Speaker 1: On this episode of Newtsworld. President Trump marked his first
Speaker 1: hundred days in office this week, and it's been one
Speaker 1: of the most remarkable one hundred days in any modern
Speaker 1: American presidency. From securing the border to taking on inflation
Speaker 1: to challenging unfair tarishs from countries around the globe, President
Speaker 1: Trump has had a monumental impact in a very short
Speaker 1: period of time. Here to discuss the first hundred days,
Speaker 1: I'm really pleased to welcome my guest, doctor Kevin Roberts,
Speaker 1: President of the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America. Kevin, welcome,
Speaker 1: and thank you for joining me on Newtsworld.
Speaker 2: Newt Gingrich, I am not just being polite as a
Speaker 2: fellow Southerner when I say it's heartfelt. You are one
Speaker 2: of my political heroes and mentors. It is a leisure
Speaker 2: to be with you, sir.
Speaker 1: Well, You've been doing an amazing job at Heritage, and
Speaker 1: I'm just delighted to have this chance to talk to
Speaker 1: you because I know you have a remarkably broad view
Speaker 1: of everything that goes on with government and that Heritage
Speaker 1: does an astonishing job as one of the great centers
Speaker 1: of conservative thought in America. Let's start with the border
Speaker 1: where I have to confess. Much as I support Trump
Speaker 1: admire him, the achievement on the border crossing is like unbelievable.
Speaker 1: I think the drop last month from one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty nine thousand under Biden for the same period to
Speaker 1: about eleven thousand under Trump, and it's continued to go down.
Speaker 1: They've dropped from about fifteen thousand illegal entries into ander
Speaker 1: Biden to about one hundred and seventy eight. You've seen
Speaker 1: the collapse in the number of people trying to get
Speaker 1: in because they figured out that they're not going to
Speaker 1: Are you surprised by the scale of change?
Speaker 2: Like you, I had very high expts because you and
Speaker 2: I both know President Trump. When we know that, especially
Speaker 2: this time around, he's assembled what I think is the
Speaker 2: greatest cabinet in modern political history. It has the potential
Speaker 2: to be the greatest ever. And so with those two dynamics,
Speaker 2: our expectations were really high.
Speaker 3: As you said, Newt.
Speaker 2: And yet particularly when you look at the number of
Speaker 2: border crossings that is the minuscule number, now you realize
Speaker 2: they're ahead of schedule. And then I started thinking about it, Newt.
Speaker 2: One last important point on this, Tom Homan who was
Speaker 2: a fellow here at Heritage, a friend to us both
Speaker 2: I spoke with recently, and Tom was not surprised at
Speaker 2: all because he thought that the combination of the rhetoric
Speaker 2: after the election day by him and by the President,
Speaker 2: and obviously all of the key figures, including Secretary Nome,
Speaker 2: would create this process of deflating the numbers, that is,
Speaker 2: people who would be willing to cross the border would
Speaker 2: start to decline. But what the precise thing that they've
Speaker 2: done a really good job of is at the order
Speaker 2: interdicting these people who are crossing illegally. And then finally
Speaker 2: they're really gaining some momentum on the interior enforcement, which
Speaker 2: of course is where you and I and other normal
Speaker 2: Americans just going about our daily lives encounter these illegal aliens.
Speaker 2: So hats off to the administration. In fact, they might
Speaker 2: even already be victims of their quick success because Americans
Speaker 2: are starting to get used to having operational control of
Speaker 2: the southern border.
Speaker 1: That's right. The reality is when you solve something, it
Speaker 1: drops off their list. Tim Hammer said something on April
Speaker 1: twenty eighth and a White House briefing that I thought
Speaker 1: was astonishing. He said, last year one hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: four thousand illegal aliens were released into the United States
Speaker 1: under Biden. In the same time period this year, the
Speaker 1: number was nine. Now, to go from one hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty four thousand to nine, I would have thought that
Speaker 1: was technically impossible.
