The Great America Show with Lou Dobbs and John McLaughlin on the economy, inflation, the stock market, and the student loan debt crisis under the Joe Biden administration. The Great America show is a weekly political commentary show hosted by former CNN White House correspondent and current host of the "Great America Show" on the Wall Street Journal/NBC's "The Situation Room" hosted by CNN's Fareed Zakaria.
00:00:00.240Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Great America Show. I'm Lou Dobbs, and it's great to have you with us.
00:00:05.960Let's begin today with something that's plaguing almost all of us right now, and that is this dismal economy under Joe Biden.
00:00:14.160Whether you own a house, have a 401k, investments, or go shopping at a grocery store, you're feeling the wrath of this puppet president's policies.
00:00:23.160The stock market having its worst year in five decades. Inflation hurting Americans of all ages and walks of life.
00:00:33.360And gas prices are tearing up family budgets. This is Joe Biden's economy.
00:00:40.000A new survey from the Bank of America finds 71% of workers now say their pay isn't keeping up with inflation.
00:00:47.420That's 7 in 10 Americans. That number up from 58% just back in February.
00:00:55.460The same survey found 21% say they're tapping into their emergency savings to pay bills.
00:01:01.56021% say they're working extra hours. Another 20% say they're looking for higher paying jobs.
00:01:08.4206% say they've resorted to a 401k hardship withdrawal to make ends meet.
00:01:14.500And what does Joe Biden do? Well, he hires 87,000 IRS agents at a cost to the taxpayer of $80 billion.
00:01:25.180And he forgives half a trillion dollars in student loan debt.
00:06:04.840So the challenges were coming into September and now October in the final six weeks of the campaign is,
00:06:11.500are the Republicans going to do something to stop the Democrats from spending?
00:06:16.500Will they pass the continuing resolution so the Democrats can keep spending?
00:06:23.180Will they raise the debt ceiling so they can keep adding to the debt and fuel inflation?
00:06:28.080I mean, are the Republicans going to do something about inflation, which is the top issue in the country?
00:06:33.760Because I tell you, one of the most significant thing to me is in the United States, you have 81% of the voters telling us they've been significantly impacted by inflation.
00:06:44.220And 43% of all Americans said they said they're having trouble making basic ends meet.
00:08:00.660And when we look at the numbers you're showing us here, the fact that they blame Biden for something that they are all saying is impacting them, it seems like the numbers would be reflected in his disapproval ratings as well.
00:08:27.080I remember the 94 campaigns where we took over Congress.
00:08:31.980At this point in time, we spent the summer morphing Democrats into Bill Clinton's face, into basically his failures where every Democrat who was on the ballot.
00:08:42.100How many campaigns have you seen running ads attacking Joe Biden on the Republican side?
00:08:46.980They're starting to now, but they were giving her a free ride.
00:08:50.760And if you've got 62 percent, say the country's on the wrong track, and of the 62 percent who say it's on the wrong track, only 67 blame Biden.
00:09:03.380The Republicans are not holding him accountable.
00:09:07.020They really need to go after him aggressively.
00:09:09.300And they certainly need, because if the top issue in the country is the economy and inflation, what you want to do, you want to basically at this point say it's his fault, drive up the number of Americans who believe this is his fault, drive up the wrong track.
00:09:26.100Because the other part is, among the 8 percent who are undecided for Congress, and in this poll, 48 percent were voting Republican, and 44 percent were voting Democrat generically for Congress.
00:09:47.560And the interesting thing is, two-thirds of those voters are pro-choice voters, because the Democrats are playing abortion, and two-thirds are women, 67 percent, and their average age is 44.
00:09:59.960So they're kind of middle-ager, younger women who are undecided between inflation, you know, they go to the supermarket, they buy gas, they blame Biden.
00:10:09.940But on the other hand, the Democrats are saying the Republicans want to ban abortion, so they've got to pause here with these voters.
00:10:18.420And the Republicans need to do something to say, no, inflation, the price of food that you're paying at the groceries, your rent, your health care, utility bills, we can fix that.
00:10:30.140And we can stop inflation right now if we stop the federal spending and we stop the federal debt from advancing.
