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And I want to take this opportunity to sort of, you know, go back a little bit and talk about your history, a little bit about your motivations and where you see this country and for that matter, the world going. But it's impossible not to note the world that we're living in in relationship to everything happening with the markets, everything happening with the with tariffs, everything happening with CR and a potential government.
Don't don't don't don't don't be tariffs stink eye. I don't want to start off with you giving it stink eye already.
Well, we'll stress test. I'm a tariff guy.
I appreciate that. And we'll see.
We'll see. We'll stress test that.
The purpose I want to do this is I want to convert you to be a tariff guy also. This is part of the process to unwind you from being a globalist to make you a populist nationalist.
It's a long journey. It's a long journey, but I think you'll get there.
This is part of the deprogramming, is it? I appreciate it. And by the way, for the record, I'm going down your rabbit hole right here.
I'm not an absolutist as it relates to being against tariffs by any stretch of the imagination. And I thought

it interesting where we, what I think Biden tripled tariffs on aluminum and steel, which is getting a lot of attention in this country today as it relates to Canada and Democrats weren't screaming and yelling about that. So fair is fair.
I mean, Fetterman, look, you've got, you know, and by the way, thanks governor for doing this. I really appreciate it.
I wanted to have this conversation for a long time you know two of the uh of the three best economic populist in the democratic party who i think are kind of on an island one of the best is ro kahana rose economic patriotism which we always kid him is just ripping off navarre and my economic nationalism is, you know, he's an economic populist. So is Fetterman.

Fetterman just announced, you know, we're here today during the CR. Fetterman just announced he would support the CR if it came in.
Fetterman's a populist. And then Sherrod Brown.
Sherrod Brown, I think, has been an economic populist for a long time. So there are very strong voices in the Democratic Party, I think.
Now, unfortunately, as a populist, I think they're kind of on an island because it really hasn't been the center of the conversation with the Democratic Party. But I think those three are pretty good as far as populist goes.
And Steve, I mean, in terms of populism, it's a good segue. How do you define that then? What's, I mean, is it a principle? Obviously, terror may be a component part, but how do you define populism, particularly in relationship to their reflective lens in terms of that being democratic leaders? Obviously, we believe in subsidiarity.
We believe in bringing power back to the grassroots level, right? We're very anti-elitist. And one of the reasons is we think the elites in this country, the know, the highly educated elites, the political class, the Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, all of it, have really forgotten the underlying kind of principles of the country and kind of left working class people, regardless of their race, gender, ethnicity, sexual preference, you know, you pick it, they've kind of forgotten.
And that's why it's such a big push for kind of these populist economic policies to look to put the lens is not just America first, but American citizens first. It goes with tax policy.
It goes with tariffs. It goes with bringing manufacturing jobs back.
It's nationalistic in the fact that not isolationist, but understanding that we've got to make it right for American citizens and particularly for the greatest resource we've had or ever had, which is the American working man and woman. So it's to push every decision as down low as possible and to get everything back to a grassroots level.
And one of the keys to populism and kind of about the sovereign will is that the use of human agency, that just don't sit there and say, you know, somebody else has got a congressman who's got to do something or a senator's got to do something or a governor's got to do something. You have to use your agency only.
And I see this in the Democratic Party now, the people saying, do something, do something. I think that's a lesson that we learned after President Trump.
And look, you know, we disagree on this, but President Trump won the 2020 election and we were kind of shattered as a movement when he left Washington, D.C., and we had to go back to basics to say, you know, it can't be somebody else do something. You know, we had to do something, and that's where we went back to really a pure populist movement to go at the grassroots, the precinct strategy, and kind of rebuild ourselves from there.
Well, and I appreciate the notion of agency that we're not bystanders in the world. It's decisions, not conditions that determine our fading future.
And that fundamental notion of agency, I think is important more broadly. And I think that goes to some of the issues around victimization.
And I see a lot of that respectively on the right increasingly, even with Trump often approaching things from that sort of mindset. What do you mean? What do you mean? What do you mean for Trump? I think there's sort of the grievance narrative that comes from Trump.
This this this notion there is sort of a victim. Well, they did try to they did try they did try to put him in prison for 300 years.
Right. They did try to bankrupt.
That's a guy that ever had ever had a set of grievances. They did steal, according to us, and we're firm believes it's the 2020 election, which I think worked out better that providentially that he was able to come back with that gap.
Because I think you're seeing a much more, not just new and improved, but somebody that's much more in command of these decisions and really stepping up in a way that we could have never done before. But no, I don't think it's grievances.
I think it's reality. I mean, they tried to, no one in American history has, has the system ever come after.
And I think that's one of the problems with the Democrats. You got in a position of having to defend.
Remember I come from a working class democratic family, right? I was telling some people last night, I said, we didn't know any Republicans.

There were just we were Irish Catholic working class phone company firemen, you know, a Navy enlisted people. You didn't know any Republicans.
They just weren't in your, you know, we were in the South also, which is all, you know, machine Democratic politics. So you didn't know anybody.
You didn't know anybody then. So to see what President Trump had to go through and to see how we've actively changed the Republican Party to actually the working class party in this country.
You know, there's a poll done last spring that showed that we as a Republican Party are the working class party and viewed as such.

And that President Trump's the leader of that working class party.

