April 11, 2025 • 46 mins
Congress has been looting the treasury for far too long and you're on the hook for it as an American taxpayer. In this special, Jesse Kelly investigates how we got here and what needs to be done to rectify the problem. Is it tariffs? Or something else? Jesse's guests help provide the answers America desperately needs.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Okay, let's have a talk. Is one of those talks
that I almost feel like dad, Right, your kids laying
around too much, needs to get a job, and it's
time to have a talk. Now, you're not the kid
in this situation, but the normies of America, they are
the kids in this situation. You me, we understand spending,
(00:31):
We understand government spending, we understand why it's a problem.
So first, let's just talk about the good news. Yes,
inflation as of this moment is going down. It's tacking
closer to two percent, which is the goal of the Fed.
It's at two point four. It wasn't two point six.
The goal of the Federal Reserve is two percent. Now
(00:54):
you and I can sit and argue about that goal,
which I don't particularly care for. I don't understand why
you have it baked into the economic cake that my
money has to lose two percent of its value every
single year. Why can't you try to increase its value?
Why can't you maintain it? But look, that's obviously that
(01:14):
ship has sailed, So let's not even dig into that. Okay,
we're trending in the right direction. If we have to
put a nice face on this thing, Okay, we got it.
We got it, But I don't have to tell you
that that hasn't fixed prices. The prices aren't fixed that
we're looking at over twenty percent in the last decade. You,
(01:37):
unlike your parents, unlike your grandparents and their grandparents, you
have lived in a unique period in American history. That
it's not the only period that's been like this, but
it's been relatively unique for a few generations. You've seen
your standard of living go down. We here in the
United States of America have gotten used. It's a really
(02:01):
wonderful thing. It's a wonderful way to live where everything
gets better with time. We just go up, up, up, up,
up up up, and everything kind of gets better. So
you should be able to afford better things, different things
than your parents could afford. Now. You've probably either said
this yourself or you've heard others say it. You look
around and you wonder, why why don't I own a
(02:25):
house already? My parents had a house by now, My
parents had a house, a couple cars. I why why
is everything so expensive now? Why do things feel financially
out of reach now? Well, A huge reason things are
financially out of reach now is the value of the
dollar has gone down, down, down and down. You have
(02:49):
less buying power now than your parents did. This is
a reality. But the important part of that is the why.
And the why is the part that's difficult to tackle,
difficult to wrap your arms around, it certainly difficult to
handle the problem. The why is government spending. The United
(03:11):
States government has decreased your standard of living. The United
States government and it's spending has made you poorer. And
I know I'm a partisan. You're probably a partisan, whether
you're a commie who hate watches or an anti communist
like me. Republicans are as guilty as Democrats. We spend
(03:31):
way too much money. And given the fact that the
United States government takes in in human amounts of money,
for them to continue to spend way more than that
is unbelievably ridiculous, But they do, Republicans and Democrats. Doesn't
matter whose president, doesn't matter who controls to Congress. It's
(03:52):
trillion dollar bill after trillion dollar bill, huge deficits after
huge deficits. And look, it was already bad pre COVID,
but what happened during COVID really ramped everything up into
warp speed. Is what it did. We took a bad
chest cold and we used it to justify spending at
(04:14):
World War two levels. Do you understand what this country
did during World War II? Just a brief little rewind
on this, the United States of America, Because wars are expensive.
They are now, they were then, and they always have
been and always will be. It's very, very expensive to
outfit an army, to prepare your country for war, to
prosecute awards, unbelievably expensive, buying the bombs and the bullets
(04:36):
and the medical stuff and paying that. It's just crazy expensive.
The United States of America during World War Two took
this gigantic economy and they ramped it up into warp speed,
mass amounts of spending on wartime economy stuff. Because we
(04:56):
were bitty busy fighting a war on the entire globe,
from the shores of Alaska to the Philippines to Germany
to Africa. The United States of America paid for a
world war crazy, right, insane levels of spending. Did you
know right now, because of COVID, we're spending that And
(05:20):
I warned you back then. I warned you the far
reaching consequences of what we're doing to try to stop
the spread of this virus. Maybe they're necessary, maybe they're not.
But we are talking about massive, massive economic losses coming,
and that's just that's just the truth. We are going
to be feeling this for not just you know, the
(05:42):
coming months, for years. No, we're not going to be
in lockdown for years, but the economic impact of this
is going to be it's going to be something. Did
I call that or what? And this is how it works.
You see, government creates a problem, Government decides it can
(06:05):
spend your money, it can spend its way out of
a problem. And then even once the problem is gone,
they don't want to stop. You see all this extra
cheddar laying around. We got more money for him, and
more money for her, and more money for this district,
and more money for this state. And I can build
a new airport, and I can build a new base,
and I can pay these roads, and I can. You
(06:27):
gave me access to all this money, all this vast
amount of money in the American treasury, and now me
member of the House, Republican and Democrat, me Senator Republican
and Democrat.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Take that big pot of taxpayer gold and I want
to throw it out to the masses and buy myself
some popularity, and old boy, does it work. It works
on a dumbed down population that doesn't understand. With every
trillion dollar bill, your groceries get more expensive. Let me
say that again, with every trillion dollar bill, your groceries
(06:59):
get more expensive. One more time. Every trillion dollar bill
means your groceries get more expensive. Nobody really explained this
problem better than Milton Friedman did.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money,
and any other attribution to other groups of inflation is wrong.
Consumers don't produce it. Producers don't produce it, trade unions
don't produce it, foreign chieks don't produce it, while imports
(07:35):
don't produce it. What produces it? It's too much government
spending and too much government creation of money and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
What was true then remains true now. And you see
this is the problem. Americans don't understand this, and they
don't understand you see those words on the screen right now.
They don't understand what's happening inside of the criminal organization
known as the United States government. Senators, members of the House,
(08:12):
and the bureaucracy. They're a huge part of this as well.
And the NGOs that orbit all of these things, they
are only in this to steal your money. They are
in this to find out new and inventive ways to
steal your money. They get to Washington, DC and they
see this big pot of gold. It's the US Treasury.
(08:34):
It's your money. It's your money, the money you worked for,
the money the government steals from you. And when all
these people look at that big pot of gold, they
think to themselves, I want some of that. I gotta
get my hands on some of that. I gotta dip
my hands in that by myself, some more political capital,
(08:56):
hands some money out to my cousin at this ngo.
I gotta get some of that. And So what happens
every day while you go to work and the government
steals twenty five percent plus of your income is these
people go to work and they plot new and inventive
ways to spend and steal your money. That's why you
can't afford groceries. That's why you can't afford to remodel
(09:18):
your house. That's why you're driving run family vacation instead
of flying now. It's because the Republicans and Democrats in Washington,
d C. Simply will not stop spending your money. They
love it. They're like bank robbers who are in the
bank vault and no cops are coming. It's glorious. And
Trump and Elon Must, to their credit, are finally talking
(09:38):
about it.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look
at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money,
the taxpayers are harder money is spent in a good way.
And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
I'd well, you, you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look
at what you do. You walk in, you want to quit.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
They go on strike.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
I won't mention the name of the company, but they
go on strike and use it.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's okay, you're all gone. So they're working on it.
