writing a book about your time in the trump administration? larry: i don't have anything planned at the moment. i'm very busy, i'm loving life. never say never, but not at the moment, i don't. host: how may jobs do you have? -- how many jobs do you have? larry: there's a foxbusiness show every day, if i could plug that, 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. that's the bulk of what i do. i do a lot of different segments for ftm and fox news. i did one this morning on fox and friends. i do a radio show every saturday morning for three hours. a national radio show. that runs here on wabc radio. we are livestreamed and syndicated. and i also do -- i write op-ed pieces to much constantly. some informal political consulting with my friends on policy. pretty much anybody who asks. so i am a busy camper. i'm a grateful camper. life after the white house has been terrific. it's a real blessing. host: this is your second stint in the white house. the first being? larry: just a few years ago -- 40 years ago. a somewhat lower position. i was that economics deputy at the office of management and budget during the reagan administration. the director of omb was a fellow named david stockman who remains a friend of mine. that was my first job, in reagan's first term. host: your trip the 16 book connects the reagan revolution with jfk. what is the policy connection? larry: it's a story i've wanted to tell for years. it has been in the back of my head. i worked with my pal, a terrific researcher and co-author. in a nutshell, john f. kennedy was a progrowth democrat. he was a taxcutting democrat. he was a supply-side democrat. when he ran in 1960, he really ran as the growth guy and richard nixon ran as the status quo. in those days, the republican party was ok with very high tax rate. eisenhower had no interest in cutting that 91% tax rate they inherited from fdr's new deal. kennedy did not explicitly run on it but set i want 5% growth. i want low unemployment because there had been three recessions during the eisenhower years. that is a little-known factoid, but it is true, factually. the connection to reagan some 25 years later was reagan lowered marginal tax rates and helped reignite a more abundant economy. i would argue, as i do quite a bit on our show that the reagan tax cuts launched almost a three decade prosperity. the jfk tax cuts launched a decade-long prosperity, but unfortunately was unwound and undermined by lbj's great society. richard nixon, jerry ford, jimmy carter, none of them understood tax cuts, none of them understood the incentive effects, the economic growth effects of lower tax rates. maybe we can talk about that some more. some very smart people -- arthur laffer, who still around, my dearest friend and mentor. robert mondello, nobel prize, jack kemp and others, essentially they brought the kennedy tax cuts to reagan and ran on them. it was very controversial just as it was in jfk's day and reagan had two rounds of tax cuts. i was there for the first round and was involved in the campaign to promote. host: in 19 621, you quote jfk is saying it will be a major proponent of our tax reform program to broaden the tax base and reconsider the risk. larry: there are some really juicy jfk quotes that could have easily applied to reagan. kennedy was the first guy to use the phrase a rising tide lifts all boats. that phrase was used later by jack kemp, the late jack kemp, who is a very dear friend and mentor. i use it all the time. trump used it. the trump tax cuts, which were more on the corporate side, but were enormous tax cuts were cut from the same cloth as the reagan and jfk tax cuts. i was able to bridge reagan to trump on those policies. i was too young for jfk, just barely too young. i was only 17 when i went into the reagan white house. that's a joke. -- if i may come i want to go back because i'm reading a book, the title is the jazz age, but it is about warren g. harding, a much maligned u.s. president, way too far maligned. but in the 1920's, harding, his vice president, calvin coolidge and his treasury secretary andrew mellon, who was a great figure from pittsburgh and entrepreneurial banker, they put together a huge reduction in marginal tax rates. the income tax amendment was 1913. when woodrow wilson left office, it was over 70%. we went into a recession after world war i and those guys brought tax rates down to 25%. it launched a tremendous prosperity boom in the 1920's. i'm going to go one more. another of my favorite figures is ulysses s grant. he was arguably america's greatest generals -- they still teach some of his formations at west point. but grant come also as president, much maligned. my colleague at fox wrote a pretty good book about grant. but he did two things. economic things. he never gets credit. the liberal historians will never give him credit. but the fact is grant ended the civil war income tax. grant restored the greenback to gold. so we had massive wartime inflation and high wartime taxes and grant ended both and helped launch the second industrial revolution, which is sometime referred to disparagingly as the gilded age, but it was a phenomenal time in american life. just to be consistent, here is my guy grant, he's cutting taxes , harding, he's cutting taxes, kennedy is cutting taxes, reagan is cutting taxes, trump is cutting taxes. i was honored to serve under the last two. wish i would have been around for the others. host: in all of your books, and your work on foxbusiness, you talk about some economic turns and i was hoping we could have a broader discussion about how they all work together. tax reference, growth, the bond market, the stock market -- what's the interplay between all of these. here's a dissertation topic. larry: i would simply say the absolute basic key elements to economic growth and prosperity -- let me step back a moment. i am for growth, i am for prosperity. in my whole career, that has been my raison d'etre. i served in government -- the first job i ever had was at the federal reserve in new york, the federal reserve bank of new york. i served in open market operations and was a secretary to paul voelker, who is president at the new york fed. so i have had three government assignments. it seems to me if you do nothing else in government, you should promote policies that would generate growth, prosperity, jobs. that is our job. i am a free-market capitalist. i believe in free enterprise capitalism. i think it is the surest path to growth. when i was in the cnbc days and had my show there for many years, i use to open up the show every night by saying free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. i set it for many years. i believe that. i still believe that. coming back to your questions, essentially, you need the lowest possible tax rates, the least possible government intervention -- think of it as minimal regulations, and you need a sound currency, which i call king dollar. that was my phrase years ago. if you break that, if you move to a policy regime of high tax rates, excessive government intervention and regulation and a cheap dollar, a debased dollar, depreciated dollar, you will find yourself with high inflation, high unemployment and recession. i have argued down through the years that there are almost no exceptions to that. almost no exceptions to that. this is a controversial point. economics profession nowadays, which like everything else in the academy has moved way far to the left and doesn't agree with that, although i will say this modern monetary theory is taking a big licking with high inflation. i'm prepared to argue in historical terms as well as economic policy terms, that those are the essential ingredients -- lowest possible tax rates, minimal government regulation, and a sound, reliable king dollar. host: is the fed too powerful? is it necessary? larry: i won't argue the necessity part. although it is interesting. in the gilded age, j.p. morgan was his own fed and rescued the monetary system a couple of times. but is the fed too powerful? yes. right now, it is. the most troubling part of the fed to me is it has lost sight of its principal mission, which is to keep the currency sound and the price levels stable. nowadays, with all of this talk of woke culture and woke economics, the fed and some of its appointees talking more about climate change and price stability, diversity -- i'm not opposed to diversity, but i don't think that is the mission of the fed. the fed should manage its own human resources properly without any prejudices at all. but the fact that it wants to equalize the economy, that it takes this left-wing socialist view that we should all be equal at the finish line, when in fact, at a free society like ours, what we want is equal opportunity at the starting line and the finish line we will exercise our god-given talents in many different ways. i think the fed is way too much geared toward something called equity and climate change, which i'm not a climate denier, i'm just saying we do not have a climate emergency. we do not have an extensional