'GREATEST PERIOD WE'VE EVER SEEN': Trump touts pro-growth policies

[0:01] Mr. President, welcome. Thanks for coming back to The Cutlow Show. We appreciate it, sir. [0:05] Thank you. Thank you, Larry. [0:06] Anyway, I thought I'd start with Dow 50,000. Congratulations with America. That was your [0:12] truth social. The economy is hitting on all cylinders. Most of the experts have been [0:18] completely wrong about it. So as you look at this thing, it's the midterm elections and so forth. [0:25] How good a year is it going to be, 2026? [0:27] Well, I think it's going to be great. When you say 50,000, and by the way, S&P 7,000, [0:35] which is, I guess, almost the equivalent, I think. [0:38] It's a huge number. [0:39] When you think about it, right? And I remember when I first won, they said, [0:43] if he gets the Dow up to 50,000 by the end of his fourth year, he will have done miracles. [0:50] And we're at the end of the first year. So when you think about it, that's great. And the S&P, [0:57] the same thing. And everything else. I mean, everything's going great. We inherited a total [1:01] mess from Biden. And not only the borders, but the economy, the inflation. The inflation was the [1:07] worst ever in history. They say 48 years, but basically ever in history. And the prices were [1:13] high. And you don't hear them use the word affordability anymore. They can't use it because [1:18] we brought the prices down. Oil now, I was in Iowa last week, and they were $1.85 a gallon. [1:26] And if you go all over the country, in many cases now, it's broken $2 a gallon. And that's like a [1:31] major tax cut. We've given them that too in the great, big, beautiful bill. So we've had a very good [1:38] run, and we want to keep it going. [1:39] It's interesting. Falling energy prices permeates the entire economy. [1:44] It's so big. [1:44] Hundreds and hundreds of people don't understand that and never give you credit for it. So the [1:51] signature legislation embodying the policy was the one big, beautiful bill. It was the one big, [1:56] beautiful bill. [1:56] That's right. [1:57] Tax cuts, deregulation, energy dominance, and tariff reciprocity. Is there any plans to do a [2:08] second big, beautiful bill? Is there another reconciliation bill out there? There might be [2:14] deeper tax cuts or more deregulation or what? Anything of that nature? [2:19] So when I first came in, we met with John Thune, who's a terrific guy, and with, as you know, [2:24] Mike Johnson, the speaker, and we had about 17 different bills. And I said, let's put them all [2:32] together. And everybody was against. They weren't, really. But it was a long shot. [2:37] I lobbied you for one big, beautiful bill. [2:39] You did. [2:40] It was after the Army-Navy game. [2:41] You did. And plenty of people said, you can't get it done. Don't do it. It'll be bad. [2:46] And we put everything together. And this was a four-year package. And we put it together, [2:51] and we got it passed. And it was sort of a miracle because, you know, there's... See, [2:57] I think it worked the other way. There was something in there for everybody, and that's [3:00] how we got it passed. I'm not sure that we would have gotten very many of those bills. [3:04] But we had many bills. We put them all together. And so, in theory, we've gotten everything passed [3:10] that we need. Now we just have to manage it. But we've gotten everything passed that we need [3:14] for four years. Do we have other things in mind? Yeah, we do. We have things in mind. [3:19] We have perfecting a little bit of what we did, because this is really... This is the biggest [3:24] bill ever passed in the history of Congress. And it's a great thing. But we also have other [3:30] bills we want to get. We want to get the Save America Act passed. Save America is on voting. [3:35] We want people to have voter ID. We want people to have proof of citizenship. And we want to have [3:41] no mail-in ballots, other than if you're in the military or you're sick or you're away, [3:47] or some reasonable but good excuse. Can that get done, you think, before the [3:51] midterm elections? Well, it polls at about 94 percent, including Democrats, [3:55] are at 87 percent, other than Democrat politicians, because they cheat. [4:01] It's a huge vote. I guess the House is going to re-vote on it now because of the photo ID, [4:07] which is so important. Actually, you need a photo ID to vote on the floor of the House, [4:13] even though Democrats are opposed to a photo ID. That's right. They can't vote for their own bill. [4:18] But think of it, Larry. So you have a thing called Save America Act. Save America Act. [4:26] And Schumer's going to say, I oppose it. How do you oppose Save America? [4:30] So this is