And Donald Trump has said publicly multiple times, including during
his State of the Union, which I know wasn't a
State of the Union, that we need to make some cuts.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Just listen to some of the appalling waste. We have
already identified twenty two billion dollars from HHS to provide
free housing and cars for illegal aliens, forty five million
dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma. Forty
(10:45):
million dollars to improve the social and economic inclusion of
sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million dollars
to promote LGBTQI plus in the African nation of Lesuto,
which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for
(11:08):
indigenous peoples and Afro Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty
million dollars, eight million dollars for making mice transgender.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
This is real.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I'm glad he pointed it out in front of the
American people, the absurdity of it. But we have to
talk about something else because it's that's an easy sell,
isn't it. Only you're crazy liberal ant Pagya. She's popping
her anti anxiety megic medication. Only she is supportive of
those things. She's a very tiny minority. Most American people
(11:50):
hear about transing mice and they say, ah, probably not necessary. Okay,
what about the military? Do you do you think there
should be any cuts there? Trump thinks it should be
a trillion dollar budget.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
We have great things happening with our military. We also
essentially approved a budget which is in the facility. You'll
like to hear this of a trillion dollars one trillion
dollars and then nobody's seeing anything like it. We have
to build our military, and we're very coarse conscious, but
the military is something that we have to build and
(12:29):
we have to be strong because you got a lot
of bad forces out there now. So we're going to
be approving a budget and I'm proud to say, actually
the biggest one we've ever done for the military.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
The United States military is full of fraud, flat out theft.
They haven't passed an audit in years. We talk about
inflation and we need cuts, and we're going to hand
a completely corrupt military area of trillion dollars. It's not
like it's just Trump either. Listen to these Listen to
(13:05):
all these GOP senators talking about spending and cuts and infletion.
This is Biden's inflation and he needs to own it.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Due to rampant inflation spurred by reckless government spending and
consumer prices are escalating at a historic pace.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Inflation is real. Don't dismiss it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This is a natural emergency.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
What I would like to do is get the administration
to focus on this. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There's an old expression that when you find yourself in
a hole, quick digging.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
President Biden's inflation is strangling a feat of a free people.
The American people deserve better.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
We do. How many of those senators are about to
vote for a massive blowout budget that makes inflation is
bad or worse? I mean that last guy was Senator Kennedy.
American people on the right, not on the left. The
right loves him, absolutely loves him. I have Republican friends
from Louisiana. They think he's the best. He's got so
(14:14):
many one liners.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
I can shad her. Congresswoman. Okay, she a cortege to
be the leader of the Democratic Party. She's entitled to
her opinion. I'm entitled to mine. As I've said about
him before, I think she's the region. There are directions
on a shampoo box. Our plan for dealing you heard
(14:37):
of that out we got to hurt. Our plan for
dealing with her is called Operation let her Speak.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Aha, It's funny, gosh, the one liner it has even
got the accent. What a straight shooter votes for every
big spending bill we can get his hands on. Sorry,
Oh that may have made you uncomfortable, but I am right.
If you want inflation to go down. We have to
stop government spending. One liners or not, we have a
(15:05):
great show for you. Expenses are a nightmare, aren't they?
The word Isn't it the worst time in the world
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(15:28):
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(15:48):
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Terms and conditions apply. Well, what is the biggest threat
(16:13):
to the United States of America? Different people have different
ideas on that. Me personally, if you asked me, I'd
tell you it's the United States government, namely the FBI,
but some say China. I can't say they're wrong. I
wonder what Carol Ross says. Oh, here it is quote
the biggest threat bar none to US growth has been
and remains the US government policy and US government spending.
(16:35):
And it's awfully hard to tell Carol she's wrong about that,
especially given every look everything we're seeing today. Sorry, I'm
in a sour mood about all this. Joining me now,
my friend Carol Roth, author of so many great books,
including the one You Will Own Nothing, which apparently you
most definitely will at some point in time given this
level of government spending. Hey, Carol, why is US government
(16:57):
policy bad?
Speaker 8 (17:00):
Well, I'm not going to be the one to put
you in a better mood, Jesse, so apologies for that
in advance. But basically, they have racked up so much
debt as well as deficits that at this point are
wartime level deficits at a time when we're supposed to
be having quote unquote growth, that it's put us in
a really terrible fiscal position. We have a balance sheet
(17:22):
that looks like that of an emerging market about to
have a sovereign debt crisis. The only reason it hasn't
happened so far is that the we're the world reserve currency,
but certainly many countries are trying to move away from that.
As I said, we have these crazy deficit levels, and
at the end of the day, we put ourselves into
a position where we're now spending more to service the
(17:44):
interest on our debt than we are for defense spending.
So it's difficult for us to be a strong country
and have the cards and make the deals that we
want to when we have this really terrible fiscal position,
and it's created lots of issues and choices and trade offs,
all of which end up in the end screwing the
(18:05):
American consumer.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Carol, describe this sovereign debt crisis because as you said,
we've been able to avoid well, we've been able to
rack up this amount of debt spend at this level
because we are the world's reserve currency. When you're trading
your goods and services, you can always rely on the
US dollar. Of course, but what does it that crisis
look like if they decide they're done with all that
(18:29):
and they're going to go to something like gold.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
Well, I think that the first thing that probably happens
is we get a dysfunction in the treasury markets where
everything go crazy and you start to see rates spiking,
and the most likely thing that's going to happen is
that the FED and the government aren't going to want
to go immediately into a crisis, so they're going to
do what they need to do to stop the bleeding.
(18:54):
And what does that usually look like, Well, that usually
looks like something we saw on a tative easing, with
the FED buying lots of securities, a certain amount of
securities to keep down interest rates and to help the
situation out because there are no other buyers for the debt.
But it could come in a different package. There's something
(19:15):
called yield curve control, which is kind of the same thing,
but instead of having a defined program like QUE where
they say we're going to buy a trillion dollars worth
of bonds, they say we're going to buy whatever it
takes in order to keep the yield below a certain amount,
or something that approximates that under some other special pretty packaging.
And as we've seen before, what does that do. It
(19:37):
ends up transferring wealth to the asset holders. It ends
up creating inflation for the everyday consumer. It drives a
non merit based inequality, and that continues on until you
know everybody says, Okay, this is crazy and we need
to have some other sort of ordering of our financial order.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Carol. One thing that drives me so insane about this
whole thing. It makes me want to choke somebody, is
how obvious and inevitable all this is. It's not at
left or right, or a conservative or Democrat or their Britany.
It's simple math. You can't run up these numbers. It's obvious.
Even the morons in Washington, DC know what you say
(20:19):
is true. Yet no one wants to stop it, even
the American voter. Honestly, Yeah, they want to stop transing mice,
but they don't want to actually make significant government cuts
to anything, and that's why we are where we are.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
Yeah, Well, the challenge is that they want to do
it at the macro level that they know we need
to stop spending. But when it comes down to the
micro level and it threatens their own specific pet project
or the dollars that they are getting personally, then it
becomes personal and it needs to shift. And this is
just basic human nature, which is why this is, as
you said, all very predictable. And the larger the government gets,
(20:56):
the more likely this is to happen. So that's really
what we're up against. Even with spending cuts, though, Jesse,
we have to do this in a way that's very
careful because we have the debt to GDP that we
do and the deficit to GDP. Part of the issue
that we have is that we've been taking in very
large amounts of revenue, and that's been based on government
(21:18):
spending propping up our GDP and generating some additional revenue
has been propping up our stock market and generating revenue
from that. If that stops, if we cut spending too fast,
as you and I have discussed before, what could end
up happening is that we get a decrease in revenue
in these the government quote unquote revenue, the tax revenue,
(21:40):
and we saw that back in I think it was
the third quarter of twenty twenty two. If we get
a recession, if we have prolonged dips in the stock market,
we're talking it could be a half a trillion dollars,
a trillion dollars, a trillion and a half dollars or
more that we're no longer taking in and it really
ends up floating that deficit. That's what's happened you know
(22:03):
before when we've seen the stock market go down as
well as in previous recessions. So you know, you don't
want to be in a no good deed goes unpunished
situation either, So they have to be very careful in
how they phase out that financing at the same time
finding ways to amplify growth, you know, so that you
get that kick up in the GDP, because if you
do it in a way that brings down the GDP,
(22:25):
then again we end up in this vicious cycle which
takes us back into that potential for a debt spiral.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Carol, How does China come into play here? Obviously there
are going to be a player of some kind because
globally you can't ignore them. How does China our policy
with China, How does it affect any of this?
