impact do you think he's going to have on the democrats and how they govern? >> well, he's already taken the largest social media site in the world or maybe the second largest. i'm not sure how twitter compares to facebook. x, excuse me. different kind of media. he has already taken that and swung it hard to the right and turned it into a massive propaganda operation. that can't help but influence both republicans and democrats. so, you know, i'm concerned about it. like i said, you know, jimmy carter said we're sliding in oligarchy.oligarchy, and i would say we, as of january, we will have officially arrived. the morbidly rich, the extraordinarily rich, are running our country now, and typically -- the thing that concerns me the most. i wrote a book about this, "the hidden history of american

oligarchy." oligarchy is almost always a transitional political system. it very rarely lasted even half a generation, and typically, one of two things happens. either oligarchies flip back into democracies, as a result of popular revolt. we saw this in brazil, for example, throwing out bolsonaro, or they flip into tyranny. we saw that in russia. there was an oligarchic period of four or five years where the rich people took over the government and then putin just started clamping down and saying, that's it, no more political conversations. anybody who speaks up goes to jail. and i'm very concerned that we're at the -- we're at the cusp of making a decision which way we're going to go, because oligarchy won't last. >> we're going to have to end it there. thank you very much, thom hartmann, who is the host of "the thom hartmann program"

and also the author of the book that you just mentioned. thank you so much, thom. >> thank you, kimberly. we're joined now by the founder and chief economist at american compass. welcome to washington journal. >> thanks for having me. >> can you tell us a little bit about your mission at american compass and how your organization is funded? >> sure. our mission, directly, is to resorry an economic consensus that emphasizes the importance of family, community, and industry to the nation's liberty and prosperity, and you know, so what that means, in practice, is really focusing a lot on economic policy, trying to get away from this model that just says, all growth is equally good, and we'll somehow make it up to everybody who gets left behind, making sure it's a much more broad-based growth, and as a result, we're funded by a really interesting set of some individuals, some corporations, and a lot of foundations all the way across the political spectrum. >> speaking of the political spectrum, where would you say that your group sits in terms of

ideology in politics as well as economics? >> well, we're definitely on the right of center. i think we're clearly identified as a very conservative group, but at the same time, it's interesting, we spend most of our time on arguments within the right of center, really working on a lot of these fights that are going on among conservatives about how to move forward. obviously, the republican party today is not the same one of john mccain and mitt romney and paul ryan, and so, you know, we work a lot with folks like now vice president-elect jd vance, now nominee for secretary of state marco rubio on trying to shape the future direction of the conservative movement. >> you had an op-ed in "the new york times" or a guest essay, i should say, "trump is about to face the choice that dooms many presidencies." what is that choice, and why did you need to write this now? >> well, i think it's an especially interesting situation for mr. trump, because, you

know, it's been almost 150 years since we have had a president who was out of office and then coming back into office, so he kind of gets a second chance at doing a first term. and you know, typically, what we see when a new president is coming in, they've just spent all of this time campaigning, making commitments to voters, trying to win their support, and all of a sudden, everything flips. now you're the president-elect. now all of those special interest groups, all of those donors, everybody's trying to get your support for their own priorities, and i think it's a place where, you know, right at the beginning, we typically see administrations really struggle, where they do a lot of the stuff that the activists really want, that the donors really want, and the voters kind of look around and say, wait a minute, this isn't what we were expecting at all. and typically, then, in the next midterm election, you see the president's party get wiped out. and so, you know, i think the point of the piece that i wrote and what is such an important

moment right now is to see, can mr. trump remember why it is he was actually elected, what he's going to have to do to be a successful president, or does all of the attention focus to what people are talking about at the bar at mar-a-lago, which isn't the stuff that's going to get it done? >> now, when it comes to trump's first administration, how close do you think he got to some of these pro-worker economic policies that you support, and in general, what did you think of his economic record? >> well, i think his first term was a really interesting situation where, you know, i like the metaphor of the dog that caught the car. obviously, people were very surprised that he won, and it was a situation where there hadn't been a lot of work done to develop the kinds of policy ideas, to develop the bench of talent that you could bring into an administration that was going to do that kind of work. and so, what i think you really saw in his first term was, you

know, he gets to the white house, who's in congress? well, paul ryan is the speaker of the house. and so, what are the big legislative priorities? it was a big corporate tax cut, and it was trying to repeal obamacare, and i think those probably weren't the right places to focus. on the other hand, in places where a lot of thinking and work had already been done in terms of stronger immigration enforcement, in terms of much more aggressive trade policy and confronting china, that's where you saw him get more done, and i think especially on trade, you know, ambassador bob lighthizer, who was u.s. trade representative, who's a candidate for treasury secretary now, you know, he knew exactly what needed to be done. trump gave him the power and the space to go do it, and so i think we made a tremendous amount of progress on the trade issue with china. >> now, you mentioned earlier that you're working with vice president-elect jd vance. i want to play a portion of his speech accepting the vice presidential nomination in july.

