tv Face the Nation CBS December 30, 2024 2:30am-3:00am PST
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the trump administration when it was in charge. what level of concern do you have about some of the people appointed by president-elect trump to incoming public health positions regarding issues of vaccine, testing, public health, efficacy? >> i think there are some people coming into this administration who are very competent. a johns hopkins surgeon, we have worked together for the last ten-plus years, he's an independent thinker who listens to science and is willing to change his mind when there's new evidence that emerges, but i have a lot of concern and i've spoke tone my colleagues in medicine and public health and i think all of us share this concern about robert f. kennedy, the nominee to be the head of health and human services. kennedy has espoused many views that are anti-vaccine, one of the leading anti-vaxing advocates in the country if not in the world over the last couple of decades.
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he's also someone who has made his career from being an activist and not a scientist. if you're a scientist even if you have deeply held convictions should be able to change your mind. it's a fact childhood vaccines are safe and are lifesaving. a cdc analysis found that the childhood vaccination have saved over 1.1 million lives, according to a study childhood vaccines saved 154 million lives globally over the last 50 years. these are facts and it's very concerning to have someone who doesn't believe in the -- in how science works to be in charge of our nations scientific agencies. >> do you believe it's more imperative for the biden administration to move forward on vaccinations and testing? >> that's exactly it. i don't want to wait for the trump administration to potentially hold up the vaccines
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saying they want more evidence. evidence is good and facts are always good. but you have to weigh that against a potential catastrophe we could be having for bird flu the way we had for covid. there's no reason to hold off on getting more testing. we need to know how much bird flu there is out there, if there are new mutations developed. other countries also need to know so that they can prepare as well. i think it's a major problem we have been holding back on testing and also holding back on getting the vaccines deployed that are already developed. >> dr. leana wen, thank you for your expertise. thanking you twice and a happy new year to you. >> to you, too, major. >> we'll be right back .
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the outgoing president about what kind of economy he's giving to a successor. that's a political conversation, objectively what is the economy the incoming trump administration inheriting? >> good morning. thank you for having me. so we think the economy has really solid momentum going into next year, you can look at our internal card data, for example, that shows a nice acceleration in spending going into the holidays. you can look at the tsa and that looks strong around the holiday period as well. think about things via a wider lens, start in 2022, that was a year in which gdp grew by only 1%. cpi inflation peaked at 9%. all of the talk was stagflation, when, not if a recession will arrive, why are workers quitting, and then what happened over the following two years, right. this was quite unexpected and in a very pleasant way. 3% gdp growth.
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inflation coming down, labor productivity moving up. all positives that leave us optimistic going into next year that we can continue to grow above 2%, albeit with somewhat sticky inflation. >> is there any larger x factor in 2025 than the scale and scope of promised mass deportations of the trump administration? >> from a market perspective, i think the two biggest issues will actually it be fiscal policy and trade policy and there's a lot of uncertainty around those as well just as there is around immigration policy. so with fiscal policy, you had this conversation in your last segment, right, the majority for republicans in the house is very, very narrow. if they want to extend the tax cuts and jobs act, do more stimulus. they have a very slim margin to work with. and then with trade policy we need to understand how much of the tariffs that president-elect trump has threatened are going
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to be implemented versus how much is a negotiating tool, how much is transactional. >> and for mass deportations, how much do you fear that could affect the labor market on our country, that is to say, put upward pressure on prices because if there is mass deportations and work place inspections, lots of workers in agriculture, construction, meat processing and other vital industries could be pulled out of those sectors. >> our base case is there will be a slowdown in the flow of immigrants. it's harder to know what will happen around exportations. a worker is also a consumer. so there are some down side risks if there's a large change in the population. that's just math. in terms of pressures in specific sectors, it's really going to depend on how things
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play out. yes, there could be labor shortages in certain sectors but it's very hard to know think stage. >> many say they expect tariffs and regulatory relief to kind of watch themselves out meaning essentially you put them together, it's benign on the u.s. economy. is that your perspective? >> i think that's about right. the four key policy issues that we've been focused on, as i said earlier trade, fiscal policy, immigration policy and deregulation, we think they'll roughly wash out but, again, the starting point is pretty helpful, right? we think we can continue to grow at around 2, 2.5% the coming year as well as in 2026. >> so in reading year-end summaries, the economist, "the wall street journal" and "washington post" warned in their own way the stock market may be overvalued, do you share any of those concerns?
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>> i'm not an equity analyst. our equity strategists do think that stocks can continue to run up to around 6600, 6700 by the end of the year. there's been a pretty aggressive run-up in tech stocks but it is not of the same scale we saw in the late '90s of a similar bubble. >> what effect do you believe cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence will play in the global economy in 2025? >> so when it comes to a.i., i think there's two things to be said. the actual impact of a.i. adoption will slow up slowly in the data. i don't know that we'll see that in 2025 or 2026 but what has been really impactful already and will be much more impactful
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is laying the groundwork for a.i., the increases in investment in data centers, and you think about what all that requires, it requires materials, energy supply -- >> aditya, we need to go, pardon me. >> sure, sure. >> i'm sorry to cut you off. we have a hard break. aditya bhave from bank of america. happy new year and thank you for being with us. we'll be right back in just a moment.
