The Ricochet Podcast - Let's Make A Deal

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

This week, Larry Kudlow sits in the Long Chair ® as the President and his new BFF’s Chuck and Nancy strike a deal over dinner, Heritage’s Steve Moore on the administration’s tax plan and Tevi Troy on how the President did on Storm Watch ’17. Music from this week’s podcast: The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead by XTC You’re a good egg... Source

We have special news for you. The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer. Are you going to send me or anybody that I know to a camp? We have people that are stupid. Let's make a deal! And now, here's America's top creator, TV's big dealer, Monty Hall! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Peter Robinson and Larry Kudlow sitting in for Rob Long.

I'm James Lilac's guest today, Tevi Troy and Stephen Moore. Let's have ourselves a podcast. Bye-bye. No idea who these guys are, who these wonderful, insightful, brilliant voices are. Well, now you know. But how does the show get to you? Well, thanks to great sponsors like ZipRecruiter. Right now, Ricochet listeners can post jobs on ZipRecruiter for free. That's right, absolutely free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. And we're brought to you by Texture.

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That's it. So enough of the commercial praises. Let's get to the meat of the matter. Hello, Larry. Hello, Peter. Welcome. Thank you, James. Hi, James.

I'm glad you know who I am now. Well, of course I know who you are. I know you're the very first time. It's those other people who are just showing up and, you know, their nose pressed against the window and saying, is that Larry? Is that really Larry Cuddle? He's on four times a day on television nowadays. I'll introduce Peter Robinson if you want. Peter needs no introduction, but you two were talking before the podcast, I believe, about how you have have surprised and stunned people in the media and elsewhere by saying positive things about Donald Trump and having predictions that came true. Peter, you got up at a at a media. There was a dinner out here. There was a dinner out here in San Francisco and I was called upon to speak. And frankly, I wasn't expecting to talk because it was mostly business, but they wanted a little dollop of politics. So I hadn't given it

much thought. But I said, here's what I think we know about Donald. My thought was Donald Trump and the eclipse. We were all told during the eclipse, don't look at the sun, look away from it. You can see it best only when you look at the effects it produces, the shadows it casts and so forth. Likewise, turn your gaze away from the spectacle of the ISIS to zero. An attorney general who simply by enforcing laws already on the books combined with the president's own rhetoric has caused illegal immigration to drop by some 70%. An administration that is so fundamentally in sympathy with business, the hostility toward business has ended and we have an administration that is fundamentally in sympathy with business. This has caused a release of what John Maynard Keynes called animal spirits. Business guys and gals, business people, understand that the administration wants capital formation.

They want job creation. They want, above all, growth, and the markets have responded to this. Congress may have thwarted the repeal of Obamacare, but where this administration can act, it is acting. It is learning in real time. It's absorbing information. of the federal bureaucracy after another. And quite apart from whether you like what it's doing or not, and entirely apart from whether you like or dislike or just find weirdly fascinating the spectacle of the president himself, the administration is proving surprisingly effective. It is getting things done.

And jaws dropped around the room. Apparently, nobody in Sanisco had said such things or even thought such thoughts but i i actually have to say i surprised myself a bit but if you but but the point is if you simply there's some strange way i'd love to hear what larry has to say about this there's some strange way in which the person of the president himself is a kind of distraction stop reading the tweets don't look at the press conferences if they make you worry about him for days on end just look at what's happening around him and they're getting stuff done you know that's it that last one's a pretty good point

by the way the first nine you mentioned i hope you footnoted me exactly as my friend larry has been claiming from the beginning, especially, by the way, I'm just kidding you because I love you. But one of my mantras from day one has been that Donald Trump is ending the war on business. And I just I just can't tell you how important that is. He's also ending the war on fossil fuels, and he's also ending the Obama war on success. I mean, these are psychological issues, but they're also very economic pragmatism issues. You can't run this country. You can't run any country's economy unless you have successful people in business, unless you have investment flowing in to create jobs and new plant and factories and so forth and so on.

And of course, energy is rapidly now becoming one of America's top industries. It's grown back to about 12 percent of GDP. But all your other side, the only question I had, Peter, is whether they wheeled you off to the emergency room after you said this. But the other points, and I want to say this, too. Good story is interesting from the Wall Street Journal. My pal Greg Ip, who's an economic columnist. Greg is a straight shooter.

He's not left. He's not right. He wrote a piece about three, four weeks ago. I had him on radio, I think last week, saying, look, don't judge Trump merely by the fact that he couldn't get health care legislation through. He said, take a look at what Trump is doing with respect to rolling back the regulatory state. Exactly. And that is so huge for businesses particularly small businesses that can't afford the costs and burdens of the regs and the licensing fees and whatnot and here's a stat for you this comes out of omb if you remember peter that office of information and regulatory affairs and Regulatory Affairs, OIRA. So for the first seven months, the first seven months of 2017,

800, over, I'm sorry, 800 regulations pending have either been frozen, declassified, or ended. 800. And it covers the entire gamut of the American economy. OK, it covers labor laws. It covers energy, you know, EPA type laws. It covers financial areas and on and on and on. Eight hundred. So we talk a lot about this. Steve Bannon, what Steve calls it, the regulatory state or the deep state or whatever. Trump is dismantling Obama's central planning.