climate risk. factually, even u.n. reports don't show this. this has become a political obsession, almost religion. i think the fed completely, utterly missed the boat on this inflation problem we are experiencing today and that last one is really unpopular. host: one of the other issues brought up in this genre is income inequality. is that a concern? should we be concerned person makes 10 times as much as person -- larry: we should not. the idea for me is we should, by law, have equality of opportunity at the starting line. absolutely by law. but we cannot guarantee equality of results. we cannot. even in communist countries, even in the old soviet union -- i grew up during the cold war and particularly in the reagan years, when we fought soviet communism, the only equality they had in the soviet union was equality of poverty, and the end the nomenclature who ran the place, they were the rich guys but there was no widespread prosperity ever, and that's true for all socialist or communist countries, it seems to me. we should not strive to end something called inequality. we should strive for growth and prosperity. we should maximize opportunities. we want to have unlimited opportunities. that is why i argue the government cannot manage the economy. the government cannot manage the price system. the government cannot manage markets. you have literally thousands and millions of people operating in a free economy and i want the economy to be free and i want them to have their own personal freedom. that's a job for the so-called private sector. free-market economics is the best path to prosperity. i want individual freedom inside the economy. freedom to fail and freedom to succeed. one of the great aspects of america, and it is still true to this day, you have an entrepreneurial story where people have an idea, they might scratch up some money to finance it, it may not work, it may fail , it may fail several times, you may go bankrupt, but at some point, you may get it right and you become a massive success. that is what is so brilliant about the gilded age, the industrial revolution, the information revolution. the stuff we routinely use today did not exist when i was in prep school or college or starting out. do you have a spare mimeograph machine in the truck? all of that is gone. we don't even hardly xerox anymore. you are running the show on an iphone and i love it. even an old guy like me, i've figured out most of the stuff. you've got kids dropping out of college, working in garages, trying to put things together, they fail, they fail and then succeed and hit it big. that's the american story, but behind that story is freedom. if we lose that, we will lose everything. i spent a lifetime trying to promote freedom, frankly in the economic sector where i know something about it but all throughout the country. freedom of speech, there's a big debate with misinformation, government bureaus, this stuff drives me crazy. i won't call him my friend, but elon musk, he calls himself a free speech absolutist -- i love that. free speech, freedom of religion, i want a free economy. a free economy will out produce every state run, centrally planned economy and i will sit here for a couple of hours all day and tomorrow and show you historical examples of why a free economy outperforms a state economy. host: before we get too far from jfk and the revolution, the fact about the recessions in the go get them 50's, what happened? was that government policy, just the waxing and waning? supply and demand? larry: there are a lot of factors after world war ii and after the korean war. but i would say principally, you had a 91% tax rate, very high taxes, which were very onerous. some critics of this view would say you had high taxes but you had loopholes and nobody paid it. you had some loopholes, some very famous loopholes. from hollywood studio owners and stuff like that. but most people, particularly the entrepreneurs had to pay very high income taxes. the more they earned, the more punitive the tax rate was. capital gains taxes were very high, corporate taxes were very high. the economy was smothered. the incentive effect which was so prominent during the harding, coolidge, mellon tax cuts, those incentives were not around. it was a tightly controlled economy, very government-run to economy, a highly regulated economy. the federal reserve properly, i think cap the dollar stable so you had episodes of inflation, but we were under the old bretton woods dollar-gold exchange system and the federal reserve did a pretty good job. but any time the fed tried to tighten, the economy had no other outlets because it was so tightly controlled by high taxes and regulations. those are really important issues. pike has many wonderful qualities, general eisenhower, president eisenhower. economics was not one of them. there's a long story. his top advisor was arthur burns . he advised nixon. push the ball down the road during the reagan years. he was ambassador to germany and a very good ambassador. he and i became very friendly and he became something of a mentor of mine. arthur creed -- i had a point about lower tax rates. he opposed it -- eisenhower, nixon -- he saw them work during the reagan years. there were three recessions and this is what gave kennedy a step up in the election. he ran as a growth guy and nixon did not deal with much economic, domestic policy. i remember nixon's son-in-law, a very dear personal friend of mine, his daughter and son-in-law are very dear friends of ours. i met nixon in the middle 80's. i was out of office, back on wall street. he had his old office down at one federal plaza, whatever it was in downtown new york those days. his son-in-law would bring in various policy people before president nixon would go on foreign trips. i had at least one visit, maybe two, and it was very charming -- but what i had written, numerous op-ed pieces criticizing his economics as president. he did everything wrong. raised taxes, had tariffs, took the dollar off the gold standard and we had booming inflation. the first time i met him, he comes in and looks at me and says you don't think much of my economics, do you? [laughter] and i said net -- i said, no sir, with respect, i don't. it was a very cool moment. this was the mid 80's. i had served in reagan's first term, but nixon acknowledged in his books that the reagan tax cuts worked. he acknowledge that because he was intellectually honest. host: insanity once more is a collection of your columns that came out in 2018. i want to read a quote from them -- this is election day 2016. enforcing trade deals is spot on . acting in the interest of american workers is correct. but large-scale tariffs are a terrible idea. larry: yes. and believe it or not, that is still my mantra. this is a good story. president trump was much more attuned to tariffs than i was or that i am. before i went into office, i became his nec director in march of 2018. he had just put through steel and aluminum tariffs. i did not agree and art die, i think steve moore may have been on that, but we wrote an op-ed piece criticizing this -- criticizing the steel and aluminum tariffs. president trump knew all about it. he read it when he was calling me secretly. the subject came up once or twice. we agreed to disagree. it is interesting. i'm not a fan of tariffs. tariffs are international taxes. they tax work and production just as much as direct -- as the mistake tax rates. so i regard myself as a free trader. but i'm going to make two qualifications on this. one is you do have two think about the issue of reciprocity. what's the other side doing to you on trade? this was an important point trump made. he and i, it is sort of interesting -- the only two op-ed pieces i wrote in his administration both preceded drew -- both preceded g7 meetings. in those, i quoted a conversation he and i had where he believed he was a free trader and under ideal circumstances, that is to say no tariffs, no non-tariff barriers, and no subsidies. that is the world trump yearned for. those were his goals and they are classic free-trade goal -- no tariffs, zero non--tariff barriers, and zero subsidies for favorite industries. i wrote that and quoted that. one op-ed was in the washington post, the second was in the wall street journal before a g7 and i remember, at the g7 we had in canada, which i think was 2018 in the north of quebec. we were in a bilateral with justin trudeau and president trump and your senior advisers lined up on both sides and they were talking about trade because trump was threatened to impose car tariffs on canada, which would have devastated canada. trump said you know, justin, if we had no tariffs and no nontariff barriers and no subsidies, we would all be in great shape as free traders. trump looks at me, i'm sitting one or two or three down from him. he said you've said that your whole career, 30 years. he knew that because we had talked about it. but, he expressed publicly that view and he did it later. so he had a lot of free-trade blood in him. his trade