to receive the schedule of up coming programs, author discussions, book festivals and more. book tv, every sunday on c-span 2 or any time online at book tv.org. television for serious readers. weekends on c-span 2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's story, and on sunday, book tv brings you the latest in nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span 2 comes from these television companies and more, including buckeye broad band. ♪ ♪ buckeye broad band along with these television companies supports c-span 2 as a public

service. larry kudlow, will you be writing a book about your time in the trump administration? >> i don't have anything planned at the moment. i'm very busy. i'm loving life. never say never. but no, not at the moment, i don't. >> how many jobs do you have? [laughter] >> well, of course there's fox business show every day, if i can plug it, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. i love that. that's the bulk of what i do. i also do a lot of different segments for fbn and also fox news people. in fact, i did one this morning on "fox & friends." i also do radio show every saturday morning for three hours, the national radio show. it runs here on wabc radio. but we're live streamed, and we're also syndicated.

and i also do some -- i read op-ed pieces pretty much constantly and some informal political consulting with my friends on policy pretty much anybody who asks. i'm a busy camper. i'm a grateful camper. life after the white house has been terrific, so it's a real blessing for me, real blessing. >> this is your second stint in the white house; correct? >> yes. >> your first being? >> just a few years ago, 40 years ago, it was somewhat lower position. i was economic deputy at the office of management and budget during the reagan administration. the director of omb in those days was a fellow named david stockman who remains a friend of mine. yeah, that was my first job. it was in reagan's first term. >> larry kudlow, your 2016 book connects the reagan revolution -- >> yes.

>> -- with jfk. what is that policy connection? >> well, it's kind of -- it's a story that i've wanted to tell for years, been in the back of my head, and i worked with my pal who is a terrific researcher and coauthor, so basically in a nutshell, john f. kennedy was a pro-growth democrat. he was a tax-cutting democrat. he was a supply-side democrat. and when he ran in 1960, he was -- he really ran as the growth guy, and richard nixon kind of ran as the status quo in those days republican party was okay with very high tax rate. eisenhower had no interest in cutting the 91% tax rate they inherited from the fdr's new

deal. and kennedy didn't explicitly run on it, but he said i want 5% growth i want low unemployment because there had been three recessions during the eisenhower years, three recessions. that's a little known factoid, but it is true factually. and the connection to reagan some 25 years later was reagan lowered marginal tax rates also and helped reignite a more abundant economy. in fact, i would argue as i do quite a bit on our show that the reagan tax cuts launched almost a three-decade prosperity. the jfk tax cuts launched a decade-long prosperity, but unfortunately, was unwound and undermined by lbj's great society, but richard nixon,

gerry ford, jimmy carter, none of them understood tax cuts. none of them understood the incentive effects, the economic growth effects of lower marginal tax rates. maybe web talk about that some more and some very smart people, arthur laffer who is still around, my dearest friend mentor, jack kemp and others brought the supply side essentially the kennedy tax cuts to reagan. reagan looked at them and thought about them and ran on them. it was very controversial just as it was in jfk's day, and it worked. it worked in fact. reagan had two rounds of tax cuts. i was there for the first round. i was involved in the campaign to promote it. ::

that could easily applied to reagan. in fact, listen, kennedy was the first guy to use the phrase are writing tide lifts all boats. that phrase was used later by jack kemp, the late jack kemp, who was a very dear friend and also a mentor by reagan. i use it all the time. trump uses it. look, the trump tax cuts which were more on the corporate side but were enormous tax cuts were cut from the same cloth as the reagan and jfk tax cuts. so i was able to bridge reagan to trump on those policies. i was too young for jfk, just barely too young. i mean, i was really only 17

when he went into the reagan white house. that's a joke. but tax cuts were, and if i may, i want to go back because i'm reading a book, the title which is the jazz age but it's about warren g harding, a much-maligned u.s. president i might add, way, way too far maligned. but in the 1920s, in the 1920s, , harding, his vice president calvin coolidge, and importantly his treasury secretary, andrew mellon who was a great figure from pittsburgh and entrepreneurial banker, they put together a huge reduction in marginal tax rates. the income tax amendment was a bleak 1913, the 16th amendment, started out at 7%. when woodrow wilson left office

it was over 70%. we went into a recession after world war i. those guys rock tax rates down to 25% and launched a tremendous boom prosperity bone in the 1920s. and i'm going to go one more. you're going to give me one more on this, and that is another of my favorite figures is ulysses s. grant. now, he was arguably america's greatest general, or one of its greatest generals. grant as president also much-maligned and my friend and my colleague wrote a pretty good book about grant, as a matter fact. but grant did two things. economic things in his administration turkey never gets credit for this, the liberal historians will never give him credit but the fact is grant ended the civil war income tax, ended it, okay?

and grant restored the greenback to gold. so we had massive wartime inflation and high wartime taxes, and grant ended both, and also helped launch of this second industrial revolution which is sometimes reviewed again refer to spiritually as the gilded age but it was phenomenal time in american life. suggest to be consistent, i'm, you know, here's my guy grant. he's cutting taxes. harding, he's cutting taxes. kennedy is cutting taxes here trump is -- reagan is cutting taxes. trump is cutting taxes. i'm as honor to serve under the last two which i -- wish i would've been rough with others. would've been great fun. >> host: in all of your books, in your work on fox business, et cetera, et cetera, you talk about some economic terms and i was hoping we could maybe have a broader discussion about how they all work together.

tax reference, , growth, the bod market, the stock market. what's the interplay between all these? >> guest: look, i think i would simply say the absolute basic key elements to economic growth and prosperity -- let me step back a moment. i am for growth. i'm for prosperity. in my whole career that's been my raison d'être. it seems to me, i served in government by the way, the first job i ever had was at the federal reserve in new york federal reserve bank of new york. i served in open market operations, and i was a secretary to paul volcker who was president of the new york fed. so i've had three government assignments. seems to me if you do nothing

else in government, you should promote policies that would generate growth, prosperity, jobs, optimism. that's our job. our job, i'm a free market capitalist. i believe in free markets, free enterprise capitalism. i think it's the surest path to growth. when i was in cnbc days and i had my show there for many years, i used to open up the show every night by saying free market capitalism is a best path to prosperity. i set it for many years. i believe that. i still believe that. so come back to your points, your questions, essentially you need the lowest possible tax rates, the least possible government intervention, think of it as minimal regulations. and you need a sound currency, which i call king dollar. that was my phrase years ago,

