WEBVTT - Bruce Bartlett Talks About Why Truth Matters 0:00:02.279 --> 0:00:06.840 This is Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Boomberg Radio. 0:00:09.760 --> 0:00:12.920 This week on the podcast, I have an extra special guest. 0:00:13.119 --> 0:00:17.080 He is Bruce Bartlett. And if you're not familiar with 0:00:17.440 --> 0:00:21.079 h Bruce, you really should be. Uh. He started his 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:24.960 career UH working for Ron Paul and then Jack Camp. 0:00:25.000 --> 0:00:28.320 He helped to put together what eventually became the Kemp 0:00:28.440 --> 0:00:31.960 Rough tax cuts, which were passed by Ronald Reagan in 0:00:32.000 --> 0:00:36.720 the early eighties. Eventually, due to some of the policies 0:00:36.760 --> 0:00:40.320 of George Bush, he broke with the far right and 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:45.040 became an independent voice and a critic of the move 0:00:45.400 --> 0:00:50.240 of the GOP away from its traditional roots to areas 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:54.040 never seen before. I know I'm gonna get all sorts 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:57.840 of angry emails from people, um, mostly because I agree 0:00:57.840 --> 0:01:00.640 with pretty much everything Bruce says, and some of you 0:01:00.720 --> 0:01:05.440 are going to disagree with everything he says. UM, you 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.560 can send me angry emails at m IB podcast at 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:12.119 Bloomberg dot net. I don't know how else to describe 0:01:12.160 --> 0:01:16.240 this other than just a tour to force conversation about 0:01:16.920 --> 0:01:22.279 a from a certain segment of the political firmament, which 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:28.240 is the conservative Republican never trumpers and Bruce Bartlett is 0:01:28.280 --> 0:01:32.200 a perfect um example of that. Previously, we've had Mike Murphy, 0:01:32.280 --> 0:01:35.959 who was a Jeb Bush's campaign manager, who gave a 0:01:36.000 --> 0:01:39.640 slightly different perspective. UH, And we try and bring all 0:01:39.680 --> 0:01:43.480 sorts of of perspectives onto the show to discuss these things. 0:01:43.920 --> 0:01:47.400 I found it really fascinating and I expect you will too. So, 0:01:47.520 --> 0:01:55.040 with no further ado my conversation with Bruce Bartlett, I 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.200 have an extra special guest today. His name is Bruce Bartlett, 0:01:59.280 --> 0:02:03.200 and he has a storied career in politics in Washington, 0:02:03.320 --> 0:02:06.559 d C. He has held senior policy roles in both 0:02:06.600 --> 0:02:11.560 the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administration. He started 0:02:11.600 --> 0:02:15.000 in in DC working with Congressman Ron Paul on the 0:02:15.040 --> 0:02:19.040 Banking Committee. He has also worked with Jack Kemp. He 0:02:19.200 --> 0:02:23.960 was executive director of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress. UH. 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:28.239 He's written for various publications, including The New York Times, 0:02:28.280 --> 0:02:32.360 Economics Blog, for The Washington Post, and other fine publications. 0:02:32.680 --> 0:02:37.679 He is the author of multiple best selling books, including Reaganomics, 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:42.680 Supply Side Economics and Action, and Impostor, How George W. 0:02:42.840 --> 0:02:47.959 Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Most recently, 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.120 he wrote the book The Truth Matters, a citizens Guide 0:02:52.120 --> 0:02:56.200 to separating facts from lies and stopping fake news in 0:02:56.240 --> 0:03:00.280 its tracks. Bruce Bartlett, Welcome to Bloomberg. Happy to be here. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:05.440 So that's quite the CV. Let's let's let's begin by 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:10.520 going to your political beginnings. You, in nineteen seventy six 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:16.040 began working for a then unknown congressman named Ron Paul 0:03:16.120 --> 0:03:18.799 out of Texas. Uh. What did you do for him? 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:22.560 And how did you guys ultimately find each other? Well, 0:03:23.160 --> 0:03:28.600 at that time, Texas was a very solidly democratic state. Uh. 