representative, a deer friend of mine and a brilliant guy, he was just on my tv show. we were in atlanta for an america first policy conference. people forget we had usmca, which was not perfect free-trade but it was a good free-trade deal. we had free-trade deals with japan, brazil, south korea, where both sides in the spirit of reciprocity gave up some protections. the biggest one was china and the most controversial one was china. trump had big tariffs on china. we still have them. 365 billion some odd. so far, biden has not taken them off and i hope he doesn't. i would argue, and as president trump argued, we needed those tariffs to bring china to the table, to get their attention. i will give you another view -- i completely agree. one of trump's greatest achievements as president was he rang the bell on china correctly. he made it very clear to people in this country and around the world that china is an adversary, they are not our friend, they are an economic adversary, they are a foreign policy adversary. so his rhetoric was tough, his tariffs were tough, but we did bring them to the table. no one had been able to do that. we got a bunch of concessions and i was on that china trade team and it was hard going. beijing and washington, beijing and washington. this was the so called one deal. the phase one free-trade deal was rooted in tariffs. if there is a certain inconsistency there, i understand the point, but the one was necessary to get to the other and i think the deal is holding up the good. it ain't perfect, lots and lots of progress on international -- on intellectual poverty theft. they bought a lot of our commodities, not perhaps as much as we want, but a lot, and we ought to be selling much more lng exports. forced transfer of technology, still a work in progress, but on the whole, phase one was a great success and if trump had been reelected, we would have moved to phase two. so far, nothing has happened. a bit long-winded, but i am a free trader. is trump a free-trade or? he would not say it the way i say it, but in a perfect world, he would agree with me -- no tariffs in a perfect world. he liked that. somewhat pollyanna. host: good afternoon and welcome to book dvds in-depth program. our guest is larry kudlow, the author of american abundance, which came out in 1997, jfk and the reagan revolution came out in 2016 and a collection of his columns from creators syndicate came out in 2018 and that is called insanity once more. for regular viewers, you know this is our monthly call in program. one author, his or her body of work and your calls, text messages, tweets, etc. here is how you can get a hold of us if you have a question or comment. for the eastern and central time zones -- and in the mountain and pacific time zone. if you want to send a text message, 202-748-8903. include your first name and your city. we will also scroll through our social media addresses. just remember at book tv is the handle there. we will begin taking those in just a few minutes. what was the reaction from a lot of your long-time republican friends when you joined the trump administration? larry: it was pretty good, actually. very positive. people encourage me to do it. for a variety of reasons. i was pretty busy, tv on a different network and a radio show and consulting. i had worked with candidate trump, we worked on the tax-cut plan quite a lot. occasionally i was a spokesperson for him. he invoked my name several times in some of the debates, much to my astonishment. and i knew him in new york city for many years. new him, like him, he had been a guest on my tv show and radio show. i knew his family a bit. i thought he was a major force. i was not looking for a job. but if you have a second, i will tell you how it started. it is honey. in march of 2018 is how this got started. we were up here in connecticut for a weekend and i was coming back from indoor tennis. the phone rings in my car and it is the president. i had spoken to him. i had seen him in 2017, and been in the oval with him and talked to him. he calls me and i pulled over, i had pretty good reception, i pulled over so we could have a conversation and he just starts talking about one thing or another. he mentioned the national economic council, but nothing terribly specific. i thought he was calling to yell at me because we had written an op-ed piece against the steel tariffs. but i don't think it came up in that conversation. he just wanted to talk about things and i think he mentioned the nec. it was a sunday afternoon. he said i will call you back tomorrow night. i said ok, sir. host: when the phone rings from the white house, is it please hold for the president? larry: yes. monday night, i'm home in new york and he did call. that was when we had a more earnest, direct conversation about the national economic council. he was about to make a change and we talked about a bunch of policies. these were very good conversations. what do you think about this, what do you think about that? what should i do here question mark as you know, i'm not bashful about my views and he said no one knows we are having this conversation. ok. he said i will call you tomorrow night. i said yes. the next night, we are having dinner. we have a dinner group with some dear friends in new york city in midtown. i had the cell phone in my back pocket just in case and the phone rang and it was him. i walk out onto fifth avenue, it was cold and drizzly, but i wasn't going to take the call in the restaurant. he got much more specific on that call. it's amusing because my wife came out to get me. we had to go home and i had to do a radio show. every tuesday night, we would do an hour. so we were talking and going up madison avenue. finally i said sir, are you offering me a position? yeah, you are my guy. no one knows we are having this conversation. you are my guy, congratulations. he said would you take the job and i said yes, i would. i'm honored, and i was honored. i love government service and i love him. so that was that. i went and did the radio show and a very dear friend of mine, a radio man, mark simone, who is part of the dinner group said kudlow takes a call from the president at dinner, gets up and walks out of the restaurant and we don't see them for four years. [laughter] that's sort of how that happened. then in that call tuesday night, some people said he offered me the job the night before but i didn't get it, i don't know. in any case, he said you will come down here thursday or friday and we will have a press conference. no one knows this. the next morning, which is a wednesday morning, i'm sitting at home preparing for my tv show . he calls me and says you look so handsome. he said turn on the tv. and the news at broke and everyone was running this thing. [laughter] to me -- those are in during qualities. he's just natural and flows and maybe he could say some things differently, but he is who he is and i remains -- i remain loyal to them. host: did you know him is donald? larry: yes. host: once he got elected, did you call him by his first name? larry: never. when he was president elect and while i serve there, he was either mr. president orser, always. -- mr. president or sir, always. host: we are in larry kudlow's library up in the wilds of connecticut. back to your insanity once more book. this is your october 2016 column -- i want to thank melania trump for starting me on the path of restored confidence in donald trump. larry: president trump, then candidate trump had said a couple of things that did not thrill me. i never left him, just things that did not throw me. things came up in that campaign -- you look back and it wasn't very important but during the campaign, it became a big deal and i had to talk about on the air and i recall milani a who is a wonderful, wonderful woman. we got to be good friends in the white house. she went on tv and defended president trump. she made it very clear she was a thousand percent behind him and that these things were passing and it was no big deal. so i wrote about that. it's funny. that column, he told me later that he was personally not thrilled about that column, but that milani loved me. he says milani loves you. i don't think you had to write it but -- it was a column about her. i'm not one of her intimates, but i have great respect for her and i watched her on a couple of cable tv shows and it was very impressive and clear to me that her support was unwavering. those columns were written to some extent tongue-in-cheek. but she liked it more than he did. host: let's hear from our viewers. let's begin with monte in spring, texas. you are on with larry kudlow. go ahead and make your comment or question. caller: i had a short question for mr. kudlow about the comments president trump made on may 3 2019 when he said we are taking billions of dollars in china from tariffs. we've never taken tariffs from china -- now we are taking billions of dollars. were these both false statements? we have been taking billions but china is not paying the tariffs. it is american consumers. host: