well, i i joined the college newspaper back in the early 1990s when i was in school and that sort of where i got the political the political bug. i i discovered writers thinkers intellectuals like thomas sole and shelby steele and glenn lowry and they had a huge impact on my my intellectual development and on my thinking about race in particular as well as economics and politics and and some other issues. so so that's where i got my start. i i interned at usa today during college and then about six months after graduation. i joined the wall street journal and and i've been writing for that newspaper ever since so jason, i think many viewers and readers of the wall street journal were kind of impressed with the journal editorial page separating the issues of some people talking about trump's personality from the issues of a trump policies. can you kind of give us a little bit before we get into the substance of the book? can you kind of give us a little bit of insight behind the scenes sort of how that emerged? well, i i think what you saw there on the from the editorial page editors were journalists who were doing their job their job was to cover this president the way they had covered previous presidents in terms of his analyzing his policies what he what he set out to do whether he accomplished it and and what kind of impact it it had and and the the journal did do plenty of criticizing of president trump's character and twitter feed and and all the rest, but they did not let that get in the way of carrying out their journalistic duties and i think that's where a lot of other mainstream journalists aired and went wrong and i think subsequently have have lost the trust of a lot of their their viewers or readers listeners or what have you they decided that donald trump should be covered differently and and really not so much covered as resisted. you know, this is a and this was something new, you know, this republican presidents are used to a left leaning washington, press corps that that's nothing new, but that press corps went much further with with donald trump. and i and i really think it was journalistic malpractice the way they behaved in in thinking that that there i their job was to take down this this president not just merely cover him. yeah, i think that's important because the book and i will get to the substance of the book very briefly, but the book really the sort of main message of the book got buried in the mainstream media, obviously because people didn't want to talk about, you know, positive policies successes, right? but but my my view of i don't know if you from the journalistic side have a different view but my view of the president why they obviously they were upset at his personality. that's one issue, but also think i don't know if you agree. that by going on twitter and communicating directly with voters on twitter. he basically broke up the monopoly of the press. and communicating with voters. so if you're republican president in the past with their snakes and reagan or bush you basically have to go through the press to communicate with voters, but he bypassed the press with twitter which i thought was very useful. do you think that kind of the monopoly break up of communication with voters was one and then an additional reason i should say why they were so hostile. um perhaps perhaps and it was unprecedented at his use of social media and i think you're you'll see presidents going forward do this. but with trump it was especially important as you said a lot of democratic presidents can usually depend on on the press to tell the the good news coming out of their administration republican presidents not so much and with donald trump almost never they were extremely reluctant to to to cover his political victories his political wins or paint anything he was doing in a positive light. and again, i think this was an idiot an ideologically motivated, press corps that was committed to presenting president trump as a bigot as a racist as someone who's a policies would harm the prospects of low-income minority groups in this country. and as i write in the book, when it turned out that his policies were not doing that the press simply refused to tell that story. they played it down or they ignored it entirely and that's one of the reasons i wanted to write this book. it's a very underreported story that i'm telling here what was going on in terms of the the economic gains of disadvantage groups in this country. it was quite remarkable and the point is not i mean the objective here is not to score partisan points. it is to tell a story about what types of policies produce the types of outcomes. we'd all like to see less unemployment less poverty more economic growth less income inequality. that's what we were saying under donald trump. i think it had a lot to do with the policies he put in place and it's a story again that the press by and large refuse to tell because they were so opposed to this. and and did not want to present anything. he did in a positive light. yes, so let's get get to the substance of the book. you already alluded sort of the main punchlines of it. i think you know, i was the team in the white house was very isolated. we we didn't see the lack of discussion of these results because we essentially produced a lot of them throughout the the administration's term in particular if the viewers are interested. there's something called the annual report of the council of economic advisor the economic report of the president that outlines a lot of the facts that riley jason is basically discussing which he basically gets to in a much clearer way. i think that we did sometimes but it has some adana line facts if people are interested. so let me go to the book. is a fair summary of your book essentially that the progress of african americans during the period 17 to 19 before corona hit. was mainly due to the economic policies in place not to immigration policies and not to the state policy. so the federal economic policies and enacted as opposed to immigration policy and minimum wage policy, which you spend a couple of chapters discussing, is that correct interpretation of the main message. i think so. yes. i'm arguing that that the trump administration policies prior to covid produced economic growth and that economic growth is something that a low-income minority groups are able to take advantage of i mean the book is titled black boom, but it's really a working-class boom that i'm describing. it. just so happens that blacks into some extent hispanics are overrepresented among the working class. but what