king dollar. and if you break that, if you move to a policy regime of high tax rates, excessive government intervention and regulation, and the cheap dollar, debased dollar, depreciated dollar, you will find yourself with high inflation, high unemployment, and recession. and i've argued down through the years that there are almost no exceptions to that, almost no exceptions to that. this is a controversial point. economics profession nowadays which like anything else in the academy has moved way far to the left, doesn't agree with that. although i will say this modern monetary theory has taken a pretty big licking right now with high inflation. but the point i'm making is i prepared to argue in historical terms as well as economic policy

terms that those are the essential ingredients, lowest possible tax rates, minimal government and government regulation, and a sound, reliable king dollar. >> host: is the fed to powerful? is it necessary? >> guest: well, i won't argue the necessity part, although it is interesting, the gilded age, jpmorgan was his own fed, rescued the monetary system a couple of times. but is the fed to powerful, yes right now it is. traveling to become the most troubling part of the fed to me is its loss site of its principal mission which is to keep the currency sound and the price level stable. okay? it tried, i mean, nowadays with all this talk of woke culture

and will economics, i mean the fed and some of its appointees are talking more about climate change than price stability, diversity. i'm not opposed to diversity lord knows but it don't think that's the typical mission of the fed. the fed should manage its own human resources properly without any prejudice at all. but the idea that and wants to equalize the economy, that it takes this left-wing socialist view that we should all be equal at the finish line when, in fact, in a free society like ours what we want is equal opportunity at the starting line, and then the finish line we will exercise our god-given talents in many different ways. but i think the fed is way too much geared toward something

called equity and, of course, climate change, which i'm not a climate denier. i'm just saying that we do not have a climate emergency. we do not have some existential climate risk factually, even u.n. reports don't show this. this has become a a political obsession, almost a religion. and i think the fed completely, utterly missed the boat on this inflation problem that we are experiencing today, and that last one is really unpopular. >> host: one of the other issues that's brought up in this genre is income inequality. is that a concern? should we be concerned that person x makes ten times as much as -- >> guest: we should not. we should not. again, i think that the idea here for me is we should, we should by law have equality of

opportunity at the starting line. absolutely by law. but we cannot guarantee equality of results. we cannot. i mean, even, even in communist countries, , even in the old soviet union. look, i grew up during the cold war, and particularly in the reagan years when he fought soviet communism. i mean, the only equality that they had in the soviet union was a quality of poverty, and then the nomenclature who ran the place, they were the rich guys but there was no widespread prosperity ever. and that is true for all socialist or communist countries, it seems to me. so no, we should not strive to end some the called inequality. we should strive for growth and prosperity.

we should maximize opportunities. we want to have unlimited opportunities. that's why i argue, the government cannot manage the economy. the government cannot manage the price system. the government cannot manage market, okay? you have literally thousands and millions of people operating in a free economy, and i want the economy to be free and i want them to all have their own personal freedom. but that is a job for the so-called private sector. that is why i say free market economics is the best path to prosperity. free market capitalism is the best. i what individual freedom inside the economy. freedom to fail and freedom to succeed. you know, one of the great aspects of america, and it's

still true to this day, you've got an entrepreneurial story where people have an idea, they might scratch up some money to finance it, it may not work, it may fail, it may fail several times, you may go bankrupt but at some point you may get it right and then you become a massive success. a massive success. that's what's so brilliant about the gilded age, the industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution, the information revolution in our lifetime. i mean the stuff we routinely use today didn't exist when i was in prep school or college or you know, starting out, all that stuff. do you have a spare mimeograph machine and the truck? remember that? all that is gone. we don't hardly xeroxed anymore. you are running the show on a

little iphone, for heaven sakes, and i love it. and even an old guy like me i figured out most of the stuff come how to use it. so my point is you've got kids dropping out of college working in the rajya tried to put things together. they fail, they fail, then they succeed and hit it big. that's the american story, but behind that story, you know, that's alger hiss 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 were i know something about it, but, frankly, all throughout, all throughout the country. i mean, freedom of speech now. there's a big debate. we've got misinformation, government bureaus. this test drives me crazy. but i won't call you my friend but i had dealings with elon musk windows in the white house. what he's trying to do, he calls

himself a free-speech absolutist something like that. i love that. free speech, freedom of religion. i want a a free economy. a free economy will out produce every state run centrally planned economy. and i will sit here, we're on for a couple of hours, i will sit here all day and tomorrow and show you historical examples of what a free economy outperforms the statist economy. >> host: before we get too far from "jfk and the reagan revolution," that fact about the three recessions in the go-go \50{l1}s{l0}\'50{l1}s{l0} kind of surprised me. what happened? was that government policy? was that just the waxing and waning? was a supply and demand? >> guest: there are a lot of factors after world war ii and a lot of factors after the korean war. i will just a principal unit 91% tax rate. rate. you at very high taxes which were very onerous. some critics of this view say

yeah, high taxes budget loopholes and nobody paid them. you had some loopholes, some very famous loopholes from hollywood studio owners and stuff like that. but most people, particularly the entrepreneurs, had to face very high income taxes. the more they earned, the more punitive the tax rate was. capital gains taxes were very high. corporate taxes were very -- the economy was smothered. the incentive effect which was so prominent during the harding, coolidge melvyn tax cuts of the 20 for example, or the liberating u.s. grant tax cut. those incentives weren't around. so is a very tightly controlled economy. it was a very government run economy, highly regulated economy. the federal reserve properly i

think, properly kept the dollar stable so inflation come you with episodes of inflation but basically we were under the old bretton woods dollar gold exchange system, and the federal reserve principally under william mcchesney did a pretty good job under that. i didn't on the that tried to tighten the economy had no other outlets because again it was so tightly controlled by high taxes and regulations. those are really important issues. ike, who has many wonderful qualities, general eisenhower, president eisenhower, economics wasn't one of them. just wasn't one of them. there is a long story there. his top advisor was arthur burns, one of them. burns advised nixon.

pushed the ball down the road during the reagan years. burns was impossible to germany under reagan and a very good ambassador his later years. he and i became very, very friendly, became something of a mentor of mine. arthur creede that i had a point about lower tax rates, he opposed it throughout all those years eisenhower, nixon, but he saw them work during the reagan years. anyway, , there were three recessions under ike and this is what gave candidate a step up in the election. he ran as the as a growtd nixon, you know, didn't really deal with much on economic policy, domestic policy. and i remember, nixon son-in-law by the what is a very dear personal friend of mine, his daughter and son-in-law, very dear friends of ours. i met nixon in the middle 80s. i was out of office back on wall

street. he had his old office down at one federal plaza, what if was downtown new york in those days. and his son-in-law ed cox of bringing various policy people before president nixon would go on foreign trips. so i had at least one visit, maybe two and by the way he was very charming. but i had written numerous op-ed pieces in the "wall street journal" criticizing make sense economics as president. he did everything wrong,, everything wrong. raise taxes, had tariffs, took the dollar all the gold standard. we had booming inflation. so the first time i met if he comes in and he just looks at me and says, you don't think much about economics, you, mr. kudlow? [laughing] and i said, no, sir. with respect, i don't. [laughing] and it was a very cool moment.

