The Michael Knowles Show - September 01, 2025


Michael Knowles In The White House EXCLUSIVE Updates & Interviews


Episode Stats


Length

40 minutes

Words per minute

160.70103

Word count

6,498

Sentence count

552

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

4

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I sit down with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to talk about what it's like to be the first podcaster to ever attend a White House cabinet meeting and what it was like to sit in on one of the most important meetings in American history.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
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00:00:30.460 These are questions that take cultures
00:00:32.660 thousands of years to answer.
00:00:35.100 During Answer the Call,
00:00:36.260 I take questions from people just like you
00:00:38.260 about their problems, opportunities, challenges,
00:00:41.280 or when they simply need advice.
00:00:43.040 How do I balance all of this grief, responsibility?
00:00:46.140 How do you repair this kind of damage?
00:00:48.020 My daughter, Michaela, guides the conversations
00:00:50.920 as we hopefully help people navigate their lives.
00:00:54.440 Everyone has their own destiny.
00:00:56.460 Everyone.
00:00:58.360 Last week, I got to go to Washington, D.C.
00:01:05.320 Not only that, I got to go to the White House.
00:01:07.320 Not only that, I became the first podcaster
00:01:09.940 to attend a cabinet meeting.
00:01:11.360 Not only that, but afterward,
00:01:13.940 I got to sit down with one of the most important
00:01:16.320 cabinet secretaries.
00:01:18.080 In fact, one of the most important men
00:01:19.640 in the entire world,
00:01:20.820 successor to Alexander Hamilton,
00:01:23.280 the Secretary of the Treasury,
00:01:26.160 Scott Besant.
00:01:27.080 Here's our interview.
00:01:27.660 I'm here at the White House.
00:01:37.320 I have the privilege of sitting down with a man
00:01:39.320 whose every decision affects your wallet
00:01:42.160 and the financial health of our country.
00:01:44.620 That would be Treasury Secretary Scott Besant.
00:01:47.720 Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here.
00:01:49.820 Good to be with you this afternoon.
00:01:51.220 So we were supposed to sit down
00:01:53.620 about two and a half hours ago,
00:01:56.220 but we didn't because you and I were both
00:01:59.200 in the cabinet meeting over in the West Wing
00:02:01.600 for what I believe was the longest cabinet meeting
00:02:05.800 in presidential history.
00:02:07.680 And probably the first one on a Tuesday
00:02:09.780 before Labor Day in history.
00:02:12.840 There was a lot to fit in.
00:02:14.060 There was a lot of history,
00:02:15.660 but it was an incredible meeting.
00:02:16.980 You know, I think I actually might be the first podcaster
00:02:19.980 ever invited into a cabinet meeting,
00:02:21.820 which I was very honored by.
00:02:23.920 And they really gave me my money's worth, you know?
00:02:26.120 I mean, that was a full showing.
00:02:28.080 A lot of it hinged on what you're doing,
00:02:31.260 though, of course, the entire cabinet was reporting.
00:02:34.220 Some of the big news was about the Federal Reserve,
00:02:37.880 the next Fed chair.
00:02:39.180 But before we get to any of that,
00:02:41.620 this was the Tuesday before Labor Day.
00:02:43.840 President Trump has made the American worker
00:02:45.480 a key aspect of his, well, both of his terms, I suppose,
00:02:50.640 and has implemented real economic reforms
00:02:54.040 that are designed to benefit the American worker.
00:02:57.120 How's it all going?
00:02:58.280 It's going well.
00:02:59.300 We're off to a great start.
00:03:01.220 I call it parallel prosperity,
00:03:03.000 because what we've seen for too long,
00:03:05.160 especially since the China shock in the early 2000s,
00:03:08.840 was Wall Street's taken off
00:03:10.860 and Main Street's gotten left behind.
00:03:14.040 Capital's done great.
00:03:15.280 Stock market's at all-time highs.
00:03:17.360 And as you said, the American worker
00:03:19.740 has struggled to keep up,
00:03:21.700 especially the bottom 50% of working Americans.
00:03:25.040 So I don't think it's an either or.
00:03:28.180 I think both can do well.
00:03:29.680 So parallel prosperity, Wall Street can do well.
00:03:32.320 But now it's Main Street's turn for a catch-up,
00:03:34.700 and that's what we're really starting to see here.
00:03:36.600 So a lot of people said at the implementation of the tariffs
00:03:40.780 that it was going to destroy the entire economy.
00:03:42.840 There were a lot of people that the president dubbed panic hands.
00:03:46.100 And the numbers that we're seeing right now look pretty good.
00:03:50.800 What is it, $100 billion in revenue from the tariffs,
00:03:54.180 and manufacturing is looking up, I think three-year highs,
00:03:57.260 and a lot of great trade deals.
00:03:59.400 The European Union giving us $600 billion,
00:04:02.700 some crazy number.
00:04:03.660 Things are looking up.
00:04:05.040 Well, look, there was a lot of whataboutism.
