Howard Lutnick | All-In DC
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本篇目录8 章节
§01Chamath and Friedberg welcome Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick!§02Howard describes his 30+ year relationship with President Trump and his road from business to politics§03Running Trump's transition team, DOGE origin story, what it's like working for Trump§04Balancing the budget and fixing GDP§05Tariff history and strategy, global trade§06Trump Cards, building better government software, AI thoughts§07Sovereign Wealth Fund strategy§08How his family reacted to his new role Thanks to our partners for making this happen: Gemini§01Chamath and Friedberg welcome Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick!
You're in New York much?
Never. I I closed my house.
Oh, wow.
I basically I tricked my wife. You know how your wife always wants to renovate your house? No idea. My wife always renovate my house right? Every minute I've been alive my wife has wanted to renovate parts of my house.
So we moved out once a year and a half ago. We moved out for a year and a half, about six years ago and she only did half the house and she still rues the day that she only did half the house.
Really?
Yeah. So that was the deal. What I did is I bought a house in Washington and said, you want to renovate the house? She said, Yeah. I said, great.
We hired a contractor.
Wait. You brought Brett Beer's house now? Yeah. Yeah. That's a beautiful house.
We can talk
I could talk about whatever you want, by the way. I'm happy to talk about serious things, casual things.
No. Let's just do this.
Let's let's roll because he's Just roll. You're you're already running. Right?
He's on fire.
I'm doing all of it.
Alright, besties. I think that
was another epic discussion. People love the interviews. I could hear him talk for hours. Absolutely. We crushed your questions in a minute.
We are
giving people route to data to underwrite your own opinion. What'd you gonna say?
§02Howard describes his 30+ year relationship with President Trump and his road from business to politics
Howard, thanks for being here. Thanks for joining myself and David Friedberg on the All In podcast. I wanna take a step back before we talk about today and instead talk about your friendship with the president, how it started, how you guys got to know each other, and walk us through the moment when you, you know, frankly, went out on the limb a little bit, stepped up, became the campaign finance chair, and then just that evolution.
So I've known the president since I was 30 years old. So I used to go on the we call it the charity circuit in New York. Sure. So there's basically a charity party every night when you live in New York.
Like the rubber chicken dinner.
Like literally the rubber And so sort of every night you go out. So the boss of my company, Bernie Cantor, he got tired of going, right? So he didn't want to go. So he would send me with his wife and I would be her walker. You know, I'm the 30 year old CEO of the company, and I'd take her to the party.
And after the party, I'd put her in a limo, and she'd go home, and DJT would say, Well, let's go out. And so we'd go out. It wasn't planned, but he was at the party. He was 45. I'm at the party 30, and we chased the same girls.
Okay. It was basically it worked out fine. And and by the way, here's the thing about Donald Trump. He was the most famous, the most fun
Yeah.
The most interesting person thirty years ago
Yeah.
Thirty three years ago. I mean, here's the best thing. He's been on the cover of Time Magazine 59 times.
No way.
And then he leans over to me and he goes, and 20 were good. I'm like, but who can take that? Yeah. I mean, could take it? Like other people when you have a bad cover of Time Magazine, you'd crumple, right, and be sand on the floor.
And so he's like
But so Howard, is it that he's just totally wired to understand that moment, like, of being a public figure? Or like, what is it that's so unique about what constitutes the ability to navigate that over forty years?
I think it it it adds energy to him. To him. Right? So everybody else's energy, what they don't understand is people bring negative energy to Donald Trump, right, and they're just charging his battery. Okay?
Your energy around him comes to him. So when I come at him with a lot of energy, he comes back with a lot of energy. Right. Right? It doesn't matter.
He never he never steps back. He just sort of takes it like the centrifuge Right. And then hurls it back at you. And he's been that way always. So this is not new.
This is just who he is.
This is who he is. So those other people who attack him, they think they're attacking him. They're charging his battery. They're literally charging his battery. So he comes back bigger, stronger, bigger, stronger.
And once you understand the man, the most intuitive person that you've ever met. Yeah. And people say, well, okay. So people who know me, I don't suffer fools. And they have all these derogatory of my left liberal friends, all these derogatory statements about the guy, right?
And they know me really well.
Yeah.
Right? And they'd say, Well, how can you work for him? I'd say, How can I work for him? The most intuitive person, he senses it. He knows it.
He calls me up, and he says, Panama Canal. That's very serious. Goes, Panama Canal. It just feels wrong. Right?
And then he sends me on the quest to go I I didn't do anything. I just start the quest to go look at it.
Yeah.
Right? The mouth that's east is a deep water port by the Chinese. The mouth that's west is a deep water port by the Chinese. They're building bridges over it, so our ships and our military ships should go under, right, in our hemisphere, a Chinese bridge. So then I said, okay, let's go prove it.
So I have a friend of mine, owns a big shipping company. I said, take two iPhones, put them on a stand, and just go through the Panama Canal. You know, the Panama Canal, they sort of drag ships through like And I said, just go video both ways. Yeah. Just video both ways.
70% of every letter is Chinese. Then I'm talking like the size of container ships, the stores, like I'm not talking
like- Just signage.
Just random signage like you're riding on a road. It's all Chinese. And then I do the research and I call him back and I say the magic words between me and him. I have your path, which is I've done it. I've done the legal work.
I've done everything. Right? So when you start talking about it, you have a foundation. It's not just you talking. So people think he's just talking.
He's never just talking. Yeah. He has people behind him who bring him his foundational, structural outcome. And then what does he do? He went and played golf that afternoon.
He called me at seven in the morning. He said, What do you got? We talked from seven to eight. He went and played golf. Right?
And that afternoon, there's the American flag in the middle of the Panama Canal in some, you know, truth he puts out. Right. And that's the fun part. Right? So you work for the most intuitive guy.
Yeah. Unbelievably smart, unbelievably thoughtful, who knows what he's doing.
So let's
It's so fun for me.
Howard, let's just go back one second. So you have this deep relationship with him. You guys are friends. Scott Besson told us this story that about 18 ago though he saw all this data about what was happening under Biden and he was just so concerned that these deficits and debts were getting so out of control. He went to the president and said, how can I help?
Can I help? That's a story. But was there a moment for you that was, like, rooted in something other than friendship? Like, was there something on the ground where you said, hold on a second. This is a train wreck and we
need to do You were the finance chair for the campaign.
Well, I wasn't the finance chair. I was the transition chair.
Transition chair.
Okay. I ran transition, which we'll talk about. But so let's go through it. So I'm friends with him. Right?
But I'm building my business. Young guy building my business. And then nineeleven happens. Yeah. Okay?
So I'm friends with the guy. I'm just friends with the guy. But then nineeleven happens. Kind, sweet, calls me all the time. Just a good human being.
Nice, warm, caring, good human being. Right? But then I'm knocked out. So what do I do next? I try to rebuild my company, take care of the families of nineeleven.
You know, I lost six fifty eight people who worked for me, we had a policy. We want to work with people that we like. So when we had an opening, we didn't use headhunters. We would say to everybody at the firm, Does anybody know anybody who'd do this job?
No.
And so, you know, a young lady who works for me says, You know, my best friend is an HR person. They have to have capacity. Yep. But once they have capacity, imagine we hire that person. Yeah.
Now what happens is it's not one big happy family. Yeah. But people really, really care about the company. And that's our company that's on the Top 5 Floors of the World Trade Center on nineeleven when the plane hits it. Kills everybody at the office.
My brother Gary, he dies at thirty six. My best friend Doug, he dies at 39. I had just turned 40 that summer. I had a party. 65 couples.
It's my my fortieth birthday. Fortieth birthday. Yeah. Right? 27 people at my party get killed.
Jesus.
It's my friends. These are my friends. So I'm driven to take care of the families of the people who who died. And I commit 25% of all of our profits, but the company is destroyed. So we go from making a million a day.
I was a rich guy. Right? What's the definition of a rich guy? No personal debt. No corporate debt.
Ken Fitzgerald, no debt. So how do you survive nineeleven? If you don't owe anybody any money, the only money you're losing is your money.
Is your money.
So we survive, and we take care of our friends' families, and then we build the company back up. So you could see, like, I'm a I'm a special guest on the celebrity apprentice, the first season of celebrity apprentice when Piers Morgan wins.
Did he fire you?
No. No. I wasn't a contestant.
Oh, I was gonna I'm
a little beyond being a contestant. I was I was a special guest. I'd come in, like, if you see during the auction, I'm standing next to him at the auction, you know, and I'm helping him. Like, I'm just his friend sort of as an extra all along the way. Know, every once
in while.
You kept the friendship going as rebuilding.
We're friends all the way, but I'm rebuilding my company. So I'm not interested in politics. I don't do anything in politics because I got my head down. Right? The financial crisis, Candidate Show does great in the financial crisis.
Had you ever donated to candidates at all or
none of Yeah. New York candidates. Okay. Right. New York so think about it.
You're in New York. You try to pick social liberals, fiscal conservatives. Right. If that even exists anymore. Yeah.
Yeah. Right? But if you're in New York, you have to pick and look, I grew up in New York, so I'm socially liberal. What else could I possibly be? So, you know, so early when Chuck Schumer was young before he became what the president now calls a Palestinian, you know, you know, he, you know
Did he really?
He did. I raised him, you know, raised him money and it gave him money. Yeah. Donald Trump gave him Same,
same, did too.
Mean, he was, that's what he said he was. He was social liberal, fiscal And so I, you know, we know we'll give to those kind of candidates, but mostly giving to get along. Right. And to be able to, you know, ask them a question if you needed to ask them a question. But there was really no I had no drive Right.
In that. And like I said, the first four nights I slept in Washington in the last twenty years were when Donald Trump was elected. I had never slept here. I'd come down, visit a little. Go home.
Go home. What am I staying here for? So he calls me at the October '23.
Okay.
So he's already had his first term. You didn't support or
get No. I was so I gave him money and I gave Hillary money.
You gave Hillary money in the first term.
Hillary was incredibly helpful to me post nineeleven. Remember, was a senator?
Right.
And New York needed help.
Right.
And Hillary was incredibly helpful. And I was driving the team to help New York rebuild because I had relationships with a whole bunch of congressmen, and they were going to do nice things. Like Bill Young ran House Appropriations.
Right.
Bill Young was my friend.
Right.
Through a whole variety of things that had to do with I used to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital, and I used to walk around, and I would bring music there for the men who got hurt from the military who were in Bethesda Naval Hospital. And we would walk around, I'd go with my wife, and then I would engage the young man with music. I'd give him music and ask him what CDs he wanted. This is when CDs were there, and I'd bring up a walkman. And my wife would pull the family outside, and she'd pay a year of their mortgage and all their expenses.