OK, it also covers immigration and so forth. This is a phenomenal achievement in seven months. And we're going to get tax cuts. We're going to get tax cuts very soon. And that's going to round off a terrific first year. But this regulatory stuff is so important. I don't mean to be redundant, but it really is important. There's one. This is the kind of thing that would be hard to enforce, I think. But it changes the whole conversation. Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB, I've interviewed him.

I can't say I know him well, although I sure liked him. He's smart and personable. You probably do know him, Larry. But Mick Mulvaney, director of OMB, has let it be known that for every new regulation a federal agency wishes to propose, it must tell the Office of Management and the Budget two regulations it proposes to end. Yes, they're working on that. You're exactly right.

Mick Mulvaney is an old friend of mine. He's one of the really bright, light stars in the cabinet. I know somebody's giving me some noise on the other end. I don't know who's doing that. It makes it a little harder to hear. But you're right. And by the way, Mulvaney did something else, too. I mean, Trump has a tough budget, incidentally, really tough budget on domestic restraints and savings.

But Mulvaney has instituted these reforms of what we call the small entitlements, the welfare state, welfare, food stamps, unemployment, social security disability. These reforms under Obama had completely lost all of their eligibility requirements that were put in place by Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton in the mid-90s. The work time, the training, the able-bodied, you got all these able-bodied people that should be working, but they're on public assistance. So they want to go from welfare to workfare. This was Mulvaney's thing. A lot of this comes from Professor Casey Mulligan at the University of Chicago and Professor John Cochran, formerly Chicago, now Stanford Hoover. This is so important, so important to recreate eligibility requirements and incentives to go back to work from welfare to workfare. And by the way, as we all recall, our friend Arthur Brooks, the head of the AEI, has said this for years, folks who are working, I'm not even saying how much they make. It's not about the money.

Folks who are working are happier, more optimistic, with greater self-esteem than folks who are not working. So this is a psychological issue, and this is an economic issue. If these things can get through the Congress, there will be tremendous incentives to go back to work. We'll see an increase in the labor force, which of course will help GDP. So Mick Mulvaney wins on about five different counts. The guy's a superstar.

Agreed. Agreed. counts the guy's a superstar agreed agreed what it comes down to well it's we'll want to talk about this when we get steve on but um well why don't you describe it for us larry tell us about what fred barnes described in an article in the in the weekly standard as the gang of four. You, Steve Forbes, Steve Moore, and now who's the fourth person? Oh, and Art Laffer. Art Laffer, the father of us all, actually. And so here's the argument, Larry, that I'd like to hear you address. There are conservatives, smart, younger conservatives, who say, oh, come on, guys, this is you're just you're just trying

to reinstitute the Reagan agenda. And that was for the late 70s and 80s. It made perfect sense. You could take there was room to restart the economy by cutting taxes and rolling back regulation. We're in a completely different economy now. Tax rates are lower in the first place. And you guys are just trying to take the whole nation on a walk down memory lane.

And Larry Kudlow replies, yes, we do. And the reason we do is because we're talking about universal economic principles. Steve Forbes, Art, Steve Moore, myself, we're arguing that what worked in the 1920s, what worked in the Kennedy 60s, that's the topic of my book with Brian Dimitrovich, JFK and the Reagan Revolution, what worked in the 80s and 90s, that is to say rapid economic growth because of lower marginal tax rates, which have

a cash effect, more take-home pay, as Reagan used to say, but also an incentive effect. Next, the last dollar earned from work and investment will be taxed at a lower marginal tax rate, thereby providing a bigger reward and a greater incentive to work, save and invest. These are universal principles, OK? And we should never lose sight of them. Now, for our group and, you know, God bless Freddie Barnes for writing this. It was a wonderful story.

And he's an old friend. We love him to death. We started this in 2015. We were sitting. I don't remember exactly we were sitting around steve moore and me i think my wife was there a couple other people there and i was just saying if you go back uh peter to the 70s do you remember the the original neocons uh uh earth crystal earth crystal uh norman pod hororetz, Gene Kirkpatrick and so forth.

Well, you know, they got up and said in the late 70s, it's time to roll back and defeat communism, not contain it, not make deals with it, not real politic with it. Roll it back and destroy it. And they started a group which grew and grew and grew called the Committee on the Present Danger. Remember that? And I do indeed. Yes, it was chock full of Democrats as well as Republicans, many of whom Democrats went into the Reagan administration. Elliott Abrams was instrumental in this. The late Bill Kristol was instrumental in this. The late Bill Kristol was instrumental in

this. Bill has, you know, rest in peace, has now gone off into different areas. But in any event, I said, let's do something for the economy. All right. Let's do something to remind people that we will not settle for two percent economic growth because of the big government, high regulation and tax policies of Barack Obama. And yes, a little bit of George W. Bush, who I love, but didn't always get it right. And so we just quibbled about a name, prosperity, and somebody came up with the idea on committee to unleash prosperity. And you know what?