00:04:09.020 There was a lot of vested interest
00:04:12.000 because the mantra, again, especially since the China shock,
00:04:16.700 but had gone back before then,
00:04:18.580 was to design or market and sell in the U.S.,
00:04:22.280 but not manufacture it in the U.S.
00:04:25.080 So we had offshored so much of that production.
00:04:27.700 And, look, over the long term, for working Americans,
00:04:34.320 manufacturing jobs are the way to middle-class lifestyles.
00:04:39.060 It's very difficult in the service economy
00:04:41.580 to really move up the economic chain.
00:04:46.400 There are some great service jobs.
00:04:48.780 That's why we've done no tax on tips, no tax on overtime.
00:04:51.680 But we saw it during COVID.
00:04:54.680 Working Americans are the backbone of the country.
00:04:58.200 Capital has been treated very well.
00:05:00.360 We're going to keep treating capital well.
00:05:02.440 But it's going to come in in a different form.
00:05:04.640 Before, we had these gigantic trade deficits,
00:05:08.480 which were the current account deficits.
00:05:11.120 And how did the countries that created these surpluses invest back in the U.S.?
00:05:18.060 They'd either buy treasury bonds, they would buy Google stock,
00:05:22.540 or they'd buy private equity.
00:05:24.120 And that created a lot of bad distributional outcomes.
00:05:28.600 The coast did well.
00:05:29.820 The middle didn't.
00:05:31.320 Now, what we're going to see is if someone sells us an LG television,
00:05:39.260 we are going to sell them a General Motors car again,
00:05:43.880 just like we used to.
00:05:45.440 Now, I mentioned it's all going very well.
00:05:49.280 As you mentioned, it's all going very well.
00:05:51.700 But Walmart recently, on their earnings call, said they had some trepidation.
00:05:56.440 They're seeing the effects of the tariffs.
00:05:58.820 Prices might start going up.
00:06:00.320 Obviously, President Trump won the election in large part because Joe Biden so mishandled inflation.
00:06:05.740 So I'm looking around on a sunny day in August, right before Labor Day.
00:06:09.440 Things look fine.
00:06:10.240 Do you have any trepidation, and are there strategies to mitigate what might come in Q4 or Q1 of next year?
00:06:18.080 Well, I think what we've seen is the economic establishment was wrong, as you said earlier.
00:06:23.700 I was at a conference on Jackson Hole, and several of the economists there had mea culpas.
00:06:29.480 They said, look, before Liberation Day, if you were to find out what percent of Ph.D. economists like tariffs, it would be—
00:06:45.160 Negative 50.
00:06:46.040 Ninety-nine percent and Peter Navarro.
00:06:49.600 Yeah.
00:06:50.180 Right?
00:06:50.620 It was 99 percent versus Peter Navarro.
00:06:53.520 And once again, the consensus has been proven wrong.
00:07:00.220 Look, a big portion of it, our biggest trade deficit is with China.
00:07:05.120 So they are selling things below the cost of production.
00:07:09.780 So they're not going to stop.
00:07:11.800 They're not going to raise prices.
00:07:13.400 That industry in China is an employment scheme, mostly, not a capitalist system.
00:07:20.980 And that's part of what the tariffs are here to remedy.
00:07:23.860 When a country has a completely different belief system, governmental system, and economic system, then we don't align with them.
00:07:36.660 And they could just flood our markets.
00:07:39.180 Same thing with Vietnam. 0.56
00:07:40.440 I'm not sure—I can't remember what the head of Vietnam is called.
00:07:43.980 I think he's called the premier.
00:07:45.780 That they are not a completely market-based economy.
00:07:50.440 It's an employment thing.
00:07:51.900 And I think a lot of the standard economists didn't use that kind of imagination to be able to say, well, of course China's going to eat these.
00:08:00.700 And the other thing, too, that Walmart has been eating a lot of the cost.
00:08:09.380 So across—it hasn't flowed to the consumer.
00:08:15.160 And also preferences change.
00:08:18.240 That if somehow the price of an avocado goes up, then you buy a South Carolina peach.
00:08:24.820 Right, right.
00:08:25.420 Well, that answer is very interesting.
00:08:27.840 But to answer your question, I don't see any reason why this should flow through.
00:08:34.340 The Biden administration created this terrible affordability crisis.
00:08:37.840 The stated CPI numbers, the inflation numbers were 19 to 21 percent.
00:08:45.060 Working Americans had a different bundle of goods and services.
00:08:48.780 Probably their inflation was over 35.
00:08:52.820 So the first thing for us to do to get at the affordability crisis was to stop the inflation.
00:08:59.400 And we've seen a 1.9 percent inflation back to the long-term trend since President Trump came in.
00:09:06.200 And the other way to solve for inflation is to increase real working-class wages, which is what we saw in President Trump's first term.
00:09:14.820 President Trump's first term, hourly workers did better than supervisory workers.
00:09:20.300 The bottom 50 percent of American households saw a greater increase in their net worth than the top 10 percent.
00:09:26.780 So I think we can go back to that.
00:09:29.220 But look, we're not going to be satisfied.