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.680 You know, the old story down there is the Democrats 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:35.000 were yellow dog Democrats. They'd vote for a yellow dog 0:03:35.040 --> 0:03:38.320 if it was running as a Democrat. And there was 0:03:38.360 --> 0:03:43.080 only two other Republicans in the Republican House delegation, and 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:47.520 one of the Democrats, Uh, resigned because he got a 0:03:47.600 --> 0:03:50.920 higher level appointment of some kind, and so they had 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:54.640 to have a special election in April nineteen seventy six, 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:58.480 And I saw a brief story, uh in the Washington 0:03:58.520 --> 0:04:02.360 Post in which this this fellow Ron Paul, whom of 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:06.600 course I'd never heard of, Uh, was elected Republican to 0:04:06.640 --> 0:04:09.680 a Democratic seat, and he was quoted in the article 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:13.000 saying he was to the right of very goldwater Well, 0:04:13.280 --> 0:04:16.839 which is hard to imagine. Well, at the time, that 0:04:16.880 --> 0:04:19.000 sounded like a good idea to me. I was very 0:04:19.000 --> 0:04:24.160 conservative at that time, libertarian and uh so and I 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:26.640 was I was just finishing up some work at graduate 0:04:26.720 --> 0:04:30.800 school and was looking around for a real job. Saw 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.159 out of the blue, I just sent him a letter 0:04:33.320 --> 0:04:37.800 and uh some things I published and uh A few 0:04:37.880 --> 0:04:40.280 days later, I get a call from his secretary and 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:43.279 I interviewed with him. And I remember when I entered 0:04:43.279 --> 0:04:47.400 his office, he had a bookcase, and in the bookcase 0:04:47.480 --> 0:04:50.960 was every book published by the Foundation for Economic Education, 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:54.280 which is still around in a robust website. That's right, 0:04:54.440 --> 0:04:59.479 and but at the and but at the time it 0:04:59.600 --> 0:05:04.040 was was the most well known, well established free market 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.160 oriented think tank in the United States. And I had 0:05:08.200 --> 0:05:10.960 already published a couple of articles in its little journal, 0:05:11.000 --> 0:05:14.280 which was called The Freeman. And so I think that's 0:05:14.320 --> 0:05:16.880 probably what caught his attention. And when I saw all 0:05:16.920 --> 0:05:19.359 these books, I knew I was in pretty good shape. 0:05:19.800 --> 0:05:22.000 So what was it like working with him? He that 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:25.039 was he was on the banking committee. Uh. I don't 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:29.560 think people had any idea of how his politics would 0:05:29.600 --> 0:05:34.760 evolve to really full blown libertarianism. Uh. Nor did people 0:05:34.839 --> 0:05:39.800 understand that he would one day mount a fairly um 0:05:40.080 --> 0:05:44.000 significant run for the presidents, multiple runs for the president, 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.600 and that his son would become a United States Senator. Yeah. 0:05:47.640 --> 0:05:49.440 I mean at the time, we thought what we were 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.320 doing was very quicksodic and uh and I think we're 0:05:53.360 --> 0:05:55.839 just trying to make a point. And in order to 0:05:55.880 --> 0:05:58.520 do so. Uh, you know, Ron like to to do 0:05:58.600 --> 0:06:02.360 things in a very outrage just manner. For example, one 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:05.680 of his things he most enjoyed was being the only 0:06:05.800 --> 0:06:10.680 no vote against some piece of legislation that passed would 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:14.960 otherwise have passed unanimously. And since he was a medical doctor, 0:06:15.000 --> 0:06:19.080 he got people would call him doctor No and he 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.279 he very much enjoyed that. How did you move from 0:06:22.360 --> 0:06:26.600 run poland Texas to Jack Kemp up in upstate New York. Well, 0:06:26.640 --> 0:06:29.839 the problem was that Iran was elected in a special 0:06:29.839 --> 0:06:33.160 election in April of nineteen seventy six and therefore had 0:06:33.200 --> 0:06:37.080 to run for election for for a full seat that 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.200 very same year, and unfortunately he was defeated in his 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:45.039 first bid for h I guess he