and as i said this was the mid-'80s. i had served in reagan's first term. but nixon acknowledged in his books and later that the reagan tax cuts worked. he acknowledged that he can see was intellectually honest. >> host: insanity once more is a a collection of your columns came out in 2018 and want to do a quote from them. this is on election day 2016, november 88, 2016 column. enforcing trade deals is spot on. on. acting in the interest of american workers is correct. but large scale tariffs are a terrible idea. >> guest: yes, yes and believe it or not i still, that is still my mantra. so this is a good story. president trump was much more attuned to tariffs that i was, or that i am.

and before i went into office i went in and became his nec director in march of 2018. he had just put through steel and aluminum tariffs, and i didn't agree. in fact, art laffer and i, i think steve moore may have been on that, but anyway, we wrote an op-ed piece criticizing this deal on aluminum and steel tariffs. president trump knew all about that. he read it when he was calling me secretly to come, become the nec director. the subject came up one or twice but we agreed to disagree. you know, it's interesting. i am not a fan of tariffs. tariffs or international taxes. they tax come look, they tax work work in production just as much

as domestic taxes. so i regard myself as a free trader. but i'm going to make two qualifications on this. one is, you do have to think about the issue of reciprocity, what's the other side doing to you on trade? and this is an important point that truck made. now, he and i, it's sort of interesting, the only two op-ed pieces i wrote when i was in his administration, just two, and they both preceded g7 meetings. i was sure before g7 g7. and in those i i quoted a conversation that he and i had where he believed that he was a free trader and under ideal circumstances, that is to say, no tariffs, no nontariff

barriers, and no subsidies. and that is the world that trump yearned for. those were his goals, and their classic free trade goals. no tariffs, zero tariffs, zero nontariff barriers, and zero subsidies for favored industries. and and i wrote that and quott in i think one op-ed was the "washington post" before g7. the second one was in the "wall street journal" before g7. and i remember at the g7 we have in canada, which i think was 2018, north of québec, where in a bilateral with justin trudeau and president trump and you know, your senior advisers lineup on both sides. and they were talking about trade.

because trump was, threatened to impose car tariffs on canada, which would've devastated canada. and trump said, you know, justin, you know, if we had no tariffs and no nontariff barriers and no subsidies, we would all be in great shape as free traders. and trudeau, then trump looks at me. i may be sitting one or two or three down from him. and he said, you said that your whole career, 30 years, have two? of course he knew that because we talked about it. but he expressed publicly that view. and he did it later. so we had a lot of free trade blood any. people don't understand that. and i just had bob lighthizer was his trade representative, a dear friend of mine, a brilliant guy. bob was just on my tv show. we were in atlanta america first

policy conference, and we talked about this. and people forget we had usmca, which was a perfectly trade but it was good free trade deal. we had free trade deals with japan, with brazil, with south korea, all free trade were both sides in the spirit of reciprocity, you know, gave up some protections. now, the biggest one was china, and the most controversial one was china. and trump had big tariffs on china. we still have them, i believe 365 billion and some odd. so far biden has not taken them off and hope he doesn't. i would argue, and as president trump argued, as lighthizer argued, we needed those tariffs

to bring china to the table, if you will, to get their attention. and i'll give you another view from lighthizer which i completely agree, i i agreed o ben and i agree now. one of trump's greatest achievements as president was he rang the bell on china threat. he made it very clear to people in this country and around the world that china is an adversary. they are not our friends here they are an economic adversary. they are a foreign policy adversary. and so his rhetoric was tough. his tariffs were tough. but we did bring them to the table. no one had been able to do that. no one before. and we got a bunch of concessions from them, and i was

on that china trade team and it was hard going to beijing and washington, aging in washington. -- beijing and washington. this is so-called the phase one deal. the phase one free trade deal was rooted in tariffs. yes, it was. and there is certain inconsistency there, i understand the point but one was necessary to get the other and i think the deal is holding up pretty good. it ain't perfect. lots and lots and lots of progress on intellectual property theft. they a set of institutional mechanisms to reduce it. they bought a lot of our commodities, a lot, not perhaps as much as we want but a lot. and we ought to be selling them much more lng exports. forced transfer of technology, still a work in progress. but i think on the whole phase one was a great success, and if

trump had been reelected we would have moved on to phase two. so far nothing has happened. >> host: well, good -- >> guest: a bit long-winded but you know i'm a free trader. his trump a free trader? he wouldn't say the it the i would say it, but again in a perfect world he would agree with me. no tariffs in a perfect will. he liked that. but it was a great idea. somewhat pollyanna, i acknowledge. >> host: well good afternoon and welcome to booktv's "in depth" program. our guest this month is larry kudlow picky is the author of "american abundance" which came out in 1997. "jfk and the reagan revolution" came out in 2016. the collection of his columns from creators syndicate came out in 2018. and that is called "insanity once more" ." for regular views of booktv you know this is our monthly call-in program. one author, , his or her body of work, and your calls, your text

messages, your tweets, et cetera. here's how you can get a hold of us if you have a question kudlow. 202-748-8200 for those of you in east and central time zones. 202-748-8201 for those of you in the mountain and pacific time zones. if you want to send a text message, this is for text messages only, 202-748-8903. is the number for you. please include your first name and your city if you would. we've also scroll through our social media addresses. just remember at booktv is the handle there. so we will begin taking those in just a few minutes. mr. kudlow, what was the reaction from a lot of your longtime republican friends when you joined the trump administration? >> guest: it was pretty good actually. yeah, it was very positive. people encouraged me to do it. for a variety of reasons.

i wasn't looking for it. i was again pretty busy with tv on a different network and a radio show and lots of speeches and so forth, consulting. i had worked with candidate trump. we had worked on the tax cut plan in particular quite a lot. occasionally i was the spokesperson for him on economics during the campaign. he invoked me, he invoked my name several times in some of the debates, much to my astonishment. of course i knew him in washington, in new york city for many, many years, knew him, liked him. he had been a guest on my tv show. and my radio show. i knew his family a bit, but i knew, i always liked him. i thought he was a major force. i was looking for a job, but i don't know, if you have a second, i will tell you how it started, is that -- it's funny.

