>> larry kudlow will you write a book about your time in the trump administration? >> i don't have anything planned at the moment. i am very busy. i am loving life. never say never. but not at the moment. >> how many jobs do you have? [laughter] >> we have foxbusiness every day between four and 5:00 o'clock p.m.

i love that that is the book of what i do i also different segments for fox news and foxbusiness people. i did one this morning for fox and friends at her radio show every saturday morning for three hours. the national radio show runs here w abc radio. we are live stream in syndicated. i write op-ed pieces constantly and some informal political consulting. with pretty much anybody who asks. i am a grateful camper life after the white house has been terrific itt has been a blessing for me. >> 40 years ago as an at the

reagan administration and the director of omb was document who remainsck a friend of mine. that was reagan's first term. .n

he ran in 1960, he ran and richard nixon ran as the status quo known as the republican party was okay with very high tax rate. eisenhower has no interest innh cutting the 91% tax rate they inherited from fdr's new deal. kennedy didn't explicitly run on itdi what he said he wants 5% growth, it had been three recessions during the eisenhower years, three recessions. that's a little known fact, but it's true. and the connection some 25 years later was reagan lowered the marginal tax rates also and helped reignite the economy that

would argue as they do quite a bit on the show the tax cuts launched almost a three decade prosperity. the jfk tax cuts launched a decade-long prosperity but was unwound and undermined by lbj's great society. but richard nixon, jerry ford, jimmy carter, none of them understood tax cuts or the incentive effects, the economic growth effects of lower marginal tax rates. maybe we can talk about that some more. and some very smart people out there. my friends and mentor the nobel prize winner and others brought the supply side. essentially the tax cuts to reagan. reagan looked at them and

thought about it and ran on them and it was very controversial just as it was in jfk is a day. you quote jfk is sagging it will be a major aim of the program to broaden the tax base and reconsider the rate. >> absolutely. there's some juicy quotes that couldd have easily applied to reagan. kennedy was the first guy to use the p phrase a rising tide lifts all boats i use it all the time.

on the corporate side they were cut from the same cloth so i was able to bridge reagan to trump on those policies. i was too young for jfk. really only 17 when i went to the reagan white house. but if i may, i'm reading a book thee title of which is about warren g harding a much-maligned u.s. president i might add, but in the 1920s, harding as vice president calvin coolidge and

the treasury secretary andrew mellon, who was a great figure from pittsburgh and entrepreneurial banker. they put together the huge reduction of marginal tax rates. the income tax amendment i believe was 1913, the amendment started and when woodrow wilson left office it was over 70%. we went into a recession and brought tax rates down to 25% and launched a tremendous boom, prosperity boom in the 1920s. and i'm going to go one more. that is another of my favorite figures is ulysses s grant. he was arguably the greatest general or one of the greatest

generals. grant as president also much-maligned and my friend and colleague. grant did two things in his administration. he neverer gets credit for this. the liberal historians will neveror give him credit but the fact is grand ended the civil war income tax, ended it, okay, and grant restored back to golda so we had a massive wartime inflation and grand ended both and also helped launch the second industrial revolution which is sometimes referred to as the gilded age but it's a phenomenal period of american life so to be consistent, here is grandin cutting taxes. harding is cutting taxes, kennedy is cutting taxes,

reagan, trump is cutting taxes. under the last two, which i've been around for the others. wewe talked about some economic terms. i was hoping we could have a broader discussion about how theyde work together. what's the interplay between all these? the absolute basic key elements in economic growth and prosperity, and let me step back a moment. i am for growth and prosperity. in my whole career it seems to

me i served in government by the first job i ever have is in the federal reserve bank of new york. i was a secretary who was president with three government assignments. it seemsnt to me if you do nothg else, you should promote policies that would generate growth, prosperity's, jobs. and i. am a free-market capitalist. i believed in free enterprise capitalism. i think it's the surest path to growth. when i was in the cnbc days and i had my show there for many years i use to open up as the best path to prosperity isolated

for many years. i believe that. essentially you need to the lowest possible tax rates, the least possible government intervention. think of it as minimal regulations and a sound currency. in the regulations a cheap base dollar, depreciated dollar you will find yourself with high inflation, high unemploymenten d recession. and i've argued down through a e years that there are almost no exceptions to that. almost no exceptions to that.

this is a controversial point. the economics profession adnowadays like everything elsen the economy has moved to the left, doesn't agree with that. the point i'm making is i am prepared to argue in historical terms as well as economic policy terms. i won't argue the necessity part though it is interesting in the gilded age and rescuing the monetary system plenty of times.

but right now it is troubling to me. the most troubling part is that it's lost sight of its principal mission to keep the currency sound and the price level. nowadays with all this talk of local culture and economics, the fed and some of its appointees are talking more about climate change than price stability. i'm not opposedm to diversity t i don't think that the fed should manage its own human resources properly without any prejudice at all. the idea that it wants to equalize the economy takes this left-wing socialist view that we

should all be equal and the finish line when in a society like ours what we want is equal opportunity at the starting line and then the finish line we will exercise our god-given talent in many different ways. it's geared to something called equity and of course climate change. i'm not a climate denier i just do not have a climate emergency. this has become a political recession and i think the fed completely and utterly missed the boat on this inflation problem that we aree

experiencing. one of the other is income inequality. is that a concern, should we be concerned they make ten times as much? >> no we should not. again i think the idea here for me is we showed bylaw have equality of opportunity at the starting line. we cannot guarantee equality of results. even in communist countries and the old soviet union, i grew up during the cold war particularly in the reagan years when we fought.

