Best of the Program | Guests: Sean Davis & Joseph Lavorgna | 6/18/25
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The bump we took from London could be this as a one-off. Well, it started something. Slow Horses has been nominated for 13 awards. I need to send a message. Including six BAFTAs. Our threat levels are critical. You're about to find out it's all just starting. I'm gonna fix this. Lovely. Catch up on the show critics are calling so much damn fun. You're no good at this. It's five stars and one of the most sensational shows on television.

That's it, Phil, don't get your hands dirty. Slow Horses, now streaming on Apple TV+. Great conversation today about the Middle East and Iraq, also on the economy. We have somebody from the Treasury to tell us something that hasn't happened since 1968, a very positive sign on the economy. Also, Sean Davis from The Federalist joins us. And I tell you a story about a small town where there were three people that were really connected, very close, but slowly torn apart from one another.

What was left of the town? I think you'll understand why I'm telling that story after you hear the audio of Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz. What's happening to us? I like both of these people too. Please don't make me choose all in today's podcast.

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Hello, America. You know we've been fighting every single day. We push back against the lies, the censorship, the nonsense of the mainstream media that they're trying to feed you. We work tirelessly to bring you the unfiltered truth because you deserve it. But to keep this fight going, we need you. Right now, would you take a moment and rate and review the Glenn Beck podcast? Give us five stars and leave a comment.

because every single review helps us break through big tech's algorithm to reach more Americans who need to hear the truth. This isn't a podcast. This is a movement, and you're part of it, a big part of it. So if you believe in what we're doing, you want more people to wake up, help us push this podcast to the top. Rate, review, share. Together, we'll make a difference. And thanks for standing with us. Now let's get to work. ♪♪

You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. So what are we doing to ourselves right now? What is, what is actually happening to us? You know, I, let me, let me play a clip from Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson yesterday. How many people live in Iran, by the way? I don't know the population at all. No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population of the country you seek to topple.

How many people live in Iran? 92 million. Okay. Yeah. How could you not know that? I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. Why is it relevant whether it's 90 million or 80 million or 100 million? Why is that relevant? Because if you don't know anything about the country. I didn't say I don't know anything about the country. Okay, what's the ethnic mix of Iran?

They are Persians and predominantly Shia. OK, this is cute. You don't know anything about Iran. So, OK, I am not the Tucker Carlson expert on Iran. You're a senator who's calling for the overthrow of the government. You're the one who claims. You don't know anything about the country.

No, you don't know anything about the country. You're the one who claims they're not trying to murder Donald Trump. You know, I'm not saying that who can't figure out if it was a good idea to kill General Soleimani. And you said it was bad. They're trying to murder Trump. Yes, I do. You're not calling for military strikes against them in retaliation. And if they really believe that carrying out military strikes today, you said Israel was right with our help.

I've said we. Israel is leading them, but we're supporting them. Well, you're breaking news here because the U.S. government last night denied, the National Security Council spokesman Alex Pfeiffer denied on behalf of Trump that we were acting on Israel's behalf in any offensive capacity at all. We're not bombing them. Israel's bombing them. You just said we were. We are supporting Israel. This is high stakes. You're a senator. If you're saying the United States government is at war with Iran right now, people are listening.

This is one of the saddest people. This is one of the saddest clips I've seen in a long time. I like Tucker Carlson and I like Ted Cruz. I'll tell you a story about a small town. It's not unlike yours, not unlike mine. Three men live side by side. One was a baker, one was a preacher, one was a school teacher. They had known each other for years. They had raised their kids together. They sat on the same bleachers at football games. They argued about taxes at the diner. They brought pies to one another's porches when life fell apart for that family. They

And they didn't agree on a lot of things. One of them was a conservative. Another one was a liberal. The preacher, he was more concerned about heaven than Washington. But they all talked. They disagreed. They argued sometimes. They listened. Because somewhere deep down, they had one thing in common. They cared. They cared about their town. They cared about their kids. They cared about what kind of life they were leaving behind for those kids. Then a storm came. Bad storm.