Speaker 2: You would think it would be impossible to get the
Speaker 2: number that low, and yet it just shows you. As
Speaker 2: President Trump said on the media, you know, the corporate
Speaker 2: media thought he was just being flipped. You didn't need
Speaker 2: really new policies. You needed a new president to enforce
Speaker 2: the law in the books. And obviously, as you know
Speaker 2: better than anyone, Congress needs to take some action and
Speaker 2: they will. But ultimately President Trump has delivered practically immediately
Speaker 2: on the single most important part that drove the outcome
Speaker 2: of this election, and that was the lawlessness at the
Speaker 2: southern border that Americans all across the political spectrum, from
Speaker 2: the left to the right thought was absurd.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that that was one of the
Speaker 1: two great things, along with the economy, that drove people
Speaker 1: to decide that they had to replace Biden and led
Speaker 1: them to support President Trump as strongly as they did.
Speaker 1: But there are a number of other pieces of this
Speaker 1: whole safety issue, which is, in my mind, you have
Speaker 1: domestic safety from crime, you have safety from the cartels
Speaker 1: and others who want to penetrate our country illegally, and
Speaker 1: then you have national relations in the whole national security issue.
Speaker 1: As Heritage looks at all this, what's your sense of
Speaker 1: how they are doing and whether or not they're moving
Speaker 1: in the right direction.
Speaker 2: Well, the bottom line up front is they're one percent
Speaker 2: moving in the right direction. And there are a few
Speaker 2: reasons for that. The first is they're not committing the
Speaker 2: problem of failing to.
Speaker 3: See the forest through the trees.
Speaker 2: That is to say, it would be very common in
Speaker 2: the first days of a presidency, first weeks of a
Speaker 2: presidency to home in on one discrete issue and see
Speaker 2: some policy progress, some good outcomes in that one discreet part,
Speaker 2: but sort of like you know, a really complex engine,
Speaker 2: if you get one part of it right, maybe it
Speaker 2: affects the running of the rest of it. Instead, I
Speaker 2: think because of the experience of the individuals who have
Speaker 2: control of the respective parts of the government, as well
Speaker 2: as the wisdom experience, and very importantly the gut instincts
Speaker 2: of Donald Trump, which may be the best in the
Speaker 2: history of the presidency, they actually have a strategic view
Speaker 2: about how all of these discrete parts fit into the
Speaker 2: outcome that they want. And because the outcome that they
Speaker 2: want ultimately is the restoration of the American dream, the
Speaker 2: revitalization of self governance, and that requires Washington to get
Speaker 2: the hell out of the way of the everyday, hardworking American.
Speaker 2: They're doing really well. In short, what they're doing, I
Speaker 2: think in every policy area is connecting the daily tactical
Speaker 2: steps that have to be accrued day by day, week
Speaker 2: by week, month by month that lead to this strategic objective.
Speaker 2: So at Heritage, where's part of our job, informally on
Speaker 2: the outside to take a sort of holistic view of
Speaker 2: how all of this is going.
Speaker 3: Even accounting for.
Speaker 2: Our really high expectations, we believe the administration is surpassing them.
Speaker 1: You played a major role in developing a whole range
Speaker 1: of opportunities and executive orders, and were you surprised at
Speaker 1: the speed of the first hundred days. I think he
Speaker 1: beat Franklin Roosevelt's record for executive orders issued in the
Speaker 1: first hundred days and did it across the board. Clearly
Speaker 1: an men's amount of work. Between Heritage and the America
Speaker 1: First policy Institute. This was the richest period of development
Speaker 1: for transition in American history.
Speaker 2: I'm so proud of everyone who had anything to do
Speaker 2: with the outcomes that we're seeing up to this point. Obviously,
Speaker 2: President Trump, Vice President Advance, the Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,
Speaker 2: who's doing a remarkable job, the whole cabinet deserve all
Speaker 2: of the credit. Right those of us who have the
Speaker 2: privilege of helping out on the outside and who do
Speaker 2: that in between. Conservative presidencies have this privilege of being
Speaker 2: able to cultivate these ideas the specific policy proposals. But
Speaker 2: what Heritage and AFPI and one hundred and ten groups
Speaker 2: across the conservative movement got right was that the courage
Speaker 2: and instincts of Donald Trump, which are unique in modern
Speaker 2: American political history, when paired with a set of policy preparations,
Speaker 2: personnel recommendations, all of us doing that for the sake
Speaker 2: of the country, for any other purpose, would be a
Speaker 2: really special recipe. And therefore, when you ask about the
Speaker 2: pace of the first hundred days, you and I are
Speaker 2: both historians, we both immediately think about what FDR did.
