The Pomp Podcast - #1427 Howard Lutnick | Bitcoin & Tariffs Will Save The US Economy

Episode Date: October 28, 2024

Howard Lutnick is the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard is one of the most interesting people in finance, he is a billionaire, and has incredible ideas to improve America. In this conversation, we talk about the national debt, inflation, why he is the co-head of the Trump transition team, what their plan is to balance the budget, how they are going to change things around economically, and a touching story about 9/11.  ======================= Buy book: https://www.amazon.com/Live-Extraordinary-Life-Anthony-Pompliano/dp/0857199927/ ======================= Gemini is the safe and secure way to trade crypto. Gemini is offering eligible new users the opportunity to earn $100 in BTC when they trade $1000 in crypto within their first 30 days of signing up. Head over to ⁠https://www.gemini.com/partners/pomp⁠ and start trading crypto to earn $100 in BTC. ======================= The Pomp Podcast is powered by BetOnline.ag, the premier crypto-friendly place to gamble on politics and sports, casino, poker and horse racing. BetOnline.ag gives you the ability to use Bitcoin and more than a dozen altcoins to make deposits and withdraw your winnings. There are no crypto transaction fees, and processing is instantaneous and secure. Visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠⁠⁠⁠ and use PROMO CODE: POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline.ag is available in nearly every country around the world, making it the top global gaming destination for crypto users. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up, guys? Today, we've got an incredible episode with Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. Howard is one of the most interesting people in finance. He's a billionaire, and he has some incredible stories and ideas

about what he thinks we can do to improve the state of America. In this conversation, we talk about the national debt, inflation, why he is the co-head of the Trump transition team, and what their plan is to balance the budget and how they actually are going to turn everything around economically for so many millions of Americans. On top of that, Howard also was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald during 9-11. They famously lost 658 of their employees, and Howard tells a very moving and inspiring story of what happened that day, where he was, and what they did to rebuild the firm, and how they took so much time, effort, and money to support so many different families who had lost their loved ones during that horrific attack. This conversation will give you

lots of ideas about the future. It'll teach you about one side of the political aisle and what their plan is. And then also at the end, it's pretty heavy stuff, but you're going to want to listen to Howard's story about 9-11 and how Cantor Fitzgerald went through that time and came back even stronger. Here is my episode with Howard Letnick. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational

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Gemini will give you $100 in Bitcoin if you head over to Gemini.com slash partners slash Pomp and you trade $1,000 in crypto within the first 30 days. This episode is brought to you by BetOnline. Do you like making a profit from sports betting? Well, set yourself up to take home the most profit possible using crypto to fund your sports betting, casino, and poker account at betonline.ag. You can avoid costly transaction fees, get your payouts lightning fast, and do it all securely and anonymously with the highest deposit and withdrawal limits in the industry. If you want to get in on the action, do it the smart way with crypto at betonline.ag.

Head to the website, sign up with promo code POMP100 to get a 100% bonus on your crypto deposit today. If you go and you deposit, they'll give you 100% bonus if you use promo code POMP100. BetOnline. The game starts here. BetOnline.ag. Go check them out today. You are the epitome of the American dream. I think that as the co-head of the Trump transition team, the American dream is the promise of a lot of the policies. What does it mean to have the American dream today? like what is that is that still alive in america today well it gets confused by people because

you see these politicians they just talk about these platitudes they don't talk about you what do you want to own you want to own a home you want to have a great life for your kids you want to have a good education you want to have your kids live a better life than you had right and that's sort of the fundamental american dream of of our country right we have got two-thirds of the the American workforce does not have, you know, they only have a high school education, right? And one third has a college education. So, two thirds high school education, one third college education, and the two thirds live, ready for this? Seven years less. How is that possible? It's not the air, right? It's not the food and it's not healthcare. It's despair. You work in

an auto factory. They do NAFTA, right? And they move your auto factory to Mexico. Who came up with this idea? This is like nuts, right? They move it down to Mexico. They gut Michigan. You lose your job. Where do you go? So, you're so sad and you're so depressed. You take drugs. Then what do they do? They open the border and they bring fentanyl in, right? And it's despair. So we've got to fix it. And that's, you know, Trump's key mission is let's take care of the American workers. Let's take care of America. Let's take care of America first. And people go, oh, that's crazy. Why is that crazy? How about we take care of America? And so that's sort of a key part of his initiative. Now, did I think about this five years ago? Of course not. I was rebuilding after September 11th. But now I am just focused on what's the right move for America. And that's why I'm all in with Donald Trump, his policies, his thinking, his way of just looking at things, his intuition is just right. So one of the things that's been fascinating to me is there's a bunch of groups, their union groups and various other kind of American worker type of governance or organizations that are either supporting Trump or they're absolving themselves from endorsing either candidate, which is basically kind of an implicit endorsement of Trump. Why is it that these organizations, which historically have donated to Democrats, they have supported them, they've endorsed them, they've been very Democrat in their voting kind of penetration, all of a sudden are switching over?

Are we seeing the political parties kind of shift and now the Republican Party is becoming more pro-American worker and where Democrats used to be that way? Exactly right. So what happened is the Democrat Party, when I grew up, used to be the party of the worker and the Republicans were the party of the businesses. right and that's completely shifted now donald trump talks about taking care of the american worker the union worker the rank and file and the and the democrats talk about the green new deal right and so they talk about electric cars who who's buying an electric car you're not buying an electric car if you're a farmer in the middle of the country electric cars don't work i like a friend of mine, they're so left, incredibly left. And they live in Chicago. They're incredibly left.