Not of wind and rain and lightning and thunder, but of ideas, headlines, hashtags, rumors, bots, people all around that wanted to separate these three men. They began to mistrust. It was a storm that whispered in their ears, he's not just wrong, he's evil. She's not just different, she's dangerous. And little by little, the voices that had once shared coffee and laughter were replaced with silence.

then suspicion, then contempt. And then the baker accused the teacher of brainwashing his kids, and the teacher called the preacher a bigot, and the preacher heartbroken went to his chapel wondering, what has happened? What has happened? And one by one, they all just stopped speaking to one another. They sat on the same bleachers, but on opposite ends now. They passed each other, but they passed in silence. When one's house burned down, nobody called the others to help. Now let me ask you,

How close are we to that moment? How many of our friendships are already buried, buried deep under the weight of a single disagreement? I have been wrong in my life more than I've been right. Are you right more often than you're wrong? I am wrong more often than I am right. And I am wrong. I hope I'm getting better at this, but I am wrong. And it is only in my arrogance that I fail to say, wow, that was a huge mistake.

When did we forget to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt? When did we forget being wrong doesn't make you wicked? What kind of country are we building if no one is allowed to be right? No, I'm sorry. Let me say this right. When no one is allowed to be wrong on their way to becoming right. Because when I'm wrong, I learn from it and I become more right the next time.

What kind of country will we have if no one is allowed to be wrong on their way to becoming right or having serious disagreements on how we view something, but we still have the same love of country and the same basic understanding of what this country means, and yet we blow each other up? There's no need for an enemy.

Judging right from wrong isn't just about being right. It's about how we do it. Do we look at another person's intent or do we look at just their latest post and not really even know the person? Do we try to understand or do we rush to destroy? I can say so many great things about Tucker Carlson and his intent and what he believes. He believes in the same kind of country I do. He believes in freedom.

We don't necessarily agree on the way to get there, but I don't doubt his love for country. And I don't doubt Ted Cruz's love of country. And we don't agree on everything. But I'm not an enemy of those two. And neither of them are enemies of one another. And yet, now they are. Now you are forced to decide which one is on your side.

We're holding others to standards we can't survive ourselves. If everybody, if you have to be in complete alignment with me, not the Constitution, but with me, me and my friends, and the friends that I have today because I might turn on my friends tomorrow because they don't agree with me, what is left? You'll be left standing alone.

You might be right, but you'll be surrounded with nothing. Trust takes time. Violation of that trust happens quickly. But how many times have we really been violated recently? How many times have people really violated our trust? And how many times has that violation come from a post where you didn't even really hear the full context?

or somebody who is just grinding axes because they both, you like both of them, but they are just going at it because in the moment, in the heated moment, they can't find a way to each other. And neither one of them is willing to take a breath and say, can we start this conversation again? And if they did, you're not going to see that on social media. You'll never know if they did that.

Trust takes time. Humility takes practice. And grace? Grace is the one thing we all want for ourselves, but seem like we're unwilling to give it to anybody else. It's easy to win an argument. It is really hard to win a person. So maybe we should ask ourselves a couple of questions here. Am I listening to respond? Because I think that's what most of us do. We listen to respond, and we respond to win.

Are we listening to respond or are we listening to understand? Do we want truth or do we want a victory? Am I giving others the freedom to change their mind? Like, I may have to tomorrow. We're headed towards a very different nation where all of us, we're going to be a nation of very lonely victors. I won!

And the echo just keeps on going because no one is around. We're all sitting on a hill of ashes shouting, I was right, right, right, right. Look, I don't agree with a lot of things. And I get really hot sometimes because I can't believe people's stupidity. But you know what? I've been really stupid at times too. I think humility is the key to all of this. And we are so...

We're all in our lizard brains. And now our final battle, we are just tearing each other apart. We're tearing our own side apart. I mean, look at what happened with Elon Musk and Donald Trump. I like both of those men.

I didn't want to see those guys fight. I still don't want to see those guys fight. I would love to see them. It would be great. It would be awesome if they could come together. And even if when they came together, they hugged it out and said, I don't agree with everything he says, but he's still my friend. And we're still on the same fight. I don't agree with what he's doing here, here, and here. And he doesn't agree with me here, here, and here.

