Anthony Scaramucci
Anjali Sundaram | CNBC
Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci sees a landslide re-election for President Donald Trump in 2020, saying on Wednesday that voters will be wary of meddling with the success of Trump’s economic policies.
Making a wild prediction on CNBC’s “Squawk Box, ” Scaramucci said, “I think he’ll get resoundingly re-elected. He’ll probably have a 40 state landslide, because what are you going to do? You’re going to put a socialist in place and wreck the entire economy?”
No candidate has won 40 states in a general election since George H.W. Bush in 1988. Ronald Reagan carried 49 states in his 1984 reelection bid, and Richard Nixon won by the same margin in 1972. Trump lost the popular vote in the 2016 election, but won 28 states and 306 electoral votes, making him the country’s 45th president.
The president would prefer to face the more moderate former Vice President Joe Biden in the 2020 general election, said Scaramucci, the founder of the SkyBridge Capital hedge fund who famously served in the Trump White House as communications director for less than a month in 2017. “I think he wants Biden because I think he can compare and contrast himself to the 50-year establishment failure in Washington.”
However, Scaramucci does not believe that Biden will win the Democratic nomination, in part due to his poor debating skills. Biden’s lead has shrunk in several polls since last week’s first Democratic presidential debates, during which California Sen. Kamala Harris pressed Biden on his record regarding busing and school desegregation.
“When he’s in a debate situation and there’s some controversy, he locks up,” Scaramucci said of Biden, adding he expects one of the younger candidates, who tend to be more progressive on the economy, to be the party’s nominee.
Trump will certainly be running on the economy, which flew higher in 2018. But he’ll also have to explain why growth is losing steam this year. Gross domestic product growth of 2.9% growth in 2018 beat any calendar year since the 2008 financial crisis but fell short of the president’s promised 3% or better gain. This year appears to be slowing down, even with the unexpectedly strong 3.1% GDP rate in the first quarter and the unemployment rate at a 50-year low.
Robust job growth, a hallmark of Trump’s time in office, has also started to weaken in recent months. Private payrolls added 102,000 jobs in June, according to the latest ADP and Moody’s Analytics report on Wednesday, missing Wall Street expectations. The government’s June nonfarm payrolls number is out on Friday. For May, job growth was 75,000 positions, less than half what economists had expected.
According to a Quinnipiac poll from May, 71% of Americans view the economy as “good” or “excellent,” the highest percentage in nearly 18 years. However, voters aren’t attributing that to Trump, with 45% saying they disapprove of how he is handling the economy.
— CNBC’s Jeff Cox contributed to this report.