It worked. It worked. We incorporated and we started having dinners in New York essentially to interview all of the reformer con movement, they're wrong. They're good guys. They're friends of mine, but they're wrong. We need to focus on basics. And to quote Brian Dimitrovich and me from our book on Kennedy and Reagan, there's two things here. One, reduce marginal tax rates as low as possible to create incentives to work. And number two, keep the U.S. dollar sound and stable and reliable to bring in investment and hold down inflation. It's so much simpler than these, shall we say, Ivy League academics would have us believe.

It worked in the 20s. It worked in the 60s. It worked in the 80s and 90s. I don't know if you saw Phil Graham's, former Senator Phil Graham's article in the Wall Street Journal with his colleague Mike Solon. It actually has worked. Yes, that's correct. It actually worked for the whole history of the United States. Look at the 19th century.

Look at the 20th century. We grow at about 3.5%. We, yes, have an occasional terrible depression. Yes, we have financial crackups. But the reality is low tax rates and a sound dollar have delivered phenomenal growth in this country for over 200 years. It is the greatest economic story in the history of history. And all we're saying is let's use this again, this model of low tax rates and sound money. Just try it.

We tried Obama's way. It failed. That was the status regulatory. Now, let's try it. I say this to all my friends, dear friends in the Democratic side, Jason Furman, who's a wonderful person and a brilliant guy, Jared Bernstein and others. Fellas, you had your chance. You had your chance. You used the big government model. It didn't work. OK, so now we won the election. Give us a chance to implement our policies and just let's see what happens. If we're wrong, we will accept blame. But give us a chance.

But for the people who say today is different and it won't work, they are wrong. Historical principles work. And by the way peter robinson i'll conclude the bible which has a lot of important value spiritual and religious principles that baby's been around for a couple thousand years yes it has are you going to tell me that doesn't work anymore wrong wrong so we have a Bible. It's called Supply Side Economics. Let's try it again. Got it. James?

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That's right, free. Just go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricochet. One more time, to try it for free, go to ZipRecruiter.com slash Ricocom. And we thank ZipRecruiter for sponsoring this, the Ricochet podcast. Now our first guest, Stephen Moore, formerly running the economy and public policy for the Wall Street Journal, is now the distinguished visiting fellow for the Project for Economic Growth at the Heritage Foundation. Welcome back to the podcast. Hey, Steve, yesterday we saw the Trump-Pelosi-Schumer axis begin to form,

and some people are wondering how this is going to affect the upcoming tax reform. Tell us what you think might be in the cards. Well, first of all, I think as time goes by, I'm more impressed with the shrewdness of Donald Trump in terms of this debt ceiling deal, because I think what he was able to do was move the debt ceiling and the budget debate off of the front page and really cleared the table for this big tax debate, which will be front and center now for the next 10 weeks. And so this is, I think, was a very big political victory for Trump in a lot of ways. Whether they can get this tax cut done in the next 10 weeks, I sure hope so.

Larry and I are working 24-7 to make it happen, but we haven't seen a whole lot of progress in the last few months. So a little frustrated by the pace of progress, but I think that imperative is certainly there. Steve, let me just add one thing for you. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Steve, we were talking, Peter Robinson was reminding everybody of the spectacular article that our friend Fred Barnes wrote about us, you, me, Art, and Steve Forbes, the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. Peter, I just want to say, just last point, the beauty of this thing, not only is it we're reviving important economic growth principles, and I might add Steve Moore has really been the quarterback of this group.

President Trump, first of all, candidate Trump, and now President Trump and his senior people have given us access. They are listening. It's not an academic exercise. A lot of my friends during the campaign said to me, Larry, get out of this thing. He's just saying stuff now to bring you and Steve and others to conservative purposes, but he won't follow through. Wrong. He is following through. He and his top people are talking to us on a constant basis.