Speaker 2: I mentioned to a group of these conservative coalition folks
Speaker 2: in the last couple of days that the American people
Speaker 2: should be taking a victory lap because, for the first
Speaker 2: time in my lifetime, but really the first time since
Speaker 2: FDR left office, the Conservative movement as a president who
Speaker 2: is willing to move with the vigor and pace that
Speaker 2: FDR did for the New Deal, not even Ronald Reagan,
Speaker 2: one of our heroes, move with that kind of pace.
Speaker 2: And the reason that this is important Newt is that
Speaker 2: so much of this large strategic objective is about scaling
Speaker 2: back the worst rotten fruit that came out of the
Speaker 2: New Deal, the misnomer the Great Society thirty years later,
Speaker 2: and obviously the aggravation of those ridiculous policies under Obama
Speaker 2: and Biden. In short, President Trump has to move this
Speaker 2: quickly if in fact we have a chance at getting
Speaker 2: this Republic back on track.
Speaker 1: I was a big fan of Reagan's I worked with Reagan,
Speaker 1: and what he did with the Soviet Empire was astonishing.
Speaker 1: I mean, a grand strategic defeat without a war. But
Speaker 1: while he moved the country to the right, and he
Speaker 1: relaunched the American economy and he rebuilt a sense of
Speaker 1: American morale, I don't think President Reagan ever saw it
Speaker 1: as plausible that he could take on the entire establishment,
Speaker 1: And of course, in the thirty years since then, the
Speaker 1: system has evolved and gotten much sicker, much more corrupt,
Speaker 1: much bigger. And Trump came along, and I think that
Speaker 1: the four years that he was out of office allowed
Speaker 1: him to really think about how bad the system had become.
Speaker 1: And ironic from the standpoint of the left having blocked
Speaker 1: him in twenty twenty, they gave him the chance to
Speaker 1: really develop a level of boldness that I think if
Speaker 1: he can sustain this, and if he can win the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty sixth election, this will be the fifth great
Speaker 1: change agent presidency after Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln and FDR. And frankly,
Speaker 1: I don't think I was fully ready for that scale
Speaker 1: of change. And you see it in the economy where
Speaker 1: we shifted from the Biden system, which was creating mostly
Speaker 1: government jobs, were almost no private sector jobs, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, with Trump, you have a huge increase
Speaker 1: in private sector jobs. You have jobs in mining and logging,
Speaker 1: you have jobs in construction, you have jobs in manufacturing,
Speaker 1: and there we gained nine thousand manufacturing jobs, while under
Speaker 1: Biden we were losing six thousand manufacturing jobs every month
Speaker 1: from January twenty three to twenty four. I mean, don't
Speaker 1: you think in this sense, so we are right on
Speaker 1: the edge of, potentially, if we can pass the one big,
Speaker 1: beautiful bill on top of all of the investments people
Speaker 1: are announcing, we could really have a Trump boom by
Speaker 1: next summer.
Speaker 2: We could, and two things, the first a near term
Speaker 2: comment and then one much longer term to your point
Speaker 2: about Trump being already or on the brink of one
Speaker 2: of our five great change agent presidents. The first near
Speaker 2: term comment is, if Congress can get the reconciliation bill passed,
Speaker 2: hopefully by the beginning of the summer, not let this
Speaker 2: slide until September. Is you so rightly observed, given your experience,
Speaker 2: then what I think is likely is that you're going
Speaker 2: to see not just an economic recovery from a little
Speaker 2: bit of uncertainty choppiness right now, but an economic boom
Speaker 2: just in time for the midterm elections, especially if Trump
Speaker 2: is out there, as you have recommended, doing whistle stop
Speaker 2: tours and getting Americans to understand that even if he's
Speaker 2: not on the ballot, his agenda is on the ballot.
Speaker 2: And that leads me directly to the second long term comment.
Speaker 2: What I think we're in the first month newt is
Speaker 2: a presidency that is going to redirect the trajectory of
Speaker 2: the United States future. And by that I mean it
Speaker 2: does a compliment because I think what we have been doing,
Speaker 2: even on the right, is managing decline, and we ad
Speaker 2: heritage you know as well have said we lament that
Speaker 2: that's reality, but we also don't believe that that decline
Speaker 2: is irreversible. And obviously that's what makes Trump tick, is
Speaker 2: making America great again, to use his motto.
