00:00:54.000We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
00:02:20.000Can you tell us why you wrote this book and most importantly, how this applies in the next seven days coming up to this very important election?
00:02:31.000You know, I think we wrote this book because we both recognize that we were witnessing and participating in this extraordinary moment in time with an unconventional president and who has been really chalking up so many successes and victories one after the other.
00:02:48.000And yet it comes into this broader backdrop of the media refusing to acknowledge any of them and report on actual facts.
00:02:58.000So James and I started to look at what we felt was most important about President Trump's approach.
00:03:05.000And what we came up with was clearly economic policy that was able to move the needle on growth and focus on jobs.
00:03:13.000Also, an incredible situation with the media and this resistance that was so extraordinary.
00:03:21.000And then the broader challenges that this president faced, including China, and how we all watched for 40 years, how we expected China to go one way and perhaps look at an engagement with the United States as a positive, but in fact went the opposite way and had bad behavior in terms of intellectual property theft, moving into countries.
00:03:43.000And so President Trump dealt with all of these issues, whether it's foreign policy, economic policy, so well, putting America first.
00:03:52.000And he faced a resistance from the media and from government within, which was so harsh that we just decided that we wanted to document it.
00:04:03.000It's well put, and it's very applicable and interesting, especially what's happening in the news cycle right now.
00:04:10.000James, one thing that I don't think the president talks enough about is how we were able to survive the shutdowns because of the economic prosperity we enjoyed for the three years prior.
00:04:22.000I would make the argument that if we had to shut down our economy right when Barack Obama ended his presidency, I don't know what America would look like.
00:04:31.000Can you talk a little bit about how good the last three years were economically and who the biggest gainers were in the economy?
00:04:39.000Yeah, I think the table was really set for a thriving economy.
00:04:43.000And we start out in the book talking about when Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency in 2015.
00:04:51.000He comes down the escalator at Trump Tower, and there are some fans there and a lot of reporters.
00:04:57.000And he said, I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created.
00:05:02.000And I'm sure there were a lot of media folk there who thought this was kind of an absurd, ridiculous statement.
00:05:08.000But about two and a half years later, officially, you could say that was true in the sense that we had never had so many job openings in the United States.
00:05:18.000As long as the government has been measuring it, we had never had this situation where you had more job openings than unemployed people.
00:05:27.000And that Trump movement toward American competitiveness continued to roll.
00:05:33.000He had the tax cut bill in 2017, making our businesses more competitive and cutting rates for individuals up and down the income scale.
00:05:42.000You had a real campaign against government bureaucracy and red tape.
00:05:47.000So then you get to 2019 and you have a situation where wages for the bottom 25% are rising faster than wages for the top 25%.
00:05:59.000So basically this income inequality thing that we were hearing so much about, all of a sudden Trump was the one solving it.
00:06:06.000So maybe that's why Democrats are talking about it a little less now.
00:06:10.000But you get to February of 2020, 3.5% unemployment rate historically low.
00:06:28.000You put in the book here, the political and media warfare has never ended.
00:06:33.000Just as the impeachment collapsed in the Senate earlier this year, the world was beginning to realize how large a threat the Chinese Communist Party had become and what it had been hiding in Wuhan.
00:06:44.000Maria, you've been in journalism for quite some time and very well respected on both sides of the aisle, especially in the financial and business community.
00:06:54.000I am perplexed, stunned, and confused with how the media has remained silent on the leading candidate for the presidency, according to the national polls, Joe Biden, and his son's alleged connections to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:07:11.000The very least, you would think that they would write a little bit about it or ask some questions.
00:07:15.000Is this a new form of their warfare, Maria, that they just are going to not cover any stories?
00:07:20.000And have you ever seen anything like this in all of your years in journalism?
00:07:26.000This is such a dereliction of the media's jobs.
00:07:30.000And all people really want is an honest playbook and for people to play by the rules.