00:09:32.080 But the other thing, too, that if I think about my weight, I think the last time I checked, I weighed about 210 pounds.
00:09:40.080 What I care is about my overall weight.
00:09:42.760 Like, I don't care how much my arm weighs.
00:09:45.280 I care.
00:09:46.760 So energy, especially gasoline, is coming down.
00:09:53.420 President Trump is going to do a substantial decrease in pharmaceutical costs.
00:09:58.680 So we're looking at the macro number.
00:10:02.320 And other people, especially a lot of vested interests, might be screaming on a micro level.
00:10:07.900 I think my wife would prefer if I had more weight in my biceps and less in my gut. 1.00
00:10:13.440 But I think the point is totally accurate economically.
00:10:16.480 And I also love your response when you say, look, Walmart is griping about seeing costs go up.
00:10:22.380 And you say, yes, they are griping because they're eating those costs largely.
00:10:25.520 And it's not actually being passed on to the consumer.
00:10:28.520 And good for them.
00:10:30.300 Good for the Americans.
00:10:31.700 So then, speaking of percentages, it's a little bit of a hard transition to interest rates and the Federal Reserve.
00:10:40.080 But it does seem to be on everybody's mind.
00:10:42.960 We were just in that cabinet meeting, and President Trump rarely missed an opportunity to jab the Federal Reserve chairman.
00:10:50.040 You will be instrumental in the next pick.
00:10:54.240 You've said that you don't want the job yourself.
00:10:56.180 One, how important is an independent central bank, in your view, to the country?
00:11:01.360 And two, who do we need to see in the Fed chair role?
00:11:05.740 Well, thank you.
00:11:07.560 Not me.
00:11:09.340 But an independent central bank is very important.
00:11:13.560 But as I said, as we were going around the table, when the president called on me, the Federal Reserve gets this authority because the American people trust it to be independent.
00:11:26.200 And when we have a potential scandal like this or a potential member who seems to have a very serious mortgage violation, because one thing we have not heard yet from Lisa Cook, we haven't heard her say, I didn't do it.
00:11:44.500 We haven't heard her say, I didn't do it.
00:11:45.720 Just for people who haven't followed this that closely, Lisa Cook, on the Fed, accused of a scandal, fired by the president, saying that the president doesn't have the power to fire her, now threatening to sue the president.
00:11:58.920 The president says, you know, go on and try it.
00:12:01.160 I've got a list of 500 problems.
00:12:02.940 Get in line.
00:12:05.380 All of this news breaking within the last several days.
00:12:08.100 So where does that stand?
00:12:10.460 Well, we'll see.
00:12:11.800 As I said, the independence of the Federal Reserve comes from the American people, from them believing there's an agreement there.
00:12:23.160 We will give this unelected body the control over or substantial amount of control over the economy.
00:12:30.900 In return, we expect that the members of that group are above reproach, especially that Lisa Cook is accused of a financial crime.
00:12:45.760 And the Fed, aside from setting interest rates, also sets bank regulation.
00:12:51.120 So I'm not sure you could be a regulator.
00:12:52.980 And as I said, and maybe we will in the coming days, but so far we have not seen Ms. Cook say, I didn't do it.
00:13:02.620 The other thing we haven't seen is the Federal Reserve come out and say, we stand behind her.
00:13:08.540 We haven't seen the institution say, we've investigated it.
00:13:13.520 She didn't do it.
00:13:14.440 And one of the things that I have called for over the past couple of months is for the Federal Reserve to do a big internal review before an external review comes along.
00:13:26.740 And thus far, nada on that.
00:13:32.420 And I think this should be the thing that pushes them over the line just to review all that.
00:13:38.800 Because there's monetary policy, there's regulatory policy, and then there's the administration of this sprawling institution with a very large budget that's losing.
00:13:51.060 The Federal Reserve is losing $100 billion a year because of some bond buying that they did at bad prices.
00:14:00.100 So again, for now, I'm calling for an internal investigation.
00:14:08.260 Before they get the external investigation, right?
00:14:10.820 That's the way it rolls.
00:14:11.920 President Trump, during the cabinet meeting, was attacking the Fed chairman because he said, look, America's housing is doing very well right now, but the housing market would be doing much, much better if not for Jay Powell's stupid rates.
00:14:25.840 One, from your position at Treasury, how do you assess how the Fed is doing and housing and elsewhere?
00:14:32.220 And then looking ahead to the next Federal Reserve chairman, what sort of things do you want to see other than it not being you?
00:14:39.060 Well, one of the things that I said that I won't comment on the mistakes the Fed's going to make, only on the mistakes they have made, because that's a big folder.
00:14:52.540 And a couple of the big mistakes was when they did a quantitative easing, which was large-scale bond buying, that had the effect of lifting assets.
00:15:02.360 And again, the top 10% of households own 88% of equities, the top 50% really own the other 12%, the bottom 50% of Americans have debt and rent.
00:15:17.840 So again, you end up with this distributional problem.
00:15:21.660 There's a progressive economist, Karen Petirou, who has a book called The Federal Reserve, The Engine of Inequality, who says that they've set off this massive amount of inequality that we have in the U.S.