i think we got the idea. he referenced may 3, 2019, but tariffs on china and taking in billions of dollars. is there something you can extrapolate from that. it was a little difficult to hear. larry: i'm not sure -- in economic terms, the tariffs imposed a significant burden on china. they experienced it and they sought because prices went up and the demand for chinese currency went down. their inflation rate went up, interest rates went up and it is true those tariffs would be paid , imports, rather, in that tariff world would be paid by u.s. companies. but the key point it was minimal impact. our economy was booming. their corporate tax cuts were so important and gave us such a big advantage and that deregulation, but particularly in the world of trade and tariffs because, as we discussed earlier, tariffs are tax rates. we did increase tariff rates on certain chinese imports, particularly technology-related imports, what i call the family jewels, which we had to protect. but, we slashed the marginal corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, which more than offset any tariff rate impact. as i was mentioning earlier, even though i don't like tariffs in an ideal world, perhaps president trump doesn't either in an ideal world, he rang the warning bell and we brought them to the table and it wasn't until 2019, early 2020 that we finally consummated what became known as the phase one china trade deal. i think, on balance, even though i am a free trade are, i think those tariffs were necessary and any time -- there is a lot of talk about the biden edits ration about raising the corporate tax rate, it would put us at tremendous disadvantage and would damage the tough position we had staked out on china. i would urge them to keep those tax rates low. we want to be as competitive as we can and money flowed back to the u.s. just as an aside, it turns out corporate tax rates, the reduction in corporate tax rates pay for themselves. we've been getting irs data on this and i've talked quite a bit about this on my show with arthur laffer. the laffer curve work. -- laffer curve worked. tax collections went up as tax rates went down. why? because you had more economic activity, more people working, earning more income. so, they paid more tax collections even though the rates were down and income was up. and, by the way, tax avoidance is much less. there's no point in looking for tax shelters if you have a low tax rate. it's just not worth the effort. so we were able to withstand any to minimize native impacts of the chinese tariffs. it was well offset by corporate tax rates. host: let's hear from george in hudson, florida. caller: good afternoon. how are you today. host: go ahead with your question or comment. caller: i watch your show religiously on foxbusiness channel because i don't have a nine-year-old around to set the dvr for me. [laughter] larry: thank you. caller: i have to do it myself. what i was going to ask you is where are we going to be next year when we still have joe biden in office whose cognitive values is craziness or however you want to call them. there's something wrong with him and i can't see anything happening with kamala harris or anybody in the government now that can take care -- where are we going to be next year? larry: i can't comment on the cognitive problems. i see what i see and i see what lots of other people see and i will leave that to doctors. this is my own personal view -- as i have said many times, cavalry is coming. i think the midterm elections are going to be a gop sweep in both houses and i think that will stop some of the economic and social excesses of the biden administration. just giving my own personal views here. i think the biggest problem we are going to have in the next couple of years is getting high inflation down. i think high inflation was a big mistake by the biden administration. too much spending, too much borrowing, and the federal reserve missed the inflation boat. too much money printing. so we are paying for that now. the good news is it's not a 12 year thing the way it was back in the 70's. the bad news is getting 8% to 10% inflation back to 2% inflation will not be pain free. hopefully a republican congress will move to reduce spending and reduce borrowing. hopefully a republican congress will open the spigots toward oil and gas production and pipelines, all of which had been closed by biden. and hopefully a republican congress will keep a sharp eye on the federal reserve to make sure they slow down the money supply and move their interest rates up accordingly and protect the value of the dollar. i think you will see policy changes, but it's not going to be easy. and i don't think it's going to be pain free. host: for those who do or don't watch your show, there is something else you have been saying recently and we are going to play a quick montage. you will see it, but you will hear it. larry: save america killed the bill. save america killed the bill. save the bill -- save america and kill the bill. that wisdom is simple, save america, kill the bill. save america, kill the bill. save america, kill the bill. tonight, i'm lunching a slightly new mantra, kill any new bills that may come next year. [laughter] that's great. there it was. the good news is, we killed the bill, at least so far. it keeps coming back. it became a rallying cry. that bill, depending on its iteration would've been another five or $6 trillion of additional federal spending with massive inflationary consequences. and also, hidden in that bill, very huge tax hikes which would have done great damage to the economy and incentives to work, save and take risks. there was a save america coalition that developed among conservative groups. i was a supporter of democrat joe manchin, constantly supporting mention. i thought he was a very brave democrat. he's somebody who would save the democratic party from themselves if they ever gave him the chance. i wish you would run in primaries for the presidential run in 2024. joe is a friend of mine. he's been on the show. i don't talk politics with them, talk policy but i think he did a heroic job. i think kyrsten sinema has done a terrific job fighting off the tax increases and so far, we have killed the bill. i don't want any more bills. by the way, i want to add one thing -- there is another bill sometimes called the china compete bill which has nothing to do with competing with china. it would be as much as 300 billion dollars of additional federal spending, industrial policies, corporate welfare, bailing out a chip industry that doesn't need bailouts. and i've got to tell you, a dozen republicans voted for it in the senate and should not have. host: richard is in brentwood, maryland. caller: you are still in the top three interviewers in the country. i appreciate your efforts. mr. kudlow, you mentioned to the previous caller about nonclinical comments about mr. biden's cognitive abilities and i listen to you on the forum with stephen forbes and you called our president an idiot. so enough of that. but my question is this. you did -- you referred to reagan's tax policy of three decades -- as three decades of prosperity. his policies cost george bush the first a second term because it was economics clinton ran on and the state of our country's economy. 30 years would have taken us to the second bush which was an economic debacle as well. host: a lot on the table there. mr. kudlow -- first of all the idiot remark and we will go into the economics. larry: i'd don't think i've said that. perhaps i did and passing, but i don't believe that. i've been critical of biden. idiot, i doubt it. putting that aside, poppa bush temporarily reversed a small part of reagan's tax cuts and it was a mistake. we went into recession and he lost the election. but the bulk of reagan's tax cuts state and bill clinton, who continued to raise the income tax -- when reagan came in, it was 70%. when reagan left, it was 28. poppa bush raised it to 31 with other tax hikes. bill clinton took it to perhaps 40. still below 70. george w. bush brought it back to 35. basically, the tax cuts stayed intact. they were not as low as 28 but basically stayed intact. but look -- with poppa bush, so many of us who helped vice president bush and tried to talk him out of raising taxes -- he said don't do it, don't do it, he did it and he lost the election. host: richard in brentwood, maryland. if you want a fuller, longer answer of that, this trick kudlow writes about that extensively in jfk and the reagan revolution. you and i were talking yesterday and you kind of have this happy warrior persona on the air. i was surprised you had called mr. biden. guest: it's just not my way. i gave him a chance and then i looked at thehost: our book tv h program continues from larry kudlow's library in connecticut. we want to hear from you. 202 is the area code. 202-748-8201 if you live in mountain and pacific time zones. if you want to send a text, 2027 488903. -- 202-748-8903. mr. kudlow, where did you grow up and who are your parents? guest: i grew up