Howard Lutnick | All-In in DC!

Do you go to New York much?

Never.

I close my house. I basically, I tricked my wife.
You know how your wife always wants to renovate your house? No idea. No idea what that's like.
My wife always wants to renovate my house, right? Every minute I've been alive, my wife has wanted to renovate parts of my house. So we moved out once a year and a half ago.
We moved out for a year and a half, about six years ago. And she only did half the house and she still rused the day that she only did half the house.
Really? Yeah. So that was the deal.
What I did is I bought a house in Washington and said, do you want to renovate the house? She said, yeah. I said, great.
We hired a contractor. Wait, you brought Brett Bauer's house, no? Yeah.
Yeah, that's a beautiful house. We can talk about whatever you want, by the way.

I'm happy to talk about serious things, casual things.

No, let's just do this.

Leave it, it's fine.

Let's roll because he's on fire.

You're already running, right?

He's on fire. Absolutely.
We crushed your questions in a minute. We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion.
What are you going to say? That was fun. That was great.
I'm doing all in. Howard, thanks for being here.
Thanks for joining myself and David Freeberg on the All In Podcast. I want to take a step back before we talk about today and instead talk about your friendship with the president, how it started, how you guys got to know each other, and walk us through the moment when you, you know, frankly, went out on a limb a little bit, stepped up, became the campaign finance chair, and then just that evolution.
So I've known the president since I was 30 years old. So I used to go on the, call it the charity circuit in New York.
So there's basically a charity party every night when you live in New York. Like the rubber chicken dinner.
Like literally the rubber chicken. And so sort of every night you go out.
And so the boss of my company, Bernie Cantor, he got tired of going. Right.
So he didn't want to go. So he would send me with his wife and I would be her walker.
And I'm the 30 year old CEO of the company. And I take her to the party.
And and after the party, I put her in a limo and she go home and DJT would say, well, let's go out. And so we go out.
It wasn't planned, but he was at the party. He's 45.
I'm at the party 30. And we chased the same girls.

Okay. It was basically, it worked out fine.
And by the way, here's the thing about Donald Trump. He was the most famous, the most fun, the most interesting person 30 years ago, 33 years ago.
I mean, here's the best thing.

He's been on the cover of Time Magazine 59 times.

No way. years ago yeah 33 years ago i mean here's the best thing he's been on the cover of time magazine 59 times no and then he leans over to me and he goes and 20 were good like but who can take that yeah i mean who could take like other people when you have a bad cover of time magazine you'd crumple right and be sand on the floor and said he's like, bring it.
But so Howard, is it that he's just totally wired to understand that moment, like of being a public figure? Or like what is it that's so unique about what constitutes the ability to navigate that over 40 years? I think it adds energy to him. To him.
Right? So everybody else's energy, what they don't understand,

is people bring negative energy to Donald Trump, right?

And they're just charging his battery.

Okay?

Your energy around him comes to him.

So when I come at him with a lot of energy,

he comes back with a lot of energy.

Right.

Right?

It doesn't matter.

He never steps back.

He just sort of takes it like the centrifuge

and then hurls it back at you. And he's been that way always.
So this is not new. This is just who he is.
This is who he is. So those other people who attack him, they think they're attacking him.
They're charging his battery. They're literally charging his battery.
So he comes back bigger, stronger, bigger, stronger. And once you understand the man, the most intuitive person that you've ever met.
And people say, well, okay, so people who know me, I don't suffer fools. And they have all these derogatory, all my left liberal friends, all these derogatory statements about the guy.
Right? And they know me really well. Yeah.
Right? And they'd say, well, how can you work for him? I'd say, how can I work for him?

The most intuitive person.

He senses it.

He knows it.

He calls me up and he says, Panama Canal.

That's what he says.

He goes, Panama Canal.

It just feels wrong.

And then he sends me on the quest to go.

I didn't do anything.

I just start the quest to go look at it.

The mouth that's east is a deep water port by the Chinese. The mouth that's west is a deep water port by the Chinese.
They're building bridges over it. So our ships and our military ships should go under, right, in our hemisphere, a Chinese bridge.
So then I said, okay, let's go prove it. So I have a friend of mine.
He owns a big bridge so then I said okay let's go prove it so I have a friend of mine he owns a big shipping company I said take two iPhones put them on a stand and just go through the Panama Canal you know the Panama Canal they sort of drag ships through like this and I said just go video both ways yeah just video both ways 70 percent of every letter is Chinese. Then I'm talking like the sides of container ships, the stores, like I'm not talking like- The signage.
Just random signage, like you're riding on a road. It's all Chinese.
And then I do the research and I call him back and I say the magic words between me and him. I have your path, Which is, I've done it.
I've done the legal work. I've done everything, right? So when you start talking about it, you have a foundation.
It's not just you talking. So people think he's just talking.
He's never just talking. He has people behind him who bring him his foundational, structural outcome.
And then what does he do? He went and played golf that afternoon. He called me at 7 in the morning.
He said, what do you got? We talked from 7 to 8. He went and played golf.
And that afternoon, there's the American flag in the middle of the Panama Canal in some truth he puts out. And that's the fun part.
So you work for the most intuitive guy guy yeah unbelievably smart unbelievably thoughtful who knows what he's doing so it's so fun for me howard let's just go back one second so you have this deep relationship with him you guys are friends scott besant told us this story that about 18 months ago though he saw all this data about what was happening under biden and he was just so concerned that these deficits and debts were getting so out of control. He went to the president and said, how can I help? Can I help? That's a story.
But was there a moment for you that was like rooted in something other than friendship? Like, was there something on the ground where you said, hold on a second, this is a train wreck and we need to do something? Because you were the finance chair for the campaign wasn't the fighting i was the transition chair transition okay so i ran transition which we'll talk about but so let's go through so i'm friends with him right but i'm building my business young guy building my business and then 9 11 happens yeah okay so i'm friends with the guy I'm just friends with the guy but then 9-11 happens kind sweet calls me all the time just good human being nice warm caring good human being right but then i'm knocked out so what do i do next i try to rebuild my company take care of the families of 9-11 you know i had i lost 658 people who worked for me. And we had a policy.
We want to work with people that we like. So when we had an opening, we didn't use headhunters.
We would say to everybody at the firm, does anybody know anybody who do this job? And so, you know, young lady works for me, says, you know, my best friend is an HR person. They have to have capacity.

But once they have capacity, imagine we hire that person.

Now, what happens is it's not one big happy family.

But people really, really care about the company.

And that's our company that's on the top five floors of the World Trade Center on 9-11 when the plane hits it.

Kills everybody at the office. My brother Gary, he dies at 36.
My best friend Doug, he dies at 39. I had just turned 40 that summer.
I had a party. 65 couples.
It's my 40th birthday party. 27 people at my party get killed.
Jesus. They're my friends.
They're my friends. So I'm driven to take care of the families of the people who died.
And I commit 25% of all of our profits. But the company is destroyed.
So we go from making a million a day. I was a rich guy.
Right? What's the definition of a rich guy? No personal debt. No corporate debt.
Ken Fitzgerald, no debt. So how do you survive 9-11? if you don't owe anybody any money the only money you're losing is is your money is your money so we survive and we take care of our friends families and then we build the company back up so you can see like i'm uh i'm a special guest on the celebrity apprentice the firstice, the first season of Celebrity Apprentice

when Piers Morgan wins.

Did he fire you?

No, no, I wasn't a contestant.

Oh, I was going to ask.

I'm a little beyond being a contestant.

That's what I figured.

I was a special guest.

I'd come in, like, if you see during the auction,

I'm standing next to him at the auction, you know,

and I'm helping him.

Like, I'm just his friend sort of as an extra

all along the way, you know, every once in a while.

You kept the friendship going as you're rebuilding. We're friends the way but i'm rebuilding my company yeah and then so i'm not interested in politics okay i don't do anything in politics because i'm i got my head down right we're the financial crisis candidate for children is great in the financial crisis had you ever donated to candidates at all or yeah new york candidates okay right new york so you think about it you're in new york you try to pick uh social liberals fiscal conservatives right if that even exists anymore yeah right but if you're in new york you have to pick and look i grew up in new york so i'm socially liberal now what else could i possibly be yeah so you know so early when Chuck Schumer was young before he became what the president now calls a Palestinian,

you know, I raised him money and gave him money.

Donald Trump gave him money.

Same.

I did too.

Yeah.

I mean because he was… that's what he said he was.

He was social, liberal, fiscal, conservative.

And so we all give to those kind of candidates but mostly giving to get along right and to be able to you know ask him a question if you needed to ask him a question but there was really no i had no drive right in that like i said the first four nights i slept in washington in the last 20 years when when donald trump was elected i had never slept here. I'd come down, visit a little, go home.
What am I staying here for? So he calls me at the end of October 23. Okay.
So he's already had his first term. Yeah.
You didn't support or get involved. No, no.
So I gave him money and I gave Hillary money. You gave Hillary money in in the first term yeah because hillary was incredibly helpful to me post 9 11.
remember she was a senator right and new york needed help right and hillary was incredibly helpful and i was driving the team to help new york rebuild because i had relationships with a whole bunch of congressmen and they were going to do nice. Like Bill Young ran house appropriations.
Bill Young was my friend through a whole variety of things that had to do with... I used to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital.
And I used to walk around and I would bring music down for the men who got hurt from the military who were in Bethesda Naval Hospital. And we would walk around.
I'd go with my wife and then I would engage the young man with music. I'd give him music and ask him what CDs he wanted.
This is when CDs were there. And I'd bring up a walkman.
And my wife would pull the family outside and she'd pay a year of their mortgage and all their expenses because what people don't realize is your son loses his leg right dad and mom come flying in and they're going to stay by his bedside what job do these people have yeah that allows them to be at their son's world and their world is falling apart because their son lost his leg so the world world is falling apart. But at home their world is falling apart.
And so my wife would just try to figure out how much money it was and just give them a check. And no form, no nothing.
Just give them the money and help them. So I would bump into Billy Young and his wife.
They ran then defense appropriations and they were there just being good human beings and so we became friends and he said to me once he said is there anything i could ever do to help you i'm like look you run you're like a congressman from florida who does defense appropriations and i'm like a jewish guy from new york who's in finance if there ever were two skews that we're never going to meet this is two ships going right we got nothing so i said to him look we're just going to be friends right we're never going to do anything and then he runs house appropriations and so when new york needs money to rebuild if to 911 they go see bill young to try to get a bill passed right and he said how can you come see me without howard yeah know, this is post 9-11. So I'm running New York, and Hillary does a really nice job for New York.
And I told DJT, I call him DJT because I've known him for always. I said, I told him that I can't forget.
I'm just not the person who's going to forget. Of course I gave him money, i give it and and by the way he still tortures me for it so like you know what the best part is a good friend does yes right you know what the point is see other people would would you know sort of curl back yeah right so here right after he gets elected okay here's a story for you so right after he gets elected he has a dinner in new york right so he invites me to the dinner in New York because I'm his friend.
And then while he's giving his talk to his first dinner in New York he goes, wait, wait, Hillary supporter and he points at me. So I stand up and I go, hey, everyone.
And I sit down. You know, he's just sassing me.
Okay? Because I gave him tons of dough. He knows I love him, and it's fine.