And they said they were going to visit their parents, and they have two electric cars. But they had to rent a car because their parents live a couple hundred miles away. And of course, the electric car can't possibly make it there and back. So they rent a regular car. I mean, what American worker is going out to buy an electric car? The answer is none of them. This is just coastal elite nonsense has sort of infiltrated the Democrat Party. And now they're just they're just out of touch with the American worker. And Donald Trump has pivoted, literally pivoted the Republican Party to take care of the American worker. And and it's really a fascinating change.

So the name on the door is not right. And you've hit the point exactly. It's really what's on the inside and on the inside of Donald Trump is let's go protect the American worker. So one of the things that people always point to is the income inequality gap. And it's been widening for years. And it's happened under Republican administrations, have it under Democratic administrations. And my analysis is that it really just comes down to the dollar loses value. The bottom 50% of Americans don't have investments. They just sit paycheck to paycheck. They put 100% of their wealth in dollars in the bank. Those dollars lose value. And the top 50% of Americans, they're not holding dollars. They're holding investments. Those investments go up and the cash goes down. Inflation obviously spiked, which made that problem way worse. It accelerated the trends that were already kind of in place. How much of the American worker is in the kind of their maybe perception of pain or their dissatisfaction with kind of their previous political agenda is just like, I can't get ahead. Everything around

me is getting more expensive. This inflation thing is eating away. And I'm almost a single issue voter because literally I can't figure out how I'm going to put food on the table for my family. I can't figure out how I'm going to pay rent that's exploding around me. And it's just an economic story and everything else is just noise. You hit it on the head. So inflation, right, changes everything. So when Donald Trump was in office, he had 3% GDP growth, 3% wage growth. So the average wages in America are growing 3%, right? And 2% inflation. So people were getting ahead, right? They were catching up, maybe 1%. But when you talk about all of America, 1%, it's a lot because it's everybody, right? Then the Democrats get elected. Now, you know

why they did it, right? They're not in power during the pandemic. So they want to help. They want to help. They really, really want to help. But then the economy sort of starts to rock in the end of 2020. 2021, we're booming. And in March of 2021, the Democrats do the American Rescue Plan, a solid 15 months too late. They put $1.9 trillion of new money into the system and create inflation. I go on TV at the time, I said, 15 months, the historical norm for over-stimulus is 15 months later you get inflation, okay? June of 22, Fed raises rates the first time and here we go. So, what inflation does, you're right. If I own a house, it inflates. If I own stocks, their earnings inflate, right? If I'm living paycheck to paycheck, the costs of my eggs

go up, the cost of gas goes up, the cost of my insurance goes up, I get crushed, right? It crushes the American worker. So that's why inflation is the meanest thing you can ever do to your people. You're right. The rich people, but it's not the rich people have ducked and avoided it. It's the rich people, they own a house and they own stuff. And the stuff that they own goes up in value. But if you're spending your money, you're just getting pulverized, right? So the key is you got to bring great jobs here. You got to tariff the rest of the world and keep them the out. You got to bring the manufacturing back here. So I hit your mic, right? You have to read. I talk with my hand. So this mic's in trouble, you know. Watch out, those punch back.

Oh, that would be funny, right? Imagine the thing goes boom. So don't hit me again. That would be funny, Mike. You'd be like the greatest podcast ever because you had the funny mic. But, you know, bring it back. And what happens is if you bring back manufacturing, then there's, you'd say, well, how do you know there's so many workers to have all these jobs? There won't be. If you bring back American manufacturing into the great American economy and you protect the American workers, then there's going to be demand, excess demand, too many factories. What's going to happen to the price of their services? Up it goes. What's fascinating to me is, I mean, COVID really was a kind of a moment in time that exposed America for this pursuit of lowest cost labor,

lowest cost goods, we basically searched the globe to find who was willing to do work for the least amount of money. And what we were willing to give up for it was resilience. And so when the entire world locked down, all of a sudden, America's like, well, what do we make here? And their list wasn't very long. And so it does feel like cost is one component of this, but also there's an element of kind of a resilience story. And to me, okay, how many times in our lifetime are we going to have a global lockdown? I'm not sure. Hopefully that was the only one. But then you get into things like national security. Right. I read a story that the ports in America, the cranes are being produced in China and there is the ability to

remotely access them. And of course, the story is probably, hey, we need analytics or we need to be able to do software updates, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I don't know, maybe we can call china a frenemy you know we want to work with them but also there's some competition that there's maybe some national security stuff and so to have other countries who have remote access to the cranes that we rely on to get goods into our economy seems kind of like something maybe we should take a look at and then you go and you look at a bunch of these other technologies that already have been uh kind of put on a list and america says hey we can't have these on our government officials phones we can't use these in cell towers or whatever cost is important but also

it almost feels like people have forgotten how important it is to have a kind of a defense shield around technology and goods that protects the country regardless of the cost right it's kind of like you want low cost if everything else is held constant but actually you should be willing to pay a little bit more as long as you actually are safe as well so you're giving me like the the greatest opening ever to talk about this stuff, but power. Let's just talk about power. We all need energy. We need power. So national security would say that all of our states and all of our people need domestic power. We are a net exporter of power. But what we do is we refuse to build pipelines to get our own energy to ourselves. So while we're net equal, we sell

to others and import from others. And by the way, do you think the oil that we buy from Russia, and by the way, if you don't think we buy oil from Russia, you're wrong. Do you think it's clean oil from Russia? No, I don't think so. So what happens is we cancel our own pipelines, which really, instead of calling it the Keystone Pipeline, they should have called it the National security deliver gas and oil across the United States of America. Instead, we cancel it because it won't go be green enough. And then what we buy is our ports are full of oil coming in from Venezuela and from Russia. And we buy their oil, even though there's sanctions, we still end up buying their oil because they go through here and there and it comes back in anyway.