00:07:36.000And what we've seen here is a simple pay-to-play corruption story where, you know, Hunter Biden was, and this is based on emails that we've seen, that Hunter Biden was basically selling himself to these companies because of the quote unquote Biden lift.
00:07:55.000These are the emails which Peter Schweitzer told us about that he's got, which Hunter's partner has given him.
00:08:01.000And to completely ignore this on the part of the media is exposing the media for their, you know, they're taking a side.
00:08:13.000I mean, I was actually struck just the other day watching 60 Minutes and Leslie Stahl saying that she couldn't verify that Donald Trump was spied on.
00:08:22.000I mean, in October of 2020, for you to say you cannot verify this, you know, I can understand it if you didn't believe it in 16 and 17 and 18 and 19.
00:08:34.000But after a Mueller investigation and the IG investigation and the Senate Intel investigation, it's sad.
00:08:40.000And to see what social media is doing as well is really just a sad situation and a sad state of affairs for the American people.
00:08:50.000I don't think that this will age well.
00:08:53.000I do think that social media will lose their liability protection because clearly in this dominant position, they have abused their power.
00:09:04.000And we have seen these multi-trillion dollar companies use their incredible market advantage to now become a political advantage, which if a Republican company dared to do anything close to that, there would be widespread bipartisan condemnation.
00:09:23.000If for whatever reason, ATT was a conservative company and they started dropping calls between the Biden campaign staffers, or they said, we're going to turn off the internet for the Biden campaign field offices, if they had any, in Florida and Pennsylvania.
00:09:41.000You know, people would be, they would say they'd be rightfully outraged about it.
00:09:46.000You could go through any or say, American Airlines comes out and they say, we will not fly Biden staffers on our airlines.
00:09:54.000That's basically the equivalent of what Google and Facebook is doing.
00:09:58.000James, I want to just get your thoughts on the rising issue of tech tyranny and kind of how you analyze how this issue has evolved over the last couple of years.
00:10:09.000It really is amazing when you think about it.
00:10:11.000They're blocking New York Post stories that have held up really well.
00:10:17.000It wasn't just sort of a big tech giant setting itself up as the referee.
00:10:23.000They're blocking true information that I think is important for people to consider as they think about hiring this guy to be our president for the next four years.
00:10:34.000But as far as the problem of big tech generally kind of abusing this legal safe harbor, which of course was created to allow them to take down jihadi videos and criminal acts, things like this, excessively violent material.
00:10:54.000I don't think it was written this way either.
00:10:57.000So I think this could be one of the many benefits of Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court is we have another, along with Clarence Thomas, we now have a real textualist who is going to look at that law as written, not as people would like it to be, not as they imagine the intent of the authors was, but looking at the plain language.
00:11:22.000And I think if there's a case that goes to them, I think you would find that tech companies do not have a safe harbor when they turn off the New York Post.
00:11:35.000Maria, I visit college campuses, so other people do not have to.
00:11:39.000I've spoken over 150 in the last five years.
00:11:42.000And one of the talking points that is continuously repeated towards our students and towards me is that the Republicans are the party of Wall Street.
00:11:53.000And I always rejected this as if, so what if they're the party of Wall Street?
00:11:59.000Maria, can you talk about how we have seen the financial kind of ruling class, if you will, or the most valuable companies in this election participate heavily on behalf of the Democrats and Joe Biden?
00:12:13.000You have seen the U.S. Chamber of Commerce come out for mostly Democrat House candidates.
00:12:18.000You are seeing most of the major banks such as Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo be very much aligned towards Democrat social causes, if not Democrat candidates.
00:12:32.000Can you add some context to that for some of our listeners and viewers?
00:12:36.000I can tell you for sure, many of the leading Wall Street firms are all backing the Democrats.
00:12:43.000And even in a handful of firms in 2016, I remember hearing from sources within the firm saying that it was encouraged by their CEOs to donate to Hillary's campaign.
00:12:56.000So, you know, I think that they're globalists and they want to be able to have access to China, roll over for China.