And the Democrats have become both not just the Wall Street elitist, but also kind of the credential class with the poor underneath it, of which we're now trying to obviously recruit not just the working poor, but actually the poor itself to join our broadening coalition. I appreciate it.
I want to talk more about that because I think it's interesting just as one of the points

of contrast with you and frankly, Trump himself right now is on some of the issues of tax

policy. And I want to talk more about that because I think it's interesting just as one of the points of contrast with you and frankly, Trump himself right now is on some of the issues of tax policy in relationship to this notion of who are you for.
And you've been pretty critical about the proposed tax, the extension of the existing tax cuts that disproportionately favor the wealthiest. And you are making the point that it should disproportionately focus on the middle class and working.
You know, Governor, I'm not so sure. Let me get there.
So in 17, I was a big advocate of that in the first Trump tax plan of actually raising the rates on the upper bracket and doing actually more to the lower bracket in the corporations. And it was not just what I thought was right, but also politically expedient.
At that time in the spring of 2017, it was really Bernie Sanders and Pocahontas that was going to be the- Senator Warren. Elizabeth Warren is going to be, Pocahontas we call, going to be the challengers coming from the populist left.
And I thought it was very important to nip that in the bud of time and raise the brackets. Now, I think history shows that they can show you the math that doing all of that actually worked in unison and got us that great, you know, 2019.
Today, and President Trump, I think, and Besson are pretty upfront that this is the last chance we're going to get at a supply side cut. Of that $4 trillion, I think the $2.6 trillion of joint, you know, $400,000 and below of couples, and I think you add another couple of hundred billion dollars for maybe the pass-throughs to the LLC so the entrepreneurs get caught up.
But that additional trillion dollars, unless it can be shown mathematically, and I think people are working on this, that they consume, you know, right now I think the top 3% consumed almost 50% of what's going on in the country. Unless you're concerned that that would kick you into a major recession if that went away, I'm pretty adamant about that.
You shouldn't, the upper bracket shouldn't get it. And even some of the corporations shouldn't get it if they're just going to do stock buybacks.
But additional tax cuts should go as President Trump promised. No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and particularly no tax on Social Security.
Yeah, but I mean, his current proposal doesn't add up then in that respect. Blows the deficit and continues those corporate tax cuts and continues the tax cuts to the wealthiest.
So it runs. And I think we're not to be argumentative.
No, appreciate it. We want to have an open dialogue.
I think when you look at Besson and Charlie Gasparino had a pretty good piece in the New York Post today about this. If you add in, if you look at the growth rates and this predicate on growth, you look at a growth rate two and a half to three percent.
Right. If you add in, if you look at the growth rates, and this predicated on growth, you look

at a growth rate 2.5% to 3%, right? If you look at what we're trying to do on cutting federal

spending, in addition, DOGE, which is the waste, fraud, and abuse, and you look at additional

revenues externally from tariffs, you can get to, and what Besson's trying to do is take the

deficit from 6.5% of GDP down to 3.5% of GDP. So this out-of-control explosion of $2 trillion in deficits, which we as Republicans are about to sign off on today.
Just so your audience understands, this CR today, the House, will approve the Biden-Kamala Harris spending for this year, locking it in, locking it in.

And that's how you can't be.

I mean,

how are you out there supporting that then?

Well,

because right now I think with everything it does.

And by the way,

it's just,

it's that plus it's a two train dollar deficit.

Okay.

I think the reason we're doing it is that the house has not gotten their act

together to get these single subject appropriations bills done.

They are committed to do that.

Working with Democrats in the spring and summer this year for fiscal Thank you. The House has not gotten their act together to get these single subject appropriations bills done.

They are committed to do that working with Democrats in the spring and summer this year for fiscal year 26. And I think to keep the to keep the government open, to keep President Trump hitting on all senators, to keep Doge at work in federal court overnight.
The federal courts are coming after Doge. This is on at least information.
We expect many more lawsuits about that.

But I think in the effort to do it, we're prepared. And you know, we hate any CR.
This one, we've hated for a long time. We're prepared to go along.
The president says he needs it. What I love about Johnson for the first time, they just announced they're going to vote on it this afternoon.
He thinks he's got the votes in the House to do it. Then they're going on recess.
They're sending it over to the Democratic Senate with a play me or trade me. They need seven votes on the Senate side in order to get this done.
Otherwise, we've got a government shutdown yet another one. What is your over under on the prospects of that? I think it's interesting.
I think the Democrats have to make a decision of whether they think it's better to keep it going and keep the resistance they've got in the legislative part, but also in the courts or let Elon Musk, you know, potentially unchaining with the doge groups on who's, you know, who's who's a necessary employee versus who's an unnecessary employee. I think it's the first time because traditionally the Democrats have always been for keeping the government open.

I think they put them in a real conjuring.