the only inequality that they had in the soviet union was of poverty and then the nomenclature of who ran the place but there was no widespread prosperity ever and that is true for all socialist or communist countries it seems to me so no way should not strive to and do something called inequality. we should strive for growth and prosperity. we should maximize opportunities. we want to have unlimited opportunities. that's whyd i would argue the government cannot manage the economy, cannot manage the price system, the government cannot manage markets. you have literally thousands and millions of people operating in the free economy and i want the economy to be free and i want them all to have their own

personal freedom. but that is a job for the so-called private sector. free-market economics is the prosperity. i want freedom inside of the economy. freedom to fail and to succeed. it's still true tot this day you've got an entrepreneurial story where people have an idea they might scratch off some money to finance it. it may not work. it may fail several times. you may go bankrupt, but at some point you may become a massive success. that is what is so brilliant about the b gilded age.

the revolution, the information revolution in our lifetime, the stuff that we routinely use today didn't exist when i was starting out. all that stuff. so all that's gone. even like me i figured out most of this stuff and how to use it so my point is you've got kids dropping out of college working trying to put things together. they fail and then they succeed. that's the american story but behind that story is freedom. and again if we lose that we will lose everything. so i spent a lifetime trying to

promote freedom frankly in the economic sector where i know something about it but i know all throughout the country freedom of speech now there's a big debate and we've got misinformation. this b stuff drives me crazy. he calls himself a free speech absolutist or something like that. free speech, freedom of religion. i want a free economy, a free economy without produce every state run centrally planned economy and iom will sit here on for a couple of hours all day share theow and historical examples of why the free economy outperforms the statist economy that fact about the recessions kind of surprised

me. what happened was that government policy? there are a lot of factors after world war ii and the korean war but i would just say principally you had 91% tax rate. very high taxes. some critics of the view would say hi taxes but this loopholes. you have some loopholes from hollywood studio owners but most people, particularly the entrepreneurs had to pay high income taxes.

the incentive that was so prominent during the harden harding and coolidge and the liberating u.s. grant tax cut it was a very tightly controlled economy. a government run economy. the federal reserve properly i think kept the dollar stable. you had episodes of inflation but basically we were under the old brentwood's dollar gold exchange system and federal reserve principally under. but anytime the fed tried, there were no other outlets. it was so tightly controlled by the high taxes and regulations. those are really important

issues and ike who has many wonderful qualities generalized economics wasn't one of them. there's a long story there. the top advisor was arthur burns. pushed the ball during the reagan years and burns was the ambassador to reagan and a very good ambassador in the later yearss and we became very friendly. all those years eisenhower, nixon he sold them work during the reagan years. so there were three recessions and this r is what gave kennedya

step up. nixon didn't really deal with much on economic policies and domestic policies. i remember nixon's son-in-law by the way is a personal friend of mine, very dear friends of ours. i met nixon in the middle 80s. i was out of office back on wall street. he had his office down at one federal plaza in downtown new york in those days and his son-in-law would bring in various policy people before president nixon would go on trips so i had at least one visit, maybe two. i had written numerous pieces in the wall street.

took thek dollar and we had booming inflation. and i said no, sir, with respect i don't. it was a very cool moment and as i said this is the mid 80s. the reagan tax cuts. >> insanity once more is a collection of the columns that came out in 2018 and i want to do a quote from them. this is 2016, november 8, 2016 and forcing the trade deals is spot on. acting in the interest of american workers is correct.

this is a good story. president trump was much more attuned to the tariffs and i was or am. i became the director in march of 2018. he had put through steel and aluminum tariffs. i didn't agree and i think more may have been on that but we wrote a piece criticizing the deal and president trump knew

all about it when he was calling me secretly. i am not a fan. they work in production just as much as domestic tax rates so i regard myself as a free trader but i'm going to make two qualifications.u one is you do have to think about the issue of reciprocity. what's the other side doing on trade and this is an important point made. it is interesting the only two pieces i wrote when i was in his

administration and they are both preceded. i quoted a conversation he and i had where he believed he was a free trader and under ideal circumstances, that is to say no barriers and subsidies. that is the world that trump here and for those were his goals. zero subsidies.

the second one was in "the wall street journal" and i remember i think it was 2018 north of québec we were in a bilateral with justin trudeau and the senior advisors lineup on both sides and they are talking about trade because trump was threatened to impose the tariffs that would have devastated canada. no barriers and subsidies we would all be in great shape as free traders. then he said you've said that

your whole career. he expressed that view. people forget we had u.s. mca which was a good free trade deal. we had free trade deals with japan, brazil, south korea where both sides in the spirit of reciprocity gave up some protections. theth biggest one was china and

the most controversial. trump had big tariffs on china in 365 billion. so far biden hasn't taken them off and i hope he doesn't. i would argue we needed them to bringng china to the table one f trump's greatest achievements as president was he rang the bell one china and made it very cler to people in this country and around the world that china is

an adversary, they are not our friends, they are economic adversaries and a foreign policy. so his rhetoric and tariffs were tough but we did bring them to the h table. the deal was rooted. it's a certain inconsistency but the one was necessary to get to the other and i think the deal is holding up pretty good. lots and lots of progress on

