The Charlie Kirk Show - Trump and the True Cost of Electing Biden with Maria Bartiromo and James Freeman

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00:00:08.000 Hey, everybody.

00:00:09.000 Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, we are joined by the amazing Maria Bartaromo and James Freeman.

00:00:13.000 They have a new book out called The Cost.

00:00:15.000 We cover Trump, China, Hunter, Biden, and so much more.

00:00:18.000 You guys can support us at charliekirk.com/slash support, charliekirk.com/slash support.

00:00:24.000 Email us your questions, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:00:29.000 Maria Bartaromo and James Freeman are here.

00:00:31.000 Buckle up, everybody.

00:00:32.000 Here we go.

00:00:33.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

00:00:35.000 Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campuses.

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00:00:40.000 Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.

00:00:44.000 I want to thank Charlie.

00:00:45.000 He's an incredible guy.

00:00:46.000 His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.

00:00:53.000 Turning point USA.

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00:01:55.000 Hey, everybody.

00:01:56.000 Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:58.000 Super thrilled to be joined today by Maria Bartaromo and James Freeman.

00:02:03.000 They have a phenomenal new book out called The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival.

00:02:09.000 I am working my way through it, learning quite a lot.

00:02:11.000 And I think it actually puts this election in a proper context of exactly what is at stake.

00:02:18.000 Maria, I'll start with you.

00:02:20.000 Can 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?

00:02:29.000 Thank you so much, Charlie.

00:02:31.000 You 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.

00:02:48.000 And yet it comes into this broader backdrop of the media refusing to acknowledge any of them and report on actual facts.

00:02:58.000 So James and I started to look at what we felt was most important about President Trump's approach.

00:03:05.000 And what we came up with was clearly economic policy that was able to move the needle on growth and focus on jobs.

00:03:13.000 Also, an incredible situation with the media and this resistance that was so extraordinary.

00:03:21.000 And 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.

00:03:43.000 And so President Trump dealt with all of these issues, whether it's foreign policy, economic policy, so well, putting America first.

00:03:52.000 And 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.

00:04:03.000 It's well put, and it's very applicable and interesting, especially what's happening in the news cycle right now.

00:04:10.000 James, 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.

00:04:22.000 I 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.

00:04:31.000 Can you talk a little bit about how good the last three years were economically and who the biggest gainers were in the economy?

00:04:39.000 Yeah, I think the table was really set for a thriving economy.

00:04:43.000 And we start out in the book talking about when Donald Trump announced his run for the presidency in 2015.

00:04:51.000 He comes down the escalator at Trump Tower, and there are some fans there and a lot of reporters.

00:04:57.000 And he said, I will be the greatest jobs president God ever created. 0.91

00:05:02.000 And I'm sure there were a lot of media folk there who thought this was kind of an absurd, ridiculous statement.

00:05:08.000 But 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.

00:05:18.000 As long as the government has been measuring it, we had never had this situation where you had more job openings than unemployed people.

00:05:27.000 And that Trump movement toward American competitiveness continued to roll.

00:05:33.000 He had the tax cut bill in 2017, making our businesses more competitive and cutting rates for individuals up and down the income scale.

00:05:42.000 You had a real campaign against government bureaucracy and red tape.

00:05:47.000 So 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%.

00:05:59.000 So basically this income inequality thing that we were hearing so much about, all of a sudden Trump was the one solving it.

00:06:06.000 So maybe that's why Democrats are talking about it a little less now.

00:06:10.000 But you get to February of 2020, 3.5% unemployment rate historically low.

00:06:10.000 I'm not sure.

00:06:17.000 And you really, in terms of workers and wages, it's hard to think of a stronger economy heading into this virus.

00:06:26.000 That's well put.

00:06:28.000 You put in the book here, the political and media warfare has never ended. 0.91

00:06:33.000 Just 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. 0.60

00:06:44.000 Maria, 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.

00:06:54.000 I 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.

00:07:11.000 The very least, you would think that they would write a little bit about it or ask some questions.

00:07:15.000 Is this a new form of their warfare, Maria, that they just are going to not cover any stories?

00:07:20.000 And have you ever seen anything like this in all of your years in journalism?

00:07:24.000 I've never seen anything like this.

00:07:26.000 This is such a dereliction of the media's jobs.

00:07:30.000 And all people really want is an honest playbook and for people to play by the rules.

00:07:36.000 And 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.