Speaker 8 (22:45):
Oh, it affects all kinds of things, including the fact
that the Chinese own all kinds of assets, including treasuries,
the stock market and whatnot. So you know, for the
amount of leverage that we think we have over China,
they also have leverage on the other side. And if
we get into a match with them, because you know,
(23:08):
they think in hundreds of years and we have a
new president's you know, every four or eight years, as
well as a shift of over of Congress every two years.
So you know, it's very difficult to have a long
term strategy, and so they're able to wait out you know,
dips and hips and changes in a different way than
we are. So I would imagine to the extent that
(23:30):
we cannot get China to come to the table and
do something side by side, that that's actually very bad
for us. And I know we all hate China, and
we all you know, understand the issues with communism and whatnot,
but this is the situation that we're in now, and
to our own benefit, we need to be able to
find a way to figure out where there's points are
(23:53):
where we meet in the middle, and be able to
extract ourselves and build up the capabilities and you know,
right the our fire financial ship, and do all of
these things first before we can fully cut them off,
because otherwise it's going to end up being to our
own detriment. And as you know I wrote about and
you will own nothing, it could actually end up in war.
(24:13):
And when you've had previous massive changes in the global
financial order before, it's always been preceded by war. So
this is a very tenuous situation. The Biden administration left
the Trump administration a mess. They don't have a lot
of options here, and that's why, you know, we're seeing
as they're trying to do things that it's been pretty painful.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
When goods stop crossing borders, armies will That's an old saying.
I don't know who said it, but I'll take credit
for it. I guess I said it. Joining Well, I'm
going to let you go now, Carol, goodbye, thank you.
I'm so sad these can't stop spending, can't stop doing it.
American people love it. The politicians don't have the gots
(25:00):
to stop it. Something else whatever. Let's talk about China.
In fact, forget China. Let's talk about COVID and what
it did to bring about all this with Jeffrey Tucker. Next,
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Speaker 5 (26:25):
Who are announcing new guidelines for every American to follow
over the next fifteen days as we combat the virus
seats in. Every one of us has a critical role
to play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus.
We did this today. This was done by a lot
of very talented people, some of whom were standing with me.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I don't
know that I've ever I don't know that I've ever
been that frustrated in my life, but I remember it
like it was yesterday. Down a twenty trillion dollar economy
for a virus. Joining me now, Jeffrey A Tucker founder
and president of the Brownstone Institute. Jeffrey, I understand why
it's not popular to bring up old things like that,
(27:14):
even though it was five years ago. But the truth
is that was the beginning of so much destruction, so
much inflation, so much that we still feel to this day.
The very idea that you shut down a country on
purpose for a virus. It's an idea so insane that
I can't believe so many people bought it, and everyone
on the planet bought it.
Speaker 9 (27:33):
We've now published about fifteen, maybe seventeen, maybe twenty books
in the topic. We have a new one coming out,
which is a compilation on all of our research. We
haven't even begun to get to the bottom of exactly
what happened in those days. I'm obsessed with the topic, myself,
digging up every bit of information. Trump knows, a lot
(27:53):
of people know, Navarro knows that there's a lot of
people who know, but very few people are willing to
actually speak about it. A lot of what's happening right
now with the Trump administration traces to those days. They
just went after the head of the guy named who
was head of SISA, which is a cyber infrastructure security
(28:16):
or whatever, cybersecurity infrastructure security agency that was in effect
the government of twenty twenty. They were in charge of censorship,
they were in charge of election security, and they were
the first agency that went out there to divide the
workforce between essential and unessential. So basically the government, right
(28:38):
it was a small department within the Department of Homeland Security,
and they assumed the role of essentially running the country,
if not the world. And Trump put out an executive
order basically attacking the guy who was head of the
agency at the time. So which tells me that Trump
(29:01):
knows exactly, you know, who is it fault. I'm not
sure if he knows exactly, but he has an intuition
that there was profound things going on at that time
that resulted in his you know, and a comp a
very compromised election. But the story is much bigger than that,
as you and I both know, and we're still trying
(29:23):
to get to the bottom of it. And yes, it
was contrary to the Constitution, is contrary to all moral intuition,
is contrary to epidemiology and economics, and all good sense.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It was.
Speaker 9 (29:34):
It was our first introduction to the meaning and fullness
of totalitarian government. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It was. I remember it like yesterday, standing on standing
on the footprints in the grocery store, taking down the
outdoor basketball hoops. It was. It was almost as if
we have a legion of tyrants and power in this
country and they were way for such a day where
they could finally take the throne and be the kings
(30:04):
and queens they wanted to be. That's what it felt like.
It's what it still feels like when I look back
on it. I don't know how you can interpret it
any other way.
Speaker 9 (30:10):
Frankly, it was qusy martial law. We felt at the
time we were obeying things that weren't actually legislation. We
were obeying things that weren't actually lost. We didn't know
who was in charge of anything and what the consequences
for defiance would be. It was just all vague and strange,
and our voices were throttled very quickly, right, I mean
(30:32):
even from middle of March, and certainly by a month later,
the censorship was full blown. So we felt those of
us who thought the world was going crazy we felt
very much alone. A lot of our ideological colleagues in
the past, if you'd move in those circles, completely abandoned
the cause. They stayed entirely silent. And it went on
(30:53):
and on and on, and nobody could really figure out why.
Then we had this weird Summer twenty twenty thing where
all the cultural and government prevailing government elite said, Okay,
now you have to leave your home to go protest
the murder of George Floyd, you remember that. And so
suddenly all the young people are out in the streets going, yeah,
I'm against racism, and then you know, the city is
(31:18):
a whole city's burned down and that sort of thing.
And then I don't know, it's like only weeks later
it was back go back home again. Now that's time
to hide from the virus again. And this went on
and on and on, and finally, by October we managed
to put together this Great Brandon Declaration, which which cut
through all the censors and caused panic inside NIH and
(31:42):
many other institutions in Washington. And I couldn't even understand
entirely why. Looking back now, it's incredibly obvious why the
Great Brandon Declaration panicked the people in charge because it's
said very plainly and in accordance with all of history
that the problem would end with exposure and natural immunity.
(32:06):
It even added assisted by vaccines, but that was exactly
the problem. The idea that we could just get through
this by being a normal society was what panicked the
elites because this put it. Frankly, it took me like
two years to realize this. They had a product to sell,
and that product was a shot, and they were very
(32:27):
concerned that the great brands and declaration would diminish consumer uptake,
and that's why they wanted to suppress it. That's why
they why they censored it. And then when the shot
was was released after the election, right the election that
was heavily compromised by mail and ballots that were mandated
(32:50):
by the CDC back in March and even funded by
the CDC back in March. So Trump lost because of
those ail in ballots. Then and only then was the
vaccine released. It was deliberately laid delayed until after the election,
but uptake was in fact quite low, as they realized
by you know, several months later, and that's when the
(33:13):
mandate started. So millions of people eventually were displaced in
their jobs, fired, including tenured professors, frontline healthcare workers, anybody
who didn't accept the shot, pilots, and you know, all
sorts of things. Anybody who didn't accept the shot was
was was threatened with their jobs fired, and the whole
(33:36):
nation went into upheople. But even that didn't work because
uptake was still lower than they wanted. They were going
for somebody like nine. So then came the mask mandates.
It's like, okay, you're not going to get the shot, Well,
now you have to cover your face.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Everywhere.
Speaker 9 (33:52):
And even though we all existing research said the masks
do not stop the spread of a respiratory bar with
the zoononic reservoir, we knew this, they were useless. But
suddenly the mask mandates were everywhere, and that went on
for another six or eight months. During this period, two
whole cities were shut down. I mean, nobody talks about this.
