In a provocative assessment of the current political landscape, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci claims President Donald Trump has entered a “full nihilism mode,” evidenced by a recent proposal to cap credit-card interest rates at 10%. Speaking on his podcast, The Rest Is Politics US, Scaramucci characterized the move as a “hard-left populist” maneuver that aligns more closely with democratic socialists than traditional Republican orthodoxy.
Scaramucci suggested the policy shift is so radical it feels as though Trump is “texting back and forth with Mayor Mamdani,” referencing recent reporting in Axios that Trump and the recently elected democratic socialist mayor of New York City, 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 Trump is adopting an approach typically championed by figures like Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders.
“This is a hard-left populist thing to do,” he said, though he was quick to point out Trump lacks the unilateral authority to implement such a change. He explained such a cap would require congressional approval and would have to navigate the complex regulatory hurdles of the Senate Banking Committee.
What the interest-rate fracas is all about
Since 2022, interest rates on credit cards has skyroketed, hitting a record high in August 2024. There are a number of reasons why; the Federal Reserve’s campaign to hike interest rates to combat inflation after the pandemic increased the Federal Funds Rate, which is tied to most credit cards’ rates. But Trump and other critics more have blamed credit card companies’ own greed as they extracted more money on top of the rate set by the Federal Funds.
In 2024, the gap between the typical credit card interest rates and the rates that companies were issuing had the widest gap in history. That allowed large credit card issuers to generate returns on assets six times higher or more than their other banking activities.
Meanwhile, evidence is piling up American consumers are under growing financial strain. Last April, a record number of Americans, 11%, met only the minimum requirement payment on their credit card bill. Consumer debt broadly surged in 2025, with the first three months of the year marking the highest level of debt delinquency since the pandemic.
This has put Trump in company with more Mamdani-like figures, namely Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). But the cap 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 had called her about the proposal this week.
But it is a nightmare for banks, which have been hammering away on the media cycle arguing the cap would actually cause stricter credit, meaning less people will get 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 the cash-strapped households that most need it,” Columbia Business School economics professor Brett House told Fortune.
Trump, however, has shown little hesitation in embracing populist policies that unsettle the business community. His second term has been marked by unusually direct executive intervention in markets, often to the discomfort of corporate America.
Joining Scaramucci was veteran Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, former campaign advisor to Mitt Romney, who argued the proposal is a symptom of a larger identity crisis within the GOP. Stevens asserted there is essentially “no conservative party in America today,” noting the party has traded ideological philosophy for a series of “marketing slogans.”
To Stevens, it was “darkly hysterical” the Republican Party opposes Mamdani’s ascension so much while Trump’s own policies look more classically socialist, first in taking a direct stake in semiconductor champion Intel and now in proposing a cap on interest rates.
“Your socialism is not as good as our socialism,” Stevens said, highlighting what he views as a hypocritical shift toward big-government interventionism.