00:10:36.340And they like to fight it as toughly as the Democrats are fighting on abortion.
00:10:42.160Well, there are perhaps unintended consequences in that direction, though, because if you're watching 71 percent of the population saying that they're having a direct impact, they're not going to be too eager and are having to struggle with the consequences in their household budget.
00:10:59.700Right. It's not the time, probably, to tell those people the hell with you, we're not going to be spending any more money, any more money on you.
00:11:08.140I don't think that's an argument the Republicans could win. Do you?
00:11:12.700I think they can win it because we're not spending this. I'm talking about federal spending.
00:11:19.660So so when the federal government spends money, I mean, think about how many people are not going to benefit from the four hundred billion dollars, according to the CBO of loan forgiveness.
00:11:30.760Think about it. I've seen statistics where it's eighty seven percent are not going to benefit from that.
00:11:35.780But your taxes are going to go up and your and inflation is going to go up.
00:11:39.920I mean, you know, Biden has increased in, you know, less than two years.
00:11:45.180He's increased federal spending four trillion dollars. He's increased the national debt.
00:11:49.520Ten trillion dollars. You're preaching to the choir, partner.
00:11:53.020I but my point being that if you have it as a to use your word generic federal spending, it's probably a losing argument.
00:12:03.500It would seem to me when you have people so uncertain of their futures, uncertain of their presence in point of fact, because of all of the policies that have gone haywire,
00:12:13.420the prices they have to pay at the grocery store, still at the gasoline pump.
00:12:18.100Despite what Joe Biden says, there are no no states that have gasoline below three dollars a nation.
00:12:26.420So, I mean, so I would just caution on on the issue of federal spending generically, perhaps be very specific about just the way you said it.
00:12:37.960They're spending. Well, they say four hundred.
00:12:40.520It could be closer to a trillion dollars in student loan forgiveness.
00:12:43.560And none of that that money goes to the middle class, working men and women.
00:12:48.680And you'll be paying, by the way, for people who are affluent, making one hundred thousand dollars a year or more or less.
00:12:55.980Excuse me, just under one hundred thousand.
00:12:58.200It's not a good argument for them. And I think, as you say, they should hammer it.
00:13:03.440Let's let's go to. So what do you think of that?
00:13:06.100That's I think that there's other things, too.
00:13:08.320Like, for example, the their their inflation, so-called inflation reduction act, which is causing the market to go down and interest rates to go up.
00:13:18.000You know, the inflation reduction act, you had eighty seven thousand IRS agents.
00:13:22.560And last month we had the Americans oppose that the eighty seven thousand IRS agents, the twenty billion in increased taxes on the middle class.
00:13:30.400They oppose that. Fifty percent to thirty seven percent.
00:13:34.580Good Lord. So why are we, you know, going after that?
00:15:24.500I mean, you know, I mean, before you start negotiating, the special agent will probably probably put down his thirty eight revolver and say,
00:15:32.520let's have a discussion about your taxes.
00:15:35.120Right. And, you know, and first of all, I think we pay enough in taxes that I think my accountant gets a commission from the federal government.
00:15:42.920But it's it's I mean, I mean, it's it's just crazy that they're going to spend this kind of money, you know, to get blood out of a stone.
00:15:55.420We've got to win that argument. We've got to press it.
00:15:57.880And we could drive, you know, right now in Congress, you have roughly, according to the Real Clear Politics website,
00:16:05.840you've got one hundred and ten congressional seats in play and sixty eight are Democrat seats and forty two are Republican seats.
00:16:12.720And if we have a forty four to forty forty eight Republican, forty four Democrat, we can push that over 50 and take 50 or 60 seats.
00:16:22.460If we have a really good closing six weeks and if we get very aggressive with the issues and and and the most important issue is absolutely inflation cost of living.
00:16:33.100And we shouldn't let the Democrats, you know, set the table with whatever issues that they but they that that they think they, you know, can win on.
00:16:42.300It's just following following on what you said earlier in connection to that.
00:16:47.840You remember James Carville won the presidency, really, for Bill Clinton when he said it's the economy, stupid.
00:16:55.920Right. And in 1994, that was thrown back in their face in that midterm election.