(34:14):
Nobody's like it's like this history has just vanished. But
there were at least five cities that closed all public
accommodations to the unvaccinated. New York and Boston and New
Orleans and Seattle and Chicago. Those are the ones we
know about. They and it was intended to be nationwide.
(34:36):
There was such outrage about this that they finally had
to roll these things back. But it seems just incredible
to think we actually segregated our cities in the United
States along lines that had a fantastically racially disproportionate impact
on all these cities, so that the minority population, which
(35:01):
tended to refuse the vaccine at a greater rate than
majority populations, were actually not allowed into theaters, libraries, and
restaurants and bars. So this actually happened in this country.
So yeah, I want to get to the bottom.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
It's unbelievable. And Jeffrey, I honestly the point of this
whole special tonight is how the government just started spending
crazily and haven't stopped the thing, have not cut back
on a single solitary penny. They got a new injection
of drugs, and I'm not convinced they ever will. I'm
convinced we will maintain COVID levels of spending until economic collapse.
Speaker 7 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
I just looked at the latest thing just passed by
the House Republicans. It doesn't really cut a dime, and
it promises to cut the futures that always has. Our
friend Thomas Massey voted against it and got attacked for
doing so. But yeah, they're despite all the efforts of DOZE,
despite you know, all the promises, they're still not cutting
(36:03):
the spending. All that was accommodating, all that new spending
during the COVID period was accommodated by money printing, which
led to anywhere twenty five percent thirty decline and overall
purchasing power of the dollar during during the Biden years.
So yeah, we're so are. Our centate of living has
(36:26):
has diminished, the government has grown, the powers are not
really taken away. I mean, Trump's done some things, something
like a beginning of change, and I thrill every day
to see the executive orders and and and the changes
enacted by the redirection of funding away from from from
(36:46):
the left, you know, and so on. That's quite delightful.
But we are nowhere near getting to the bottom line
in terms of the truth of that period of what happened,
or having any kind of serious discussion about it. I
do would like to mention very quickly that my friends
actually took made major efforts to get the DoD to
(37:08):
confess what was going on at the Military Olympics in
October in Wuhan and the DoD just yesterday. This would
have been you know, say, April April eight, April ninth,
finally came out with a report five months late. But
they finally came out with the report admitting that yes,
(37:30):
seven soldiers you know, got sick with COVID nineteen like sentence.
Get this between October and they dated a very late
and January twenty twenty. So I mean that the report
is you know, the very embodiment of the limited hangout,
if you can imagine. So it raises more questions than
(37:52):
it answers.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Of course it does. Jeffrey, you were the best go
back against her. All right, we're almost done. Yeah. I
love to sleep. I love it. And there's just something. Look,
(38:16):
I'm a big I'm a big believer in kind of
starting out on the right foot, if you will. In
business meetings. That's why you shake hands, look them in
the eye. When you're picking up your honey for a day.
Oh you look pretty not hated. You get the dishes done.
Setting the tone. I guess I should say when you
have a good night's sleep, you wake up in the morning,
(38:39):
it sets the tone for your entire day. If you
slept great, you know it immediately. When you wake up,
you can tell how you feel. You're ready. And when
you didn't sleep, you know you know today's going to
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(39:00):
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Speaker 5 (39:17):
We are restoring the name of a great president, William
McKinley to Mount McKinley in Alaska. He was the big
tariff sheriff they used to call him, and made.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
A lot of money. Our country became very rich. And
when he was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt became president and he
spent all of that money that was made from tariff's
The money was so enormous, and they built the thing
called the Panama Canoun.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
You don't hear many people reference McKinley killed by an anarchist,
shot in the stomach, even though he was very fat,
it ended up killing him. Joining me now, David Keene,
Editor at large, Washington Times, David, not many people bring
up McKinley. Shoot, you don't ever hear his name. We
do hear Teddy Roosevelt's name, But people forget about our
different economic policies.
Speaker 10 (40:05):
Back then, well back then, prior to actually prior to Wilson,
the tariffs were used as the major way of raising
revenues for the government. That changed at the beginning of
the twentieth century, but there's no question that during that
period tariffs were, as Trump likes to look at them,
(40:29):
as a main source of revenue as well as a
source of protectionism. Remember, back in the eighteenth century, in
the nineteenth century, the newly formed United States was what
we could today call it developing country, and oftentimes developing
countries protect their infant industries with tariff walls as those
(40:51):
industries develop and mature. And that's what was going on
at that time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Okay, so are we passed phase?
Speaker 7 (41:00):
Now?
Speaker 1 (41:00):
At what point in time does a country move past
that phase?
Speaker 10 (41:05):
Well, we're certainly past the stage of a developing country,
although you could argue that much of our industry is
in decline just for age reasons. Because, for example, one
of the things the President's been talking about in recent
days is the problem we have with the maritime trades
with building and equipping ships, where China stripping outstripping us
(41:28):
by a thousand ships a year. One of the reasons
for that from an economic standpoint is that a nation's
competitives and that depends almost entirely on how new its
shipbuilding facilities are, so that for example, our shipyards, which
(41:48):
in many cases are one hundred years old or more,
are competing against shipyards that are ten or fifteen years old.
And the technology. Just as an example, we talk about wages,
but I know when I looked some years ago at
building a ship in Korea versus building it in the
United States, the problem was it took three to four
(42:09):
times as many man hours to build it in the
United States as it did in Korea because we were
using antiquated methods and we still are. So many of
these industries have sort of sat on their laurels, if
you will, and have not increased or kept up with
the competitiveness of the rest of the world. So in
that sense, much of the American manufacturing infrastructure in particular
(42:35):
is behind the times. So that's true. The other problem
is that while there have been a general acceptance in
the course of the twentieth and twenty first century of
the macro advantages of free trade. There has never really
been a situation in which free trade exists, so that
(42:58):
you've got countries imposed tariffs in other countries, while those countries,
in this case the United States, lets that go on
and suffers losses as a result of those teriff walls.
One of the problems that on the trade front that
the President confronts is that with these tariffs that he suggested,
(43:18):
in today's world, many of the many of the walls
that have been put up aren't terriff walls, their regulatory walls,
their workarounds that other countries have developed. There are things
that are hard to quantify, but which in fact make
it impossible or very difficult for Americans to compete in Europe.
(43:42):
Of course, you've got the agricultural field, where basically Europe
subsidizes its entire agricultural thing, not through tariffs, but through
bans on the kinds of products that come from the
United States. So it's a very difficult thing to achieve
what politicians used to call free and fair trade, and
(44:05):
it's fair trade. I think that the president in the
current administration is seeking, and that's that requires you to
look at things as they are rather than as you
might like.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Them to be. David, thank you so much. I appreciate
you joining us. All right, I have final thoughts next. Look.
(44:43):
I know this is difficult to hear, but all we
can do is recognize the problem and start to tackle
the problem and look at it. It's like somebody who's
extremely fat. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're super fat and
you want to lose the weight. We want it easy,
don't we Can I just get to get a shot
(45:03):
of something. Can I just go to the doctor? And
But the truth is, it's going to involve sacrifices. It's
going to involve giving up things you want. You want
to lose the weight. You don't have to give up soda.
You have to go for a walk on Saturday morning.
You have to skip a pizza. You're gonna have to.
It's going to involve denying yourself things you've grown accustomed
(45:28):
to the United States of America. If we want to
save our economic system long term, we are going to
have to make major adjustments to things we've grown accustomed to.
There's no other way to do it. And all we
can do. Look, with all these big problems. All we
can do is start now and start voting that way,
and start demanding it from our reps. All Right, all right,
(45:51):
we'll do it again.
Okay, let's have a talk. Is one of those talks
that I almost feel like dad, Right, your kids laying
around too much, needs to get a job, and it's
time to have a talk. Now, you're not the kid
in this situation, but the normies of America, they are
the kids in this situation. You me, we understand spending,
(00:31):
We understand government spending, we understand why it's a problem.