00:15:36.160 And if we look back to the COVID period, I couldn't have agreed with the Fed more in terms of when the markets became destabilized, March, April, even May, June of 2020.
00:15:51.840 We didn't understand COVID.
00:15:53.460 We didn't know what it was.
00:15:55.220 Then large-scale asset purchases, both to stabilize the market, to take a lot of uncertainty out of the economy, certainly warranted.
00:16:05.780 But the Fed kept buying bonds until, I believe it was February of 2022.
00:16:15.300 And at the same time, house prices went up substantially, more than 50%.
00:16:22.240 And we became this bigger nation of haves and have-nots.
00:16:27.420 And now rates are stuck at this high level, and there are more distributional consequences.
00:16:34.440 Google, Microsoft, Meta have net cash, so they like high rates.
00:16:42.060 A lot of upper-income households like high rates.
00:16:47.020 But as the president said, the aspirational households, young people, we saw a terrible statistic last month.
00:16:56.160 We saw more people over 70 buy homes than people under 35.
00:17:01.380 It's supposed to go the other way.
00:17:05.000 So that's not sustainable over the long term.
00:17:11.760 So, again, we're back to the distributional aspects of what's going on.
00:17:16.680 And if we want to get the housing market going, one of the biggest components is obviously rates.
00:17:23.680 In terms of what are we looking for in the next Fed chair, it's going to be the president's decision.
00:17:31.100 I'm interviewing 11 excellent candidates, very different.
00:17:36.040 Some I know well.
00:17:37.000 Some I've known for more than 20 years.
00:17:38.680 Some I've never met before, other than the phone call when I said, I'd like to consider you.
00:17:44.560 This is going to hit the news.
00:17:47.120 Would you like to be considered?
00:17:49.120 And I'm looking forward to that.
00:17:51.180 It'll be beginning after Labor Day.
00:17:54.480 But what are we looking for?
00:17:56.580 We're looking for someone who has respect of the markets, understands monetary policy,
00:18:03.860 but also is more like Alan Greenspan was as Fed chair.
00:18:08.340 He came in in the 80s, went all the way to the mid-aughts.
00:18:13.580 And he had a very open-minded approach to monetary policy.
00:18:19.400 He came in.
00:18:21.960 I had started on Wall Street, crash of 87.
00:18:24.740 He knew exactly what to do.
00:18:27.400 Everyone thought, not unlike after Liberation Day when the market went down.
00:18:32.760 And I remember in 87, there's going to be a depression.
00:18:36.940 And it turned out 88, 89 were great years in the market.
00:18:42.620 And he guided the economy through.
00:18:46.600 But in the 1990s, there was a real technological revolution.
00:18:50.960 It was the internet and then all the embedded office electronics.
00:18:56.480 People finally started using them.
00:18:58.320 So you had this big productivity boom.
00:19:00.180 And I think there's a chance, very good chance, that we are going to have a similar productivity boom from AI starting next year.
00:19:10.660 So I want to hear someone talk about, okay, what will I be looking for in this productivity boom?
00:19:19.120 How should monetary policy look in the future as opposed to in the rearview mirror?
00:19:25.300 Two, the Fed is responsible for bank regulation.
00:19:30.680 I think that the regulations have been much too tight.
00:19:33.860 I began my career as a bank, as exciting as I may seem.
00:19:38.600 I may not seem like I was a banking and insurance analyst, but I was.
00:19:43.080 And I began my career.
00:19:44.780 So I understand how these institutions work from the bottom up.
00:19:48.760 And this big market outside of the regulated banking system that we're seeing in private credit and buy now, pay later, all that tells me that the regulated banking system has been in this regulatory noose.
00:20:06.880 And we need to unshackle the banks, especially the small banks.
00:20:12.760 And the small banks doing well is the key to Main Street doing well because they provide a huge amount of the small business loans, the ag loans, the small real estate loans.
00:20:22.800 So it would be someone who understands bank regulation well.
00:20:26.440 And then three is someone who can run an institution of this magnitude.
00:20:32.080 This is a big institution.
00:20:36.100 They, their branches, their employees, it's a gigantic budget.
00:20:41.040 President has criticized Chair Powell for the cost overruns on the building projects.
00:20:49.900 It's, it's, it's, it's, there, there's an investment slash professorial function here, but then there's also a CEO function.
00:20:58.340 You've got to run the business.
00:20:59.260 It's a big business.
00:21:00.240 It's a, it's a big business.
00:21:01.240 Right.
00:21:01.520 And it's a business that's losing $100 billion a year.
00:21:04.280 So it's a turnaround.
00:21:05.360 Last question before I let you go, because I know it's, it's been a very long day.
00:21:08.900 An historically long podcast with the Treasury Secretary after the historically long cabinet meeting.
00:21:13.740 Uh, the president just acquired 10% of intel for the American taxpayer.
00:21:20.380 Great deal.
00:21:21.180 Uh, the president has talked about a sovereign wealth fund for the United States.