And if you look at what Trump has been saying in speeches and so forth in the last couple weeks, you see the principles of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity. It's very important, listeners. Trump is giving us access, and that's really all you can ask for. So, Steve, Peter here, a question. The president has said no to entitlement reform, at least for now. He's put entitlement reform off. He's just cut a deal with the Democrats on the debt ceiling. He wants that off the political table. He seems to be putting all his chips down on the tax cut and

the reason for putting the chips down on the tax cut, I don't believe I'm reading into his remarks what I know you and Larry believe, but that is growth. So let's just begin there. This is a basic point. Who cares if we go from a little under 2% to a little over 3% growth? That sounds like small potatoes. Why would that matter? It's a great point. First of all, I agree with the proposition that I think Trump is focused like a laser beam on getting this tax cut done because uh when larry and i would be with him he would talk about growth growth growth he gets it he does understand that you know the reason he was elected is because people in michigan and ohio and pennsylvania and those uh blue states that for the first time in 30 years went uh

republican uh have not felt a recovery. You know, it's been a bi-coastal recovery, and those places have been left behind. So I think he thinks about this every single day, every hour that he's in office, about how do I bring prosperity to these places that were left behind. And he understands that the tax cut is not the most, not the only way to get growth, but a really important one. And let me just say as an aside, I think Trump's anti-regulation policies have bumped up growth from 2% to 3% already. So we were growing at less than 2% in the last couple of Obama years, and now we're growing at 3%. And I think that is sustainable.

And I think with the tax cut, you get the 3.5% growth. Now, you asked what's the difference between... Steve, right there, I don't want to derail you, but a very brief question right there. You say that rolling back the regulatory state has already bumped up growth. Do you want to argue that it's sort of the release of animal spirits as an anticipation

of what's to come, and knowing that the president is on their side that has business investing and so forth? Or do you believe that the substance of what has already taken place, the substance of it, has bumped up growth? They're related but slightly different, right? Yeah, they are, but I think it's a little of both. I think it's 50-50. I think part of it, to steal a line from Larry Kudlow, on November 8, 2016, the war on business in Washington was over.

And that has had a very salutary effect on business investment. And by the way, we're seeing businesses spend again. Finally, we're starting to see a tick up in business investment, which is one of the lead indicators for future growth and future increases in wages. So, you know, you asked the question, what's the difference between, say, 1.5% growth, which is what we had in the last Obama, no, 1.6% in the last Obama year versus, say, 3% now. Well, I would say it's like the difference between going 16 miles an hour down the highway and 30 miles an hour down the highway. You know, and by the way, a statistic that Larry uses all the time that I'm using a lot now, too, correct me. I'm wrong on this, Larry. Every one percentage point increase in growth. So if we go from two to three,

we get $3 trillion more tax revenues over a decade. So this idea that we can't afford the tax cut, I've been using a lot and we can't afford not to do the tax cut. And by the way, to answer Peter's initial question, which I think was who cares yeah I just wanted to add the answer is

320 million Americans alright because look you know extrapolate Steve's point you're talking about higher real wages, more jobs, greater investment, by the way, creates jobs, greater productivity, so we're efficient. You're also talking about helping

to solve poverty in inner cities. That's an often overlooked point. And you're providing the resources, for example, while we're cutting back on domestic spending, particularly the small entitlements. We will have the resources to beef up our our military side as Reagan used the resources to defeat communism. You know, there's, I talk to Steve Bannon about this all the time. And Steve and I agree on some things. We disagree on some other things. Stephen says he's a populist. And I say, fine. Ronald Reagan was also a populist.

The most populist thing a president can do is create the conditions for a confident, deeply rooted, long prosperity. And the optimism that goes with that, that is populism. with the workers in the energy belt who come together with the workforce in the retail belt and the technology sector and on and on and on. You're creating growth equals opportunity. That's the deal. Okay.

Now that you've used the word deal, I'm going to take that as a transition to my next question for Steve. I did that a little bit. Thank you, Larry. No, I know for Steve. Thank you, Larry. No, I know you're a thorough professional, Larry. So do we get a deal? Do we get a deal? Actually, I think I detect, because I know the two of you so well, I detect a little more agnosticism in Steve about whether we can get this thing, whether we, whether the administration can get the tax reform through in the next couple of months than I detect in Larry. So, Steve, here's the case. Neither the Republicans in the House nor the Republicans in the Senate could pull themselves

together to replace Obamacare. There is bad blood. It's probably even worse than the press suggests because it's in everybody's interest to keep quiet about how bad it is. But there is now bad feeling between the majority leader of the Senate and the president. And I'm not sure when it comes to it, there's much greater, much more warm feeling between the speaker and the president. This is not a good situation for rolling through a major piece of legislation. Do they get it done? Why should they be able to enact tax reform when they couldn't replace Obamacare? Steve? Well, look, Donald Trump is frustrated with the pace of progress. And I go around the country,

and I think all Americans are frustrated with the pace of progress here. I consider Mitch McConnell a friend. I consider Mitch McConnell a friend. I consider Paul Ryan one of my best friends in Washington. But I think Trump was right to give him a little spanking and say, come on, let's go here. You know, go, go, go. Why is it that it's the middle of September right now and we still don't have a tax bill? I mean, not only have they not voted on a tax bill, there's no bill to vote on. They should have had a tax bill ready in the middle of March, not the middle of September. So I think Trump was entirely appropriate to, you know, spank these guys a little bit, get them off the ball.