00:07:55.000 These are the emails which Peter Schweitzer told us about that he's got, which Hunter's partner has given him.

00:08:01.000 And to completely ignore this on the part of the media is exposing the media for their, you know, they're taking a side.

00:08:11.000 It's just, it's sad.

00:08:13.000 I 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.

00:08:22.000 I 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.

00:08:34.000 But after a Mueller investigation and the IG investigation and the Senate Intel investigation, it's sad.

00:08:40.000 And 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.

00:08:50.000 I don't think that this will age well.

00:08:53.000 I do think that social media will lose their liability protection because clearly in this dominant position, they have abused their power.

00:09:04.000 And 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.

00:09:23.000 If 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.

00:09:41.000 You know, people would be, they would say they'd be rightfully outraged about it.

00:09:46.000 You could go through any or say, American Airlines comes out and they say, we will not fly Biden staffers on our airlines.

00:09:54.000 That's basically the equivalent of what Google and Facebook is doing.

00:09:58.000 James, 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.

00:10:09.000 It really is amazing when you think about it.

00:10:11.000 They're blocking New York Post stories that have held up really well.

00:10:15.000 They were big scoops.

00:10:17.000 It wasn't just sort of a big tech giant setting itself up as the referee.

00:10:23.000 They'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.

00:10:34.000 But 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.

00:10:52.000 It was never intended for this.

00:10:54.000 I don't think it was written this way either.

00:10:57.000 So 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.

00:11:22.000 And 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.

00:11:33.000 That has proven to be all true.

00:11:35.000 Maria, I visit college campuses, so other people do not have to.

00:11:39.000 I've spoken over 150 in the last five years.

00:11:42.000 And 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.

00:11:53.000 And I always rejected this as if, so what if they're the party of Wall Street?

00:11:57.000 But now that's not even the case.

00:11:59.000 Maria, 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?

00:12:13.000 You have seen the U.S. Chamber of Commerce come out for mostly Democrat House candidates.

00:12:18.000 You 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.

00:12:30.000 This is kind of a new development.

00:12:32.000 Can you add some context to that for some of our listeners and viewers?

00:12:36.000 I can tell you for sure, many of the leading Wall Street firms are all backing the Democrats.

00:12:43.000 And 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.

00:12:56.000 So, you know, I think that they're globalists and they want to be able to have access to China, roll over for China.

00:13:07.000 The Democratic Party has also enabled that.

00:13:10.000 I remember when I was covering Russia, actually, at CNBC, and I had to travel to Russia a couple of times.

00:13:16.000 And Hillary Clinton was helping the Russian government create what was called the Skulcovo Project.

00:13:21.000 I 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.

00:13:30.000 And, 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.

00:13:43.000 Then 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.

00:13:54.000 That's actually what he said to me.

00:13:57.000 I just think that, you know, you're right.

00:13:59.000 For 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.

00:14:12.000 I don't know why that became so prevalent, but it did.

00:14:18.000 I 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?

00:14:33.000 Yeah. 0.59

00:14:33.000 And 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. 0.59

00:14:47.000 And those people that had a more left-wing kind of deconstructionist post-modernist slant, they went and took over institutions.

00:14:55.000 And 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.

00:15:03.000 And then you have liberals that control almost every major institution in the country.

00:15:07.000 So, James, the name of the book is called The Cost.

00:15:10.000 What exactly is the cost?

00:15:12.000 And how do you build that out in this book?

00:15:16.000 Well, that was related to what Maria was talking about earlier.

00:15:20.000 I 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.

00:15:37.000 And I understand there are comments he makes that a lot of times make people scratch their heads.

00:15:41.000 But 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.

00:16:08.000 And I think that that was one thing that was kind of stunning going through that document review.

00:16:15.000 And 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.

00:16:31.000 But the idea was to focus on the costs, costs and benefits, economic benefits, costs of not having Donald Trump as president.

00:16:41.000 He's a popular target for a lot of folks in the media.

00:16:45.000 And obviously, a lot of people have thrived in this era by attacking Donald Trump.

00:16:51.000 But let's look at the things we can measure, the economics.

00:16:55.000 And that is really a story about him making the United States much more competitive.

00:17:02.000 And 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.

00:17:13.000 We're actually attracting them.

00:17:15.000 People want to build here.

00:17:16.000 They want to invest here.

00:17:18.000 And when companies invest more in the U.S., they buy tools.

00:17:24.000 Those tools make workers more productive.

00:17:26.000 And those workers can then demand higher wages.