00:21:25.640 Uh, he said there are going to be more investments to come.
00:21:28.060 I think many people in America right now would like to see him acquire a cracker barrel as soon as possible, maybe turn that around too.
00:21:35.100 Uh, but assuming that's not on the docket for businesses that he's looking to, uh, to constitute the sovereign wealth fund, what sort of industries,
00:21:43.160 what sort of businesses could you see down the line if that fund is to be built?
00:21:48.060 Well, uh, we'll, we'll see whether it's in the form of sovereign wealth fund or, uh, other businesses.
00:21:55.300 But I, I, I think, uh, your viewers should think about it in two ways.
00:22:00.120 One, they're strategic industries.
00:22:02.240 So the only, as I've said many times, the only good thing about COVID was it was a test run for what happens if we were to get into a kinetic war with a major economic slash political adversary, i.e. China.
00:22:18.260 And we saw that we were woefully negligent in our supply chains.
00:22:23.280 So five to seven strategic industries that we have to rebuild at home.
00:22:28.820 So with chips being one, 99% of the high value chips are made on the island of Taiwan.
00:22:35.460 And that doesn't even require war.
00:22:37.760 I, I have no reason to believe that China will do it, but I know they could do it if they were to do a blockade of Taiwan and stop semiconductors from getting off.
00:22:49.580 That would be a problem.
00:22:50.940 As the president said, we're getting along very well with China right now, but you've got to be prepared.
00:22:56.300 Precursors for pharmaceuticals, moxicillin, you know, if you, if you have children, you, the, uh, you, you, you've given them that.
00:23:04.220 So a huge amount, 80, 90% of precursor drugs go into our pharmaceutical ecosystem, steel, uh, rare, rare earth, rare earth magnets.
00:23:17.320 So I, I think you will see that.
00:23:20.880 Then on the other side, uh, the, the president wants to monetize some of our balance sheet.
00:23:26.880 Yeah.
00:23:27.260 So his view with Intel was we've given this grant.
00:23:31.620 Why, why, why, why do we do that?
00:23:33.220 Why don't you?
00:23:33.660 Biden had given the grant.
00:23:34.760 Biden had given the grant.
00:23:37.240 Uh, why, why, why shouldn't the American public, the American taxpayer get part of the upside?
00:23:42.760 So I, I think their, uh, early stage talks for, uh, the two government controlled mortgage companies, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, then that, that could be a windfall for the American taxpayer, uh, that perhaps a sale of TikTok, then the government, some of that value could accrue to the American taxpayer.
00:24:08.560 But I, I think what's important here is unlike the past, I, I guess we'd have to go all the way back to, I don't know how far, um, President Trump wants to create assets for the American people, not debt.
00:24:25.680 So he wants to pay down the debt with the tariffs, tariff money, and the CBO came out on Friday and all of a sudden they had an aha moment.
00:24:36.740 There could be $4 trillion comes from tariff income, $3.3 trillion from tariffs, $700 billion.
00:24:44.420 The number keeps going up too.
00:24:46.120 Exactly.
00:24:46.360 Everyone had very low expectations.
00:24:48.460 Frankly, even some of your estimates were, were lower than it, than it seems like now.
00:24:52.360 Well, it's, it's like, I like to tell the president, I, I like to, and Wall Street is called a beat and a raise.
00:24:58.620 So you, you, you, you, you keep expectations low, you beat, then you can raise it.
00:25:03.720 The, the, the, the president, uh, likes to start out the, uh, with, with, with, at, at, at the raise, but he, he's been right.
00:25:11.660 Yeah.
00:25:11.800 He's, he's been right.
00:25:12.920 So, uh, we, we, we had a big increase in tariff income July over August.
00:25:17.840 Uh, my guess is we're going to see a big increase August over September.
00:25:22.660 Then we'll get into a natural cadence that 400, five, $500 billion.
00:25:31.020 And the, the, again, the way for your viewers to think about that is every 300 billion is 1% of GDP.
00:25:38.580 So, uh, if, if we could get, make it easy on me, if we could get to 450, then we will narrow the budget deficit by 1.5% of GDP.
00:25:49.340 So the mess that the Biden team left us, they left us at 6.5% deficit GDP.
00:25:54.740 The highest, when we weren't at war, what, weren't a recession, if we could get it down to something with a five or a four in front of it, at the same time with the one big beautiful bill that it's front loaded as the companies are building factories and buying new equipment, then they get a automatic depreciation.
00:26:16.920 So that hits in the early years, but it's like coiling a spring, it's productive capacity, and then that production comes online and generates more jobs, tax income.
00:26:26.800 So if the tariff income actually, the, uh, prevents the, the front loading, then this is fantastic.
00:26:36.880 Right, right.
00:26:37.640 And this is what the president kept saying in the cabinet meeting.
00:26:39.880 He said, you think it's good now, wait for two years, wait for three years when, when this capacity is really online.
00:26:45.040 But I, I, I do think we're going to see the acceleration fourth quarter of this year, beginning of next year.
00:26:52.740 And I think 2026 could be a great year.