intellectual property theft. they've set up institutional mechanisms to reduce it. they've brought a lot of our commodities, not perhaps as much as we want but a lot and we ought toto be selling a lot mor. the transfer of technology still a work in progress. so far nothing has happened. he wouldn't f say it the way tht i've said it. in a perfect world he would agree with me. >> good afternoon and welcome to booktv. our guest is the author of

american abundance that came out in 1997 in the reagan revolution came out in 2016 and the 2 collection of the column is from the creators syndicate in 2018 and that's called insanity once more. this is the monthly program his or her body of work. here's how you can get a hold of us if you have a question or comment (202)748-8200 for those of you in the east and central time zones. (202)748-8201 for those in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you wantex to send a text message 8903 is the number for you please include your first name and city if you will. we will also scroll through our social media addresses.

just remember booktv is the handle so we will begin taking those in just a few minutes. what was the reaction from a lot of your longtime republican friends when you joined the trump administration? >> people encouraged me to do it for a variety of reasons. i was pretty busy on a different network and radio show and consulting. i had worked with candidate trump and in particular quite a lot. occasionally i was a spokesperson for economics during the campaign and he evoked my name several times.

i knew him for many years knew himm and liked him. he'd been a guest on my tv show and my radio show. i knew his family a bit but always liked him and thought he was a major force. i wasn't looking for a job, but if you have a second i will tell you how it started. in early 2018, march of 2018 is how this got started we were up here in connecticut and i was coming back from indoor tennis. the phone rings in my car and it's the president. i had seen him in 2017 and we kept in touch and anyway, he calls me and i pulled over and had a pretty good reception.

pulled over and continued the conversation. he starts talking about one thing or another. you mention the economic council but nothing terribly specific. i thought he was calling to yell at me because we had written this op-ed against the steel tariffs. but i don't think it came up in that conversation. maybe it did once but he just wanted to sort of talk about things and i think he mentioned sunday afternoon he says call me back. i said i will call you back tomorrow night. i said okay, sir. >> when the phone rings for the white house does it say please hold for the president? >> yes. so anyway, i am home monday night in new york and he did call. that is when we had a more

earnest direct conversation about the national economic council. it was about to make a change and we talked about a bunch of policies. these were very good conversations i enjoyed it. what do we think about this and that and whatbo should i do the. as you know, not bashful and he knows that. then he said no one knows we are having this conversation. that's what he said. no one knows we are having this conversation. he said i will call you tomorrow night and we will talk some more. so the next night we are having dinner with a group of friends in midtown and i had at the cell phone in my back pocket just in case. the phone rang and it was him.

i had to walk out on fifth avenue. it was cold but he got much more specific on that call. in fact it's sort of amusing because my wife came out to get me. we had to go home, i did a radio show and in those days every tuesday we would do an hour so we are talking on madison avenue and he's talking and finally i just said are you offering me the position? [laughter] yeah, you're the only guy, no one knows we are having this conversation. congratulations. he said will you take the job and i said, yes, i will, sir

later he said hello, takes a call from the president at dinner, gets up, walks out of the restaurant and we didn't see him for four years. [laughter] so that's how that happens. then in that call some people said he'd offered me the job the night before but i didn't get it. i don't know. in any case, he said you will come down here thursday or friday.. no one knows this. so the next morning which is a wednesday morning, i'm sitting at home preparing for my tv show and he calls me and says you look so handsome and burn on the

tv. of course the news had broke and everybody was running this thing. it wasn't supposed to go out. but those are qualities and one of the reasons i really liked the guy. maybe he could say some things differently but he is who he is. >> did you know him as donald? did you ever call him by his first name? >> no, never. he was either mr. president or sir. back to insanity once more. if it looked different it's because we are at the library in

the wilds of connecticut so appreciate ite very much you allowing us to come up here. back to your insanity once more. this is october, 2020. 2016 column. i want to thank for starting me on the path to confidence. president trump, then candidate trump had to set a couple things that didn'tha throw me. things come up in that campaign you look at that and it wasn't a very important but during the campaign they become big deals. i recall she was a wonderful, wonderful woman.

she went on tv and adjust defended president trump, just made it very clear she was a thousand% behind him and that these things were passing and it was no big deal, so i wrote about that.so it's funny that column he told me later that he was personally notno thrilled about that colum. i knowou i'm not one of her intimates but i had great

respect. her support was unwavering and had written to some extent tongue and cheek. go ahead and make your comment or question. >> we are taking billions of dollars from china. now we are taking billions and billions of dollars. that's had a positive effect on

things. i think we got the idea. he referenced 2019. it was about the tariffs on china and taking in millions of dollars. so is there something you can extrapolate from that? in economic terms impose a significant burden on china and experienced it and assaulted because prices went up and the demand for chinese currency went down. the inflation rate went up. interest rates went up.