in inglewood, new jersey. irv and ruth kudlow. he was a businessman. she became a very good real estate agent. and i have one younger brother who has lived in hollywood, los angeles, hollywood for many decades. i love him to death. he is my favorite hollywood liberal. host what does he do in hollywood? guest: he is a scheme -- screenwriter, postproduction. younger brother. host: i want to read a quote from "american abundance." this was in the introduction "in late november 19 905i had no prospects, no confidence, no ambition, and know since i could do the job." what was going on? guest: well, i had had my crash and burn sort of hopeless addictions to alcohol and drugs. it was the worst time of my life . it had been building up for several years. it went away -- i went away to a treatment center in minnesota for five months to get well. my saintly wife, judy, whom you have meant, sent me up there to long-term care. november 1995 is when i got out. basically what i wrote was kind of true. i was not really sure what was going to happen. the most important thing was staying sober. which, i have managed to stay sober now for 27 years, coming up on 27 years. that is through god's grace and is the greatest blessing of my life. those were tricky times. it seems like a long time ago. things have, in almost every way, worked out better than i ever dreamed possible or ever dared dream possible. judy and i will have, i guess, i had better remember this. i think, 35 years married this summer. 27 years of sobriety. god has been very good to me. god has been very good to me. at that point when you read that, and i was being honest in that book, who knew? i did not know. i had no idea. host: what do you remember about the last, or, first few months of 1995 at the end of your using. guest: blessedly, very little, to be honest with you. look, i still go to 12 step meetings. i'm still very active in 12 steps. i am very active in my church. i think about that stuff from time to time. every now and then, you know, the way it works in the 12 step. may be on your anniversary or maybe not you are asked to tell your story in front of the group . i don't want to bore the viewers but, you kind of go back in time a little bit. you never really want to lose that. because, they were terrible days, terrible days. i will spare the quantification here. on c-span. i will just say that it was the worst moments of my life without any question. i do not think -- i mean, i returned to faith. i returned to a more spiritual way of looking at the world. i would also say, peter, things that i have learned from the 12 step group have served me very well in my career these last three decades. very well. of course, i have been honest about all of this. president trump new. i have never withheld that and it has come up from time to time. i have done interviews. in the white house, the trump white house, on my 25th anniversary melania was hosting a conference on alcohol and drugs. it so happened that they found out, i do not know how, maybe one of my ladies, but that it was my 25th anniversary coming up. she asked me to speak, which i did in at least a general way. but, you know, i mean, think about it. from that point in 1995 to being a very senior presidential advisor it is a very long stones throw but one could not have happened without the other. i'm very grateful for that. god has been very good for me -- to me and i tried to follow his path. i and perfect, but i tried. host: jim in rochester, new york you are on with larry kudlow. caller: mr. kudlow, i am wondering what your opinion is on the u.s. debt of $30 trillion, the unfunded liabilities we have in social security, medicare coming up getting closer and closer. also, the $9 trillion balance sheet the fed has. what kind of effect will that have when interest rates begin to turn to -- return to anything close to normal? it seems to me there is a growing concern, i think, the cato institute published a booklet of various editorials called the fiscal cliff. it is very concerning. i'm wondering what your opinion of it is. guest: those a very good questions. one is the entitlement question on social security and medicare. the second one is the balance sheet of the fed, called the monetary base which is just briefly for viewers, essentially, printing money. all right? said, the government spends money. the federal government spends money. it borrows to finance its spending. that all too frequently -- then all too frequently the federal reserve purchases the bonds uncle sam sells. there is fullface faith in credit but when the fed buys those bonds they literally create money. that is what central banks do. i could go on and on about it. i actually started my entire career at the new york fed back in 1973. but in any case, the entitlement problem is an issue. look, i do not believe there will ever be a default of social security obligations or, for that matter, medicare obligations. i mean, at the end of the day, it is the government that sells bonds to raise the money. yes, we pay taxes and we have payroll taxes for social security and medicare. but, really, there is a certain fiction about that, particularly, on the medicare side. medicare really is not funded anymore by payroll taxes. it is mostly just funded out of general obligations. those are financed by selling bonds. so at some future point, somebody in power, in congress are the white house, will have to look at that. they will just have to look at that. there are very valuable systems that need to be preserved in my judgment. they could be reformed. there are a number of decent proposals out there to reform social security and to reform medicare. but, we spend more than we take in. that is a generic program -- problem throughout the entire government. it includes entitlements and will have to be looked at. and the other point the viewer made, interest rates will return to something more normal. they will not be zero anymore. already mortgage rates are up to 5%. 10 year bond rates are moving to 3%. in my view both will go higher because of inflation and the federal reserve's attempts to stop inflation. so that will add to the burden. the financing of federal debt in general will be more expensive. i will add one other point, peter. these are all reasons why i do not want any more federal spending. on domestic discretionary programs. that is why i said save america kill the bill. we don't need another $5 trillion worth of domestic spending. we cannot afford it. it will be extremely costly to finance. and ultimately, it is inflationary. i want to say, although, i has been an opponent of the biden administration's policies, by the way, not alone. some democrats like larry summers and jason furman, honest democrat economists, have also. but the point is, we have to come up with no new spending at all, period. that is why i have been so emphatic about this. secondary from my concern about the negative economic growth effects we cannot keep doing this. it is a matter of common sense. let me put it to you that way. i know i am a republican, a reagan guy, a trump guy, a conservative, a supply side. i get that. i am not masquerading as anything else. i think what you are seeing in the polls, in the run-up to the midterms, it is a matter of common sense. people do not want to go out this far to the left on everything. whether it is government spending more ending fossil fuels or taking parents out of the classroom more the -- or the open border or the file is -- foreign policy the afghanistan. i mean, this is not a campaign commercial. i am just saying that what you have here is an administration that is departed from traditional democrat concerns. this is why i love joe manchin. i speak as a former democrat. many years ago. i'd knowledge it was 45, 50 years ago. i worked for ronald reagan, a former democrat. i worked for donald trump, a former democrat. i have often said the best republicans are former democrats. not every republican senator agrees with me on that and i say it somewhat tongue in cheek. but the extremism in the biden administration rejected. it just lacks common sense, that is all. you are sitting there and you see an inflation rate that has jumped. this was before the invasion in ukraine. the inflation rate has gone from less than 2% to 7% before ukraine. now here they come back with a new proposal. the congressional budget office prices it out at $5 trillion in spending and another $3 trillion in debt. you can do this. -- cannot do this. joe manchin was the standup guy along with kyrsten sinema and i noticed some other moderate democrats beginning to line up behind it. the stuff going on on the border is not sustainable, alright? you see a bunch of democrats, and i know they are from swing states. but i don't need to question their motives. directors, -- the fact is, we cannot just have a couple million people illegally cross the border every year. it's just not sustainable. just like we will not end natural gas and fossil fuels in the next eight to 10 years. because, there is nothing to replace