But we know one thing, this country is worth saving. And while we might disagree on how to get there, we both know we have to get there. And if we continue to divide ourselves, there will be no one left to enjoy the country and we'll never be able to save it by ourselves. So we can either just keep bashing each other

And, you know, I give this monologue to me as well. I want you to know. It is so hard for me to give you the monologue I'm giving you right now for a couple of reasons. It's not the monologue I want to give. The monologue I want to give, oh, is really passionate. It's also not the monologue you want me to give. Because do you know what is happening with AI right now? Right now with AI, they are now...

changing the algorithms to give you the answer you are looking for. We are now training AI to put us into more of a bubble and convince all of us that we are right because it will give you the answer you want. Could anything be more destructive? When the lights go out, the schools burn down, your house burns down.

When the next storm rolls in, it ain't going to be our righteousness that saves us. It's going to be the friend. It's going to be the family member that's still willing to pick up the phone, even after the last disagreement, and say, I'm here for you. I'm coming to help. Let me tell you about Patriot Mobile. You know, if I asked you to put a price on your car, you could do it. Might not be exact, but you could name a number, certain amount of money, where if handed you in cash, you'd be willing to hand over the keys. Now, how about your house?

Your house, that's a harder one. There's history there, memories, roots. There's probably still a number there, right? So the question that actually matters is what about your principles? Is there a price on your principles? No, there's not. You know...

And there's not a price, especially when you're paying a bill to one of the big cell phone companies, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. Part of that money is going to organizations that stand against your principles. But there is a choice, and it's Patriot Mobile. Patriot Mobile gives you the same great coverage on the same cell towers, but they donate to causes you actually support. Pro-life organizations, first responders, religious liberty, veterans. Ask yourself again, is there a price on your principles?

Or is this where you draw the line? Make the switch today. Go to patriotmobile.com slash Beck or call 972-PATRIOT. 972-PATRIOT. Patriotmobile.com slash Beck. Use the promo code Beck for a free month of service. Patriotmobile.com slash Beck or call 972-PATRIOT. Now back to the podcast. You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program. Sean, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me, sir. You bet. I'm glad to have you on. You know, I'm not sure...

I'm not sure of anybody's position because the smart people, like I think you are, are asking questions and not coming out with these bold declarations. They're just asking questions, and sometimes their own response, at least mine is, it's very nuanced.

And I'm not recommending anything. I'm asking questions and I'm warning about the mistakes of the past. I don't trust anybody. But I also think a nuclear-armed Iran is really bad, but I want Israel to take care of it. I don't want to be involved in that. It's their direct threat right now. Let them take care of it. Where do we go from here? What questions should we be asking ourselves, Sean?

Yeah, I love your approach to it because it doesn't start with a conclusion. It's kind of trying

trying to build what we should be doing from the bottom up, which becomes a discussion of first principles, and I think that's really important. I think we probably all agree that we don't want bad people and we don't want our enemies to have weapons they could use to destroy us or our friends. I think probably everyone agrees on that. We probably... Can I add a caveat to that? Not just our enemies, but especially those who are crap crazy.

Or believe in the return of the Mahdi and I can hasten his return by washing the world in blood. That kind of puts you in a special category for me. But anyway, go ahead. And I think I might even extend it. I'm not even sure I want our friends and allies to have them in a perfect world. We would be the only country with these massive weapons. Okay. All right. I'll go for that. Yeah. Right. Okay. So the problem we have is that, you know, for...

let's call it 80 years, you know, 75, the nuclear toothpaste has been out of the tube. Soviets got it, then it's expanded elsewhere, you know, India, Pakistan, North Korea, France, Israel, South Africa for a time. They all had nukes. And to me, the big problem that I have a really difficult time wrapping my head around is how do you solve the problem we created with Gaddafi in Libya?

Yes. That country gave up their weapons program voluntarily after Iraq, you know, kind of before Iraq became an utter debacle and a cautionary tale. But they gave up their weapons in the U.S. and NATO and our allies. We returned the favor, thanks to Hillary and Obama, by overthrowing Qaddafi and killing him. And I think what that communicated to every leader on Earth, good or bad, was that if you don't want to ever be overthrown, you have to have nuclear weapons.