Okay, so we're 2023.

So we're 2023, and he calls me.

And he says, will you help me?

Yeah.

And I had not thought politics.

Now, I gave him money in 2020 re-election.

Yeah.

Probably gave him 10 million bucks.

I raised him 15 million bucks.

So I was, you know, once, I'm on a side. side the whole way through I'm raising the money in 17 18 19 20 while he's president I'm totally on his side yeah and I'm but I'm just his friend I'm not engaged yeah okay because I'm still rebuilding my life yeah okay and then 2023 calls me says will you help me and I actually thought about it.

Like, and that was the first time I really thought politics. And then I said, yes.
And I gave him 10 million bucks right then and there. And then I started talking to him.
I started going on the campaign trail. I started doing research.
I started doing knowledge. I i talked to him about everything i talked to him all the time about everything did you love it because our friend sax we were talking at dinner last night he seems to love it like there's nothing not to love as donald trump says this is a thousand super bowls right For him.
And for me, it's only 100 Super super bowls right i mean if if you're dedicated to america and you're willing to wear america's clothing and to stop worrying about yourself and only care about america yeah and have no objective post yeah the president hates when these people have like they raise money post from people they've met in here so i'm never work again. Okay? I'm never going to work.
This is all I care about. I'm just going to help America.
So he asked me to help him. And I start thinking about it.
I start studying everything. And I read everything.
And I read everything about the White House. I read everything about everything I can possibly read because I'm just that way.
And then I start helping him. Right? And I went to learn how he picked the judges, right, and the Supreme Court and why it didn't.
And I'm just very detailed. And so I started studying what transition is.
Right. Right? And I started studying it.
And I started studying tariffs. Because he wanted to talk about tariffs.
And he's always thought the trade deficit was wrong and basically a ripoff of America. and I started studying tariffs because he wanted to talk about tariffs and he's always thought the trade deficit was wrong and basically a ripoff of America and I started studying everything about it yeah and so he and I would talk about it and we knew everything about it and then he picked me to run transition okay so we're going to talk about tariffs in a second but so double clicking to transition what did you find that was so interesting like I'll give you an example so there's a a book called The Gatekeepers that was written.
People gave me, oh, you should read this book. And it's about chiefs of staff.
And basically, there's another way to call it. It's called The Jerks.
Because what they do, imagine you're the gatekeeper. You're the gatekeeper of what? Of the man who was elected president of the United States of America he needs the gates kept from him

and if you listen to Nixon tapes

you hear him scheming to try to learn anything

because what happens is the chief of staff

everybody reports to the chief of staff

and the chief of staff reports to you

so you can't get on Air Force One

without asking the chief of staff

you can't get a document unless you have the chief of staff

no one can come see you unless you have the chief of staff and if they take your phone away you know what you are you're imprisoned and that's the gatekeepers so i said to donald trump i said look you fired reince prebuss who was your chief of staff then you fired john kelly was the chief of staff then you fired mick milvaney's chief of staff then you would have fired meadows but you but you didn't get a chance because of the next election. So I said, why don't you fire the job? What you need is a chief of staff who's actually a chief of staff, not who's the gatekeeper.
Right. Right.
And so that was an example of how I changed it. And so Susie Wiles is perfect for Donald Trump.
You know why? She lets him be him. John Kelly took away his phone.
So he couldn't communicate with anybody. Whereas Susie embraces who he is, helped him get elected, ran a great campaign.
She's perfect for him in this role. And so that's what I brought.
So I brought like an understanding of him and an understanding of the role. And that's why I convinced your friend David Sachs every time he said, I can't do it.
I would call him and say, it's an emergency. It's an emergency.
I need to see you. He'd fly.
And he'd go, what is it? I go, you need to join the administration. He goes, that's what the emergency was? I go, of course.
And Howard, was that when you conceived originally Doge in that initial, was that during the transition? All right, so Doge. Yeah, we should talk about Doge and tariffs.
Okay, so Doge comes, it's October of, before the election. Okay.
Early October. October 2024.
October 2024. Yeah.
Like the beginning of October 2024. And I called the president and I said, I need to spend an hour with you.
Because I have my big ideas. Yeah.
Right? So he gives me, he says, look, I'm not sure what to do october 7th right why don't we figure

out what i should be doing october 7th so we decide we're going to go out to the ohel which is a super religious uh hasidic jewish um messiah you know the people who wear black hats think he's the messiah and they have a crypt for him where you write a note and you put a note in all right and so we agreed we'd go out to that uh to that grave site and we'd probably win 60 000 of those kind of voters which is pretty cool for a day and then we drove there and back together two of us so i had an hour and a half just he and me talking and i said i balance the budget in the United States of America. And this is the way we're going to do it.
No one's ever checked the just under $4 trillion of entitlements. Every politician thinks what you have to do is you have to take the retirement age from 65 and make it a 70.
And you have to do this and this and this and this because they never think about the money. But people like us would say, what's the first thing you do? What's the value I'm getting for my money? Totally.
And what you find is if nobody ever, like as in ever, like I could say the word ever 12 times, has looked at where the money goes. Totally.
And so there's not even a process

to get it back when you send it to the wrong person.

You just send another one out.

Yeah.

Like, think about it.

You just, well, I sent it accidentally.

Accidentally.

Notice how it's accidental.

Right.

It's always accidentally sent to the wrong person.

Really, you wouldn't ever say

the 5.9 million people who work for the government,

there could be some crooks in there.

Right.

No, no, no.

It's all accidental.

What a load of nonsense this is.

There's some percentage of this. you would say yeah and you would say no just zero base it and let's figure out it's got to be 25 yeah we'd all say if it's never been checked how could it not be 25 right how could it not be right and the answer is that's a trillion dollars a year right okay so i said i think we're going to cut a trillion dollars a year in expense and then i think we can through tariffs and other means when you get revenues have a year.
Right. Okay.
So I said, I think we're going to cut a trillion dollars a year in expense. And then I think we can, through tariffs and other means, we're going to get revenues of a trillion dollars.
Incremental revenue. Incremental revenue.
And we're going to balance the budget. But sorry, let me just ask one question.
How did the tax cut to the extension of the tax cuts? There is zero basis. I mean, where I was yesterday and where I am tomorrow, like, oh, it's a tax cut.
No, it's not. It's the exact same thing as yesterday as today.
To say continuing yesterday, tomorrow, is like silly. So let me ask you on tariffs.
Having studied it yourself, when there's higher tariffs, people purchase less, things cost more. No, we'll talk about tariffs.
Let's just finish Doge. So I'm in the car with him, right? And I said, we're going to balance the budget.
And I said, but I have one favor to ask of you. If we can balance the budget for you, will you agree to waive all income tax for every person who makes less than $150,000 a year for the United States of America? Which, by the way, is about 85% of America.
Right. Right.
And the reason you want to work for Donald Trump is he looks at me and goes, sure. You realize the President of the United States said, if you balance the budget, sure.
And he's not lying. He's not kidding.
He's like, yeah, that seems like a great idea. Right.
Right? And so, and then I tell him, okay, I'm going to go recruit Elon. Because Elon's all in.
He's already said he's all in. He's already said he's going to Pennsylvania.
So I call Elon and I don't know Elon. I don't know, but he's perfect for this.
So I use my superpower, which is I call everybody else I know who him, and they arrange. And I'm texting with him, and he agrees to meet me on October 14th.
So I fly down to Brownsville, Texas. He's going to catch the rocket on October 14th.
Right. So he invites me down for the rocket catch.
That's right. He's not inviting me for the rocket catch.
He's just inviting me down that that's a good day for me to meet him. So I fly down.
I see the rocket catch, which is awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome.
And then I expect to meet him. By the way, very pivotal day in the campaign.
If you remember, Biden sort of didn't pay as much attention to it. Trump was pretty engaged.
Elon was supportive of Trump. So when he actually caught the rocket, the media was almost like frozen, waiting for it to fail.
And it didn't fail. And it worked this incredible i was waiting for elon okay so i flew down to see elon and uh with with my uh with my son and uh so we watched the rocket right and then they say okay he's gonna go hang out with his engineers and party with them seems reasonable it's like hour hour and a half and then he just goes dark.
You're still waiting. I'm just sitting there waiting.
And then they take me and I go to like the equivalent of a Margaritaville, you know, where you have like a basket and you can get quesadillas. And you get a Diet Coke and a red sort of plastic thing that's about this tall.
I got 4,000 ounces of Diet Coke in it that with this big mouth. But now, to his credit, he sends me all the executives from SpaceX are hanging with me.
But he's dark. And what happened is he took a nap.
He was up all night

doing the engineering and he went to sleep. So then when he finally wakes up, so I'm just

sitting there like, you know, doing the, like, I don't know him really. So I'm just doing