and then we burn dirty oil. So it's illogical. We let all of the pharmaceuticals like penicillin, we let the things that make it are made in China. And we don't think about the national security that if we had war with China, they just wouldn't give us penicillin anymore. We buy batteries from where? Elon Musk complained to me that he has to buy his lithium to make batteries in Australia. And he says, where's the greatest lithium mines? Nevada. And we just found one, by the way, in Arkansas. Huge lithium mine. So we buy it in Australia, and then he puts it and goes through seven time zones on a boat that's really very environmentally friendly to have a boat. Go from seven time zones, and it comes here. It's just hypocrisy. The worst part is

it's hypocrisy. If you want to be green and you want to be clean, which we all agree, we want clean water and clean air, but don't make believe that you're taking it from Australia and shipping it here and somehow it's green. National security matters. We got to think about manufacturing our stuff here, our pharmaceuticals here. We have to distribute oil and natural gas to ourselves here. So we are independent, not we're balanced, but half the people are buying it from outside and half buying it from inside. These are fundamental things that we need to think about. And that's the beauty of working for Donald Trump. He thinks about these things and he's the only one who thinks about them. There was a recent clip that went viral,

which it went viral because it was funny, but it was Theo Vaughn talking to JD Vance. And Theo Vaughn basically said some something like, you know, the quality of goods has been so diminished that Americans are suffering. Now, he chose of all the goods and services in the world to use. He said, you can't do cocaine in this country anymore. Right. Because basically saying that it's so viral, even the guy wears a suit. So, yeah. Right. And so it's like, look, he was making the claim that, like, even the cocaine is laced with fentanyl. And J.D. Vance, to his credit, just laughed and thought it was hilarious. But I do think that, you know, again, strip out kind of the nonsense of the Internet and say, look, like, what is he really talking about there?

And if you think about American-made goods. Well, wait, but first, let's talk about the fentanyl thing. See, so it's slightly different than everybody thinks. So all the fentanyl comes from China. Why? Like, what's the whole fentanyl thing? It's the gutting of America from the inside. you think they're just playing like a century-long game and they say we're going to rot your brain

with tick-tock we're going to rot your population with fentanyl and we're going to literally slowly kill you so that's what it is right why is the uh why is the american workforce have seven year less average life because what happens is if they get despair and they take a drug and the drug kills them it kills them so china is attacking america from its guts you know it's getting stuff in your stomach right it's going to get it directly into your stomach to try to kill you right because who's our workforce who might take fentanyl? Are they old people like 63-year-olds like me? No. They're the 18 to 30-year-olds. So if I kill them, then where are you going from here? No, I think it's the core evil that you really... And people don't core... They don't call out

core evil. Who makes fentanyl? Their core evil. It all comes from China. Donald Trump gets in office. He calls China and says, the next piece of fentanyl that comes in our country, I'll put a 200% tariff on you and your country must have our economy because otherwise you won't employ your people. If your people are unemployed, then there'll be regime change. They'll rise up against the communist party. So stop the fentanyl and you'll watch it stop. And that's the person who saved american workers lives and then the joke will be he can't do cocaine again which is kind of a funny comment i mean it's hilarious right but but the um i think that if you watch the chain of let's say fentanyl so you have the production of it in china uh but it's

also getting into the country and people have seen video after video after video of um boats pulling up to the shores of america and 10 to 12 uh you know military-aged men jumping off and running into our neighborhoods and literally just leaving the boat behind they've seen literally caravans of people crossing rivers borders etc um and you see all that and you say you know what the border patrol's got a really hard job america's big we've got these massive borders uh we've got to try to figure out how to secure them and building a wall seemed like a good idea now. It sounds like both candidates are on board to build the wall. But I think the part that people then go from, wow, that's a really hard problem to pissed off, frankly,

in conversation I've had with people on both sides of the aisle, is that the government then takes those people and flies them all around the country. And now all of a sudden, if you don't live in a border town, you've got those same people who are crossing the border now living in your city, living in your town. And so, is it just a game of, hey guys, we're going to stop the production of fentanyl and we're also going to stop people from just coming in the country that aren't legal? Well, the whole open the border. So, Donald Trump had 10 miles left. He built 500 miles. He had 10 miles left and all the steel is in a factory. He had 10 miles left and he made a deal with Mexico to protect the border. He said, I'm going to put tariffs on you, Mexico, unless

you don't let people in so the mexican military was kept the border closed and then biden just ended it on executive order his first day said i opened the border why why would you open the border joe biden when he was young was all against the border bill clinton was against the opening the border what happened i think i know do you want to know what i think that happened um i think there's only one thing that i can think of that a bureaucratic administration could all get in the conference room have a bunch of papers studies all this stuff and come to the conclusion that we should do this for one reason and it's because they looked at the economy and they said we don't have enough workers let them all in oh my god i can't disagree more that is just such a load of

crap sorry no i'm gonna not know that it's accurate completely and totally disagree because if you wanted workers, you would actually check who they are. You think the people who are sneaking into our country are ready to go to work? Are you out of your mind? They are ready to vote for whoever let them in. All right, so let's go through it. The census, you know, I'm sure this is like one of the most exciting things you've ever talked about in your podcast is the census but the census does not count citizens it counts humans so what do you do you put them on that plane and where do you send them you send them to the swing states so that they'll have more people the census will have more people more congressmen will come from

that particular district and then you'll figure out a way to fast track as kamala harris has said fast-track them to citizenship so that by next election, these 20 million people they've let in, they let in 20 million people who vote for them because they let you in, okay? And that is why I do not think this is worker-based. I don't think it has anything to do with worker-based.