it. people know that. so, entitlement. i mean, we have a lot of work to do, ok. a lot of work to do. i think that you will see a big change. but i think the congressional changes coming. but i think the biggest change and the most important change will be 2024. because in order to effect major reforms, in any of these areas whether it is taxes or spending or inflation or the border or education or civil rights or what have you, you need the white house. you need the white house. i believe you will see different occupants in the white house. host: ok. july 9, 2019 talking to business insider this is a quote. "i do not see this as a huge problem right now at all, it is quite manageable talking about the $22.5 trillion debt at that point. guest: as a share of gdp host: july 9, 2019. guest: it was still under share of gdp. i did not see it as a big problem. it's funny. i have a long history of not being a debt monger. some of my traditional conservative friends don't like that. i am much more interested -- here is where my theme of economic growth comes into play, ok? are you growing the economy? that is my first question. now, let's go back. this was true in the reagan tax cut debate. let's go back to the trump tax cut debate. so, his tax cuts were priced out by the congressional budget office and the joint tax committee on a static basis meaning no economic good -- growth impact. at $1.5 trillion. of course, you have democrats that said, oh my god, that will raise the deficit and the debt. of course, they have never cared about that before. tax cuts not only promoted growth but brought unemployment to record low levels, brought minority unemployment to record low levels, brought poverty to record low levels. they also paid for themselves. now, they did not in year one and i never said they would. they did not in year two. yes, there was a debt increase to finance those tax cuts. but here we are, through the pandemic and all of these numbers are coming in from the irs and treasury. they show record revenues. they zero -- show that the corporate tax cuts paid for themselves. this has been the suspect or subject of a cup -- been the subject of a couple programs on my fox business show. the laffer curve works. in the first year or two, you may have to borrow money to finance lower tax rates. but whether they are individual or corporate rates, you are making an investment. you are making an investment in future growth and prosperity and jobs including minorities, especially minorities. you are making an investment in middle-class working folks, blue-collar folks. so it is worth it to incur a temporary deficit. that will increase the debt. it is worth it because down the road everybody will benefit. studies show for example, studies on the left of center. you know, the brookings. they are not crazy leftists, but left of center. i don't know. 80% of the people got tax relief. 60%, 70% of the benefits of the corporate tax cuts went to working folks. middle-income typical families. that was worth it. when i made that statement in 2019, you know, i stick to it. it did not bother me. what bothers me is if you are going to spend a lot of money that will not enhance growth, that bothers me. ok? so, i will go back to my experience as a young man in the reagan budget office. reagan was not particularly worried about deficits. he would say so a little bit. but he did not care. he had two priorities. one was to cut tax rates to rejuvenate the economy. second, to put money in defense to defeat soviet communism. ok? he did both. deficits temporarily went up. so did the debt. but he achieved his ends. the economy grew. nearly three decades worth of prosperity with very small interruptions and we defeated soviet communism. growth, peace through strength, strong at home, strong abroad. we get home, always weak abroad. those are the dictums. i learned that from reagan and i have never forgotten it. it has been 40 plus years. i will say as a senior trump advisor he believed the same thing. weakness at home breeds weakness abroad. strength at home breeds strength abroad. what did trump do? he slashed corporate and small business tax rates and grew the economy and reinvigorated the economy. unemployment fell. he put a lot of money into the defense budget. we had to do that at that point. it was not so much russia as it was china. john f. kennedy talked about strength at home, strength abroad. kennedy was a firm anti-communist. people forget this. i know it was a long time ago. if kennedy were along -- alive today he would be a reagan trump republican. kitty wanted growth at home, 5% growth. which he wanted -- which he got posthumously from his tax cuts. and he fought the soviet union to send mail. these are not historical coincidences. these are historic principles that work whether you are a democrat or a republican. one of my arguments today as a former longtime democrat. pat moynihan was the last democrat i worked for and he was half republican. the point is this, there was a time when the two parties were a lot closer together. then they are today. this far left stuff is being rejected. i common sense people through the country. you know what? i have so much faith in america. i am just a hopeless optimist about this country. as long as we protected these freedoms, this little far left woke aberration will not last. that's my take. hosts: host: next call comes from martin in ohio. caller: i have been listening to kudlow a long time, going back to the cnbc days. i generally would always listen to him. not always agree, but i always listen to him. i want to touch on immigration, inflation, and tax. immigration, there is a podcast called macro musings, so here is homework, listen to that because that can help us. immigration is chaotic right now but we don't have birth rate -- we don't replace our people -- our birthrate rate is too low. we need immigration to make this a bigger, stronger place. if you can listen to people like her koran who want to have to hundred million people in america, but we would be fine with 360 people in america. that would make us better. if you are talking about growth, that is where you get it and those people, you get them on a pathway to citizenship, they start paying into the system. that is how you solve that problem. for some reason, people on the right -- you talk about the people on the left of that are extreme, and there are extreme wackos on the right. you have these know nothing people and that is going nowhere. secondly, inflation. host: you know what, martin? there's a lot there to play with and we appreciate your calling and. -- in. guest: it is very well done. the third-best interview on tv? host: one of the three. guest: that is even better. i want to make a point about immigration. part of what the caller said i agree with. i think that immigration is a good thing, not a bad thing. of course, america has a long tradition of immigration. here is what i don't like, illegal immigration. i don't like open borders. i think that is where we are. my own views have changed, revolved in the last 10 years over this question. because i'm a strong pro-immigration reform or. but the border crisis, the catastrophe at the border, is something we -- cannot be allowed to continue, it is not sustainable. president trump on this basically did two things. one is he got control of the border through the remaining mexico policy, through building a while policy, and through basically a policy -- remain in mexico was essentially catch and deport, because illegal immigration is a damage. illegal immigration includes the drug trafficking, which is a crisis point. sex trafficking, kids trafficking, the narco terrorists run these borders. we cannot allow that. i guess my views have been tougher on the border because i have been looking at what has happened on the border in recent years. i think the bidens have made a terrible mistake opening up the border. title 42, if you are going to get rid of that, replace it with something else. the other part of president trump's policies were what i will call legal immigration reform. we have very good plan, which we could never get through congress. it will require more elbow grease and it will require probably a new white house and a new congress. there are a number of ways that we can legally, productively, consistent with economic growth, allow would million plus perhaps legal immigrants per year. i don't have any problem with that. our economy could do it. america was founded on immigrants. and they were gigantic contributors to our fabulous economic growth over the last several centuries. but today's situation cannot last, in my judgment. host: what about his comment, martin's comment about right-wing wackos, as he called them? guest: i'm not sure what -- i don't know -- he mentioned market corian. i know mark kirk troy and is a smart guy. i'm not sure what a right wing wacko is. i don't know. host: let's hear from tom in phoenix. go ahead. caller: thank you for taking my call. mr. kudlow, you seem to be a person respectful to everybody, but