the thumb twiddle. I'm going, okay, you know, this guy's- You had a couple of cases.
I'm hoping he sees me, right? So then he wakes up. He says, come to my house.
Right. I'll see you in my house.
So his house is 1200 square feet. It's got the furniture in it that I had when I graduated from college.
Right. Okay.
I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding.
It's 1200 square feet and got the furniture, plastic, chairs, and stuff. OK.
So I say, we're going to balance the budget. I need to cut a trillion.
He's like, I'm in. He says, I think we should cut 80% of the federal government because the essential employees, if the government shut down, essential employees are $450,000.
and there's 5.9 million people who work for the government how can 450 000 be essential and there's 5.9 million so he says like twitter i think we should cut 80 percent yeah and i say i know how to cut 50 and he says i want to cut 80 i said i know how to do 50 he goes are you with me or against me i go i know how to legally do it what you have. And my I said, I know how to do 50.
He goes, are you with me or against me? I go, I know how to legally do it. What do you have? And my son says it was like two alpha dogs just like fighting with each other for the first half hour.
And then, and then, um, so then X comes in, right? And then he's got to walk X, he's got to walk his son X out. So he walks his son X out and I'm thinking maybe the meeting's over, right? Cause we've been together a half hour, 40 minutes, and maybe it's over.
Because he got up, he walked out, he comes back, and he sits down, he goes, Howard, this meeting is... Right? That's what he says.
And we sit down, and we map out the plan. I tell him what a gratis vendor is.
Because I designed, because I was not going to go into the government. I was doing transition.
What is a gratis vendor? A gratis vendor is an approved vendor for the United States of America that gives product to the government. It doesn't sell it.
Okay. So therefore, I don't have to go through the whole process of becoming a proper vendor because you're giving it to us.
And then if you give it to Article which is the president's stuff then the president can accept it right because it's give sorry how what's an example of this like just to make i write some software you write some software i write some software for the commerce department to do a better job of xyz you just give it to me and then i do qa on it and i can take it if you sell it to me for And then I do QA on it, and I can take it. If you sell it to me for $1, we go into government hell.
Right, the whole rigmarole. Right, but if you give it to me, right, and then I set up, you know, so I said, I'm calling it Doge.
And I registered the name Doge. You said that.
Of course. And were you familiar with Dogecoin? Of course.
It's Elon. So what happens is in the Defense Production Act in World War II, in order to get all the great executives of America to help with production, they named everything after jazz singers or everything.
That of the people who were on the committee that it would make them Okay. Right? So I picked a Doge so he would laugh and smile.
And he said, get the F out of here. Like when I said, we're going to name it Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, which I didn't think of.
It was on the internet sort of floating around in June. Yes.
Right? But I literally registered it. Right? As the Department of Government Efficiency, like make it a real thing as a gratis vendor and i said this is how i've done it for me yes so that i can run canada fitzgerald you can run spacex right you're not you don't have to sign the conflict form and all this stuff because you're not working for the government you're just giving stuff to the government yeah you are literally giving of yourself right but you're not looking for anything.
You're not taking any money. You're not owning anything.
You're not doing anything. You're not on that side of the wall.
You're on this side. You're outside.
Right? And so we had fun. We talked for two hours.
And then on my Twitter feed, I took a picture of me and Elon outside and I put up, welcome to Doge. We are going to rip the waste out of our $6.5 trillion government and balance the budget.
We must elect Donald J. Trump president.
Yeah. Right.
And I posted that with my, I probably at the time had 25,000 viewers and I got 45 million views. Wow.
Right. So it was me and Elon.
Yeah. And that was the beginning of Doge.
Yeah. Right? Then I ran transition, which is, so for the transition, we had, I had a room in Mar-a-Lago.
Yeah. Okay? Big conference table in the middle.
Four 85-inch screens on one side and mirror four 85-inch screens on the other side. So that you and I could talk to each other.
So the president sat the president sat across from me yeah elon sat oh and then i'll tell you one other story about elon so he wins the election president wins the election he accepts it like wednesday at two o'clock in the morning all right elon's not on stage if you see i'm on stage elon's way in the back of the room there's a thousand people in the room two thousand people's way in the back. He goes home.
Thursday afternoon I call. I'm doing a dry run of the launch of my transition.
Right? And the president is superstitious. He's never had one conversation with me about transition.
He totally trusts me. He wins the election.
Now he's got to, look, you know, I sit on Jesse Waters. He hasn't talked to you ahead of time about who he wants.
About one job, about one thing. So until the election.
Now he's got to, look, you know, I'd sit on Jesse Waters. So he hasn't talked to you

ahead of time

about who he wants.

About one job,

about one thing.

So the transition,

so until the election.

Because he's superstitious.

He's superstitious.

Like,

don't waste your time.

Don't jinx it.

Right?

Just go win.

And you got to go win.

So what happens is,

he,

so I'm doing a dry run.

So I call Elon.

And I say,

where are you? He goes, what do you mean? I'm in Austin, Texas, whatever. I go, what are you doing? I mean, what is the point of you spending three weeks living in Pennsylvania, helping the guy get elected, if you're not going to help him pick the cabinet? Like, come on.
Right? Because the way President Trump works, he makes decisions by orchestra. He likes lots of views and opinions.
He likes them. And anybody who says, oh, the last person who sees him gets him, that's because they don't know him at all.
Right? The answer is, it's an orchestra. Right? And I would say, okay, I'm the first violin.
You know, at the time I would say I was, you know, I would describe myself as second violin. Yeah.
Right? So this is an orchestra. So the president's not going to make a decision with me and him alone.
Yeah. No, he's going to have, so it went like this.
President sitting across from me, right? At the conference table. Elon to his left.
Susie to his right, right to my left lynda mcmahon who's my co-chair

right but she wrote all those eos that he did that was she was responsible for and i was responsible

for personnel but she was with me for personnel so she's sitting to my right jd city to my left don jr right stephen miller and and he there was always 12 people in the room they were never like me and him hushed in the corner doing this and that never and what we would do is I would put 8 candidates on one screen right right and then big candidate on each screen right most beautiful AI picture of you you've ever seen right and people would walk in and go wait to get that photo right I'm like what do you think I did I took 3 of your photos I've heard second handhand stories of this room during the transition. You walk in and everyone's photo is up on the screen.
Everybody's on the room. And so what happened is...
That's a candidate for a role. And then you guys would debate it.
So what happened is a big picture of the person. Yeah.
Their key highlights of the resume. Not boring.
Their education. Yeah.
Right? And then you would click a button and you'd see him speaking. 20 seconds at a time.
Four of them. So it was about 80 seconds.
And you're not speaking about the job. Just like, how do you present? And what you can see is his whole cabinet can talk.
All of them. Because he picked them knowing, I need you to be able to talk, to be able to present our ideas and our concepts out there.
And that's key to him. And the way I would joke to people is, how do you do it? I go, watch.
Pitch. So you throw him a curveball.
He wouldn't swing. You throw him a fastball, he wouldn't swing.
You throw him a slider, he hits the ball, hits it to my glove, I go, here you go. You go, well, how do you know that? I go, because I know the guy for 33 years, I know what he wants.
And he loved the process. And you know what happened? You you saw what happened right first date eight candidates 12 jobs national security okay he says what do you want i go eight to four i put up eight candidates i recruited everybody i had 150 of the best republicans in the united states of america they each gave me five people who then gave me 10 people.
I had thousands of people to pick from. The whole government was set up to pick from.
And then we picked candidates. I had eight for every job.
Eight, eight, eight, eight. Eight to four, that's Friday.
Sunday comes in, four to two in the morning. I fly everybody in for the two.
I prep them. We go in and meet them.
Two to one. Final interview.
Give them the job. Wow.
Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. Monday.
Monday, we're done with national security. Okay? Now we're rolling on.
And it just pounds out. Why? Because he had every candidate.
Everybody knew it. Everybody was prepped.
Everybody was where. Everybody was done.
You know, that's why I had to beat the heck out of David Sachs because I needed David Sachs to be in the government. I recruited David.
I pounded on David. You can ask David, right? I beat him and beat him and beat him until he finally said, okay, I'm going to do it.
Right. And I did that for everybody.
Yeah. Right.
And I made sure he had the greatest choices. And then every once in a while he would call me at night and say,

throw this guy in, throw this guy in, throw this guy in.

We did a vet on everybody.

But I didn't take out anything negative.

I am not a negative person.

You can tell.

I'm positive.

So why would I discuss anything negative about any candidate?

Until I get picked.

There was no game theory.