in early 2018, march the 2018 is how this got started. we were up here in connecticut for a weekend, and i was coming back from indoor tennis, and the phone rings in my car and it's the president. i mean, i had spoken to them and seeing them in 2017 and we kept in touch, i been in the oval within a bunch of times a talked about one thing or another. anyways, calls me and i pulled over, had pretty good reception, i pulled over so we could keep the conversation going and he starts talking one thing or another. and mentioned the national economic council but nothing terribly specific it was just a good -- i thought he was calling to yell at me because laughter and i have written this op-ed piece against steel tariffs. but it never, i don't think came in a conversation. maybe it did once but it just wanted to talk about things and

mentioned, i think you mention the nec. instead, sunday afternoon, so we said he would call me back i saw call you back tomorrow night. i said okay, sir, you know. >> host: when the phone rings and the white house is a placeholder for the present? >> guest: yes. so anyway, monday night i'm home in new york and he did call. and that was when we had a more earnest, direct conversation about the national economic council. he was about to make a change and we talk about a bunch of policies. it was, these were very good conversations, i enjoyed it. what you think about this? what you think about that? what should i do here? what should i do there? as you know i'm not bashful about my views, and he knows

that, , too. and then he said, he said no windows where having this conversation. that's what he said to me, no one knows were having this conversation. okay. he said, i'm going to call you tomorrow night, call you tomorrow night, , talks more. i said yes, sir. so the next night where having dinner out, we have dinner group with some different in new york city in midtown, and i had the cell phone in my back pocket just in case, and he, the phone rang and it was him. of course had to walk out onto fifth avenue. it was cold and drizzly out that it wasn't going to take the call in the middle of this restaurant. and it much more specific on that call. in fact, certainly amusing because my wife came out to get me. i had to, we had to go home. i had to do a radio show. my pal john gnosis. i was doing it every tuesday night we would do an hour.

so we're talking, going up madison avenue and is talking and talking. and finally i just said, i said, sir, are you offering me the position? all, yeah. oh, yeah, you're my guy. the only guy who. no windows were having this conversation. you are my guy, congratulations. and he said when you take the job? i suggest i will, thank you. i'm honored. and it was honored, okay? i love government service and i loved him. so that was that, and then went in and did a radio show very dear friend of mine, fabulous radioman mark simone who was part of the dinner group, he tells the story later, he said you know, kudlow takes a call from the president at dinner, gets up, walks out of the restaurant, we don't see them for four years. [laughing] so that's just sort of how that

happened. and then the way, then gets better. then in the call tuesday night offering me the job, some people said he offered me the job the night before but i didn't get it. i don't know. in any case, he said yeah, you'll come down or thursday or friday. well, press conference but no one knows this. so the next morning which is a wednesday morning, i'm sitting at home preparing for my tv show and stuff and i'm not watching tv. and he calls me and he says, you look so handsome here i didn't, sir? turn on the tv. and, of course, the news had broke and everybody was running this thing, you know. [laughing] wasn't supposed to go out and kill -- but you know, to me those are enduring qualities, one of the reasons why i really like the guy. he's just natural and flows and you know, maybe he could say

some things differently but he is who he is and i remain very loyal to him. >> host: did you know him as donald? >> guest: i did, yes karen once you got elected, did you ever call him by his first name? >> guest: never. never. in fact, when he was president and then while i serve that there come he was either mr. president orser. always. >> host: back to "insanity once more," by the way it looks different our savior because were at larry kudlow in his library up in the wilds of connecticut. so we appreciate very much you back to your "insanity once more" book. this is an october 20 -- >> guest: going to get in trouble. >> host: i want to thank melania trump for starting me on the path of restored confidence. >> guest: well, president trump then candidate trump had

set a couple things that did not thrill me. i never left him. i just, there were just things that did not thrill me. things came up in that campaign. you look back on that and it wasn't very important, but at the moment during the campaign he became big deals. i had to talk about on the air. and i recall melania was a wonderful, wonderful woman, and we were, , we got to be good friends in the white house. she went on tv and just defended president trump and just, you know, kept her, made it very clear that she was 1000% behind in and that these things were passing and it was no big deal. so i wrote about that. it's funny.

that column, he told me later, he told me later that he was personally not thrilled about that column, but that melania loved me. [laughing] he just said, melania loves you. i don't think you had to write it but she really -- was really a column about her. i don't know her, , i'm not onef her intimates, but i have great respect for her and i watched her on a couple cable tv shows and it was very impressive and it was very clear to me that her support was unwavering. and so i i said, i mean those columns were written to some extent tongue-in-cheek, but yeah, i did, i did. she liked it more than he did. >> host: well, , let's hear from our viewers. let's begin with monty in spring

texas. monie, you are on with larry kudlow. go ahead and make your comment or question, yes. i had a short question for mr. kudlow about the context of a comet president trump made on may 3, 2019 were president trump said we are taking billions of dollars from china in the form of tariffs. as you know -- we've never taken terrorist from china. and i were taking in billions and billions of dollars that has had a a very positive effect n things. were these both false statements? we haven't been taking billions and child did not pay these terroristic these were paid by the american public and consumers actually are forced to pass -- >> host: i think we got the idea. this is he referenced may 3, 2019. it was was about paris on china and taking in billions of dollars. so is a something you can extrapolate from that?

it was a little difficult to hear that one, i agree tragic yeah, i'm not sure. in economic terms, the tariffs and pose a significant burden on china. you know, they experienced it and they saw it because prices went up and the demand for chinese currency went down. their inflation rate went up, interest rates went up. it is true that those tariffs would be paid, imports rather, and that terrible world will be paid by u.s. companies. but you know, a key point there, it was de minimis impact. our economy was booming during that time. the corporate tax cuts were so important and gave us such a big advantage, and the deregulation but particularly in that world

of trade of tariffs because again as we discussed earlier, tariffs our tax rates. so we did increase tariff rates on certain chinese imports absolute, particularly technology-related imports and what i call the family jewels which we had to protect. but we had slashed the marginal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, the federal rate, which more than offset, more than offset in the tariff rate impact. so again as i was mentioning earlier, i think that even though i don't like tariffs in an ideal world, perhaps president trump doesn't either an ideal world, he rang the bell. he rang the warning bell and we brought them to the table. and it wasn't until late 2019, early 2020 that we finally consummated what became known as

the phase one china trade deal. so i think on balance even though i'm a free trader, i think those tariffs were necessary, the chinese tariffs were necessary. and you know, any time, mean there's a lot of talk about the biden administration about raising the corporate tax rate. it would put us at tremendous disadvantage and would damage the tough position we had staked out on china. so i would urge them with all my heart to keep those tax rates low. we want to be as competitive as we can, and we, you know, money flow back to the u.s. actually just as an aside, turns out that corporate tax rates, the reduction and corporate tax rates paid for themselves. we have just been getting irs data on this. i've talked quite a bit about it on my show with arthur laffer.