Because what people don't realize is your son loses his leg, right? Dad and mom come flying in and they're going to stay by his bedside. What job do these people have that allows them to be at their son's world? And their world is falling apart because their son lost his leg, so their world is falling apart. But at home, their world is falling apart.
Falling apart, yeah.
And so my wife would just try to figure out how much money it was and just give them a check. Yeah. And no form, no nothing. Just give them the money. Yeah.
And help them. So I would bump into Billy Young and his wife, who they were just, they ran then defense appropriations, and they were there just being good human beings. And so we became friends, and he said to me once, he said, Is there anything I could ever do to help you? I'm like, Look, you run. You're like a congressman from Florida who does defense appropriations.
I'm like a Jewish guy from New York who's in finance. If there ever were two SKUs that we're never going to meet, this is two ships going like, Shoo. Right? We got nothing. So I said to him, Look, we're just going to be friends.
Right? We're never going to do anything. And then he runs House appropriations. And so when New York needs money to rebuild after nineeleven, they go see Bill Young to try to get a bill passed. Right.
And he said, how can you come see me without Howard? Yeah. You know, this is post nineeleven. So I'm running New York and Hillary does a really nice job.
K.
For New York.
Yeah.
And I told I told DJT, I call him DJT because I've known him for always, I said I told him that I can't forget. Yeah. I'm just not the person who's gonna forget. Of course I gave him money. Right?
But I gave and and by the way, he still tortures me for it. So, like
I you know
what the best part is?
As a good does. Yes.
Right. A good friend does. See, other people would would, you know, sort of curl back. Yeah. Right?
So here, right after he gets elected okay, here's a story for you. So right after he gets elected, he has a dinner in New York. Right? So he invites me to the dinner in New York because I'm his friend. And then while he's giving his
§03Running Trump's transition team, DOGE origin story, what it's like working for Trump
So we're twenty twenty three.
So we're twenty twenty three and he calls me and he says, Will you help me? Yeah. And I had not thought politics. Now I gave him money in twenty twenty reelection. Yeah.
But I gave him $10,000,000. I raised him $15,000,000. So I was, you know, once I'm on his side the whole way through. I'm raising him money in seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty while he's president. I'm totally on his side.
Yeah. And I'm just his friend. I'm not engaged. Yeah. Okay?
Because I'm still rebuilding my life. Yeah. Okay? And then 2023 calls me, says, will you help me? And I actually thought about it.
Like, and that was the first time I really thought politics. And then I said, Yes. And I gave him $10,000,000 right then and there, And then I started talking to him. I started going on the campaign trail. I started doing research.
I started doing knowledge. I wanted I talked to him about everything. I talked to him all the time about everything.
Did you love it? Because our our friend Saxx, we were talking at dinner last night. He seems to love it.
There's nothing not to love. As Donald Trump says, this is a thousand Super Bowls Right. For him. And for me, it's only a hundred Super Bowls. Right.
This is very expensive. I mean, if you're dedicated to America and you're willing to wear America's clothing and to stop worrying about yourself and only care about America Yeah. And have no objective post. Yeah. The president hates when these people have like they raise money post from people they've met in a year.
So I'm never gonna work again. Okay? I'm never gonna work. This is all I care about. I'm just gonna help America.
So he asked me to help him. And I started thinking about it. I started studying everything, and I read everything, and I read everything about the White House. Read everything about everything I can possibly read because I'm I'm just that way.
Mhmm.
And then I started helping him. Right? And I went to learn how he picked the judges, right, and the Supreme Court and why it didn't I'm just very detailed. And so I started studying what transition is. Right.
Right? And I started studying it, and I started studying tariffs, because he wanted to talk about tariffs. He's always thought the trade deficit was wrong and basically a rip off of America, and I started studying everything about it. And so he and I would talk about it, and we knew everything about it and then he picked me to run transition.
Okay so we're going to talk about tariffs in a sec, but so double clicking to transition, what did you find that was so interesting?
I'll give you an example. So there's book called The Gatekeepers that was written. People gave me, oh, you should read this book. And it's about chiefs of staff. Okay.
And basically, there's another way to call it. It's called The Jerks. Right? Because what they do imagine you're the gatekeeper.
Yeah.
You're the gatekeeper of what? Yeah. Of the man who was elected president of The United States Of America. He needs the gates kept from him? And if you listen to Nixon tapes, you hear him scheming to try to learn anything.
Because what happens is the chief of staff, everybody reports to the chief of staff, and the chief of staff reports to you. So you can't get on Air Force One without asking the chief of staff. Mhmm. You can't get a document unless you have the chief of staff. No one can come see you unless you have the chief of staff.
And if they take your phone away, you know what you are? You're imprisoned. And that's the gatekeepers. So I said to Donald Trump, I said, look. You fired Reince Priebus, who was your chief of staff.
Then you fired John Kelly, who was the chief of staff. Then you fired Mick Mulvaney as chief of staff. Then you would have fired Meadows, but you didn't get a chance because you because of the the next election. So I said, why don't you fire the job? What you need is a chief of staff who's actually a chief of staff, not who's the gatekeeper.
Right.
Right? And so that was an example of how I changed it. And so Susie Wiles is perfect for Donald Trump. You know why? She lets him be him.
John Kelly took away his phone. Right. So he couldn't communicate with anybody. Oh my. Whereas Susie embraces who he is, helped him get elected, ran a great campaign.
Yeah. She's perfect for him in this role. And so that's what I brought. So I brought like an understanding of him and an understanding of the role. Right, that's why I convinced your friend David Sacks every time he said I can't do it.
I
would call him and say, It's an emergency, it's an emergency, I need to see you. He'd fly in. He'd go, What is it? I go, You need to join the administration. He goes, That's what the emergency was?
I go, Of course.
And Howard, was that when you conceived originally Doge in that initial was
that during the transition? Alright. So Doge Yeah.
Should talk about Doge and tariffs.
Okay. So Doge comes it's it's October of before the election. Okay. Early October.
October '20 '20 '4.
October '20 '20
'4.
Yeah. Like, the beginning Yeah. Of October 2024. And I called the president and I said, I need I need to spend an hour with you because I have my big ideas. Ideas.
Right? So he gives me, he says, Look, I'm not sure what to do, October 7. Why don't we figure out what I should be doing October So we decide we're going to go out to the Oh Hell, which is a super religious Hasidic Jewish Messiah. You know, the people who wear black hats think he's the Messiah, and they have a crypt for him where you write a note and you put a note in.
All
right? And so we agreed we'd go out to that that grave site and we'd probably win 60,000 of those kind of voters, which is pretty cool for a day. And then we drove there and back together, the two of us. So I had an hour and a half, just he and me talking. And I said, I want to balance the budget in The United States Of America.
And this is the way we're going to do it. No one's ever checked the just under $4,000,000,000,000 of entitlements. Every politician thinks what you have to do is you have to take the retirement age from 65 and make it a 70. Right. And you have to do this and this and this and this because they never think about the money.
Totally. But people like us Totally. Would say, what's the first thing you do? What's the value I'm getting from my money? Totally.
Right? And what you find is if nobody ever, like as in ever, like I could say the word ever 12 times, has looked at where the money goes. Totally. And so there's not even a process to get it back when you send it to the wrong person.
Totally.
You just send another one out. Yeah. Like think about it, you just, well I sent it accidentally, Accidentally. Notice how it's accidental?
Right.
It's always accidentally sent to the wrong person. Really? You wouldn't ever say the 5,900,000.0 people who work for the government, there could be some crooks in there. Right. No.
No. No. It's all accidental. What a load of nonsense this is.
There's some percentage of this.
But you would say. Yeah. And you would say.
No, just zero base it and let's figure out where
It's got to be 25%. Yeah. We'd all say if it's never been checked, how could it not be 25%? Right. Completely.
How could it
not be?
Right. And the answer is that's a trillion dollars a
year. Right.
So I said I think we're going cut a trillion dollars a year in expense, and then I think we can, through tariffs and other means, we're going to get revenues of a trillion dollars.
Incremental revenue.
Incremental revenue. And we're going to balance
But all but sorry. Let me just ask one question. How do the tax cut to the extension of the tax cuts?
They're they're zero basis. I mean Zero basis. Where I was yesterday and where I am tomorrow, get, oh, it's a tax cut. No. It's not.
It's the exact same thing as yesterday as today. To say continuing yesterday tomorrow is like silly.
Me ask you let me ask you on tariffs, having studied it yourself, when there's higher tariffs, people purchase less, things cost more.
No. We'll we'll talk about tariffs. Let's just finish. We'll focus on that. Let's finish.
Yeah. Doge. So I'm in the car with him. Right? And I said, we're gonna balance the budget.
And I said, I but I have one favor to ask of you. If we can balance the budget for you, will you agree to waive all income tax
I see.
For every person who makes less than a hundred and $50,000 a year for The United States Of America? Which, by the way, is about 85% of America. Right.
Right.
And the reason you wanna work for Donald Trump is he looks at me and goes, sure. Like, you realize you realize the president of The United States said, if you balance the budget, sure. And he's not lying. Not kidding. He's like, yeah.
That seems that seems like a great idea. Right. Right? And so and then I tell him, okay. I'm gonna go recruit Elon.
Because Elon's all in.
Yeah.
Right? He's already said he's all in. He's already said he's going to Pennsylvania.
Yes.
Right? So I call Elon, and I don't know Elon. I don't know. But he's perfect for this. So I use my superpower, which is I call everybody else I know who knows him, and they arrange.
And I'm texting with him, and he agrees to meet me on October 14. So I fly down to Brownsville, Texas. He's gonna catch the rocket on October 14. Right? So that's he invites me down for the rocket catch.
That's right.
Having not he's not inviting me for the rocket catch. He's just inviting me down that that's a good day for me to meet him. So I fly down, I see the rocket catch, is awesome. Yeah. Awesome.
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And then I expect to meet
him. By the way, very pivotal day in the in the campaign. If you remember, Biden sort of didn't pay as much attention to it. Trump was pretty engaged. Elon was supportive of Trump.
So when he actually caught the rocket, the media was almost, like, frozen waiting for it to fail, and it didn't fail and it worked. And it was this incredible
I was waiting for Elon. Okay? So I flew down to see Elon and with with my with my son. And so we watched the rocket. Right?
And then they say, okay, he's gonna go hang out with his engineers and party with them. Seems reasonable. It's like an hour, hour and a half. And then he just goes dark.
You're still waiting?
I'm just sitting there waiting. And then they take me, and I go to, like, the equivalent of a Margaritaville. You know, where you have, like, a a basket and you can get quesadillas and get it. And you get a Diet Coke in a in a in a red sort of plastic thing that's about this tall. It's like 4,000 ounces of Diet Coke in it that comes with this big.