I think it has entirely to do with a deep-seated view that I want to bring in and make this a one-party country and all left all the time. They'll try to get, if they win, they'll try to get D.C. They've said this stuff. They'll make D.C. and Puerto Rico states so they can have four Democrat senators. They'll break the filibuster. And they've said and Chuck Schumer has said that he would pack the court with with Democrats. And then let's talk about Chuck Schumer for a second. You win. Chuck Schumer and Trump. I've heard, you know, they didn't get along for

a long time. But then I saw the Al Smith dinner and they're back to pretty chummy sitting next each other how does dc really work like is it a um you go on tv you hold a press conference you yell and scream about somebody else and then behind closed doors your friends or when we see people arguing with each other or you know talking essentially uh they really don't like each other it used to be uh that people were very civil to each other and that you had differences of opinion but people so scalia and ruth bader ginsburg were great friends right so they had different sides of the supreme court but they were great friends that has dissipated you know what happens now is you blame the other one for everything in the world i mean kamala harris goes

on tv and calls donald trump a fascist says by having a rally in madison square garden where i'm speaking and i'm introducing elon musk right that's he's an he's a hitler for doing madison square garden where i'm introducing elon musk and then elon musk is introducing jd vance and then And then Donald Trump is speaking. And that somehow is fascist. That is just mean, nasty and completely false. How did we get here? Right. So, like, if it has evolved to this point where everyone is just, hey, no holds barred, just say whatever you want, really go after kind of now some of you disagree with. Is that the mainstream media kind of pulling people to the extremes? Is that they know that that's going to go viral online and they're and, you know, just get the clicks or, you know, what is it? Because I almost think in a weird way that the politicians, if you go and you talk to a young person, you say, you know, name 10 politicians, the ones that they will name.

Trump, Harris, AOC, you know, Marjorie Greene, right? Like you go to these people who are very good at getting attention. And so in a weird way, I used to say that Trump and AOC were like very similar, like much more similar than people realized because they both understood how to dominate news cycles. He probably did it even bigger than she did, but still they both understood like, hey, you can do certain things. The appearance at McDonald's is a great example, right? That was a talk of the world for 24 hours. And the guy spent, what, an hour at McDonald's, right? And so it's like, is that what's happening now is politics is basically falling victim to

what gets rewarded online and just the people are getting better and better at understanding how to make it work. I think that's right. And I think what's happened is the media is now all one way or the other. So there's no such thing as nonpartisan media. There should be. Oh, people have opinions. Everybody has opinions. By the way, you know, one of the things I talk about is people think, oh, they're generals. The military, these are generals because they have all their medals and stuff. But the fact is they're just people, which means they're either Democrat generals or they're Republican generals. So who do you think all the four-star generals are under Joe Biden? Let me give you a hint. They're all Democrats, right? Because what they're supposed

to do is then if a Republican gets elected, they retire. And of course, being a retired general is not that bad because guess where you go to work? Lockheed Martin. You go right to General Dynamics, you're going to get a big job for money. So, what's happened is the mainstream media is because it's all one way or the other, it's just echo chambers. And to get heard, you go stronger and stronger and stronger that way to get some attention. And then that's what you have. You have this giant divide because there's no place to go have a civil conversation in the media. Where would I go? Let's say I wanted to bring a good debate for someone on the other side. Let's go have the head of the transition of the Harris campaign and let's go

have a good debate. Where would you suggest I go? You come right here and I'll make sure you both fight it out. I think that's right. But honestly, I really do think that in a crazy way, the mainstream media is being replaced in certain pockets by people online who say, you know what, i'm trying to figure it out and um my wife is a journalist and uh she would tell you that over the last 10 years the shift that has occurred from um hey people want to find the truth to now especially young people who work at these mainstream media organizations are essentially activists who are able to publish with the big brand behind them and it's not every organization it's not every reporter but there has been this massive shift that i think is really really

impactful one thing i want um maybe we can uh uh clear something up is i've continued to say that the national debt is one of if not the single most important thing facing the country because if you have a massive national debt that is explode and literally exploding i think there's almost 500 billion dollars has been added in just the month of october um that national debt only has one solution we're going to inflate it away because neither neither candidate has explicitly been promising to balance the budget which we haven't had a balanced budget in this country for more than 20 years you right before we started told me that's not true that you're going to help balance the budget so let's talk about uh one is it possible to balance the budget how do you do it

and can you and trump figure it out okay so i have to add one person to it all right it's me elon musk and trump are gonna figure it out so i went down on the day of the rocket right the coolest catch ever right megazilla goes in and catches it i flew down to brownsville texas right and uh i met with elon and uh we spent two hours together and uh and i told him we were going to create the department doge right and he did exactly that he started laughing and he was happy he goes no no seriously and i said no no it's going to be called doge the department of government efficiency but we're definitely calling it doge for you and he was just so like lit happy like he just thought it was funny and that's what you're supposed to do yeah you have to if you

have the greatest capitalist in america and you can make him happy that's pretty good there's an article a couple of years ago that asked him uh you know you're a multi-billionaire uh but also you like memes if given the choice would you rather be a billionaire or a meme lord and of course he said meme lord okay so he invited me over his house and i went to go see him in his house and what's the name of the street meme street i have a picture of it on my phone just to make me laugh because of course you know you go to the street sign i mean how often do i take picture of a street sign. But if you go to see Elon Musk and he lives on Meme Street, like literally they renamed the street for him as Meme Street. And so, I put out a tweet with him.