I think it's the first time because traditionally the Democrats have always been for keeping the government open. I think they put them in a real conjuring.
I think this is Johnson's, it's going to be high stakes poker, I think this afternoon, but people should understand this is a bitter pill to swallow for us because we have argued, this is the whole reason Kevin McCarthy, a guy you know very well from California, we got turfed at his speaker. It was all over.
It was the deal he cut with Biden that gave President Biden two years and unlimited no debt ceiling to spend and run up. And McCarthy then didn't deliver on the single subject appropriations bills and he got turfed out.
So your audience understand these are huge fights on our side of the football all the time about spending. Texas on May 3rd, hosted by Bobby Bones.
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So locking in the Biden-era budget, or at least extending it and kicking it out, it's the last thing I expected to see coming from your side of the aisle, or at least the MAGA movement. But also just even you saying something complimentary about Speaker Johnson.
You've been pretty critical of the speaker. I've been very critical.
Up until today, I've been very critical about we're in this job because of over-promising and underperforming. And I think you got to, in leadership, I think now, and I think it's a long way from him being out of the woods, is that now because you got only, he's got six months now, he's got to deliver like a real budget with real cuts.
Because just back for your audience, the Doge effort is waste, fraud, and abuse. Okay.
They're kind of like shock troops or special forces. And people can either say they're great or whatever.
I would like to see a little more definition of what they've actually found. Okay.
All of us would. A little bit of accountability, transparency.
I agree with that. More transparency.
But that doesn't, to me, get to the meat of it. Because I think you're going to have to have programmatic cuts.
And I've been a big proponent that those programmatic cuts have to start in the defense department. I was a naval officer for eight years.
My daughter went to West Point. I'm not a dove, but I think I've been a big critic of the, we're at a trillion dollars now.
And that's one of the reasons of this post-war international rules-based order. We just can't continue on with NATO.
We got to have allies that really pitch in here, but you got to start in the defense department. Program, Matt, you have to do programs and billets to get the budget deficit to three and a half percent of GDP, roughly under a trillion dollars, so that we can start, somehow we can begin to finance this, because right now that's the driver of inflation.
You know, Biden, they just restated their numbers from the fourth quarter, and traditionally the Biden thing has always been, the labor number has always been different, right? It's been, you know, one thing and we've criticized that for a long time. This one, the shocker, and I don't think that, and I've said this, that the guys on the economic team did enough for President Trump pushing this.
The inflation number went from 2.2% to 4.2%. And it really didn't even get mentioned in the business for us.
And I said, that shows you the underlying kind of burning inflation. And the reason that is you have to finance now essentially a third of the debt every year.
So you're talking, I don't know, 10, 12 trillion dollars of government securities you have to sell at higher interest rates. That's what's driving inflation.
Plus, I think a too loose Federal Reserve. So you had both a fiscal overspending and a monetary loose money.
We've got an inflation problem that's not going to be easily solved. The way to solve inflation is you have to cut, I believe, federal spending dramatically.
You have a Keynesian kind of stimulus all the time and you have to do it. And that's going to lead to painful conversations.
It just is because if Doge doesn't find all this waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And they're saying now they think they can get a trillion dollars, which would cut the deficit in half. You can't get a trillion, back to your point, without significant programmatic cuts.
And I appreciate the defense frame, which is anathema. I mean, the CR increases the defense spending and locks in a higher rate.
But you can't get there without cuts to something that you, to your credit, have said, you know, you can't put a quote unquote meat axe towards the Medicaid side. I came out of the Pentagon, and this is why I was adamant about Elon Musk, what we call crossing the Potomac.
There's a point in time that people are saying, well, let Pete Hicks handle the Pentagon. I said, no.
To get, if to get, first off, waste, hard enough use, I think everybody has to get an assessment. And not just that, the Pentagon's got to step up.
People have to know that, because it's always rumored, they can't pass an audit. It's $2 trillion of assets.
$2 trillion just for the damn F-35, which we can get into that question. That's programmatically, but there's two trillion on the audit.
I think there's two trillion of assets they can't put their hands on. John Stewart was just lighting up one of the undersecretaries of defense, I think, a couple of weeks ago about this.
So you have to do that, but then programmatically, and this is why I think President Trump's shift to hemispheric defense, which is from Greenland to the Panama Canal, more of a naval strategy. the Pacific.
It's the three island chains. And really, the vast desert of the Pacific is really the American heartland.
That's our defensive barrier. That, to me, should restructure the entire Pentagon and armed forces to force structure around that.
I think Pete Hex has got to move immediately. I think there should be significant cuts to the Defense Department.
and then that would give you the political cover to then say on medicaid you know we got to be sensible here we right now with the economic distress there's a lot of maga on medicaid yeah a lot of man overwhelming opposition to cutting it from and and i think by you know the illegal aliens and and and uh and obviously the waste fraud and abuse and and some of the things about, you know, a block granting it back to a governor like yourself and to California to figure it out has to happen. And all the social programs, this is not going to be painless to we've been so out of control.
And it's both parties. The Republican Party has been controlled opposition.
They have not had these tough fights. That's right.
That's the tough fights we're going to have to have. And to be fair, so people understand, and it's not an indictment to your point about both parties, but, you know, another $8.4 trillion went to the debt under Trump administration.
And to be fair, COVID had a huge part of that, but it's $3 trillion even before COVID hit, to your point. And I remember talking, by the way, you'll appreciate this, Steve.
I remember being in Marine One, talking to Trump, President Trump, about the issue of the deficit. And he literally looks at me and he goes like this with his hands.
And he said, printing press, printing press, and literally dismissed it. He was kidding.
He was kidding. Well, I'm not the way he governed the first four years.
I'm not sure he was. By the way, the first couple of years, the first couple of years, the deficits were under, I think, four or five hundred billion dollars.
We came very close to actually trying to balance it. If we went back to pre-COVID spending, I mean, Scott Besson says this all the time.
We don't have a revenue problem. And this is where everybody would think about having to increase your taxes.
We have a spending problem. I mean, post-COVID, we've had explosion of some of these programs.
I think you've got to get your arms around them. But once again, these are going to be huge fights and they're not going to be painless.
What I liked about Johnson today for the first time, because I think he's tapped us along and over promise. And now we're in a situation that, you know, we have to do a CR, which we hate.
If you think that the MAGA base and our show, we represent the hardest core of the hardcore. If you think we like sitting here and basically not lighting up the phones and accepting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's budget, it's a tough pill.
It's a hell of a thing. I mean, I'm enjoying watching this in some respects.
No, but what I liked about what I liked about him, he's voting and going home. He's going to put it right on the Democrats about shutting down the government or not.
And I think you're going to have a real firestorm in the Senate. And I think a fascinating debate about the direction of the country.
And I think we're going to see that. I think we're going to see that coming.
I think you'll see voices like Fetterman and others start to step up and take a much more prominent role in Democratic Party. Because one thing I keep saying all the time, if you'd watch MSNBC and CNN, you never really see the populace on the economic side.
You don't see the Rocahannes getting the time. You don't see Fetterman really getting the time.
Sherrod Brown and Sherrod didn't want to do national TV, but you never see really the economic populist ever really get, they kind of roll out Bernie Sanders, who I'm not a fan of, but they don't really ever get to the other guys. I think that's all going to become quite different in the days and weeks ahead.
Well, I think, Steve, just listening to those of you that may have some familiarity to you, but never have taken the time to actually listen to you or tune into the war room. I mean, the idea that you're even talking about the corporate tax rate and the tax rate for the wealthiest among us and having, I mean, the fact that we're having this dialogue about your different approach.
I mean, in some ways, it's the California tax policy as it relates to more progressive tax policy that favors the working class. We would never take anything from California.
I understand. I'm challenging you on the point.
You're grossly overtaxed in California. We want to cut taxes.
We have moderate income taxes for middle-class working folks. It's the top tax rate, which you're arguing for a little higher tax rate, which I appreciate in the corporate tax side.
I don't know if it's completely dissimilar. I don't want to get you in trouble.
But on the issue of tariffs, I want to go back to that because you're a big, you know, you're a big supporter of tariffs. I mean, right now this, you know, this tit for tat, what's going on in Ontario, we doubled another 25% back to aluminum and steel up in Canada.
We're already seeing the- I think we're increasing. I think we're increasing aluminum and steel.
I think he said today, a hundred percent. Is it going a hundred? It was a 20- There was another- I think it was a true social, not that it's tit for tat, but there was a true social right before I came along.
I think there were a hundred, literally a hundred true social posts. And I, you know, with respect on terror policy, it seems a little chaotic.
There's no stability. The markets are reflecting that.
I used to say the most powerful force in the world was mother nature. Now I say the markets.
I mean, people, there's a, now you're seeing even, well, I will tell you session. You're saying, I will tell you, I say this, the bond market, the bond market, more than the stock market, the bond market has turfed out more governments than howitzers.
If you look over the last couple of years, Liz trust in England, really the assembly in France under Macron, the Germans, right? The Italians are probably close to a sovereign debt crisis. Spain, England's been a couple of governments, even Starmer's under real pressure.
So no, the global capital markets, particularly when you have to borrow this much money, the 10-year treasury is, you know, Bob Rubin used to run the country under Clinton. And this is why Carville said, I want to come back as a 10-year bond or the bond market.
That 10-year bond sets everybody's economic underpinnings. And so it's very important.
But I think with President Trump, it's both a growth strategy and part of his tariffs. Governor, it shouldn't be lost that the tariffs have many different aspects to it.
Number one, he wants to get back at least somehow back to more of the American plan from Alexander Hamilton McKinley. Before the early 1900s, driven by the earthquake in San Francisco and the fire, we had a massive financial panic.
And that led to really the Internal Revenue Service and people focusing more on getting off American domicile companies and American citizens. President Trump wants to go back to more external revenue.