00:17:02.600But it is, to me, ridiculous that the Republicans seem to think about what we're really saying.
00:17:12.340We were asking you and I are asking the Republican Party to relearn a lesson that is three decades old.
00:17:20.100That when you start there is a problem for the campaign, that makes me worry about that 50, 60 seat margin of votes turning because I don't see them getting aggressive.
00:17:32.080I don't see them reaching to the middle class, the working man and woman in this country the way we have we saw, for example, in 2010.
00:17:40.820Yeah, I agree with you. And we need it's there, but we need to be aggressive.
00:17:45.640And by the way, I had a I have a European client I was talking to yesterday who was saying they had watched the Reagan Carter debate from from 1980 and it was all about inflation.
00:17:56.120So even you can go farther back and say, remember, there you go again, Mr. President.
00:18:04.000And it was mostly that debate. Granted, there was, you know, a rain that was the hostages, etc.
00:18:09.900But but but it was when, you know, when Reagan pressed him on inflation, he was winning.
00:18:16.540So you could actually take, you know, Carville's slogan and say it's it's inflation stupid.
00:18:21.640I mean, this is we can't afford it. We've got people that, you know, still the price of gas is too high.
00:18:28.720As you said, Biden says it's under three. Not yet.
00:18:31.140But he's releasing the strategic oil reserves, you know, before Election Day, trying to get down artificially.
00:18:38.240But it's still high. The price of food is going up. Price of rent, health care, utilities in the northern states.
00:18:45.820You're going to have utility shock with net price of natural gas going up.
00:18:50.820People trying to refill their oil tanks for their home heating oil.
00:18:54.700I mean, it's it's something that the Republicans need to be out there and reminding people every day this is Biden's fault and it can be fixed.
00:19:04.120And and what's odd about this conversation, I think, John, is you and I are talking about politics.
00:19:10.980But in this case, politics is about governance and it really is policy.
00:19:16.700It's governance and it is values. And the Republicans don't seem to have the comprehension of what a powerful force that is.
00:19:26.860If they unite those three elements and make it clear to the American voter what they stand for.
00:19:33.040And I know they've got this new agenda out and that just gets my heart.
00:19:36.880I got to tell you, my heart skips a beat every time I think about it.
00:19:40.480And I see an article saying we've got a nice, aggressive agenda.
00:20:54.000But to pass it to defer until November, December and allow the Democrats to have, whether it's a lame duck or a full duck Congress, to increase spending again, huge mistake.
00:21:06.940I mean, we need that fight now so that we tell people we're the serious party, we're the adults in the room.
00:21:24.480Well, the problem with that, of course, is you've got Kevin McCarthy as the, I don't know if you would call him the speaker to be the prospective or pretend speaker in the House.
00:21:39.340And you've got Colonel Foghorn running the Republican Senate.
00:21:43.480Those are not animated, energetic, original, deep thinkers, are they?
00:21:51.020No, but you know what the big difference is?
00:22:43.220He'll talk about inflation, fighting high prices.
00:22:45.600In a state where they used to be the auto manufacturing capital of the world, but try to get a car now under Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, they tell you there's a chip shortage.
00:22:56.660I mean, and the ones that are out there, it's like Cuba where you're trying to buy an old car that you're paying an exorbitant price for for a used car because we don't have, you know, the cars out there anymore.
00:23:09.340So inflation is going wild because of, you know, their incompetence on the supply chain.
00:23:15.420And so Donald Trump will take them on.
00:23:17.660And it's no wonder that Trump is leading Joe Biden in the polls, or at least in our polls, in the good polls.
00:23:23.160And, you know, you're looking at the Republicans for Congress and you're saying, well, a lot of these candidates have Trump's endorser and following his lead, and they're willing to take on federal spending and federal debt.
00:23:35.440Well, as they as they must at some point, I truly believe that whether Democrat or Republican, it's going to happen.
00:23:43.140But this president, I think one of the things the Republican Party can't get its head around is that Joe Biden is a puppet.
00:24:02.620He's forsaken, Biden has forsaken every element of his previous career to take on the role of puppet president and enjoy his, what is it, 40% of his time on holiday.