our economy was booming during oothe period. the corporate tax cuts was so important and gives such a big advantage but in that world ofri trade because again as we discussed earlier they are tax rates so we did increase the rates on certain chinese imports. but we had flashed the corporate tax rate. it more than offsets any rate at

impact. even though i don't like the tariffs in an ideal world perhaps president trump doesn't either. he rang the warning bell and we brought that to the table and it wasn't until 2020 that we finally had the phase one trade deal so on balance it may be necessary. raising the corporate tax rate would put us at a tremendous disadvantage and would damage the position so i would urge

them to keep the tax rates low. we want to be as competitive as we can. money flowed back to the u.s. and as an aside it turns out the corporate tax rates, the reduction in the corporate tax rates paid for themselves. we talk about it on the show. the tax collections went up as the tax rate went down because there was more economic activity, more people working, earning more income so they paid more tax collections even though the rates were down the income was up and by the way, tax avoidance is much less. there's no point for looking at the tax shelters if you have a

low tax rate it's just not worth the effort. so for any negative impacts. >> in hudson florida good afternoon. >> please go ahead with your question or comment. >> i watch your show religiously. >> what i was going to ask is where will we be next year in

ther craziness there's something wrong with him and anybody in the government now where are we going to be next year. >> thanks for calling in i can't comment on the problems. i see what i see and i will leave that to doctors. this is my own personal view as i say many times i think the midterm elections are going to be a gop sweep in both houses and i think that. some of the economic and social.

the biggest problem we are going to have in the next couple of yearst is getting high inflation down. the high inflation was a big mistake by the biden administration. too much spending and borrowing. the federal reserve as i said earlier missed the inflation. getting inflation back to 2% will not be pain-free. hopefully a republican congress work to reducespending and borr.

hopefully a republican congress will open towards oil and gas productiond and pipelines all f which have been closed by and hopefully the republican congress will keep the federal reserve to make sure that they slow down the money supply and move their interest rates up accordingly and protect theth value of the dollar so i think you're going to see policy changes but i don't think it's going to be easy. >> for those who do or don't watch the show there something else you've been saying. we are going to play a quick montage. >> that's still my motto.

save america kill the bill. tonight i am launching a new mantra kill any new bills that come next year. [laughter] so far it keeps coming back. it became a rallying cry. that bill would have been another five to $6 trillion of additional federal spending with massive inflationary consequences and huge tax hikes

they. there was a save america coalition that developed. i was a supporter of democrat joe manchin constantly, supporting. i thought he was a very brave democrat. as somebody who would save the democratic party for himself if ever given thes chance. he's a friend of mine that's obeen on the show. i don't talk politics with him i talk policy but i think that he did a heroic job. and so far, we've killed the

bill. i want to add one thing. there's another bill out there that has nothing to do with nacompeting with china but as mh as $300 million of additional federal spending. industrial policies, corporate welfare bailing out the industry that doesn't need bailouts and i've got toed tell you a dozen republicans voted for it in the senatela. the top three in the country appreciate your efforts. you mentioned to the previous call making nonclinical comments about mr. biden's cognitive

abilities. you actually called our president an idiot. but my question is this. you referred to the tax cuts, tax policies as decades ofax prosperity. his policies cost george bush a second term because it was economics clinton ran on in the state of the economy. thirty years would have taken us up to the second thate was an economic debacle as well. >> there's a lot on the table there. a lot on the table.

perhaps id said that in passing but i don't believe that. putting that aside, reversing a small part we went in and lost the election. but the bulk of the tax cuts when reagan came in it was 70%. it's raised to 31 and bill clinton took it to so still

below 70 and then george w. bush brought it back down. they went as low as 28. so many that help to vice president we said don't do it. he dated and he lost the election. if you want a full explanation. writing about that pretty extensively in the reagan revolution it's funny because you and i were talking yesterday and we had this persona on the

air. i am very critical. i wasn't at the beginning. i gave that chance and took a look at the left and its policies our booktv program continues. we want to hear from you as well. we are going to give you the numbers and how you can participate. (202)748-8200 in the east and central time zones. (202)748-8201 and the mountain and pacific time zones. if you want to send a text message, (202)748-8903. again that is for text messages only. please conclude your first name and your city if you would. where did you grow up? >> grew up in englewood, new

jersey. he was a businessman and she became a good real estate agent. i had a brother that has lived in hollywood, los angeles for manyny decades. i love him to death and he's my favorite hollywood liberal. >> what does he do in hollywood? >> he's a screenwriter, postproduction. aas i say he's my favorite hollywood liberal. [laughter] >> this is from american abundance, you can take it where you want. in late november, 95 i had no prospects, no confidence, no ambition andnd no cents i couldo

the job. what was going on? >> i had my crash and burn sort of hopeless addictions. there was the worst time of my life that had been building up for several years and it went away to a treatment center in minnesotaa for five months. my wife send meca up there and november 95 is when i got out and i wasn't sure what would happen. the most important part was staying sober for 27 years.

the greatest blessing of my life those were t tricky times. it seems like a long time ago things in almost every way have worked out better than i ever dreamed possible or ever dared to dream possible. we would have i think 35 years. god has been very good to me. r and at that point when you read that, and i was being honest in that book. i had no idea. >> what do you remember about the last few months or the first

few months at the end? >> very little to be honest with you. i still go to 1212 step meetings. i'm still active in the 12 steps and in my church and i think about that stuff from time to time. you may be on your anniversary or not but you have to tell your story in front of s the group. i don't want to bore the viewers but you kind of go back in time and think about that. you never want to lose that. there were terrible days. i will spare the qualifications here on c-span but i will say it was the worst moments of my

life. i would return to a more spiritual way of looking at the world and i will also say things that i have learned from the 12 step group have served me very well in my career. i've been honest about all this. i've never withheld that from time to time. in the white house on my 25th

anniversary, she was hosting a conference on alcohol and drugs and it just so happened they found out, i don't know how. it was my 25th anniversary coming up and she asked me to speak, whichch i did in at leasa general way. but you think about it from that point in 1995 to being a very senior presidential advisor is a long stone's throw but the one couldn't have happened without the other. and i'm very grateful for that. i try to follow his path.