And so I start with understanding that fact, what is the best, most effective way to make our enemies, make sure our enemies don't get nuclear weapons. And I'll tell you, I don't have a good answer because we've heard for 40 years that Iran's on the verge of a nuke. They're about to get a nuke. They're about to have a weapon. So let's assume we go through with these attacks and we bomb Fordow or Israel bombs it.

What that doesn't get rid of is the incentive. It temporarily gets rid of a mechanism for, I guess, enriching uranium. But in four years or five years, how do we deal with that? I don't think regime change is a great idea because we've seen how well that works. It turns into an unmitigated disaster. And so I think we just have to start with the question, what is the best possible way to incentivize people we don't like and don't like us to not have weapons? And I genuinely don't have a good answer to it.

You know what? I keep thinking every day I do this job. And I think what Reagan said when I was a kid, he said, there's going to come a time. And he was talking about social security at the time, but I apply it now to everything. There's going to come a time where we've made so many mistakes. There won't be a good solution to anything. Every choice will be a bad choice. And I think we're here. I think we're here. Everything we do. You're like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to do the mistakes of the past.

But I don't know how to stop this now. You know, regime change. Let me just take that one. Regime change. It doesn't work. I loved your post. I think it was yesterday. Yes, our military industrial complex lied about Vietnam, killed Kennedy, ran a coup against Nixon, then killed another Kennedy, tried to get MLK Jr. to kill himself, ran drugs through the Americas to fund shenanigans in the Middle East, and

Funded bin Laden and the Taliban. Missed 9-11. Then lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Got an ambassador murdered in Benghazi. Then turned Libya into a slave market run by terrorists. Then created ISIS. Ran the Russian collusion hoax. Tried to overthrow Trump with the Ukrainian hoax.

weaponized a bat virus that killed millions of people and lied about it and then used the virus they made to steal an election. Then arrest Trump, tried to bankrupt him, tried to make him die in prison. And then when they failed, they denied him adequate security, leading him to be shot in the head. Yeah, they did all of those things.

The drug cartels, Iraq, Bosnia in the 1990s, Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2000s, still Iraq and Afghanistan in 2010 plus Libya, the whole moronic Arab Spring thing, Ukraine in the 2020s. These were all disasters that cost millions of dollars and countless lives. You're right on every single one of those things. Every single one of those things. So how do we make a decision now? Right, and that's why I think it's so important to get to first principles, which is

understanding our limitations, understanding history, understanding how other nations view things. One thing that's driven me nuts in the foreign policy debates that we've had in this country for 20, 30 years is there seems to be zero desire to put ourselves in the position of our adversaries or our opponents and think, how are they looking at things? You know, some people, if you try to do that, they'll say, oh, well, you're sympathizing with them or you're appeasing them.

Well, no, this is the basic stuff for negotiation. You're playing chess against someone. You want to understand what they're going to do next so you can respond to it. And we just never do that. And I guess so I look at this. I think there's probably two major options for either forestalling or preventing a particular regime from getting weapons. The first one is regime change.

In the short term, you can tell yourself, we're going to go overthrow these people, and then they won't want nukes anymore because we'll put our friends in, and then that'll be good. Well, that's been ongoing in Iran for 100 years. The Brits and the Soviets were the ones who came in and put the original Shah in. It's been a mess over there. Personally, I throw regime change out the window because it opens up Pandora's box of just insanity, as we've seen in the Middle East. Okay, hang on just a sec. Hang on just a sec. Wait, wait, wait. On that.

Is there a chance that, you know, because I never saw it. I kept saying, you know, when we got into war in Iraq and Afghanistan, show me the person that's, you know, going to have their face on the stamp. Show me the person that's going to have their face on the money. I never saw anybody stand up and say, you know, we need to be free and we're going to fight for our own freedom. You do have those people that are really tired of this that are much more Western and

I don't want to get involved in a regime change, and I certainly don't want to say, hey, we're going to help you pick a leader. But is there a chance that this time it is different, or is that just wishful, stupid thinking?

You know, I think it's probably wishful thinking, but I don't know. I'll tell you, I have a hard enough time figuring out what's going on politically in my own country. Think about all the time we spent poring over polls over every election and talking to our neighbors. This is a country we were born in. We understand its culture without even thinking about it. We're fluent in the language. We can talk to anyone we want whenever we want.