That's part of the tariffs.

He looks at the U.S. as a premium market.

And so you would pay a premium to get access to here like you would get a skybox at a sporting event

or sit in the front row of a concert.

But he's got an out.

If you want an out, because the tariffs are going to be substantial, right,

particularly in Mexico and Canada, so you can't game the system manufacturing-wise and against China, just look over the last, you know, he's been there 40 days. I think over the last three or four weeks, you've had almost a trillion dollars.
I think it's $800 billion from Honda, from Siemens, from Apple. It was $500 billion.
Taiwan, a semiconductor, you know, $100 billion in four years. These are massive capital investments in top grade.
This is not some sovereign wealth fund saying I'm going to come in. It's not Masa San, it's SoftBank saying I'm going to throw $100 billion.
These are companies that are relocating here. And a big part of that is the tariffs.
They say, look, we want to get into the United States. We want to manufacture domestically.
It's got a logistics supply chain we can control. It's got the rule of law, but most importantly, it doesn't have tariffs and it's got lower energy costs.
That's the new economic model. And it's going to go through some choppy water to get there.
So these are just not a 25% tariff on an avocado coming from Mexico or some part under the hood from Canada. It's much more systematic.
Now, I understand the way it was rolled out because of the emergency nature of it. The focus was on fentanyl, this chemical warfare.
Yeah, which is a little BS, isn't it? I mean, there's a larger economic populism frame here.

Let's just be honest with folks. It had nothing to do with the tyrannical nature of prime minister

or 51st governor of America, Justin Trudeau's policies on the board.

But hold it.

The Canadians have been, the Canadians are one of the tough,

this is why when you talk about reciprocity on August, on April 2nd, you're going to have

reciprocity in tariffs. And in India and Canada.
Is that, you think that's going to go in effect

in April? You think, I mean, with all the uncertainty, the market uncertainty, the Trump

slump, all of the stress and the anxiety that people are feeling, all the doubt. I don't call

it the Trump slump. Listen.
I know. Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett, who's a big Democrat and a supporter of many Democratic politicians because you know him very well.
He went to cash. He's sitting on $350 billion in cash a couple months ago.
I think he realized that a lot of the markets, particularly equity markets, were driven by NVIDIA and all this AI first kind of stage. There was a lot of fluff in that.
So I think with President Trump, I do think they're coming in because I think he's changing the geostrategic model of the United States back to a hemispheric defense away from the post-war international rules-based order, which has really gutted the United States. It was great for a while.
I mean, 80 years of relative peace and prosperity, and America dominated. I mean, there's a lot of attributes.
But it gutted the middle class, remember, and the working class. And at the end of the day, we had allies that were taken advantage of it.
Give me a second on this. If you take the rim of the Eurasian landmass, you've got Western Europe, the Persian Gulf, the Gulf Emirates, Middle East, then you've got the Straits of Malacca, the South China Sea, and then up to Korea and Japan.
Those four nodes, we have commercial relationships, trade deals, capital markets integration, some cultural interface, but it's an American security guarantee. This is how, whether it's NATO or the Middle East or South China Sea, or are with Japan and Korea, we have combat troops there.
We have 150,000 troops deployed today in, I think, 115 countries. This is one of the reasons people talk about foreign aid with USAID, which I'm against a lot of this stuff going on, but it pales in comparison to what we're underwriting for countries that were upside down on every trade deal.
Our trade deficit in, I think in January alone was a record trade deficit. I think it was a hundred billion dollars.
So not just do we have budget deficits, we have trade deficits that are kind of interstrictly linked because we've gutted all the manufacturing jobs. We've all shored those.
And I think Trump's geoeconomic strategy is a massive reshoring process. And I think you're seeing this now.
And I might note, and I don't want to take a cheap shot, a lot of those traditionally would go back to California, but they're going to Arizona and Texas because I think they're looking at red states now as having lower regulation, lower taxes, and people are going there. And I think this is going to change a massive demographic change in the United States as you have Trump's reshoring comeback to the United States.
And so, to be fair, that's tied to unwinding the post-war international rules-based order. We're going to tell people that, hey, we're not going to be everywhere.
Kids from California are not going to be on carrier battle groups.