We took a picture in front and we said, we're going to rip the waste out of our $6.5 trillion budget, right? And we are going to then balance the budget. And I'm going to tell you how we're going to do it, all right? So, this is the plan of the Trump administration. And here's how it goes. We have a $6.5 trillion budget. We have $4.5 trillion of revenue, right? So taxes and all the rest of our money and the tariffs that Donald Trump put in that Biden, who he said bad things about it, didn't take off. Shocking. $4.5 trillion of revenue, $6.5 trillion in spending, $2 trillion a year budget deficit on only four and a half. I mean, it's irresponsible if there ever was one. our GDP, total sales, right? But you're not counting the price of the sale of a house.

You're just talking about the commission, okay? That's about $29 trillion, just under $29 trillion. And our total debt, just under $36 trillion. We're going to hell. We're going to hell. But if you go to a financial expert and you sort of hit them a few times and get them to pay attention the right way. You say, what thing didn't I say? Because those are the only stats you ever hear. I'll give you one more. What is the balance sheet of the United States of America? What's everything we own and everything we have? I think it's worth $500 trillion. So then you say, okay, Howard, can you make a quarter of 1% on it? Right now, If all of your assets are a giant mountain of palladium and gold, and you can't move it, and you have to just look at it and go, oh, that's so pretty, that's not going to help us.

But we have land, and we have minerals. So, if we have $500 trillion, and we can make a quarter of a percent, that's a trillion and a quarter. You ask Elon Musk, can you rip waste out of our, just, I mean, I'm talking waste. But what are examples? Right. Because I think people don't quite understand how inefficient, how bureaucratic, just how ridiculous this is. And this is coming from somebody who I forget which bill it was. I think maybe it was the Inflation Reduction Act. When that came out, I went and I read it. And as I was reading Creation Act. Well, here's what's hilarious. Whichever bill it was, as I was reading it, they're talking about we're going to invest in infrastructure. Okay, that sounds good. But we're going to do a study that's going to cost $50 million to look at the impact on exotic plants. There was another $50 million that was to study the impact of driving high. And I literally said, I have hundreds of people in the audience that will do it for free. So I saved you $50 million there, right? then you go and you look and it's like 25 million dollars worth of cleaning supplies for the capitol building and again these are only 25 50 whatever but then i start looking and i see we're giving a billion dollars to some appalachian non-profit who happens to be run by the wife

of a politician right you start doing you're just like dude where like where is the money going all right so we'll i'll give you one that i promise will make you laugh okay and then i'll give you one that makes you sad and shake your head. So, the Department of the Interior, okay? So, you tell me, what is that? That's like the parks, okay? Uses the most real estate of any department in the United States government. You say, really? You mean like a lot of office space? Yeah, because they have office space across the country. So, why would they have so much space. Oh, each office must be one day's horse ride from the next one. And your audience is saying, no, no, that's not true. Oh, no, no, no. That's true. Well, who told you that? Well,

the secretary of the department of the interior told me that. And I'm like, and then I go look at the numbers. You're like, stop it. Stop it. They came. I mean, one day's horse ride, one day's horse ride see but that's that's literally 2024 i mean think of things that make you laugh come on you go to the airport and there's the aircraft you know the the air traffic control tower the tower because they build it like a little taller because they're what looking out the window are they looking at the planes going oh look that one's gonna hit this one. They have radar. You'd say radar? Radar? What was that, 1970? Yeah. We have a company that makes 1970 radar equipment, Monopoly, by the way. Of course, we always have that,

but Monopoly, who makes this 1970 radar equipment new and gives it to us. Because GPS, Well, that would be a challenge. I mean, you know how much it would cost us to put GPS in every plane? Oh, they already have it. Oh, I forgot they already have it. It would cost. All right. If we put GPS in planes, all our airports would be three times more efficient. Three times more efficient. Why don't we do it? Because the monopolist selling us the radar would be really pissed off. And his congressman would be really sad that we modernize America. Someone has to have the guts to do it, to get rid of all these offices. And so you tell that to Elon Musk, we send more than a hundred billion dollars a year and lose the money accidentally.

Now you might say, come on, Howard, someone switched the number and sent it to his pal. I'm not doubting that. We buy over a hundred billion dollars worth of product that we never receive. Or I'll give you a fun one. When we left Afghanistan, right? We all know those pictures of us leaving Afghanistan. And we all know that we left $80 billion of equipment behind. And if I ask anybody, all my democratic friends, and I ask them, what happened? They go, it's so stupid. Stupid. 80 billion stupid. See, when I say it slowly like that, you know what's coming. Yeah, I don't think it's so stupid. If I said to you, let's leave your house and let's leave all your furniture behind. We're going to move and we're going to leave all your

furniture behind. We don't want to take it, a moving truck. No, no, no moving truck. That would be clever. Leave it all behind. What's the first thing you have to do when you go to your new house? Buy $80 billion of furniture. No, no, no. You left $80 billion of furniture for the evil people and the enemy. You have to buy $120 billion to fight them off. Yeah. Oh, you think it was stupid? See, everybody thought it was stupid. It's the military-industrial complex. Let's go over a little history for a minute. Why does Dick Cheney hate Donald Trump? Donald Trump hates wars and had in his presidency no wars. Dick Cheney was the vice president of the United States, convinced George Bush

