In a provocative assessment of the current political landscape, former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci claims that President Donald Trump has entered “total nihilism mode,” as evidenced by his recent proposal to cap credit-card interest rates at 10%. Speaking on his podcast, The rest of politics is AmericaScaramucci characterized the move as a “hard-left populist” move more closely aligned with Democratic Socialists than traditional Republican fundamentalism.
Scaramucci suggested that the policy change is so radical that Trump feels like he is “messaging back and forth with Mayor Mamdani.” Axios Trump and New York City’s newly elected Democratic Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani have been texting since they met at the White House in November.
By proposing a 10% cap on bank and credit card rates, the founder of fund-of-funds Skybridge Capital argued that Trump is adopting an approach typically championed by figures like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
“It’s a hard-left Democratic thing to do,” he said, though he pointed out that Trump doesn’t have the unilateral authority to implement such a change. He said such a cap would require congressional approval and navigate the complex regulatory hurdles of the Senate Banking Committee.
That’s what interest rate fraud is all about
Since 2022, interest rates on credit cards have skyrocketed, hitting a record high in August 2024. There are many reasons; The Federal Reserve’s campaign to raise interest rates to fight inflation followed a hike in the federal funds rate, which is linked to many credit card rates. But Trump and other critics have blamed the credit card companies’ own greed as they took out more money on top of the rates set by the Federal Reserve.
In 2024, the gap between typical credit card interest rates and the rates companies issue was the widest gap in history. This allowed large credit card issuers to generate a return on assets six times or more than their other banking activities.
Meanwhile, evidence suggests U.S. consumers are under increasing financial stress. Last April, a record 11% of Americans made only the minimum required payment on their credit card bill. Consumer debt has risen sharply in 2025, with the first three months of the year the highest level of credit delinquency since the pandemic.
This has given Trump many Mamdani-like figures, namely Rep. Alexandria is tied with Ocasio-Cortez (DN.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). But the hat is popular among politicians across the aisle. Senators Sanders and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a bill last year that would cap credit card interest rates at 10% for five years. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Trump called her this week about the proposal.
But it’s a nightmare for banks, which have argued in the media cycle that the cap will actually lead to tighter credit, meaning fewer people will have access to credit cards.
“An artificial cap on credit card interest rates is likely to backfire on the White House by making credit less accessible to cash-strapped households that need it,” said Columbia Business School economics professor Brett House. fate.
Trump, however, has shown little reluctance to embrace populist policies that upset the business community. His second term has been marked by unusually direct executive intervention in the markets, often to the dismay of corporate America.
Joining Scaramucci was veteran Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, a former campaign adviser to Mitt Romney, who argued the proposal was symptomatic of a larger identity crisis within the GOP. Stevens asserted that “there is no conservative party in America today,” noting that the party has traded ideological philosophy for a series of “marketing slogans.”
For Stevens, it was “deeply hysterical,” given that the Republican Party opposes Mamdani’s ascension so much while Trump’s own policies seem classically socialist, first taking a direct stake in semiconductor champion Intel and now proposing a cap on interest rates.
“Your socialism is not as good as our socialism,” Stevens said, highlighting what he sees as a hypocritical shift toward big-government interventionism.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