A lot of people speculated there was game theory that we'll put a mix of people that will assume some won't make it out of committee and then we'll end up with the ones that we do want everyone was the number one only one only one and that was matt matt yeah what happened what happened with matt howard how did that process we he was tortured by his attorney general in the first term and we were were not going to have that ever again. Right? So we needed strong backbone, strong capacity, of which Matt Gaetz has it.
Yeah. And I know Matt Gaetz, and he has it.
Right? But we did not know what that vet was going to say from that report from Congress. So here was the idea.
We fight for him. And we fight for him to get through.
And then we read the report. The report's not bad.
Remember, the president's been tortured by people blaming him for stuff that never happened. Oh, 30 years ago, he raped this woman in the dressing room of Bloomingdale's.
I mean, what a load of crap. Right? It's just not true.
None of it's true. It's ridiculous.
So he comes at this saying, I know you're going to get tortured with ridiculous. So then he says, if it's ridiculous, then we support men.
And if it's not, we have Pam right here, right now. So that was lined up.
So that everybody knows it's right here, right now. And it's 3D chess.
So we read it, Pam. It's like Pam in a hundredth of a second.
And Pam is a rock star. And you could argue that you would say, well, why didn't you pick her first? You know what? He's the president.
He plays 3D chess. He did it his way.
And you know what? But there was no candidate up there who wasn't right. And we could talk about all the detail and how we thought about it, where it went, but it was so thoughtful, so intuitive, and so right.
And what does it produce? The greatest cabinet ever, the most capable, thoughtful, best able to communicate. I mean, it's so fun to be in a room with these people because these are world-class people, the best ever in government.
We shouldn't betray confidence, but I mean, we were in a room earlier this week with several of them and everyone had a moment to speak. It was unbelievable.
I mean, look, I- Every single one of them, you're like- I'm a huge fan of all these people. Could have been a leader of the country.
They're all great. That's the point.
He picked greatness. Now, I was the recruiter, so I was a recruiter in chief.
I can understand why now, by the way. But think about it.
If you take someone like me and you say, just be a headhunter, I swear to you I can be the greatest headhunter ever to live. Because think about it.
What's the odds of saying, okay, Howard, your whole job is just be a headhunter. Find the best guys.
I promise you I'll be really good at it. Can we go back to Doge? So you talked about the gratis vendors.
Maybe there's other stuff that you can do with executive action. The president can do with Doge, et cetera.
Can we talk about congressional budgets? How do we actually balance a budget without bringing Congress along? And is the plan to bring Congress along? I've asked this of Besant. I've asked this several times since we've been here.
And it's the thing that gives me the most heartache and the most headache is I worry about whether this actually gets there given congressional interests. I think Congress works with something called scoring.
Yeah. Right.
That that if it comes from their pen, it counts. If it doesn't come from their pen, it doesn't count.
But the fact is money always counts. It just doesn't count for their scoring.
But their scoring is only part of the game. Right.
The outcome of the game is what matters to me, Elon, our cabinet and Donald Trump. Okay? The outcome of the game.
And I'm telling you, the outcome of the game by me and Elon. Now, a funny part of it is, so I invite Elon to Madison Square Garden.
He doesn't want to leave Pennsylvania, right? Because he, you know, Elon, he's committed to Pennsylvania. So I convince him he's got to come.
And we have a plan. I'm going to say to him, so everyone else gets introduced by the voice of God.
I'm the only one who introduces Elon. So Elon comes on stage with me.
There's the two of us on stage in Madison Square Garden. The only time the two of us are on stage.
I'm the fourth speaker. He's the third from the end.
JD is second from the end. And Donald Trump is last.
Okay? So he's supposed to say, when I say to him, how much are you going to cut? The deal was he's going to cut $1 trillion. And then he's supposed to say, and how much are you going to earn? And I'm supposed to say $1 trillion.
And then we're supposed to say, together, we're going to balance the budget in United States of America. That's the little sort of thing.
So I ask Elon, how much are you going to cut? And he... What did he say? He said $2 trillion.
Well, because we're in front of 22,000 people and the place is erupting. He says $2 trillion.
And then I'm sitting there going... And I'm like, I think I said all righty then.
All righty then. Or something like that.
You know what I mean? Like, what was I supposed to say? Yeah. You know? So later when he walks back to a trillion.
No, you were caught off guard. But I mean, it was quite a moment.
Did he ask you how much he was going to earn? No. No.
Because he said two trillion. He's like, I got it all.
Don't worry, Howard. Like, I said, all righty then.
And that was that. So then I walked off stage and, you know, he said two trillion.
So like, what am I going to say? But the answer was always, right? That 25% of the waste, foreign abuse is $1 trillion. Right.
And he's got to cut and find the waste, foreign abuse of $1 trillion. Okay.
Okay. And that my job is to raise $1 trillion of exogenous new revenue.
New revenue for the government. And we, right? I'm telling you, I've been here now two months.
Yeah. Right.
I am more confident. It's going to happen.
And more exciting. Tell us how it happened.
Well, hold on a second. So, Howard, let's finish this and then we'll move to tariffs and revenue generation.
So there's a lot of domestic terrorism. Is that the response to try to slow down the expense side of the house? Is it basically to put fear into people

that are trying to find this waste and fraud?

Is that what that is?

The burning of the dealerships?

If you were, I describe it to people this way.

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks

this month.

My mother-in-law, who's 94,

she wouldn't call and complain. She just wouldn't.
She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month. A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining.
And all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen. Because whoever screams is the one stealing.
Because my mother-in-law is not calling. I mean, come on, your mother, 80-year-olds, 90-year-olds, they trust the government.
They trust, okay, maybe got screwed up. Big deal.
They're not going to call and scream scream at someone but someone who's stealing always does so what happens is we need to get to so the people who are getting that free money stealing the money inappropriately getting the money have an inside person who's routing the money they are going to yell and scream but real america is going to be rewarded because here's the key. Benefit of the doubt.
Not one penny should stop going to the richest country on earth. Here's the way I say it.
I said we have a $6.5 trillion budget. We have $4.5 trillion of revenues.
We lose $2 trillion a year. We have a $29 trillion GDP, which people don't understand, which I'll explain a little bit.
And we have $36 trillion in debt. What number didn't I say to a business person? What's our balance sheet worth? I say $500 trillion.
The president says a quadrillion. But at $500 trillion or a quadrillion, $36 trillion? We're rich.
We don't have to take one penny from someone who deserves Social Security. Not one penny for someone who deserves Medicaid and Medicare.
What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who's not hurt, who's on disability for 50 years. It's ridiculous.
And they have another job. And do we have to monetize our assets? We need to be smart.
That's all we need to be. And I'm going to tell you things that are just smart.
They're not, oh my God, this is the most brilliant thing ever. This is just smart.
There are so many smart things we can do. Like, you know, we'll talk about the post office, right? Think about this.
The post office has 625,000 people who work there and they go to your house every day. You know what the census does? The census hires 625,000 people, trains them, teaches them.
As interviews, 2 million people, trains and teaches them, hires cars. How about this? That's pretty smart.
You're a genius. That's pretty smart, Howard.
Right? Okay. Like obvious, yeah.
Right, but here's what it is. I'll tell you what I'm good at.
You're so right. I'm really good at pattern recognition.
Okay, here's one. Tell me 625 of one and I can point that 625 of another.
This is the genius I bring to the government. This is core.
By the way, you're responsible for all the core data collection as well, aren't you? Isn't commerce responsible for generating a lot of the- Oh, GDP? For economic data. Oh, that's right.
I get to talk about GDP and how I'm going to clean up the nonsense that isn't GDP.

You know, I can explain that.

If you make a tank and someone buys a tank, that is GDP.

Yeah.

But 1,000 people thinking about buying a tank, right, who take your tax money and I give

it to them and they go, hmm, should we buy a tank or not?

That's not GDP.

Right.

You're saying government spending should not be counted in GDP.

No.

Government spending to buy a tank should be.

Right.

Government spending-

That's nonproductive.

Nonproductive should not be.

This is so important.

So what I'm going to do is... be counted in GDP.
No. Government spending to buy a tank should be.
Right. Government spending- That's non-productive.
Non-productive should not be. This is so important.
I don't think a lot of people realize this. How much of GDP is non-productive government spending? How about we do one thing? Yeah.
GDP. D means domestic.
P is domestic production. It's not consumption.
If I go out and buy a Toyota, that's not GDP. If I buy a Chevy that's made in America, that's a D.
So people think it's like a consumption model. That's not it.
And you can check another one is There's gross domestic income right that's also good so by the way they're about they grow about the same rate it's kind of fun right so the key for me is to take out the part that if i cut non-productive a million government employees who are non-productive meaning they don't make tanks right right if i take out, it's going to look like our GDP declined. But you'd say, but what really happened? No.
Our expenses went down. This is so important, by the way, because people talk about a recession, and a lot of people create a lot of red lights and alarm bells about, we're going to go into a recession if we cut all this spending.
But the follow-on effect of of cutting nonproductive spending is that the workforce and those dollars flow into more productive parts of the economy where we make more things, we create more jobs, we create higher wages. And that's the theory that you guys are trying to execute against.
I don't think a lot of people in the general public fully understand that it's so important to kind of explain and get across. Okay, if we put three people behind us and they sat behind us and they did nothing and each of us gave them 125 000 just like this here you go and they just sat there right what is that all right that's not gdp that's actually me taking my money and giving it to them we produce nothing we nothing.
We've no purpose of the earth. It was my money.
The income, however I earned my income was mine and I just gave it to them. They didn't really earn income.
It's really a transfer pricing model. That is currently considered in GDP.
And it's nonsense. So if I stopped paying them, what would I do? The first thing you'd say is, well, then why am I paying so much tax? Bang.
So now we're in the concept of where we are. So Howard, do you have an intuition on what the actual GDP number is? I'm sure you do.
If you take out nonproductive spending. Yeah, but I'm not going to talk about it until we release it because that's the proper way to do stuff.
Got it. And I'm going to break that out.
I think it's 25%. And I'm going to break it out.
And I'm going to break it out for the last 20 years. And what you're going to see is every time the quarter just before an election, all the government spending happens right then and there.
And so all of a sudden you have this jumping GDP. Right.
Total lie. Right.
Total lie. I mean, basically, they just take all this money and they jack it into the quarter so that we have that.
And you'll see it. It goes, da-da-da-da-whoop.
And then they can make it. And then what do you think the first quarter is? Wham-o.
Or the second quarter's wham-o. Why? Because you pre-spent it.
Right. Right.
And then you have this whole, and it's gross. Yeah.
Okay, that's the only way. like, really? It's so manipulated? And the answer is, duh.
And to your point, the game that's being played is we're going to take taxpayer dollars that people don't understand once you give it to the government. We're going to create these waves of fake growth that try to tip elections so that then the grift and the waste and all the fraud can then continue for as many years until the jig gets replayed over and over again.
And it seems like the buck is stopping with you guys because you've exposed it. It's going to.
And that's the idea. The idea is to take a trillion of waste, fraud, and abuse out and then make a trillion from having other people and resetting global trade.
And once you understand global trade and how it makes sense and where it came from. Can you explain that to us? Sorry, before we get there, I want to ask one last question on the cuts.
Can we speak in an... Do we need to speak in a more empathetic way because that trillion dollars of spending flows into someone's pocket some percentage of that pays people a salary and they live on that income and i think a lot of no no okay i think this is important for you to highlight because a lot of people are reacting to elon and doge and the budget cut saying

you're destroying jobs you're taking money away from people that need their jobs why are you

why rich people are taking i'm going to give you a sad example and so like help us understand are

people going to lose their jobs i'm going to give you a sad example we all remember during the covid there was the ppp money yeah right remember that yeah totally so it was proven that 200 billion of the 1.2 trillion was going to chinese fraud gangs what why is that proven you just make up a company right you know joe's deli yeah you make it up joe's deli right say you're in trouble file and they sent you money yeah so why wouldn't chinese gangs do that come on so we show not we but people showed the government those people that money and instead of stopping they said yeah but we can't stop because there are real people who need the money and so what happens is because there's no no one's ever been fired ever for sending money to the wrong place. People send it on purpose.
I'm not saying everybody sends it on purpose. I'm saying there are some people who send it on purpose.
Some people who are complete morons and an enormous number of people who work for the government who are awesome. I mean, amazing people.
Right? But what percentage? Okay. If there's 5.9 million people who work for the government, you're like, wow, that's like so many and we're paying them all.
And how many do you really need? I mean, if the answer is 2 million, wow. And we could talk about how we understand it and how we're going to retrain society for the AI industrial revolution is coming, which is going to create the greatest set of jobs and greatest set of growth ever.
Ever. Okay.
But then we can talk about that. But the key is stop sending money to the wrong place so we can make sure we can always defend sending money to the right place.
I would never allow, if I can stand it, to not pay somebody who retired at 65 their benefits. I find it disgusting when we're the richest country in the world and some politician says, in order to save Social Security, rather than getting rid of the waste, fraud, and abuse, we should move it to 70 yeah how about how about no how about we're rich enough to give people the benefit of the bargain yeah of being a great american but let's put great people in charge that's really well said i think that that's really well said okay let's put a pin in let's put a pin.
Right. So let's, Howard, explain to us global trade as you understand it,

and then the context of tariffs, and maybe historically, and what role they play now.