to attack Iraq, right? Think of the amount of money you're going to spend. And Dick Cheney is the military industrial complex, right? That's his family, that they own stock. He ran military contractors. I mean, that's what he does. So, he's a member of that club, right? And so, we attack Iraq and we destroy Iraq. As it turns out, Iraq and Iran have been at war with each other for 2,000 years. So, we kill one of them. And the other one is like Thanos now. He's just free to attack the Western world because his arch enemy is gone. And think of how much military spending has happened since then. Don't think of the wars. Just think about it like if you were in the business of the military, when we went into Iraq, right? You opened a bottle of

champagne with your family and you said, today is the greatest day in the history of our military family because we're going to be buying missiles for the rest of our lives. Cheers to missiles. and if you look at things with the right glasses on and it's a head shaker you're like really how much real estate you think there is that we can sell right so like the military the military all right let's go back to but here's the thing right so like no let's go back to balancing the budget i love that discussion we've got we've got like the military stuff all that and i think people um it's hard for them to wrap their head around but this idea that like the balance sheet of America. There's a lot of people who say, you know what? If I was sitting there and I was

spending more than I'm making, but I had a bunch of assets, I could sell some of the assets. I could monetize the assets, whatever. They understand that. Is it a thing where the Department of Interior, we're just going to take away 80% of your offices and we're going to sell them off and now we've got money to pay the deficit or what? All right. So Elon will take between $650 billion and a trillion dollars off our budget. And what's he going to do to do this? he's just going to fire people or efficiency right we're just we have offices we don't use we have procurement waste at vast scale and i mean vast scale i mean we have 2.9 million full-time employees okay and we have 3 million contractors who are effectively full-time so we have 5.9

million employees in the u.s government all right that's a lot oh my god and and so many of them just do they just give them work to push around paper so if you actually used computers you know they have these cool things now they're computers you that and you know what's amazing now they just recently invented we don't even need to plug them in they're like they charge overnight and you can use them so modernize america you could easily make these people's jobs better more efficient and cut 20 of their time waste because they're just moving paper around and ridiculous things But I think what he's going to do is he's going to cut waste, and he's going to cut the size of the government and save us a trillion dollars. So now we're a trillion left, right? And that comes into my job. Let's talk about how do we make a trillion dollars. If you give us a $500 trillion asset, can you make a trillion dollars off of it? Hopefully.

I'm going to rename that famous department we just called it. We called it the Department of the Interior. Let's give it the real name. The Department of all the land and mineral rights of the United States of America. All the land and mineral rights. It used to be called the U.S. Naval Petroleum Reserve. Now it's called ANWR. 19 million acres off the coast of Alaska that has as much oil, slightly less oil than Saudi Arabia. And it's ours. If we pump that oil, who wants to buy that oil? Let me give you a hint. You know how much oil Korea has? None. And they're our ally. You know how much oil Germany has? They need it. They're our ally. If we sell oil, how about Japan? How much oil does Japan have? None. So, it's in Alaska, you sell it to our allies. They become strategically important to us. They make a better trade deal with us. They thank God for America, right? And we make money. And you

what we do with that money reduce our deficit we use our assets to make money we have lithium mines mine it make money from the united states of america don't tax our people make money instead put tariffs on china and make 400 billion dollars now let's go to the military We spend $200 billion a year on R&D. Every year, we spend $200 billion on R&D. We take the cool stuff that we invent, and then we give it, give, it's a great word, G-I-V-E, give it to a military contractor who makes the thing we want, the plane or the missile or whatever we come up with that's totally freaking cool, and then they sell

it back to us at like a 50% margin. If we simply said to them, you have to give us back our $200 billion on the products. Do you realize I just said $200 billion a year? So you'd say, all right, Howard, you got the interior. That's probably like $100, $150 billion. You have this $200 billion for R&D. If we make zero return, we're now the dumbest investor in the history of the world. We spent $200 billion and we had our money back.

That's $200 billion. Now we're in $300 billion to the plus, right? We're going to put tariffs. Donald Trump said his tariffs would be between $250 and $500 billion, right? And I spend time going on and on and on. You'd say, Howard, you have a view with Donald Trump to get to a trillion at the end of four years, don't you? I think it can happen faster. Thanks, pal.

Yeah, I think that, well, here's- Like I say I'll get to a trillion in four years, and you're like, I could do it faster. No, no, no. You do it. I'm the one who thought of it. no i'm not even the one who's saying that uh i could do it what i think is um the problem with doing it faster is that you're it's kind of what elon faced at twitter right is he walks in the building and they have thousands of employees and he says all right i'm gonna let some people go and

the second he lets anybody go the rest of the employees outside of the 500 that are the stars start yelling and screaming so he's got to make another cut and what you find is that he's trying to turn the business around while fighting the people who are there because they're entrenched in the bureaucracy. They've got cushy jobs and all these issues. In hindsight, I think he reduced that staff by 80%. Yeah, he did. And the product is better today than it was before. Yeah. It's at least the same. And so if you were unencumbered and you were able to go in, God forbid we did a zero-based budget of the government, you could do it way faster. I think that you've got to say four years because they're going to fight you every second of the way remember there's two sides

there's the cost cutting which is doge right and there's revenue production which is which is howard and the economic team so we're going to have a department of the interior person who's going to be the department of land and mines and let's go make money right we have our tariffs let's go make money. We have our procurement. Let's go and use our R&D to make money. I think if I watch just enough to be dangerous, you talking, Trump talking, JD talking, a couple of others. Is there a world where we can eliminate income tax in this country by using tariffs and other means to replace all that tax revenue? once upon a time in the land called america don't do it don't do it we were the richest country on

