Stephen Moore, former Trump economic advisor and now co-host of the Unleash Prosperity podcast, joins me to discuss the latest economic numbers from the 3rd quarter and the outlook for growth in 2020 and beyond. We also talk about the impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and the impact it has on the economy.
00:00:56.000The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by Preserve Gold, the leading gold and silver experts and the only precious metals company I recommend to my family, friends, and viewers.
00:01:09.000All right, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
00:01:11.000Hour two is underway, and President Trump got an early Christmas present with some amazing economic news that came out this morning.
00:01:19.000So here to unpack that with us is former Trump economic advisor, and now he's with Unleash Prosperity.
00:01:26.000And that's, of course, Stephen Moore, a longtime guest on this show and good friend of Charlie's.
00:02:13.000I don't care what the polls are showing, that all of the indicators show a very strong growth year.
00:02:18.000And I think we're going to see a speed up in 2026 because a lot of people come up to me on the street and say, hey, Steve Moore, I know you helped write that big, beautiful bill.
00:02:28.000And I tell people, well, because it hasn't taken effect yet for tens of millions of Americans on January 1st, when they get their first paycheck for the month of January, they're going to start to see less money withheld from their paycheck, which is exactly what Americans want to see.
00:03:01.000And I know many may question data gathering, but on the surface, this would be the strongest quarter going back to the third quarter of 2023 when it was 4.7.
00:03:28.000That's much higher than 2.7 we were looking for.
00:03:31.000All right, so we hit the first part, you know, where we beat the GDP forecast by over a point potentially.
00:03:38.000But what is he talking about with this price index, Steve?
00:03:41.000Well, I'm not exactly sure, quite honestly, because we got a really blockbuster number on inflation earlier the week, or late last week, I guess it was, where the inflation rate fell to 2.7%.
00:03:53.000And if you look at the last couple of months, inflation is headed down to 2% or less.
00:03:59.000And as you know, the Fed target rate, which is the rate we should shoot at, is about 2% inflation.
00:05:39.000So for young people to say, oh, gee, this isn't a very good economy.
00:05:42.000They don't, they can't put this in any kind of perspective.
00:05:45.000Now, I think the one thing that where I would like to see improvement on is on the housing front, because I have two sons that are in their early 30s, and they're doing fine with their careers, but they cannot afford to buy a house.
00:05:57.000And that's a result of a lot of things we could get into it.
00:06:00.000But it is true that housing is very expensive right now.
00:06:04.000So what is driving that then, Stephen, the housing market?
00:06:08.000If you talk to JD Vance, if you listen to what he's saying, he's saying it's a supply and demand issue.
00:06:12.000We've just been letting in too many people.
00:06:14.000The foreign population's too high, illegals, that sort of thing.
00:07:35.000And if we have more people in the country, then I get that a lot of the laborers that are building houses are immigrants, but I mean, they are going to have to live somewhere.
00:07:44.000So there is a dynamic there that we've been taking, you know, for the last 30 years, we've taken tens of millions of immigrants and housing has actually been low cost.
00:08:12.000Charlie loved Kevin Hassett because it was like this breath of fresh air and optimism when he would come on the show.
00:08:18.000Let's hear what he's having to say, 193.
00:08:20.000President Trump's trade agenda is working.
00:08:24.000And so we got about, you know, 1.5% of the growth on 4.3 because we reduced the trade deficit.
00:08:30.000We went back and we looked at every Blueberg forecast for the main numbers since September and found that on average, we outperformed the forecast 94% of the time.
00:08:40.000So if 94% of Wall Street economists are getting the macro trends wrong, they need to start to think about, hey, maybe Trump's policies are actually way better than we thought.
00:08:49.000And maybe the fake news that says all these terrible things about Trump policies should reconsider and grab their pencil and redo their economics.
00:09:06.000And then I want to talk about tariffs, because that seems to be the big hot button question.
00:09:12.000You could take it in whatever order you want, Stephen.
00:09:14.000So, yeah, it's absolutely true that Trump derangement syndrome is a pathological disorder in this country.
00:09:20.000And it does judge, it does change people's perceptions of what's happening in the economy, especially academics and professional economists who keep lowballing the numbers and they keep getting them wrong.