i'm not perfect but t i try. >> let's collect calls. you are on. >> i'm wondering what your opinion is on the u.s. debt of 3 trillion and the unfunded liabilities that we have in the social security that's coming up and getting closer and closer also the 9 trillion-dollar balance sheet. what kind of affect are we going toto have when interest rates begin to return to anything close to normal? -it seems to me there's a growg concern and various editorials.

it's very concerning and i'm wondering what your opinion isin and i will take my answer off the air. >> those are very good questions. the second one is the balance sheet that is essentially printing money. it borrows to finance its spending and the federal reserve purchases the bonds that uncle sam sells. it's full faith and credit but when the fed buys those bonds they literally print money. that is what the central banks to do. i could go on and on about it.

i started my professional career in the market operations at the fed so i learneded it back in 13 but in any case, the problem is an issue. i don't believe you will ever be out of default of social security obligations or for that matter medicare obligations. at the end of the day it is a government that sells bonds to raise the money. yes we pay taxes and have payroll taxes for social security and medicare but there's a certain fiction about that. at somebo future point somebodyn

power in congress or the white house will have to look at that. they are very valuable systemsbl and need to be preserved and can be reformed. there's a number of decent proposals. it includes the entitlements and the other point the viewer made interest rates will return to something more normal in my view at least both will go higher because the inflation and federal reserve attempt. the financing of federal debt

these are all reasons i don't want any more federal spending on the discretionary programs. that's why i said to save america, kill the bill. we don't need another $5 trillion of domestic spending. it's going to be extremely costly to finance. i've been an opponent of the administration's policies. the point is we have to come up with no new spending at all, period. supper at about raising the

marginal tax rates and the negative incentive and economic growth. we can't keep doing this. it's a matter of common sense. it to you that way. i know i'm a republican and conservative. i get that. i'm not masquerading if anything else but i want to say i think what we are seeing in the polls, a matter of common sense people do not want to go out this far rnon everything whether it's government spending or ending fossil fuels were taking parents out of the classroom or the open border or the foreign policy with afghanistan. i'm not a campaign commercial i'm just saying what you have

here as an administration that's departed from traditional democratic concerns i acknowledged it was about 45 to 50 years ago i worked for the former democrat and donald trump. i've often said that the best republicans were former democrats not if the republican senators agrees but i say that somewhat tongue and cheek this is being rejected. you're sitting there and use yan inflation rate that's jumped and this is before the invasion of ukraine. then they come back with a new proposal which the congressional

office has 5 trillion and another 3 trillion in debt. you say to yourself you can't do this. joe manchin was the standup guy along with kristin cinema. the stuffbo going on isn't sustainable.e. there's a bunch of democrats. i know they are from swing states but i don't mean to question their motives. the fact is we can't just have a couple million people illegally cross the border every year. it's not sustainable just like we are not going to end natural gas and fossil fuels in the next eight to ten years because there's nothing to replace them and people will know that. so entitlement, we have a lot of workrk to do and i think you wil

see the big change. but i think the congressional change is coming. but the biggest change and the most important will be 2024 because in order to affect the major reforms in any of these areas with words taxes were spending or inflation or education or civil rights. >> july 9, 2019 talking to business insider this is a quote. i don't see this as a huge problem right now at all. it's quite manageable, talking about the $22.5 trillion debt. as a share of gdp, this was when

-- >> july, 2019. >> i didn't see it as a big problem. actually, it's funny i had a long history of not being a dad to monitor and some of my traditional conservative friends don't like that. i am much more interested. here's where my theme of economic growth comes into play. are you growing the economy? that is my first question. let's go back this was true in the reagan tax cuts and trump. his cuts were replaced on a static basis meaning no economic growth impact.

and of course you have democrats. i mightht add they've brought minority unemployment to record lows. they also paid for themselves. there was an increase but here we are even through the pandemic all these numbers coming in from the irs and treasury show record revenues. they show that the corporate tax

cuts. this has been the subject about of a couple of programs. so, you may have to borrow money to finance lower tax rates, but what i would say is you are making an investment. everybody will benefit. studies show, for example they

are not crazy leftists but it's left of center. 80% of the people who got text. i supported him on this 60 to 70% of the benefits of the tax cut went to working folks typical families. when i made the statement in 2019, i stick to it. what bothers me is if you are going to spend a lot of money that will not enhance growth that bugs me. reagan wasn't worried. he would say so a little bit but

he had two priorities one was to/the tax rates to rejuvenate the economy. the secondn was to put money ino the defense. the deficits temporarily went up and so did the debt, but he achieved his ends. the economy grew as i said before. just nearly three decades worth of prosperity with very small interruptions. growth and peace through strength. strong at home and strong abroad. week at home and week abroad. i learned that from reagan and i've never forgotten it's been 40 plus years. i will say to you as a senior trump advisor he believed the

same thing. weakness at home reads weakness abroad. he slashed corporate and small business tax rates, grew the economy, reinvigorated the economy and unemployment fell, put a lot of money into the defense budget. we had to do that at that point it was not so much russia as china. so i think you go back and john kennedy talked aboutth strengtht home and strength abroad. kennedy people forget this i know it was a long time ago but if alive today i'm just saying he wanted growth at home which he got posthumously from the tax cuts and brought the soviet union tooth and nail.