earth right the turn of the century we had no income tax we had tariffs we have this great economy you want to come play here pay it's like joining costco he's got to pay to come in it's the best place to be. You should pay to come in, right? And we were the richest country and we had commissions on what to spend our money on. Seriously, the United States of America had commissions on what to spend our money on. Then Teddy Roosevelt became the president and he had so much surplus that he built parks and roads and bridges. Remember all that? Okay. then we had the world wars and we decided we've got to help the rest of the world rebuild so what we're going to do is we're going to drop our tariffs think of another way to say it is drop

our pants that's another way to say it right and let the rest of the world have at it with us and we'll use the power of our economy to help them out and we will switch from charging tariffs to charging our gigantically rich Americans income tax. 1% to the 1% to start. And that's where it began, okay? And then you get to World War II, right? And we really need to build the rest of the world. You got destroyed Japan, you got destroyed Germany.

And we want to show them democracy is the way to go. So let's, we'll just undress our economy, have at it, come with us, come on, come on. And we, you can put trade barriers up, and we won't fight you. So you can put tariffs, you can put trade barriers. We won't sell a car in Europe. And by the way, we don't sell cars in Europe. So it's 2024. When should this policy have ended? 1980? I mean, 75? It can't be 2020. Who says this is great? So if we did tariffs, China would have to pay because if they don't use our economy they can't employ their people

if they can't employ their people there's going to be a revolution do you think that you can put the tariffs high enough to replace 100 of the tax revenue no no but I think what you could do is you could create a world where the business of America is so good that the tax rate can come lower and lower and lower I think here's here's what I said to Donald Trump I said if Elon Musk cuts the expenses enough. And we build the revenues the way I've talked about it. Would you please consider dropping all income tax for everybody who makes less than $150,000 in the United States of America? Zero. Zero. And they only pay $10 for any drug, nothing more expensive. Because if we balance the budget, that's about $200 billion.

Why wouldn't we do that? And you know what the beauty of Donald Trump is? Because that's a good idea. Okay, you balance the budget, I'll do it. You balance the budget, I'll do it. Because I don't think people understand this. Yeah, I don't think people understand this, right? Is tax rates keep going up. And of course, there's local, state, federal.

There's a whole bunch of new ones here, by the way. You know, Norway. Even worse, we lose money. So there are people in this country that pay more than 50% of their income. I always joke, you don't start working for yourself. I don't have a special deal with the government. I make money, I pay 55%

because I live in the gorgeous state of New York. So you don't start working for yourself until like July 15th every year, right? That's pretty good. Dance to my birthday. I like it. I like it. And now I'm going to think about it that way.

It's very sad. I mean, it's crazy, right? Six and a half months of the year, you work for the government and then you get to work for yourself for five and a half months. Like, okay. But here's what becomes pretty interesting

is that as that happens, if the government can balance the budget, you can start to drop interest or starts to drop the tax rate. And to your point, one of the things that I never hear politicians talk about is everyone wants to talk about the rich are taking advantage of the tax system, et cetera.

I don't know what the percentage is today, but it's something like 50% of Americans don't pay tax, right? There's some big number. Maybe it's 40%, maybe it's 50%, whatever. There's some big number of people who either don't make enough money, the way they make their money, whatever. There's some huge number of people

who do not pay tax. And so actually, wealthy people, they may pay less in tax than you think they should pay. But the people who pay zero are on the bottom end. Now, I would argue that that's actually a good thing. They're the people with the least amount of money, right? They don't have enough money to pay the taxes. So if you balance the budget, though, you can actually expand that group. So let's just say it was 20% of Americans today don't pay taxes, whatever the number is. to get it at 30, 40, 50, 60, 70. Let's say you get 80% of Americans who don't pay taxes. I actually think that the top 20% would say,

you know what? We got a balanced budget. You're going to bring my tax rate down anyways. That's a great deal. Let's keep going. Just get my tax rate down. Most wealthy people I know don't look at what is everybody else paying?

They just want to know, how do you get my tax rate down? And it's because they want a more efficient government, which actually has a surplus, not a deficit. There were two theories kicking around. I haven't studied them. One says, eliminate all tax in America, all tax, and just do the equivalent of like Europe has a VAT, value-added tax, right?

And just, so it's a consumption tax. You want to spend money, you want to do something. So the rich will spend way more money. But what would happen is the cost of employing people in America would go down, right? Because there's no tax, right? And then you'd have sort of another model where if you earn a certain amount of money, you get relief from the VAT tax, right? That's the idea of the model. And what happens is if I want to buy something, it's just much more expensive, but I don't pay any tax.

So why not? And what happens is because we have the greatest economy in the world, all the money in the world flocks here because there's no capital gains tax. All factories get built here. All our people get employed and they get paid more and more money because there's no tax on them. So they're willing to work for a lower price, but then everybody gets employed and it goes up and the whole economy becomes the envy of the world and no one else can do it because it doesn't matter what some country does, which has got the greatest economy, us. So that's one model. The other model was a transaction tax that you pay 1% on anything you do.

So you buy a house, you pay 1%, you pay this for 1%, you pay that for 1%, you pay 1% on everything, everything everybody does. And I haven't studied it, but that would earn us money and we could get rid of the income tax. But the concept of these things is only relevant if you actually look at the power that is America. And what we do is we sit there and we say, hold, take your right hand, grab your right ankle, pull it back behind your butt, and let's run. And that's what the America is that we know today.