>> never in my wildest imagination could i have believed that i would be standing here tonight. i grew up in middletown, ohio. a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands, and loved their god, their family, their community, and their country with their whole hearts. >> amen. >> but it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by america's ruling class in washington. when i was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of joe biden supported nafta, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to mexico. cd when i was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named joe biden gave china a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good american middle class manufacturing jobs.

when i was a senior in high school, that same joe biden supported the disastrous invasion of iraq, and at each step of the way, in small towns like mine in ohio or next door in pennsylvania or michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas, and our children were sent to war. >> oren cass, what is your assessment thus far of president-elect trump's picks for his cabinet, as well as what you're hoping to see from vice president-elect jd vance when it comes to economic policy? >> well, i think something really interesting that you notice in that clip from jd vance is that he's -- he's actually pairing together two different issues where the republican party has really shifted. on free trade and economic policy, the republican party and, for that matter, the democratic party, as he noticed with joe biden, was overwhelmingly focused on just

embracing free trade and ignore places like ohio that were going to be hurt by it and also, then, on foreign policy, it was sort of a parallel process. you had both democrats and republicans just kind of going around looking for wars to start, and not thinking about the people who were going to have to fight in those wars. and so, what i think what you see with trump and vance and in the picks they've started to make is obviously a different way of thinking about that. so far, the picks have been more on the foreign policy and military side, and so, you know, i think somebody like senator rubio at the state department is a really excellent pick. you know, he has been really at the forefront over the last decade of making the case that we need to rethink all of this. we need to recognize that our main adversary is china, that our economic and foreign policies are entangled. what we do on economics has a huge effect on what we can do in foreign policy, what it means

for our national security, and so i think he's going to bring much-needed change and leadership to the state department. on the economic side, it's interesting to see, those are the picks that haven't really been made yet. there's still a debate about treasury secretary, you know, who's going to be somebody who actually will carry forward president trump's vision and not just kind of be another wall street banker, which we tend to see, especially in republican treasury departments. and then, likewise, picks like commerce, labor, these are now the issues that are at the heart of our economic policy, and i think, you know, as someone like jd vance has spoken about a lot, having a labor policy that is much more focused on the interests of workers, having a, you know, commerce department, for instance, who's in charge of the c.h.i.p.s. act, which is all of the investment we're doing to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to this country, so those are the kinds of things i think we still are kind of waiting to see on, but

hopefully that we get right, because that's what's going to determine the direction of our economic growth. >> we'll be taking your calls with questions for mr. cass. democrats can call in at 202-748-8000. republicans at 202-748-8001. independents at 202-748-8002. we've talked about what's happening in the white house, but republicans have also gained control of congress and a big thing on their agenda when they come into office is going to be taxes with the expiration of some of the provisions of the 2017 tax cuts and jobs act and you have something on your sub stack about this. the coming tax fight will not be what you're expecting. so, what do you think most people are expecting, and what should we expect instead? >> i just -- i wrote about this week at the substack's called "understanding america" because it -- that's what it's about is in all of these dimensions, trying to really

understand what's going on that a lot of times i think is different from what people are expecting, and so this tax fight is a great example. you know, if you think back to 2017, the republicans pushed very hard on a large tax ut that wasn't paid for at all. it just went straight into a bigger deficit, and the argument was somehow that -- you know, you've heard the phrase, "it will pay for itself" somehow. and the reality is that it didn't. i think there isn't really any dispute at this point that it added significantly to our deficit, and as did certainly many of the things on the spending side that the biden administration has since done, and so now, we have just a much worse fiscal picture. we're looking at deficits of almost $2 trillion a year, even just the interest payments on our debt at this point are -- we are spending more on interest payments than we spend on our military. and that just can't go on. people have been predicting a fiscal crisis for a long time.

we're now in the fiscal crisis. and i think the really interesting thing is that a lot of republicans know this, especially in the house of representatives. there are a lot of republicans who have already said, you know, if anything, we actually need to be raising some more revenue to address our deficit problem, and so the idea that even with republican control, we're just going to take the tax cuts from 2017 and just extend them all, just do it all again and not worry about the cost, i think that's totally unrealistic, and does not have the votes that it would need, and so frankly, that's a very good thing. it means there's going to be a much more serious look at what can we afford, how do we pay for it, and as a result, we're not going to be able to extend everything. there's going to have to be a much bigger fight about which parts of these tax cuts really were valuable and we want to keep them, because there were some very good things in there, you know, the child tax credit that helps a lot of working

families, some very good incentives to encourage businesses to invest more, so there are things we want to keep, but there's going to be a lot more work and a lot more fighting to be done about what this looks like going forward. it's not just going to be a blank check to spend the money and not worry about the deficit. >> president-elect trump has suggested tariffs as one way to raise revenue. what do you think of this policy, particularly in terms of maybe 60% tariffs on goods coming from china, 20% across the board? >> i think it's a very good policy. this is one that we do a lot of work on at american compass, and really focusing on, you know, where we started with this question of what does pro-worker policy look like, how do we build a model of economic growth that actually creates good jobs in america for american workers, and doesn't just sort of promise everybody cheap stuff that somebody else will pay for and you know, in reality, we've just kind of been putting on the national credit card. so, i think that kind of policy is very much needed, especially

when it comes to china. you know, the fight that we're now going to have goes all the way back to a fight that we had back in 2000, and you heard jd vance mention, in that speech at the convention, there was a huge fight over, should we essentially grant free trade to china? what's called permanent normal trade relations. and all of the economists said, yes, absolutely, this is going to be great, it's going to be great for us, it's going to be great for china, and obviously, it has been a disaster for us, and so what people are now finally starting to think about, you know, it's actually -- it's interesting. it was a bipartisan recommendation of the house of representatives china committee. it's in the republican national platform, saying, no, we are not going to have normal trade relations with china. we are going to treat them like the adversary and the bad actor and the economic system that they are.