And we have a tough time figuring out what's going on here. I don't have a clue what's happening in Iran. I don't speak any of the three or four different languages over there. I don't understand the culture. I've never been there. I'm not able to talk to people there. I don't know how to read the news there.

And so the idea that I or really any other Westerner can look at Iran and with any confidence say what the people want or don't want, I think it's crazy. And so I think you kind of have to be humble about your ignorance. And we are largely ignorant of just about everything happening within Iran and its culture and its people. I have to say, I think you're right on that. Okay, so that's out. So what's the next thing?

Yeah, so that if you know, we've kind of set aside regime change, probably not a great idea. Another option is maybe economic incentives. Yeah, we know you don't want to be overthrown. If that's going to be a hard incentive to overcome, so you're going to want nukes as regime change insurance. Maybe we can bribe you out of it, all kinds of economic assurances, this and that. The problem with Iran is that they're sitting on oil, which is probably the most precious and important natural resource on earth. I don't think that works.

And so I think what we're left with is probably the whack-a-mole that's been going on for years. And I think the nation that's probably best suited to deal with that whack-a-mole, they're the ones at risk. Iran can't reach us here in the U.S. They don't have the ballistic missile capability. They're not a direct military threat to us. They're clearly a military threat to our friends and allies in the Middle East.

And so I think the least worst option is probably Israel doing what it does every five to ten years and going and trying to degrade their ability to mechanically make this stuff.

wait to see what happens, do it again over and over and over. But to me, that's a regional issue. And yes, there are allies. Yes, there are friends. But it's far more consequential to them than it is to us. And so I have no problem with them doing what they need to do to address the threats to them. So I'm with you 100% so far. Now,

I'm very, you know, we are the only ones with the bunker buster that could get into that. I mean, I think that, what does that go down? 12 stories, 20 stories, 20 stories underground can destroy anything with a 20 story footprint underground. We're the only ones that have it. It has to be dropped from one of our planes. And I'm very uncomfortable with that. Very uncomfortable. I mean, you know what? You want to buy the bunker buster? I'll sell, I'll sell it to you, but you got to drop it.

Once we put that on our plane and we drop it, aren't we then part of the war? Right. And like I said, that might be the least worst option to the extent we have to be involved. But I think when it comes to foreign policy, I think a lot about what Mike Tyson said, that everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.

Once you go and drop a bomb on someone, once you engage in offensive military capabilities, now you may rhetorically say, well, it's preemptively defensive. It's an offensive move whenever you bomb another country. You are creating the conditions for all kinds of chaos. Who knows how they're going to respond? Maybe they're rational. They understand, look, we're just going to have to take this one on the chin. We don't want to fight with the U.S. We don't want to fight with Israel. We're just going to deal with it.

Or maybe they decide, hey, we were in the middle of negotiations and we thought we were trying to get somewhere. And if they're just going to do this stuff to us, then, you know, to heck with it. We're just going to unleash hell. That can happen. Now, I don't know if it will. It's probably less likely than them just taking it. But it's a possibility. Whenever you go and punch someone in the face, you don't have to now have to deal with the consequences of how they're going to respond.

You're streaming the best of Glenn Beck. To hear more of this interview and others, download the full show podcasts wherever you get podcasts. I don't know if you've seen this, but real wages in hourly workers are up nearly 2% in the first five months of Donald Trump's second term. Up nearly 2%. Now, let me give you the history of this, what a big deal this is.

The last time it went up nearly 1% was during Nixon in 1969. Carter had a zero real wage increase. Reagan, negative almost 1%. H.W. Bush had negative 3%. Clinton had negative 0.6%. W. had 0.6%.

Obama had negative 0.3. Donald Trump's first term, plus 1.3. First time since 1969. Plus 1.3. Then Biden down almost 2%, negative. And now in the first five months, Trump is back up to almost 2%, 1.7%.

You know, he's doing everything that everybody's saying is going to cause economic disaster, and yet it doesn't look like it's actually panning out. We have a counselor to the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Joseph LaVorna, and he is with us now. Joe, how are you? Glad I'm great. That was a great, great summarization.