was his first 0:06:45.080 --> 0:06:48.880 effort at re election and uh, and so he was defeated, 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:51.840 and Uh, I was looking around for a job, and 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:54.520 uh one of the women in the office that she 0:06:54.560 --> 0:06:58.440 had heard that Jack Kemp, who I really only knew 0:06:58.440 --> 0:07:01.240 about as a football player. I remember watching him in 0:07:01.279 --> 0:07:06.159 the nineteen AFL Championship game. He when he was playing 0:07:06.200 --> 0:07:09.359 for the Buffalo Bills, and he had been elected to 0:07:09.440 --> 0:07:12.760 Congress in nineteen seventy and he always said that the 0:07:12.800 --> 0:07:15.080 reason he was elected because he threatened to come and 0:07:15.160 --> 0:07:17.720 come back and play for the Bills another year if 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.880 he lost. And that's very funny. So you leave Ron 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:25.560 Paul after he was defeated in what was that seventies 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:31.720 eight or and you join um Jack Kemp's office. Kemp 0:07:31.840 --> 0:07:36.040 was tapped by Reagan to help push forward a very 0:07:36.080 --> 0:07:38.080 big set of tax cuts. Tell us, well, that was 0:07:38.200 --> 0:07:40.960 much later. So I went to work with Kemp, and 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:45.680 he was very interested in tax policy, and he had 0:07:45.680 --> 0:07:48.520 come under the influence of a guy named Jude Winnisky, 0:07:49.400 --> 0:07:53.400 who in turn had come under the influence of too economists, 0:07:53.440 --> 0:07:57.000 one named Robert Mundell, who later won the Nobel Prize, 0:07:57.080 --> 0:08:00.760 and Arthur Laugher, who was still out there and very 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.720 active in in in tax affairs. One of the things 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:07.560 that Jack was very interested in was the Kennedy tax 0:08:07.600 --> 0:08:10.480 cut of the nineteen sixties, which he felt had done 0:08:10.480 --> 0:08:14.679 a lot to invigorate the economy. And remember, in nineteen 0:08:14.760 --> 0:08:19.680 seventy seven, inflation was the overwhelmingly large problem, and this 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.360 tended to make it very hard to do any kind 0:08:23.400 --> 0:08:26.720 of fiscal policy because anything that would increase the deficit 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:32.800 was considered per se inflationary. But what Jack argued, uh 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:37.280 really based on Mundel's theories, was that if you enacted 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.839 some kind of policy that increased the production of goods 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:44.760 and services, then this would be anti inflationary, you see. 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:47.920 And so that meaning you would have more supply and 0:08:48.160 --> 0:08:51.760 it should not see runaway prices. The additional supplies should 0:08:52.200 --> 0:08:55.600 actually keep a cap on prices. Well well, yeah, if 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:58.199 you could just hold the line on the money supply 0:08:58.559 --> 0:09:02.200 and and then do something that would raise supply, then 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:06.560 you should get a diminishing diminishment of of inflation. At 0:09:06.640 --> 0:09:10.960 least that was our theory and our argument. And uh so, 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:14.080 you know, one day, I remember he uh you know, 0:09:14.200 --> 0:09:16.480 just said to me, Bruce, why don't we instead of 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:18.760 just talking about the Kennedy tax cut, why don't we 0:09:18.760 --> 0:09:23.720 just do it and just reintroduce the same legislation. Well, 0:09:23.760 --> 0:09:27.080 obviously you couldn't literally do that because the Kennedy tax 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:30.160 cut was already in effect, So we had to find 0:09:30.240 --> 0:09:35.520 something that replicated it in in my in current terms, 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:40.320 remind us, how what were the top rates like under Kennedy. 