00:13:07.000The Democratic Party has also enabled that.
00:13:10.000I remember when I was covering Russia, actually, at CNBC, and I had to travel to Russia a couple of times.
00:13:16.000And Hillary Clinton was helping the Russian government create what was called the Skulcovo Project.
00:13:21.000I don't know if you guys remember the Skulkovo project, but that was the project in Russia that the Russian government and Putin wanted to create the next Silicon Valley.
00:13:30.000And, you know, President Clinton and Hillary Clinton were all in on helping lots of big global technology companies share their research, get their headquarters, get the people and staffers over to Russia to do that.
00:13:43.000Then another quick story, I was talking with someone during the 2016 election, a major CEO of a major firm, and he said to me, what I like about Hillary Clinton is when you buy her, she stays bought.
00:13:57.000I just think that, you know, you're right.
00:13:59.000For the longest time, there was always this perception that the Republicans were, you know, the Wall Street Party when in fact much of Wall Street and of global corporations are actually backing Hillary Clinton.
00:14:12.000I don't know why that became so prevalent, but it did.
00:14:18.000I mean, and I asked the question, why academia and why, you know, Hollywood, why are they so aligned with the Democrat Party when in fact they're not doing anything for their constituents?
00:14:33.000And the best explanation I have is that the most talented people that were on the center right that loved the country of a constitutional capitalist pro-American slant went and built businesses and built families.
00:14:47.000And those people that had a more left-wing kind of deconstructionist post-modernist slant, they went and took over institutions.
00:14:55.000And you can kind of see you have a bunch of conservative business people with big families that kind of have kids that have values that are unrecognizable.
00:15:03.000And then you have liberals that control almost every major institution in the country.
00:15:07.000So, James, the name of the book is called The Cost.
00:15:12.000And how do you build that out in this book?
00:15:16.000Well, that was related to what Maria was talking about earlier.
00:15:20.000I think it was, I think it was, Maria, I think that was your idea to focus on stuff you can measure because so much of the coverage and the reaction to Donald Trump is Has to do with emotion or feelings you have when you read his Twitter.
00:15:37.000And I understand there are comments he makes that a lot of times make people scratch their heads.
00:15:41.000But we felt that it was important to, one, to measure the achievements, but also to look at the, as she mentioned, the collusion investigation, which dominated so much of his presidency, which not only couldn't be measured, but we found the more we reported on it, obviously Maria very early on this, but the more the documents came out, there was really nothing there at all.
00:16:08.000And I think that that was one thing that was kind of stunning going through that document review.
00:16:15.000And I don't know how Leslie Stahl can still ignore the Obama-appointed inspector general's report on the abuse of surveillance powers by the federal government.
00:16:31.000But the idea was to focus on the costs, costs and benefits, economic benefits, costs of not having Donald Trump as president.
00:16:41.000He's a popular target for a lot of folks in the media.
00:16:45.000And obviously, a lot of people have thrived in this era by attacking Donald Trump.
00:16:51.000But let's look at the things we can measure, the economics.
00:16:55.000And that is really a story about him making the United States much more competitive.
00:17:02.000And I think a lot of that is bringing the corporate income tax rate down to a level where we're no longer driving businesses out of the United States.
00:17:18.000And when companies invest more in the U.S., they buy tools.
00:17:24.000Those tools make workers more productive.
00:17:26.000And those workers can then demand higher wages.
00:17:29.000Now, I think most of the academics would say this is a longer-term project, but we've actually seen a lot of progress just in the few years after the enactment of these Trump reforms.
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00:18:41.000Maria, I want to ask you about chapter five, Boomtime and Beijing.
00:18:47.000You start the chapter with a very fun story regarding Kobe Bryant and the National Basketball Association, and you connect it with the Chinese Communist Party.
00:18:58.000Can you take our listeners and viewers through this story?
00:19:01.000I thought it was really attention-grabbing.
00:19:03.000It's chapter five here, Boomtime in Beijing.