simply on voting. Voter ID, we want a statement that you are a citizen of America. [4:38] I think that's a reasonable thing to ask. And no mail-in ballots, which are very corrupt. [4:43] No country in the world is doing mail-in ballots, or especially the way we do them. [4:49] I mean, they send them all over the place. Nobody knows. It's totally corrupt. [4:53] No country in the world does what we do. [4:56] I vote in the state of Connecticut. You don't need a photo ID. You can vote if you just show [5:03] them a credit card or a debit card, which anybody can get their hands on. I think it's a scam. I mean, [5:09] it's just remarkable. Well, Connecticut is a very corrupt voting place. That's why a guy like [5:13] Blumenthal can keep getting elected, because it's, you know, he admitted that he cheated on the war [5:18] like nobody's ever cheated. He said he was a great war hero from Vietnam. And I went to Vietnam for a [5:24] couple of days, and I spent two more days than he did there. You know, he was never there. [5:28] And he keeps getting elected. Sort of amazing. It's amazing that he was able to get out of that [5:33] one. But I bring it up because it was one of the most, maybe the most egregious I've ever seen. [5:40] Anyway, let's come back to the economy, if I may. You had a line in your speech to Davos. I want to [5:46] read it. It used to be when we had a great quarter, a great month, great earnings, great anything, [5:53] any good news, the stock market went up. We have to do that again. So the thought occurs to me, [6:01] it's happening. You've had great earnings. You've had great GDP. You're running 4% plus on GDP. [6:06] Nobody thought that possible. Inflation numbers are relatively muted. So it looks like now we're back [6:13] to where you want it to be. The stock market will go up on good news. And because of your Federal [6:20] Reserve appointments, they're not going to take the punch bowl away just because the economy is [6:26] growing. I think that's what's happening. So you're old enough to know. Yes, sir. Okay. [6:32] And I am too, unfortunately, in both cases. Right. But we're old enough to remember when [6:37] the stock market, when there was good news, the market went up. It was bad news. The market went down. [6:43] That's the way it should be. Goes up. Now, if there's good news, the market goes down because everyone [6:48] said, oh, inflation, they're so they have the yips. You know, golfers have the yips. They can't [6:53] sink a three foot. But when the word inflation, even the concept of it, well, growth doesn't mean [6:59] inflation. And what it means is you can never really grow the country because as you do well, [7:06] they keep trying to put you down. And so when good news is announced, I mean, sometimes great news is [7:13] announced and the market literally crashes. Bad news is announced and the market goes up [7:19] because of interest rates, because they say and we have to go back to the old system. When we have [7:25] good news, the market should go up and we have bad news. The market should go down and we'll take care [7:31] of inflation as it comes. We can take care of it. I took care of it. I had the worst inflation in history [7:36] with Biden, aside from borders and everything else that we had to take care of. But we had the worst [7:42] inflation in history. And now for the last three months, as you know, it was one point three percent. [7:48] You know, you said in Davos also good growth can actually bring inflation down. [7:54] Correct. Supply side growth happened. If you put more goods on the market, that brings prices down. [7:59] Yeah, it happened with us. I mean, we have great growth and our growth hasn't even you haven't seen. [8:04] We have 18 trillion dollars invested in this country. Nobody's ever had anything like it. We haven't. [8:11] When I say nobody, it's not even close, not even close. I think the record is three trillion dollars. [8:18] We're at 18 trillion. And, you know, they talk about construction jobs are way up. Right. [8:23] Well, they're up because they're building all these factories all over the country. You have car plants under construction. [8:29] You have. I spoke to Mr. Toyota in Japan. I said, what's your name? Toyota. I said, if your name's Toyota, [8:35] you're a very rich guy, he's about 90 years old. And he said, I'm going to invest 10 billion dollars [8:41] in the United States building plans. But everybody is. They're all doing it. They're all doing it. [8:46] And they're building A.I. We know about that. We're leading China. We're leading everybody and everything. [8:52] This is the greatest period of of anything that we've ever we've ever seen. Plus, we have a powerful [9:00] military, a great military, strong that