00:24:16.580This is a moment of madness in our history.
00:24:34.160We need leaders who actually understand what's happening and what can be done.
00:24:38.520And honest to gosh, John, you mentioned Trump.
00:24:43.520There's just no one else out there, not in the Republican Party, certainly not in the Marxist dim party.
00:24:49.340No, and when you think about the scary part about Joe Biden, we kept on asking over the past year, do you think he needs to take a cognitive test to make it public?
00:24:59.280And, you know, I was always six out of 10 voters said yes, but it hasn't changed.
00:25:05.420The difference is the corruption, because the corruption of the Biden administration is the real threat.
00:25:12.320Because when you think about, you know, now as we find out in the right of center media, you're finding out stories that, okay, there was a deal where Hunter Biden was getting, you know, tens of millions from the Chinese.
00:25:25.200I mean, the Secretary of State, Blinken, was the head of the was the head of the Penn Center, the Biden Center, University of Pennsylvania.
00:25:34.700Well, the Chinese had given them tens of million dollars.
00:26:05.280When you say you go back to Delaware every week, well, you know, they put up a fence around it, you know, for a reason.
00:26:13.500But, you know, it's just the corruption there and the one-party state in Delaware where no laws are enforced if your name is Biden.
00:26:24.160And that's the real threat we have right now.
00:26:26.920And hopefully, you know, that's the real – they'll go all out in the next six weeks to stop us, because if the Republicans get the House and the Republicans get the Senate and they dive into that corruption, what they've done to the FBI, what they've done to, you know, the other parts of law enforcement, our government, the Department of Justice, et cetera.
00:26:46.540You know, that's what we really need to find out and get things put back on the straight and narrow.
00:26:53.180You know, it's – I guess what I'm getting at here, John, is why is the Republican leadership unable to coalesce around ubiquitous, toxic corruption within not only the FBI and the Department of Justice,
00:27:10.320but the Department of Education, political corruption within the Pentagon, they can't coalesce around that and be the party of good.
00:27:20.360They cannot express noble values and assert it.
00:27:27.520I want to fight everybody on the Marxist Dems.
00:27:57.700Well, I think it's going to come from the backbenchers.
00:27:59.740I mean, by the way, one senator who is standing up is Chuck Grassley in Iowa.
00:28:05.720I mean, he's calling out, you know, Ray and he's calling out Garland on their corruption or they're allowing this corruption of what's going on in the FBI.
00:28:16.680And they're going – I mean, some courageous FBI whistleblowers are coming forward.
00:28:21.400The mainstream media is not covering it.
00:28:23.720But Chuck Grassley is standing up for those whistleblowers and he's going after Ray and Garland.
00:28:29.880So what would you do if you wanted the American people to see these whistleblowers and hear what they've got to say?
00:28:53.000And take them to rallies, take them every – whatever the hell it takes.
00:28:57.000But don't accept just lying flat on your stomach, trembling in fear of a Marxist-dim takeover of the U.S. government and stripping us of everything that this country has built.
00:29:14.420No, but what you're talking about makes sense because you've got to be that aggressive.
00:29:18.400I mean, I'm working – it'll be the long-shot candidates that come through or the perceived long-shots that aren't that really – I'm working for Lee Zeldin in New York for governor.
00:29:27.160And he's within single digits of Kathy Hochul because of her stand on crime and cashless bail.
00:29:31.660And – but her corruption, it came out – and it's not from – the stories in New York now are not – no longer because she won't debate.
00:29:40.540They're no longer from just the New York Post and the right of center media.
00:29:47.620You have other outlets in New York saying she did a deal where she took over $300,000 in campaign contributions and gave out a no-bid contract for COVID tests for $637 million.
00:30:03.020And it was double the price what California and other states were paying.
00:30:06.860And it was – and that kind of corruption, whether it's the billion dollars for the Buffalo Bills stadium that the New York taxpayers are going to have to pay that's going to benefit some corrupt donors to her campaign or the Penn Station deal in Lower Manhattan or even the congestion pricing deal where you're going to pay just for the privilege of driving a truck or a car into Manhattan.