0:09:40.400 --> 0:09:42.720 What was the actual impact of the cuts that were 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.640 passed in the early sixties. Well, the the you have 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.480 to remember that when Kennedy took office, all the World 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:52.240 War One to Korea War, tax rates were still in 0:09:52.280 --> 0:09:56.320 effect because Eisenhower refused to cut them on the grounds 0:09:56.320 --> 0:09:59.160 that he wanted to balance the budget. And but Kennedy, 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:02.160 remember and on saying he wanted to get the economy 0:10:02.240 --> 0:10:06.520 moving again. And so he's at that time the top 0:10:06.559 --> 0:10:10.720 tax rate in the federal marginal statutory income tax rate 0:10:12.880 --> 0:10:17.480 and the bottom rate was I believe, and so he 0:10:17.880 --> 0:10:20.800 cut those from He cut the top right down to 0:10:21.240 --> 0:10:25.400 uh sev and the bottom right down to fourteen percent. 0:10:25.840 --> 0:10:29.880 And that's where those rates were when I started working 0:10:29.880 --> 0:10:34.120 for Jack Kemp. Now, the real problem was remember inflation, 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:39.439 and everybody was getting pushed up into higher tax brackets. Inflation. 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:44.840 At the time, tax brackets um were not adjusted for inflation, 0:10:44.920 --> 0:10:48.400 you could just be inflated into a higher bracket, that's right. 0:10:48.480 --> 0:10:51.840 And so workers were getting cost of living adjustments which 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:54.840 just kept them even, but they were actually were soft 0:10:54.920 --> 0:10:58.480 because they were getting pushed into higher brackets that had 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:02.000 been originally put in to place the tax people whose 0:11:02.000 --> 0:11:06.600 real incomes were very substantially higher than their's. And actually 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.760 the rich, we're we're in somewhat of a better shape 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:11.880 because if you're already in the top bracket, you can't 0:11:11.920 --> 0:11:15.160 get pushed any higher. But there were some other problems. 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.800 Capital gains was a very serious problem because a lot 0:11:18.880 --> 0:11:21.760 of the gains that were being realized at that time 0:11:21.840 --> 0:11:25.640 was pure inflation, and so you're you're being it was 0:11:25.679 --> 0:11:29.640 confiscatory taxation. You were paying a tax on on zero 0:11:29.760 --> 0:11:33.080 real gains. So what had Kemp proposed doing based on 0:11:33.320 --> 0:11:37.040 where taxes were in the late He proposed cutting the 0:11:37.040 --> 0:11:40.839 top rate from seventy to fifty and the bottom rate 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:46.360 from four to and so we just we just asserted 0:11:46.400 --> 0:11:49.600 that this is essentially the Kennedy tax cut, another twenty 0:11:49.600 --> 0:11:51.760 points off the top and a third off the bottom. 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:53.920 And yeah, so we argued that everybody was getting a 0:11:54.000 --> 0:11:56.120 tax rate cut and all the rates in between were 0:11:56.120 --> 0:12:00.680 cut at about this by the same amount, and so 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:05.240 we introduced this legislation in the middle of nineteen seventy seven. 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:10.400 In the meantime, a Senator named Bill Roth from Delaware 0:12:10.880 --> 0:12:13.600 had contacted Kemp saying he really liked what he was 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:17.280 saying and suggested they worked together, and so we asked 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:19.560 him if he wanted to be to co sponsor this 0:12:19.679 --> 0:12:23.360 Kennedy tax cut legislation. He was very interested in doing so, 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.920 and that's how it became the Kemp Roth Bill. But 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:30.320 in nineteen seventy seven there was not much interest in 0:12:30.360 --> 0:12:34.360 this legislation because Republicans were still very wedded to the 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:39.000 balanced budget idea and they didn't want to cut taxes 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:43.720 and less they cut spending simultaneously by an equal amount. 