00:09:35.000As my friend Kevin Hassett just said, 94% of the time they're wrong.
00:09:39.000Maybe they should start thinking that their assessments and their models are completely off base.
00:09:48.000They got the trade deficit numbers wrong.
00:09:50.000In fact, I'm writing a column on this right now as we speak about, you know, these professional economists probably should turn their PhDs back in and say, we don't know what we're talking about because they are consistently wrong.
00:10:03.000I think economists are simply struggling to catch up with the new paradigm and they underestimate the amount of leverage America has as the market that everybody wants to play into and sell into.
00:10:14.000But Trump's flipping the economic models on their heads.
00:10:20.000President Trump walked into a catch-22 when taking office.
00:10:23.000Do nothing, and America would be staring at a ticking debt bomb, the kind of crisis that could cripple our future.
00:10:28.000Instead, he's taken action with strong policies to slow the train and buy us some time.
00:10:33.000But the effects of past administration spending are still working through the system and experts predict dramatic price increases and market uncertainty.
00:10:41.000Trump is doing all he can, but no matter who's in office, protecting your retirement savings is ultimately up to you.
00:10:47.000And that's why many Americans are turning to real assets like gold and silver.
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00:11:02.000Now, hear from Charlie in his own words.
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00:11:17.000President Trump is fighting for America's future.
00:11:19.000Now it's your turn to help protect yours.
00:11:23.000All right, Stephen Moore, I got to ask you a softball question.
00:14:19.000If you look at the 10 states that have the highest cost of living, nine of them are blue states because liberal Democrats cause shortages of everything because of their stupid policies, high taxes, high regulations, and therefore the price rises.
00:14:34.000So if you want lower prices, folks, move to a red state like Florida, like Texas, like Alabama, like Utah.
00:14:58.000Oh, I guess we could ask him what he thinks on housing, what he thinks of like 50-year mortgage topics or whatever.
00:15:04.000There's various, I'm not a big fan of that.
00:15:08.000I think, you know, stretching out the mortgage is a dumb thing to do.
00:15:14.000Look, I know Trump's heard us in the right place on that, but the best way to bring the price of housing down is to bring the mortgage rate down.
00:15:22.000And the way you bring the mortgage rate down is bring the inflation rate down, which Trump is doing.
00:15:26.000Mortgage rates will continue to fall as prices stabilize.
00:16:08.000And what he started doing is like reading Outlaugh or reading Larry Kudlow, reading Steve Moore, and educating himself.
00:16:13.000And by the way, you can educate yourself way more by reading the stuff that we write than the crap that they teach in college on economics because most of it is wrong.
00:16:23.000That's the reason 94% of the professional economists got it wrong.
00:16:27.000But he, you know, I just saw his evolution over the next 11 or 12 years.
00:16:33.000And every time I saw him, he just got better and better and better and better.
00:16:37.000And boy, I mean, it's just such a sad thing because I really believe Charlie Kirk was on path to someday be president of the United States.
00:16:47.000And you guys, I'll never, one of my kind of lasting memories of this show with Charlie at the helm was every time you'd come on, Steven, we'd have this whole topic prepped, and it would be, you know, Charlie, we're going to talk about this, and this economic new number came in and what Trump's going to do or whatever.
00:17:04.000And then you guys would just like talk about Chicago the whole time.
00:20:19.000I thought that the America Fest you put on was incredible, incredible.
00:20:24.000It was so important because you allowed the debate to be aired.
00:20:32.000And I think we get really attached to our positions in this country.
00:20:37.000And then we get really attached to the idea that, you know, we have to convince people that we're right.
00:20:44.000And we forget that the most important thing is, I think, what Charlie really stood for, which was the view that more unites us than divides us as Americans.
00:20:52.000And that you have to have the conversation.
00:20:54.000You have to trust your fellow Americans.
00:20:57.000And you have to bring that love that he had, even to people that don't agree with you.
00:21:03.000I think like that is the thing that we really lost was that spectacle of him going to those college campuses and talking to people whose views I know he thought were bad and wrong and dangerous, but you could still see the love that he brought to them.
