The Ramsey Show - Can Trump’s Plan Clean Up America’s Financial Mess?

Episode Date: October 2, 2024

📱 For more content that keeps you motivated, download the Ramsey Network app. Americans deserve to know what their presidential candidates will do about real issues that matter to real people. So, we reached out to both candidates to give them the opportunity to sit down with Dave and share their ideas. 
 
Dave took everyday Americans’ questions about the economy to Donald Trump in a real-talk interview.   Founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions, Dave Ramsey is a financial expert and national bestselling author. Over the last 30 years, Ramsey Solutions has delivered clear, no-nonsense money advice through radio shows, podcasts, books, courses and tools, helping millions of people take control of their money and build wealth. Each week, 8 million people tune in to The Ramsey Show across podcasts and YouTube for advice on money, careers, and relationships. Learn more about Ramsey Solutions here! Get more from Ramsey Network:
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This inflation thing is a big deal. So in the first 90 days, the strokes that you make to change the economy when you're elected, that's pretty dramatic. I believe I'll be able to get energy down to 50% of what it is right now within a period of less than a year. I know small businesses are where jobs come from. When you guys in government can take your hands off of small business, we're able to employ people and change things. So how can you help small businesses? You have to love what you do. If you don't love what you do, it's not going to work. It's the largest tax cuts in the history of our country.

That's why we became so successful. You think we can do that again? Yeah, I think we can go lower. If I don't turn my head at the exact 90 degree angle, if I was a little off, I'm not doing this very nice interview with you. I hear you're going back to Butler and finish the speech. I am. I'm going to say. Hey guys, Dave Ramsey here with The Ramsey Show. If you don't know what The Ramsey Show is, it's a show about life, about money, about relationships. It's not a show about politics.

We specifically over the years have tried to remind you over and over again that what happens in your house is more important for your success than what happens in the White House. We also realize that this election is a really important time right now. The people are really looking at what's happening. There's a real divisiveness in the air, a lot of anger in the air. So our team reached out to Vice President Harris's team about the opportunity to sit down with her for a long-form interview,

and reached out to President Trump's team about the opportunity to sit down for a long-form interview with him. And to talk about ideas, talk about what's going to happen, not what has happened, and not about personalities and not about name-calling because both sides are pretty good at all of that stuff. And the fact that I sit down with either one of these candidates is going to piss some of you off, and frankly, I'm perfectly fine with that. It's something I wanted to do, and I felt like it was something we needed to talk about.

So I find myself sitting here in Trump Tower, getting ready to interview President Trump for a few minutes. I think you're going to find this really interesting. So, President Trump, thanks for taking time to sit down with us. Thank you. It's an honor to be with you. Good to hang out with you. As you know, we do a show called The Ramsey Show

and talk to regular folks every day, calling in most of the time with financial trouble, sometimes with financial victories, stuff we've taught them to do, the basic grandma's common sense stuff. Right. And that audience that's going to be watching this is, they're not concerned with a lot of things,

but they are concerned with $8 eggs, $5 gas, 7% interest rates, and a house they can't afford with wages not going up as fast as house prices. This inflation thing is a big deal. So in the first 90 days, the strokes that you make to change the economy when you're elected are a big deal. What's the first things you're going to do on that? Well, in terms of inflation, you're right. And it's almost inflation over the economy, if you want to really know, because people are getting wiped out like never before. I think it's the highest inflation we've ever had. They say it's the highest in 48 years. I think it's the highest ever. There's never been any mess like this. And it's because of what they did with energy. Also, then they topped it with spending with money that trillions and trillions of dollars that they didn't need

that's being just wasted. But the first thing you have to do is get the energy down. If you get the energy down, other things are going to follow. You want to get the interest rates down too. And interestingly, even interest rates are going to follow energy because it's going to take that burden off the shoulders of the economy and off the shoulders of inflation itself. And we are going to drill at a level that you haven't seen since, let's say, four or five years ago, but even more so.