Well, I was just reading the tweet from the Treasury Secretary, your boss, Scott Besson, so I'm glad that I got it right. This is remarkable. I heard somebody describe this as, well, that's just propaganda. It doesn't seem like that when you look at the history of every other president. No.

I, having had the pleasure of serving under the president in 1.0, I knew that we had a blue-collar wage boom following passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. So I was just curious. I said, how have we done so far? Because the sense is the economy actually has performed very well and certainly much better than the naysayers. And I was actually struck by the data when I saw it. But as you said, it makes complete sense given what –

president trump has wanted to do and with secretary betson is reinforced in that you know we want everybody to do well but we really need and want main street to do well and that's what happened under the first trump presidency and when the one big beautiful bill was passed which is going to codify and solidify the permanency of pro-growth business related

tax cuts that incentivize capital deepening and productivity enhancement, then we should continue to see these very strong gains in blue-collar wages. So it's a really great story, and I appreciate you having me on so that we can at least talk about it, because unfortunately this good news oftentimes doesn't get reported. Speak to somebody who don't believe the talking point that illegal immigration actually suppressed U.S. wages.

Well, it's very simple. I mean, what you're doing is if you're taking, if a worker comes in illegally, that allows the employer to pay he or she a below average wage rate. And in turn, that resets the market lower for everybody else. Put another way, if a firm does not have access to abundant, and we can even call it exploitative labor, then those wages

economically microeconomics are such you have to pay more uh... you know you're not kinda wanting the law and uh... and what that allows that is for wages to be naturally higher and what happened is workers u_s_ workers then get paid a a fair actually fair when i mean fair i mean market-based rate uh... it's not a bad you know there's no more below market-based rate so

The economics are pretty solid, and Secretary Besson has highlighted that. And you should see over time with this flow of illegal workers coming into the market, you should see nominal wage growth accelerate.

I have a guest on in a little while that's talking about the, and I don't know if you can get into this at all, talking about the migrant workers on farms and that, you know, we're going to not go after some of the farmers. And the local farms and the small family farms are saying, no, that's not a problem. That is a problem with these big industrialized farms. And they're trying to put us out.

Right. I mean, the president has talked about making some exceptions. I mean, and again, but like this take my understanding, Glenn, and correct me if I'm wrong, but in the case of California, you've got migrant workers, seasonal migrant workers who come in, but it's illegal. This

this is the point it's legal so i think what we want to highlight is the fact there have been millions of people who have come in illegally and that cheap source of illegal labor is depressing wages uh in a way that is to the significant disadvantage of u.s citizens uh and that is a totally separate and much bigger broader deeper issue than certain select areas which

you know may have their own unique uh microeconomic issues so we have a wage growth for blue-collar workers about two percent almost two percent biggest in 60 years um and bigger than he did in the first term um what does that tell us does it tell us anything of what is possibly coming

Because people are still feeling the bite of inflation, although inflation is way down. It's not down. It's just reduced. But it is. I mean, it is really close to going into the negative territory for the first time. What are the things that you expect to see that that might signal to somebody like you when you look at almost 2% real wages growth going up? What does that tell you is coming?

So to me, Glenn, this just speaks to the incredible competency and, you know, real world know-how because of his business acumen, the president's policies, where he's actually accomplished an extraordinary amount in getting prices down very quickly as he had promised. Now, when the bill is passed, the one big, beautiful bill is passed, then

then I'm going to look for significant capital investment. Companies investing in plants, companies investing in equipment, companies investing in factories. And that means they've got to employ people to build those factories. It means you have to employ people to operate the machinery, to use the capital. And, you know, not to get too wonky, but the capital-labor ratio, when capital rises relative to labor, you're able then to pay labor more money.

so that's what i'm going to look for so when the bill is passed i think you're going to seem like continuation of very strong growth which right now according to the widely followed atlanta fed g_d_p_ numbers you know going to grow upwards of three half four percent in the second quarter and i see no reason glenn went this bill is passed that it just remove any lingering uncertainty on tax policy could absent passage of the bill

there'd be a record large tax increase, which would decimate the economy next year. So that certainty that we're finally going to make permanent president Trump's policies will be a boon to the average, uh, blue collar worker. So I don't like a lot of the things in the big, beautiful bill, but I love a lot of things in the big, beautiful bill. Um, it seems like we're getting a little, little, um, teaspoon of, of everything in this thing. Um, however, I think the,

The way I look at it, at least currently, the good stuff outweighs the bad stuff in it by far because of that tax cut. Are you convinced that we're going to get this bill? I mean, now it's going back to Congress and Congress is saying it's dead on arrival.