So I remind people that on the earth there was the Dark Ages.

So the Dark Ages meant that the world knew how to read.

And then because of religious and other actions they burned all the books yeah right and literally the earth stopped learning how to read for 500 years or 400 years we didn't know how to read and we knew how to read before so how could you forget so america was built on tariffs with no income tax.

No income tax till 1913.

None.

Greatest, richest country in the world.

So, when Donald Trump says, make America great again, what he's talking about is from 1880 to 1913, when the country had so much money

that we had blue ribbon commissions,

which you guys would have been on,

to try to figure out how to spend the money.

And no income tax.

Then we put in the income tax in 1913.

Why?

Because we're entering World War I.

And don't we all need to contribute

to protect democracy

and to protect our way of life?

Right?

Then what happens is the world goes into chaos we come out of chaos right and then we're starting to think of well what do we do what do we do and then 1929 the stock market crashes right 1933 we start to say oh god we forgot we need to do 1933, how can you do tariffs when the markets crash,

the world's going into depression,

and you're going to do tariffs in 1933?

You can't charge the rest of the world money

unless the rest of the world's okay.

That's right.

So it was too little, too late, right?

So then we come out of World War II.

It's 1945.

We need to rebuild the world, okay? So we decide we're going to take our tariffs down and we'll let them, here's the key, we'll let them have tariffs be up. And we will export the power of our economy to let them rebuild.
And we'll let them rebuild. And that's what happens.
So 1945 we have theall plan right and we do it in japan of course because they need to be rebuilt what's the difference right so they need to be rebuilt and then what happens we have the 50s and we have the korean war so we let them rebuild which means low tariffs here high tariffs there low tariffs here high tariffs there then we have the vietnam war right so now all of a sudden we have all of southeast Asia. Low tariffs here, high tariffs there.
Then we have the Vietnam War, right?

So now all of a sudden we have all of Southeast Asia.

Low tariffs here, high tariffs there.

You know what the best example I can give you

to make it crystal clear?

Kuwait.

We spend almost $100 billion freeing Kuwait, right?

You know who has the highest tariffs

against the United States of America?

The number one country with the highest tariffs against the United States of America? The number one country with the highest tariffs against the United States of America? Kuwait. And you think, what? That's insane.
But here's what it is. If you go back to this understanding the way America thinks, you need to be rebuilt.
You were just destroyed, right? All their oils were, you You remember Red remember red the guy's name was red something and he was the guy who capped all the there were fires and all the the the oil wells and he capped them all and it was amazing so we let them put up high tariffs but you know what the problem is then we forget right and we let it go yeah so comes in and says, it's got to stop. OK, so that's an incredible context now for tariffs.
It's like it was a long term strategy that essentially says, OK, great. There's rebuilding to be done sort of almost out of the largesse of America.
We're going to enable that to happen. So we'll lower tariffs here and we'll support the high tariff regimes over there.
We let it happen. We let it happen.
On purpose. But it's an incredible thing you're also saying, though, which is that it's inexorably linked to this repetitive machinery of war, because those create these boundary conditions over and over again.
Always. Where there's so much destruction abroad that America then feels compelled to have to do this correct that's exactly that's exactly

right so what happens is and then you say to yourself okay i get the 40s i get the 50s i get the 70s right but 80s 90s 2000 2010 what's time out 20 so donald trump gets elected 2016. Who understands this?

Okay, let me give you a hint.

Donald J. Trump.
Who else? Nobody. Right? You'd say, wow, he understands.
And how long has he been talking about it? 40 years. Why? Because in the 80s, he's saying, what are you doing? Well, let me give you the economist counter, and then you can respond to it, which is tariffs on imports in the United States will ultimately pass to the consumer.
Higher prices, inflationary. So the things that our consumers and our citizens are buying gets more expensive.
And as a result, they buy less. And it's recessionary.
It shrinks the economy. It shrinks spending.
it shrinks uh consumption can you kind of respond to the you know that's the typical economist refrain on this independent and maybe they're isolating the imbalance okay india has a 50 tariff on average 50. tariff on average.
50. We have, on average, four.
Okay? I would say to the person who said that, can I ask you a question? What are you talking about? They're 50 and four. Here's what you're talking about.
When we're all equal and everything is free and fair, if you raise tariffs and they raise tariffs, isn't it bad for society? The answer is, of course it is. But there's two differences.
Number one, let's do human beings first. Before we go to the math, let's go to human beings once upon a time we had an auto industry in detroit okay and in ohio but detroit then some genius named bill clinton signs the north american free Trade Agreement or corporations you can screw

Americans and go get cheap labor in Mexico and break the unions by going to Canada. Now, if you were General Motors, I'd say it's like my birthday.
Yeah. But if you're a worker who comes from Michigan or Ohio, they just signed.
You know what they signed? Worst statistic I'm going to tell you today. Average life expectancy of high school educated workforce.
So, by the way, the United States of America, two-thirds is high school educated. One-third is college educated.
The difference today of average life expectancy between those two categories is seven years. Seven-year average life expectancy.
It's not the air. It's not the food.
It's not the medicine. It's despair.
My grandfather worked in the auto factory. My father worked in the auto factory.
I have a good life. I'm going to do Friday Night Lights and football.
I mean, it's going to be a good life. I have a good middle class life.
I'm a member of the United Auto Workers. Life is going to be good.
The factory moves to Mexico. And I am just screwed because the government of the United States of America didn't care about industrial policy and didn't protect me at all.
And let cheap labor in Mexico, I'm sure the Mexican people went from $4 an hour to $5 an hour and they're kicking it. But I destroyed you.
And that is incredible failure of industrial policy, which nobody wants to talk about. But you talk about it as average life expectancy and you're talking about it, about reshoring and building the life for the people who are America.
That's why you elect Donald Trump president. You elect him because I didn't spend one minute doing politics until he asked me to help him.
But when he asked me to help him, I started spending time with him. When did I learn this? And who taught me this? The president of the United States.
This is not me teaching him. You understand? This is him teaching me.
And you can see him talking about it in the 80s. Right.
He's talking about this for a lot and what it does is it means reassure so number one we have to care about human beings that's a globalist view yes if i take my production and move it to mexico it's better for me mr corporation okay but it's not better for me mr u. U.S.
citizen of the United States of America who's

working at a car plant. That's bad news for him.
Okay? And that's number one. And now let's go to number two, which is the math of it all.
If we say free and fair trade, I want to remind you, There ain't no such thing.

There is no country in this world that is free trade. Zero.
And we are the lowest and the dumbest because everybody else is higher and more protective. So they protect their farmers.
Here, I'm sitting at the dinner, Modi comes to town and i say to him when donald trump we have dinner and after the niceties donald says go ahead go ahead harvard and i said you have 1.4 billion people and you brag to us how amazing your economy is why won't you buy a bushel of our corn we'll buy a bushel of our corn so our farmers can't go to him but his of course can come at us right why is that okay you know and we can go into all the stuff that oh i mean i don't even want to go into it because if i had another hour i could regale you with stories that are fun with that but just address the pricing inflation that arises from tariffs talk to the average person who says the cost of a toy at Walmart just went up by 50%. Okay.