So first, let's just talk about the good news. Yes,
inflation as of this moment is going down. It's tacking
closer to two percent, which is the goal of the Fed.
It's at two point four. It wasn't two point six.
The goal of the Federal Reserve is two percent. Now
(00:54):
you and I can sit and argue about that goal,
which I don't particularly care for. I don't understand why
you have it baked into the economic cake that my
money has to lose two percent of its value every
single year. Why can't you try to increase its value?
Why can't you maintain it? But look, that's obviously that
(01:14):
ship has sailed, So let's not even dig into that. Okay,
we're trending in the right direction. If we have to
put a nice face on this thing, Okay, we got it.
We got it, But I don't have to tell you
that that hasn't fixed prices. The prices aren't fixed that
we're looking at over twenty percent in the last decade. You,
(01:37):
unlike your parents, unlike your grandparents and their grandparents, you
have lived in a unique period in American history. That
it's not the only period that's been like this, but
it's been relatively unique for a few generations. You've seen
your standard of living go down. We here in the
United States of America have gotten used. It's a really
(02:01):
wonderful thing. It's a wonderful way to live where everything
gets better with time. We just go up, up, up, up,
up up up, and everything kind of gets better. So
you should be able to afford better things, different things
than your parents could afford. Now. You've probably either said
this yourself or you've heard others say it. You look
around and you wonder, why why don't I own a
(02:25):
house already? My parents had a house by now, My
parents had a house, a couple cars. I why why
is everything so expensive now? Why do things feel financially
out of reach now? Well, A huge reason things are
financially out of reach now is the value of the
dollar has gone down, down, down and down. You have
(02:49):
less buying power now than your parents did. This is
a reality. But the important part of that is the why.
And the why is the part that's difficult to tackle,
difficult to wrap your arms around, it certainly difficult to
handle the problem. The why is government spending. The United
(03:11):
States government has decreased your standard of living. The United
States government and it's spending has made you poorer. And
I know I'm a partisan. You're probably a partisan, whether
you're a commie who hate watches or an anti communist
like me. Republicans are as guilty as Democrats. We spend
(03:31):
way too much money. And given the fact that the
United States government takes in in human amounts of money,
for them to continue to spend way more than that
is unbelievably ridiculous, But they do, Republicans and Democrats. Doesn't
matter whose president, doesn't matter who controls to Congress. It's
(03:52):
trillion dollar bill after trillion dollar bill, huge deficits after
huge deficits. And look, it was already bad pre COVID,
but what happened during COVID really ramped everything up into
warp speed. Is what it did. We took a bad
chest cold and we used it to justify spending at
(04:14):
World War two levels. Do you understand what this country
did during World War II? Just a brief little rewind
on this, the United States of America, Because wars are expensive.
They are now, they were then, and they always have
been and always will be. It's very, very expensive to
outfit an army, to prepare your country for war, to
prosecute awards, unbelievably expensive, buying the bombs and the bullets
(04:36):
and the medical stuff and paying that. It's just crazy expensive.
The United States of America during World War Two took
this gigantic economy and they ramped it up into warp speed,
mass amounts of spending on wartime economy stuff. Because we
(04:56):
were bitty busy fighting a war on the entire globe,
from the shores of Alaska to the Philippines to Germany
to Africa. The United States of America paid for a
world war crazy, right, insane levels of spending. Did you
know right now, because of COVID, we're spending that And
(05:20):
I warned you back then. I warned you the far
reaching consequences of what we're doing to try to stop
the spread of this virus. Maybe they're necessary, maybe they're not.
But we are talking about massive, massive economic losses coming,
and that's just that's just the truth. We are going
to be feeling this for not just you know, the
(05:42):
coming months, for years. No, we're not going to be
in lockdown for years, but the economic impact of this
is going to be it's going to be something. Did
I call that or what? And this is how it works.
You see, government creates a problem, Government decides it can
(06:05):
spend your money, it can spend its way out of
a problem. And then even once the problem is gone,
they don't want to stop. You see all this extra
cheddar laying around. We got more money for him, and
more money for her, and more money for this district,
and more money for this state. And I can build
a new airport, and I can build a new base,
and I can pay these roads, and I can. You
(06:27):
gave me access to all this money, all this vast
amount of money in the American treasury, and now me
member of the House, Republican and Democrat, me Senator Republican
and Democrat.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I want to.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
Take that big pot of taxpayer gold and I want
to throw it out to the masses and buy myself
some popularity, and old boy, does it work. It works
on a dumbed down population that doesn't understand. With every
trillion dollar bill, your groceries get more expensive. Let me
say that again, with every trillion dollar bill, your groceries
(06:59):
get more expensive. One more time. Every trillion dollar bill
means your groceries get more expensive. Nobody really explained this
problem better than Milton Friedman did.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Inflation is made in Washington because only Washington can create money,
and any other attribution to other groups of inflation is wrong.
Consumers don't produce it. Producers don't produce it, trade unions
don't produce it, foreign chieks don't produce it, while imports
(07:35):
don't produce it. What produces it? It's too much government
spending and too much government creation of money and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
What was true then remains true now. And you see
this is the problem. Americans don't understand this, and they
don't understand you see those words on the screen right now.
They don't understand what's happening inside of the criminal organization
known as the United States government. Senators, members of the House,
(08:12):
and the bureaucracy. They're a huge part of this as well.
And the NGOs that orbit all of these things, they
are only in this to steal your money. They are
in this to find out new and inventive ways to
steal your money. They get to Washington, DC and they
see this big pot of gold. It's the US Treasury.
(08:34):
It's your money. It's your money, the money you worked for,
the money the government steals from you. And when all
these people look at that big pot of gold, they
think to themselves, I want some of that. I gotta
get my hands on some of that. I gotta dip
my hands in that by myself, some more political capital,
(08:56):
hands some money out to my cousin at this ngo.
I gotta get some of that. And So what happens
every day while you go to work and the government
steals twenty five percent plus of your income is these
people go to work and they plot new and inventive
ways to spend and steal your money. That's why you
can't afford groceries. That's why you can't afford to remodel
(09:18):
your house. That's why you're driving run family vacation instead
of flying now. It's because the Republicans and Democrats in Washington,
d C. Simply will not stop spending your money. They
love it. They're like bank robbers who are in the
bank vault and no cops are coming. It's glorious. And
Trump and Elon Must, to their credit, are finally talking
(09:38):
about it.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
Just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look
at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money,
the taxpayers are harder money is spent in a good way.
And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission.
Speaker 5 (09:55):
I'd well, you, you're the greatest cutter. I mean, I look
at what you do. You walk in, you want to quit.
Speaker 3 (10:03):
They go on strike.
Speaker 5 (10:04):
I won't mention the name of the company, but they
go on strike and use it.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
That's okay, you're all gone. So they're working on it.
And Donald Trump has said publicly multiple times, including during
his State of the Union, which I know wasn't a
State of the Union, that we need to make some cuts.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
Just listen to some of the appalling waste. We have
already identified twenty two billion dollars from HHS to provide
free housing and cars for illegal aliens, forty five million
dollars for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma. Forty
(10:45):
million dollars to improve the social and economic inclusion of
sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. Eight million dollars
to promote LGBTQI plus in the African nation of Lesuto,
which nobody has ever heard of. Sixty million dollars for
(11:08):
indigenous peoples and Afro Colombian empowerment in Central America. Sixty
million dollars, eight million dollars for making mice transgender.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
This is real.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
I'm glad he pointed it out in front of the
American people, the absurdity of it. But we have to
talk about something else because it's that's an easy sell,
isn't it. Only you're crazy liberal ant Pagya. She's popping
her anti anxiety megic medication. Only she is supportive of
those things. She's a very tiny minority. Most American people
(11:50):
hear about transing mice and they say, ah, probably not necessary. Okay,
what about the military? Do you do you think there
should be any cuts there? Trump thinks it should be
a trillion dollar budget.