00:21:20.000And that's my New Year's resolution is to be more like that, even especially when I'm talking about the things that matter to me the most.
00:21:29.000And I just felt that you really, you and Erica made that happen.
00:21:34.000You aired the debate and everybody could see it for themselves.
00:21:39.000And because this is the greatest country on earth and the American people are the most incredible people on planet Earth, it reminded me to just trust that process of seeing the debate and hearing the debate and listening to both sides.
00:21:54.000So I just, I watched every minute of it.
00:22:21.000And, you know, the elephant in the room is sort of this foreign policy debate, the Israel debate, but also this debate.
00:22:30.000Ben kind of kicked things off on night one, calling out some of the people that he had grievances with.
00:22:35.000And then they ended up taking the stage later, some of them at least, and kind of throwing it back.
00:22:40.000So it, like you said, it was this debate, this airing of family business, as Erica called it.
00:22:46.000But then we led up to, and Blake, feel free if you want to chime in on that, on that point before I move on, because I do have a question for Batia.
00:23:52.000You, you, we, by the way, we certainly are not trying to anoint JD Vance anything.
00:23:57.000It was sort of this, if you're in turning point circles, Charlie was talking about that we have JD's back a thousand percent and he hopes he runs.
00:24:15.000But from your perspective, why did you say what you said?
00:24:17.000And, you know, what is it going to take to kind of get you to come around on the JD Vance conversation?
00:24:24.000I want to believe, I'm so honored to be able to have this conversation with you.
00:24:29.000Like, you have no idea what it means to me to be here with you in the room.
00:24:34.000On so many issues, I think JD is spot on.
00:24:37.000You know, my top issues, I would say, is I think what President Trump represented, which was, you know, being pro-worker, pro-labor, the dignity of working class Americans is like my number one issue, which entails, you know, getting to immigration zero right away for as long as it takes, you know, in order to make sure that Americans have access to the American dream before we start giving it to everybody else.
00:25:03.000On foreign policy, I'm aware that I guess the 50% of the turning point straw poll was like, I see Israel as a great ally among great allies.
00:25:13.000Our interests are frequently aligned, but not always.
00:25:16.000Sometimes the Israelis, I think, overstep.
00:25:18.000And I've been, you know, glad to see President Trump have a really strong idea of when our interests are aligned and when they diverge and choosing American interests when he needs to.
00:25:28.000You know, so on all of that stuff, I feel like, you know, very much on the same page.
00:25:34.000Certainly don't want to go back to the like rhino pre-Trump version of the GOP.
00:25:39.000I think that would be a huge mistake and a huge betrayal of the American working class, which is like where my allegiances lie as a Jewish American.
00:25:48.000But I will say that I think there have been podcasters out there who have been saying things that make me as an American and as a Jew feel like I'm questioning whether this movement wants me.
00:26:03.000For example, platforming people who think that Hitler was not the villain of World War II.
00:26:11.000That's just going to make every Jewish person, like somebody, a podcaster agreeing with that point of view, the way that Tucker Carlson seemed to is going to make every Jewish person feel like, wait a minute, is that actually a question?
00:26:24.000And so when JD says, well, I'm, you know, close to Tucker Carlson, I disagree with him about a lot of things, but I'm not going to be clear about what those things are, that leaves people thinking, well, you know, is that one of the things or not?
00:26:37.000And Blake, I want to get you in on this conversation because you obviously have a really long conversation relationship with Tucker.
00:26:44.000But I want to show that you mentioned the straw poll.
00:26:46.000Go ahead and throw 178 up on the screen.
00:26:49.000It shows 53.4% consider Israel an ally, 33.3% our top ally.
00:26:57.000Only 13.3% say that Israel is not an ally of the United States.
00:27:01.000So despite all of the hand-wringing, all the loud voices online, we still are at 87% of Amfest attendees consider Israel either our top ally or an ally.
00:27:16.000And maybe what you're seeing in the shift in the dialogue is more to one ally of many as opposed to our top ally.
00:27:23.000Maybe that's the shift you've seen in the Trump era.
00:27:26.000Blake, I want to give you a chance to respond just because of your relationship with Israel.
00:27:46.000Think there is an element where some people find it interesting in a transgressive sense or something.