You know, guys deployed from San Diego and kids that live in the Inland Empire are not going to be deployed in the Red Sea with two carrier battle groups that keep the Suez Canal open so that Europe can get, you know, can get energy resources from the Persian Gulf. I think those days are kind of over.
We'll pick and choose as we pull back and look at hemispheric defense, not retreat from the world, not be isolationist, but kind of take care of the homeland first and particularly take care of the people in the homeland, the working class, and middle class. Hey, it's Amy Brown from The Bobby Bone Show.
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best effort see thousands of stars in some of the darkest skies stake out haunted hotels can you make it to sunrise there's always something new to see because we've got plenty of space to just be plan your trip at travelnevada.com i appreciate how you laid all that out. I think there's risk in the context of the argument to move into a multipolar world.
And obviously the security umbrellas that will radically reorganize themselves. You already see now with Mertz and Germany in the relationship with obviously Britain and France.
But also I worry about Japan and South Korea and that relationship. I worry about the nature of our broader influence, but I want to step back.
There was a lot that influenced a lot of those companies you said that are coming back to the United States of America. Do you not agree that the industrial policies of the Biden administration, as it relates to the infrastructure bill, aspects of the IRA, aspects of the Chips and Science Act, were they not determinative from an industrial worker center policy perspective? Were they not also influential in the decision for people to begin to quote unquote reshore or make unprecedented investments? It might have been at the beginning, but it was President Trump.
They announced it on President Trump's term. If President Trump had not won this election and he just had...
You don't think those companies... No, I do not.
There was record investments coming back during the Biden years. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I think Biden in the entire four years was $1.7 trillion of capital investment back here from, I think, companies, not just private equity. From the private sector.
From the private sector, right? Not just that. But Trump's almost at a trillion dollars in four weeks.
And these are Apple because they understand that Trump represents a populist nationalist that's only growing and only going to expand, right? And people are now focused on this. And that's why I think you have Honda, you have Siemens, you have, you know, the semiconductor company is huge.
You know, they're the most advanced, I would say, semiconductor manufacturer in the world. The other thing I think is quite interesting that traditionally our tech area in 128 in Boston and Silicon Valley are built around great engineering schools, built around Berkeley and Stanford are built around Harvard and MIT.

You know, when you start relocating to Arizona on something that's both an art and a science like advanced chip design. And, you know, I love Mike Crow at Arizona State.
He's a buddy of mine. University of Arizona is a great school.
I love Arizona. They're not exactly MIT or Stanford.
or Stanford.

And I think it's showing you that there,

that the red States have done such a great job,

Texas being the lead, of actually making these amenable to people's needs as companies that they're coming back there. And I think it's going to have a huge political impact and a huge demographic.
But they didn't come and Biden, Harris. And if Kamala Harris won, certainly they wouldn't have come because she's still a globalist that's not prepared to disrupt the global supply chains.
President Trump's prepared to do that because reshoring, they're not going to come back here unless you incentivize them to come back here. And part of that's a carrot, which is what- Well, that was what the IRA was.
That's what the infrastructure chips and science, 52 billion. But as you know, Trump's better with a stick and you need a carrot and a stick.
And I appreciate the stick, but let's talk about those red states. Aren't they disproportionately the ones impacted by these tariffs? I mean, to your point, there's going to be some tears here.
And I appreciate the larger geopolitical and what you're trying to argue for ultimately coming out on the other side. But this transition is not overnight.
The transition will come at real cost and consequence. Let's just be pragmatic.
Up in Minnesota, Michigan, in New York, they're looking at $100 more a month on electricity bills as it relates to the retaliatory nature of what happened. That's a threat.
That's if it goes through some agricultural... But that's just one example.
I mean, every economist looks at the impacts of these tariffs. But California will be disproportionately impacted.
We did this governor. We did the most significant tariffs we've ever done on the Chinese Communist Party in President Trump's first term.
And Biden held the line on a lot of this. He definitely held the line.
Well, number one, because I think geopolitically, he realized that, you know, you've got to stand up to the CCP. And I think, although you wouldn't have heard it from the media, that what President Trump did was a beginning stage of something that had to be done to get the attention of the Chinese Communist Party, that you just can't continue to game the system.
President Trump went out of his way. By May of 19, Lighthizer and Navarro had that deal that went to every seven of the categories they had to resolve to really integrate with the Western economy or really the world's economy, including the state-owned industries.
And they just tore the deal up and walked away, right? And said, screw you. And so that's when these tariffs and the tariffs didn't increase prices.
So when people say they increased prices, I don't actually think you have some economists saying theoretically, but when we look at practically back to the golden year of 2019, you don't actually see it. And I think there may be some dislocations in the short term, but in the intermediate term, I think it's really the way you get to the sunlit uplands of really having back to the American plan of, remember, world-class industrial manufacturing that generates so many other opportunities.
I think it's a mutual goal for all of us, but industrial policy, which I think is missing a little bit from the Trump agenda with targeted tariffs, I understand, but broad tariffs without an industrial policy to back it up is where I start to lose a little. The key is broad, sustained.
If you have broad and sustained tariffs and people can make capital allocation decisions, particularly small and medium manufacturers. Remember, in the Chicago area, I think between 1998 and 2005, we lost 5,000 small manufacturers and a couple of million jobs because we shipped it all to China.
And those guys are begging all the time. These are not the apples and it's not the Taiwan manufacturing.
Some of these guys are manufacturing. These are small.
You know, these companies employ under 100 people, which I think is the lifeblood. In fact, there's a guy in Laguna Beach, John Gardner, who's kind of the leader of this effort to bring the small manufacturing folks back to more craftsmanship type of uh of uh of manufacturing we have to do that we have to become a manufacturing powerhouse again uh we have to do it quickly and it's gonna no one disagree i mean wall street's not gonna love it because they're all neoliberal neocons they want to be they want to be invading everywhere and and they and they they hate populism.
One of the reasons people should understand is the is the is the is the blowback among the donor class in Wall Street is not just that they perceive the economics and not to their benefit because they've concentrated wealth so dramatically here since the financial crash of 2008. But they hate the fact and this shows you the Democratic Party, they hate the fact that they're empowering the populist.
If we start to win on these tariffs, if we start to win on bringing these back, our movement is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. Remember, we got 39% of African-American men.
I think the first time we've got a majority or near majority of Hispanics because working class people see the opportunities there. And Wall Street understands this and the corporatists understand this.
I can't. Corporate America is my enemy.
Number one, they're the leader in the woke movement in this country. But they're also the greed and avarice has always been for the leaders.
In fact, the tax cuts they take. And one of the reasons I hate allowing them to do stock buybacks is they game the system to drive up stock prices, to drive the warrant package and the thing, and they don't put in a capital equipment.
Thank you. Same page.
You got to tell your president that, Steve. You got to tell your president that.
He's about to extend the status quo. The president knows this already is taxed.
Why does he go after the carried interest? Why is he subsidies for big oil? I'm going to break some news here, Governor. I believe that one of the leading things you're going to see in President Trump's tax bill when it comes out, that he's going to take on carried interest.
And President Trump has finally had a bill. Well, that's my kind of doge.
That's $1.3 billion. Small ball, but it's symbolic and substantive.
What about the $3 billion in oil and gas subsidies? I mean, that's ultimate corporate welfare. What do you mean? We've got to drill baby drill.
We need to get lower energy costs. We are 13 and a half billion barrels, a million barrels a day.
We have to have lower energy costs. And one of the reasons all these companies are coming back.
We're never, what we got to do is stop. Look, you see this in Germany.
Germany had this maniacal, and you and I are not going to agree on this even close, but they had this fetish. A fetish for net carbon zero.
They've de-industrialized themselves on the Greta Thunberg model. They're at 3 and 5% negative growth.
It was pre-Greta Thunberg. She wasn't even bored, but I appreciate your frame.
No, but they de-industrializing Germany. We don't want that to happen here in the United States.
No, we're on the same page on that. It's just how we achieve the goal.
And by the way, 100% aligned on industrial policy, bringing manufacturing back that's worker-centered, 100%. By the way, I say that as governor of the largest manufacturing state in America, a state that has more corporate headquarters, God bless, forgive me, than any other state in America, more than we've had in over a decade, and that dominates in the innovative space in terms of scientists, engineers, researchers.
Hang on, but hang on, you've allowed, but hang on a second, hang on a second. You've also allowed, and you've also allowed the oligarchy of Silicon Valley.
Well, let's talk about that. Silicon Valley is an apartheid state.
Right. Okay.
You're one of the most progressive leaders in this country, right? We disagree probably on everything on the cultural side, but you're one of the leaders. You're one of the leaders, elected officials of the most progressive state, and you're the leader of that element of the Democratic Party.
What do you call it? Techno-feudalism.