00:26:56.320 Mr. Secretary, any fun plans on Labor Day?
00:26:59.640 Uh, I, I actually am going to, for Labor Day itself, I'm going to be out, uh, my, one of my favorite parts of the one big beautiful bill is the no tax and tips.
00:27:09.760 When I went, I got my first, I actually had two jobs when I was nine years old.
00:27:14.280 One was working on the beach, putting out, uh, beach chairs and umbrellas.
00:27:18.320 Uh, the other was working in a restaurant.
00:27:20.780 So I've been getting tip income since I was nine years old.
00:27:24.960 So I, I'm going to visit a series of, of family restaurants and diners, probably not Cracker Barrel, uh, on the, uh, on Monday and talk to the employees there about the, the difference that no tax on tips is making in their lives.
00:27:43.760 Because they, uh, the, the, these are hardworking people.
00:27:47.940 They're going to get to keep more of their income.
00:27:50.900 And, uh, I, I can tell you, because there's no tax on tips.
00:27:54.560 When I walk into a restaurant, I'm the most popular person there.
00:27:58.340 Of course.
00:27:59.200 And I like the strategy, the mom and pops.
00:28:01.280 That's great.
00:28:02.140 And holding out on Cracker Barrel until they bring back Uncle Herschel.
00:28:05.720 That's called the art of the deal, I think, Mr. Secretary.
00:28:08.480 That is good.
00:28:09.020 And they put more rockers out on the front porch.
00:28:12.240 Thank you, sir.
00:28:12.860 Happy Labor Day.
00:28:13.480 Good to see you.
00:28:15.660 One thing I notice every time I sit down with Scott Besant is that he looks like a basketball player.
00:28:22.540 A little bit whiter than most basketball players, but he's very, very tall.
00:28:25.980 I think he's a descendant of the Nephilim. 0.65
00:28:27.920 Anyway, after I spoke to Secretary Besant, I then moved from the basketball player to the, to the football player, a former professional football player who now happens to be the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development at a time when housing is on everyone's mind.
00:28:42.120 Young people can't afford houses. 1.00
00:28:43.340 And I asked him how they're going to do it.
00:28:45.040 That would be HUD Secretary Scott Turner.
00:28:48.500 Hold on one second before we get to any more very, very important stuff.
00:28:52.080 You must go to hillsdale.edu slash Knowles.
00:28:56.020 You ever hear the phrase, that's unconstitutional?
00:28:59.440 People toss that phrase around like confetti at a political rally.
00:29:02.660 You hear it pretty much anywhere people gather to debate the issues of the day.
00:29:06.120 But here's the thing.
00:29:06.880 When someone drops that phrase, do you just nod along and take their word for it?
00:29:10.240 Or have you ever actually cracked open the Constitution yourself to see what all the fuss is about?
00:29:14.520 I think you should.
00:29:16.380 And that is one of the many reasons that I'm thrilled about Hillsdale College's brand new free online course called The Federalist.
00:29:22.620 You know those Federalist papers everyone references but few have actually read?
00:29:26.080 They were penned by Alexander Hamilton and James Madison and don't forget John Jay to explain how our Constitution creates a government strong enough to protect our rights, yet safe enough to trust with power.
00:29:36.000 Brilliant stuff.
00:29:37.100 More relevant today than ever.
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00:29:57.360 I love it.
00:29:58.260 Hillsdale is one of the absolute top learning institutions in the entire country, and their courses are just magnificent.
00:30:05.100 The Federalist, I highly recommend.
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00:30:14.780 Young people can't afford housing. 1.00
00:30:17.060 A lot of people, actually, can't afford housing.
00:30:19.520 And our cities are falling into disrepair.
00:30:22.120 So who better to talk to than the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner?
00:30:28.080 Mr. Secretary?
00:30:29.240 Sir?
00:30:29.720 Thank you for stopping by.
00:30:31.560 I guess, really, I'm stopping by you, because we're at the White House right now.
00:30:34.340 So, Mr. Secretary, you and I were just in the cabinet meeting for what was apparently 100,000 hours.
00:30:41.080 It covered a lot of stuff.
00:30:43.820 One point that stuck out to me was President Trump going after the Fed Chairman, Jay Powell, and saying that because of his policies, housing is not exploding in the way that it should.
00:30:54.060 And I know this is an issue that is on a lot of, especially young Americans' minds.
00:30:57.880 They cannot afford housing.
00:31:00.220 Why is that, and what is being done to fix it?
00:31:03.120 Well, Michael, it's great to be with you.
00:31:05.000 Thank you for being in the cabinet meeting.
00:31:06.680 Yeah, it was my honor.
00:31:08.020 It was truly my honor.
00:31:08.500 And as you can see, the president is very transparent.
00:31:11.340 And as he said, in the cabinet, we have nothing to hide.
00:31:13.800 Every cabinet member had an opportunity to speak about what's going on in their prospective agencies.
00:31:20.700 And so the American people appreciate that.
00:31:22.620 I hear from people all the time, thank you, you know, that we get to hear what's going on in education and labor and defense and state and HUD.