00:19:06.000I think it really tells an important point.
00:19:08.000Well, we begin the chapter there with Xi Jinping visiting one of the NBA games, and he was basically given the red carpet.
00:19:17.000And, you know, LeBron James came down and shook his hand.
00:19:22.000And then the mayor of Los Angeles came down and gave him a jersey with his name on it.
00:19:27.000And, you know, he was sort of the big deal in the stadium that day because the NBA had pretty much set up shop in China.
00:19:36.000And they were incredible, as you know, basketball players who were big news in America.
00:19:46.000And the partnership was growing and growing.
00:19:49.000And I think that was an important point to make because that was a moment in time where people believed that China was going to be the growth story of tomorrow.
00:20:01.000And the NBA is here operating in China and rolling out the red carpet for Xi Jinping and ignoring some of the real glaring situations that have occurred in communist China.
00:20:17.000And as we take you through the next two chapters, boom time in Beijing and then the next one, Eyes Wide Open, we're trying to tell a story of, yes, for 40 years, the world was looking at China and thinking that China would open up and be accessible for certainly the United States and the rest of the world.
00:20:37.000And we had this assumption that when President Nixon first went to China, that we would be able to work side by side and have free trade and have real relations between the two countries.
00:20:48.000And China would eventually see, okay, democracy is good and freedom works here.
00:20:53.000And maybe we'll move a little more to the middle.
00:20:56.000Unfortunately, that is not what happened at all.
00:20:58.000And it has, in fact, gone the opposite way.
00:21:01.000Whereas now, China has become more inward than ever before.
00:21:05.000And the Chinese Communist Party has become more aggressive than before.
00:21:09.000So as you read through chapter five and seeing Beijing and the Chinese business opportunities clearly, and that's the way global companies were seeing it, you then read further through and understand that that's not how it played out.
00:21:24.000And today you have continued theft of intellectual property, spying on American citizens, moving into other countries and trying to militarize, militarizing the South China Sea, moving into Hong Kong, breaking its promises.
00:21:39.000And so today, you're seeing a very different story as American companies go into China, whether it's the NBA or anybody else, or although the NBA hasn't figured it out yet, by the way, and that's a major issue that it's having right now.
00:21:53.000But you have to understand what's truly happening in China and the competitive threat that it is to America.
00:22:01.000In fact, we open up the book in a story about when Donald Trump first had dinner with Xi Jinping in Mar-a-Lago, and they're talking about the national security issues.
00:22:15.000And the president is hosting him and they're eating chocolate cake.
00:22:19.000And the president is, this is during one of my first interviews as president.
00:22:23.000And President Trump walks me through the story where he's explaining to Xi Jinping while they're having chocolate cake that he just launched 59 missiles into Syria because they've used chemical weapons against their people.
00:22:36.000And I think what we're trying to do is open up the story to what's really taking place in China right now.
00:22:44.000And, you know, the NBA has still not gotten it.
00:22:47.000And unfortunately, I think it's lost a lot of fans and support as a result of its behavior in China.
00:22:57.000So one of the other parts of the Chinese project, if you will, which is some of their international ambitions, is a different approach than what the Soviet Union did.
00:23:08.000James, I've heard you write and comment on this before, but I think our listeners and viewers would benefit from this.
00:23:14.000The Chinese Communist Party is not trying to necessarily be overly adversarial on the surface to the West.
00:23:22.000And said, it seems like their initial goal is to infiltrate and addict the West to the labor arbitrage, the flow of cheap goods, and to the eventual rise of the Chinese Communist Party.
00:23:37.000Can you contrast the Soviet Union's international ambitions with the Chinese Communist Party and how they had completely different ways of going about it?
00:23:46.000Well, I guess when you set the bar there, the Chinese look better in a lot of ways.
00:23:53.000Certainly they're not sort of invading various countries and they have a much more open economy.