Love that.
But now, to his credit, he sends me all the executives from SpaceX Yeah. Are hanging with me. Yeah. But he's dark. And what happened is he took a nap.
He was up all night doing the engineering and he went to sleep. So then when he finally wakes up so I'm just sitting there like, you know, doing the like, I don't know him really. So I'm just doing the thumb twiddle. I'm going, okay. You know, this guy's
couple of places.
I'm hoping he sees me.
Right? Yeah.
So then he wakes up, says, Come to my house. Right? I'll see you in my house. So his house is 12 hundred square It's got the furniture in it that I had when I graduated from college.
Right.
Okay? I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. Oh, we know. It's 1,200 square feet and it's got the furniture, plastic, chairs, and okay.
So I say, we're gonna balance the budget. I need to cut a trillion. He's like, I'm in. He says, I think we should cut 80% of the federal government because the essential employees if the government shut down, essential employees are 450,000.
Yeah. Okay.
And there's 5,900,000 people who work for the government. Yeah. How can 450,000 be essential in this 5,900,000? He says, like Twitter, I think we should cut 80%. And I say, I know how to cut 50.
And he says, I want to cut 80. I said, I know how to do 50. He goes, are you with me or against me? I go, I know how to legally do it. What do you have?
And my son says it was like two alpha dogs just like fighting with each other for the first half hour. And then, so then X comes in, right? And then he's gotta walk his son X out. So he walks his son X out, and I'm thinking maybe the meeting's over, right? Because we've been together a half hour, forty minutes, and maybe it's over.
Because he got up and he walked out and he comes back, and he sits down and goes, Howard, this meeting is right? That's what he says. This meeting is and we sit down and we map out the plan. I tell them what a gratis vendor is. Yeah.
Because I designed because I was not gonna go into the government. I was doing transition.
What is a gratis vendor?
A gratis vendor is is an approved vendor for The United States Of America that gives product to the government. Doesn't sell it.
Okay.
So therefore, I don't have to go through the whole process of becoming a proper vendor because you're giving it to us. Mhmm. And then if you give it to article two, which is the president's stuff, then the president can accept it. Right? Because it's give.
Sorry. What's an example of this? Like, just to make it I write some software. You write some software.
I write some software for the Commerce Department to do a better job of x y z.
Mhmm.
You just give it to me. And then I do QA on it, and I can take it. If you sell it to me for $1 we go into government hell.
Right. The whole rigmarole.
Right? But if you give it to me, right, and then I set up you know, so I said, I'm calling it Doge. And I registered the name Doge.
You said that. Of course. And were you familiar with Dogecoin and Of course.
It's Elon.
I'm so sorry.
So what happens is in in the Defense Production Act
Yes.
In World War II
Yes.
In order to get all the great executives
Yes.
Of America to help with production, they named everything after jazz singers or everything that of the people who were on the committee that it would make them laugh and smile.
Okay. Right?
So I picked Doge so he would laugh and smile. He said, Get the F out of here. Like when I said, We're gonna name it Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, which I didn't think of. It was on the internet sort of floating around in June.
Yes.
Right? But I literally registered it, right? As the Department of Government Efficiency, like make it a real thing as a gratis vendor. And I said, This is how I've done it for me.
Yes.
So that I can run Cantor Fitzgerald. You can run SpaceX, right? You're not you don't have to sign the conflict form and all this stuff because you're not working for the government. You're just giving stuff to the government. Yes.
You are literally giving of yourself. Right. But you're not looking for anything. You're not taking any money. You're not owning anything.
You're not doing anything. You're not on that side of the wall. You're on this side. Yeah. You're outside.
Yeah. Right? And so we had fun. We talked for two hours. And then on my Twitter feed, I took a picture of me and Elon outside, and I put up, Welcome to Doge.
We are going to rip the waste out of our $6,500,000,000,000 government and balance the budget. We must elect Donald J. Trump president. Yeah. Right?
And I posted that with my I probably at the time had 25,000 viewers, and I got 45,000,000 views.
Wow.
Right? So it was me and Eli. Yeah. And that was the beginning of Doge. Yeah.
Right? Then I ran transition, which is so for the transition, we had I had a room in Marlauga. Yeah. Okay? Big conference table in the middle.
Four eighty five inches screens on one side and mirror four eighty five inches screens on the other side. So that you and I could talk to each other. So the president sat across from me. Yeah. Elon sat Oh, and then I'll tell you one other story about Elon.
So he wins the election. President wins the election. He accepts it like Wednesday at 02:00 in the morning. Right? Elon's not on stage.
If you see, I'm on stage. Elon's way in the back of the room. There's a thousand people in the room, 2,000 people. He's way in the back. He goes home.
Thursday afternoon I call. I'm doing a dry run of the launch of my transition. Right? And the president is superstitious. He's never had one conversation with me about transition.
He totally trusts me. He wins the election. Now he's got a like, you know, I'd said on Jesse Waters He
doesn't talk to you ahead of time about
who he About one job, about one thing.
He's He's transition until the election.
Because he's superstitious. Like, don't your time.
Don't jinx it.
Right? Just go win. You gotta go win. So what happens is he so I'm I'm doing a dry run. So I call Elon.
And I said, where are you? He goes, what do you mean? I'm in Austin, Texas. Whatever. I go, what are you doing?
I mean, what is the point of you spending three weeks living in Pennsylvania helping the guy get elected if you're not gonna help him pick the cabinet? Like, come on. Right? Because the way president Trump works, he makes decisions by orchestra. He likes lots of views and opinions.
He likes them. And anybody who says, Oh, the last person who sees him gets him, that's because they don't know him at all. Right. Right? The answer is it's an orchestra.
Right? And I would say, Okay, I'm the first violin. You know, at the time, I would say I was, you know, I would describe myself as second violin.
Yep.
Right? So this is an orchestra. So the president's not going to make a decision with me and him alone.
Yeah.
No, no, he's going have So it went like this. President sitting across from me, right, at the conference table. Elon to his left. Susie to his right. Right?
JD to my left. Linda McMahon was my co chair. Right? But she wrote all those EOs that he did. That was she was responsible for.
And I was responsible for personnel, but she was with me for personnel. So she's sitting to my right. J. D. Sitting to my left.
Don Jr. Right. Steven Miller. And he there was always 12 people in the room. They were never like me and him hushed in the corner doing this and that.
Never. And what we would do is I would put eight candidates on one screen.
Right.
Right? And then big candidate on each screen. Right. Most beautiful AI picture of you you've ever seen.
Right.
And people would walk in and go, where'd you get that photo? Right. I'm like, do you think I did? I took three of
your By the I've heard secondhand stories of this room during the transition that there were you walk in and everyone's photos up on
the screen.
Everybody's on the room.
And so what happened is That's a candidate for a role, and then you guys would debate Right,
so what happened is a big picture of the person.
Yeah.
They're key highlights of the resume, not boring, with their education. Yeah. Right? And then you would click a button and you'd see them speaking. Twenty seconds at a time, four of them.
Right? So it was about eighty seconds. And you're not speaking about the job. Right. Just like how do you present?
Totally. And what you can see is his whole cabinet can talk.
Totally. All of them. Totally.
Because he picked them knowing, I need you to be able to talk, to be able to present our ideas and our concepts out there, and that's key to him. And the way I would joke to people is say, How do you do it? I go, Watch. Pitch. So you'd throw him a curveball.
He wouldn't swing. And you'd throw him a fastball, wouldn't swing. And you throw him a slider, hits the ball, hits it to my glove. I go, Here you go. You go, Well, how do you know that?
I go, because I know the guy for thirty three years. I know what he wants. And he loved the process. And you know what happened? You saw what happened.
Right? First date, eight candidates, 12 jobs, national security. Okay? He says, What do you want? I go, Eight to four.
I put up eight candidates. I recruited everybody. I had 150 of the best Republicans in The United States Of America. They each gave me five people, who then gave me 10 people. I had thousands of people to pick from.
The whole government was set up to pick from, and then we picked candidates. I had eight for every Eight, eight, eight, eight. Eight to four, that's Friday. Sunday comes in, four to two in the morning. I fly everybody in for the two.
I prep them. We go in and meet them, two to one. Final interview, give them the job. Wow. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.
Monday. Monday, we're done with national security. Okay? Now we're rolling on, and it just pounds out. Why?
Because he had every candidate. Everybody knew it. Everybody was prepped. Everybody was aware. Everybody was done.
You know, that's why I had
to keep
the heck out of David Sacks, because I needed David Sacks to be in the government. I recruited David. I pounded on David. You can ask David. Right?
I beat him and beat him and beat him until he finally said, Okay, I'm going to do it. Right? And I did that for everybody. Yeah. Right?
And I made sure he had the greatest choices. Then every once in while, would call me at night and say, throw this guy in. Throw this guy in. Throw this guy in. We did a vet on everybody.
Yeah.
But I didn't take out anything negative. I am not a negative person. You can tell.
Yeah.
I'm positive. So why would I discuss anything negative about any candidate? Then there was get picked?
There was no game theory. A lot of people speculated there was game theory that we'll put a mix of people that will assume some won't make it out of committee, and then we'll end up with the the ones that we do want. Everyone was the number one Only
one. One. That was Matt.
Matt. Happened with Matt Howard? How did that process work?
He was tortured by his attorney general in the first term, and we were not going to have that ever again. Right? So we needed strong backbone. Mhmm. Strong capacity, of which Matt Gaetz has it.
Yeah. And I know Matt Gaetz, and he has it. Right? But we did not know what that vet was gonna say from that report from Congress. So here was the idea.
We fight for him, and we fight for him to get through. And then we read the report. The report's not bad. Remember, the president's been tortured by people blaming him for stuff that never happened. Oh, 30 ago, he raped this woman in the dressing room of Bloomingdale's.
I mean, what a load of crap. Right? It's just not true. None of it's true. It's ridiculous.
So he comes at this saying, I know you're going to get tortured with ridiculous. Right? So then he says, If it's ridiculous, then we support Matt. And if it's not, we have Pam right here, right now.
So that was lined up.
So that everybody knows it's right here, right now. Yeah. And it's three d chess.
Okay.
So we read it. Pam. It's like Pam in a hundredth of a second.
Right.
And Pam is a rock star. And you could argue that you would say, Well, why didn't you pick her first? You know what? He's the president. He plays three d chess.
He did it his way. And you know what? But there was no candidate up there who wasn't right. Right? And we could talk about all the detail and how we thought about it, where it went, but it was so thoughtful, so intuitive, and so right.
