And bring in Art Laffer, former Reagan economist
Kevin Hassett, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
Gentlemen, I am honored in your presence.
The IQ here is phenomenal.
Not on stage here, but out there,
remote. Appreciate it very much.
I just want to go first.
Kevin.
Speeches like this more and more.
You know, he keeps talking about cutting spending.
He keeps talking about undoing all of
Biden's, you know,
green New Deal subsidies and programs and whatnot.
He keeps mentioning budget impoundment authority.
This is a tougher Trump on spending,
and he's making the link between spending and inflation.
I think this is extremely constructive.
What? What are you thinking,
Kevin?
Yeah. And. And again, it's almost like President Trump needs
to make one of his slogans.
It's the economy, stupid. Harkening back to Bill Clinton.
The the Biden administration really is in denial on inflation.
But I emailed you this morning,
Larry, that Google Trends, like one of the biggest upticks
in in Google Trends is searches on the word inflation.
You and I see it in the data and Americans
are concerned about it and they're even Googling it.
But at the same time,
Jim Tankersley just put a piece in the New York
Times where he interviewed White House officials,
including, you know, my dear friend Jared Bernstein,
who has my former job.
And Jared says that he doesn't see any link between
demand and inflation at all.
No kidding. And so it's not,
it doesn't have anything to do with all of this
runaway spending.
And so the point is,
the Biden administration, sadly, is in denial about inflation,
and it's taking off again because of that,
right? If they actually faced up to what causes inflation,
then maybe they could do something to help their own
election chances by reducing it.
But instead they're doing the opposite.
Arthur, hang on a second.
I've got some more sound on Trump on Biden spending
from the Wisconsin speech.
Take a listen please.
And upon taking office, I will impose an immediate moratorium
on all new
spending grants and giveaways under the Joe Biden mammoth socialist
bills like the so-called Inflation Reduction Act to further crack
down on rampant waste in the federal government.
We're going to bring back presidential impoundment Authority,
which it and we're going to end this war on
American energy.
We're going to drill, baby,
drill. All right, there you have it.
And Arthur, with patience. I want you to hear one
more about stagflation and tax cuts.
Here it comes.
We're plunging. We're now in a Biden stagflation.
Yet Crooked Joe Biden wants to raise taxes on top
of that and raise business taxes,
which will lead to the destruction of your jobs.
But with me in the White House,
we will protect the Trump tax cuts for working families.
We will make our middle class stronger,
bigger, better, stronger, wealthier and more prosperous than ever before.
All right, all right. The
reason they're both very important.
I know we repeated the sound on spending,
but I think that's just very important.
But the other thing is what he said,
he of course he is saying we're going to keep
the Trump tax cuts.
We will extend the Trump tax cuts.
Biden wants to expire the Trump tax cuts.
But Art, President Trump saying
if you raise business taxes,
you will damage working folks and their jobs and their
wages.
Now, I think that is a key insight.
You've put it out there.
Kevin practically invented it with corporate taxes.
We all argue this. I think the president has just
lassoed this idea.
He's linking it in a way that the Bidens are
incapable of linking it.
You knock if if you Jack up these corporate taxes
or small business taxes,
I don't care which, both of which are in Biden's
plan,
then who's going to suffer?
Not rich people. I'm sorry.
Working folks are going to suffer.
Middle and lower income folks are going to suffer.
Real wages will go down.
Arthur, I mean, this is so important.
Yeah, let let me just say,
Larry, that raising taxes as Biden is proposing is the
exact wrong thing to do right now.
You destroy an economy. I've never heard of an economy
being taxed into prosperity.
The reason you guys and and Trump did so well
was you brought down the taxes,
tax cuts and JOBS Act was very effective.
I mean, it's just a pleasure to be on here
with you and Kevin.
It's just wonderful. But when you let people spend other
people's money and then raise taxes to destroy the supply
of goods,
you're going to get the inflation.
Kevin, I just can't believe that Jared Bernstein said anything
like what he said.
It just makes no sense whatsoever.
You know, Trump's really on A roll.