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in 22 days donald trump will be sworn in as the 47th president, only the second to serve two nonconsecutive terms. for more perspective on the most powerful position in the world, we spoke with david rubenstein, the co-chairman of the carlyle group. his new book "the highest calling" studies the highs and lows of some of this country's most consequential presidents. how would you compare, based on your study of the presidency, our unsettled times now to unsettled times past? >> nothing is as bad as the civil war when we had 3% of our population killed and the fighting in washington was so
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bad 60 different times members of congress hit other members on the floor of the congress. we're not quite there yet. clearly we're going into uncharted waters because we have a president coming back who had been president before. that hadn't happened since grover cleveland was re-elected in 1892 and trump has more power than i think many people would have thought by the virtue of his victory size. i do think he will act like he has a mandate and washington is bracing for what's going to happen. >> related to that, before the election results were known, polls indicated they were afraid if harris would win while others worried if trump would win. can you recall a time where that fear of an outcome was as president as it was leading into this election? >> a couple times people were afraid that the next person coming in that was the opposite party would really hurt the country in many ways. my former boss, jimmy carter,
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really feared ronald reagan. he thought he would undo things carter had done. reagan won by a landslide. you've seen other times this happened. when fdr won the first time, herbert hoover could not believe that this man, herbert hoover, such a distinguished american before he was president and while he was president, he was a very distiuiedperson, never took fdr seriously and fdr didn't take hoover that seriously and refused to meet with him essentially or met with him briefly and they didn't want anything to do with each other. >> you mentioned grover cleveland. there's not a chapter in the book about grover cleveland. is there anything that retroactively fascinates but the cleveland presidency now that trump has returned to office or are you similarly fascinated by the time in which he was president, the guilded age? >> grover cleveland was a democrat, a former governor of new york, very well respected, but he lost the election in 1888, and he came back in 1892. now one of the things we don't really know is whether a president, when he has a second
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term after he's been out of office, whether he'll be fresher, whether he'll bring better people in, will be more experienced. grover cleveland's second term was reasonably successful. maybe trump's will be as well. >> the last 18 months or so, we struggled with the collision of politics and the law. do you think there are any lessons to be learned from this clash and the politics that came from the clash of trying to indict and try someone who had been president of the united states and was aspiring to that office again? >> i think there is a feeling among many people it wasn't a good idea to indict the president of the united states. i think the trial in new york where trump was convicted, i think really helped him in his election effort, and i think there are many people who are trump supporters who believe the indictments that came out of the special prosecutor, jack smith, were political as well. i think both sides feel that the other side is really talking
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past each other. the people who are in the justice department now feel that these indictments were fair and correct and a special prosecutor and so forth, the trump people believe they're political. i hope going forward that the justice department is not seen as political because one of the strengths of this country has been the rule of law, and i hope the justice department that's coming in now will continue that tradition. >> do you have a president in mind who, based on up study, grew in your regard and a president in your mind who, based on your study, got more diminished? >> harry truman left office extremely unpopular, and he was thought to be an inappropriate successor to the great fdr. now, because of books by david mccollough and others who wrote books about truman, people see him as one of our great presidents. post-world war ii he helped end the war because he dropped the atomic bomb. many think it was necessary. >> he never doubted?
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>> he never doubted it. self-doubt wasn't his thing. he believed it was the right decision. he was responsible for nato, the u.n., the world bank, the imf, and the cia, which he created as well. he recognized israel. even though his secretary of state threatened to resign over it. he was a person who has risen up, a person who has gone down, i would say, or two that have gone down a lot, one is andrew jackson. remember, democrats used to say we're going to have a jefferson jackson day dinner. they don't have that anymore. he's seen as racist and very anti-native american and did things that killed a lot of people in the native american community in particular. he's not well respected today by scholars. another person i would say is -- whose reputation has gone down is woodrow wilson, the great reformer. he's governor of new jersey and then president of the united at.
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however, he now is widely seen as having done two things that were big mistakes. one, he resegregated the federal workforce and had been integrated. two, and this is very damaging as well, he had a stroke with about 18 months to go. he couldn't do what he had done before. he hid that from the public, and his wife essentially became a shadow president. she was really making decisions and deciding things that maybe he should have decided and the public didn't know this. that was a big problem. >> you often ask biographers what question they would most want to pose to the subject of their presidential biography. let me expand on that. if you could go to dinner with any president, who would it be, and what question would you want to make sure you got answered? >> without doubt, the greatest president and greatest american ever is abraham lincoln. he was not an abolitionist but came to free the slaves through the emancipation proclamation and won the civil war despite the fact many didn't want to fight the civil war. they would say let the south go.