Inflation comes from printing more money. Okay.
Let's say the United States of America had $1 trillion. That's all we had.
That's it. No more.
Okay. And I want to buy a bottle of water and you want to buy a bottle of water.
One came from America and the other one came from Fiji. Right.
Then, and I tariff Fiji. Then that water is a dollar and a quarter and this water is a dollar.
That's not inflation. That means that one's more expensive, but I can choose to buy this one.
Right. Okay.
So you're right. This toy might be more expensive and that toy's not.
I get it. But that's not inflation.
Here's inflation. Snap my fingers.
Now we have $2 trillion. Right? That water's $1.50.
That water's $1.25. Yeah, everything's more expensive.
That's inflation. Okay? So inflation without tariffs is everything's a buck and a quarter.
Now what about- Inflation with tariffs is a buck and a quarter, right? And a buck 50. And so you have to understand inflation doesn't come from tariffs.
Certain products, if I put a tariff on a mango, right? We can't grow mangoes in America. We just can't grow a mango.
If you put a tariff on a mango, the mango would be more expensive. Yes.
Okay? But if the president chose to put a tariff on a mango, then the mango is more expensive. That just becomes a consumption tax.
It's like a sales tax. Yes.
Right? It's a sales tax. It's a consumption tax.
If I want to buy a mango, it costs more money. And you can offset that with a reduction in income tax.
So then that's just like another version of income tax. How do you think about- Okay, so the idea is to not do that.
Yeah. That's the idea.
The idea is to choose things that are going to reassure. Yeah, exactly.
Come here. This is so important.
Hire my people. Yeah.
Bring it home. Yeah.
Right? By the way, I want to just speak as an entrepreneur i see the economic incentive when i see the price for certain things go higher because you have to import and pay a tariff i'm like why don't we make that here we should be doing that and there's going to be a lot of that kind of entrepreneurial opportunity that will arise from making things and this is just how the markets work someone will Two trillions so far. Me, he's been in office, right? Like seven weeks, eight weeks.
Yeah. Two trillion dollars of committed domestic production coming back because of his tariffs.
TMC saying, I'll build, you know, semiconductor wafers. Yeah.
Everything we do, they're going to build it here. That word is never coming.
Yeah. Unless the tariff.
So what happens is you bring it here, you create the jobs here, and then they avoid the tariff. And by the way, those jobs are better paying and they're more productive than the government fund is.
What do you want to do about like the narrow set of products that are more high value than the mango that maybe can't be made here, or at least can't be made here in the next five to 10 years? So TSMC can make chips. I think that's great.
ASML, who makes the extremely complicated lithography machines, as an example, can't necessarily do that for another five or six years here. So there's these narrow cases where tariffs can exploit a market or perturb a market where there is no multi-vendor solution, right? But that's still critical.
How do you think about that set of stuff? You know, the beauty of putting Donald Trump in the White House is it's giant three-dimensional chess yeah okay so we all have stockholm syndrome for the internal revenue service we think we like the internal revenue service we don't say it but when we say we're going to charge a tariff and other countries who lean on us, who rely on us, who bleed on us, who can't live without the oxygen that is our economy. Because remember, the thing about our economy is, while we have a $29 trillion GDP, we are the consumer of $20 trillion.
And this is the key thing. We buy everybody's stuff.
So who's more important? Let's say they have an economy that produces stuff. And we have an economy that buys stuff.
The customer's always right. We all know the customer's always right.
Because if no one buys it, they can't produce it. So everybody needs our economy.
When? Now? I mean, to the fact that China consumes less than 10 trillion and primarily tries to figure out how to sell it to itself. Yeah.
Right? So they don't buy anybody else's stuff. Right.
So we are the world's consumer. We're the world's customer.
Right. Right? So that's point number one.
So we want them to come here. And if they can't come here, what if you pass? Okay, now let's say there was a 20% tariff.
And in order to sell his goods, he knows he can raise the price 10%, but he can't really sell it, raise it 20. So he eats 10 and the price goes up 10, let's just say.
That 20 goes into the conference of the United States of America from the president of the United States who said, we're going to balance the budget. And then his goal is to drive down income tax in the United States of America, including waiving tax.
So what has he said so far? With that in his pocket, knowing that this is what we're going to try to do, what does he announce? No tax on tips. No tax on overtime.
No tax on Social Security. Why is he saying those things? Right? Because he knows that he's got, Elon's going to cut and Howard's going to raise and he's going to have the tools to deliver on his promise.
And that'll unlock spending. Literally the money.
More money for folks to spend. And they'll have more money to spend, right? So if you actually get the external revenue service, right, which of course I named, you know, I named it, but you know what the funny part is? I came up with the name.
I wrote a truth, right? And I sent it to DJT and I wrote, this wrote this is my huge idea you know with one of those things that goes like this yeah you know like this is my huge idea right and because it's the external revenue service but it only matters because i work for him because if i worked for joe Biden or anybody else, they wouldn't care at all.

So the fact that he loves a great idea the minute you say it,

and it becomes his idea,

my idea is useless.

A good idea in his hands

is all the value in the world.

So the External Revenue Service,

if we went back to make America great again,

which is pre-1913,

which is let them pay, you don't pay. And what that means is let them pay, try to balance the budget, try to waive tax on everybody who makes less than $150,000.
And look what you did for America. Holy moly, look what you did.
And by the way, labor costs come smashing down because it's tax-free. So if their earnings are tax-free, right, then they're happy to work because they get the money.
So what happens is cost of labor comes down because we're run correctly as a government. And this is what I'm trying to do.
Speaking of potentially great ideas, can you tell us about the Trump card? Sure. So whose idea was that and how did that come about? John Paulson had a call with Donald Trump and was talking to Donald Trump and was kicking around the idea of we should sell, right? Why do we give away visas? We should sell them.
And they're talking about it. Donald Trump calls me, gets me on the phone, right? We about it right and then we go from there and then my job is to figure out like i always figure out how to do it what's the path do you have to figure out of course about two weeks from today it goes out okay elon's building me the software right now yeah right and Right? And then out it goes.
And by the way, yesterday I sold 1,000. Oh, you did? I got a polymark that I created on how many of you guys are going to sell this year.
Cool. Yeah.
Curious to see how many. That's fantastic.
Do you want to tell people just the rough broads? Yeah, what are the terms on it? OK. Yeah.
So if you're a US citizen, you pay global tax. Yeah.
OK. So you're not going to bring in outsiders who are going to come in to pay global tax.
So if you have a green card, which used to be a green card, now gold card, you're a permanent resident of America. You can be a citizen, but you don't have to be.
And none of them are going to choose to be. What they're going to do is they're going to have the right to be in America.
They'll be $5 million. And they have the right to be in America.
They have the right to be in America. Permanent residency.
As long as they're good people. And they're vetted.
And they're vetted. And they can't break the law.
We can always take it away if they're like evil or mean or bad or something. Not mean, but if they do something horrible, you can take it away, right? But the idea is, if I was not American, and I lived in any other country, I would buy six.
One for me, one for my wife and my four kids, because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America, and I want to have the right to go to the airport, to go to America, and then to say, hellonik hello mr latnik and the latnik family welcome home right that's what i want to hear i don't want to hear i can't come here when there's a you know a horrible war a horrible whatever right i want to be able to go home right and once i'm home i might as well build a business. So you have the most productive people in the world

going to start spending time here.

They're going to have a family office.

They're going to hire some people.

And you're not going to tax their external worldwide income.

They only tax the money they make in America,

which is what we do now.

But their global income stays out.

And they pay $5 million.

And how many people do you think there are

that could qualify in the world?

There are 37 million people in the world

who are capable of buying the card.

In case you were wondering.

37 million.

That's a lot more than Chad CPT told me.

Who are capable of buying it.

Who are capable of buying it.

Now, I'm not saying they will,

but they're capable of buying it.

How many do you think you'll sell?

The president thinks we can sell a million.

So $5 trillion. That's $5 dollars.
I think a million is reasonable. I mean, look, as an outsider who came in and got his green card and then got his citizenship and now pay global tax every which way known to man, if this were available 15 years ago after the Facebook IPO, that's what I would have done.
It would have been much better for me, theoretically. Now, I'm happy to pay the taxes.
So the idea is, and it's going to go fast, meaning you apply, right? We take your money. And the way computers work now, they have these cool things, like these computer things.
They're amazing. You put stuff in, and they actually check everything.
It's fantastic. You don't even have to plug them in anymore.
It's amazing. Like, they get the information through the air.
I mean, you could do a better vet than anybody in government has ever done it before in one second. Right.
Better than they've ever done it before. So, I mean, I'll tell you a quick story.
Monday night, Elon was telling us about this, me and Saxon. One of the things he was saying is he's been helping you build this site.

He's building it for you.

But one of the most difficult parts of it is it turns out like all of the CPB infrastructure to do all these checks, it's like a lot of COBOL mainframes and the amount of technology that has to get rewritten. And so this is a question.
Big opportunity. It's incredible that the most advanced nation in the world deployed systems in 1970, which at the time probably felt very cutting edge to everybody in the room at the time.
But to your point, has not evolved in the last 50 years. It's always, there's always a reason.
Okay. And the reason is, it's a great reason, is that uh in the mid 70s we changed the way

government accounts for software we we took a 10-year contract and you have to take the contract

up front so if i if i'm signing a contract you for 10 years a million a year i have to take it

against my budget for 10 million so i'm not doing it see i'm only here for four years yeah i'm not

doing case everything so what happens is when was the last time we bought software? 1975. Where? Everywhere.
Yeah. Why? Because it's illogical.
Now, what I'm doing is I'm saying, okay, I've got to collect tariffs. Right? So I go to one of the great software companies of the earth, and I say, I want you to give me,

you're going to build for me for America.

You're going to build the greatest

customs processing ever.

We're going to take a photograph.

It's going to know what it is.

It's going to go through AI.

It's going to know what it is.

It's going to know what the tariff is.

It's going to determine the percentage.

It's going to know the weight.

So when you weigh the thing plus the package,

you'll know what it weighs.