these are not historical coincidences. these are principles that work whether you are a democrat or republican. one of mycr arguments today as a former democrat pat moynihan was the last democrat i worked for and he was half republican but the point i'm trying to make is there was a time the two parties were a lot closer together than they are today. this far left stuff is being rejected by common sense people throughout the country and i'm a hopeless optimist you know this hopeless optimist as long as we protect its freedoms this little far left woke aberration will not last. that's my take. >> next call comes from martin in dayton, ohio. >> thanks for having me on.

really grateful. going back to the cnbc days i generally would always listen to him, not agreement always listen. immigration first of all, there is a great podcast called macro musings with david beck were so do your homework and listen to that because that can help us. first it is chaotic but right now we don't replace people with birthrates that are too low we actually need to make this a bigger and stronger place so if you listen to people who want to have 200 million in america but we would be just fine with 35360 people in america that would make us better so if you're talking about growth that's where you get it and then you plget them on a pathway to citizenship and they start paying into the system that's how you solve that problem and

for some reason people on the right there's a lot that goes on on the right. you've got to be the american first and that's going nowhere. inflation, trump printed money -- >> there's a lot there to play with and we appreciate you calling in. >> the third best interviewer -- >> one of the three. >> i want to make a point about inflation because i at least part of what he said i agree with. immigration is a good thing, not a bad thing. of course america has a great tradition. i don't like illegal immigration. i don'ti like open borders andi think that is kind of where we

are. my own views have changed or evolved in the last ten years over this question because i'm a strong pro- immigration reform or. but the border crisis, the catastrophe at the border is stuff that we cannot be allowed to continue. it's not sustainable in all of its many forms and president trump basicallyth did two thing. he got control of the border through the remain in mexico policy to buildingng a wall poly and basically the remain in mexico was catch and deport because illegalmi immigration by the way includes the drug trafficking that again sex

trafficking, the terrorists that run the borders. we cannot allow that. i guess my views have been tougher on the border because i've been looking at what's happened on thebo border in rect years. i think the biden's have made a terrible mistake over the borders. title 42 if you're going to get rid of that replace it with something else. the other part of the policies however is what i will call immigration reform. we had a very good plan which we congresser get through and it will require more elbow grease and probably a newll whie house and congress. there are a number of ways that we can legally, productively consistent withh economic growth

allow a million plus perhaps legal immigrants per year. i don't have any problem with that. our economy could do of course america was founded on immigrants and they were gigantic contributors to the fabulous economic growth over the last several centuries but the situation cannot last in my judgment. >> what about his comment about right-wing wackos that w he cald them? i'm not sure. he mentioned mark and he's a pretty smart guy. i'm not sure. >> let's hear from tom in phoenix. go ahead. >> thank you for taking my call. you seem to be a person respectful of everybody but if comments were made, my assessment is they are accurate

and true so how bad can they be. but any rate, save america kill the bill, your education is as disservice to this country and how to change things around from the disaster that we have now. there's a lot of people on the right are writing books and talking and their service is greatly appreciated and we need to -- i used to write the office of correspondence. i don't know if the president gets to read them. but i used to refer to him as the resident teacher. the way he spoke, people understood, they got it. it wasn't a bunch of c&c stuff. and i see you do a lot of the

same on the economic side. >> that's very kind. i appreciate it. i have a long history with c-span. i have thoughts of this giant iconic figures so i'm thrilled to be on the show today. love to do service with c-span. >> i'm not sure if you can answer this but how often does it become a bubble? >> with president trump, i would say he kept in touch with more people, just constantly on the phone which made it very

interesting. let's say we are having a big policy meeting. let's say the economy so we have aos meeting with the boss. rewe are all there. very important meeting with the boss and some subject would come up. it could be taxes. it could be trade. could be housing, no end to it. so you would start off by are here.e top, we next thing he will yell out he got me so and so on the phone. i want to talk to her.

it would be in his mind he would associate somebody he knew from outside who might have something interesting to say about the topic. he would put the person on the phone, put the speakerphone on. this would happen. this was our regularity. i know also even when we are not in formal meetings that he was constantly on the phone with people and people you might be surprised. not everyone was a trump supporter or a republican. he wanted to get all the inputs as he possibly could. he's not giving away trade secrets. it's not like he was sort of randomly calling people for national security meeting. but i will call them open-ended

discussions not necessarily decisionne discussions which wod be governed by various executive ordinances. but rather open-ended discussions, kicking stuff around. he loves to bring people in, ceos, sometimes broadcasters. friends. one of the great things in that tradition is the so-called experts including -- we are not always right and we don't always have all the wisdom in this sort of beltway thing, credentials and decrees and length of service. trump was great at staying in touch with people who were not in the government. some people in the

administration were frankly crushed by that. i would do the same thing. i would like to hear from so and so. i've been around the block for a long time. i know people out there that have opinions and i'm interested in hearing them so i love that he did that. we used to have the national economic council would have cabinet lunches every two weeks throughout all the agencies and economic policies and we would invite my predecessor. we would invite people outside the government to speak with us during the workweek, go to the board room and white house mess. it's refreshing. they are saying we needt to hear it and trump is the same way. experts. m no, too many experts.