if comments were made, my assessment is they are accurate and true, so how bad can they be? at any rate, save america, kill the bill, your education is a service to this country and will help change things around from the disaster that we have now. there's a lot a people on the rights that are writing books and talking and their service is greatly appreciated and we need to -- when tv like cnn -- i'm sorry, not cnn, the program we are on. i used to write to the white house orifice -- white house office of correspondence. i don't know if the president gets to read them. i used to refer to him as the president teacher. the way he spoke, people understood, it was not any fancy stuff. i see you do lots of the same around the economic side and i appreciate that. thank you. host: thank you, tom. guest: thank you, i appreciate it. i have a long history with c-span, out of it. -- proud of it. in my book, america abundance, i have a hats off to brian lamb, who i think is an iconic figure. so i'm honored to be on the show today. i love to do service with c-span. host: i don't know if you can answer this, but tom asked about the president and access or hearing from the public. how often -- you have been in that oval office twice. how often does it become a bubble? guest: actually, with president trump, i would say he kept in touch with more people more frequently -- he is constantly on the phone. that is the thing. which made it interesting. so let's say we are having a policy meeting. let's say the economy. so we have a meeting in the oval with the boss. steve mnuchin is there and i am there, lighthizer is there, others are there, chris lundell is there. anyway, very important meeting with the boss. some subject would come up. could be taxes, could be trade. could be housing, could be fossil fuel -- no end to it. so you would start off by raising the top -- sir, we are here. i lost a lot of these meetings. he would listen. next thing, he would reach out to the outer oval office, can you get me so when so? get me so and so on the phone, i want to talk to him, i want to talk to her. it would be -- his mind would associate somebody he knew from outside the government who might have something interesting to say about the topic. he would put that person on the phone, at the speakerphone on, and they would join our meeting. this would happen with some regularity. i know also, even when we are not in formal meetings, that he was constantly on the phone with people, and people that you might be surprised. not everyone was a trump supporter, not everyone was a republican. he wanted to get as many inputs as he possibly could. he is not giving away trade secrets, it is not like he would start randomly calling people for a national security meeting. but some of these -- i will call them open-ended discussions, not necessarily decision discussions , which would be governed by various executive ordinances, but rather open-ended discussions, kicking stuff around. he loved to bring in people, ceos, sometimes podcasters, friends, you know? one of the great things in that trumpian tradition is, you know what, the so-called experts, including us, i guess, we are not always right, we don't all have all the wisdom, you know what i mean? this sort of beltway thing, credentials and degrees and length of service, nonsense. and trump was great at bringing in new blood and trump was great at getting and staying in touch with people who were not in the government. you know? and some people in the administration were frustrated by that. i thought it was a great idea. i would do the same thing in my own level, if i had something cooking, i would like to hear from so-and-so and so-and-so. i have an around the block for a long time, i know people that have opinions i'm interested in hearing, so i loved it when he did that. we used to have national economic council would have come that lunches every two weeks throughout all the cabinet agencies and we would invite -- my predecessor, gary cohen, we would invite people outside the government to speak to us, we would go down to the board room in the white house mess and it is refreshing. they could say anything we want -- they want, we need to hear it. trump was the same way. experts will be the death of us. experts -- no, too many experts. just saying. host: every author who appears on in depth, we ask him or her for their favorite books and what they are currently reading. here is larry kudlow's list. his favorite books include john sanford, the investigator. but they are, to rescue the republic. brian kill me, the president and the freedom fighter. current lady -- currently reading steve forbes on inflation. brian to be trebek, the emergence of arthur laffer. charles morris, the tycoons. in brian walters, the jazz age president. which of those would you like to bring up specifically? guest: i want to say two things. they are not necessarily my favorite books of all time, but it is what i either have read or am reading now. i want to say on john sanford, i love to read -- this, by the way, these are fictions. john sanford's book the investigator, he has written one million books. i love mystery, cops, cia, spies. sanford writes -- his favorite cop is davenport. i have read so many john sanford books, i believe i know lucas davenport very well and i have been invested in his family and this is a book about lucas davenport's daughter, about halfway through it. so i will let you know how that works. the other one is i wanted to say jamie lee burke who has written about my other favorite cop, david robichaux in southern louisiana. i do not have a copy. i have never met james lee burke, i have never met john sanford, i would love to meet them, they are fabulous writer. lucas davenport should sometime actually meet david robichaux. david robichaux is a recovering alcoholic and actually goes -- some of his books go into aa meetings, that is how good they are. i think it is great fun. the other stuff, i enjoy steve forbes, who is a dear friend, longtime collaborator. his book on inflation is terrific. inflation is so very important. i wanted to say that brett bear wrote a book about u.s. grant. i had brett on my tv and radio shows. an excellent book about grant, who is one of my favorite presidents. brian kilmeade wrote a terrific book about abraham lincoln and frederick douglass. two opponents of slavery, different styles, different positions. very important book. he did a good job. i really am very keen on the foci brought here, i'm not sure what the assignment was going to be. the two books i am really keen on, one is the book about the gilded age, which is the charlie morris book, wherever i put that. that is the jazz age one. host: and waiting for you. guest: the tycoons. that links to the jazz age. the jazz age is about warren harding. i want to group them together because -- i'm going to give an opinion here. left-wing historians have destroyed these presidents. by the way, they tried to destroy grants, although i think it was you who told me grant is starting to move up the list again. host: on the c-span quadrennial list of presidential rankings, grant has been moving up steadily. guest: deservedly so. not only did he win the civil war on the battlefield, but as i said to you yesterday, grant was the guy who tried to reinforce construction. grant was the guy who took on the complex plan. grant ended the civil war income tax and restored the value of the dollar to stop the civil war inflation. liberal historians don't like grant, they don't like warren harding, they don't like calvin coolidge. they just do like ronald reagan, but so much material has come out, reagan and his own hand, they realize reagan was quite a policy intellectual. let's go to the gilded age. the gilded age -- i'm going to define it as kind of like 1870 to 1910 or something, give me some running room on that. i am going to include u.s. grant. grant was president from 1868 to 1876. the gilded age was the second industrial revolution. the gilded age was a phenomenal period of inventions -- railroads across the country, airplanes, oil, the applications of oil. i brought a list because i was hoping we could go into this stuff. best mustela, telegraph, rail lines, telephones, automobiles, airplanes, the red cross -- come on. and they are badmouthing everything about the guilder -- this tv show made them all out to be villains. it was about social climbing and stuff like that. they completely missed the big picture. this was a period of unheralded prosperity for the united states. america became the greatest country in the world economically during the so-called gilded age. it was the second industrial revolution. my saintly wife is also a terrific painter, artist. you had the hudson river painters came through. john singer, tremendous stuff. stephen crane, elizabeth worden. the chicago exposition of 1893, i hope i get this right, if i don't she will correct me, it was 1893 or 1896. the wright brothers, 19 oh three, was during the gilded age. what charles morrison does is chronicles a few of