00:23:59.000And I think that's why, as Maria said, this kind of allure of the Chinese market was so attractive to so many business people in the West is because they really were the contrast to the Soviet Union, which seemed to be the hard, severe, old school communism, complete lack of economic freedom.
00:24:22.000So what you had in China was this opening up of the economy to an extent.
00:24:28.000And we have to acknowledge the benefits.
00:24:30.000So millions of people have been pulled out of poverty there.
00:24:38.000And I think this is where Donald Trump deserves a great deal of credit for basically trashing the establishment consensus that, as Maria said, they were opening up.
00:24:53.000That really was the justification for us letting them into the WTO, letting their companies into our capital markets.
00:25:00.000This idea that this was a story of reform.
00:25:04.000And if we just had patience understanding that they might not be moving at our timetable, but the long sweep of history was moving them toward freedom and reform and opening up.
00:25:16.000And it's really been, I think, an eye-opener.
00:25:19.000And although I think a lot of what you might call globalists would not acknowledge it, Trump has pretty much persuaded them.
00:25:30.000We talk in the book about Hank Paulson, who was sort of Mr. Establishment Fancier, Bush Treasury Secretary, former co-head of Goldman Sachs.
00:25:42.000And he said, look, the Chinese are not playing by the rules.
00:25:46.000He talked about the theft of intellectual property, forcing our companies into joint ventures and saying it, you know, there's a perception, and it's not something to blame Donald Trump for, but there's a growing perception that this is a country that's largely been rising at America's expense.
00:26:04.000And I think to be clear, you know, it's fine to have a thriving China, but we want one that's moving toward liberty and the rule of law and that is not based on a thuggish dictatorship mistreating its own people as well as our companies and workers.
00:26:26.000Because I think here you also have to connect the dots with this whole Joe Biden scandal that's going on right now.
00:26:33.000Because the fact is, is China has been trying to acquire companies in America for years and then forcing this transfer of technology.
00:26:43.000In other words, it's using theft as a strategy to grow.
00:26:47.000And the president has been pushing back on that.
00:26:50.000And when you look at what just took place and what we learned about CEFC as one company where Hunter Biden was selling access and influence.
00:27:00.000And one thing that Peter Schweitzer reported is that they were also selling the ability to get through Cypheus.
00:27:07.000So you're supposed to have all of this standards and approvals to get in the United States if a foreigner wants to acquire a U.S. company.
00:27:18.000Look what this whole relationship potentially was allowing, that a Chinese company can just come in, get the approval from CFIS because of who they knew, the big guy, and then acquire our innovation and technology and in the end, beat us at our own game.
00:27:34.000I mean, people need to understand the significance of influence peddling, which was what was going on.
00:27:41.000Yeah, and I think, so just to add a little more, Marie and I are fortunate in our jobs to be able to talk to a lot of people who run international businesses.
00:27:52.000And it really has been striking the last few years where even people who on the record are very positive about the business opportunity and the business environment in China off the record will often tell you stories about their companies getting robbed when they're over there, trade secrets, copyright, patented information, et cetera.
00:28:16.000And obviously some on the record, we have in there the interview with former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who was on Marie's show, talking about how it's, I think he said 10 billion a year in lost profit for Microsoft just from the unauthorized use of software, Microsoft software in China, which is back.
00:28:38.000Obviously, it's a huge company, but it's just one company.
00:28:41.000He said 90% of the companies in China are using the Microsoft operating system and only 1% are paying for it.
00:28:46.000We also have a great story around Motorola where a staffer at Motorola was stopped at the airport and she had, you know, she had hard drives and soft drives and tens of thousands of dollars of intellectual property that she was bringing back to China.
00:29:00.000So what is then, I mean, we know where Joe Biden stands on China, which is a continuation of the status quo.
00:29:09.000And either Maria or James, you guys can answer that.
00:29:12.000The confusion that some people have then, what is the proper way to hold China accountable?
00:30:07.000And now 30 countries have banned Huawei and ZTE.
00:30:12.000We're going to get an alliance with allies across the world to make sure to communicate that we will not share information with you if you do have Huawei infrastructure.