You don't even have to open it

or weigh exactly the right amount and you'll do this and that. And these are all things that I know and all things I could figure out.
Because you know the way gold works? Gold bar is about 40 pounds. You know the way I know the gold bar is they weigh it and they weighed out 13 digits of decimals.
So basically if you touch the thing, it's not going to be 13 digits of decimals. So you have a perfect scale and you weigh it and that that's like the code.
Yeah. Right? Because you can't touch.
If you touch it, you'll change the, and you can't get it right out 13 digits. It's just not possible.
So that's what we do with stuff. You know what it weighs.
Right? Three t-shirts. If you're sending the same three t-shirts, they always weigh the same.
But what's incredible is you're convincing these companies to basically like do right for america and build a software for you you think that's going to be a movement throughout the government or is that here's the idea i say build it for me for free yeah i put it in for free i don't know what other countries in the world you think gonna buy now right if it works for us well remember you have to you have to connect to me yeah Yeah. So every country is going to buy.
Right. And it's a great business model.
Right. Right? If the greatest customer in the world says they'll take it, life's good.
Right. So what should the greatest customer in the world get? I don't know, a good deal.
Yeah. Right? And you got a guy like me there.
Everybody else is like. Howard, you have to change how government operates if you're going to scale that.
You can't negotiate every contract out there for every department i mean it's not that hard when you say it's free you know free is like that's the word i mean you yes it is and then what i do is i get the head of that technology company yeah because i then i use my superpower which is my friendship with donald trump and then i go in the overall office and we call them together. And we call the CEO together and make them promise the president.
Because promising Howard is like really nice. Promising DJT, that's something else entirely.
So I get these guys to promise Donald Trump that they'll build it. Now let's see him renege.
Yeah, that ain't going to happen. So when you get Elon to say, I'm going to build it for you, and he says in front of the president, like, how great is that? You got like the greatest technologist, the richest guy in the world, he says, I'll build it for you.
You're like, thank God. Right? And then I get, you know, I go to the heads of Google and Microsoft and Amazon.
They're all for America, building for us, for free, to make America better. Because they are great American companies.
And in exchange for that, we're going to help them through all sorts of things that are towards fairness. Just towards fairness.
Because you can't get me to do something outside the world of fairness. But I tell you what, if it's unfair, I'll be on your side as hard and as positive as I possibly can be.
Talk to us about some of the hot button markets that you're going to have to navigate. You know, you are in charge of export controls, which is a very important thing in AI.
We don't allow export licenses for the most advanced NVIDIA chips. We don't want training necessarily to be done outside of the United States.
We're okay with inference happening outside the United States in certain conditions. Maybe just talk about that for a second.
How are you going to navigate AI? How do you think about that from your seat? All right. So I'll give you an example that's sort of live right now.
Yeah. Right? So we have DeepSeek.
We have Quinn. We have we have dobao yeah right and and i don't think we should be having apps in america and i don't think we should have their website in america because they all go back home okay but it's open source and i want our american companies including college students to be able to download it and it.
Right. But I want to make sure that there's no part of it that says, send it home to Dada.
Right. Or store now and analyze later.
Right. Right? So I need that out.
So what I want to do is I'm going to embrace what you guys know. You guys are used to product evaluations.
Yeah. So let's do security now.
Exactly. Right? And say your industry, and you can't let it get overrun by Chinese.
Because what happens is if there's a policy, right, all of a sudden 100,000 people from China come in and they say they're John Smith and Todd Peterson, right, but they're not. And then you think the vote is this way yeah and it's easily manipulated so we have to be very careful but my first instinct is to lean on and that's why i see it's important to have david sachs as my partner right someone who knows it and and someone who can live and breathe the industry right and so what we're we're going to have is we're going to have security evaluation.
And say if the security evaluation model says that this is a good model, then people can download it. But it's got to go through the industry.
And I want it to feel and smell like what we're good at. I don't want to create like, oh, this is what government's doing.
I don't want what government to do. I want us to do it, but I've

got to figure out the right way to do that.

Right. And that's important

for America. Articulate the standards, articulate

sort of the concept, and then let a lot of these

private market actors kind of help

fill in the gaps. And compete.

The only thing I think I really need

to do, and that's

with regulatory,

is post-quantum cryptography. Yeah.
Okay? I think that is vital to us. That's right.
Yeah. Right? That asymmetric.
I would bet this happens during this administration. He bets post.
No, I'm going to put it out because we all have passwords, right? For those who are watching who don't know this, our password is called asymmetric, right? Yours is different than mine. That's the key.
And cryptography is just the computing. So asymmetric, key cryptography.
You have your password, I have mine, and they're the key. That's right.
Obviously the central hub has our key, the. A quantum computer we know can break all of them in a nanosecond.
Like all of them in the whole world, including the CIA, all of them are, say, 2048. All of them can get broken in a nanosecond by a quantum computer.
So the defense of it is called post-quantum cryptography, right? We know how to do it. And we'll come out with a rule that says America's got to protect itself.
New standards. And by the way, there are.
Because every once in a while you need to have a new standard that says it's coming. We know what it is.
Please, God, go put it in because we need to have it in. We need America to live in.
Great segue. Let's sort of segue now to a couple of things that we can enjoin together in this concept.
Crypto, obviously, Bitcoin. You guys announced the strategic Bitcoin reserve.
But broadly speaking, you also announced sort of this idea of the sovereign wealth fund. Can we talk about that? Sort of what is the vision behind that? How do you want that to be executed? How do you think it should be run? What assets are on the table? What assets and strategies should never be on the table? How are you thinking about it? The greatest customer in the world, the United States government, the most powerful, the greatest customer, buys stuff.
We walk in, we're going to buy, this is an example I like to use, we're going to buy 2 billion COVID vaccines. When we buy it, Pfizer and Moderna stocks are going to triple.
They're going to triple.

Because then we say,

everyone's going to have this vaccine.

If I were,

after Jared Kushner

negotiated the best deal he could,

if Howard Lutnick walked in the room,

Howard Lutnick would say,

what do you think?

20% warrants?

20% warrants?

Right.

Right?

What?

So we'd make $50 billion. Off of who? Nobody.
We didn't take from anybody. We didn't do it.
Okay. The shareholders of Pfizer, who we just tripled them with our order.
Right. Now, how many of my customers in my life have required that from me? All of them? All of them.
This isn't like, oh, Howard, this is the greatest new idea ever this is just business proper so yeah i don't view risk of the sovereign wealth fund i view the first couple of years of the sovereign wealth fund or scott bessent and i making money monday tuesday wednesday thursday and friday say well but you can't invest and lose. Don't you lose money? No.
Why? Well, if I have big daddy of the United States of America behind me, right? And I'll give you, I'll give an example. We buy missiles episodically.
Launch a missile, buy a missile. Launch a missile, buy some missiles, right right the people who sell us missiles have bad quarterly earnings or good quarterly earnings but they're episodic yeah here we go I will sign a contract with you 10-year contract cancel it at the end of five years to buy X amount of missiles and I'll pay you quarterly then they can take that contract they can go finance it their financing costs go their earnings are steady and their multiple improves and their stock doubles up yeah and i say in exchange for that reasonable thought how about a little warrants right and you want to talk just for people that don't understand give me some stock me a little bit of your stock.
But don't give me some stock. Just give me the upside.
If I help your stock go up, I get to share it. And then I take the money for the United States of America and I put it into the Social Security system of the United States of America.
And then all of a sudden, so the social security system says it's $4 trillion in the hole. Yeah.
Okay? If we cut the waste for an abuse out, it becomes $1.5 trillion. And by the way, Frank Bisagnano, the greatest executive, the greatest payments executive ever to join the US government is about to get confirmed and take over the social security system.
Okay? Frank ran Fiserv, $120 billion public payments company. And when Donald Trump asked him in his interview, can you handle social security? It's $1.3 trillion a year.
He goes, well, I handle $500 billion a day. So Wednesday.
And he goes, my whole life, all I worry about is getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse. That's all I care about.
Every single day, $5, $2, $1. He goes, this is going to be the most fun I've ever had.
Yeah. I mean, this, like this is a Donald Trump administration.
This is something that's another planet. Now, of course, I recruit Frank and, you know, I get to have my piece in the game.
But if we get rid of a couple hundred billion, then it's only a trillion four in the hole. We make a trillion four.
Yeah. That baby is finished forever.
Is the sovereign wealth fund a balance sheet for social security? Does social security become more than what it is today? Does it over time offer bigger, greater benefits? And is it basically a pool that holds equities? Historically, and we talked about this on our show, show it's only ever held treasury but it's really kind of a fake treasury it's got 2.7 trillion today but if we bought the s p in 1971 when we went off the gold standard with the cash flows that have come in and gone out of social security we'd have a 15 trillion dollar interest in the s p today but you know that that would have had you have donald trump be the president the whole time which is not a thing right okay but is that is that the objective is that the sovereign wealth fund is basically for the benefit of retirees in this country and it becomes like a sovereign wealth fund that we have a 36 trillion dollar budget deficit i'm in debt debt to the united states of america and we we have a budget deficit of two trillion so donald trump wants to knock down the two trillion yeah and then he's focused on the 36 trillion which the social security is part of it yeah so how he allocates it he was elected president united states i was not yeah okay i like the social security idea because it's really easy to explain yeah to people and sell to people yeah and so they understand it but the fact is that it's the same money if i put it in social security or i put it on the debt of the united states of america and i'm going to let donald trump make that decision you know why because it's holy's idea and none of it's not mine so he will decide that okay and he will play it his way but but scott besant and i will make more than a trillion dollars for the United States of America during our term,

which is pretty darn cool. And we'll use that.
And if that reduces our debt, but that's not the policy of how we're going to balance the budget. We're going to balance the budget.
Trump card, tariffs, getting rid of scams. I'll give you a scam example.
Every boat you've ever seen, like every single cruise ship, super tanker, container ship, you've never seen an American flag. Ever.
In fact, you ever think about the flag you've actually seen? All of you would say, I have no idea what that flag is. Why is it some flag I've never heard of? Liberia is number one.
You go, what? No one even knows where Liberia is. Because the answer is, it's a flag of convenience.
They sell the flag for like 10 grand. Like they're literally here.
You could have a flag. And you pay no tax.
So what happens is, a cruise ship in the United States of America picks up American passengers, goes in the Caribbean, comes back to America and treats the port as an expense. And all the profits are made in the Caribbean where it pays no tax.
That's what I call a tax scam. I mean, it's unfair to America.
We're going to fix that in America. We're going to try to fix a whole bunch of these tax scams.
Ireland is my favorite. The country of Ireland last year had a $60 billion budget surplus.

So we lose $2 trillion and they make $60.

You'd say, Ireland?

What do they do?

Oh, they have all of our IP for our great tax.

All the tech companies.

All our great tech companies and great pharma companies.

And pharma, yeah.

They all put it there because it's low tax.

Yeah.

Let's do this. they have all of our ip for our great all the tech companies all our great tech companies and great pharma companies and pharma yeah they all put it there because it's low tax yeah and they don't pay us they pay them so that's got to end so when those things end tariffs trump card getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax that's my trillion.
Elon's got to do his trillion.

So whenever I see him getting off the rails,

he and I go out and we have a strong conversation together

that you've got to do your trillion.

So you've got to focus not on small potatoes.

Big, big, big, big, big.

I need you to do your side of the trillion.

Now, as it turns out,

I'm going to do more than a trillion

because I'm me. Elon's probably going to do more than a trillion because I'm me.

Elon's probably going to do more than a trillion because he's him.

And then what we're going to do is going to, our objective is to smash down the Internal Revenue Service and change America.

And then imagine America.

This is just an imagination moment.

Okay?