these guys, rockefeller, carnegie, j.p. morgan. i'm just saying, this was not an era of robber barons, this was an era of american greatness and prosperity with tens of millions of people getting higher-paying jobs. you cannot ask for more. it was a tremendous period of literature and art. that is why i wanted to bring that up. there's lots of good books about this. the tycoons is a good place to start. a lot of good books about this. william bill brandt has written about this. liberal historians have slaughtered this age and they are wrong. they missed the point. i don't know why. the progressive period under woodrow wilson cannot pose of anything like this. the other thing is the 1920's, the jazz age. again, you get people like to kill harding. there was corruption in the harding administration. but as mr. walters shows, it had nothing to do with harding. and the people that were corrupt got busted. the teapot dome standoff -- harding had nothing to do with that. he was a good, middle-of-the-road conservative republican senator from ohio. here is the thing about harding. return to normalcy. i said this earlier in the show -- harding working with calvin coolidge, who is another guy, liberals hit coolidge -- coolidge, by the way, maybe the first law & order guy, he stopped the police strike in massachusetts, he was tough on crime, that is a big issue today. and andrew mellon was the quarterback. they slashed tax rates. and they slashed spending, and the even slashed the federal debt, even though i don't care about that as much as some people. we had unbelievable prosperity in the 1920's. another industrial age. literature, art, everything exploded. unfortunately, herbert hoover came in, and even though he was republican and he served in coolidge -- coolidge called him wonder boy. hoover was a good businessman, he was a mining engineer, and he did great humanitarian things in world war i, but as secretary of commerce, coolidge had no time for him because he was a big government guy. even though he had the hoover institution in stanford which is all about free markets, hoover himself -- hoover took the tax rate from 25% to 65%. i know there was restricted tariffs during these republican years, but not like that. it was a terrible mistake. it turned what was a modest downturn a major depression, than fdr, in my view, made it worse because he kept raising taxes and kept regulating and kept controlling prices. i am reading these books and i like to productize about these books. i love the gilded age stuff personally. if i had to do it over again, you could kind of plot me -- i would have liked to have been -- i don't know, grover cleveland, a democrat, is one of my favorite presidents. he was a pro gold, spending cutter, would not fathom the income tax, from buffalo, new york. he was governor of new york and president all in about six or eight years. he is the only guy to come back and be president again, i think. i like grover cleveland. i like u.s. grant. i like warren harding. i especially like calvin coolidge. i like ronald reagan. and i like donald trump. host: wasn't grover cleveland the father of baby ruth? let's hear from -- guest: that is -- his opponents go after these guys on those grants and they forget -- grover cleveland was the last gold democrat. anyway, william jennings bryan, we can go through that another time. host: we have time for one or two more calls. john is in florida. you are on with larry kudlow. john, you with us? let's try john in connecticut. caller: this is john from connecticut. i want to know if you think that john kennedy, senator from louisiana, would be a good presidential candidate in 2024. host: thank you, we are going to leave it there, we are running short on time. guest: john kennedy is a very smart man. i will leave it there. host: is he somebody you know? when you are in the white house, how often did you talk with senators? constantly? guest: tons. i had a lot of dealings with senator kennedy. i introduced him -- he spoke here at the state party fundraiser, he was on a tv show recently, he is a very smart guy. host: frank, florida. you are on the air. caller: that is kirk in washington. host: i apologize. caller: you asked a wonderful question of mr. kudlow and i happen to enjoy watching mr. kudlow. i somewhat agree with some of his positions, but some of them i do not. one of them -- i think the caller had mentioned about spending of the trump administration. that has always been -- people in the state of washington think the republicans drive up the debt, the democrats try to fix that. what is mr. kudlow's position on that? and one more thing. elon musk made a great argument about robots coming in to take place of workers. he made a position that they would start having to pay workers a salary because there would be no more jobs. i will take my question off the air. thank you very much. host: that was a little hard to hear. did you get anything out of that? guest: robots are not going to replace the workforce. that is the most exaggerated, overstated argument. robots will help grow the economy and create jobs, just like all these industrial revolution improvements to -- do. gales of creative destruction, i'm an advocate of that. i'm not sure i heard his first question. host: i could not hear it quickly -- clearly enough. i want to do something in our last five minutes. i want to go through some headlines and just get your quicktake on these. these are from recent newspapers. here's the new york times, a story on dr. carlsen, american nationalist. guest: i read it quickly. tucker is a friend of mine, he is a smart guy, he has done a fabulous job as a broadcaster, and it looks like a new york times political hit job to me. host: wall street journal, u.s. economy shrinks 1.4%, amazon loses money. guest: look, high inflation, the fed is going to have to take away the punch bowl. the stock market is going to be in for a rough time the next six to nine, maybe 12 months. but i want to say this, people should buy and own stocks for the long run. the fact that the market does go down some more, which i think is likely because i think the economy is going through stagflation, we may be on the front end of a recession next year, people should buy the dip and hold on -- by the indexes and hold them forever, do not try to out tray the market. in the cavalry is coming. host: washington post, biden aid plan for ukraine signals deepening war. guest: look, i did not read that. my view is joe biden has been a dollar short and a day late on helping ukraine. but i will also say it looks like they are catching up to where they need to be. i am impressed with defense secretary lloyd austin about this. and i think the united states should do everything it can, everything it can to help the ukrainians win the war in ukraine. not american troops on the ground, but everything, we should help ukraine win the war and drive the russians out of their territory. host: media relaxant -- media reaction to elon musk proves conservatives guest: i happen to like elon musk. i like what he is doing with respect to twitter and his crusades for free speech and i think he is a brilliant guy. happy to have him on board. host: one final story, this is from the washington post. cowboys member pleads guilty in january 6 cooperation deal. january 6, where were you? guest: i was at my office in the second floor. i did not read that. i will make one comment. january 6 was a rough day for everybody, but i will say this. people who accuse donald trump of somehow fomenting insurrection or revolution, they ought to go back and look at some facts, and my friend murdoch has written about this but others have too. it was president trump who ordered 10,000 to 20,000 national guard people to police the capitol and the city of washington. that order was rejected by the mayor of washington and by the speaker of the house. so for a guy who has said -- is trying to promote insurrection, don't you think it is odd that he wanted 20,000 national guard's people to protect the city and the capitol? i believe that there appeared -- leave at there. host: and from insanity, september 16, 2017, there is not a racist, hateful, white supremacist bone in donald trump's body. we are going to finish from this quote from larry kudlow. i don't believe in retirement, i don't understand the word, i just adore working. work is a virtue. what else am i going to do? guest: i don't believe there is a racist tone in donald trump's body. i will repeat that. i cannot imagine not working. as long as the lord gives me the strength to work and opportunities, i will continue to work. i love it too much. i was -- i would keel over on the set of some tv show and you will cart me away and we will be done with it. host: they're a cut though, think you for being on book tv. thank you to you and your wife for hosting us here. of addiction and the deadly impact of synthetic drugs. host: author sam quinones, what do portsmouth, ohio, los angeles, boston, and columbus, ohio

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