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we'll have our own country. lincoln said we will hold our nation together. he lost 3% in the war but kept the union together and made the united states a stronger country. we ended slavery because of the 13th amendment. most importantly, he did it with humility. he didn't run around saying, look, i won the civil war. i did the gettysburg address. isn't that a great speech? he didn't brag about it. he was humble and i think he had a sense of humor and perspective that is a really good thing for a president. i would like to ask him, do you have any regrets about not having freed the slaves earlier? do you have any regrets about not getting rild of your generals earlier who were not very good? he waited a couple years before he got grant in. grant is a person i should mention had the most amazing meteoric rise of almost anybody who had become president. he was selling firewood on the streets of st. louis in 1860. the war breaks out in 1861, more or less, and eight years later he's president of the united states. it's amazing. >> you mentioned humility.
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george w. bush told you in your interview with him that was the most important characteristic a president can possession. i've read other words that are important for presidents -- courage, compassion, curiosity, decisiveness. based on your study, what would you say is the most important? >> i think the most important thing is having a perspective you want to do what's right for the american people. you're not trying to make money. you're not trying to feather your own nest, not trying to worry about history. you're trying to do what's best for the american people. the qualities i admire in leaders are people who are reasonably intelligent but not geniuses. you don't have to be a genius to be a great president. people who are willing to listen to other people. people who have some humility. people who are highly ethical. they are the people i think great leaders have in any area. overall we've gotten pretty talented people who serve as president of the united states and we've been fortunate, lincoln, washington, fdr, teddy roosevelt, jefferson, and modern day presidents eisenhower among
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ohers have had some really great attributes and the country is good and i think better off for having good people serve. one of my concerns in the future is that because it's become so political in washington sometimes and the infighting has been so intense i'm not sure as many good people want to rise up and run for president in the future as we've seen in the past. >> you mentioned in your very first answer the civil war, the greatest time of testing in our country's history. you don't have to be very aggressive online to find casual talk among americans about another civil war. they bantied about with some frequency. how worried are you about that and do you think the mere discussion of it creates the potential of an inevitability? >> i think there has been discussions. some people say the red states and the blue states should separate, but i don't think that's realistic or will happen. i think the country realizes we are the strongest power in the world economically, militarily, politically, culturally and, in part, because the country has a
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big enough population and we have a lot of attributes in red and blue states. i don't think it's realistic, people talk about that. the country is not going to be split up the way it was in the civil war. i don't see it as realistic or desirable. >> any doubt in your mind the president, all presidents, must guard against bitterness, anger, resentment, some of the things that fueled their pursuit of the office in the first place? meaning once they got there they had to set those things aside even though they were part of the engine? >> everybody goes through life and has ups and downs and you get a lot of bitterness and resentment of people. they ultimately rise up above that. a lot of people criticized abraham lincoln for many, many things. they called him all kinds of terrible names and they did say he was barely human. >> called him a gorilla. >> yes. and he rose above that. i think you have to rise above it. hopefully, when you don't have to worry about politics in a second term, for example, you can rise above all the concerns you've had. when you're president of the
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united states, if you carry your resentments for too long it can affect others adverse li. clearly he has some resentments but i believe will rise above that in his second term. >> is richard nixon, which you in you book describe as a tragic figure, almost a shakespearean-like tragic figure, the most available cautionary tale about resentments and the presidency? >> if only shakespeare had been alive to write about it, it would have been a wonderful tragedy. he's very smart. he stumbles running for president, barely loses. loses in the governorship of california and comes back and is elected in 1968 against all the odds, but he resented the people that looked down on him. he resented the liberals. he resented the ivy leaguers, as he would call them. he, i think, took those resentments and perpetuated them through his chief of staff, holderman and other people, and the result was a terrible thing called watergate. i think richard nixon, had he
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not had watergate, i think he would have gone down as an impressive president. he opened china, things he did on the environment. watergate will be what he's remembered for. >> was he the least ethical president in our history? >> i don't think that's easy to say. some presidents had issues that we don't know about as much. richard nixon wasn't a person who was trying to make money for himself necessarily. he wasn't grafting himself into business deals but he had some ethical failings. >> the book is called "the highest calling." is the presidency the highest calling? some might argue that an age defining innovation is a higher calling or being a captain of industry is a higher calling, or being a simple ceo employing tens of thousands of people is a higher calling. why is it the highest calling? >> the reason i called it "the highest calling," and i had historically said private equity, my profession, is the highest calling, but that was tongue-in-cheek. when woodrow wilson went to
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paris to help end world war i, he was cheered by hundreds of thousands of parisians and people for the first time realized the most important person in the united states, in the world, is the president of the united states, and that's been true since almost wilson came back from paris. when fdr was running the world effectively because he was president of the united states during world war ii, he was the most important person in the world for sure. i think ever since then because of the economic, military, the political power of the united states, whoever is the leader of the united states is almost certainly the most powerful person in the world and pursuing what i would call the highest calling because you can affect the lives of people so much more significantly as president of the united states than any other job in the world. >> thank you very much. >> my pleasure, thank you. >> you can watch the extended interview on our youtube page or on our website, facethenation.com. we'll be right back. can neuriva support your brain health? mary. janet. hey! eddie. no! fraser. frank. frank. fred. how are you? support up to seven brain health indicators, including memory.
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