Speaker 5 (12:08):
We have great things happening with our military. We also
essentially approved a budget which is in the facility. You'll
like to hear this of a trillion dollars one trillion
dollars and then nobody's seeing anything like it. We have
to build our military, and we're very coarse conscious, but
the military is something that we have to build and
(12:29):
we have to be strong because you got a lot
of bad forces out there now. So we're going to
be approving a budget and I'm proud to say, actually
the biggest one we've ever done for the military.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
The United States military is full of fraud, flat out theft.
They haven't passed an audit in years. We talk about
inflation and we need cuts, and we're going to hand
a completely corrupt military area of trillion dollars. It's not
like it's just Trump either. Listen to these Listen to
(13:05):
all these GOP senators talking about spending and cuts and infletion.
This is Biden's inflation and he needs to own it.
Speaker 6 (13:16):
Due to rampant inflation spurred by reckless government spending and
consumer prices are escalating at a historic pace.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Inflation is real. Don't dismiss it.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This is a natural emergency.
Speaker 5 (13:32):
What I would like to do is get the administration
to focus on this. Thank you.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
There's an old expression that when you find yourself in
a hole, quick digging.
Speaker 7 (13:43):
President Biden's inflation is strangling a feat of a free people.
The American people deserve better.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
We do. How many of those senators are about to
vote for a massive blowout budget that makes inflation is
bad or worse? I mean that last guy was Senator Kennedy.
American people on the right, not on the left. The
right loves him, absolutely loves him. I have Republican friends
from Louisiana. They think he's the best. He's got so
(14:14):
many one liners.
Speaker 7 (14:16):
I can shad her. Congresswoman. Okay, she a cortege to
be the leader of the Democratic Party. She's entitled to
her opinion. I'm entitled to mine. As I've said about
him before, I think she's the region. There are directions
on a shampoo box. Our plan for dealing you heard
(14:37):
of that out we got to hurt. Our plan for
dealing with her is called Operation let her Speak.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Aha, It's funny, gosh, the one liner it has even
got the accent. What a straight shooter votes for every
big spending bill we can get his hands on. Sorry,
Oh that may have made you uncomfortable, but I am right.
If you want inflation to go down. We have to
stop government spending. One liners or not, we have a
(15:05):
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The word Isn't it the worst time in the world
when it's a expends season. I hate it. In my
own life, my wife will text me, do you e
a receipt for this? Do you know which category does
(15:28):
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Terms and conditions apply. Well, what is the biggest threat
(16:13):
to the United States of America? Different people have different
ideas on that. Me personally, if you asked me, I'd
tell you it's the United States government, namely the FBI,
but some say China. I can't say they're wrong. I
wonder what Carol Ross says. Oh, here it is quote
the biggest threat bar none to US growth has been
and remains the US government policy and US government spending.
(16:35):
And it's awfully hard to tell Carol she's wrong about that,
especially given every look everything we're seeing today. Sorry, I'm
in a sour mood about all this. Joining me now,
my friend Carol Roth, author of so many great books,
including the one You Will Own Nothing, which apparently you
most definitely will at some point in time given this
level of government spending. Hey, Carol, why is US government
(16:57):
policy bad?
Speaker 8 (17:00):
Well, I'm not going to be the one to put
you in a better mood, Jesse, so apologies for that
in advance. But basically, they have racked up so much
debt as well as deficits that at this point are
wartime level deficits at a time when we're supposed to
be having quote unquote growth, that it's put us in
a really terrible fiscal position. We have a balance sheet
(17:22):
that looks like that of an emerging market about to
have a sovereign debt crisis. The only reason it hasn't
happened so far is that the we're the world reserve currency,
but certainly many countries are trying to move away from that.
As I said, we have these crazy deficit levels, and
at the end of the day, we put ourselves into
a position where we're now spending more to service the
(17:44):
interest on our debt than we are for defense spending.
So it's difficult for us to be a strong country
and have the cards and make the deals that we
want to when we have this really terrible fiscal position,
and it's created lots of issues and choices and trade offs,
all of which end up in the end screwing the
(18:05):
American consumer.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Carol, describe this sovereign debt crisis because as you said,
we've been able to avoid well, we've been able to
rack up this amount of debt spend at this level
because we are the world's reserve currency. When you're trading
your goods and services, you can always rely on the
US dollar. Of course, but what does it that crisis
look like if they decide they're done with all that
(18:29):
and they're going to go to something like gold.
Speaker 8 (18:32):
Well, I think that the first thing that probably happens
is we get a dysfunction in the treasury markets where
everything go crazy and you start to see rates spiking,
and the most likely thing that's going to happen is
that the FED and the government aren't going to want
to go immediately into a crisis, so they're going to
do what they need to do to stop the bleeding.
(18:54):
And what does that usually look like, Well, that usually
looks like something we saw on a tative easing, with
the FED buying lots of securities, a certain amount of
securities to keep down interest rates and to help the
situation out because there are no other buyers for the debt.
But it could come in a different package. There's something
(19:15):
called yield curve control, which is kind of the same thing,
but instead of having a defined program like QUE where
they say we're going to buy a trillion dollars worth
of bonds, they say we're going to buy whatever it
takes in order to keep the yield below a certain amount,
or something that approximates that under some other special pretty packaging.
And as we've seen before, what does that do. It
(19:37):
ends up transferring wealth to the asset holders. It ends
up creating inflation for the everyday consumer. It drives a
non merit based inequality, and that continues on until you
know everybody says, Okay, this is crazy and we need
to have some other sort of ordering of our financial order.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Carol. One thing that drives me so insane about this
whole thing. It makes me want to choke somebody, is
how obvious and inevitable all this is. It's not at
left or right, or a conservative or Democrat or their Britany.
It's simple math. You can't run up these numbers. It's obvious.
Even the morons in Washington, DC know what you say
(20:19):
is true. Yet no one wants to stop it, even
the American voter. Honestly, Yeah, they want to stop transing mice,
but they don't want to actually make significant government cuts
to anything, and that's why we are where we are.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
Yeah, Well, the challenge is that they want to do
it at the macro level that they know we need
to stop spending. But when it comes down to the
micro level and it threatens their own specific pet project
or the dollars that they are getting personally, then it
becomes personal and it needs to shift. And this is
just basic human nature, which is why this is, as
you said, all very predictable. And the larger the government gets,
(20:56):
the more likely this is to happen. So that's really
what we're up against. Even with spending cuts, though, Jesse,
we have to do this in a way that's very
careful because we have the debt to GDP that we
do and the deficit to GDP. Part of the issue
that we have is that we've been taking in very
large amounts of revenue, and that's been based on government
(21:18):
spending propping up our GDP and generating some additional revenue
has been propping up our stock market and generating revenue
from that. If that stops, if we cut spending too fast,
as you and I have discussed before, what could end
up happening is that we get a decrease in revenue
in these the government quote unquote revenue, the tax revenue,
(21:40):
and we saw that back in I think it was
the third quarter of twenty twenty two. If we get
a recession, if we have prolonged dips in the stock market,
we're talking it could be a half a trillion dollars,
a trillion dollars, a trillion and a half dollars or
more that we're no longer taking in and it really
ends up floating that deficit. That's what's happened you know
(22:03):
before when we've seen the stock market go down as
well as in previous recessions. So you know, you don't
want to be in a no good deed goes unpunished
situation either, So they have to be very careful in
how they phase out that financing at the same time
finding ways to amplify growth, you know, so that you
get that kick up in the GDP, because if you
do it in a way that brings down the GDP,
(22:25):
then again we end up in this vicious cycle which
takes us back into that potential for a debt spiral.
Speaker 1 (22:33):
Carol, How does China come into play here? Obviously there
are going to be a player of some kind because
globally you can't ignore them. How does China our policy
with China, How does it affect any of this?