And what does it produce? The greatest cabinet ever. The most capable, thoughtful, best able to communicate. I mean, it's so fun to be in a room with these people, cause these are world class people, the best ever I mean,
we shouldn't betray confidence, but I mean, we were in a room earlier this week with several of them and everyone had a moment to speak. It was unbelievable.
I mean, look,
Every single one of them, you're like
I mean, he's fan
of us. Could have been a leader of the country. Like, every
They're all great. Yeah. That's the point. He picked. Yeah.
He picked greatness. Now I was the recruiter, so I was recruiter in chief.
I I can understand why now, by the way.
Well, think about it. If you take someone like me Yeah. And you say, just be a headhunter. Yeah. I swear to you, I can be the greatest headhunter ever lived.
Because think about it. What's the odds of saying, okay, Howard, your whole job is just be ahead
§04Balancing the budget and fixing GDP
of them. Find the best guys.
I promise you I'll be really good
at Okay.
Can we go
back to Doge? So you talked about the gratis vendors. Maybe there's other stuff that you can do with executive action, president can do with Doge, etcetera. Can we talk about congressional budgets? How how do we actually balance a budget without bringing congress along?
And is the plan to bring congress along? I've asked this of Besant. I've asked this several times since we've been here, and it's the thing that gives me the most heartache and the most headache is I worry about whether this actually gets there given congressional interests.
I think Congress works with something called scoring.
Yeah.
Right? That that if it comes from their pen, it counts. If it doesn't come from their pen, it doesn't count. But the fact is money always counts. It just doesn't count for their scoring, but their scoring is only part of the game.
Right? The outcome of the game is what matters to me, Elon, our cabinet, and Donald Trump. Okay? The outcome of the game. And I'm telling you, the outcome of the game by me and Elon.
Now a funny part of it is, so I invite Elon to Madison Square Garden. He doesn't want to leave Pennsylvania. Right? Because he you know, Elon, he's committed to Pennsylvania. Yeah.
So I convince him he's got to come, and we have a plan. I'm going to say to him, so I everyone else gets introduced by the voice of God. I'm the only one who introduces Elon. So Elon comes on stage with me. There's the two of us on stage in Madison Square Garden, the only time the two of us are on stage.
I'm the fourth speaker. He's the third from the end. JD is second from the end, and Donald Trump is last. Okay. So he's supposed to say when I I say to him, How much are you going to cut?
The deal was he's going to cut $1,000,000,000,000 And then he's supposed to say, And how much are you going to earn? And I'm supposed to say, dollars 1,000,000,000,000. And then we're supposed to say, Together, we're going to balance the budget of The United States Of America. That's the little sort of thing. So I ask Elon, how much are going to cut?
He because
He said 2,000,000,000,000.
Well, because we're in front of 22,000 people and the place is erupting. He says 2,000,000,000,000. And then I'm sitting there going and I'm like, I think I said alrighty then.
Alrighty then.
Or something like that. You know what mean? Like, what was I supposed to say? Yeah. You know?
So later when he walks back to a trillion
No. You were you were caught off guard, but I mean
Did he ask quite how much are gonna No.
No. Because he said 2,000,000,000,000.
He's got it all. Don't worry, Howard. Yeah.
Like like I said, alright. Alrighty then. Yeah. And that was that. So then I walked off stage and, you know, he said 2,000,000,000,000.
So was like, I'm gonna what am I gonna say? But the answer was always, right, that 25% of the waste, fraud, and abuse is a trillion dollars.
Right.
And he's gotta cut and find the waste, fraud, and abuse of a trillion dollars.
Okay.
Okay? And that my job is to raise $1,000,000,000,000 of exogenous new revenues.
New revenue for the government.
And we, right? I'm telling you, I've been here now two months. Yeah. Right? I am more confident and more excited.
Tell us how it happens.
Well, hold on a second. So Howard, let's let's finish this, then we'll move to tariffs and revenue generation. So there's a lot of domestic terrorism. Is that the response to try to slow down the expense side of the house? Is it is it basically to put fear into people that are trying to find this waste and fraud?
Is that is that what that is? Burning of the dealerships, the
you're I I describe it to people this way. Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks
Mhmm.
This month. My mother-in-law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain. Mhmm. She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up, and she'll get it next month.
Yeah.
A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining. And if all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right? Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen. Yeah. Because whoever screams is the one stealing.
Yeah. Because my mother-in-law is not calling. I mean, come on, your mother, 80 year olds, 90 year olds, they trust the government. They trust, okay, maybe it got screwed up. Big deal.
They're not gonna call and scream at someone, but someone who's stealing always does. Yeah. So what happens is we need to get to so the people who are getting that free money, stealing the money, inappropriately getting the money, have an inside person who's routing the money. They are going to yell and scream. But real America
is going to be
rewarded because here's the key.
Benefit of the doubt.
Not one penny should stop going to we're the richest country on Earth. Yeah. Here's the way I say it. I said we have We have a $6,500,000,000,000 budget. We have $4,500,000,000,000 of revenues.
Yep. Okay? We lose $2,000,000,000,000 a year. Yep. We have a $29,000,000,000,000 GDP, right?
Which people don't understand, which I'll explain a little bit. And we have $36,000,000,000,000 in debt. Yeah. What number didn't I say to a business person? What's our balance sheet worth?
Right. Right.
I say $500,000,000,000,000. Right. The president says a quadrillion. But at 500,000,000,000,000 or a quadrillion, 30 6 trillion? We're rich.
We don't have to take 1p from someone who deserves Social Security. Not one penny from someone who deserves Medicaid and Medicare. What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who's not hurt, who's on disability for fifty years. It's ridiculous. And they have another job.
And do we have to monetize our assets?
We need to be smart. That's all we need to be. And I'm going to tell you things that are just smart. They're not, Oh my God, this is most brilliant thing ever. This is just smart.
There are so many smart things we can do. Like, you know, we'll talk about the post office. Right? Think about this. The post office has 625,000 people who work there, and they go to your house every day.
You know what the census does? The census hires 625,000 people, trains them, teaches them, as interviews 2,000,000 people, trains and teaches them, hires cars. About this?
That's pretty You're genius. That's pretty smart, Howard.
Right? Okay.
Like, obvious. Right.
But here's what it is. Tell you what I'm saying.
You're so right.
I'm really good at pattern recognition. Okay. Here's one. Like, tell me six twenty five of one and I can point that six twenty five of another. This is the genius I bring to the government.
Responsible for all the core data collection as well,
aren't you?
Isn't commerce responsible for generating a
lot of the Oh, GDP?
For economic data.
Oh, that's right. I get to talk about GDP and how I'm going to clean up the nonsense that isn't GDP. You know, I can explain that. If you make a tank and someone buys a tank, that is GDP.
Yeah.
But a thousand people thinking about buying a tank, right, who take your tax money and I give it to them and they go, I wonder, should we buy a tank or not? That's not GDP.
Right. You're saying government spending should not be counted in GDP.
No. Government spending to buy a tank. Right. Should be. Right.
Government spending
That's nonproductive.
Nonproductive
should not This so important. Don't think a lot of people realize this. How how much of GDP is nonproductive government spending?
How about we do one thing? Yeah. GDP. D means domestic. P is productive domestic production.
It's not consumption.
Right.
If I go out and buy a Toyota.
Right.
Right? It's not GDP. Right? If I buy a Chevy that's made in America, that's a D. Right?
So people think it's like a consumption model.
Metric. Yeah.
Right? That's not it. And you could check another one is is gross domestic income. Right. That's also a good So by the way, they grow about the same rate.
It's kind of fun.
Right.
So the key for me is to take out the part that if I cut nonproductive, a million government employees who are nonproductive, meaning they don't make tanks.
Right.
Right? If I take that out, it's gonna look like our GDP declined. But you'd say, but what really happened? No. Our expenses went down.
This is so important, by the way, because people talk about a recession, and a lot of people create a lot of red lights and alarm bells about we're gonna go into a recession if we cut all this spending. But the follow on effect of cutting nonproductive spending is that the workforce and those dollars flow into more productive parts of the economy where we make more things, we create more jobs, we create higher wages. And that's the theory that you guys are trying to execute against. I don't think a lot of people in the general public fully understand that it's so important to kind of explain and get across it.
Okay. If we put three people behind us, and they sat behind us, and they did nothing, and each of us gave them $125,000 just like this, here you go. And they just sat there. Right? What is that?
Right. That's not GDP. Right. That's actually me taking my money and giving it to them. We've produced nothing.
We've no purpose of the earth. It was my money. The income, however I earned my income was mine, and I just gave it to them. They didn't really earn income. It's really a transfer pricing model.
That is currently considered GDP, and it's nonsense. So if I stopped paying them, right, what would I do? The first thing you'd say is, Well, then why am I paying so much tax? Bang. Okay?
So now we're in the concept of where we're
So Howard, do you have an intuition on what the actual GDP number is? I'm sure you do.
If you take out nonproductive spending.
Yeah. But I'm not gonna talk about it until we release it because that's the proper way to do stuff.
Got it.
Right? But and I'm gonna break that out.
I think it's 25%.
And I'm gonna break it out for the last twenty years, and what you're going to see is every time the court or just before an election, all the government spending happens right then and there. And so all a sudden you have this jump in GDP. Right. Total lie. Right.
Total lie. They basically, they just take all this money and they jack it into the quarter. So that we have that, and you'll see it. It goes, duh duh duh duh duh duh. And then they can make it And what do you think the first quarter is?
Wham o. Right. Or the second quarter's wham o. Why? Because you pre spent it.
Right, right.
And then you have this whole and it's gross. Yeah. Okay? That's the only way to us, you're like, really? It's so manipulated?
Let me ask And the answer is,
And to your point the game that's being played is we're going to take taxpayer dollars that people don't understand once you give it to the government. We're going to create these waves of fake growth that try to tip elections so that then the grift and the waste and all the fraud can then continue for as many years until the jig gets replayed over and over again. And it seems like the buck is stopping with you guys because you've exposed it.
It's going to, and that's the idea. The idea is to take a trillion of waste, fraud, and abuse out. Yeah. And then make a trillion from having other people resetting global trade, and once you understand global trade, and how it makes sense and where it came from.
Can you explain that
to us?
Sorry, before we get there, want ask one last question on the cuts. Can we speak in an, do we need to speak in a more empathetic way? Because that trillion dollars of spending flows into someone's pocket. Some percentage of that pays people a salary and they live on that income. And I think a lot of the No.
Okay I think this is important for you to highlight because a lot of people are reacting to Elon and Doge and the budget cuts saying you're destroying jobs, you're taking money away from people that need their jobs. Why rich people are taking away I'm
give you a sad example.
And so, like, help us understand, are people going to lose their jobs?