every author wee ask him or her for their favorite books and what they are currently reading. here's the list. his favorite books include john sanford the investigator, to rescue the republic, brian kelly, the president and freedom fighter. currently reading or just read. brian, the emergence of arthur laffer. or am reading now. i want to say on john sanford, i love to read -- this, by the way, these are fictions.

john sanford's book the investigator, he has written one million books. i love mystery, cops, cia, spies. sanford writes -- his favorite cop is davenport. i have read so many john sanford books, i believe i know lucas davenport very well and i have been invested in his family and this is a book about lucas davenport's daughter, about halfway through it. so i will let you know how that works. the other one is i wanted to say jamie lee burke who has written about my other favorite cop, david robichaux in southern louisiana. i do not have a copy. i have never met james lee burke, i have never met john sanford, i would love to meet them, they are fabulous writer. lucas davenport should sometime

actually meet david robichaux. david robichaux is a recovering alcoholic and actually goes -- some of his books go into aa meetings, that is how good they are. i think it is great fun. the other stuff, i enjoy steve forbes, who is a dear friend, longtime collaborator. his book on inflation is terrific. inflation is so very important. i wanted to say that brett bear wrote a book about u.s. grant. i had brett on my tv and radio shows. an excellent book about grant, who is one of my favorite presidents. brian kilmeade wrote a terrific book about abraham lincoln and frederick douglass. two opponents of slavery, different styles, different

positions. very important book. he did a good job. i really am very keen on the foci brought here, i'm not sure what the assignment was going to be. the two books i am really keen on, one is the book about the gilded age, which is the charlie morris book, wherever i put that. that is the jazz age one. host: and waiting for you. guest: the tycoons. that links to the jazz age. the jazz age is about warren harding. i want to group them together because -- i'm going to give an opinion here. left-wing historians have destroyed these presidents. by the way, they tried to destroy grants, although i think it was you who told me grant is starting to move up the list

again. host: on the c-span quadrennial list of presidential rankings, grant has been moving up steadily. guest: deservedly so. not only did he win the civil war on the battlefield, but as i said to you yesterday, grant was the guy who tried to reinforce construction. grant was the guy who took on the complex plan. grant ended the civil war income tax and restored the value of the dollar to stop the civil war inflation. liberal historians don't like grant, they don't like warren harding, they don't like calvin coolidge. they just do like ronald reagan, but so much material has come out, reagan and his own hand, they realize reagan was quite a policy intellectual. let's go to the gilded age. the gilded age -- i'm going to

define it as kind of like 1870 to 1910 or something, give me some running room on that. i am going to include u.s. grant. grant was president from 1868 to 1876. the gilded age was the second industrial revolution. the gilded age was a phenomenal period of inventions -- railroads across the country, airplanes, oil, the applications of oil. i brought a list because i was hoping we could go into this stuff. best mustela, telegraph, rail lines, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, the red cross -- come on. and they are badmouthing everything about the guilder -- this tv show made them all out

to be villains. it was about social climbing and stuff like that. they completely missed the big picture. this was a period of unheralded prosperity for the united states. america became the greatest country in the world economically during the so-called gilded age. it was the second industrial revolution. my saintly wife is also a terrific painter, artist. you had the hudson river painters came through. john singer, tremendous stuff. stephen crane, elizabeth worden. the chicago exposition of 1893, i hope i get this right, if i don't she will correct me, it was 1893 or 1896. the wright brothers, 19 oh three, was during the gilded age. what charles morrison does is chronicles a few of these guys, rockefeller, carnegie, j.p. morgan.

i'm just saying, this was not an era of robber barons, this was an era of american greatness and prosperity with tens of millions of people getting higher-paying jobs. you cannot ask for more. it was a tremendous period of literature and art. that is why i wanted to bring that up. there's lots of good books about this. the tycoons is a good place to start. a lot of good books about this. william bill brandt has written about this. liberal historians have slaughtered this age and they are wrong. they missed the point. i don't know why. the progressive period under woodrow wilson cannot pose of anything like this. the other thing is the 1920's, the jazz age. again, you get people like to kill harding. there was corruption in the harding administration. but as mr. walters shows, it had

nothing to do with harding. and the people that were corrupt got busted. the teapot dome standoff -- harding had nothing to do with that. he was a good, middle-of-the-road conservative republican senator from ohio. here is the thing about harding. return to normalcy. i said this earlier in the show -- harding working with calvin coolidge, who is another guy, liberals hit coolidge -- coolidge, by the way, maybe the first law & order guy, he stopped the police strike in massachusetts, he was tough on crime, that is a big issue today. and andrew mellon was the quarterback. they slashed tax rates. and they slashed spending, and the even slashed the federal debt, even though i don't care about that as much as some people. we had unbelievable prosperity in the 1920's. another industrial age.

