PR consultant Paul Allen and former White House Director of Communications Anthony Scaramucci held a joint celebration in Dublin last week to mark their respective business milestones.

Allen was celebrating 34th anniversary of the launch of Paul Allen & Associates PR while Scaramucci marked 20 years since the foundation of his investment fund, SkyBridge Capital.

The pair were reintroduced by Alistair Campbell, the co-host of the popular The Rest Is Politics podcast.

Allen and Campbell first met during the peace process in Northern Ireland when Allen was advising Bertie Ahern and Campbell was spin doctor for Tony Blair, and Scaramucci now presents The Rest of Politics USA, which has close to a million weekly listeners, and like the Campbell's show is produced by Gary Lineker's Goalhanger Podcasts.

Allen has helped to secure a number of Irish guests for The Rest Is Politics, and he also helped to put together the episode recorded at Queen's University Belfast to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement in 2023 with guests such as Leo Varadkar and Bill and Hillary Clinton joining Campbell and co-host Rory Stewart.

Speaking to BusinessPlus.ie, Allen said he and Scaramucci met more years ago than he cared to remember, and that they had renewed their friendship through their work with Goalhanger.

"It was [Scaramucci's] first time in Ireland, and he was delighted to celebrate with ourselves. He had a small event in New York and he, too, shares a love of Billy Joel, she he had a Billy Joel [tribute act] at his party that blew the bloody socks of people because he was so loud."

The Dublin party was a much quieter affair -- "a small, intimate occasion with friends and clients," according to Allen -- and he and Scaramucci cut a cake, wished each other a happy birthday and many more successful years in business.

"It's been a rock 'n' roll period of work, spending your life telling people what they don't want to hear, and spending your life saying, 'Honesty will get me into trouble, but I've got to tell you this, this and this,'" Allen said of his 34 years at the helm of Paul Allen & Associates.

"I always say you don't have to like people to work with them. Over the years, we have been blessed with a great collection of clients, many of whom are repeat clients and have gone from strength to strength."

Scaramucci, who famously served as Donald Trump's communications director for 10 days in July 2017 during his first term as US President, recently encouraged the EU to "outgame" Trump by lowering tariffs on US imports to 0%.

"I would caution ministers and people in Brussels. If you want to outgame Trump, play his game, lower your tariffs," he told Ivan Yates in an interview for Newstalk.

"[Ronald] Reagan in 1981 went with a zero option. He said he would zero-out the Pershing missiles in West Germany if the [Soviet Union] did the same thing in East Germany, and so play his game. Cut your tariffs to zero."

Scaramucci, who presents The Rest Is Politics US podcast, was sceptical as to whether Trump would be successful in his efforts to bring pharma manufacturing operations and jobs back to the US though.

"I think when you look at the matrix of outcomes, it's very hard for him to fix even if he gets a 15% corporate tax rate, which I predict he won't be able to get, because he doesn't have the mandate that he's pretending to have," he said.

"But even if he were to do that, it's not enough of a threshold to cause that migration. You just said this 30-year build-up of corporations that have moved here, that have made a strategic decision to be here.

"They've got expats here alongside of Irish citizens working in their companies. I think it's very, very hard to snap a finger and make a migration."

"I think what the President is missing with the strategy is that these economies are integrated, that these economies have trade agreements," he added.

Scaramucci went on to say that if Trump could "screw up" Ireland's corporation tax regime, he would have "telegraphed" that to Taoiseach Micheál Martin and "scared the life" out of him in the Oval Office in March.

"It would have been Zelenskyy-lite ... but he didn't do that because he actually knows that he can't do that. He doesn't have a mechanism to do that."

Photo: (l-r) Paul Allen and Anthony Scaramucci. (Pic: Supplied)