Host you are no stranger to cspan viewers, author, columnist, president ial advisor, Economic Advisor to the Trump Campaign back in 2016. Do you have any role in the campaigns this season . Guest i am working with President Trump on the 2024 campaign. Its a long way to go. He has to get through this primary and the general, but it is the honor of my life to work with trump in 2016 and its exciting, as you know, working on a campaign. We will be fulfilling that same role with a lot of other really top people, larry kudlow, who chief Economic Advisor, and others. So hes got a great gang of Economic Advisors. Id say this trump understands the economy very well. A very successful businessman so i always found that he has the sort of streetsmarts and we have the more academic views on the economy. You think he is talking about the economy enough on the campaign trail right now . Is there space for him to talk about the economy . Effect that hes facing four or five indictments and 500 years in prison, yeah. We put together a lot of documents just showing the case for are you better off than you were four years ago, and for the vast majority of americans, the answer to that question is no, not financially, with the high inflation, with the troubles weve had with the economy. We are not looking at then whenw Trump Left Office the Mortgage Interest Rate was 2. 9 , now its over 7 . Inflation rate was 1. 5 when Trump Left Office and at 9 , still closer to 4 . Week think if you put sideby side the Biden Economic record versus the trump economic record, thats his strong point. President biden over the Labor Day Weekend has been talking about the economy for quite a bit. He was on a visit to pennsylvania. He was talking to the sheet Metal Workers in pennsylvania. This is about a minute of what he had to say about the economy. 13,500,000 jobs just since you got me sworn in, in january 2020. 800,000 new manufacturing jobs, but you wouldnt know it from all the negative news you hear. What we are getting through is one of the greatest job creation periods in American History. For real. Thats a fact. You know it wasnt that long ago we were losing jobs in this country. In fact, the guy who held this job for me was just one of two president s in history. Heres an important point. Two president s who left office with fewer jobs in america than when he got elected to office. By the way, you know who the other one was . Herbert hoover. Isnt that kind of coincidental . Look, were turning things around because of you. When the last guy was here, you were shipping jobs to china. Now were bringing jobs home from china. When the last guy was here, your pensions were at risk. We helped save millions of pensions with your help. When the last guy was here he looked at the world from park avenue. I look at it from scranton, pennsylvania. I look at it from claymont, delaware. That was President Biden on monday. A very different economic picture that he paints than what you were just talking about. Theres a lot of smoke and mirrors going on there. We were really proud of what we accomplished during Trumps Administration with respect to the economy. People forgot, on the eve of covid, and covid really did change everything. We had the biggest booming economy evergrande if it hadnt been for covid, trump probably wouldve won one of the greatest landslide elections ever. We shut down the American Economy. I think that was one of the greatest mistakes in American History, what happened during covid, both from an economic and Civil Liberties standpoint. We now know that lockdowns were a complete failure and lets just pray that we never lock down our economy again. When we locked down all of our businesses, the Government Shutdown our businesses, so we a lost 15 million jobs. Everybody remembers that. I remember that one day im going to work and the next day im not going to work because everything shut down. If you look at bidens record, look, 90 of those jobs that joe biden is talking about that he, quote, created are just jobs that opened up once covid was over. Thats a bit of a distortion. I always say you may not like donald trump, and there are a lot of people im sure listening to the show who dont like donald trump, his antics, or sometimes he says offensive things. But youve got to love what he did for the country in terms of his economic policies. We have just one statistic that i know the president likes to use and i showed him this chart a couple weeks ago. Under trump, the median Family Income in the United States, adjusted for inflation, grew by 6500 when he was president. Thats a big, big increase. For biden in his first 2 1 2 years the average family has lost 4000 in income. That i would submit to you is why, when you look at the opinion polls, and theyre all ready much the same, about 70 of americans think the economy is headed in the wrong direction. You talked before on this program this year but youve also written about your deep concerns about a recession during the Biden Administration. Do you still think today, looking at the economic picture today, that we are in for a recession sometime in the next 12 months . Theres a famous thing about economists, that we predict did eight of the last two recessions. Economists are always saying a