the laffer curve worked lower marginal tax rates created higher tax revenues. tax collections went up as tax rates went down. why? why? because you had more economic activity, more people working, earning more income so they paid more tax collections even though the rates were down, their income was up. and by the way, tax avoidance is much less. there's no point in looking for tax shelters if you have a low tax rate. it's just not worth the effort. so we were able to withstand any de minimis negative impacts of the chinese tariffs they were well, well offset by the lower tax rates. >> host: lets you from george in hudson florida. good afternoon, george. >> caller: good afternoon. how are you today? >> host: please go ahead with your question or comment. >> caller: sure.

mr. kudlow, i watch your show religiously on fox business channel because i don't have a nine-year-old around to set the dvr for me, so you do great. [laughing] >> guest: thank you. very good. >> host: i have to do it myself. i don't not operate those things. anyway, where are we going to be next year if we still have these come still have joe biden in office with his cognitive values or his craziness or however you want to call them? there's something wrong with them and i can't see anything happening like with kamala harris or anybody in the government now that can take care of our economy. where are we going to be next year if things keep going this way? >> host: thanks for calling

in. larry kudlow. >> guest: well look, i can't, i can't really comment on the cognitive problems. i see what i see. i see what lots of other people see. i'll leave that to doctors. i do think, this is my own personal view, as i say many, many times on the show, the cavalry is coming. i think the midterm elections are going to be a gop sweep in both houses. at a think that will stop some of the economic and social excesses of the biden administration. i'm just giving you my own personal views here. i think the biggest problem we are going to have in the next couple of years is getting high inflation down. at a think the high inflation was a big mistake by the biden administration. too much spending, too much

borrowing, and the federal reserve as i said earlier missed the inflation boat. too much money printing. and so we're paying for that now. the good news is it's not a 12 year thing the way it was back in the '70s. the bad news is, getting eight to 10% inflation inflation back to 2% inflation will not be pain-free. now, hopefully a republican congress will move to reduce spending and reduce borrowing. hopefully a republican congress will open the spigots towards oil and gas production and pipelines, all of which have been closed by biden. and hopefully a republican congress will keep a sharp eye out on the federal reserve to make sure that they slow down the money supply and move their interest rates up accordingly

and protect the value of the dollar. so i think you're going to see policy changes, but it don't think it's going to be easy. i don't think it's going to be easy edit don't think it's going to be pain-free. >> host: for those who do or don't watch your show or something else that you have been saying recently and we'll play a quick montage you won't be able to see it but you will hear it. >> save america, kill the bill. >> listen, save america, kill the bill. that's still my motto. save the bill. no. save america. save america and kill the bill. the wisdom is simple. save america, kill the bill. save america, kill the bill. save america, kill the bill. save america, kill the bill. at tonight i'm launching a slightly new mantra, kill any new bills that may come next year. [laughing] >> guest: that's great. well, there it was. the good news is we killed the

bill, at least so far. it keeps coming back. it became a rallying cry. it became a rallying cry. i felt that bill comes to being on its iteration, would've been another $5-$6 trillion of additional federal spending with massive inflationary consequences, massive inflationary consequences. , massive inflationary consequences. and also hidden in that bill were very huge tax hikes which would've done, also have done great damage to the economy and done great damage to incentives to work, save, invest, grow, take risks. you know, on that it became, there was a save america coalition that developed among conservative groups. i was a supporter of democrat joe manchin, constantly

supporting joe manchin. i thought he was a very brave democrat. i think he's somebody who would save the democratic party from itself if they ever gave him a chance. i frankly wish he would run in primaries for the presidential run in 2024. joe is a friend of mine. he's been on the show. we have spoken on the phone. i don't talk politics with him. i talk policy with him but i think he did a heroic job. i think kyrsten sinema has done a great job fighting off the tax increases. and so far we've killed the bill. i don't want any more bills. and by the way i want to add one thing here. there's another bill out there sometimes called the china compete bill which is nothing to do with competing with china. would be as much as $300 billion of additional federal spending, industrial policies, corporate welfare, bailing out a chip industry that doesn't need

bailouts, and i've got to tell you, a dozen republicans voted for it in the senate and they shouldn't have. just going to say that. >> host: richard is in brentwood maryland. good afternoon, richard. >> caller: good afternoon, peter the great. you are still one of the top three interviews in the country. mr. kudlow, you just mentioned to the previous caller about making nonclinical comments about mr. biden's cognitive abilities, and i've listen to you on the phone with stephen forbes and sununu i think it was, and you actually called our president an idiot. so enough of that. but my question is this. you referred to -- >> guest: i don't believe i have, you did. please. in any event, you referred to the reagans tax cuts, tax policy

as three decades of prosperity. in fact, his policies cost george bush the first a second term because it was economics that clinton ran on and the state of our countries economy. 30 years would've taken us up to the second bush which was an economic debacle as well. so i can count on -- >> host: there's a lot on the table there. we have a lot on the table there. mr. kudlow, first of all the idiot remark and then will go into the economics. >> guest: you know, i don't think i said that, right? perhaps i did in passing, but i don't believe that. i've been critical of biden. idiot, i doubt it. putting that aside, look at poppa bush temporarily, temporarily reversed small part of reagan's tax cuts and it was

a mistake. we went in the recession and lost the election. but the bulk of reagan's tax cuts stayed and bill clinton, who continued to raise the income tax, again when reagan came and it was 70%. en reagan left it was8. poppa bush raised it to 31 with other tax hikes. i believe bill clinton took it to perhaps 40, i'm going to say. so still below 70. and then george w. bush brought it back down to 35. so basically the tax cuts stayed intact. okay, they weren't as low as 28 but they basically stayed intact. the incentive effects ae intact. but look, again with poppa bush, so many of us who helped vice president bush and try to talk them out of raising taxes and he