00:17:29.000 Now, 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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00:18:41.000 Maria, I want to ask you about chapter five, Boomtime and Beijing.

00:18:47.000 You 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.

00:18:58.000 Can you take our listeners and viewers through this story?

00:19:01.000 I thought it was really attention-grabbing.

00:19:03.000 It's chapter five here, Boomtime in Beijing.

00:19:06.000 I think it really tells an important point.

00:19:08.000 Well, we begin the chapter there with Xi Jinping visiting one of the NBA games, and he was basically given the red carpet.

00:19:17.000 And, you know, LeBron James came down and shook his hand.

00:19:22.000 And then the mayor of Los Angeles came down and gave him a jersey with his name on it.

00:19:27.000 And, 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.

00:19:36.000 And they were incredible, as you know, basketball players who were big news in America.

00:19:44.000 And the NBA was big news in China.

00:19:46.000 And the partnership was growing and growing.

00:19:49.000 And 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.

00:20:01.000 And 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.

00:20:17.000 And 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.

00:20:37.000 And 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.

00:20:48.000 And China would eventually see, okay, democracy is good and freedom works here.

00:20:53.000 And maybe we'll move a little more to the middle.

00:20:56.000 Unfortunately, that is not what happened at all.

00:20:58.000 And it has, in fact, gone the opposite way.

00:21:01.000 Whereas now, China has become more inward than ever before.

00:21:05.000 And the Chinese Communist Party has become more aggressive than before.

00:21:09.000 So 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.

00:21:24.000 And 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.

00:21:39.000 And 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. 0.66

00:21:53.000 But you have to understand what's truly happening in China and the competitive threat that it is to America.

00:21:59.000 Donald Trump did understand that.

00:22:01.000 In 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.

00:22:15.000 And the president is hosting him and they're eating chocolate cake.

00:22:19.000 And the president is, this is during one of my first interviews as president.

00:22:23.000 And 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.

00:22:36.000 And I think what we're trying to do is open up the story to what's really taking place in China right now.

00:22:44.000 And, you know, the NBA has still not gotten it.

00:22:47.000 And unfortunately, I think it's lost a lot of fans and support as a result of its behavior in China. 1.00

00:22:56.000 Yeah, I agree.

00:22:57.000 So 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.

00:23:08.000 James, I've heard you write and comment on this before, but I think our listeners and viewers would benefit from this.

00:23:14.000 The Chinese Communist Party is not trying to necessarily be overly adversarial on the surface to the West.

00:23:22.000 And 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.

00:23:37.000 Can you contrast the Soviet Union's international ambitions with the Chinese Communist Party and how they had completely different ways of going about it? 0.96

00:23:46.000 Well, I guess when you set the bar there, the Chinese look better in a lot of ways.

00:23:53.000 Certainly they're not sort of invading various countries and they have a much more open economy.

00:23:59.000 And 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.

00:24:22.000 So what you had in China was this opening up of the economy to an extent.

00:24:28.000 And we have to acknowledge the benefits.

00:24:30.000 So millions of people have been pulled out of poverty there.

00:24:34.000 But we got, I think, misled.

00:24:38.000 And 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.

00:24:50.000 They were moving toward democracy.

00:24:53.000 That really was the justification for us letting them into the WTO, letting their companies into our capital markets.

00:25:00.000 This idea that this was a story of reform.

00:25:04.000 And 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.

00:25:16.000 And it's really been, I think, an eye-opener.

00:25:19.000 And although I think a lot of what you might call globalists would not acknowledge it, Trump has pretty much persuaded them.

00:25:29.000 Some of them do acknowledge it.

00:25:30.000 We talk in the book about Hank Paulson, who was sort of Mr. Establishment Fancier, Bush Treasury Secretary, former co-head of Goldman Sachs.

00:25:42.000 And he said, look, the Chinese are not playing by the rules. 0.92

00:25:46.000 He 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.

00:26:04.000 And 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.

00:26:25.000 Can I just add one thing, Charlie?

00:26:26.000 Because I think here you also have to connect the dots with this whole Joe Biden scandal that's going on right now.

00:26:33.000 Because the fact is, is China has been trying to acquire companies in America for years and then forcing this transfer of technology. 0.61

00:26:43.000 In other words, it's using theft as a strategy to grow.

00:26:47.000 And the president has been pushing back on that.

00:26:50.000 And 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.