I'm gonna give you a sad We all remember during the COVID there was the PPP money. Yeah. Right. Remember that? Yeah, totally.
So it was proven that 200,000,000,000 of the 1,200,000,000,000.0 was going to Chinese fraud gangs. What? Why?
Is that proven?
You just make up a company. Right. You know, Joe's Deli.
Yeah.
You make it up. Joe's Deli. Right? Say you're in trouble, file, and they sent you money. Yeah.
So why wouldn't Chinese gangs do that? Come on. So we show not we, but people showed the government, those people, that money, and instead of stopping, they said, Yeah, but we can't stop because there are real people who need the money. And so what happens is because there's no no one's ever been fired ever for sending money to the wrong place. People send it on purpose.
I'm not saying everybody sends it on purpose. I'm saying there are some people who send it on purpose.
Yeah.
Some people who are complete morons, and and enormous number of people who work for the government who are awesome. I mean amazing people. Right? But what percentage? Okay?
There's 5,900,000 people who work for the government. You're like, wow, that's like so many and we're paying them all. And how many do you really need? I mean, if the answer is 2,000,000, wow. And we could talk about how we understand it and how we're going to retrain society for the AI industrial revolution is coming, which is going to create the greatest set of jobs and greatest set of growth ever.
Ever.
Okay? But that but then and we can talk about that. Yeah. But the key is stop sending money to the wrong place so we can make sure we can always defend sending money to the right place. I would never allow, if I can stand it, to not pay somebody who retired at 65 their benefits.
I find it disgusting when we're the richest country in the world and some politician says, in order to save social security, rather than getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse, we should move it to 70. Yeah. How about no? How about we're rich enough to give people the benefit of the bargain Yeah. Of being a great American?
But let's put great people in charge.
That's really well said. Think that that's really well said. Let's put a pin in let's put a pin in this because Great. So let's, Howard, explain to us global trade as you understand it, and then the context of tariffs, and maybe historically, and what role they play now.
§05Tariff history and strategy, global trade
So I remind people that on the Earth there was the Dark Ages. So the Dark Ages meant that the world knew how to read, and then because of religious and other actions, they burned all the books. And literally, the Earth stopped learning how to read for five hundred years or four hundred years. We didn't know how to read. And we knew how to read before.
So how could you forget? So America was built on tariffs with no income tax. No income tax till 1913. None. Greatest, richest country in the world.
So when Donald Trump says, Make America great again, what he's talking about is from 1880 to 1913, when the country had so much money that we had blue ribbon commissions, which you guys would have been on, right, to try to figure out how to spend the money. Right. Right? And no income tax. Then we put in the income tax in 1913.
Why? Because we're entering World War Yeah. And don't we all need to contribute to protect democracy and to protect our way of life? Right? Then what happens is the world goes into chaos.
We come out of chaos, Right? And then we're starting to think about, what do we do? What do we do? And then 1929, the stock market crashes. Right?
1933, we start to say, Oh, oh, oh, God, we forgot. We need to do tariffs. Nineteen thirty three. How can you do tariffs when the markets crash, the world's going into depression, and you're going do tariffs in 1933? You can't charge the rest of the world money unless the rest of the world's okay.
That's right.
So it was too little, too late. Right? So then we come out of World War II. It's 1945. We need to rebuild the world.
Okay? So we decide we're going to take our tariffs down. And we'll let them here's the key. We'll let them have tariffs be up, and we will export the power of our economy to let them rebuild. And we'll let them rebuild.
And that's what happens. So 1945, we have the Marshall Plan. Right? And we do it in Japan, of course, because they need to be rebuilt. What's the difference?
Right? So they need to be rebuilt. And then what happens? We have the 50s and we have the Korean War. So we let them rebuild, which means low tariffs here, high tariffs there.
Low tariffs here, high tariffs there. Then we have the Vietnam War. Right? So now all of sudden, we have all of Southeast Asia. Low tariffs here, high tariffs there.
You know what the best example I can give you to make it crystal clear? Kuwait. We spend almost $100,000,000,000 freeing Kuwait.
Mhmm.
Right? You know who has the highest tariffs against The United States Of America? The number one country with the highest tariffs against The United States Of America? Kuwait. And you think, What?
That's insane. But here's what it is. If you go back to this understanding the way America thinks, you need to be rebuilt. You were just destroyed. Right?
All their oils were You remember Red? The guy's name was Red something. And he was the guy who capped all the There were fires and all the oil wells, and he capped them all. And it was amazing. So we let them put up high tariffs.
But you know what the problem is? Then we forget. Right. And we let it go. Yeah.
So Donald Trump comes in and says it's got to stop.
Okay. So that's an incredible context now for tariffs. It's like it was a long term strategy that essentially says okay great, there's rebuilding to be done sort of almost out of the largesse of America. We're going to enable that to happen so we'll lower tariffs here and we'll support the high tariff regimes over there.
We let it happen.
We let
it happen.
On purpose. But it's an incredible thing you're also saying though, which is that it's inexorably linked to this repetitive machinery of war because those create these boundary conditions over and over again. Always. Where there's so much destruction abroad that America then feels compelled to have to do this.
Correct. That's exactly right. So what happens is, and then you say to yourself, okay, I get the forties, I get the fifties, I get the seventies. Right? But eighties?
Nineties? Two thousand? Two thousand '10? What what? Time out.
Twenty so Donald Trump gets elected 2016. Who understands this? Okay? Let me give you a hint. Donald J.
Trump. Who else? Nobody.
Nobody. Yeah.
Right? You'd say, wow. He understand and how long has he been talking about it? Forty years.
Yeah.
Why? Because in the eighties, he's saying, what are you doing?
Well, let me give you the economist's counter, which and then you can respond to it, which is tariffs on imports in The United States will ultimately pass to the consumer higher prices, inflationary, so the things that our consumers, that our citizens are buying gets more expensive, and as a result, they buy less, and it's recessionary. It shrinks the economy, it shrinks spending. It shrinks consumption. Can you kind of respond to the you know, that's the typical economist refrain on this independent, and maybe they're isolating the imbalance.
Okay. India has a 50% tariff on average. 50. We have on average four. Okay?
I would say to the person who said that, Can I ask you a question? What are you talking about? They're 54. Here's what you're talking about. When we're all equal and everything is free and fair, if you raise tariffs and they raise tariffs, isn't it bad for society?
The answer is, of course it is. But there's two differences. Number one, let's do human beings first. Before we go to the math, let's go to human beings. Once upon a time, we had an auto industry in Detroit.
Okay? And in Ohio.
But
Detroit. Then some genius named Bill Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement, or corporations, you can screw Americans and go get cheap labor in Mexico and break the unions by going to Canada. Now, if you were General Motors, I'd say, it's like my birthday.
Yeah.
But if you're a worker who comes from Michigan or Ohio, they just signed you know what they signed? Worst statistic I'm going to tell you today. Average life expectancy of high school educated workforce. So by the way, United States Of America, Two thirds is high school educated, one third is college educated. The difference today of average life expectancy between those two categories is seven years.
Seven year average life expectancy. It's not the air. It's not the food. It's not the medicine. It's despair.
My grandfather worked in the auto factory. My father worked in the auto factory. I have a good life. I'm going do Friday night lights and football. I mean, it's to be a good life.
I have a good middle class life. I'm a member of the United Auto Workers. Life is going to be good. The factory moves to Mexico. And I am just screwed because the government of the United States of America didn't care about industrial policy and didn't protect me at all.
And let cheap labor in Mexico, I'm sure the Mexican people went from $4 an hour to $5 an hour, and they're kicking it. But I destroyed you. And that is incredible failure of industrial policy, which nobody wants to talk about. But you talk about it as average life expectancy, and you're talking about it about reshoring and building the life for the people who are America. That's why you elect Donald Trump president.
You elect him because I didn't spend one minute doing politics until he asked me to help him. But when he asked me to help him, I started spending time with him. When did I learn this? And who taught me this? The president of The United States.
This is not me teaching him. You understand? This is him teaching me, and you can see him talking about it in the eighties. Right. Right?
He's been talking about this for and what it does is it means resource. So number one, we have to care about human beings. That's a globalist view. Yes. If I take my production and move it to Mexico, it's better for me, Mr.
Corporation. Okay? But it's not better for me, Mr. U. S.
Citizen of The United States Of America who's working at a car plant. That's bad news for him. Okay? And that's number one. And now let's go to number two, which is the math of it all.
If we say free and fair trade, I want to remind you, there ain't no such thing. There is no country in this world that is free trade. Zero. And we are the lowest and the dumbest because everybody else is higher and more protective.
Yeah.
So they protect their farmers. Here, I'm sitting at the dinner, Modi comes to town. And I say to him, when Donald Trump we have dinner, and after the niceties Donald said, Go ahead, Howard. And I said, You have 1,400,000,000 people. And you brag to us how amazing your economy is.
Why won't you buy a bushel of our corn? Who buy a bushel of our corn? So our farmers can't go to him, but his, of course, can come at us. Right? Why is that okay?
You know, and we can go into all the stuff that mean, I don't even wanna go into it because if I had another hour, could
retaliate stories
and have fun with that.
Just address the pricing inflation that arises from tariffs. Talk to the average person who says the cost of a toy at Walmart just went up by 50%.
Inflation comes from printing more money. Okay? Let's say The United States Of America had $1,000,000,000,000 That's all we had. That's it. No more.
Okay? And I want to buy a bottle of water, and you want to buy a bottle of water. One came from America, and the other one came from Fiji. Right? Then and I tariff Fiji.
Then that water is a dollar and a quarter, and this water is a dollar. That's not inflation. That means that one's more expensive. But I can choose to buy this one.
Right.
Okay? So you're right. This toy might be more expensive, and that toy's not. I get it, but that's not inflation. Here's inflation.
Snap my fingers. Now we have 2,000,000,000,000. Right? That water's $1.5 That water's $1.25 Yeah. Everything's more expensive.
That's inflation.
Okay. So inflation without tariffs is everything's a buck and a quarter. What about Inflation with tariffs is a buck and a quarter, right, and a buck 50. And so you have to understand inflation doesn't come from tariffs. Certain products, if I put a tariff on a mango, right, we can't grow mangoes in America.
We just can't grow a mango. If you put a tariff on a mango, the mango would be more expensive.
Yes.
Okay? But if the president chose to put a tariff on a mango, then the mango is more expensive. That just becomes a consumption tax. It's like a sales tax. Yes.
Right? It's a sales tax. It's a consumption tax. If I want to buy a mango, costs more money.
And you can offset that with a reduction in
income So then that's just like another version of income tax.
How do
you think Okay. The idea is to not do that. Yeah. That's the idea. The idea is to is to choose things that are going to reassure.