I think he reflects the opinion of Americans. Republicans cannot strike out on this. They can't. You know, this is why, as my old friend Bob Novak used to say, why Republicans are on this earth is to cut our taxes. If they can't get that done, I think if there's a black market, I think they will look incompetent. And in terms of the relationship between, you know, Ryan McConnell and Donald Trump, it's very simple. If they hang together, they're going to hang separately. You know, Paul Ryan has a pro-growth vision.

Larry and I have known him for, since he was, what, 22 years old. This guy is a Jack Kemp Republican. He wants to get it done. I think they have some differences about how to get it done. But they better get going. It's the middle of September. They've only got about 40 legislative days left. And I really worry about what happens, aside from the policy implications, the political implications of not getting a tax cut done, not getting Obamacare repealed is going to be very bad news for the Republicans.

I'd put it at 50-50. Larry's the optimist here or there. Well, yeah, I may be a little more optimistic, but I agree with everything you just said. You know, Peter, look, there's a lot of people in what I'm going to call the Trump right or the Trump base or whatever you want to call it. There are a lot of people who really are suggesting that the Republican establishment wants to harm Trump, not help him. Right. And I am not ready to conclude that, but I am sometimes close to concluding that. And Trump is right to fight back. Trump is right,

as Steve put it, to give these guys a spanking from time to time. And by the way, that's why I like this new triangulating. I'm not going to take it that far. But now with Trump talking to Schumer and Pelosi, some things will be better. I don't know about taxes, but on some things, that's a good triangulation. And it's interesting, you know, look how fast when Trump came out and shook Schumer's hands and Pelosi on a deal. Remember, the Republican leaders were in that room and Trump got up and didn't shake their hands. He shook Schumer and Pelosi's hands and made a deal to postpone for 30 for three months. Right. The debt, the debt ceiling. All right. And to get the FEMA Texas money right away to solve Harvey and to get a continuing resolution.

And by the way, they won't vote again on the debt ceiling for at least 18 months. And there never may be a debt ceiling vote in my lifetime because that thing's going to go down anyway he did that and that was a wake-up call and by the way by the way they passed they passed the legislation the next day i was just going to say the next day and isn't that interesting the goP had no plan to pull together debt, Harvey and the CR. And all of a sudden, after that meeting, in about 35 minutes, it got done. Isn't that interesting? So that was a shot across the bow. And that was part of Steve Moore's spanking concept, which I love very much.

Now, Steve, I will say one thing, one positive thing in the last 24 hours. Paul Ryan, you're right. He's our pal. We always believe him as a camp guy. He's suffering a little bit in recent years from the Stockholm syndrome. That's because he was running the budget committee. It always happens. When you're on the budget committee, you become a green eye shade guy. That's right.

All of a sudden, his whole head was attached to a green eye shade that had CBO written on top of it. I watched this 35 years ago with David Stockman in OMB, same thing. So there's the Stockholm syndrome at work. However, here's the great news. Ryan gave a speech or an interview. I have the clip, but I i don't have in front of me where get he said you know what you know what he said maybe three percent growth will give us

the tax revenue neutrality that we want and i know because he's been so wrong on this forever. And then he went on to say some of the CBO conventions need to be changed. And I looked at that and, you know, I'm very old now, so my eyes deceive me. I read it three times. I went to the big print on the computer and it was the same way. So he is now finally coming around to the Kudlow-Moore-Laffer-Forbes idea here. Three percent growth. You can have a 20 or 30 year window with respect to these, you know, so-called deficit impacts. And reconciliation can be whatever you want it to be. That's the key thing. Now, if Ryan sticks with that because Trump spanked him, Steve, I love that word, by the way, this is good. This is a good omen. So Steve's 50-50. I'm going to stay 60-40. How about that?

Okay. Excellent. Stephen, thanks for dropping by. By the way, I come from two parents who were spankers, and it does change behavior. I love it. Thank you, Stephen. We'll read you on the web and elsewhere, and we'll see how that spanking works in the future. Indeed. Well, it's right. When you want to look at what the magazines are going to say about the folks, I don't have time for segues. We just we don't have, you know, as as Jesse Ventura said in Predator, I ain't got time to segue. So I'm just going to go right to it. And that would be to tell you about texture, because, as you know, we've got lots of stuff going on here. But that doesn't mean you don't want to sit down some days and flip through a magazine, right? Because they provide a different mode of getting your information. I love magazines.

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If you just download the Texture app and go to texture.com slash ricochet. That's a free 14-day trial. Texture.com slash ricochet. 14 days free. Texture.com slash ricochet. Now we bring back to the microphones, Tevi Troy, president of the American Health Policy Institute. Because, you know, we're still talking about that ACA thing, right?