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:47.880 This was the widespread view in the Republican caucus. So 0:12:47.880 --> 0:12:51.960 so we were having trouble getting co sponsors. And of course, 0:12:52.000 --> 0:12:56.840 inflation was a serious problem, and all the conventional administration 0:12:56.880 --> 0:12:59.800 economists said, if you don't act a big tax cut now, 0:13:00.320 --> 0:13:04.880 it'll it'll be massively inflationary, we'll have hyper inflation. So 0:13:04.920 --> 0:13:07.959 we had no support really from anybody except these couple 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:12.400 of people like Arthur Laugher. And uh, speaking of which 0:13:13.400 --> 0:13:17.760 comes along, Ronald Reagan gets elected in in pretty much 0:13:17.800 --> 0:13:20.440 a landslide, not as big a landslide as eighty four, 0:13:20.520 --> 0:13:25.760 but still substantially trounced the Jimmy Carter. Then what happened? 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:29.000 How did we get from that too? All those tax 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:32.000 cut Well, there was something in the middle in between 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:36.880 happened that's extremely important, which is in eight they passed 0:13:36.960 --> 0:13:40.679 Proposition thirteen in California, and now I remember that's what 0:13:40.840 --> 0:13:44.280 That was a huge cut in the property tax rate. 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:47.319 And the really important part about this is there were 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:51.880 no accompanying spending cuts, because everybody just said, there's plenty 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:54.360 of fat in the government. Let them worry about. It's 0:13:54.400 --> 0:13:57.199 not our problem. We just want to pay less taxes. 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.160 And when this was enacted, it d everybody in the 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.440 United States, everybody in Washington certainly to believe, oh my god, 0:14:04.480 --> 0:14:07.240 there's a tax revolt. We got to do something about this. 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:12.720 And Kemp's legislation suddenly became the thing that every Republican 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:16.280 wanted to be the sponsor of. And as you say, 0:14:16.360 --> 0:14:19.400 in nineteen eighty, when Ronald Reagan was running for president, 0:14:19.720 --> 0:14:23.000 he he officially endorsed the kemper Off Bill and said, 0:14:23.040 --> 0:14:26.040 this is my legislation, this is what I will send 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:29.160 to Congress if I'm elected. And he did, and it 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:33.840 was signed into law in August of And what was 0:14:33.880 --> 0:14:38.680 the impact of those taxes. I think they're grossly exaggerated 0:14:38.840 --> 0:14:42.560 to this day in terms of their economic impact. You 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:45.200 have to remember the the the the tax cut took 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.480 effect in the middle of a huge recession, and so 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:52.840 in that sense it was very well timed fiscal stimulus, 0:14:53.240 --> 0:14:55.120 but a lot of other but but of course the 0:14:55.160 --> 0:14:59.320 economy continued downward for well over a year after the 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.600 tax cut took effect. Let's talk a little bit about 0:15:02.720 --> 0:15:05.960 some of the changes that have taken place in politics 0:15:06.640 --> 0:15:09.760 over the past twenty or thirty years that led you 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:14.720 to really break with your conservative roots. And probably nothing 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:18.760 epitomizes that more than the book you wrote, How George 0:15:18.760 --> 0:15:23.160 Bush Bankrupted American Betrayed the Rigging Legacy. What led to 0:15:23.280 --> 0:15:27.520 this fairly dramatic pivot from the right to I would 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:30.480 say the middle, Other people would say the left. What 0:15:30.480 --> 0:15:33.120 what led to this? Oh? I can tell you very 0:15:33.200 --> 0:15:36.920 very specifically, even give you the exact date. Now up 0:15:37.000 --> 0:15:41.280 until two thousand three. I was a very conventional Republican conservative. 