we saw in that period first three years of the trump presidency prior to the pandemic what we saw was economic growth that were down in mainly to the benefit of the working class in this country the less educated the less experience people that often been left on the sidelines during previous economic booms. and and so that's what i'm getting at here and my argument basically is that economic growth does a better job of lifting those groups then does redistribution policies then does racial preference policies and so forth, which is what we saw under president trump's predecessor. and now what we're seeing under the current administration the pursuing those types of policies. yeah, and if you look at the international experience, that's definitely been the case for with the china and india, you know, the capitalism is probably by far the greatest force in the world invented to lift the power to reduce poverty in the world and economic growth through either us policy or economic growth in those countries was really what reduced poverty in the world sense. so i wanted to get to you you have an interesting discussion in the in the book about, you know, pre civil rights and post civil rights black progress. can you kind of elaborate on that? well, i wanted to include that history to show that what happened under trump is not unprecedented and so far as when the economy has been growing in this country. that is when blacks and other minorities have been able to take advantage of that growth and move themselves forward and and and prosper and and so if you look at the the fastest period of growth for black americans since slavery economist put it in the post-war period between then and the early 1970s. so you're talking about a time period in this country where there was still legal discrimination you're talking about jim crow you're talking about a pre-civil rights period by and large you're talking about a period when blacks had virtually no political clout in this country. let alone, you know, a black president or flat black mayors of large cities forth as you begin to see 1980s and 90s none of that was in place and yet this was a period when blacks were increasing their incomes were increasing their home ownership rates were leaving poverty. we're entering middle-class professions and so forth at unprecedented rates and it's because the economy was growing the post-war period was a time of tremendous economic prosperity in this country. and the argument there is that that is primarily what these groups need and then they will be able to take advantage of it from there. and that is what they need much more so than awoke president who is putting in place racial preferences or group preferences picking and choosing winners and looters. so to speak in terms of government policy more so than they need wealth redistribution programs, which we've seen in the in the post civil rights era starting with the great society programs and so forth that is not done as good. job of lifting low-income groups as simple economic prosperity has done and so what we need are our policies that produce economic growth and then these groups will be able to take advantage of that and and the trump years prior to covid. we're just another example of this we'd seen it in the past before and we saw it again during those first three years of donald trump. yeah, i thought that was a very interesting comparison. i think that doesn't get discussed a lot. so i thought it was very useful in relation to the trump years. can you also talk about the book gets into this? which also thought was very interesting. it's the voting patterns of blacks and hispanics essentially, which is counteracting the mainstream media message. so even though you have a bombardment of negative information about the president from the mainstream media and the quieting or or you know, non-reporting of any positive policy developments. you see a shift in votes towards the president's by minorities. can you talk a little bit about that part of the book? well sure. i mean when trump was first elected in 2016. he did not do particularly. well among blacks in particular and hispanics. i mean he did worse than even traditional republican candidates presidential candidates have done and you know, i i think well in terms of recent republican presidential candidates prior to trump you had mitt romney and john mccain both of whom had to run against obama, so i think we can we can cut them some slack there for how they did among black voters, but if you go to the pre obama era trump underperformed traditional republican presidents going back to you know, gerald ford in the 1970s, so we started from a lower point than most in 2016, but what we did see in 2020 was an uptick in both black and hispanic support and i think that has a lot to do with how those groups they're economically during the trump. prior to cope with it. we saw a record low on employment rates for blacks and hispanics. we saw record low poverty rates for blacks in hispanics and more importantly. we saw a black wages rising at a faster rate than white rages during this period during that three years stretch prior to covid. i mean you also have to remember how bad blacks had an economically for the majority of obama's presidency, you know black unemployment did not fall below double digits. until the seventh year of the obama presence. i mean that blacks had it very bad economically under president obama. they supported him overwhelmingly. he was well liked among blacks personality what and among whites and still is he's still pulls very well in terms of popularity but his economic policies his stewardship of the economy did not go over well with blacks or whites. and and so i think blacks remember how bad things were and under trump when they saw their fatter paychecks when they saw how plentiful the job market was. i think they they gave trump credit for that and that's part of the reason i believe he did better in 2020. he was focused on reopening the economy quickly after covid hit and of course a lot of these workers. i'm talking about are service sector workers. they couldn't work from home during the lockdowns and and they wanted to get back to work and trump was in favor of reopening the economy and i think that that redounded to his benefit when it came to to 2020 and that's why although he lost the election he did much better among both blacks and hispanics particularly among the men in both of those groups. yeah, i written on the past also on sort of the total damage of covid. you have to count both the disease itself obviously mortality