00:27:00.000 And one thing that Peter Schweitzer reported is that they were also selling the ability to get through Cypheus.

00:27:07.000 So 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.

00:27:18.000 Look 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.

00:27:34.000 I mean, people need to understand the significance of influence peddling, which was what was going on.

00:27:41.000 Yeah, 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.

00:27:52.000 And 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.

00:28:16.000 And 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.

00:28:38.000 Obviously, it's a huge company, but it's just one company.

00:28:41.000 He said 90% of the companies in China are using the Microsoft operating system and only 1% are paying for it.

00:28:46.000 We 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.

00:29:00.000 So what is then, I mean, we know where Joe Biden stands on China, which is a continuation of the status quo.

00:29:09.000 And either Maria or James, you guys can answer that.

00:29:12.000 The confusion that some people have then, what is the proper way to hold China accountable?

00:29:16.000 Is it to sunset all trade?

00:29:18.000 Is it sanctions?

00:29:18.000 Is it tariffs?

00:29:20.000 Because that term hold accountable, it's such a buzzword.

00:29:23.000 No one really knows what that means, or it's a buzz term, I should say.

00:29:26.000 Either of you guys can take it.

00:29:28.000 What does that actually look like?

00:29:31.000 Well, I mean, I think that so far the president has used sanctions and has used tariffs.

00:29:38.000 I think it's difficult to envision a situation where we will completely decouple.

00:29:44.000 Although in our interview with the president in August, he said, look, it's a hostile country.

00:29:50.000 I don't have to do anything if I don't want.

00:29:52.000 I could completely walk away.

00:29:53.000 I think that's unlikely, but I think what this president has done is the right way and has been effective.

00:30:01.000 And that is holding them to account in terms of you're going to continue to steal intellectual property.

00:30:05.000 Well, then we're banning Huawei.

00:30:07.000 And now 30 countries have banned Huawei and ZTE.

00:30:12.000 We'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.

00:30:20.000 I don't know, James, if you think any different, if there are other options to hold China accountable.

00:30:26.000 The president took us behind the curtain in terms of their negotiations.

00:30:31.000 And 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.

00:30:41.000 One board said, we're not going to do intellectual property theft.

00:30:44.000 We're not going to do opening up access to China.

00:30:47.000 And then the president said, oh, really?

00:30:48.000 We're not going to do opening up China.

00:30:50.000 Okay, that's such a big thing. 0.93

00:30:52.000 We're not going to do it.

00:30:53.000 Well, then walk away.

00:30:54.000 The point is, is they will not admit to intellectual property theft.

00:30:59.000 They still won't admit it, even though there's a string of lawsuits and settlements that have occurred.

00:31:04.000 So what else are you going to do to hold them accountable and still have a relationship and a partnership on trade?

00:31:10.000 I think the president is trying to explore those options with sanctions and tariffs.

00:31:15.000 James, what do you think?

00:31:16.000 Yeah, I think step one was sort of persuading the political world that this was a problem, defining the problem.

00:31:23.000 And I think he's done that.

00:31:24.000 Again, 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.

00:31:33.000 And 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.

00:32:03.000 And I think you have bipartisan support to say that's not a good idea.

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00:32:15.000 At least it used to be.

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00:32:51.000 I 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.

00:33:09.000 I think we are on the verge of seeing inflation in our country.

00:33:13.000 If Joe Biden were to win, what specifically do you think that would mean for all this incredible economic progress we've seen?

00:33:20.000 Maria, we'll start with you.

00:33:22.000 Well, I think that just look at the policies that he has said that he is going to implement, and that is, like you said, higher taxes.

00:33:29.000 That's going to take back growth.

00:33:31.000 That's going to go backwards in terms of economic growth.

00:33:34.000 I 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.

00:33:54.000 Joe Biden has said that he wants to raise taxes by more than $4 trillion.

00:33:59.000 And 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.

00:34:16.000 The capital gains taxes is really what strikes me and what I've talked about a lot.

00:34:20.000 And that is right now you've got capital gains taxes and taxes on dividends at 23.8%.

00:34:26.000 He wants to take that up to 43.4%.

00:34:29.000 People need to understand what that means.

00:34:31.000 This is not about necessarily just owning your stock portfolio and getting hit with a 44% tax, which you will when you sell those stocks.

00:34:39.000 But what about selling your home, selling a home?

00:34:43.000 You're going to have to pay 44% to the government just because you made money on selling your home.

00:34:48.000 This is going to dissuade investing.