Right? He's also the author of the best-selling book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted, 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House. He's a frequent television and radio analyst and has appeared on Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, The NewsHour, among other outlets. And we welcome him back to this, the Ricochet Podcast. Hello, Tevi. Tevi, we all know that the popular culture has a verdict on the president already, but that people who are looking for something else may see something different than the crazed authoritarian racist that, oh, Saturday Night Live and Vanity

Fair would like you to believe. A lot of people, the verdict is still out on the guy, but they saw him react to the hurricane and they saw perhaps, well, what did they see? How do you think Trump handled that hurricane response? Well, thanks, James. And as you know, I've written a book on presidents and disaster response and thought Trump had a reassuring disaster response, which is how I described it in the Wall Street Journal. He has people there who know how to deal with disasters, including General Kelly, who's the chief of staff who came from Homeland Security, but also his Homeland Security advisor, Tom Bossert and others. They not only know what they're doing, but they've also practiced it. There are a number of tabletop exercises beforehand, so they were prepared. They did a lot of good work in terms of pre-deploying

resources. And I think Trump recognized that he would be judged on how he dealt with disaster, and so therefore took it seriously. And I thought his tweets on the subject of the hurricane were pretty responsible, too. So overall, I gave him a good grade. Tevi, Peter here. Thanks so much for joining us. Quickly, contrast Trump's response to Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida with George W. Bush's response to Katrina in New Orleans. Thank you, Peter. Well, you know, this is painful for me because I'm Bush's wife during Katrina, and it's very unpleasant. But first of all, let me give some credit to George W. Bush, who handled weather disasters in the first term,

and for the first 20-plus weather disasters that he had in the administration, handled it very well. But there were a number of things that went wrong to make the whole Katrina thing an epic fail, including poor coordination with the state and the localities, and states and local folks who weren't really up to the job in fact the mayor of new orleans later went to prison as we know so right i think there were a lot of i was kind of giving you an opening there tevi to contrast the local governments in each of those cases in texas between houston and the state government

in texas and over rick scott's government in Texas and over Rick Scott's government in Florida, those people are efficient, hardworking, uncorrupt, transparent, used to getting things done. And that anyway, you take I'm trying to lead the question. I don't mean to leave. But also decisive, Peter, in that you had an indecisive group of folks in the Louisiana, New Orleans situation, and it just made it very hard to coordinate with them, whereas Governor Scott has done, not only Governor Scott, but also Governor Abbott, they did great jobs, they knew what they were doing,

and also FEMA has learned a lot over the last 10 years. I think they're much better at using technology, including social media, to identify where problems are. I think, as I said earlier, they pre-deployed resources. I think they're better at figuring out how to get that coordination and cooperation with the states. So overall, a much better situation. And, of course, as I said, I was in the Bush White House during Katrina. A lot of things went wrong.

They were not all the Bush administration's fault by any means, but it was not a situation in which I would say the federal government was covered in glory, shall we say. You know, Tevi, it's Larry Kudlow here. Nice to talk to you. That last point you're making about the local governments, I mean, in Baton Rouge and in New Orleans, you basically had corrupt governments. They were corrupt. And as you said, one of them went to jail. The mayor of New Orleans, I think, went to jail. But they were corrupt. Whereas in Texas, you had a straight shooter, Greg Abbott. And in Florida, you had another straight shooter, former businessman, Rick Scott.

I think that makes all the difference in the world because at the end of the day, you need federal help. But you've got to do it at the local level. The other point I want to make, Tevi, see if this works with you. You have very powerful economies in Texas and Florida, very powerful private sectors. And I think that by itself helped a lot. It helps in a psychological sense, but it helps in a resource sense. And, Tevi, finally, it's going to help in a cleanup sense. These are powerful private sector economies that will rebuild probably faster than anybody dreams possible.

Look, you're right about all of those main points, Larry, and the local government problems in Louisiana were obviously quite manifest in this situation. But I think the federal government also has a role to communication skills and how a president's communications abilities helps give the american people a reassurance that things are going well and one of the problems with the katrina situation was when george w bush flew over into that that fly over the picture of him looking down in orleans and i think that really hurt him and i think that was a moment he regretted and he talks about it in his book you know i just want to ask one more this is really a peter robinson question tevi that i'm going to ask you it concerns politics and it concerns optics and you know all the things peter specializes in so um that was a joke peter yes we leave the substance to brother larry i just handle the optics here

well that's how this thing devised out you know that's why it's a great show now tevi let me ask you this how good is it this is a serious question politically so trump calls his entire cabinet up to camp david i believe it was this weekend was it not and they meet And before the meeting begins, they hold each other's hands and pray. What do you think of that? I think, in a Peter Robinson sense, that's pretty darn clever. What's your take? Well, I'm a fan of prayer, as you know, and I'm a servant Jew. And I remember in the Bush administration at cabinet meetings, they would start with a prayer.

And it was whatever cabinet member was giving the prayer that they would give from their own denomination or their religion. And I remember Josh Bolton giving the cabinet prayer in Hebrew from a Jewish tradition. And that was a really moving moment for me. I thought that was just a really great sense of what it is to be an American and how America embraces all faiths. So I'm a fan of prayer in government, especially in disaster situations. That's right. See, that's where I'm a churchman.