was president, i mean we said don't do it, don't do it. he did and he lost the election. >> host: richard in brentwood, maryland, if you want a more full explanation, a fuller longer answer of that, mr. kudlow writes about the pretty extensively in "jfk and the reagan revolution." larry kudlow, it's funny because you and i were talking yesterday and you kind of have this happy warrior kherson on the air. so that's what i was a little surprised if you would call mr. biden -- >> guest: it's just not my way. i'm very critical of biden. it's funny, i wasn't at the beginning. i gave him a honeymoon chance and i took a look at the leftward lurch and his policies, but for me to get personal like that is very unusual, and are booktv "in depth" program continues from larry kudlow is library in connecticut. we want to hear from you as well. we will give you the numbers and

how you can participate. 202-748-8200 for those of you in east and central time zones. 202-748-8201 if you live in the mountain/pacific time zones. if you want to send a text message to mr. kudlow, 202-748-8903 202-748-8903. again that is for text messages only. these include your first name and your city if you would. mr. kudlow, where did you grow up into were your parents? >> guest: up in englewood new jersey, irv and ruth kudlow. he was a businessman. he actually became a very good real estate agent. and i have one younger brother who has lived in hollywood, los angeles, hollywood for many, many decades. i love him to death and he's my

favorite hollywood liberal. try and what does he do in hollywood? >> guest: he's a screenwriter, postproduction, done very well for himself. as i say he's my favorite hollywood liberal. younger brother. >> host: i want to read a quote and this from "american abundance" you can take it where you want. and this was in the introductio introduction. in late november 1995 i had no prospects, no confidence, no ambition and no know since id do the job. what was going on? >> guest: well, i have had my crash and burn, sort of hopeless addictions to alcohol and drugs. and that was the worst time of my life. it'd been building up for several years, and it went away. i went away to a treatment center in minnesota for five months to get well.

my saintly wife, , judy, whom yu have met, set sydney up the, long-term care. and november 95 is when i got out. and basically what i wrote was kind of true. i wasn't really sure what was going to happen. the most important thing was staying sober, which i've managed to stay sober now for 27 years coming up on 27 years. which is through god's grace and the greatest blessing of my life. those were tricky times. i mean, it seems like a long time ago. things have, and almost every way, worked out better than i ever dreamed possible or ever dared dream possible.

judy and i will have, i guess, i'd better remember this, i think 35 years married this summer. 27 years of sobriety. god has been very good to me. god has been very good to me. and at that point when you read that, and i was being honest in that book, who knew? i didn't know. i have no idea. >> host: what you remember about the last few months of, or the first few months of 1995 at the end of your using? >> guest: well, blessedly very little, be honest with you. and i can look, i still go to 12 step meetings. i'm very active in 12 steps. and under active in my church. and i think about that stuff from time to time.

every now and then, you know, the way it works in the 12 steps you may be on your anniversary or maybe not you are asked to tell your story in front of the group, called qualification. i don't want to bore the viewers, but you kind of go back in time a little bit and think about that. you never really want to lose that because they were terrible, terrible days. terrible days. i will spare the qualification here on c-span, but i will just say it was the worst moments in my life, without any question. and i don't think, i mean, i returned to faith. i returned to a more spiritual way of looking at the world. and and i will also say, petei mean, things that i have learned from the twelve-step group have

served me very well in my career these last three decades, served me very well. and of course i've been honest about all this and president trump new. i never withheld that. it's come up from time to time. i've been interviewed on it. actually in the white house, the trump white house, on my 25th anniversary, melania was hosting a conference on alcohol and drugs. and it so happened, they found out, i don't know how, maybe one of my ladies, but it was my 25th anniversary coming up and actually, she asked me to speak, which i did in at least a general way. ..

to being a very senior presidential adviser. it's a long stone's throw, but the one could not have happened without the other, could not have happened. and i'm very grateful for that. and as i say, god has been very good to me, and i try to follow his path. i ain't perfect. but i try to follow his path. >> host: let's go back to calls. jim in rochester, new york, you're on with author larry kudlow are. caller: mr. kudlow, m wondering what your opinion is on the u.s. debt of $30 trillion, the unfunded liabilities we have in social

security, medicare coming up getting closer and closer. also, the $9 trillion balance sheet the fed has. what kind of effect will that have when interest rates begin to turn to -- return to anything close to normal? it seems to me there is a growing concern, i think, the cato institute published a booklet of various editorials called the fiscal cliff. it is very concerning. i'm wondering what your opinion of it is. guest: those a very good questions. one is the entitlement question on social security and medicare. the second one is the balance sheet of the fed, called the monetary base which is just

briefly for viewers, essentially, printing money. all right? said, the government spends money. the federal government spends money. it borrows to finance its spending. that all too frequently -- then all too frequently the federal reserve purchases the bonds uncle sam sells. there is fullface faith in credit but when the fed buys those bonds they literally create money. that is what central banks do. i could go on and on about it. i actually started my entire career at the new york fed back in 1973. but in any case, the entitlement problem is an issue. look, i do not believe there will ever be a default of social security obligations or, for that matter, medicare obligations.

i mean, at the end of the day, it is the government that sells bonds to raise the money. yes, we pay taxes and we have payroll taxes for social security and medicare. but, really, there is a certain fiction about that, particularly, on the medicare side. medicare really is not funded anymore by payroll taxes. it is mostly just funded out of general obligations. those are financed by selling bonds. so at some future point, somebody in power, in congress are the white house, will have to look at that. they will just have to look at that. there are very valuable systems that need to be preserved in my judgment. they could be reformed. there are a number of decent proposals out there to reform social security and to reform medicare. but, we spend more than we take in. that is a generic program --

problem throughout the entire government. it includes entitlements and will have to be looked at. and the other point the viewer made, interest rates will return to something more normal. they will not be zero anymore. already mortgage rates are up to 5%. 10 year bond rates are moving to 3%. in my view both will go higher because of inflation and the federal reserve's attempts to stop inflation. so that will add to the burden. the financing of federal debt in general will be more expensive. i will add one other point, peter. these are all reasons why i do not want any more federal spending. on domestic discretionary programs. that is why i said save america kill the bill. we don't need another $5 trillion worth of domestic spending. we cannot afford it. it will be extremely costly to

finance. and ultimately, it is inflationary. i want to say, although, i has been an opponent of the biden administration's policies, by the way, not alone. some democrats like larry summers and jason furman, honest democrat economists, have also. but the point is, we have to come up with no new spending at all, period. that is why i have been so emphatic about this. secondary from my concern about the negative economic growth effects we cannot keep doing this. it is a matter of common sense. let me put it to you that way. i know i am a republican, a reagan guy, a trump guy, a conservative, a supply side. i get that. i am not masquerading as anything else. i think what you are seeing in

the polls, in the run-up to the midterms, it is a matter of common sense. people do not want to go out this far to the left on everything. whether it is government spending more ending fossil fuels or taking parents out of the classroom more the -- or the open border or the file is -- foreign policy the afghanistan. i mean, this is not a campaign commercial. i am just saying that what you have here is an administration that is departed from traditional democrat concerns. this is why i love joe manchin. i speak as a former democrat. many years ago. i'd knowledge it was 45, 50 years ago. i worked for ronald reagan, a former democrat. i worked for donald trump, a former democrat.