Techno-feudalism. What do you mean by that exactly? Well, here's what I mean is that two things happened around 2008 to 2010.
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That's the Wall Street, the bailout. Well, the bailout, the financial crash of 2008.
And this is why I consider President Obama kind of a tragic figure, right? He came in as an anti-war populace. And I am opposed to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.
My daughter served after West Point in Iraq. And I can tell you as a parent, you realize that you have no control over anything when your kid goes over, you know, defending their country, representing their country.
You understand, you know, how insignificant you are. But the financial crash, you know, Geithner and Bernanke went to a classic Wall Street bailout.
You know, we didn't let capitalism, you know, Goldman Sachs got bailed out, AIG. No corporate guys ever went to prison on the worst bailout.
We had the greatest concentration of wealth until the pandemic happened with the 1% because the Federal Reserve's balance sheet went from $880 billion to I think four and a half, right? And all that liquidity went to bail out real assets and corporate stocks. At the same time with Obama, when Obama got this heads up kind of, I think it was on Facebook, the San Francisco airport, this briefing about how social media is his weapon to take on the Clinton mafia because he was a relatively unknown guy taking on the most embedded political apparatus in the Democratic Party in modern history.
And he took it all with using social media.

That was his his first thing.

And there was a deal kind of made a faustian bargain that we wouldn't pursue

antitrust we wouldn't pursue ftc or the justice department we would allow the the tech oligarchs in the age of the algorithm the algorithmic age to to basically dominate and dominate in every one of these these verticals right with no real anti-just antitrust and what we allowed them to become the most powerful people on earth.

But what proved out is that both on social media with TikTok and then with DeepSeek in the AI space, that the Falcini bargain, as a hegemon, we said, just give us the commanding heights.

And that didn't happen.

In fact, you say it's kind of an utter failure that the social media is all kind of clunky. It's very dominant, right? But it's clunky compared to TikTok.
If you look at AI and whether DeepSeek, you think it's a Chinese psyop or it's a Sputnik moment. Well, it sure as hell was a disruptor.
We clearly, you know, you don't hear a lot of talking about net carbon zero when this thing needs 10 times more power. On the data center side.
In the thing, because it's kind of brute force computing. So it has resuscitated the nuclear question, which is interesting.
So there's still a commitment. They haven't completely thrown out fully the commitment to low carbon green growth.
But your point directionally, I understand. Governor, don't get there.
Because they don't have the power. They don't have their business model.
Now, for that epic fail, what's the they've gotten away from capitalism is about markets and profits. OK, they are now about digital platforms and rent.
They're rent seekers and they don't believe in even open borders. These guys are techno feudalists that you have a digital platform.
You had kind of digital serfs that serve that.