I go every Sunday also. But, you know, this is one of these where the whole world is watching. Right. So Trump goes to Camp David, which he basically doesn't go like. Larry, hold on. I just have to I just have to interject. I'm at least 10,000 years to your time in purgatory by saying, hey, Mr. President, pray on camera. Looks good, baby. Well, as I said to our listeners ahead of time, I preface this by saying this is a Peter Robinson type question. I would never ask. I would never even consider this, Tevi.

But, you know, we have Peter here. So the point is the whole world is watching. And here's this photo op. As conditions improve in Texas and so forth and they get all these cabinet people and there's thousands of cabinet people nowadays and they hold hands and pray now i don't know who thought that up i don't know who thought that up but that person deserves a promotion that's all i'm saying all right just saying tevi they deserve a promotion for that photo op yeah some of you guys know i got my start in this political big tank world

working for Ben Wattenberg, who was always a big fan of the values issue. He talked about how, as a politician, you can't underestimate how patriotic and how religious and how faithful the American people are. And I think he was tapping into that. I think Trump was tapping into that in that prayer moment.

Hey, Tevi, Peter, here, one last question for you. One other hurricane, Hurricane Bannon. You've you've argued that the president needs a new Bannon. Well, first of all, what does it mean that Bannon was in the White House in the first place and that now that he's out, he's said, uncontradicted by the White House, that the president and he talk a couple of times every week. And what does the president why does the president need another Steve Bannon? to have a strategist slash thinker in the White House who can articulate what the larger vision of an administration is, and also take ideas in from that intellectual world. And I'm not sure who is doing that in the Trump White House in Bannon's absence.

And I talked about this model from my book about intellectuals in the American presidency, where pretty much every Republican administration dating back to Nixon had someone in that role. You had Pat Moynihan, obviously, under Nixon did it. And you had Marty Anderson from Hoover did it under Reagan. And I think that's a really important role. And I think those people are very helpful to an administration without that. And I don't know who's doing that. I want to read your article, because I think it's a great point. I speak frequently with Steve Bannon. I'm an admirer of his. He and I don't always agree, but I just want to ask you this, perhaps this point. Bannon is the keeper of the flame, and the flame for Donald Trump was to overturn the elites and the established order and to, quote, drain the swamp.

And I do worry. Now, Steve Miller is there and he shares all that. So maybe he's part of the keeper of the flame. But I am concerned that if Bannon does not stay in touch with the president, that idea of overturning elites, you know, what does Washington do for us? We know what they do for themselves, drain the swamp, which are, number one,, which are number one, true, and number two, immensely popular politically. I hope that they keep that flame. I really do. Look, you need someone to have some kind of overarching intellectual vision for an

administration. Otherwise, an administration just lurches from policy position to policy position, often makes compromises that the adherents might not like, and it puts you in a tough situation. But if you know that you can kind of count on an administration to have a larger vision that you are signed on to as a voter, as a conservative, as someone who cares about these things, then you are in much better stead in terms of having that support from your core backers. In other words, you need an intellectual. Who was it? Just quickly, Tevi, George W. Bush, who was a dear friend of mine. I love the guy. You know, some things didn't break his way.

Who was who was it in the W administration? Well, it was a smart two part approach where you had Karl Rove was the overall strategist, but you had Pete Wader, who headed the Office of Strategic Initiatives, and Pete was regularly reaching out to conservatives with his Wainergrams explaining the thinking of the administration, not in a kind of par of a sterile communications White House issue, but something that he wrote that really felt like it was from the heart that resonated with what the conservative intellectuals were understanding and so pete did a really good job of reaching out to the intellectuals but also being the temperature taker saying hey mr president there's a problem here the intellectuals aren't on board with let's say the harriet meyers pick

for example right right good point okay debbie thank you. We thank you from the heart of Ricochet, and we hope that resonates with our listeners as well. Tevi, thank you. Thank you, man. Thank you. You know, the thing is, in order to have principles, it helps to form them over the course of the years based on what you absorb, what you learn, what you read. I mean, you just can't have them implanted in you like some chip in a cybernetic organism. It's learning what you believe is an organic process. And that's why we're big fans of The Great Courses Plus. And we keep telling you about it because you too can go on that intellectual animasis thanks to their services. Now, The Great Courses Plus, what is it? Well, it's an

on-demand video service with a wide variety of engaging lectures taught by award-winning professors. Topics like business, politics, even photography and cooking. Perfect way for people like you to get unlimited access to over 8,000 fascinating videos. So what are you waiting for? Get started now with The Great Courses Plus so you can dive deeper into areas you love to learn about, such as The Philosopher's Toolkit. It's a show that tells you how to think better, explains how we think, and tells you how to think even better. Because thinking, you know,

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You ready? Okay. TheGreatCoursesPlus.com slash Ricochet. That's TheGreatCoursesPlus.com slash Ricochet. And we the great courses plus.com slash ricochet. And we thank great courses for sponsoring this, the ricochet podcast guys. We have a few minutes here. Let me just lay this out.