00:31:30.200 And so I'm grateful for the president doing that.
00:31:33.220 It is a long journey.
00:31:34.980 But he did bring up housing.
00:31:36.560 And currently housing, the median price for a house, single-family house in America right now is $435,000 as of July 2025.
00:31:48.100 It's insane.
00:31:48.680 It's insane.
00:31:49.340 It's unsustainable.
00:31:50.680 And you mentioned the interest rates and Mr. Powell.
00:31:54.140 We have all been encouraging him strongly to bring down interest rates.
00:31:59.280 Interest rates obviously impact mortgage rates.
00:32:02.460 You have the younger generation.
00:32:03.700 And I have a son, 24 years old, and he asked, how am I ever going to be able to afford to buy a house?
00:32:07.820 I hear that from young people across the country because it's not affordable.
00:32:12.380 $435,000 is a lot of money for grown people like you and I.
00:32:17.120 And so what we've been very intentional about at HUD is to bring down burdensome regulations.
00:32:23.620 Regulations cripple development from a federal standpoint, state, and local standpoint.
00:32:28.600 We took down a rule, Michael, called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
00:32:32.280 This was one of those government-sounding euphemisms, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
00:32:40.380 Yes.
00:32:40.800 What does that mean in English?
00:32:41.960 Well, it basically made HUD a national zoning board where HUD would essentially tell localities how they should zone their neighborhoods.
00:32:51.420 Every neighborhood in our country, rural, tribal, and urban, has unique needs.
00:32:57.380 Yeah.
00:32:57.840 Washington doesn't know the needs of Nashville, Tennessee, or Plano, Texas, or Dubuque, Iowa, or Trenton, New Jersey, and so on and so forth.
00:33:06.640 And so we took this rule down.
00:33:08.400 The president was very supportive of it.
00:33:10.340 Dr. Ben Carson did it in the first administration, and then it was put back up through the Obama and Biden era.
00:33:16.480 And so taking this rule down restores flexibility back to the localities.
00:33:21.180 It unleashes the ability for developers to develop and builders to build.
00:33:26.820 That's one thing.
00:33:28.080 Another thing is to form public-private partnerships.
00:33:30.520 I've traveled all around our country and have seen some great examples as it pertains to affordable housing, single-family, multifamily.
00:33:37.960 And manufactured housing is also a big deal when it comes to affordable housing.
00:33:41.600 But when private entities partner with public entities, public-private partnerships, and they work together to identify the issue and then come up with a strategy for long-term sustainability and execute that strategy, I've seen that over and over again.
00:33:59.460 The federal government is not the answer.
00:34:01.140 The federal government, HUD, is a facilitator and a great convener.
00:34:05.360 But when you start bringing in the private sector, when you start bringing in the nonprofits and the faith-based entities that are doing the work on the ground every day, that's how you build more affordable housing.
00:34:16.920 But it has to start with regulation, and we need the interest rates to come down, period.
00:34:21.620 Now, the other aspect of the last two weeks of the news that's really touched on you is that President Trump is threatening to invade all these cities, notably Washington, D.C., which is obviously the federal district anyway.
00:34:35.740 So the notion that the president could take over Washington is kind of absurd on its face.
00:34:40.520 But he said, and we're going to look at Baltimore, and we're going to look at Oakland, and we're going to look at Chicago.
00:34:45.400 In the cabinet meeting, he seemed to couch that a little bit and say, look, I'd rather go in there by invitation.
00:34:51.860 I want to help these people out.
00:34:54.520 24 out of 25 times, they're Democrats, and they don't want to admit that they need my help, but these cities are falling apart.
00:35:00.640 From the federal standpoint, what do you think that the government can do to improve these cities that, in some cases, I'm only being slightly hyperbolic?
00:35:11.320 I take the Amtrak past Baltimore.
00:35:13.160 I feel like I'm looking at Fallujah or something.
00:35:14.940 I mean, some of these places look really, really run down.
00:35:17.960 Well, there's been a lack of leadership.
00:35:20.560 Let's just start right there.
00:35:22.280 You have to care about the people that you serve, Democrat and Republican.
00:35:26.160 In this instance, most of these cities that have gone down, quote-unquote, are ran by Democrat leadership.
00:35:35.520 And see, to me, HUD, housing, poverty is not a political issue.
00:35:41.000 Safety is not a political issue.
00:35:42.920 Everybody wants to be safe, whether they say it or whether they don't say it.
00:35:46.760 Democrats and Republican men and women want to be safe.
00:35:50.440 And when you look here in Washington, D.C., our beautiful capital, and you see homelessness.
00:35:55.160 You see tents and encampments and crime and people being murdered.
00:36:01.360 There was a young lady.
00:36:02.480 You heard her today.
00:36:03.460 Yes, yeah.
00:36:03.840 She was a reporter with one of the local outlets.
00:36:07.540 Yeah, I think it was Epoch Times.
00:36:08.740 Epoch Times.
00:36:09.300 Her name was Iris.
00:36:10.160 Yeah.