We don't use our land. We don't use our minerals. We don't use our R&D. We don't use our economy, which people should be paying to come in here. We don't just use the power of the United States of America Incorporated. If you think about it, if you said to me, Howard, if you brought together the greatest business people in the world, and by the way, I run Trump Vance Transition, and I promise you, if he gets elected, you will see the greatest group of executives ever to walk on the field of an administration are going to walk on because of this conversation. Let's go out and make America great and not like some hat. I mean, this is the United States of America. I mean, if we can't make a trillion dollars a year, come on, right? And you get people to

start dreaming about it. We will build a sovereign wealth fund. Because if I do R&D, the US government does R&D, right? And we give a company, we buy product for a company with something we invent. We'd say, I'd like 25% of the equity of the company. You'd say, is that legal? Oh yeah. 1947 Supreme Court case, the United States can take equity. Why don't we? We're silly. Silly is a good word, I think. We're very silly. I take that 25% of the equity. What do we do with it? Put it in social security. You say, oh shit. You start doing that, then the economy of the United States of America and the success of our companies, they'll pay the social security, right? And all of a sudden our social security

deficit, which we all go, we have to stop paying, you know, have to make the retirement age older. We have to do all these things that no one who's running for office is ever going to do. And all you're going to do is just piss off everybody who gets the money. How about we use our brain to solve it? Well, the social security thing is hilarious. I mean, it is 100% a Ponzi scheme at the moment, but we got here because we were bad at investing. no we don't invest no that's what i'm saying is we were bad at investing if somebody gives you money today and they say i need it back in 40 or 50 years and i'm going to need you know x percent return on that money you just got to make more money than what you're gonna have to pay out

just be an insurance company but we didn't do that instead what we started to do is come on we had fun but if we do it this way we will balance social securities we'll just balance I actually wonder if you never heard what American entrepreneurs. Yeah. One of the things that I think young people specifically seem to be trying to wrestle with is patriotism and this idea that doing things in the country should also be good for the country. And so, you know, could you convince entrepreneurs where you say, listen, if you build a company in America, you've got to give 1% of the equity into whatever the social programs are, you know, that sovereign wealth fund, whatever. I don't know if people would do it. I actually don't even know if it's a good idea. But things like that are almost too creative. You can see like a bureaucrat's brain breaking to even try to figure out what something like that would look like.

Well, asking someone to give, right? But if we are, you're a contractor and you sell stuff to the U.S. government, huge size. I've become the CEO of the U.S. Government Purchasing Incorporated. And I say, gee, you know, I just noticed your entire company is worth me as a client. In the world I live in, you know what that client says? I'd like to own equity in your company or i'm going to buy from someone else and you know what you say uh sure how much do you want right right what's the deal if we acted that way and took that equity so use the power of our 6.5 trillion dollars a year spending got equity for it and put it into social security then social security would be paid for now you'd say yeah but you're just taking money from vendors

No, no. We help the vendor. I'll give you an example. We buy missiles once in a while, right? When we use them, then when we need more, we buy more, but we don't do it. So if you're a contractor and you sell a thousand missiles every now and again, you have a very low multiple on your stock because no one can rely on when you're going to make money. So if we said, why don't you give us 20% of your equity and we will buy 250 missiles every single quarter for five years. Your stock will double because now you have consistent earnings.

It's very clear the math of how you're going to do. So your stock went up 100%. The US government got 20% equity, which I put in social security, which now became worth 40, right? It was for free. And everybody wins. Nobody lost.

Like you realize in that story, I didn't take anything from anybody. I didn't do it. But what we did is instead of just buying when we need it, we bought in a way that our vendor appreciated because their multiple will be higher. Now, you have to be really smart. But did you know in the United States of America,

do you know how many smart people there are? And you know how many smart people, if you actually talk like this, you know how many phone calls I get, you know, from people who are incredibly thoughtful, incredibly smart, who want to help. And if you give them a chance to help the United States of America, which we love, they all want to do it.

It's amazing how many people want to help. But you have to give them the idea. And that is why I love Donald Trump. When did you have these ideas, Howard? Two months ago, I had dinner with Donald Trump. And he said, we should have a sovereign wealth fund. And I said, okay, 300,000 citizens, the oil gurgles out of the ground. they take care of their citizens, they sell their oil, and they buy other people's stuff.

That's the Middle East and that's the sovereign wealth fund. What do we got? And he says those magic words that only Donald can say, you'll figure it out. Okay. And then he has all sorts of people call me and they all call me with their ideas. And we figure out that we can invest $150 billion and in six years, we'll make a trillion. We'll make 100% return a year for six years. And I said, you know what the problem is? Our deficit will be 45 trillion and we'll make 1 trillion once. The United States of America is so big, we don't care. We need to make a trillion a year. And then the thinking clicked and changed. About two weeks after that, I called him up in the morning. I said, I got it. I got it. And I started talking like this, that we can

use our assets to make a trillion dollars and we can use our wealth fund ideas to fund social Security. Make Social Security an insurance company with the most powerful ally ever, the United States of America Incorporated. I mean, come on. All the land of America, all the mineral rights of America. Wow. All our patents. Oh, my God. The power of us is so awesome. But if we force the greatest athlete in the world to hold with the right hand, the right ankle, and hold it by their butt. They're not that fast. But if you take his hand away, right? Elon Musk said, if we cut the shackles. So, he texted me after I put the, I put, we put a tweet out together that said, we're going to rip the waste out of the government

6.5 trillion. And then he texted me that we're going to cut the shackles of America like Gulliver,