We would have been so dominant by this point. If you remember, when you go back to the beginning of this really failed administration that we're in right now, what they did was they turned off the energy. They turned off everything that I had built. So you turned back on the Keystone. You're going to turn back on the drill baby drill line in your acceptance speech at the convention. It says it all. You know, I'd like to use another line, but there's no line that's better. And we're going to drill baby drill. But the fact that they turned it off and then the energy, if you look back at the very initial period of their administration, the numbers started going through the roof, the energy numbers. Inflation was good.

And then they went back to Trump where they're trying to equal it. And it kept it bad as opposed to horrific. And it's been really bad. And the energy has been very expensive, but nothing like it could have been. So they went back to Trump type things. But we would have been now three to four times more. We would have been dominating the entire world on energy. We have more than anybody else, as you've heard me say, but as you also know. Right. I call it liquid gold. We have more liquid gold under our feet than anybody else. Actually, by far, we would have dominated.

We would have been taking care of Europe. We would have been taking care of Asia. We would have been taking care, you know, Anwar in Alaska is the biggest find anywhere in the world. It could be as big as Saudi Arabia. And I got it. Ronald Reagan couldn't get it. Nobody could get it.

I got it. It was done, ready to start. And when these people came in, they turned it off. They terminated it. Nobody could get it. I got it. It was done, ready to start. And when these people came in, they turned it off. They terminated it. Nobody could believe it. I don't know if people realize that, you know, 10 to 15 percent of the entire economy is energy. And it weaves its tentacles through everything else. So $5 gas affects the bread truck who's delivering the bread.

And that affects the cost of the bread then. And so getting that plentiful changes everything. So I have a little thing that I've been saying lately because I think it's easily achievable. You know, we pay very high energy costs, and especially now, but we're paying very, very high. I believe I'll be able to get energy down to 50%, 50, 5-0% of what it is right now within a period of less than a year. Wow. That's pretty good.

It's going to happen fast, okay? It's going to happen fast. But what are you going to do to do that? What causes that? They're going to drill. They're going to frack. They're going to do things that they have tremendous additional- So taking the regs off, taking the regulation off.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, we have to. They put them back on. They put regulations back on that areas that have no environmental real meaning, they don't let them drill. They're taking leases away, government leases that you're hearing about. I think we can get energy costs down to half of what they... If we do that...

That's pretty dramatic. Everything, all of those inflated prices are going to come down with it. I think the other piece of that, and I know it was part of your administration, and you and I were talking before we turned the cameras on, that we have a mutual friend in Art Laffer. And I know he helped a little bit with the tax code in the last administration. And I personally have experienced the Laffer curve, that lower taxes causes increased revenues to the federal government

because it heats up the economy. And I'm a small business guy. When you lower my taxes, it doesn't mean I put it in my pocket. It means I hire people. Right. And so talk about lowering taxes in the first year of your administration. Yeah, you probably saw my plan, and I think we have something really good. I was yesterday in North Carolina, which is great.

That was the furniture capital of the world. And China then went in and did a number and took so much of that business, you know, most of that business. The talent, I used to go there to buy furniture for hotels and things. Hickory, North Carolina. Yep, in Hickory. I was in Hickory yesterday and made a speech. And we're going to bring it all back.

What we're doing is sort of a two-phase. Number one, I took taxes from 39% to 21%. You know that better than anyone. It's the largest tax cuts in the history of our country. And that was great. That's why we became so successful. You think we can do that again? Yeah, I think we can go lower.

And I'll tell you what I'm doing. I'm bringing it from 21 to 15, but you have to manufacture your product here. And then you pay 15%. And then I'm going to put tariffs on countries so they can't come in and steal our business so that our businesses now can be competitive. Not that, I mean, China came in and just stole all our furniture and many other industries, by the way, including steel. And I save steel by putting 50% and 100% tariffs on all of the steel that they were dumping.

But we're going to do, so in other words, this is a dream for you then. We're bringing the tax rate from 21. Remember, it was 39. And it was really 50 of you, Ed, state and local and all of the other things. So we're going to bring it down from 21 to 15. I got it down to 21, which everyone said was impossible and got it approved by Congress. So it's, you know, it's there. And we're going to bring that down to 15.