I rebuilt in my first term because I had a great first term. [9:05] You remember very well you were there. But we had the greatest economy in the history of our country [9:10] in my first term. We're blowing it away now. Yeah. The numbers are even greater now. [9:16] So Kevin Warsh, your Fed nominee. So he he wants to change their models. He doesn't believe that [9:24] growth causes inflation. It's a whole new game. It may take him a bit to change the board staff. But it [9:30] seems to me that he's going to change that now. Is that the principal reason why you wanted him [9:37] there changing models? I liked him. I don't know. You know, it's not even. Yeah, it's that. But [9:43] I just liked him. I think he's a somebody that's going to be a real influencer. I think he's agrees [9:48] with what I'm saying. Larry, we are paying so much more interest than we should be paying. We're the [9:55] strongest country in the world. One. And let's go back again another 20, 25 years. We were always [10:00] the lowest interest rate, even if we weren't doing well. Our country was a low. We used to pay like [10:06] almost nothing. Other countries would always no matter what. Now we're like number 38 because we [10:14] have had stupid people running our country. You know, I had an incident with a very nice country, [10:20] Switzerland. They were paying no tariffs, sending stuff over here like nobody could believe. [10:26] And we had a $42 billion deficit and we weren't taking anything. I said, well, we have to do [10:34] something because we have to even that up a little bit. I didn't have to get everything at one time. [10:39] So I put on a 30 percent tariff, which is very low. Still, we were having a big deficit, but it was [10:46] half the deficit. Then I got an emergency call from, I believe, the prime minister of Switzerland. [10:53] And she was very aggressive, but nice, but very aggressive. Sir, we are a small country. We can't [10:59] do this. We can't do this. We are. I couldn't get her off the phone. We are a small country. I said, [11:04] you may be a small country, but we have a $42 billion deficit with you. No, no, we are a small [11:11] country again and again and again. I couldn't get off the phone. So it was at 30 percent. And I didn't [11:17] really like the way she talked to us. And so instead of giving her a reduction, I raised it to 39 percent. [11:25] And then I got inundated by people from Switzerland. And I figured, you know what, [11:32] we'll do something that's a little bit more palatable, at least now. But I realized that all [11:37] these, you know, Switzerland you think of as, you know, ultra chic, ultra perfect. They're not. [11:45] They're only that way because we allow them to rip us off and make all this money. And I could say [11:53] the same thing with another 40 countries. You know them better than I do. You and I could name them. [11:59] Some are much more egregious. And I realized then that the only reason we aren't doing the kind of [12:06] numbers that we should be doing is because we have we've allowed countries over the years to take [12:12] advantages. By the way, with tariffs, they charge tariffs. We didn't charge tariffs. We didn't charge [12:17] anything. We were honestly, we were stupid people run by stupid people. We lost our chip business to [12:24] Taiwan. We lost our car business to Mexico and Canada. We lost our car business to Germany and [12:33] Japan, everybody else. I mean, all over the world, South Korea. Look, we haven't really. And I'm being very [12:42] conservative now. I'm really being a very conservative person. But we're taking in hundreds of billions [12:48] of dollars in tariff money. And you know what it's doing? They're moving here. That's why it's $18 [12:53] trillion. They're moving their plans here because they don't want to pay tariffs. And only stupid [13:00] people or people that really hate Trump could argue with us. And the other thing. And you love [13:06] factories. You love it when they build factories. I love it. I've always said to come and build factories. [13:10] And so if you want to understand a good chunk of his trade policy, it's about factories, [13:15] building factories here. Isn't that fair? Well, we're building a record number in history. [13:19] It looks like it. There's never been anything like it. It looks like it. [13:21] And that means auto plants, not just AI. Now, AI, we're leading China by a lot. [13:26] You know, I did something with AI. So AI, for whatever reason, needs massive amounts of electricity, [13:32] right? More electricity than the entire country produces right now by double. [13:39] Now, who would even think that's possible? Well, we're not going to get that off the grid. [13:43] And we can't rebuild our