0:15:41.840 --> 0:15:46.240 I was very happy in the Republican Party. And then 0:15:46.480 --> 0:15:52.240 on November two thousand three, Uh, you may remember, we 0:15:52.280 --> 0:15:55.840 woke up too, and when we read the newspapers, we 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:58.760 found out that in the middle of the night, the 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:04.440 Republican Congress had passed something called the Medicare Part D program, 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:08.480 and they literally kept the vote open for three hours 0:16:08.560 --> 0:16:11.840 while they twisted arms and did all kinds of things 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:15.480 to ram this piece of legislation through, which was the 0:16:15.520 --> 0:16:19.360 creation of a new entitlement program for big with big 0:16:19.400 --> 0:16:22.280 giveaways to the industry itself as well. Well, that's right, 0:16:22.360 --> 0:16:25.520 it was. It was a four billion dollar costs, not 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:29.400 one penny of which was paid for, and they explicitly 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:34.120 wrote into law that the Medicare program was prohibited from 0:16:34.160 --> 0:16:39.120 negotiating with the pharmaceutical companies in the same way that 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:44.120 every single private health insurance plan does. So they have 0:16:44.280 --> 0:16:48.600 to pay the list price whatever they charge of dosage, 0:16:48.840 --> 0:16:51.760 the Medicare program has to pay it, and there's nothing 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:54.040 they can do about it. Was that a stop to 0:16:54.080 --> 0:16:58.760 the industry, It was what was an attempt to bankrupt Medicaid. No, 0:16:58.880 --> 0:17:01.960 I don't think they are consciously trying to bankrupt Medicare. 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:05.080 What I think is they were trying to throw billions 0:17:05.080 --> 0:17:07.960 and hundreds of billions of dollars at their pals in 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:11.600 the in the in the in the pharmaceutical industry. I 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.240 think that they were. And the Republicans felt that they 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:17.280 had to do this because they knew the Democrats would 0:17:17.359 --> 0:17:20.400 the first chance they got, but the Democrats would make 0:17:20.440 --> 0:17:25.800 sure that there were provisions in there to control drug prices, 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.320 and they absolutely did not want that to happen. So 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:32.280 they had to do take the initiative to pass this 0:17:32.440 --> 0:17:37.800 legislation themselves. And uh, and I was just horrified because 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:42.880 I thought Republicans existed to cut entitlement programs, reduced spending, 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:47.600 and creating a new entitlement program was just the opposite 0:17:47.600 --> 0:17:49.719 of what I thought the party existed to do. So 0:17:49.840 --> 0:17:53.159 you sat down and wrote a book called Imposta about 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.800 George Bush. What was the response and you published a 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.760 variety of different columns about it while it was in 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:02.800 the arks. What was the response from your colleagues on 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.320 the right. Well, first of all, I I started writing 0:18:06.600 --> 0:18:10.399 very very negative columns about George W. Bush, and at 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.639 the time was working for a conservative think tank which 0:18:14.480 --> 0:18:17.240 basically said stop doing this or you're gonna be fired. 0:18:17.960 --> 0:18:20.399 So so that was what led me to decide to 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.480 write the book, which I had originally thought I might 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:27.959 have to do uh anonymously. But anyway, I wrote this 0:18:28.040 --> 0:18:33.360 book during UH two thousand five, and UH, to my surprise, 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:36.639 there was interest in the publishing industry about it, and 0:18:36.880 --> 0:18:39.960 UH it came out in in early two thousand and six, 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:44.480 a Reagan advisor with strong right wing conservative credentials writes 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:49.000 a book calling George Bush the person who's bankrupting American 0:18:49.080 --> 0:18:52.399 be trading the Reagan legacy. Was it any surprise at 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:56.080 a conservative think tank said you're out? Uh? In retrospect, 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.000 I was rather naive about all of this, But I see, 0:19:00.080 --> 