00:36:10.720 And Iris told a story how she was mugged at gunpoint, a gun to her head.
00:36:16.100 She refused to give her items away, and then the guy pistol-whipped her.
00:36:19.620 Thank God he only pistol-whipped her. 0.70
00:36:21.000 Thank God.
00:36:21.440 And thank God she survived.
00:36:23.200 Well, that should not be the case.
00:36:24.660 And so, President Trump, as you know, said, we're going to take over Washington, D.C.
00:36:29.600 We're going to send a National Guard.
00:36:30.940 We're going to send our troops to make sure that the streets of our capital city are safe.
00:36:36.340 So that women that take the Amtrak, women that take the train, the bus, men, small children that walk on the streets in our city,
00:36:43.380 don't have to be terrified that they're going to get mugged, that they're going to get axed, that they're going to get shot.
00:36:48.320 And this is Baltimore, another one, Chicago, L.A., all around our country.
00:36:53.780 We have problems with crime.
00:36:55.180 Why?
00:36:55.500 Because of lack of leadership.
00:36:57.260 Remember the defund the police movement?
00:36:59.480 Yeah, yeah.
00:36:59.880 Well, we're seeing the results of that kind of paradigm, the results of that kind of culture.
00:37:05.620 We have to support our law enforcement.
00:37:07.720 We have to support our military.
00:37:09.200 These men and women wake up every single day with a mindset, I'm going to do my job.
00:37:13.940 My job is to keep the people of this city, this state safe.
00:37:18.340 And so I think that's what you see going on.
00:37:20.580 And I agree with President Trump.
00:37:22.080 You want to be invited.
00:37:23.820 You want leaders to lead.
00:37:26.080 Yes, yeah.
00:37:26.860 And part of leadership is saying, you know what?
00:37:28.660 We have an issue here.
00:37:30.060 Well, you know, something else the president said in the meeting on crime is he said it's almost like a trap for the Democrats.
00:37:35.640 I didn't mean it to be, but it's this trap.
00:37:37.760 But they're defending crime.
00:37:39.680 I mean, it's kind of like when they were defending a guy going into a little girl's bathroom.
00:37:43.600 I mean, you think, what political malpractice to take the side of what's an 80-20 issue?
00:37:49.380 More like a 97-3 issue.
00:37:51.120 So you see that on crime.
00:37:52.200 You saw that on the flag-burning executive order.
00:37:54.680 Democrats are now openly the party of burning the American flag.
00:37:58.220 It seems like political malpractice.
00:38:00.460 But when it comes to the cities, I think you're right.
00:38:02.740 Safety should not be a partisan issue.
00:38:04.660 No.
00:38:04.920 And these issues that you bring up, one mistake that we've made here recently in America is we've put politics over principle.
00:38:15.340 Yeah.
00:38:16.440 Period.
00:38:17.940 Politics should never trump principle.
00:38:19.680 And I believe what you're seeing now with the president, with this cabinet, with leaders in this administration, we're getting back to principles.
00:38:27.820 We're getting back to the foundational principles that make America great, that make America safe, that make America prosperous, that make America welcoming, that make America a place where hardworking, everyday men and women raising their families feel proud to live.
00:38:42.200 And I think returning to that principle mindset is what you're seeing.
00:38:46.000 And everybody doesn't like that.
00:38:47.520 Because politics keep people in power.
00:38:50.200 Politics keep people elected.
00:38:51.780 I don't give two cents about power or being elected.
00:38:54.780 I don't care about position or title.
00:38:56.600 It's about principle and purpose.
00:38:58.640 And I think that's what you're seeing.
00:38:59.980 And when the people do give you power, it's good to wield it to benefit them and for the common good.
00:39:05.080 You know, that's the least we could do.
00:39:06.040 Yes, sir.
00:39:06.540 Mr. Secretary, hope you have a very good Labor Day and good to see you.
00:39:09.340 Thanks for coming by.
00:39:09.880 God bless you.
00:39:10.280 September 10th, we celebrate the 10-year anniversary of The Daily Wire.
00:39:17.360 10 years of leftist tears.
00:39:19.720 New shows, big moves, bigger targets.
00:39:23.060 And first up is our newest show, Friendly Fire.
00:39:25.940 We're on the show.
00:39:26.720 This is it.
00:39:27.380 No safe words.
00:39:28.580 No moderator.
00:39:29.500 My original proposal had been that Noel should be moderator.
00:39:31.740 We all agree on that.
00:39:32.700 We're celebrating our first decade and kicking off the next 10 years by doing what we do best.
00:39:37.320 I think it's really true.
00:39:38.100 Picking arguments, starting fights, and filming the whole thing.
00:39:41.380 This is enough small talk, I think.
00:39:42.480 I got a little hungry.
00:39:43.300 I hope that your wife made you that sandwich.
00:39:44.740 Oh my God.
00:39:46.140 I think we do need a moderator, just a programming note.
00:39:48.700 September 10th on Daily Wire.
00:39:52.080 Before you go, make sure that you like and subscribe to this channel and you will get many, many more videos.
00:39:57.200 See you next time.
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