grid overnight. And everyone said we can never really [13:47] down because China does very well. You know, they have lots of coal. They use coal [13:51] like nobody uses coal, clean, beautiful coal. So what happens is, by the way, we've re-enjuvenated coal [13:58] also. But we're not allowed to use the word coal without saying clean, beautiful coal, because it needs a [14:04] PR job, right? But China has an ability to make a lot of it. You got to respect them and admire them. [14:12] They're making a lot of electricity. But we're going to make more because I'm letting everybody [14:17] that builds a plant build their own electric plant. They're going to become like a utility. [14:22] So they're building a massive plant that's four miles long by four miles wide. I mean, [14:28] buildings that nobody's ever seen. And I'm letting them build electric plants, generating plants. [14:34] Some are nuclear. Some are oil and gas. Some are coal as a backup, you know, just in case, [14:39] for emergency reasons. But they're building their own electricity. They're building their... [14:45] They're producing their own electricity. And anything they have left over, they'll sell it [14:49] into the grid. And it's been unbelievable. And now we're building... I mean, we are dominating [14:55] everybody. With 100% depreciation, immediate expensing, which is so huge. [15:00] They take it all in one year. They take the cost of a factory. They deduct it in one year. [15:05] So you're saying to them, you know, if you build here, you don't have to worry about tariffs. [15:11] No tariffs. [15:11] And if you build here, you're going to get an incentive. You can write it off in the first year. [15:16] And other incentives. But the biggest one, I've always said, you know, one of the reasons [15:20] my first term was so successful, we passed a tremendous tax cut bill also. But one of the [15:26] things we did is one year depreciation. In other words, you take whatever you're investing, whatever [15:32] it is, you write it off in one year. It used to be 38 years, 42 years, depending on where you were, [15:38] but 38 years on average. And I let him take it. And you know what it meant? It meant much greater [15:45] growth. We had tremendous growth. And I think it's being superseded by a lot. The other thing is, [15:52] you know, I've been watching you for years. I'm so proud of you. You're part of the alumni, you know. [15:56] Yes, sir. [15:57] And I wanted you, I'll tell your audience, first of all, he's great. Second of all, his ratings are [16:01] great. And they should be. But I wanted to keep Larry in any form possible. But he said, [16:06] I have to go out and make some money. So it's one of those things. And your show's been a real success. [16:10] Thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. [16:11] Your show's been a real success. [16:12] Appreciate that. [16:12] But I will say that we have, you know, I've been watching you and everybody else for years. [16:20] And they say, three percent growth. Oh, this is great. GDP. Three percent GDP. Two and a half. [16:26] They're very happy. Two and a half. Two percent. One percent. They're happy with anything. [16:32] We should grow 15 or 20 percent. Larry, every time we're growing, they stop it by announcing that, [16:39] you know, we're going to raise interest rates. So we did. We're going to do 5.4 percent. It was [16:45] announced with a Democratic shutdown, which cost us at least a point and a half. Okay. People don't [16:51] rise. We could have been at 7 percent. We should be at 15 percent. If I'll tell you, [16:57] if our new head of the Fed, who I think is going to be great. And he's he's a really high quality [17:03] person. He was a very. And your friend Kevin was great. But I want to keep him with us, too. [17:08] I said, look, I want to keep. I had the two Kevins. Right. But I wanted to keep him with us. [17:14] He's doing great. But if he does the job that he's capable, we can grow at 15 percent. [17:20] 15 percent. I think more than that. Well, 15 is a big numbers here. [17:24] But, Larry, you can do it. The problem is every time we used to grow at 15 percent. [17:29] And, you know, when we were starting as a country, we were growing. Yes. [17:33] Because we had spirit and we had the right incentives today. We have a lot of socialism. [17:39] I love communism. We have a lot of bad. Yes. [17:42] But there's no. Look, we did 5.4 with a shutdown. Think of it. We can do that. [17:50] This country can do it. Tariffs are very important. The money we're taking, [17:54] I'm taking in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariff money. And we're going to start paying [18:00] down debt. This country has never been so strong militarily or any other way.