Speaker 8 (22:45):
Oh, it affects all kinds of things, including the fact
that the Chinese own all kinds of assets, including treasuries,
the stock market and whatnot. So you know, for the
amount of leverage that we think we have over China,
they also have leverage on the other side. And if
we get into a match with them, because you know,
(23:08):
they think in hundreds of years and we have a
new president's you know, every four or eight years, as
well as a shift of over of Congress every two years.
So you know, it's very difficult to have a long
term strategy, and so they're able to wait out you know,
dips and hips and changes in a different way than
we are. So I would imagine to the extent that
(23:30):
we cannot get China to come to the table and
do something side by side, that that's actually very bad
for us. And I know we all hate China, and
we all you know, understand the issues with communism and whatnot,
but this is the situation that we're in now, and
to our own benefit, we need to be able to
find a way to figure out where there's points are
(23:53):
where we meet in the middle, and be able to
extract ourselves and build up the capabilities and you know,
right the our fire financial ship, and do all of
these things first before we can fully cut them off,
because otherwise it's going to end up being to our
own detriment. And as you know I wrote about and
you will own nothing, it could actually end up in war.
(24:13):
And when you've had previous massive changes in the global
financial order before, it's always been preceded by war. So
this is a very tenuous situation. The Biden administration left
the Trump administration a mess. They don't have a lot
of options here, and that's why, you know, we're seeing
as they're trying to do things that it's been pretty painful.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
When goods stop crossing borders, armies will That's an old saying.
I don't know who said it, but I'll take credit
for it. I guess I said it. Joining Well, I'm
going to let you go now, Carol, goodbye, thank you.
I'm so sad these can't stop spending, can't stop doing it.
American people love it. The politicians don't have the gots
(25:00):
to stop it. Something else whatever. Let's talk about China.
In fact, forget China. Let's talk about COVID and what
it did to bring about all this with Jeffrey Tucker. Next,
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Speaker 5 (26:25):
Who are announcing new guidelines for every American to follow
over the next fifteen days as we combat the virus
seats in. Every one of us has a critical role
to play in stopping the spread and transmission of the virus.
We did this today. This was done by a lot
of very talented people, some of whom were standing with me.
Speaker 1 (26:50):
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I don't
know that I've ever I don't know that I've ever
been that frustrated in my life, but I remember it
like it was yesterday. Down a twenty trillion dollar economy
for a virus. Joining me now, Jeffrey A Tucker founder
and president of the Brownstone Institute. Jeffrey, I understand why
it's not popular to bring up old things like that,
(27:14):
even though it was five years ago. But the truth
is that was the beginning of so much destruction, so
much inflation, so much that we still feel to this day.
The very idea that you shut down a country on
purpose for a virus. It's an idea so insane that
I can't believe so many people bought it, and everyone
on the planet bought it.
Speaker 9 (27:33):
We've now published about fifteen, maybe seventeen, maybe twenty books
in the topic. We have a new one coming out,
which is a compilation on all of our research. We
haven't even begun to get to the bottom of exactly
what happened in those days. I'm obsessed with the topic, myself,
digging up every bit of information. Trump knows, a lot
(27:53):
of people know, Navarro knows that there's a lot of
people who know, but very few people are willing to
actually speak about it. A lot of what's happening right
now with the Trump administration traces to those days. They
just went after the head of the guy named who
was head of SISA, which is a cyber infrastructure security
(28:16):
or whatever, cybersecurity infrastructure security agency that was in effect
the government of twenty twenty. They were in charge of censorship,
they were in charge of election security, and they were
the first agency that went out there to divide the
workforce between essential and unessential. So basically the government, right
(28:38):
it was a small department within the Department of Homeland Security,
and they assumed the role of essentially running the country,
if not the world. And Trump put out an executive
order basically attacking the guy who was head of the
agency at the time. So which tells me that Trump
(29:01):
knows exactly, you know, who is it fault. I'm not
sure if he knows exactly, but he has an intuition
that there was profound things going on at that time
that resulted in his you know, and a comp a
very compromised election. But the story is much bigger than that,
as you and I both know, and we're still trying
(29:23):
to get to the bottom of it. And yes, it
was contrary to the Constitution, is contrary to all moral intuition,
is contrary to epidemiology and economics, and all good sense.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
It was.
Speaker 9 (29:34):
It was our first introduction to the meaning and fullness
of totalitarian government. That's what happened.
Speaker 1 (29:42):
It was. I remember it like yesterday, standing on standing
on the footprints in the grocery store, taking down the
outdoor basketball hoops. It was. It was almost as if
we have a legion of tyrants and power in this
country and they were way for such a day where
they could finally take the throne and be the kings
(30:04):
and queens they wanted to be. That's what it felt like.
It's what it still feels like when I look back
on it. I don't know how you can interpret it
any other way.
Speaker 9 (30:10):
Frankly, it was qusy martial law. We felt at the
time we were obeying things that weren't actually legislation. We
were obeying things that weren't actually lost. We didn't know
who was in charge of anything and what the consequences
for defiance would be. It was just all vague and strange,
and our voices were throttled very quickly, right, I mean
(30:32):
even from middle of March, and certainly by a month later,
the censorship was full blown. So we felt those of
us who thought the world was going crazy we felt
very much alone. A lot of our ideological colleagues in
the past, if you'd move in those circles, completely abandoned
the cause. They stayed entirely silent. And it went on
(30:53):
and on and on, and nobody could really figure out why.
Then we had this weird Summer twenty twenty thing where
all the cultural and government prevailing government elite said, Okay,
now you have to leave your home to go protest
the murder of George Floyd, you remember that. And so
suddenly all the young people are out in the streets going, yeah,
I'm against racism, and then you know, the city is
(31:18):
a whole city's burned down and that sort of thing.
And then I don't know, it's like only weeks later
it was back go back home again. Now that's time
to hide from the virus again. And this went on
and on and on, and finally, by October we managed
to put together this Great Brandon Declaration, which which cut
through all the censors and caused panic inside NIH and
(31:42):
many other institutions in Washington. And I couldn't even understand
entirely why. Looking back now, it's incredibly obvious why the
Great Brandon Declaration panicked the people in charge because it's
said very plainly and in accordance with all of history
that the problem would end with exposure and natural immunity.
(32:06):
It even added assisted by vaccines, but that was exactly
the problem. The idea that we could just get through
this by being a normal society was what panicked the
elites because this put it. Frankly, it took me like
two years to realize this. They had a product to sell,
and that product was a shot, and they were very
(32:27):
concerned that the great brands and declaration would diminish consumer uptake,
and that's why they wanted to suppress it. That's why
they why they censored it. And then when the shot
was was released after the election, right the election that
was heavily compromised by mail and ballots that were mandated
(32:50):
by the CDC back in March and even funded by
the CDC back in March. So Trump lost because of
those ail in ballots. Then and only then was the
vaccine released. It was deliberately laid delayed until after the election,
but uptake was in fact quite low, as they realized
by you know, several months later, and that's when the
(33:13):
mandate started. So millions of people eventually were displaced in
their jobs, fired, including tenured professors, frontline healthcare workers, anybody
who didn't accept the shot, pilots, and you know, all
sorts of things. Anybody who didn't accept the shot was
was was threatened with their jobs fired, and the whole
(33:36):
nation went into upheople. But even that didn't work because
uptake was still lower than they wanted. They were going
for somebody like nine. So then came the mask mandates.
It's like, okay, you're not going to get the shot, Well,
now you have to cover your face.
Speaker 1 (33:51):
Everywhere.
Speaker 9 (33:52):
And even though we all existing research said the masks
do not stop the spread of a respiratory bar with
the zoononic reservoir, we knew this, they were useless. But
suddenly the mask mandates were everywhere, and that went on
for another six or eight months. During this period, two
whole cities were shut down. I mean, nobody talks about this.