Yes. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, the the I mean, the alternative to the bill would be just horrendous. And I love the fact that they're expanding the credit for investment to include new new new factories. I think that is just great. The bill will go through and I'm optimistic. I'm an optimist. Joe, explain what you mean by it would be disastrous because this is what I keep coming back to on this. If this doesn't pass.

Right. If it doesn't pass, Glenn, we're going to have the largest tax increase in U.S. history, which would meaningfully depress all the things that we want more of that will help drive a continuation of the blue-collar boom. In other words, you're going to have significant weakness in capital spending, capital investment. That is the basis for...

for all productivity gains. It's the ingenuity and investment that companies are making in cutting edge technologies and capital, which needs to be replaced because it gets depleted. It allows the economy to grow at a faster pace.

And if we don't pass the bill, all that expensing goes by the wayside. Marginal rates on capital and labor rise tremendously. Corporate tax rates increase significantly. Small businesses that pay those marginal rates would massively suffer. I mean, it's just a very bad situation. If we want to go back to a high-tax, high-regulatory environment,

as we had in the Obama years when the economy was growing well under 2%, then that's the path we're going to go down. And I don't see that as being a very economically productive way to go. So do you understand why some people are standing against it and saying, you know, there's not enough cuts in this because they're concerned about the value of the dollar, of just, you know, just spending ourselves into oblivion. Do you at least understand that argument? Yes.

Yes, I would say that this is a very, very good bill and that should not be the enemy of perfect in a perfect world. Sure, there would be even more spending cuts, but this bill is not designed to address some of the areas where some people would like lower spending.

we're certainly going not going to cut our way to prosperity we need to grow our way the prosperity and one of the things i would mean we push back again some of the people understandably are worried about long-term debt is that look

What assumptions are we making on growth? Because if we're assuming 1.8% real GDP growth, as the official arbiter is assuming, then yeah, revenues aren't going to be that great, and deficits could be as large as they say. But if we're going to assume more Trumpian-type growth of, say, 3%, which is much more consistent with the first presidential election,

presidential term of Donald Trump and what this bill has that will allow us to grow at 3% or faster, we're going to get much better revenues. So I would focus on all the positives and then we can go back at some point to address some of the others. But the alternative is just

horrendous and uh... that for the pushback needs to be in addition to the fact that again that the the the the deficit assumptions to me are too pessimistic because they're woefully downbeat on on how the economy's likely to perform over the next decade let me ask a final question about interest rates the fed as a fed gonna lower interest rates should they lower interest rates

Glenn, I'm not at liberty to discuss the monetary policy, but I have to think that Chair Powell and his colleagues

have to like this inflation news. I mean, it is remarkable how the consensus of professional forecasters got the inflation data wrong, virtually all the series for three months in a row. And I've got to think the Fed has to like the fact that inflation is moving down because of President Trump's policies. So we'll see what happens going forward. But that's good news.

I can't thank you enough for everything that you guys are doing. I just love Treasury Secretary Besson. I think he's really, really good, and being on his team must be fascinating at the least. I'm very lucky, and it's an honor, Glenn, and thank you so much for having me on your show.

You bet. Thanks, Joe. I appreciate it. Joe is counselor to the U.S. Treasury Secretary. It's Joe LaVornia. And we appreciate him coming on the program. I think that is really good news. You know, people are downplaying that. But, you know, it hasn't been done except in his last term since the 1960s. If it's no big deal, then why hasn't every president had this result?

It means your real hourly wage has gone up nearly 2% in the last five months. You may not feel it yet, but you will, and especially if you can keep on this track. Na-na-na-na.

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