Yeah. Exactly. Come
here. This is so important.
Hire my people. Yeah. Bring it home.
Yeah.
Right?
By the way, I wanna just speak as an entrepreneur. I see the economic incentive. When I see the price for certain things go higher because you have to import and pay a tariff, I'm like, why don't we make that here? We should be doing that. And there's gonna be a lot of that kind of entrepreneurial opportunity that will arise from making things.
And this is just how the markets work. Someone will say
2,000,000,000,000 so far. I mean, he's been in office, right, like, seven weeks, eight weeks?
Yeah.
$2,000,000,000,000 of committed domestic production coming back because of his tariffs. TMC saying, I'll build, you know, semiconductor wafers. Know, everything we do, they're gonna build it here. That word is never coming.
Yeah.
Yeah. Unless the tariff so what happens is you bring it here, you create the jobs here, and then they avoid the tariff.
And by the way, those jobs are better paying, and they're more productive than the government fund is.
Haru, what do you wanna do about, like, the the narrow set of products that are more high value than the Mango that maybe can't be made here or at least can't be made here in the next five to ten years? So TSMC can make chips. Think that's great. ASML who makes the extremely complicated lithography machines as an example, can't necessarily do that for another five or six years here. So there's these narrow cases where tariffs can exploit a market or perturb a market where there is no multi vendor solution, right?
But that's still critical. How do you think about that set of stuff?
You know, the beauty of putting Donald Trump in the White House is it's giant three-dimensional chess. Yeah. Okay? So we all have Stockholm syndrome for the Internal Revenue Service. We think we like the Internal Revenue Service.
And we don't say it. But when we say we're going to charge a tariff and other countries who lean on us, who rely on us, who bleed on us, who can't live without the oxygen that is our economy. Because remember, the thing about our economy is, while we have a $29,000,000,000,000 GDP, are the consumer of 20,000,000,000,000.
Yeah. Right.
And this is the key thing. We buy everybody's stuff. So who's more important? Let's say they have an economy that produces stuff, and we have an economy that buys stuff. Yeah.
The customer's always right. We all know the customer's always right because if no one buys it, they can't produce So everybody needs our economy. When? Now. I mean, to the fact that China consumes less than 10,000,000,000,000 and primarily tries to figure out how to sell it to itself.
Yeah. Right? So they don't buy anybody else's
stuff. Right.
So we are the world's consumer. Yeah. We're the world's customer. Right. Right?
So that's point number one. So we want them to come here, and if they can't come here, what if you pass? K? Now let's say there was a 20% tariff, and in order to sell his goods, he knows he can raise the price 10%, but he can't really raise it 20. So he eats 10, and the price goes up 10, let's just say.
That 20 goes into the coffers of The United States Of America from the President of The United States who said, We're going to balance the budget, and then his goal is to drive down income tax in The United States Of America, including a waiving tax. So what has he said so far? With that in his pocket, knowing that this is what we're going to try to do, what does he announce? No tax on tips. No tax on overtime.
No tax on Social Security. Why is he saying those things? Right? Because he knows that he's got Elon's gonna cut and Howard's gonna raise, and he's gonna have the tools to deliver on his promise. That'll unlock the the money.
More money for folks to spend.
And they'll have more money to spend. Right? So if you if you actually get the external revenue service, right, which of course I named you know I named it, but, you know what the funny part is? I came up with the name. I wrote a truth, right, and I sent it to DJT, and I wrote, This is my huge idea.
You know, it's one of those things that goes like know? Then, my huge idea. Yeah. Right? And because it's the external revenue service.
But it only matters because I work for him. Mhmm. Because if I worked for Joe Biden or anybody else, they wouldn't care at all. So the fact that he loves a great idea the minute you say it, and it becomes his idea, my idea is useless. A good idea in his hands Okay.
So speaking of great value
in the world. So the external revenue service, if we went back to Make America Great Again, which is pre-nineteen thirteen, which is let them pay, you don't pay. And what that means is let them pay, try to waive, balance the budget, try to waive tax on everybody who makes less than $150,000 Right? And look what you did for America. Holy moly.
Look what
you by the way, labor
costs come smashing down because it's tax free.
Yeah.
So if their earnings are tax free, right, then they're happy to work because they get the money.
Right.
What happens is cost of labor comes down because we're run correctly as a This is what I'm trying to do.
§06Trump Cards, building better government software, AI thoughts
Of potentially great ideas, can you tell us about the Trump card?
Sure. So
Whose idea was that, and how did that come about?
John Paulson had a call with Donald Trump, and was talking to Donald Trump, and was kicking around the idea of we should sell, Right? Why do we give away visas? We should sell them. And they're talking about it. Donald Trump calls me, gets me on the phone.
Right? We all talk about it. Right? And then we go from there. And then my job is to figure out, like I always figure out, how to do it.
What's the path?
Do you have the path?
Of course. About two weeks from today, it goes out. Okay? Elon's building me the software right now. Yeah.
Right? And then out it goes. And by the way, yesterday I sold a thousand.
Oh, you did? I got a poly market I created on how many you guys are going to sell this year. Cool. Yeah. Curious to see how many.
That's fantastic. Do you want to tell people just the rough Yeah. What are
the terms? Okay. Yeah.
So if you're a US citizen, you pay global tax. Yeah. Okay? So you're not going to bring in outsiders who are to come in to pay global tax. So if you have a green card, which used to be a green
card,
now gold card, you're a permanent resident of America. You can be a citizen, but you don't have to be. And none of them are gonna choose to be. What they're gonna do is they're gonna have the right to be in America. They'll pay $5,000,000 and they have the right to be in America.
They have the right to be in America. As long they're good people. And they're vetted. And they're vetted. And they can't break the law.
We could always take it away if they're, like, evil or mean or bad or something. Not mean, but, you know, if they do something horrible, you can take it away. Right? But the idea is if I was not American and I lived in any other country, I would buy six. One for me, one for my wife and my four kids, because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport, to go to America and then to say, Hello, Mr.
Lutnick. Hello, Mr. Lutnick and the Lutnick family. Welcome home. Right.
That's what I want to hear. I don't want to hear I can't come here when there's a, you know, a horrible war, a horrible whatever. Right. I want to be able to go home. Right?
And once I'm home, I might as well build a business.
Yeah.
So you have the most productive people in the world gonna start spending time here. They're have a family office. They're gonna hire some people.
And you're not gonna tax their external worldwide income.
I only tax the money they make in America, which is what we do now.
Yeah.
But their global income stays out.
And they pay 5,000,000. And how many people do you think there are that could qualify in the world?
There are 37,000,000 people in the world who are capable of buying the car. That's In case you were wondering.
37,000,000. That's a lot more than ChatGPT told me.
Who are capable of buying.
Who are capable of buying it.
Now I'm not saying they will, but they're capable of buying.
How many do think he'll sell?
The president thinks we can sell a million.
So 5,000,000,000,000 I
think a million is reasonable. I mean, look, as an outsider who came in and got his green card and then got his citizenship and now pay global tax every which way known to man, if this were available fifteen years ago after the Facebook IPO, that's what I would have done. It would have been much better for me theoretically. Now I'm happy to pay the taxes you're So
the idea is, and it's going to go fast, meaning you apply, right? We take your money and, you know, the way computers work now, they have these cool things, like these computer things. They're amazing. You're like, you know, you put stuff in and they actually check It's fantastic. You don't even have to plug them in anymore.
It's amazing. Like, they get the information through the air. I mean, you could do a better vet than anybody in government has ever done it before in one second.
Right.
Better than they've ever done it
before. So I'll I mean, I'll tell you a quick story. Monday night, Elon was telling us about this, me and Saks, and one of the things he was saying is he's been helping you build this site. But one of the most difficult parts of it is it turns out like all of the CPB infrastructure to do all these checks, it's like a lot of COBOL mainframes and the amount of technology that has to get rewritten. And so this is a question.
It's incredible that the most advanced nation in the world deployed systems in 1970, which at the time probably felt very cutting edge to everybody in the room at the time. But to your point has not evolved the last fifty years.
It's always there's always a reason. Okay? And the reason is it's a great reason, which is that in the mid seventies, we changed the way government accounts for software. We we took a ten year contract, and you have to take the contract up front. So if I if I'm signing a contract with you for ten years, a million a year, I have to take it against my budget for 10,000,000, so I'm not doing it.
See, I'm only here for four years. Yeah. Everything's not the case. Everything's So what happens is when was the last time we bought software? 1975.
Where? Everywhere.
Yeah.
Why? Because it's illogical. Now what I'm doing is I'm saying, Okay, I got to collect tariffs. Right? So I go to one of the great software companies of the earth, and I say, want you to give me You're going to build for me for America.
You're going build the greatest customs processing ever. We're going to take a photograph. It's going to know what it is. It's going to go through AI. It's going to know what it is.
It's to know what the tariff is. It's going to determine the percentage. It's going to know the weight. So when you weigh the thing plus the package, you'll know what it weighs. You don't even have to open it.
It'll weigh exactly the right amount, and you'll do this and that. And these are all things that I know and all things I could figure out. Because you know the way gold works? A gold bar is about 40 pounds. You know the way I know the gold bar is they weigh it, and they weigh it out 13 digits of decimals.
So basically, if you touch the thing, it's not going to be 13 digits of decimals. So you have a perfect scale, and you weigh it, and that's like the code. Yeah. Right? Because you can't touch it.
If you touch it, you'll change the and you can't get it right out 13 digits. It's not possible. So that's what we do with stuff. You know what it weighs. Right?
Three T shirts if you're sending the same three T shirts, they always weigh the same.
But what's incredible is you're convincing these companies to basically like do right for America and build this software for you. Do think that's going be a movement throughout the government?
Here's the idea. I say, build it for me for free. I put it in for free. I don't know. What other countries in the world do you think are going to buy now?
Right. If it works for us.
Well, remember, you have to connect to me. Yeah. So every country is going to buy.
Right.
And it's a great business model. Right. If the greatest customer in the world says they'll take it, life's good.
Right.
So what should the greatest customer in the world get? I don't know, a good deal?
Yeah.
Right? And you got a guy like me there. Everybody else is like,
you have to change how government operates if you're going to scale that. You can't go negotiate every contract out there for every department.
Mean, it's not that hard when you say it's free. You know, free is like not that hard. I mean, you Yes, it is. And then what I do is I get the head of that technology company. Yeah.
Because then I use my superpower, which is my friendship with Donald Trump. And then I go in the Oval Office and we call them together. Right. And we call the CEO together and make them promise the president. Because promising Howard is, like, really nice.
Promising DJT? That's something else entirely. Right. So I get these guys to promise Donald Trump that they'll build it.