But you have to make your product in the United States. And we do see federal revenues go up when the taxes go down because the economy goes. You saw it with me. We saw it with Reagan too. You saw it with Reagan. So at 39% and then down to 21%, you would think we'd do half or you'd do much less. In the first full year, we did much more revenue in the United States than we did at 39. In other words, we took in much more money. Which is how you solve the deficit. I mean, Bill Clinton almost balanced the budget with the exact same principle. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. He did. And cost-cutting. We have plenty of cost-cutting to do too, and that's okay. In fact, I'm going to ask Elon, who's a great guy, but he's a pretty good cost-cutter. That was a great interview. Oh, that was a great interview. That was some interview.

We did pretty big numbers. I hear we did like 900 million people or something. That was a pretty good, but he's a great guy, and he gave me a full endorsement and all of that. But he's got a good sense on that. There's tremendous cost-cutting that we can do and affect nothing. We're not going to affect anybody.

We're not going to hurt anybody. We have to save Social Security and keep it good and solid. I don't want to be raising ages or anything. I don't want to do—they're putting migrants into Social Security. When they get finished, they are—if she got elected, this country is going bust. If she got elected, we're is going bust. If she got elected, we're going back to 1929 depression. It would be a disaster for Medicare, Social Security. They're allowing millions and millions of people to come in. You can't use these schools anymore.

The quality of life in this country has gone so bad because of what they've done. One of the things that our viewers know about us, we work with tens of thousands of small business people. And so coaching them, 54% of the gross domestic product is businesses 500 people or less. Almost everyone in America, over half, almost 60% of people work for a small business. And I know small businesses are where jobs come from, not from government. So politicians don't create jobs, small businesses do. The small businesses. Kind of pisses people like me off when the politicians say they're the ones making the jobs. We're the ones making the jobs. But when you guys in government can take your hands off

of small business and allow us to do our thing, we're able to employ people and change things. So how can you help small businesses? Well, the best way is just letting them do what they have to do, but we still have to give them a playing field. If we don't give them a level playing field, they will die. And that's what happened before. That's why China came in. That's why all the...

They came in and they came in at a level like nobody's ever seen, and we did nothing about it. So the word tariff to me is a very beautiful word They came in and they came in at a level like nobody's ever seen. And we did nothing about it. So the word tariff to me is a very beautiful word because it can save our country, truly. And yet, I think because of graft, because of a lot of consulting payments and other things that are given by other countries, we have so much fighting with politicians on using it. I saved our steel industries by putting tariffs on steel that China came in and dumped. And you know what they do?

They dump and dump and dump. Everybody goes out of business. Then they buy those businesses very cheap, and then they raise the prices to higher than they ever were. That's one of the many benefits that they have if they want to do it. But by putting tariffs on, as an example, in the furniture business in North Carolina, it was so vibrant and they stole our business. And they charge us, if you wanted to build a furniture place,

if you want to sell your furniture in China, they won't take it. But if you want to build a plant in China, to make furniture in China, using their labor, they open it. We're doing the same thing. But a lot of people are like, oh, well, we don't want to have tariffs. The country was at the richest point in its history in the 1890s. It was all tariffs. If you looked at William McKinley as an example, he was a big tariff president. They had committees that were put in charge of

what to do with the money. We were taking in so much money. And McKinley would say, why should we let other people come in and steal our factories and steal our workers and steal our jobs? And why shouldn't we benefit? And he tariffed the other countries. And we made so much. And then they went to the income tax system later on. But they would actually have, they had a blue ribbon committee. Our country was so rich, they didn't know what to do with the money. And this blue ribbon committee was set up to determine how can we spend all of this money. And they took it in through tariffs. But we can turn our country around, make it strong, and then guard it with tariffs.

Yeah. Let's change gears for a second. My wife Sharon and I were in Scotland two weeks ago, and we played a bunch of different courses there, including Turnberry. Good.

Which arguably, according to the golf guys I was playing with, is the nicest course in the UK right now. And certainly the halfway house and the lighthouse out there. Isn't that good?

Turnberry's amazing. Yeah. But what I came away with, not only is the golf course great, just to give you a huge compliment. Thank you. You know that. But the staff and the team, the excellence in the hotel, in the restaurants, in the golf shop, everybody we dealt with. Talk about what it's like to work for Donald Trump. How do you hire leaders and put people in place that do that? Because I know you're obviously not there personally managing that, but you put a culture in place in your organization, and that applies to the administration as well, hiring people that are quality leaders.