morbidity, but also the cost of preventing future disease meaning foregone economic activity and if you look at the data during 2020 the major vast majority of the total harm of covid what's cost of prevention about 80% in the middle of the year roughly and 20% traditionally measured of how we value life in in government accounting was due to the disease itself in terms of mortality. so trump actually shows up if you look internationally us shows up as much better than europe even though many people in the press held up europe as role models of how to fight the disease but in terms of total damage the us actually had a lot lower total damage because we had lower cost of prevention by opening up the economy much quicker than the european so i definitely agree with you there coming back to obama's policies that kind of let into trump, so i'm going to talk about how do we get to trump? and then what he did and then sort of the future. talk about the sort of slow recovery that you talk about in the book because traditionally economies have kind of found that when you have a steep recession you have enormous growth afterwards. it's sort of like a pendulum if you swing it one way. it's going to go even further or or quicker to the other side. so talk a little bit about that and what you thought brought about the slow recovery. well, you're right people say well obama inherited a recession from george w. bush, which of course is true. it was a horrible recession. it was very deep. but as you pointed out historically the deeper the recession the more robust the recovery and yet under obama we had the slowest economic recovery in the post-warp period and and and and and that is the economy that trump inherited. i mean there there are people out there who want to say, oh to the extent that we did have good economic growth under under trump. he simply inherited this from from his predecessor and it really no matter who it's exceeded obama things would have turned out the way they did those first three years under trump and that's oh that's a revisionist history. i i would argue, know in 2015. the economy just the second to last year of the obama presidency the economy grew at 3.1 percent. the next year the last year of the obama presidency 2016 it grew at 1.6 percent. about half as the growth is about half as much and and so that is the economy that donald trump inherited. that is an economy that was slowing down dramatically slowing down to the point where you had leading economists like larry summers the former treasury secretary under president clinton saying there was a 60% chance that we were going into a recession. you had the federal reserve and the congressional budget office saying, you know, we're already at full employment unemployment can't go any lower growth. can't be any stronger. uh, we're at the end of a business cycle they were talking about a soft landing. that was the top. that was the economy that trump inherited and what happened he blew away all those expectations unemployment. didn't that go lower dramatically lower than the congressional budget office and then the federal reserve had predicted growth was stronger than the federal reserve had predicted trump exceeded those expectations. and so this wasn't merely a continuation of what was going on under obama. this was an acceleration. i mean one data point i point to is for the lowest earners the in the lowest income brackets. under the first three years of the trump presidency. their incomes grew at double the rate. then they did in the second term of obama. so this wasn't just a continuation. this was an acceleration and i think that the people who are making this up this continuation argument are making a sort of head's eye when tails you lose type of argument in other words if things had gone sideways those first three years under trump, i doubt they would have blamed president obama for that. but because they went well they want to give obama credit and i don't think they can have it both ways. yeah, i agree. i mean, in fact there's a body in the legislature called like you referred to congressional budget office and for our viewers. the congressional budget office is charged with looking at the economic outlook under current law with the key term is under current law meaning obama policies. so they did that in 2016 and that was their prediction of what a continuation of obama policies look like they're legally charged with forecasting that under current law, which was obama policies and then people turn around. i think i agree with you they turn around after the fact that says no that's not what we meant by a continuation of obama policies, even though we have illegal sort of mandate to provide that prediction. here's what we really man, and it would have been what trump accomplished so i think i couldn't agree more that that's kind of a schizophrenia and other trump the president tweeted that they were con men and and i think that's a strong term but it's kind of signifies what's going on. they pretending to be someone they're not and by having one set of definitions of obama continuation in 16 and another in 19. now what what do you think costs that getting more into the sort of slow recovery. what is your take on the exact policies? which you think obama instituted that was contributing to that slow recovery. well again, these are policies that i think harmed growth. so for example, there was a tremendous expansion of the welfare state and you know, he used the recession as an excuse to extend unemployment benefits to extend a food stamp programs and so forth a lot of this discouraged people from returning to the labor force and without workers, you're less productive country, which is one of the problems i have with the biden's bill build that better proposals is that they're going to disincentivize people to work to return to the workforce expanding the welfare state, you know, expanding government relief programs well into the class not just to help the poor but to help people with six-figure incomes. this is i think harmful to economic growth and this is what we saw under under obama an expansion of of the welfare state an expansion of government programs. and and i think that that disincentivized work. we also saw a taxes under obama and and regulations after regulation after regulation. i think that harm business growth that harmed hiring and and so a lot of what happened under trump is is a reversal of those policies last regulation and tax cut particularly corporate tax cuts, which gave businesses and incentive to bring money back from overseas and in