We have a balanced budget in the United States.'re starting to knock down the the deficit of america we can cut tax and we have a gold card a trump card that you can come to america which entrepreneur have you ever met who wouldn't buy one yeah and wouldn't start building businesses when they think the tax rate here is going to come down and eventually it's going to come down to 20% and eventually it's going to come down to 15%. You won't be able to find a plot of land in America.
You know what I predict will happen? I predict just like in the medallion industry for taxi cabs, there'll be a financing industry that'll build up around these gold cards or these trump cards. It's that great entrepreneurs, great executives will be able to finance their purchase along with someone getting venture capital interest or equity interest in their business.
We're going to take that money. So we'll sell them every year.
Yeah. Right? So they'll knock down our budget deficit.
And then eventually, right? If Donald Trump is right, and ultimately we can sell 7 million cards, you realize there

is no debt in America.

No debt in America is a trillion dollars a year in debt coverage.

A trillion dollars a year in debt coverage, you know what that changes?

That changes the internal revenue service.

You start to rethink, and I just want to remind you, right?

We are the richest country on earth.

Our balance sheet is 500 trillion. I'll give you an example.
What's the court system of America worth? Right? What's it worth? Well, how can NVIDIA be worth 3 trillion without a court system that protects it? Right. It's no such thing.
So just our, everything about us is so awesome. Yeah.
And you know what happens? We actually, like, we get beaten upon it. We actually believe it.
Yeah, you could ask Doug Burgum about how undervalued a lot of our real estate is in this country and the potential for it. We think about Biden closed 635 million acres.
This is electing Joe Biden, head of Saudi Arabia, and he closes the oil wells. Yeah.
And all of a sudden, Saudi Arabia falls off the face of the earth, broke. Like, what are we doing? Like, we care about Americans.
Yeah. Let's make Americans' lives great.
Howard. We want clean water.
We want clean air. Yeah.
Okay. We do it better than everybody else.
But if we don't, here's the one like the hypocrisy, right?

We won't mine lithium in America to make a battery.

Yeah.

But so we, so the Australians mine it with coal and it's messy because they do it like,

you know, they do it messy.

By the way, we breathe the air in 3.4 days, but who's counting?

Right.

Then we take it, we put it on a truck.

We put the truck and put it in a super tanker.

We drive the super tanker that pollutes the living heck out of the world across 12,000 miles of ocean.

Put the we take it, we put it on a truck. We put the truck and put it in a super tanker.
We drive the super tanker that pollutes the living heck out of the world across 12,000 miles of ocean, puts it in a truck and gives it to Elon to make an electric car. Why don't we mine the lithium in Nevada? Right.
And by the way, we'd mine it cleaner. Right.
And by the way, it's not just lithium. almost anything that we could possibly conceive of needing over the next couple of decades exists in the continental united states we just have had no incentive or no structure regulatory wise that enables the development of it which is this is we need to care for us make america you know america first how about there's another way to say it.
While maintaining clean environmental standards. Americans first.
While maintaining environmental standards. Yeah, look, we're never going to do something that's not like a hundred times cleaner than everybody else because we care about clean water and clean air.
There's none of us who don't care about clean water and clean air. But you know, like someone gives you a pill and says, this will save you.
And then you look at the statistic and it saves one in a million people. And you'd say, why am I taking this pill? They'd say, well, it could save your life.
You'd say, yeah, but it's like one in a million, right? That's not logical, right? That's the point. You know, There's a regulation that's the right thing.

And there's a regulation that's the one in a million pill.

Why do we give a baby a hepatitis B vaccine?

Do you realize we have a brand new baby and we hold it up and we give it a hepatitis B vaccine?

You realize the only way you get a hepat b was is from unprotected uh sex or a needle like why are we giving them to a baby like why and you know what it is you know what the answer is corruption that someone in the government got paid to put that in the rules and because there's no justification justification. There's no, I haven't met a medical doctor who says hepatitis B vaccines on brand new babies make sense.
Because by the way, you know what the worst part is? They're only the last 10 years. You need a booster in 10 years.
So the baby's going to be 10. We've got to really be fair to ourselves and be fair to Americans.
And I think we can be. And I think that's why I'm so excited.
That's why our cabinet is so excited. That's why it's so much fun to work for Donald Trump, because I am just speaking from his playbook, right? Because if you had met me before he said, will you help me? And he went out to dinner with me and said, so tell me about government.
I'd say, uh, government, you mean I pay them taxes? Like that's it. Are you having the time of your life? Most fun ever because I have every idea either gets blown up or shot down.
Okay. Meaning, I come up with lots of ideas,

and he says, nah, too complex.

And you know what?

That's fine.

But when I come up with the external revenue service,

and he says, great idea,

and then he speaks of it in his inaugural address,

right?

It's his idea.

Yeah.

Because I can't do anything with it. Howard, last question as we wrap.

Tell us about your family,

your kids, how they think about all of this. Your son's running canter now.
How's that going? Just give us the lay of the land. How's the Lutnik family? All right, so I have the best wife.
I've been married 30 years. She lets me be me, and she's gorgeous, spectacular.
I love my girl. She agreed.
I mean, imagine this. I'm not joining the government.
I'm not joining the government. I'm doing this doge thing with Elon.
I'm not joining. I'm not joining.
Honey, we got to move. Honey, we got to move.
Two weeks after election day, I'm like, we're moving. And in five weeks, we're going to live in Washington, okay? And so the fact that that wasn't unsettling would be the understatement of a lifetime.
But she's been the most supportive and fantastic. I have four kids.
My oldest son about to turn 29. I was taking him to kindergarten.
So that's why I'm alive. My second son, Brandon, I dropped him off in nursing school and then took my oldest son to kindergarten.
So the two oldest boys are running canter now until I devass is it going well i don't know oh yeah of course you're not supposed to know i would love to talk to them about it you have no idea but i'm not allowed like i literally i'm not allowed yeah and you know we all know the phones yeah so since the phone's always with me and i assume the phone is listening you know ever since we couldn't take a battery out of our phone yeah you know the phone is listening so you know i'm not no so i never talk to my son so uh i'm sure they're happy but i don't know how it's going guys if you're listening he's doing great as you can tell but and then my my daughter is going to go to med school yeah and she's on a gap year now and my youngest son also on a gap year now and he's going to uh start duke in the fall right so i have the best kids uh my kids have lived with me and they lived with this kind of energy and this positive sort of momentum and and my wife being just a spectacular mom just keeping them what we our kids, which is a fun one, is I taught them two things.

I would sit down with my kids and say, how great is your life?

And this is only maybe something that people like we can say.

But I'm talking to my kids.

I say, how great is your life?

They go, oh, great.

Because they came home and they say, I got a bad grade.

Teacher doesn't like me.

It's a classic line, right? And I said, well, how good's your life? I'm really good. I go, could it be any better? No.
Well, do you realize your teacher has given up her whole life and she makes how much money? And she's given her whole life to teach you. So can I ask you a question? Is it her job to like you? Or is it your job for her to like you? Who's failing in what you just said? Right? It's your job to have her like you.
So when she says, raise your hand, raise your hand. And the other thing is, do me a favor, color inside the lines.
school if she says this guy is orange the answer to the test is orange when you get to college you can argue with the professor all you want high school color inside the lines give the teacher what she wants make sure she loves you and you're getting a good grade that's the rules of life yeah and my wife beat that into my children so that they would have it in their souls, in their moral character of someone who's fighting for you needs to have your love and respect back. You take them for granted.
If you treat them badly, if you treat them like, oh, aren't I so great, then you deserve what what you get and my wife has taught that moral fiber into my children and it it resides in them and the other thing my kids have is they have empathy which is a very unusual thing for young people and it's because they're where they were raised with their father, crying every day.

I cried every day until October 21st, 2004. Wow.
Every day. Because I thought of someone I hadn't thought of, you know, or someone would say 658 people died.
And I just, there was, you can't process all of that death without crying.

And the only reason I remember is because as I fell asleep, I told my wife that I didn't

cry today and she wrote it down.

That's the only reason I remember.

So my kids are fantastic.

They've been incredibly supportive.

And my wife's the best.

And she lives with me in Washington.

We bought Brett Baer's house. So I have a nice house, big enough for my ego to expand.
Very important. So, mom hasn't found one that big yet.
He's still looking. You're an incredible American.
Yeah. Thank you very much for everything.
This was really fun in coming to talk. Honestly, this has been one of my, I mean, my favorite conversation we've had.
Highlights, no? I mean, like all the time. We'll have dinner.
We have dinner at like Nakasha's house, who's a good friend of ours, runs Palo Alto Networks. And Howard's like, you just push the button and you can just sit and just listen.
You can listen to him for hours. By the way, I will say, I'll echo the point you made earlier.
I think every member of this cabinet is an incredible storyteller. I mean, you're like on another level, but like the storytelling, I think, is what's so powerful about this cabinet and this administration.
And I think it's going to take some time to get the message out. But man, are there incredible ambassadors to do so? They are so capable.
Each of them is so capable, so thoughtful. I mean, I am honored to be on this cabinet with them, but we all get to work for Donald Trump, who can intuitively tell you, go fix eggs.
Yeah. And then Brooke goes, fix eggs, and eggs are down like 40%, and Brooke fixes eggs.
I mean, how awesome is that? Right? And gas is down 40 cents, right? And he's only he's only just begun. If we get the Constitution pipeline in New York passed, and I sat with him while Donald Trump lectured Governor Hochul on the unbelievable oil and fracking that they have in New York and the wealth that New York could have if they unleashed it.
But they refused to unleash it. So he's going to force the Constitution pipeline, which, by the way, will drop gas on the east coast of the United States of America in half.
I mean, this is... And then you've got Chris Wright.
That's Doug Burgum. You've got Brooke Rollins.
I mean, you could just go... Scott Bess know, so thoughtful and elegant.
I mean, he just step by step by step.

And you have really the most fun cabinet working for the most intuitive, smartest guy to ever sit behind the Resolute desk.

And we're going to make America great again, not as a slogan, but we're going to balance the budget.

We're going to change America.

Thank you, Howard.

Thanks, Howard.