Well, my son, Eric, is very much involved, and he runs a lot of it. And Don helps out a lot. And Ivanka, to a lesser extent, she's a great mother and everything. She did a fantastic job in the administration. All she wanted to do is get people jobs. She'd go around and see Exxon and see Walmart. She wanted jobs for people. It's really pretty amazing.

She could have had a very glamorous job, and she would have done well. But Eric's done a great job. And I did a similar type of job when I was doing it. Now, I'm doing a thing called running for president, so I don't get it. But we rebuilt Turnberry. Turnberry was considered one of the greatest courses in the world because the land is so incredible, right? With the ocean and that ninth hole over there, you're hitting over the ocean. How good a golfer are you? Eh, 13. All right. That's not great. I'm just learning. I've only been playing five years. I'm just

learning. Oh, really? Yeah. Enjoyed you and Bryson's 50. Wasn't that great? That was fun. That's not great. I'm just learning. I've only been playing five years. I'm just learning. Oh, really? Yeah. Enjoyed you and Bryson's 50. Wasn't that great? That was fun. That was a great video. That one did well in terms of the ratings. It did.

And he can swing a club, too. He can swing, and he's a great guy. And he is very long, very straight. And you know what? He's a great putter. Yeah. One of the best putters. He's one of the best putters in the world.

That was quite an exciting thing. We got it down to 50. You actually pulled one hole off. I watched it. Yeah. It all rode on you. You carried one in. Even more than one hole, if you want to.

But we did well. We did well. Yeah, you did. It was very fun. So what leadership qualities, when Eric's hiring, did you teach him to look for? Well, I like the recommendation business, but what I like best is taking people that are in the company and moving them up.

You take a waitress as an example, and she becomes the head of the restaurant. Because you know if certain people are good. And when they work for you already, it's better than recommendation. But if you don't do that or if you can't do that for some reason, you really need strong references. And then they have to enjoy their job.

If they don't enjoy their job, they're not going to be very good at it. So I ended up at a table, Ronnie Barrett. Yeah. Barrett, 50 Cal. He's a friend of ours. And I ended up at a table with him at an NRA convention with Eric and Donald. Got to spend some time with both of them. And you're right.

They're impressive. How do you raise great kids? What do you do? The grandkids are turned out. The granddaughter killed it. We have. Oh, how good was she? Wow.

She's a great golfer, by the way. She's a great speaker, too. She was good. She was a beautiful person in every way. She took over that whole Republican convention. And Kai, Kai, our beautiful Kai. So the one thing I always told my kids, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. Now, in my day, there were no drugs.

It was alcohol and cigarettes and and i had a brother that went through a lot with alcohol and and uh he taught me a lot he really taught me a lot and my brother fred and he had a problem with alcohol to put it mildly and he would always and he was quite a bit older than me, and he'd been through it. And he would say, no alcohol, I never want to see you drink. You know, very strong. And he'd also say no cigarettes, because, you know, cigarettes are like, you don't need it. If you don't smoke, if you don't drink, you have no problem with staying off it.

When you do drink, it's very hard to stay off it. I mean, I've seen very strong people that cannot get off. But the way you get off is if you never start. If you never start, I never had a glass of alcohol in my life. I've never had a glass of alcohol, if you can believe it. I think largely because of my brother. I think if I did, I probably would have a problem, you know, personality type, right? But I never had it less. I have no longing for it. I have friends that are in the wagon, as they say, and I watch them watching trays go by.

The tray is going by. Oh, it's like they have, you know, it's a thing that they can't get over with. Same with smoking. It's tough. I've seen guys just grab somebody's cigarette. They haven't had one in a long time. And to them, it's like the greatest sensation. If you've never smoked, you just don't have that problem. So I tell people for their children, no drugs, no alcohol, and no cigarettes. They obviously work really, really hard.