Right.
Now let's see him renege. Yeah, that ain't going happen. Right. So, you know, when you get Elon to say, I'm going build it for you, and he says it in front of the president, like, how great is that? You got, like, the greatest technologist, the richest guy in the world, and he says, I'll build it for you.
You're like, thank God. Right? And then I get, you know, I go to the heads of Google and Microsoft and Amazon. They're all for America. Mhmm.
Building for us.
Right.
For free.
Right.
To make America better because they are great American companies. And in exchange for that, we're going to help them through all sorts of things that are towards fairness. Just towards fairness because I you can't get me to do something outside the world of fairness. But I tell you what. If it's unfair, I'll be on your side as hard and as positive as I possibly can be.
Talk to us about some of the hot button markets that you're going to have to navigate. You know, you are in charge of export controls, which is a very important thing in AI. We don't allow export licenses for the most advanced NVIDIA chips. We don't want training necessarily to be done outside of The United States. We're okay with inference happening outside The United States in certain conditions.
Maybe just talk about that for a second. How are you going to navigate AI? How do you think about that from your seat?
All right, so I'll give you an example that's sort of live right now. Right? So we have DeepSeq, we have Quen, we have Doubou, And I don't think we should be having apps in America, and I don't think we should have their website in America because they all go back home. Okay? But it's open source, and I want our American companies, including college students, to be able to download it and build on it.
Right. But I want to make sure that there's no part of it that says, Send it home to Dada. Right. Or store now and analyze later.
Right.
Right? So I need that out. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to embrace what you guys know. You guys used to product evaluations. Yeah.
So let's do security now. Exactly. Right? And say your industry, and you can't let it get overrun by Chinese. Because what happens is, if there's a policy, right, all of a sudden 100,000 people from China come in, and they say they're John Smith and Todd Peterson, right, but they're not.
And then you think the vote is this way.
Yeah.
And it's easily manipulated. So we have to be very careful. But my first instinct is to lean on, and that's why I see it's important to have David Sacks as my partner. Right? Someone who knows it and someone who can live and breathe the industry.
Right? And so what we're going to have is we're going to have security evaluation. Let's say if the security evaluation model says that this is a good model, then people can download it. But it's got to go through the industry. And I want it to feel and smell like what we're good at.
I don't want to create like, Oh, this is what government's doing. I I don't want the government to do it.
I want
us to do it, but I've got to figure out the right way to do that.
Right.
And that's important for Articulate
standards, articulate sort of the concept, and then let a lot of these private market actors kind of help fill in the gaps
and compete.
The only thing I think I really need to do, and that's with regulatory, is post quantum cryptography. Yeah. Okay? I think that is vital to us.
That's right. Yeah.
Right? Yeah.
That asymmetric I would bet this happens during this administration. He bets post.
No. I'm going to put it out because, you know, we all have passwords. Right? For those who are watching who don't know this, our password's called asymmetric, right? Yours is different than mine.
Right. That's the key, and cryptography is just the computing. So asymmetric, key cryptography, you have your password, I have mine, and they're the key. That's right. Right?
Obviously, the central hub has our key. Duh. Yeah. Okay? A quantum computer we know can break all of them in a nanosecond.
Like, all of them in the whole world, including the CIA, all of them are, say, 2,048, all of them can get broken in and out of second by a quantum computer. Yeah. So the defense of it is called post quantum cryptography. Right? We know how to do it, and we'll come out with a rule that says America's got to protect itself.
New standards. And by the way, there are Because every once
in a while, you need to have a new standard that says, it's coming. We know what it is. Please God, go put it in because we need to have it in. We need America to live in. Kind of
§07Sovereign Wealth Fund strategy
wait segue. Let's sort of segue now to a couple of things that we can enjoin together in this concept. Crypto, obviously, Bitcoin. You guys announced the strategic Bitcoin reserve. But broadly speaking, you also announced sort of this idea of the sovereign wealth fund.
Can we talk about that? Sort of what is the what is the vision behind that? How do you want that to be executed? How do you think it should be run? What assets are on the table?
What assets and strategies should never be on the table? How are you thinking about it?
The greatest customer in the world, the United States government, the most powerful, the greatest customer buys stuff. We walk in. We're going to buy here's an example I like to use. We're going to buy 2,000,000,000 COVID vaccines. Mhmm.
When we buy it, Pfizer and Moderna stocks are going to triple. They're going to triple. So then we say everyone's going to have this vaccine. If I were after Jared Kushner negotiated the best deal he could, if Howard Lutnick walked in the room, Howard Lutnick would say, what do you think? 20% warrants?
Right. Right? What? So we'd make $50,000,000,000 off of who? Nobody.
We didn't take from anybody. Didn't do it. Okay. The shareholders of Pfizer, who we've just tripled them with our order. Right.
Now, how many of my customers in my life have required that from me? All of them?
All of them.
Like, this isn't like, Oh, Howard, this is the greatest new idea ever. This is just Proper. So I don't view risk of the sovereign wealth fund. I view the first couple of years of the sovereign wealth fund are Scott Bessent and I making money Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Say, well, but you can't invest and lose.
Don't you lose money? No. Why? Well, if I have big daddy of The United States Of America behind me, right? And I'll give you I'll give an example.
We buy missiles episodically. Launch a missile? Buy a missile. Launch a missile? Buy some missiles.
Right? The people who sell us missiles have bad quarterly earnings or good quarterly earnings, but they're episodic. Yeah. Here we go. I will sign a contract with you.
Ten year contract. Cancel it at the end of five years to buy X amount of missiles, and I'll pay you quarterly. Then they can take that contract. They can go finance it. Their financing costs go.
Their earnings are steady, and their multiple improves, and their stock doubles.
Goes up.
Yep. And I say, in exchange for that reasonable thought, have it a little once. Give me
what I stock. Just for people that don't understand, give me some stock. Give me a little bit of your stock.
But but don't give me some stock. Just give me the upside. If I if I help your stock go up
Just a little
I get to share it and you know what do.
Wet my beak a
little bit. And then I take the money for The United States Of America and I put it into the Social Security system in The United States Of America.
Okay. So why have
And then all of a sudden, right? So the Social Security system says it's 4,000,000,000,000 in the hole.
Yeah.
Okay? If we cut the waste fund abuse out, it becomes 1,500,000,000,000.0. And by the way, Frank Bisignano, the greatest executive, the greatest payments executive ever to join the US government is about to get confirmed and take over the Social Security system. Okay? Frank ran Fiserv, a hundred and $20,000,000,000 public payments company.
And when Donald Trump asked him in his interview, Can you handle Social Security? It's $1,300,000,000,000 a year. He goes, Well, see, I handle $500,000,000,000 a day, so Wednesday. Right? And he goes, My whole life, I worry about is getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse.
That's all I care about. Every single day, $5, 2 dollars, 1 dollar. He goes, This is going to be the most fun I've ever had. Yeah. I mean, this Yeah.
Like, this is a Donald Trump administration. This is something that's another planet. Now, course, I recruit Frank, and, you know, I get to have my piece in the game. Yeah. But if we get rid of couple hundred billion, then it's only a trillion 4 in the hole.
We make a trillion 4. Yeah. And that's That baby is finished So is this forever.
Is the sovereign wealth fund a balance sheet for social security? Does social security become more than what it is today? Does it over time offer bigger, greater benefits? And is it basically a pool that holds equities historically? And we talked about this on our show.
It's only ever held treasuries, but it's really kind of a fake treasury. It's got 2,700,000,000,000.0 today, but if we bought the S and P in 1971, when we went off the gold standard with the cash flows that have come in and gone out of social security, we'd have a $15,000,000,000,000 interest in the S and P today.
If it did have that that would have had you have Donald Trump be the president the whole time, which is not a thing.
Right.
Okay.
But is that is that the objective? Is that the sovereign wealth fund is basically for the benefit of retirees in this country, and it becomes like a sovereign wealth fund that?
We have a $36,000,000,000,000 budget deficit. I mean, debt.
Debt. Yeah.
To The United States Of America. We we have a budget deficit of 2,000,000,000,000. So Donald Trump wants to knock down the 2,000,000,000,000. Yep. And then he's focused on the 36,000,000,000,000, which the Social Security is part of it.
Yeah.
So how he allocates it? He was elected president of The United States. I was not.
Yeah.
Okay? I like the Social Security idea because it's really easy to explain to people and sell to people, and so they understand it. But the fact is that it's the same money if I put it in Social Security or I put it on the debt of The United States Of America. And I'm gonna let Donald Trump make that decision. You know why?
Because it's all his idea. And none of it's not mine. So he will decide that. Okay? And he will play it his way.
Right. But but Scott Bessent and I will make more than a trillion dollars for The United States Of America during our term, which is pretty darn cool. Right? And we'll use that. And if that reduces our debt.
Right? But that's not the policy of how we're going to balance the budget. We're to balance the budget. Trump card, tariffs. Getting rid of scams.
I'll give you a scam example. Every boat you've ever seen, like every single cruise ship, supertanker, container ship, you've never seen an American flag ever. In fact, you ever think about the flag you've actually seen? All of you would say, I have no idea what that flag is.
People
got Why is it some flag I've heard of? Yeah. Exactly. Liberia is number one.
Yeah.
And you go, what? No one even knows where Liberia is. Because the answer is it's a flag at convenience. They sell the flag for like $10. Like, they're literally here.
You can have a flag, and you pay no tax. So what happens is a cruise ship in The United States Of America picks up American passengers, goes in The Caribbean, comes back to America, and treats the port as an expense. And all the profits are made in The Caribbean where it pays no tax. That's what I call a tax scam.
Yeah.
I mean, it's unfair to America. We're going to fix that in America. We're going to try to fix a whole bunch of these tax scams. Ireland is my favorite. The country of Ireland last year had a $60,000,000,000 budget surplus.
So we lose 2,000,000,000,000 and they make 60. He'd say, Ireland? What do they do? Oh, they have all of our IP for our great tech
All the tech companies.
All our great tech companies and great pharma companies.
And pharma, yeah.
They all put it there because it's low tax. Yeah. And they don't pay us, They pay them. So that's got to end. So when those things end, tariffs, Trump card, getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax, that's my trillion.
Elon's got to do his trillion. So whenever I see him getting off the rails, he and I go out and we have a strong conversation together that you've got to do your trillion. So you've to focus not on small potatoes. Big, big, big, big, big. I need you to do your side of the trillion.
Now, as it turns out, I'm going to do more than a trillion because I'm me. Elon's probably going to do more than a trillion because he's him. And then what we're going to do is going to, our objective is to smash down the Internal Revenue Service and change America. And then imagine America. This is just an imagination moment.