recession is right around the corner and i want to set the record straight. Remember at the end of 2022, a lot of economists, the majority of economists were saying we are going to have a recession this year. I was not one who said that a recession was inevitable. We are not in a recession right now. The economy actually has picked up a bit, thankfully. By the way, i dont root against the American Economy. I want American Workers to be as successful as possible. So there has been a pickup in the economy, and thats a good thing, and the job market really is strong. If youre out there and now we have more job openings than we have people looking for jobs, so thats a good statistic. Chose joe biden get credit for that . For 2 1 2 years. I would say that the problem for bidens and that there arent enough jobs. There are right now. We need to get americans more skills so that they can fill those jobs. The problem is that when biden came in he spent about 6 trillion, and that was completely unnecessary, and i think was financially reckless. And as a result of that, what happened, people have to understand the story. He came in, spent 6 trillion on the Green Energy Programs and welfare programs, et cetera, et cetera, that they allowed in the blue states. Than what happened with all of that, with death and printing of money that caused the inflation rate to go from 1. 5 to 9 . And as a result of that, what had to happen, john, was the Federal Reserve raised Interest Rates. I think its been 10 or 11, i forget the exact number. That means we set a huge increase in Interest Rates and the high inflation has meant that for 22 of the last 24 months, americans incomes are falling behind the rate of inflation. Thats what gets back to that 4000 a year. In other words, the average american is 4000 a year poorer today than they were when Trump Left Office. Thats going to have to explain that. Even for the last 30 or 34 minutes, phone number his usual. If you want to call in. Working with the Trump Campaign in 2016, doing it again in 2024, senior economist at Freedom Works as well. Folks are calling in and reminding what Freedom Works is. Freedom works is a citizens activist group, conservative freemarket orientation. We have 5 million Members Around the country, so very proud to work. Also im a senior fellow with the heritage foundation. So i wear many hats. The liberty bell . Thats exactly right. Weve got to get our nations finances in order right now. I think all americans are concerned whats happening. Did you see who watched the post story, frontpage, i think it was on sunday or monday but our National Debt this year went up by another 2 trillion. We are supposed to be in an economic recovery right now and we are falling to trillion . You mentioned cspan scores, but i was saying when i first came to washington, i first did this show with my hero brian lamb, the National Debt, the entire National Debt for the first 220 years of the country was to trillion dollars, and now were blowing to trillion dollars a year. I dont care if you are a republican, democrat, independent, that is a catastrophe. In 2023, according to that Washington Post story, now expecting to be 2 trillion. The deficit from the past couple years, Washington Post. Com is where that story was. Let me start with jay in mississippi, republican line. Good morning. How you doing today, mr. Mullen . Good morning. Let me ask you a question. What are yall going to do when donald trump gets back in office . Are you going to get this economy started again . Its already in pretty bad shape. Getting worse, we are borrowing money. You dont know whether to lvgo gold, silver or platinum. Its in a mess but i told john before i called him one time, just call him, 40,000, 47, and 45 and 47. Th if he is 47, whats the first thing you do on the economic front if he after hes sworn in . I think thats a good question. I think the first thing we would do would be to restore American Energy superiority. And what is going on right now with our Energy Policy is catastrophic, in my opinion. When Trump Left Office for the first time in any of our lifetimes, any person, no matter what your age is, whether youre over 100 years old, the first time in American History under trump we were Energy Independent and we actually became the dominant producer of oil and gas in the world. And biden came in, the first thing he did was killed pipelines. Hes declared war on American Energy. It is a catastrophe. The price of oil is now on the international markets, nearly 90 a barrel. That means i dont want to be the bearer of bad news but 90 a barrel oil means that we are going to soon be paying 4. 