at the entire history of the United States of America, no current or former president has been indicted, ever, let alone for, initially, 91 criminal counts," Strzok says.
Back in Anthony Scaramucci's Manhattan boardroom, I ask him who he is going to vote for come November.
"I'm a lifelong Republican. I don't agree with a lot of the Biden policies," he says.
"But I'm willing to accept four years of policies I may not agree with to ensure that we don't have a direct threat to the system that's made the country so prosperous and so, so peaceful."
Scaramucci knows though, that millions of his countrymen and women are itching to see Trump return.
"He's their great white hope, or their great orange hope. He is the orange wrecking ball that can smash into these institutions that they feel have been unfair to them."
Donald Trump did not respond to an interview request from Four Corners.
See more interviews with Trump insiders in the two-part Four Corners special, Retribution, from 8:25pm on Monday, July 15, on ABC TV and ABC iview.
Be the first to hear about Four Corners' next big investigation and read behind-the-scenes stories from reporters by subscribing to the weekly Four Corners newsletter. Follow Four Corners on Facebook.
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