I watched that speed, those speeches in Wisconsin.
It was phenomenal. He hit all the right points all
the way across the board.
I think it's going to be a a slam dunk
on this election and you're going to see the US
economy soar and take off inflation coming down and having
a real long term prosperity like we did under Reagan
after 83.
Kevin, you got to be happy that that the President
Trump is making this connection between business taxes and wages
and working folks and jobs.
I mean, it's a crucial connection.
You know, Joe Biden's always out there saying
these are only tax cuts for the rich and wealthy
and for big corporations.
That's just completely wrong. They,
they weren't even the biggest beneficiaries.
It was the middle and actually the lower quintile and
poverty went down right and inequality went down right and
real wages soared.
Now, Trump had a lot of that in this speech.
I couldn't go through all of it.
It was quite a lengthy speech and he got it
done.
And then, Kevin, here's another point.
I want it, president in there said.
I don't know if anybody's going to pick up on
this.
You can't have 10s of millions of new immigrants,
illegals coming over the border
and maintain an entitlement state here at home.
He is saying you just going to break the bank.
You can have one but not the other and we
got to keep our entitlement state intact.
He does not want to abolish any
Social Security or Medicare, anything like that.
But if you leave all these,
if these people come over and they get new benefits,
you already see it in city and city and state
after state.
The the cost of the new,
the new, the illegals is astronomical and we will never
be able to pay for the Social Security and the
Medicare tax.
Now the Bidens never want to deal with this because
they think there's just more spending for everybody.
But Kevin, I think that's a crucial point.
You want entitlements, Then you got to shut the border
down.
You got to shut the border.
You're right. And going back to what you said about
the president making the link between taxes and people's lives,
that it was right before you came into the White
House,
when we were selling the Tax Cuts and JOBS Act,
that Gary Cohn and I were in the Oval with
the president,
and I presented a simulation of what it would do
to GDP.
And he looks at me,
he's like, Kevin, what are you talking about?
People don't care about GDP.
What's it going to do for people?
What's it going to do to wages?
And then he came up,
you know, then we told him
$4000 and then he knew that that was the sound
bite that the Democrats couldn't fight against.
And that's why tax cuts pass,
is because he always cared first about the worker and
knows how to communicate with them.
But the thing about looking at the speech that most
struck me,
Larry, and I'll go really fast.
It's just that when he talked about the this sham
trial in New York,
people were really, really angry.
But when he talked about the economy,
they were more angry. They were more angry.
And that's got to terrify the Biden administration.
Arthur, you can't keep a good man down.
That's what you see. They're trying to lock him up
in New York courtroom.
No, you can't. Or they're trying to lock him up
in a jail,
for heaven's sakes, for 700 years.
He gets out. He goes to this
middle America Waukesha, WI and delivers a barn banner he
gave a STEM liner.
I mean, there it is.
And art, you know what?
The media doesn't want this.
But the reason Trump is doing so well
is because of his message.
It's his message. It's not about,
you know, I'm sure law fair and and sympathy is
in there
and Biden's, you know, weaknesses across the board.
But Arthur, they want to return to growth.
They want to return to prosperity.
They want to return to law and order.
They want to return to a closed border.
Trump has been, it's like the secret message.
The only people that hear it are the voters.
The media doesn't hear it.
The voters give you the last word.
Yeah,
yeah. Well, they they claim that Trump is not for
democracy and all that.
And then they try to prohibit from being running for
office.
I mean, I can't think of anything more undemocratic and
your point about coming up.
We all love immigrants who want to come here and
work and better their lives.
Everyone's for that. To come here to get more welfare
and not work,
that is not what open borders should be.
You're completely right on that.
And you look at Trump and his whole message is
growth,
prosperity, lower inflation, higher wages.
Biden is exactly the opposite.
I'm just shocked at what they're doing and what they're
proposing.
Anyone would tell them that raising taxes in this economy
is the wrong message.
Period. Everyone knows that. Can't keep a good man down.
Thank you, gentlemen. Art Laffer and Kevin Haske.
We appreciate it very much.