00:27:51.000And I'd want to say, I hope it has no modern political manifestations, but it does pop up with a degree that if I were a Jewish American, I think I would find it disturbing as more disturbing as you do.
00:28:03.000I don't get why some people think in this particular political moment, relitigating an 80-year-old wars morality is of great importance, but some people like that.
00:28:21.000Like, when you, when you, first of all, I think it's not just Jewish Americans.
00:28:25.000I think every American should feel worried about this question of whether Hitler was truly the same.
00:28:31.000But I mean, beyond that, when you say you're like, I don't know why somebody would bring that up, but you know, like, I know why they would bring it up because they could, you know what I'm saying?
00:29:12.000Ultimately, what we've been saying is we have to be able to build a coalition that is forward.
00:29:19.000And what I liked with Vice President Vance was he's saying we are going to define this movement by positive things, by positive affirmations.
00:29:26.000And those are going to be good affirmations that make us a superior alternative to the left.
00:29:32.000And I think if Vice President Vance is setting a positive example and if he's taking on a leadership role that shows that positive example, he can shape the movement in a good direction that is good on policy, good on unifying rhetoric.
00:29:49.000And instead of having to go around playing police and disavowing people, what you are is what you are avowing is going to make people into something better.
00:29:58.000And I think that's an example Charlie himself tried to set while he was with us.
00:30:03.000I was truly humbled by how right Andrew and Charlie and you Blake were about how you set up the whole America Fest.
00:30:12.000I just came away feeling like it could not have gone better.
00:30:15.000And that was because of the disparity between me and the views that I heard there.
00:30:22.000Hey, everybody, this is Andrew Colvet, executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show.
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00:32:12.000You know, I'm an Orthodox Jew, so the traditions of like secular liberal Jews, I'm not as familiar with them.
00:32:20.000You know, to us, Christmas is, it's funny because one of the things is, you know, like there's certain texts that you're supposed to study and that you're not supposed to study on Christmas due to like, so, you know, there's that conversation as well.
00:33:37.000Megan Kelly has been traditionally extremely pro-Israel.
00:33:41.000Their biggest beef is that they feel, and by the way, Charlie had this conversation with Megan, you know, just before he was assassinated, actually.
00:33:50.000It was just this feeling from like the Gentile friends of the Jewish people and Israel that there is a moral blackmail campaign where the pressure just feels like, you know, if you're only with us 80% of the way, we're not going to be happy and we're going to call you names.
00:34:38.000Two weeks in, Putin was like, if you all just recognize the status quo and ratify it, that Crimea belongs to Russia, which he had already taken eight years earlier, you know, that the Donbass is independent, which there was a civil war there, and that Ukraine is not part of NATO, I'll withdraw immediately.
00:34:55.000I thought we should have pushed for that.
00:34:57.000You know, we had gas prices were insane at the time.
00:35:01.000I just didn't understand why, you know, a few hundred kilometers in Eastern Europe was the responsibility of the American working class to bear.
00:35:10.000Now, if you hold that view, which I do, you will get letters snail mail delivered to your home with death threats from people who are pro-Ukraine.
00:35:21.000The entire Ukraine lobby will come after you.
00:36:05.000So, you know, and the fact that there are these loons at the extreme of the Ukraine lobby, that doesn't even influence how I think about Zelensky or the Ukrainian people or the vast majority of the people who think we should be funding the war in Ukraine.
00:36:21.000I have a policy difference that makes me very unpopular with a very big group of people and the extremes of them are extreme in their opposition to me and think I should be dead for having my view.
00:36:33.000The idea that I would allow that to influence my view would make me an unserious person.
00:36:38.000So do I think there are people in the Israel lobby who embarrass me because they are extreme?
00:36:44.000Do I think Israel itself has in some ways behaved badly, especially vis-a-vis our president, the greatest friend the Jewish people have ever had?
00:36:54.000Does that, if somebody allows that to determine whether they interview Holocaust survivors, if anybody telling you that that is an excuse to become anti-Semitic, I think is not a morally serious person.
00:37:08.000That is a person who is not answering to their God.
00:37:10.000That is a person who is answering to the inverse of the algorithm.