0:19:02.760 I thought that I had written a book, and if 0:19:02.760 --> 0:19:05.040 you read it, it's it reads like an academic book. 0:19:05.160 --> 0:19:09.640 It's very, very heavily referenced. And not only that, virtually 0:19:09.680 --> 0:19:12.720 every person in the entire book who's cited or quoted 0:19:13.200 --> 0:19:16.560 is a good solid conservative. Because I was, in a 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:21.119 way distilling what a lot of conservatives were saying. And 0:19:21.160 --> 0:19:24.760 I thought of people simply read the book, they'd be 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:29.240 UH persuaded by it. They'd agree with me. Isn't it 0:19:29.240 --> 0:19:31.919 shocking you could go through this whole process of putting 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:35.159 all these facts on paper, and yet still the same 0:19:35.200 --> 0:19:40.480 myths and misunderstandings persist. People don't want to believe that 0:19:40.720 --> 0:19:44.240 which they don't want to believe. That's right, And uh, 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:47.640 it was really my first experience with this whole phenomenon. 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.480 I'm not sure quite sure what we call it now, 0:19:50.600 --> 0:19:55.200 where confirmation by a selective perception. But there's another quote 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.280 of yours I have to mention because at this point 0:19:58.320 --> 0:20:00.200 I think you're just trying to get your concern OVD 0:20:00.240 --> 0:20:04.000 of Allies and Friends angry. You wrote, no one has 0:20:04.040 --> 0:20:07.199 been more correct in his analysis and prescriptions for the 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:12.520 economy's problems than Paul Krugman, a prominent Kingsie economist. He 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:15.520 is the boogeyman for the far right, and yet you're 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:17.639 saying this guy has been more right than anyone else. 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:20.199 I don't remember exactly when I said that, but I 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.680 do remember saying it, and and I agree with that. 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:25.600 Let's talk a little bit about your most recent book, 0:20:26.400 --> 0:20:30.399 The Truth Matters, A citizens Guide to separating facts and 0:20:30.480 --> 0:20:35.840 lies and stopping fake news in its tracks. First question 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:39.960 is the truth matters. Isn't that self evident? Don't we 0:20:40.000 --> 0:20:43.760 don't we all believe the truth matters? One would think so. 0:20:44.040 --> 0:20:48.240 But there's obviously a great deal of evidence to the contrary, 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:52.680 at least as far as Donald Trump is concerned. I mean, 0:20:52.720 --> 0:20:55.439 you've probably read this recent story where he continues to 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:58.480 insist that he owns a ren Wi, an original ren Wi. 0:20:58.720 --> 0:21:02.639 Now has he actually said that, because the Chicago Art 0:21:02.680 --> 0:21:07.959 Institute recently came out and said, the renoir pictured in 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:13.040 Trump's apartment, the original is here. We have the providence, 0:21:13.080 --> 0:21:15.520 we could trade trace it back from when it was 0:21:15.600 --> 0:21:17.920 painted to who it was sold to. We know exactly 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:21.159 who and who and where it is. How can Trump 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:25.240 really believe that that's an original? He simply continues to 0:21:25.320 --> 0:21:28.280 assert it, just as he asserts so many other things 0:21:28.280 --> 0:21:31.840 that are simply lies. Now, the reason I wrote the book, 0:21:32.680 --> 0:21:36.400 it's because I was horrified by the election results. Were 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:40.600 you surprised by them? Yes? I was on election night. 