Simple question. It's kind of binary. No need to really explain or go on to great detail is single payer. Inevitable. Larry, you've got 10 seconds. I don't think so. I mean,

it, you know, it lost on the ballot in the state of california for heaven's sake so no i do not think it's inevitable and by the way there may be some decent reforms uh lindsey graham in that crowd before september 30th don't give up hope there might be something good peter do you think we're going to get it because it kind of looks like this whole thing was set up so obamacare fails and then the government swoops in and says you know that bernie sanders character he's got a good point.

We really should spend the entirety of our federal budget, $3.6 trillion on Medicare for all. My answer is as simple and as brief as Larry's. No, I don't think we're going to get it. It's not inevitable. There are lots of other policy proposals and Republicans in the administration will pull themselves together before this is over. And by this, I mean the Trump administration. However, we've been talking about politics in Washington and there's Larry sitting in Manhattan and here I am in coastal California. And I would like to turn to you, James, to give you, to ask you, how does it all look to you from the upper Midwest? Would you be our man in the street

in the heartland for a moment as we close this podcast? How does what look exactly? How does Washington look? How does the Trump administration look? Any piece of it that you want to talk about? Well, it looks distant and it looks not particularly relevant to our daily lives. If you spend a lot of time on Twitter and Facebook and you are socially engaged and politically motivated to churn up your heart and your head on a constant basis, you believe that we're living in the end times of the republic, that this is hell, as Charles Blows put it,

and that really there is nothing to be redeemed by this administration at all. And those people are welcome to stew in their own juices and make themselves completely unhappy and scour the internet constantly for new bumper stickers to put in the back of their car to alert everybody to their outrage. Because if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.

To people who are not involved on that elemental molecular level, life goes on. And the furor and the steam of the first six months of the Trump administration seem to have evaporated and been replaced by just a constant, well, if you're on the right, sort of a little spring in your step when you get the good stuff. And if you're on the left, a constant toothache as you realize that this isn't going to go away and he's not going to be impeached.

And there is actually a paradigm shift to some court in the United States. It looks from here like life is good, basically. It's a green, good place. It's decent. It's civil. And our problems here are really more focused on what the community is looking for. So we're kind of back to normal in the sense that everybody felt like everything had been turned upside down when Donald Trump was elected. Well, no. America reasserts itself and the daily rhythms of life assert themselves,

and the things that often possess us turn out not to be as important as whether or not our kid got off to school and the bus made it on time. So there you have it. That's basically it, and it may change tomorrow if the president tweets something or if North Korea does something or the rest of it. You never can tell. But the standard baseline for me is still 9-11. And when I wake up on a day that isn't that, it's good.

And it's good and it's generally getting better is the feeling that I have. Do I have questions and concerns and problems? One last one, real quick. Real quick. Go. With respect to Bernie Sanders and single payer. Respect to Bernie Sanders is something I have difficulty. Well, I should not mean respect.

I'll say I know what you mean. I know. In respect of Bernie Sanders. Thank you, counselor. All right. I'm a speechwriter now. So remember what Milton Friedman said? If you think health care is bad now, wait till you get it for free.

Terrific. That's my closing line. Thank you, boys. Well, if you think Ricochet is great now, wait until you start paying for it. Because you can't. And we advise you to do so. We've got a brand new level, a brand new tier, only $250 a month.

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Thank you, Larry. Thank you, Peter. And we'll see everybody at the comments at Ricochet 3.0. No, no, we're just finishing that Ricochet podcast. Next week, James. Let's begin. Stomach and cash around Fed the starving and housed the poor Showed the Vatican what gold's for But he made too many enemies Of the people who would keep us on our knees

We pray for Peter, pumpkin We pray for pigeon pumpkin heads Oh, fly Eternally pumpkin heads Poop them all Empty churches and shopping malls. Where each spoken word raised the roof. Peter Pumpkinhead told the truth but he made too many enemies

of the people who would keep us on our knees a grateful feeds a pumpkin who prayed for feeds a pumpkin head Who prayed for Peter Pumpkin? Who prayed for Peter Pumpkinhead? Oh my.

Peter Pumpkinhead. Put to shame. Governments who would swear his name. Thank you. merely said any kind of love is alright but he's made too many enemies of the people who would keep

us on our knees pray for Peter Pumpkinay for Peter Pumpkin Hooray for Peter Pumpkinhead Peter Pumpkinhead Was too good Had him nailed to a Ricochet. Join the conversation. Thank you. Keep us on our knees. Hooray for Peter Pumpkin.

Hooray for Peter Pumpkin. Hooray for Peter Pumpkin. Hooray for Peter Pumpkin. Hooray for Peter Pumpkin. Thank you.