00:30:20.000I don't know, James, if you think any different, if there are other options to hold China accountable.
00:30:26.000The president took us behind the curtain in terms of their negotiations.
00:30:31.000And he told us that when in the last meeting when his team went to Beijing, they walked in the room and it was a beautiful room and they had four boards up.
00:30:41.000One board said, we're not going to do intellectual property theft.
00:30:44.000We're not going to do opening up access to China.
00:30:47.000And then the president said, oh, really?
00:30:48.000We're not going to do opening up China.
00:31:24.000Again, not that they would admit it, not that certainly Democrats would say, you know, Trump has got a good point on this, but I think he's done that.
00:31:33.000And as far as I think where you have a consensus now, if it's a Chinese telecom company that wants to put equipment in the heart of the U.S. telecom network, the idea that we should allow that when you have a Chinese law requiring that company to share information wanted by the government, I think that's increasingly seen as kind of an obvious security issue.
00:32:03.000And I think you have bipartisan support to say that's not a good idea.
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00:32:51.000I want to talk to both of you, and we'll start with you, Maria, about some of the economic anxieties that are happening in our country that will almost assuredly come to light if Joe Biden were to win the presidency, whether it be the war on oil and natural gas, whether it be the raising of taxes.
00:33:09.000I think we are on the verge of seeing inflation in our country.
00:33:13.000If Joe Biden were to win, what specifically do you think that would mean for all this incredible economic progress we've seen?
00:33:31.000That's going to go backwards in terms of economic growth.
00:33:34.000I think one of the great things about this president has been his economic policy, lowering taxes to be competitive with the rest of the world, cutting out the middlemen and all of the red tape in ensuring that deregulation is a driver for business, opening up the spigot on energy, and of course, doing those new trade deals that we talked about.
00:33:54.000Joe Biden has said that he wants to raise taxes by more than $4 trillion.
00:33:59.000And when you drill down on what that looks like, corporate rate going from 21% up to 28% is certainly going to mean more expenses for companies, meaning that they likely will invest less in R ⁇ D, less in equipment.
00:34:16.000The capital gains taxes is really what strikes me and what I've talked about a lot.
00:34:20.000And that is right now you've got capital gains taxes and taxes on dividends at 23.8%.
00:34:53.000I mean, that's why I do think we're going to see a sizable sell-off should Joe Biden win, because just the element of, well, I want to sell my stocks now before I get to next year, because next year I'm going to be charged 44% versus the 23%.
00:35:08.000Then you look at the spending side of the equation.
00:35:11.000He wants to raise this $4 plus trillion dollars, but it's not like it's going to do anything to the deficit because he's got such expensive spending plans.
00:35:19.000The Green Deal alone, $100 trillion, which is just so mind-boggling.
00:35:25.000So it is going to mean, even the Committee on a Responsible Budget have said, Maya McGinnis has said, even though President Trump is cutting taxes and Joe Biden is raising taxes, Joe Biden's actually going to have a higher impact on the deficit and the debt than Donald Trump because of his spending plans.
00:35:41.000So I don't think there's any question that this is going to mean lower economic growth, a drop in jobs, and lower median income.
00:35:49.000Yeah, just I think when the Biden pitch obviously is promising people he's only going to hit the wealthy, but when you drive America toward electric cars and away from oil and toward alternative energies and make it much more expensive to travel, to make things, to use any energy in our economy, that hits everybody.
00:36:12.000And also, business taxes are paid by workers.
00:36:16.000This is the research that even the Obama administration, as we point out in the book, in their economic report of the president, realized is you put burdens on business and the result is lower wages.
00:36:29.000It's been shown in our country, in countries all around the world for years and lots of studies done by Kevin Hassett before he went to work at the White House.
00:36:38.000So the idea that you can crush employers and employees will be fine is kind of the fantasy at the heart of the Biden economic program.