And you add it to AI and what they want to do in advanced AI of cutting out all the entry level managerial, administrative, low tech work. We're going to have a massive problem about unemployment.
And they're just on their merry way. And here's what, just like the lords of easy Money on Wall Street came to the Federal Reserve and the Treasury for a bailout and no working class or middle class people, you know this in California, got a bailout.
They paid for the bailout through the taxes. What's the first thing? Silicon Valley comes, the first thing they come for is we need a new mercury program.
We need a Marshall program. We need five hundred billion dollars and they need to turn over the Lawrence Livermore weapons lab in California, Sandia.
We need to take control of all the national labs and we need a five hundred billion dollar bailout because of the Sputnik moment. So they come back to the taxpayers.
This way, I think these guys are very dangerous and it's created in Silicon Valley. And I understand the beginning there was rationale for this, but now it's not.
And it's got to be. And I think you've got to be one of the leaders of it.
Of course, California is. If we're ever to get a control of the oligarchs, you as governor and as quite frankly, the leader of that wing of the party have got to work with us to say, hey, this can't go on any longer.
We first thing we need is Lena Khan. And we got rid of her.
So I was going to ask you, you had someone who was actually starting to deal with some of these issues and then Trump threw her out. Correct me if I'm wrong, Governor.
I don't think Kamala Harris, I don't think Lena Kahn's name ever crossed the lips of Kamala Harris. I don't recall, but they never had her back.
She's the first one to say that they never had her back. She's a neo-Brandeisian after Louis Brandeis, which always warned against the concentration of private power.
And also celebrated citizenship, which I appreciate. Active, not inert citizenship.
Exactly. Most powerful office in our democracy.
He was a big believer in human agency. And by the way, with Gil Slater, Gil Slater's deputy, with Andrew Ferguson, also Mike Davis and Rachel Bovard on the outside, we are the most, we want to break up.
In fact, you see the suits right now in Northern Virginia and DC against Google. I mean, the hardcore populist wing of the MAGA movement really wants to target Silicon Valley to break them up.
And look, I appreciate that. And you've been consistent on that for years.
And obviously goes to, you know, I imagine some of your issues with Elon, and we haven't even gotten to that. And I know that's all gone.
Do you have any issues? Do you have any issues? Yeah, I know. You called him evil.
You called him a racist. You have a parasitic illegal alien, I think was your exact phrase your phrase not mine uh though we may share some commonality in terms of concern about what he's doing but that said let me just hold it hang on hang on concern you guys love it see you loved all the oligarchs and particularly elon until they flipped and remember all the rest of these oligarchs were all progressive Democrats until 11 p.m.
I don't know if they're progressive. I refer to them as libertarian, and I know these guys intimately, known them for decades.
So you know the danger we're dealing with. No, look, but why doesn't Donald Trump, why doesn't President Trump, the leader of the movement, Trumpism, without Trump? I mean, maybe it's MAGA, it's the work you're doing in that populist base.
But why isn't he pushing back? He brings someone in from Treasury, puts a Commerce Secretary that only reinforces this. First off, at Treasury, I think you're seeing a very smart analysis about M&A and about the oligarchs.
I think, look, with Gil Slater, Andrew Ferguson, I mean, these are one notch down and maybe not as well known as Lena Kahn, but they're in the same school of thought of neo-Brandeisian of concern about the concentration, the tremendous concentration of private power. And President Trump's working through this right now.
Look, all these guys just became, their Damascene moment was 11 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on the 5th of November when Pennsylvania was called for Trump.
Once that, all of them, Zuckerberg, all these guys, they became MAGA. Zuckerberg started growing the hair, working out, doing Kung Fu.
Well, Elon was there a little bit before, it seemed. Elon was there before after he dumped desantis elon i think very smartly this goes back to the precinct i give him trend his credit he saw the math of what we were doing as grassroots of this precinct strategy canvassing he backed the play i mean and look no one's ever written a 250 million dollar check when they know i think it's more but i but that's my humble opinion.
It may be more eventually. I think it's up to 280.
But he backed it on the least sexy aspect, which is backing grassroots, going door to door. And particularly, he would go up and campaign in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
And forgive me, but what's his end game? I mean, look, he wants to be the first trillionaire in the world. I mean, what's his end game here? Well, you know, you guys you created a governor.
I mean, you know, in many respects, California did. It was our regulatory process and our subsidies to create this market.
You're 100 percent right. I think you're right about that.
He left Canada to come to California. That was his, you know, and then a big and then a big check from the federal government, from everybody watching that backed his play early on when he was in deep need.
He paid it back relatively quickly, but he's been the beneficiary of billions and billions and billions of dollars. 38 loans, I think 38 billion dollars.
So what do you seriously want him to take over the Starlink, to take over the FAA and the air traffic control system? Here's what I think. The hell is that? Here's what, listen, I laid out this concept at CPAC in 17 that it was going to be, you know, populist economics and economic nationalism, America first national security.
And the third was a deconstruction of the administrative state. What Elon Musk has done, and I think this is the engineer, you know, the better angels of Elon, that engineer's brain.
I think it kicked in when he saw the strategy of how we actually win in building a coalition of working class people. He supported that in President Trump.
I think now, and this is why I think he jumped on it, he sees that we have an apparatus. And I think you'd be the first to admit the administrative state that's kind of anti-democratic.
It's there. And I don't care if AOC or Gavin Newsom or Bernie Sanders walks into the Oval Office, President of the United States, the deep state and the apparatus is going to do what they're going to do.
They're going to look at you as just passing through. No, we refer to it in non-pejorative, but there's a clay layer of bureaucracy.

And you're right, unaccountable folks making a lot of decisions.

And I don't think that's wrong.

But yours is a much more- By the way, you know what? I just had an idea. We should invite Elon, because you know these guys better.
You're personal friends with these guys. Elon ought to take a California doge, sit down with you so you can get the ground.
We've been doing it for years. But going to California- But our approach, Steve, is more like Rego.
We already did this.

$140 billion of savings on a $1.4 trillion budget.

That was real savings.

And we did it the right way.

Not two people with people.

400,000 positions under the Clinton administration.

Your favorite family.

Let Elon come out.

Let Elon come out and verify that.

I think for the nation to be good and be good for you.

But he hasn't done that.

There's a recklessness to what he's doing.

Let's go back to Doug.

Unaccountable.