(34:14):
Nobody's like it's like this history has just vanished. But
there were at least five cities that closed all public
accommodations to the unvaccinated. New York and Boston and New
Orleans and Seattle and Chicago. Those are the ones we
know about. They and it was intended to be nationwide.
(34:36):
There was such outrage about this that they finally had
to roll these things back. But it seems just incredible
to think we actually segregated our cities in the United
States along lines that had a fantastically racially disproportionate impact
on all these cities, so that the minority population, which
(35:01):
tended to refuse the vaccine at a greater rate than
majority populations, were actually not allowed into theaters, libraries, and
restaurants and bars. So this actually happened in this country.
So yeah, I want to get to the bottom.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
It's unbelievable. And Jeffrey, I honestly the point of this
whole special tonight is how the government just started spending
crazily and haven't stopped the thing, have not cut back
on a single solitary penny. They got a new injection
of drugs, and I'm not convinced they ever will. I'm
convinced we will maintain COVID levels of spending until economic collapse.
Speaker 7 (35:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 9 (35:41):
I just looked at the latest thing just passed by
the House Republicans. It doesn't really cut a dime, and
it promises to cut the futures that always has. Our
friend Thomas Massey voted against it and got attacked for
doing so. But yeah, they're despite all the efforts of DOZE,
despite you know, all the promises, they're still not cutting
(36:03):
the spending. All that was accommodating, all that new spending
during the COVID period was accommodated by money printing, which
led to anywhere twenty five percent thirty decline and overall
purchasing power of the dollar during during the Biden years.
So yeah, we're so are. Our centate of living has
(36:26):
has diminished, the government has grown, the powers are not
really taken away. I mean, Trump's done some things, something
like a beginning of change, and I thrill every day
to see the executive orders and and and the changes
enacted by the redirection of funding away from from from
(36:46):
the left, you know, and so on. That's quite delightful.
But we are nowhere near getting to the bottom line
in terms of the truth of that period of what happened,
or having any kind of serious discussion about it. I
do would like to mention very quickly that my friends
actually took made major efforts to get the DoD to
(37:08):
confess what was going on at the Military Olympics in
October in Wuhan and the DoD just yesterday. This would
have been you know, say, April April eight, April ninth,
finally came out with a report five months late. But
they finally came out with the report admitting that yes,
(37:30):
seven soldiers you know, got sick with COVID nineteen like sentence.
Get this between October and they dated a very late
and January twenty twenty. So I mean that the report
is you know, the very embodiment of the limited hangout,
if you can imagine. So it raises more questions than
(37:52):
it answers.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Of course it does. Jeffrey, you were the best go
back against her. All right, we're almost done. Yeah. I
love to sleep. I love it. And there's just something. Look,
(38:16):
I'm a big I'm a big believer in kind of
starting out on the right foot, if you will. In
business meetings. That's why you shake hands, look them in
the eye. When you're picking up your honey for a day.
Oh you look pretty not hated. You get the dishes done.
Setting the tone. I guess I should say when you
have a good night's sleep, you wake up in the morning,
(38:39):
it sets the tone for your entire day. If you
slept great, you know it immediately. When you wake up,
you can tell how you feel. You're ready. And when
you didn't sleep, you know you know today's going to
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(39:00):
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Jesse Kelly. It's a cup of hot chocolate that'll put
you to sleep. Go now.
Speaker 5 (39:17):
We are restoring the name of a great president, William
McKinley to Mount McKinley in Alaska. He was the big
tariff sheriff they used to call him, and made.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
A lot of money. Our country became very rich. And
when he was assassinated, Teddy Roosevelt became president and he
spent all of that money that was made from tariff's
The money was so enormous, and they built the thing
called the Panama Canoun.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
You don't hear many people reference McKinley killed by an anarchist,
shot in the stomach, even though he was very fat,
it ended up killing him. Joining me now, David Keene,
Editor at large, Washington Times, David, not many people bring
up McKinley. Shoot, you don't ever hear his name. We
do hear Teddy Roosevelt's name, But people forget about our
different economic policies.
Speaker 10 (40:05):
Back then, well back then, prior to actually prior to Wilson,
the tariffs were used as the major way of raising
revenues for the government. That changed at the beginning of
the twentieth century, but there's no question that during that
period tariffs were, as Trump likes to look at them,
(40:29):
as a main source of revenue as well as a
source of protectionism. Remember, back in the eighteenth century, in
the nineteenth century, the newly formed United States was what
we could today call it developing country, and oftentimes developing
countries protect their infant industries with tariff walls as those
(40:51):
industries develop and mature. And that's what was going on
at that time.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Okay, so are we passed phase?
Speaker 7 (41:00):
Now?
Speaker 1 (41:00):
At what point in time does a country move past
that phase?
Speaker 10 (41:05):
Well, we're certainly past the stage of a developing country,
although you could argue that much of our industry is
in decline just for age reasons. Because, for example, one
of the things the President's been talking about in recent
days is the problem we have with the maritime trades
with building and equipping ships, where China stripping outstripping us
(41:28):
by a thousand ships a year. One of the reasons
for that from an economic standpoint is that a nation's
competitives and that depends almost entirely on how new its
shipbuilding facilities are, so that for example, our shipyards, which
(41:48):
in many cases are one hundred years old or more,
are competing against shipyards that are ten or fifteen years old.
And the technology. Just as an example, we talk about wages,
but I know when I looked some years ago at
building a ship in Korea versus building it in the
United States, the problem was it took three to four
(42:09):
times as many man hours to build it in the
United States as it did in Korea because we were
using antiquated methods and we still are. So many of
these industries have sort of sat on their laurels, if
you will, and have not increased or kept up with
the competitiveness of the rest of the world. So in
that sense, much of the American manufacturing infrastructure in particular
(42:35):
is behind the times. So that's true. The other problem
is that while there have been a general acceptance in
the course of the twentieth and twenty first century of
the macro advantages of free trade. There has never really
been a situation in which free trade exists, so that
(42:58):
you've got countries imposed tariffs in other countries, while those countries,
in this case the United States, lets that go on
and suffers losses as a result of those teriff walls.
One of the problems that on the trade front that
the President confronts is that with these tariffs that he suggested,
(43:18):
in today's world, many of the many of the walls
that have been put up aren't terriff walls, their regulatory walls,
their workarounds that other countries have developed. There are things
that are hard to quantify, but which in fact make
it impossible or very difficult for Americans to compete in Europe.
(43:42):
Of course, you've got the agricultural field, where basically Europe
subsidizes its entire agricultural thing, not through tariffs, but through
bans on the kinds of products that come from the
United States. So it's a very difficult thing to achieve
what politicians used to call free and fair trade, and
(44:05):
it's fair trade. I think that the president in the
current administration is seeking, and that's that requires you to
look at things as they are rather than as you
might like.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Them to be. David, thank you so much. I appreciate
you joining us. All right, I have final thoughts next. Look.
(44:43):
I know this is difficult to hear, but all we
can do is recognize the problem and start to tackle
the problem and look at it. It's like somebody who's
extremely fat. Maybe that's you. Maybe you're super fat and
you want to lose the weight. We want it easy,
don't we Can I just get to get a shot
(45:03):
of something. Can I just go to the doctor? And
But the truth is, it's going to involve sacrifices. It's
going to involve giving up things you want. You want
to lose the weight. You don't have to give up soda.
You have to go for a walk on Saturday morning.
You have to skip a pizza. You're gonna have to.
It's going to involve denying yourself things you've grown accustomed
(45:28):
to the United States of America. If we want to
save our economic system long term, we are going to
have to make major adjustments to things we've grown accustomed to.
There's no other way to do it. And all we
can do. Look, with all these big problems. All we
can do is start now and start voting that way,
and start demanding it from our reps. All Right, all right,
(45:51):
we'll do it again.
Host
Jesse Kelly
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