How'd you teach them work ethics? They have to like what they do. If they don't like what they do, they do. My kids like what they do. And I would say genetically, I'm a believer in genetics. You know, I like it. I'm good at doing certain things. And, you know, racehorses, like too slow racehorses,

don't produce a Kentucky Derby winner, right? You know, that's not the way it is. But you have to have an ability at something. And if you don't have the ability, don't do it. But most importantly, do something you like, whether it's your parents or not. You know, your parents want you to go into a business or they want you to go into a store with them if they have a store. I would say that you have to love what you do. If you don't love what you do, it's not going to work.

I've never seen it. If you don't want to get up in the morning and go to work, a lot of people say, with all the people that come after you, do you really love getting up in the morning? You understand that, right? I'm attacked at left and right. But I do because we make so much progress. We're doing great on the campaign, as you probably see.

We're leading in the campaign now and doing well. We beat Biden and we were up so far on him. And then they said, that's like a fight. You're in a fight and they change the fighter in the middle of the, right? In the middle of the fight, they changed the fighter. And now we're beating her very badly. It'd be so interesting to see her in your show because I don't believe that she would be able to answer any questions

on what you discuss better than anybody else. Well, I'm happy to have her if she'd come. I'm sure she would be. I'm sure she'd love to come. She wouldn't come. So I hear you're going back to Butler and finish the speech. I am. I'm going to Butler and finish the speech. I am. I'm going to say as I was saying.

So when that happened and you get in the car, I know I saw a clip the other day that Melania was watching on television. She saw the shot, saw you dodge, saw you go down, saw you get up. Yeah. And how fast were you able to get on the phone and talk to her? Well, I know she was calling, and, you know, I was a little tough to take a phone call with blood pouring down your ear. Yeah.

People don't know, the ear is the bloodiest part. If you get hit in the ear, it bleeds because there was a lot of blood. But, no, I spoke to her. By the time I got to the hospital, I had spoken to her, and she was sort of watching it. She had it held off for a couple of minutes. And then somebody called her and said, he's okay, he's okay. She said, what do you mean he's okay?

What does that mean? She had no idea. And then she went back and pressed it and caught up. No, it was tough for her, tough for my son, too. He came out. Somebody had said, your father just got hit. And he came in, and he was very riled up. Yeah.

It's a tough thing. That was a tough day, and I don't recommend it for anybody. No. I got very lucky, or maybe more than luck. If you don't turn your head and start talking about the immigration chart at the precise moment, it's a problem. I don't turn my head at the exact 90-degree angle. If I was a little off one way or the other, I'm not doing this very nice interview with you. I wouldn't be around to do this interview. So when you were in the

White House for four years, you were talking about loving your work earlier. I have the privilege of loving my work. That's why I still do it. I don't need to, obviously, anymore. It's like you don't need to. What was the most rewarding thing in the four years that you were there for you? So my whole thing is make America great again. All right. That's, you know, that's why I do it. And we did it. Then COVID came, we did a really good job on that. So it was always about making it great again. I had that, I had the country going just prior to COVID coming in at a level that nobody had ever seen. And even if you go all four years, it was so good that even with that terrible interruption that destroyed the world, we had the greatest four years. The economy was so great.

The job numbers were the best ever, et cetera. And I think just that concept of what I had done. Just the performance. Yeah. But individual things, getting the tax cuts approved, biggest tax cuts in history, biggest regulation cuts in the history of our country, rebuilding the military. We did a job and I rebuilt the whole military. And then you see a lot of that military being given to Afghanistan stupidly because they left the country. I mean, you know, and now you see them

parading it back and forth. That was, I think, the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country, what they did. But there were a lot of individual achievements that we had, the creation of Space Force. You know, Space Force is now dominating space. And when I came, there was no Space Force. The first time since Air Force, 78 years,

maybe 80 years by now. And we are dominating space now. And we wouldn't be. We were in third place by far. And now we're way in first place. And it's very important. Militarily, it's very important. President Trump, thanks for taking time. Thank you very much. Your team told us you got a speech here in a few minutes. I do. We were still able to squeeze this in, and I appreciate your time. Appreciate you hanging out with us a little bit. It's a great honor. I've watched you for many years. I shouldn't say that, but I can say it from both of us.

I've watched you for many years and a real pro. Thank you very much. Thank you, brother. Good to see you. Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you.