00:34:51.000 That's what it's going to do.

00:34:53.000 I 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%.

00:35:07.000 That's one thing.

00:35:08.000 Then you look at the spending side of the equation.

00:35:11.000 He 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.

00:35:19.000 The Green Deal alone, $100 trillion, which is just so mind-boggling.

00:35:25.000 So 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.

00:35:41.000 So 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.

00:35:49.000 Yeah, 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.

00:36:12.000 And also, business taxes are paid by workers.

00:36:16.000 This 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.

00:36:29.000 It'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.

00:36:38.000 So 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.

00:36:49.000 The other aspect of this that you guys cover, I think, in chapter nine, which is, is it Bidenomics that is coming Bernieomics?

00:36:58.000 I'm paraphrasing here from the best memory I have here.

00:37:02.000 Either of you could take this in the couple minutes we have remaining.

00:37:04.000 Is Bidenomics turning out to be Bernie Gomics, Chapter 9?

00:37:08.000 Maria, do you want to talk about how Bernie Sanders' agenda is really going to be running the government if Joe Biden wins?

00:37:14.000 Yeah, I mean, they came up with a unity task force and a unity task statement to talk about where the priorities were.

00:37:21.000 And that meant redoing energy, redoing education, redoing health care.

00:37:27.000 And 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.

00:37:41.000 And 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.

00:37:52.000 He's really not a moderate, and Kamala Harris is not a moderate either.

00:37:56.000 And so these are very expensive big government programs, socialistic programs.

00:38:01.000 And 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.

00:38:17.000 In 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.

00:38:28.000 Bernie Sanders' budget is going to look much different than Lindsey Graham's.

00:38:33.000 And 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.

00:38:43.000 James, what do you think?

00:38:45.000 Do you think that right now he's there or he's just saying he's there and then he won't implement it?

00:38:51.000 I don't think so.

00:38:52.000 I think he's going to implement it.

00:38:54.000 And Kenny says no.

00:38:56.000 I 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.

00:39:09.000 And so they look at the Biden program and they think, oh, he'll just get a portion of it.

00:39:13.000 But I think what's new here, as you point out, is Biden was kind of the relative moderate.

00:39:19.000 And 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.

00:39:28.000 So it's not a question of his program being, you know, whittled down and moderated.

00:39:35.000 It probably gets bigger when it goes certainly in the Nancy Pelosi House and perhaps even in the Senate as well.

00:39:42.000 But I just, I'm sure I wasn't the only person when Bernie Sanders got rejected by Democratic voters last spring.

00:39:50.000 I kind of breathed a sigh of relief thinking like, okay, we're not jumping off the cliff here into socialism.

00:39:56.000 It's going to be, you know, maybe some imperfect choice here, but America's going to be fine.

00:40:03.000 But 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.

00:40:18.000 And that you mentioned the Unity Task Force recommendations, 110 pages of ideas on growing government.

00:40:25.000 Just one of them, it talks about creating a government credit bureau, a credit agency.

00:40:32.000 Maybe people think this sounds wonderful if they feel like their credit has been unfairly downgraded.

00:40:38.000 But 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.

00:40:49.000 And 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.

00:41:00.000 I think that's something you definitely do not want in government hands.

00:41:05.000 If you think about the government controlling the allocation of credit, I mean, on an economic-wide level, it's so destructive and distorting.

00:41:14.000 But 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?

00:41:25.000 That's one area you'd hope it would be a non-political judgment.

00:41:29.000 We're going to have to leave it there, but just think of the IRS controlling who gets a loan and who doesn't.

00:41:34.000 That's pretty horrifying.

00:41:36.000 The book is The Cost, Trump, China, and American Revival.

00:41:39.000 I'm Maria Bartaromo, James Freeman.

00:41:41.000 Thank you guys for joining us today.

00:41:43.000 And love watching you both on TV.

00:41:45.000 So thanks so much for joining us.

00:41:46.000 Thanks, True.

00:41:48.000 You bet.

00:41:48.000 See you soon.

00:41:52.000 Do you want to help support our program?

00:41:53.000 Then go to charliekirk.com/slash support.

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00:42:08.000 Email us your questions at freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:42:12.000 Thank you so much for listening.

00:42:14.000 Talk to you soon.

00:42:15.000 God bless.

The Charlie Kirk Show - October 28, 2020

Trump and the True Cost of Electing Biden with Maria Bartiromo and James Freeman

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