literature, art, everything exploded. unfortunately, herbert hoover came in, and even though he was republican and he served in coolidge -- coolidge called him wonder boy. hoover was a good businessman, he was a mining engineer, and he did great humanitarian things in world war i, but as secretary of commerce, coolidge had no time for him because he was a big government guy. even though he had the hoover institution in stanford which is all about free markets, hoover himself -- hoover took the tax rate from 25% to 65%. i know there was restricted tariffs during these republican years, but not like that. it was a terrible mistake. it turned what was a modest downturn a major depression, than fdr, in my view, made it worse because he kept raising

taxes and kept regulating and kept controlling prices. i am reading these books and i like to productize about these books. i love the gilded age stuff personally. if i had to do it over again, you could kind of plot me -- i would have liked to have been -- i don't know, grover cleveland, a democrat, is one of my favorite presidents. he was a pro gold, spending cutter, would not fathom the income tax, from buffalo, new york. he was governor of new york and president all in about six or eight years. he is the only guy to come back and be president again, i think. i like grover cleveland. i like u.s. grant. i like warren harding. i especially like calvin coolidge. i like ronald reagan. and i like donald trump. host: wasn't grover cleveland the father of baby ruth?

let's hear from -- guest: that is -- his opponents go after these guys on those grants and they forget -- grover cleveland was the last gold democrat. anyway, william jennings bryan, we can go through that another time. host: we have time for one or two more calls. john is in florida. you are on with larry kudlow. john, you with us? let's try john in connecticut. caller: this is john from connecticut. i want to know if you think that john kennedy, senator from louisiana, would be a good presidential candidate in 2024. host: thank you, we are going to leave it there, we are running short on time. guest: john kennedy is a very smart man.

i will leave it there. host: is he somebody you know? when you are in the white house, how often did you talk with senators? constantly? guest: tons. i had a lot of dealings with senator kennedy. i introduced him -- he spoke here at the state party fundraiser, he was on a tv show recently, he is a very smart guy. host: frank, florida. you are on the air. caller: that is kirk in washington. host: i apologize. caller: you asked a wonderful question of mr. kudlow and i happen to enjoy watching mr. kudlow. i somewhat agree with some of his positions, but some of them i do not. one of them -- i think the caller had mentioned about spending of the trump administration.

that has always been -- people in the state of washington think the republicans drive up the debt, the democrats try to fix that. what is mr. kudlow's position on that? and one more thing. elon musk made a great argument about robots coming in to take place of workers. he made a position that they would start having to pay workers a salary because there would be no more jobs. i will take my question off the air. thank you very much. host: that was a little hard to hear. did you get anything out of that? guest: robots are not going to replace the workforce. that is the most exaggerated, overstated argument. robots will help grow the economy and create jobs, just

like all these industrial revolution improvements to -- do. gales of creative destruction, i'm an advocate of that. i'm not sure i heard his first question. host: i could not hear it quickly -- clearly enough. i want to do something in our last five minutes. i want to go through some headlines and just get your quicktake on these. these are from recent newspapers. here's the new york times, a story on dr. carlsen, american nationalist. guest: i read it quickly. tucker is a friend of mine, he is a smart guy, he has done a fabulous job as a broadcaster, and it looks like a new york times political hit job to me. host: wall street journal, u.s. economy shrinks 1.4%, amazon loses money. guest: look, high inflation, the

fed is going to have to take away the punch bowl. the stock market is going to be in for a rough time the next six to nine, maybe 12 months. but i want to say this, people should buy and own stocks for the long run. the fact that the market does go down some more, which i think is likely because i think the economy is going through stagflation, we may be on the front end of a recession next year, people should buy the dip and hold on -- by the indexes and hold them forever, do not try to out tray the market. in the cavalry is coming. host: washington post, biden aid plan for ukraine signals deepening war. guest: look, i did not read that. my view is joe biden has been a dollar short and a day late on helping ukraine.

but i will also say it looks like they are catching up to where they need to be. i am impressed with defense secretary lloyd austin about this. and i think the united states should do everything it can, everything it can to help the ukrainians win the war in ukraine. not american troops on the ground, but everything, we should help ukraine win the war and drive the russians out of their territory. host: media relaxant -- media reaction to elon musk proves conservatives guest: i happen to like elon musk. i like what he is doing with respect to twitter and his crusades for free speech and i think he is a brilliant guy. happy to have him on board. host: one final story, this is from the washington post. cowboys member pleads guilty in january 6 cooperation deal.

january 6, where were you? guest: i was at my office in the second floor. i did not read that. i will make one comment. january 6 was a rough day for everybody, but i will say this. people who accuse donald trump of somehow fomenting insurrection or revolution, they ought to go back and look at some facts, and my friend murdoch has written about this but others have too. it was president trump who ordered 10,000 to 20,000 national guard people to police the capitol and the city of washington. that order was rejected by the mayor of washington and by the speaker of the house. so for a guy who has said -- is trying to promote insurrection, don't you think it is odd that

he wanted 20,000 national guard's people to protect the city and the capitol? i believe that there appeared -- leave at there. host: and from insanity, september 16, 2017, there is not a racist, hateful, white supremacist bone in donald trump's body. we are going to finish from this quote from larry kudlow. i don't believe in retirement, i don't understand the word, i just adore working. work is a virtue. what else am i going to do? guest: i don't believe there is a racist tone in donald trump's body. i will repeat that. i cannot imagine not working. as long as the lord gives me the strength to work and opportunities, i will continue to work. i love it too much. i was -- i would keel over on the set of some tv show and you will cart me away and we will be done with it. host: they're a cut though,

think you for being on book tv. thank you to you and your wife for hosting us here.