i have often said the best republicans are former democrats. not every republican senator agrees with me on that and i say it somewhat tongue in cheek. but the extremism in the biden administration rejected. it just lacks common sense, that is all. you are sitting there and you see an inflation rate that has jumped. this was before the invasion in ukraine. the inflation rate has gone from less than 2% to 7% before ukraine. now here they come back with a new proposal. the congressional budget office prices it out at $5 trillion in spending and another $3 trillion in debt. you can do this. -- cannot do this. joe manchin was the standup guy along with kyrsten sinema and i noticed some other moderate democrats beginning to line up behind it. the stuff going on on the border is not sustainable, alright?

you see a bunch of democrats, and i know they are from swing states. but i don't need to question their motives. directors, -- the fact is, we cannot just have a couple million people illegally cross the border every year. it's just not sustainable. just like we will not end natural gas and fossil fuels in the next eight to 10 years. because, there is nothing to replace it. people know that. so, entitlement. i mean, we have a lot of work to do, ok. a lot of work to do. i think that you will see a big change. but i think the congressional changes coming. but i think the biggest change and the most important change will be 2024. because in order to effect major reforms, in any of these areas whether it is taxes or spending or inflation or the border or education or civil rights or what have you, you need the white house.

you need the white house. i believe you will see different occupants in the white house. host: ok. july 9, 2019 talking to business insider this is a quote. "i do not see this as a huge problem right now at all, it is quite manageable talking about the $22.5 trillion debt at that point. guest: as a share of gdp host: july 9, 2019. guest: it was still under share of gdp. i did not see it as a big problem. it's funny. i have a long history of not being a debt monger. some of my traditional conservative friends don't like that. i am much more interested --

here is where my theme of economic growth comes into play, ok? are you growing the economy? that is my first question. now, let's go back. this was true in the reagan tax cut debate. let's go back to the trump tax cut debate. so, his tax cuts were priced out by the congressional budget office and the joint tax committee on a static basis meaning no economic good -- growth impact. at $1.5 trillion. of course, you have democrats that said, oh my god, that will raise the deficit and the debt. of course, they have never cared about that before. tax cuts not only promoted growth but brought unemployment to record low levels, brought

minority unemployment to record low levels, brought poverty to record low levels. they also paid for themselves. now, they did not in year one and i never said they would. they did not in year two. yes, there was a debt increase to finance those tax cuts. but here we are, through the pandemic and all of these numbers are coming in from the irs and treasury. they show record revenues. they zero -- show that the corporate tax cuts paid for themselves. this has been the suspect or subject of a cup -- been the subject of a couple programs on my fox business show. the laffer curve works. in the first year or two, you may have to borrow money to finance lower tax rates. but whether they are individual

or corporate rates, you are making an investment. you are making an investment in future growth and prosperity and jobs including minorities, especially minorities. you are making an investment in middle-class working folks, blue-collar folks. so it is worth it to incur a temporary deficit. that will increase the debt. it is worth it because down the road everybody will benefit. studies show for example, studies on the left of center. you know, the brookings. they are not crazy leftists, but left of center. i don't know. 80% of the people got tax relief. 60%, 70% of the benefits of the corporate tax cuts went to working folks. middle-income typical families. that was worth it. when i made that statement in

2019, you know, i stick to it. it did not bother me. what bothers me is if you are going to spend a lot of money that will not enhance growth, that bothers me. ok? so, i will go back to my experience as a young man in the reagan budget office. reagan was not particularly worried about deficits. he would say so a little bit. but he did not care. he had two priorities. one was to cut tax rates to rejuvenate the economy. second, to put money in defense to defeat soviet communism. ok? he did both. deficits temporarily went up. so did the debt.

but he achieved his ends. the economy grew. nearly three decades worth of prosperity with very small interruptions and we defeated soviet communism. growth, peace through strength, strong at home, strong abroad. we get home, always weak abroad. those are the dictums. i learned that from reagan and i have never forgotten it. it has been 40 plus years. i will say as a senior trump advisor he believed the same thing. weakness at home breeds weakness abroad. strength at home breeds strength abroad. what did trump do? he slashed corporate and small business tax rates and grew the economy and reinvigorated the economy. unemployment fell. he put a lot of money into the defense budget. we had to do that at that point. it was not so much russia as it

was china. john f. kennedy talked about strength at home, strength abroad. kennedy was a firm anti-communist. people forget this. i know it was a long time ago. if kennedy were along -- alive today he would be a reagan trump republican. kitty wanted growth at home, 5% growth. which he wanted -- which he got posthumously from his tax cuts. and he fought the soviet union to send mail. these are not historical coincidences. these are historic principles that work whether you are a democrat or a republican. one of my arguments today as a former longtime democrat. pat moynihan was the last democrat i worked for and he was half republican. the point is this, there was a time when the two parties were a lot closer together. then they are today.

this far left stuff is being rejected. i common sense people through the country. you know what? i have so much faith in america. i am just a hopeless optimist about this country. as long as we protected these freedoms, this little far left woke aberration will not last. that's my take. hosts: host: next call comes from martin in ohio. caller: i have been listening to kudlow a long time, going back to the cnbc days. i generally would always listen to him. not always agree, but i always listen to him. i want to touch on immigration, inflation, and tax. immigration, there is a podcast called macro musings, so here is homework, listen to that because that can help us.

immigration is chaotic right now but we don't have birth rate -- we don't replace our people -- our birthrate rate is too low. we need immigration to make this a bigger, stronger place. if you can listen to people like her koran who want to have to hundred million people in america, but we would be fine with 360 people in america. that would make us better. if you are talking about growth, that is where you get it and those people, you get them on a pathway to citizenship, they start paying into the system. that is how you solve that problem. for some reason, people on the right -- you talk about the people on the left of that are extreme, and there are extreme wackos on the right. you have these know nothing people and that is going nowhere. secondly, inflation. host: you know what, martin? there's a lot there to play with and we appreciate your calling and. -- in. guest: it is very well done.