00:30:30.880And depending on the time of the day, you're going to pay $23 to $34 per trip on a toll that –
00:30:41.520Why don't the Republicans take that angst that is built in there, those price hikes, those raising the cost of living even further?
00:30:51.980Why don't they take that and say, you know, maybe we ought to rethink – take a look around the country and where the support of the Republican Party is and say,
00:31:02.060Maybe we should be trying to focus on the suburban voter.
00:31:05.640Maybe we should be talking about reducing the centralized power of the Democrats in all of these urban centers and talking about mobility of people who have been screwed for decades in this country.
00:31:18.700And I'm talking about intercity minorities.
00:31:21.020I'm talking about Hispanics, Blacks, you name it.
00:31:26.240And let's create a new paradigm here because it's also ecologically nonsensical to have those big urban centers because they generate tons of heat that no one wants to talk about.
00:31:36.380They have all of these opportunities in front of them, and they're brain dead.
00:31:42.040Well, you're talking about the Zeldin campaign because I'm doing Lee's polling, full disclosure.
00:31:47.920But Lee Zeldin is doing exactly what you said where he's getting – since Labor Day, Kathy Hochul's attacked him with $8 million of ads, attacking him as a Trump supporter and to extreme an abortion.
00:31:58.980But Zeldin is coming back after cashless bail, congestion pricing.
00:32:04.740People are fed up in New York where they're spending millions of dollars getting our side, our point of view on cashless bail, keeping criminals in jail, getting at our point of view about the economy around the state and the higher taxes, plus going against the congestion pricing.
00:32:20.280So it's coming from the grassroots, and it's the same in local congressional races around the country and in Senate races where the backbenchers, if this revolution happens on November 8th, where the heartland of the country rises up again and throws the swamp out, it'll be an earthquake that'll make Italy seem like a little tremor compared to what's going to go on in the United States.
00:32:45.120But we've got six weeks to make it happen.
00:33:42.080Just slam the damn desk when you hear this nonsense.
00:33:45.220And here's a man who's had a, you know, he stood on a stage with great courage and calm and handled an attacker and couldn't get a mention in the New York Times for God's sake.
00:33:56.700He's the kind of man we want in office, the kind of brave leader we want in office, man or woman.
00:34:04.240So let me ask you to give us your view on the leadership of the Republican Party and the leadership of the Democratic Party.
00:34:15.680How important are they to what happens in the next six weeks?
00:34:18.780Well, I think, by the way, you're seeing like Nancy Pelosi.
00:34:22.760She spoke at some conference or concert.
00:34:25.360She appeared at some conference, got booed.
00:34:33.480She has, among the voters in the United States, she's a 38 favorable, 55 unfavorable.
00:34:38.940So she'll be in a lot more Republican ads than she will be in Democrat ads.
00:34:43.900But for the, and Chuck Schumer's not popular.
00:34:46.760And, you know, you just, you know, if he was in more of the Republican ads for the Senate, I think that would be good for our candidates.
00:34:57.140And so I think that the Democrat leadership is a liability.
00:35:02.340The Republican leadership, they're going to learn from the grassroots.
00:35:05.380The grassroots are going to rise up and they're going to make changes.
00:35:08.520And you mentioned a whole bunch of good Republican leaders that, you know, whether it's Jim Jordan in the House, whether it's a, whether it's a, you know, you took Rick Scott in the Senate, et cetera.
00:35:20.880You know, they're, they're listening to the grassroots and they're, and they're going to, they're going to press the issues and press the offense against the Democrats.
00:35:28.740So, and the Democrats will go all out to try to stop us, you know, waiting for the Justice Department to try and try to change election laws again.
00:35:36.760So we'll, we'll see, but we've got six weeks to fight them.
00:35:40.460And in that six weeks, we know that the back office in the West Wing will be having a, be doing a lot of work, Susan Rice, and trying to mobilize the get out the vote campaign using federal money, federal resources, federal manpower.
00:36:02.080I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a lawyer that I can get injunctions and get them to stop it, but we should try.
00:36:08.920I mean, I, I don't know why they're, you know, the Republican national committee should have filed a complaint against Zuckerberg after the last campaign that he was, you know, using C3s tax exempt money to get out partisan Democrat votes.