50 to five dollars a gallon at the gas pump, and we should be producing Oil Everywhere we can. We should be dominance. I dont think that russia wouldve ever gone into ukraine if we hadnt knee capped Americas Energy superiority. We can get that back. No country in the world has more oil, gas and coal than the United States does, and we should be using it as both an economic tool, it also a National Security tool. It puts our National Security in jeopardy when we have to get our oil from Companies Like saudi arabia and venezuela, and russia, of course, is a major oil producer. Opec, by the way, Just Announced they are cutting production by 1 Million Barrels a day. Russia is cutting 300,000. Thats one of the reasons the price of oil is going up. When trump was president we never even talked about opec because the United States was producing so much. Lets get back to being the dominant Energy Country in the world. How would a different Energy Policy have kept russia from , invading ukraine, if you could explain that . Thats a good question. Russia is a third world country. They dont have an economy, much to speak of. The major component of the russian economy is oil. Thats how they get their money. So what im saying is if we continue to produce the amount of oil that we were under trump, by the way, i think its this week, its coming the last recent days, biden again f announced hes going to take millions of acres in alaska off the market, which is crazy. We have more oil up in alaska and russia has. So when we surrendered our oil and gas leadership, thats what happened. Guess who filled that void, john. It was russia. S that sent the price of oil way up and thats whats funding, in my opinion, the military machine in ukraine. We all want the Freedom Fighters in ukraine to win. One of the best ways we can do that is not keep sending them tens and tens of billions of dollars, but defund Vladimir Putin by producing more energy here at home. They had then of the issue you were talking about, Biden Administration drilling on millions of acres in alaska. This was back on tuesday. The administrator will cancel oil and gas leases in the art wildlife refuge. This policy keeps going back and forth. Trump had actually opened up that area. By the way, a nwr ive actually been up there. It is a massive, massive amount of land and theyre talking about a tiny amount of that land would be used for oil drilling and the idea that this is going to despoil the land up there, i just dont find that to be factually true. Well take an independent organ, this is dan, democrat. Good morning. I have a problem with knowing what people on here are telling the truth and what people are lying, so i would want the people who come on here from now on to raise their right hand and just swear they are telling the truth. Thats all id like. Thank you very much. Should we swear people in when they sit down on the washington journal . One of the reasons i love doing the show is because you have people from all different perspectives. Im a big fan of the show and i love actually hearing from people every morning about their opinions, about whats going on in the country. Ill try to be as factual as possible this morning. To los angeles, this is david, good morning. Youre on with steve moore. Mr. Moore, youve been wrong on just about every single issue that you brought up. Let me get you with the one on the subject matter, x subject matter subject Matter Expert on. Real estate. You said donald trump kept Mortgage Interest Rates lowered Mortgage Interest Rates. That is exactly the reason why we are experiencing a bubble right now. It created an artificial demand, artificially deflated home prices. This is almost identical to what happened for the caused the housing crisis. Thats number one. Let me hit you with the next thing you talked about, Oil Production and gas prices. During Trumps Administration we were experiencing a pandemic. Nobody was driving on the us freeway. Half the country wasnt driving. Of course we are going to have an abundance of gas. Its a ridiculous its almost childish to think that you dont realize, the reason why we have an abundance of gas is because nobody is driving. Let me let steve moore address those two things, Mortgage Interest Rates and oil and gas prices during a pandemic. First of all lets do the mortgage rates. So the fact that the Mortgage Interest Rate has gone up less than 3 to over 7 has had a catastrophic effect on housing markets. So for example, lets say you want to buy a median priced home in america today, which is roughly 450,000, give or take. Its somewhere in that neighborhood. Lets say youre a firsttime homebuyer and you want to buy that house. Because of the entire Mortgage Interest Rates, youre going to pay, over the life of a 30 year mortgage, on a 450,000 home, over 150,000 more in interest payments, so what this doing is making housing unaffordable to americans. We want americans to be homeowners. I laughed the other day because joe biden says we are restoring the American Dream. A big part of the American Dream is being able to own your own home, and bidens policies of higher Interest Rates and higher inflation have really priced people out of that market and i think im worried about our housing market, by the way, right now. I do worry that we might see a crash because youre starting to see the home values decline. When Mortgage Interest Rates go up it hurts both the homebuyer and home seller. Both of them are hurt. On the energy thing, if you look at 2019, before covid, because this gentleman, hes right. In covid hit nobody was on the road. I remember that. Lets talk about even before it happened. The United States for the first time in history was producing more oil and gas than russia, than saudi arabia, than any other country in the world, and gas prices before covid were much lower than they are today. To patty in new