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.680 I mean it was quite early in the evening when 0:21:43.680 --> 0:21:47.160 I saw the handwriting on the wall, when I saw 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:51.560 the Hillary was was not hadn't yet been called in 0:21:51.680 --> 0:21:53.639 states that I was quite certain she was going to 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:58.359 I knew that was a very bad sign. And uh, 0:21:58.400 --> 0:22:00.720 and and I didn't stay up to watch the final 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:04.000 results of No. I just couldn't handle it. And in fact, 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.639 I refused to read any of the news for about 0:22:06.680 --> 0:22:09.359 two months after the election. I was just sick to 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:11.879 my stomach. Oh you miss them, fascinating thing. Yeah, I 0:22:11.880 --> 0:22:14.920 imagine I did. But but as I you know, got 0:22:14.920 --> 0:22:18.520 out of my stupor or whatever and began to think 0:22:18.600 --> 0:22:22.400 about what was going on, the thing that struck me 0:22:22.720 --> 0:22:26.240 was the problems of the media, because it seemed to 0:22:26.280 --> 0:22:29.359 me that that the media that had existed throughout most 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:33.720 of our lifetimes, you know, when you had three major 0:22:34.200 --> 0:22:37.800 news broadcasts in the evening, you didn't have cable. Everybody 0:22:37.840 --> 0:22:41.640 got a newspaper delivered to their house that were responsible 0:22:41.680 --> 0:22:44.639 newspapers that had a great deal of power and authority. 0:22:45.080 --> 0:22:47.959 They wouldn't have allowed any of this to happen. And 0:22:48.040 --> 0:22:51.320 so I felt that the weakness of the media, certain 0:22:52.160 --> 0:22:54.479 things that were going on in the nature and the 0:22:54.560 --> 0:22:57.960 structure of the media. Uh, we're very much to blame 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:01.560 for the Trump phenomenon. So let's unpack that a little bit, 0:23:01.600 --> 0:23:05.359 because we have we have a couple of things driving that, 0:23:05.440 --> 0:23:11.200 you have the overall move to digital, which hurt newspaper classify. 0:23:11.480 --> 0:23:16.120 Everything from Craigslist to Amazon to Google have all taken 0:23:16.400 --> 0:23:20.199 a big chunk of the traditional media's revenue stream. And 0:23:20.240 --> 0:23:24.080 so we've seen big cutbacks and newsrooms. We've seen consolidation. 0:23:24.080 --> 0:23:27.160 We've seen a lot of newspapers closing. And that's before 0:23:27.240 --> 0:23:30.600 we get to the rise of Facebook and fake news. 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:35.840 These are all related phenomenon. Obviously, the media don't have 0:23:35.920 --> 0:23:41.360 the economic strength to oppose a pop you know, somebody, 0:23:41.400 --> 0:23:44.160 I won't say Trump is popular in the conventional sense, 0:23:44.200 --> 0:23:48.159 but he's obviously newsworthy and and people paid in an 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:51.400 ordinate amount of tension. Whenever there was a story about him, 0:23:51.400 --> 0:23:54.720 it got lots of clicks. Somebody said that the media 0:23:54.840 --> 0:23:57.119 gave him and I'm I know, I'm mangling this number 0:23:57.840 --> 0:24:01.359 two billion, eight billion dollars at the free coverage. And 0:24:01.359 --> 0:24:05.280 and that's why he ran a fairly shoe string campaign, 0:24:05.320 --> 0:24:09.399 not a big budget. That's exactly correct. And and but worse, 0:24:09.520 --> 0:24:14.840 what they did is they tended inadvertently, perhaps to normalize him. 0:24:15.200 --> 0:24:18.800 They share they shaved off the rough edges and didn't 0:24:18.800 --> 0:24:21.800 make him seem like the total clown that he in 0:24:21.880 --> 0:24:25.920 fact is and always has been. They felt like, how 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:30.800 can we justify spending so much time covering this this 0:24:30.800 --> 0:24:33.560 this clown. We have to elevate him up so that 0:24:33.640 --> 0:24:38.399 he seems important enough to justify us giving him so 0:24:38.600 --> 0:24:43.120 much airspace, so many column inches of coverage. So now 0:24:43.119 --> 0:24:46.560 it's funny you say that, because I'm a lifelong New Yorker, 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:51.920 I'm gonna oversimplify this. But most New Yorkers know who 0:24:51.960 --> 0:24:54.879 Donald Trump was before he ran for office, and he 0:24:55.000 --> 0:24:57.520 was kind of looked at as, yeah, the guy inherited 0:24:57.520 --> 0:25:00.600 a bunch of money and he's kind of a a goofball, 0:25:00.680 --> 0:25:04.119 but nobody really took him seriously. Some people thought he 0:25:04.160 --> 0:25:06.600 was a grifter. I know other people who talked about 0:25:06.680 --> 0:25:09.840 him not paying contractors and all the lawsuits and all 0:25:09.880 --> 0:25:12.239 that sort of stuff. But I think the average New 0:25:12.320 --> 0:25:14.480 york had kind of looked at him and said, yeah, 0:25:14.480 --> 0:25:17.680 this guy is in a serious candidate. It was shocking 0:25:17.760 --> 0:25:20.399