00:36:49.000The other aspect of this that you guys cover, I think, in chapter nine, which is, is it Bidenomics that is coming Bernieomics?
00:36:58.000I'm paraphrasing here from the best memory I have here.
00:37:02.000Either of you could take this in the couple minutes we have remaining.
00:37:04.000Is Bidenomics turning out to be Bernie Gomics, Chapter 9?
00:37:08.000Maria, do you want to talk about how Bernie Sanders' agenda is really going to be running the government if Joe Biden wins?
00:37:14.000Yeah, I mean, they came up with a unity task force and a unity task statement to talk about where the priorities were.
00:37:21.000And that meant redoing energy, redoing education, redoing health care.
00:37:27.000And I think, you know, as we saw Joe Biden move closer to Bernie, it became clear that what he was trying to do was address the Bernie bros and address the far left, the progressives.
00:37:41.000And that's where he has been driven over the last year or even more in terms of his agenda being much more progressive than what people call him a moderate.
00:37:52.000He's really not a moderate, and Kamala Harris is not a moderate either.
00:37:56.000And so these are very expensive big government programs, socialistic programs.
00:38:01.000And I think it's going to be hard for him to not implement some of these promises and these agreements that he has with Bernie Sanders because what people are expecting is Elizabeth Warren to have a very important voice in the cabinet, Bernie Sanders to have a very important point.
00:38:17.000In fact, I understand that they're talking about if the Democrats take the Senate, that Bernie Sanders will become the chairman of the budget committee, whereas Lindsey Graham would get it if the Republicans are there.
00:38:28.000Bernie Sanders' budget is going to look much different than Lindsey Graham's.
00:38:33.000And so we have to understand what that means in terms of the allocation of taxpayer money toward more things like climate change, the environment, renewables, big health care plans.
00:38:56.000I was thinking of writing about there's a consensus among some investors that things are not going to be that bad economically because no president ever gets his full program.
00:39:09.000And so they look at the Biden program and they think, oh, he'll just get a portion of it.
00:39:13.000But I think what's new here, as you point out, is Biden was kind of the relative moderate.
00:39:19.000And he's now potentially, if he wins, going to be dealing with a much more left-wing House and Senate if the Senate goes Democrat.
00:39:28.000So it's not a question of his program being, you know, whittled down and moderated.
00:39:35.000It probably gets bigger when it goes certainly in the Nancy Pelosi House and perhaps even in the Senate as well.
00:39:42.000But I just, I'm sure I wasn't the only person when Bernie Sanders got rejected by Democratic voters last spring.
00:39:50.000I kind of breathed a sigh of relief thinking like, okay, we're not jumping off the cliff here into socialism.
00:39:56.000It's going to be, you know, maybe some imperfect choice here, but America's going to be fine.
00:40:03.000But I have worried as I've seen this bizarre situation where after winning the nomination, after Super Tuesday, Democratic voters across the country made it clear they did not want socialism, Biden has kept moving toward Bernie.
00:40:18.000And that you mentioned the Unity Task Force recommendations, 110 pages of ideas on growing government.
00:40:25.000Just one of them, it talks about creating a government credit bureau, a credit agency.
00:40:32.000Maybe people think this sounds wonderful if they feel like their credit has been unfairly downgraded.
00:40:38.000But if you think about the implications, if the federal government is deciding who gets a loan in America, this is a level of intervention and control.
00:40:49.000And I would think, especially in our era, a pretty creepy and scary thought that, you know, who knows what criteria they end up using to make that judgment.
00:41:00.000I think that's something you definitely do not want in government hands.
00:41:05.000If you think about the government controlling the allocation of credit, I mean, on an economic-wide level, it's so destructive and distorting.
00:41:14.000But I think about a personal level, I mean, what is this bureau evaluating when they decide if you, the consumer, deserve a loan or not?
00:41:25.000That's one area you'd hope it would be a non-political judgment.
00:41:29.000We're going to have to leave it there, but just think of the IRS controlling who gets a loan and who doesn't.
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