the third-best interview on tv? host: one of the three. guest: that is even better. i want to make a point about immigration. part of what the caller said i agree with. i think that immigration is a good thing, not a bad thing. of course, america has a long tradition of immigration. here is what i don't like, illegal immigration. i don't like open borders. i think that is where we are. my own views have changed, revolved in the last 10 years over this question. because i'm a strong pro-immigration reform or. but the border crisis, the catastrophe at the border, is something we -- cannot be allowed to continue, it is not sustainable. president trump on this

basically did two things. one is he got control of the border through the remaining mexico policy, through building a while policy, and through basically a policy -- remain in mexico was essentially catch and deport, because illegal immigration is a damage. illegal immigration includes the drug trafficking, which is a crisis point. sex trafficking, kids trafficking, the narco terrorists run these borders. we cannot allow that. i guess my views have been tougher on the border because i have been looking at what has happened on the border in recent years. i think the bidens have made a terrible mistake opening up the border. title 42, if you are going to get rid of that, replace it with something else.

the other part of president trump's policies were what i will call legal immigration reform. we have very good plan, which we could never get through congress. it will require more elbow grease and it will require probably a new white house and a new congress. there are a number of ways that we can legally, productively, consistent with economic growth, allow would million plus perhaps legal immigrants per year. i don't have any problem with that. our economy could do it. america was founded on immigrants. and they were gigantic contributors to our fabulous economic growth over the last several centuries. but today's situation cannot last, in my judgment. host: what about his comment, martin's comment about

right-wing wackos, as he called them? guest: i'm not sure what -- i don't know -- he mentioned market corian. i know mark kirk troy and is a smart guy. i'm not sure what a right wing wacko is. i don't know. host: let's hear from tom in phoenix. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. mr. kudlow, you seem to be a person respectful to everybody, but if comments were made, my assessment is they are accurate and true, so how bad can they be? at any rate, save america, kill the bill, your education is a service to this country and will help change things around from the disaster that we have now. there's a lot a people on the rights that are writing books and talking and their service is greatly appreciated and we need

to -- when tv like cnn -- i'm sorry, not cnn, the program we are on. i used to write to the white house orifice -- white house office of correspondence. i don't know if the president gets to read them. i used to refer to him as the president teacher. the way he spoke, people understood, it was not any fancy stuff. i see you do lots of the same around the economic side and i appreciate that. thank you. host: thank you, tom. guest: thank you, i appreciate it. i have a long history with c-span, out of it. -- proud of it. in my book, america abundance, i have a hats off to brian lamb, who i think is an iconic figure. so i'm honored to be on the show today. i love to do service with

c-span. host: i don't know if you can answer this, but tom asked about the president and access or hearing from the public. how often -- you have been in that oval office twice. how often does it become a bubble? guest: actually, with president trump, i would say he kept in touch with more people more frequently -- he is constantly on the phone. that is the thing. which made it interesting. so let's say we are having a policy meeting. let's say the economy. so we have a meeting in the oval with the boss. steve mnuchin is there and i am there, lighthizer is there, others are there, chris lundell is there. anyway, very important meeting with the boss.

some subject would come up. could be taxes, could be trade. could be housing, could be fossil fuel -- no end to it. so you would start off by raising the top -- sir, we are here. i lost a lot of these meetings. he would listen. next thing, he would reach out to the outer oval office, can you get me so when so? get me so and so on the phone, i want to talk to him, i want to talk to her. it would be -- his mind would associate somebody he knew from outside the government who might have something interesting to say about the topic. he would put that person on the phone, at the speakerphone on, and they would join our meeting. this would happen with some regularity. i know also, even when we are

not in formal meetings, that he was constantly on the phone with people, and people that you might be surprised. not everyone was a trump supporter, not everyone was a republican. he wanted to get as many inputs as he possibly could. he is not giving away trade secrets, it is not like he would start randomly calling people for a national security meeting. but some of these -- i will call them open-ended discussions, not necessarily decision discussions , which would be governed by various executive ordinances, but rather open-ended discussions, kicking stuff around. he loved to bring in people, ceos, sometimes podcasters, friends, you know? one of the great things in that

trumpian tradition is, you know what, the so-called experts, including us, i guess, we are not always right, we don't all have all the wisdom, you know what i mean? this sort of beltway thing, credentials and degrees and length of service, nonsense. and trump was great at bringing in new blood and trump was great at getting and staying in touch with people who were not in the government. you know? and some people in the administration were frustrated by that. i thought it was a great idea. i would do the same thing in my own level, if i had something cooking, i would like to hear from so-and-so and so-and-so. i have an around the block for a long time, i know people that have opinions i'm interested in hearing, so i loved it when he did that. we used to have national economic council would have come

that lunches every two weeks throughout all the cabinet agencies and we would invite -- my predecessor, gary cohen, we would invite people outside the government to speak to us, we would go down to the board room in the white house mess and it is refreshing. they could say anything we want -- they want, we need to hear it. trump was the same way. experts will be the death of us. experts -- no, too many experts. just saying. host: every author who appears on in depth, we ask him or her for their favorite books and what they are currently reading. here is larry kudlow's list. his favorite books include john sanford, the investigator. but they are, to rescue the republic. brian kill me, the president and the freedom fighter. current lady -- currently reading steve forb inflation.

brian to be trebek, the emergence of arthur . charles morris, the tycoons. in brian walters, the jazz age president. which of those would you like to bring up specifically? guest: i want to say two things. they are not necessarily my favorite books of all time, but it is what i either have read 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 ota terrific book about abraham lincoln and frederick douglass. two opponents of s, different stdifferent potis. 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. ♪ >> live, sunday on "in depth," from the texas book festival in austin, mark up degrove, president and ceo of the lbj foundation, will be our guest talking about u.s. psidential

history. mr. up degrove's books include the last republican and incomparable grace. join in the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments texts and tets. live this sunday at noon eastern on "in dep" on booktv on on c-span2. ♪ >> weekends on c-span2 are an intellectual feast. every saturday american history tv documents america's stories. and on sundays booktv brings you the latest nonfiction books and authors. funding for c-span2 comes from these television companies and more, including comcast. >> are you thinking this is just a community center? no, it's way more than that. >> comcast is partnering with a thousand community centers to create why-fy enabled concern wi-fi-enabled -- so putins -- students and families can be ready for anything. >> comcast, along wit