Okay? We have a balanced budget in The United States. We're starting to knock down the deficit of America. We can cut tax, and we have a gold card, a Trump card, that you can come to America. Which entrepreneur have you ever met who wouldn't buy one?
Yeah. And wouldn't start building businesses when they think the tax rate here is going to come down? Yeah. And eventually it's going to come down to 20% and eventually it's going to come down to 15%. You won't be able to find a plot of land in America.
You know what I predict will happen? I predict they'll just like in the medallion industry for taxi cabs, there'll be a financing industry that'll build up around these these gold cards or these trump cards. So that great entrepreneurs, great executives will be able to finance their purchase along with someone getting venture capital interest or equity interest in their business.
Think But I'm gonna we're gonna take that money. We're gonna so we'll sell them every year.
Yeah.
Right? So they'll knock down our budget deficit, and then eventually, right? If Donald Trump is right and ultimately we can sell 7,000,000 cards, you realize there is no debt in America. No debt in America is a trillion dollars a year in debt coverage. A trillion dollars a year in debt coverage, you know what that changes?
That changes the Internal Revenue Service. You start to rethink, and I just want to remind you, right, we are the richest country on earth. Our balance sheet is 500,000,000,000,000. I'll give you an example. What's the court system of America worth?
Right. Right? What's it worth? Well, how can Nvidia be worth 3,000,000,000,000 without a court system that protects it?
Right.
There's no such thing. So just our everything about us. The infrastructure so awesome.
Yeah.
And you know what happens? Actually like, we get beaten upon and we actually believe it.
Yeah. Could ask Doug Burgum about how undervalued a lot of our real estate is in this country and the potential for it.
We think about it. Biden closed 635,000,000 acres. This is this is electing Joe Biden, head of Saudi Arabia, and he closes the oil wells. Yeah. And all of a sudden, Saudi Arabia falls off the face of the earth broke.
Like, what are we doing? Mhmm. Like, we care about Americans.
Yeah.
Let's make Americans' lives great. Howard? We want clean water. We want clean air.
Yeah.
Okay? We do it better than everybody else. But if we don't here's the one like the hypocrisy. Right? We won't mine lithium in America to make a battery.
Yeah.
But so we so the Australians mine it with coal, and it's messy because they do it like you know, they do it messy. By the way, we breathe the air in three point four days, but who's counting? Right? Then we take it. We put it on a truck.
We take put the truck and put it in a supertanker. We drive the supertanker that pollutes the living heck out of the world across 12,000 miles of ocean, puts it in a truck, and gives it to Elon to make an electric car. Why don't we mine the lithium in Nevada?
Right.
And by the way, we'd mine it cleaner. Right?
And by the way, it's not just lithium. Almost anything that we could possibly conceive of needing over the next couple of decades exists in the Continental United States. We just have had no incentive or no structure regulatory wise that enables the development of it, which is This
is we need to care for us. Make America, you know, America First. How about there's another way to say
it.
While maintaining clean environmental standards.
Don't look. We're never going to do something that's not, like, a hundred times cleaner than everybody else because we care about clean water and clean air. There's none of us who don't care about clean water and clean air. But, you know, like, someone gives you a pill and says, this will save you. And then you look at the statistic, and it saves one in a million people.
And you'd say, why am I taking this pill? I'd say, Well, it could save your life. He'd say, Yeah, but it's like one in a million. Right? That's not logical.
Right? That's the point. Yeah. You know? There's a regulation that's the right thing.
Yeah. And there's a regulation that's the one in a million pill. Like, why do we give a baby, a baby, a hepatitis B vaccine? Do you realize we have a brand new baby and we hold it up and we give it a hepatitis B vaccine? You realize the only way you get hepatitis B is from unprotected sex or a needle?
Like, why are we giving it to a baby? Like, why? And you know what it is? You know what the answer is? Corruption.
That someone in the government got paid to put that in the rules. And because there's no justification. There's no I haven't met a medical doctor who says hepatitis B vaccines on brand new babies make sense. Because by the way, you know what the worst part is? They're over the last ten years.
You need a booster in ten years, so the baby's gonna be 10. We've gotta really be fair to ourselves and be fair Americans, and I think we can be. And I think that's why I'm so excited. That's why our cabinet is so excited. That's why it's so much fun to work for Donald Trump because I am just speaking from his playbook.
Right? Because if you had met me before he said, Will you help me? And he went out to dinner with me and said, So tell me about government. I'd say, government? You mean I pay them taxes?
Like, that's it.
Are you having the time of your life?
Most fun ever because I have every idea either gets blown up or shot down. Okay? Meaning, I come up with lots of ideas, and he says, Nah. Too complex. And you know what?
That's fine. Yeah. But when I come up with the external revenue service and he says, Great idea. And then he speaks of it in his inaugural address, right? It's his idea.
§08How his family reacted to his new role Thanks to our partners for making this happen: Gemini
Yeah.
Because I can't do anything with it. Howard,
last question as we wrap. Tell us about your family. Your kids, how do they think about all of this? Your son's running Canner now. How's that going?
Just give us the lay of the land. How's the Lutnick family?
All right. So I have the best wife. I've been married thirty years. She lets me be me, and she's gorgeous, spectacular. I love my girl.
She agreed. I mean, imagine this. I'm not joining the government. I'm not joining the government. I'm doing this Doge thing with Elon.
I'm not joining. I'm not joining. Honey, we got to move. Like, we got to move two weeks after election day. I'm like, we're moving, and we're going to in five weeks, we're going to live in Washington, okay?
And like so the fact that that wasn't unsettling would be the understatement of a lifetime. Yeah. But she's been the most supportive and fantastic. I have four kids. My oldest son about to turn 29.
I was taking him to kindergarten, so that's why I'm alive. My second son Brandon, I dropped him off in nursing school and then took my oldest son to kindergarten. So the two oldest boys are running Cantor now until I divest.
Is it going well?
I don't know. Oh,
Of course, you're not supposed to know.
It's kind of fun. I would love to talk to them about it.
You have no But
I'm not allowed. Like, literally am not allowed. Yeah. And, you know, we all know the phones. Yeah.
So since the phone's always with me, and I assume the phone is listening. You know, ever since we couldn't take a battery out of our phone, you know the phone is listening. So, you know, I'm not. No. So I never talk to my son.
So I'm sure they're happy, but I don't know how it's going.
Guys, if you're listening, he's doing great, as you can tell.
But, and then my daughter is going to go to med school. Yeah. And she's on a gap year now. And my youngest son, also on a gap year now, and he's going to start Duke in the fall. Right.
So I have the best kids. My kids have lived with me, and they lived with this kind of energy and this positive sort of momentum, and my wife being just a spectacular mom, just keeping them. What we taught our kids, which is a fun one, is I taught them two things. I would sit down with my kids and say, How great is your life? And this is only maybe something that people like we can say.
But I'm talking to my kids, I say, How great is your life? They go, Oh, great. Because they came home and they say, I got a bad grade. Teacher doesn't like me. It's a classic line, right?
Yeah. And I said, Well, how good is your life? They're really good. I go, Could it be any better? No.
Well, do you realize your teacher has given up her whole life? No. And she makes how much money? Yeah. And she's given her whole life to teach you.
Yeah. So can I ask you a question? Is it her job to like you or is it your job for her to like you? Who's failing in what you just said? Right?
It's your job to have her like you. So when she says, Raise your hand, raise your hand! Right. And the other thing is, do me a favor. Color inside the lines.
Okay? In high school, if she says, This guy is orange, the answer to the test is orange. When you get to college, you can argue with the professor all you want. High school, color inside the lines, give the teacher what she wants, make sure she loves you, and you're getting a good grade. That's the rules of life.
Yeah.
And my wife beat that into my children so that they would have it in their souls, in their moral character.
Yeah.
Of someone who's fighting for you needs to have your love and respect back. Yeah. You take them for granted. If you treat them badly, if you treat them like, oh, aren't I so great? Then you deserve what you get.
And my wife has taught that moral fiber into my children, and it resides in them. The other thing my kids have is they have empathy, which is a very unusual thing for young people. And it's because they were raised with their father crying every day. I cried every day until 10/21/2004. Wow.
Every day because I thought of someone I hadn't thought of, you know, or someone would say six fifty eight people died at night. I just there was you can't process all of that death Yeah. Without crying. And the only reason I remember is because as I fell asleep, I told my wife that I didn't cry today, she wrote it down. That's the only reason I remember it.
My kids are fantastic. They've been incredibly supportive, and my wife's the best, and she lives with me in Washington. We bought Brett Baer's house, So I have a nice house, big enough for my ego to expand. Very important.
Your mom hasn't found one that big yet.
I used
to look at
Howard's. You're an incredible American. Yeah. Thank you very much for everything.
This was really fun in coming to talk.
Honestly, this has this has been one of my, I mean, my favorite conversation we've had. Absolute I mean, like
He he's like this all the time.
I mean, we'll have dinner. No. We have dinner. But listen.
Yeah. We have dinner at, like, Nikesha's house. He's a good friend of ours. He runs Palo Alto Networks. And Howard's like, you just push the button.
You can just sit and just listen. It's incredible. But you can listen to him for hours.
By the way, will say incredible. I'll echo the point you made earlier. I think every member of this cabinet is an incredible storyteller. I mean, you're, like, on another level, but, like, the storytelling, I think
It's incredible.
Is what's so powerful about this cabinet and this administration. And I think it's gonna take some time to get the message out, but, man, is are there incredible ambassadors to do so with
the They are so capable. Yeah. Each of them is so capable, so thoughtful. I mean, I I am honored to be on this cabinet with them, but we all get to work for Donald Trump who can intuitively tell you, go fix eggs. Yeah.
And then Brooke goes fix eggs, and eggs are down, like, 40%, and Brooke fixes eggs. I mean, how awesome is that?
Yeah.
Right? And gas is down 40¢. Right? And he's only just begun. If we get if we get the constitution pipeline in New York passed.
And I sat with him while Donald Trump lectured governor Hochul on the unbelievable oil and fracking that they have in New York and the wealth that New York could have if they unleashed it, but they refused to unleash it. So he's gonna force the constitution pipeline, which, by the way, will drop gas on the East Coast Of The United States Of America in half. I mean, this is and that's you know, then you got that's Chris Wright. That's Doug Burgham. You got Brooke Rollins.
I mean, you could just go, you know, Scott Bessant, you know, so thoughtful and elegant. I mean, he he just step by step by step, and you have really the most fun cabinet working for the most intuitive, smartest guy to ever sit behind the resolute desk. And we're gonna make America great again, not as a slogan, but we're gonna balance the budget. We're gonna change America. Thank you, Howard.
Thanks, Howard.