What he's trying to do is get the waste, fraud, and abuse and identified. He has identified USAID, which people have been working on for years, but he's done a good job there.
The other is this $20 billion in Citicorp, you know, where it went. I think people are going to eventually need more details.
I think he said he's going to provide more details. They just went to federal court last night.
A judge ruled. I love that, Steve.
I love that you're defending him now. By the way, he's been pretty soft on you.
Hang on, hang on. He hasn't attacked you back, which is interesting to me.
He's marginally attacked you back. I'm curious your private thoughts on that.
Why do you think? He's a little scared of you, isn't he? No, I don't think Elon. I think he is.
That's my personal opinion. I'm just I'm just a Mick that yells into a microphone.
But but Governor. No, here's I think it's important.
And this is why I think let's get back to why President Trump won again. You have basically working class people, middle class and particularly lower down the chains.
They've seen the bailouts on Wall Street. They've seen the oligarchs be made.
They don't think they have agency. In a global supply chain, they think they're just a cog in the machine, that their voice is not heard, right? They're kind of dismissed culturally.
They're considered, and I don't care if you're black, Hispanic, or white working class. It not a race thing it's it's ethnicity it's you're just dismissed as not being important now with ai coming up they see that even their children that went to college and that in that important 10 years that you get out of school administrative tech managerial are probably not going to be there or be there in some dramatically different way than you came up and your dad came up and my my dad myself.
So I think they see that in the institutions that were supposed to be there to be protective, people question. And the polling shows this category.
And that's why a guy like Trump, Trump comes up and he says, look, in D.C., not in the room, not in the deal. And I'm going to put you in the room.
And people feel comfortable. That's why they love this kind of days of thunder and every day flood the zone with president Trump is doing that president Trump.
And you know, cause you know him very well, he has a visceral connection with working class people that people in politics haven't had, you know, for generations. He just has his work in working class and middle-class.
They trust him and they believe in him and he's designated Elon. I've got a lot of problems with Elon and you know that Elon knows it.
But what I do admire is that he is trying to get this situation to get the waste, fraud and abuse out. I hope it gets to a trillion dollars.
I'm his biggest supporter of that. I don't think we're going to get there.
No, back to your point. That's deep programmatic cuts.
That's deep consequences. And people this summer, and I keep telling people, like, all these corporate CEOs that come to Mar-a-Lago and the tech bros and the broligarchs, and all of them came to the inauguration.
They're all partying in their tuxes. I said, this is all great, celebratory, but we're going to go through a firestorm.
And I think part of this firestorm is not this CR. I think the CR gets kicked down.
But this summer, when you start to go through the programmatic changes that you have to have, we have to get control of federal spending. If we don't, we're never going to get rid of inflation.
That is going to be the acid test. When you talk about defense, you're going to have the Hawks and a lot of other people in the neocons in your grill.
When you talk about what has to happen to Medicaid, you know, when you talk about the social programs, you talk about SNAP, you talk about these.

We're about to have a national conversation that we've never had. We've never, and there's no easy alternatives, all the easy alternatives we left, you know, a decade or a couple of decades ago, this is going to get to down to say, Hey, we need to get the deficit to under $3,000,000 or like three and a half percent.
We're never going to people in this. Your audience should understand something.
We will never pay off one penny of the face amount of debt. As we increase this now, about every hundred days of another trillion dollars, it's just the interest right now.
It's the gross interest charge. I think it's a trillion for which is the way it's got to be looked, not net, because they kind of take the they take the interest on the bonds we sell ourselves and they net it out, which I think is unfair accounting.
You got to look at the gross right now. It's significantly over the Defense Department.
And I would tell people, too, as we kind of wrap up or get close to wrap up in the history of countries, no country's ever come back economically that it's GDP, that it's debts above its GDP. And we are now at that space.
In addition, no nation on national security has ever survived as a major power when the interest payments on their debt go above what they pay for national security. And a trillion dollars, we are now over – our national security right now is one trillion dollars.
And we are thinking about a trillion, two to a trillion, four in interest payments alone. Yeah, but Steve, that's why this tax cuts, extending the tax cuts is reckless in this respect.
I don't agree with that. I think if you want to have a governor, we're at 1.8.
By definition, that substantially increases the problem, increases the debt. If you want to have a shot, if you want to have a shot to get the three and a half, four percent growth, you got to have a supply side tax cuts.

You just and by the way, for people, it's just keeping the tax cut they have today for people.

I know that's the frame, though. You want to see it increased on corporations in the one percent.

I want to see corporations stay. I don't want to see a cut.
But on the upper on the upper brackets, I don't want to I don't want to see extension.

I want to see corporations stay. I don't want to see a cut.
But on the upper brackets, I don't want to see extension. I want them to go back to the old rates and they have to pay the old rates.
And then additionally, if they can't help us get this under control, I'm all for increasing taxes on the, they will have a tax increase if President Trump doesn't extend it. But then I think we'll have another tax increase.
The 1%, the top 3%, because they control Washington, D.C., unless they work together with working class and middle class people to get this spending out of control and get all the corporate welfare out of this, because we hate corporate, we hate crony capitalism and corporate welfare. Except for oil and gas, apparently, Steve.
Come on. Three billion right there.
You've got to generate lower energy costs. There are exceptions apparently to the rule.
First off, you finally admitted for the first time the net carbon fetish is- I didn't admit it. I've been pretty clear on this whole frame, but I'm not naive about it.
But also, by the way, I don't know what more evidence you guys need of Mother Nature's fury than we've had in the last year, but that's another conversation. For another day.
And that's not fanaticism. That's called pragmatism.
Eventually, you work with Roe Kahana and Fetterman, you'll become more of a populist nationalist, and then you'll probably have a bright future. Hey, Steve, I really enjoy this conversation.
I think it's incredibly valuable, and I appreciate the spirit to which we were able to engage, and I hope we can continue the conversation, and I hope we get out of this week without any further disruptions. It's been a hell of a beginning of administration, And I appreciate your advocacy.
I also appreciate that you call balls and strikes as it relates to what you're seeing with the administration. I also think that for your audience, there's a saying that there are decades in which nothing happens and there are weeks in which decades happen.
We're living in that time right now. So whatever happens this week, next week, it's going to be quite intense.
We have an economy to turn around geostrategically. The beginning of the kinetic part of the Third World War has got to be stopped.
So we're living history every day.

And I'm just honored you had me on here. And we were able to conduct this in some level of

decency. I appreciate it, Steve.
Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Governor.
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