Speaker 3: But all of that to lead to this point.
Speaker 2: If you think about the four presidents you mentioned, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, FDR.
Speaker 2: They didn't just dominate an era, but to underscore the
Speaker 2: point that you're making, they dictated the parameters of politics
Speaker 2: for a century and even beyond that. I could make
Speaker 2: a case for each of them that they put an
Speaker 2: imprint on what America, the American dream, even the identity
Speaker 2: of Americans would be. And Trump is doing that because
Speaker 2: he's reminding us of the principles of our founding, which
Speaker 2: is that centralized power isn't just expensive and inefficient, it
Speaker 2: stands in the way of individual, hardworking Americans. Realizing their
Speaker 2: potential in the ways we put it as Americans realizing
Speaker 2: the American dream. I think to sum up here that
Speaker 2: if we continue on this pace, and reconciliation gets passed
Speaker 2: hopefully by the House by Memorial Day and by the
Speaker 2: Senate earlier in the summer, and the Trump cabinet continues
Speaker 2: to do what they're doing, which is remarkable, that we're
Speaker 2: not only going to see success in twenty twenty six
Speaker 2: and twenty twenty eight and in the near term. I
Speaker 2: think that people who are having this conversation when you
Speaker 2: and I are both gone in the year twenty one hundred,
Speaker 2: are going to look back and say, the twenty twenties
Speaker 2: was the decade when the United States decided it was
Speaker 2: reversing its decline, it was going to stop hating itself,
Speaker 2: it was going to tell allies, suppose it, allies in Europe,
Speaker 2: put your money where your mouth is, and then will
Speaker 2: be your best friend. And ultimately a majority of Americans
Speaker 2: decided that they would wake up and say, this is
Speaker 2: our country again, and the American dream is alive and
Speaker 2: well for us, for our kids and for our grandkids.
Speaker 2: I know that's what motivates President Trump.
Speaker 1: I had the feeling. In his speech to the Congress,
Speaker 1: he had a section where he talked about merit and
Speaker 1: the importance of performance, and I thought that was in
Speaker 1: some ways the most important part of the speech because
Speaker 1: it was a direct repudiation of the sort of diversity, inclusiveness,
Speaker 1: and equity model of the left, which said, you don't
Speaker 1: have to work for it, you don't have to earn it,
Speaker 1: you don't have to desire it. We somehow owe it
Speaker 1: to you, no matter how lazy you are, how incompetent
Speaker 1: you are. The cultural part of trump Ism may in
Speaker 1: the long run be even more important than the changes
Speaker 1: in tax law or the changes in regulation, because it's
Speaker 1: getting America back to being Americans again. I mean, a
Speaker 1: good example is the country's overwhelmingly in favor of the
Speaker 1: work ethic, and the country overwhelmingly favors requiring people who
Speaker 1: get money from the government to work for it. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is totally antagonistic to the hard left. I
Speaker 1: think that the country is going to rally to President
Speaker 1: Trump on these issues, and as a side effect of that,
Speaker 1: because he's offering a very pro free enterprise, very optimistic vision.
Speaker 1: I mean, they've been over five trillion dollars in investments
Speaker 1: announced in the US economy since you took office, think
Speaker 1: about the first hundred days, there's already been announced over
Speaker 1: five trillion dollars in various investments. I find that to
Speaker 1: be astonishing.
Speaker 2: It is astonishing, and there's some good evidence just as
Speaker 2: we sit here that that number has become even larger
Speaker 2: than the amount of investments. And it leads me to
Speaker 2: make this observation on top of all of the good
Speaker 2: points that you've made newt and it's this, if we
Speaker 2: continue on this path of all of these good policies
Speaker 2: by the administration and by Congress, and we initiate and
Speaker 2: win what is in essence a trade war with China,
Speaker 2: we will have prevented, in the same way that Reagan
Speaker 2: prevented a hot war with the Soviet Union, a hot
Speaker 2: war with China. Because most really smart foreign policy people
Speaker 2: before Trump won the election in November of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 2: believed that Shi Jinping was probably telling the truth when
Speaker 2: he was signaling that by twenty twenty seven China was
Speaker 2: going to invade Taiwan. That obviously has some serious consequences
Speaker 2: on the United States, but China's ambitions You and I
Speaker 2: know full well are beyond Taiwan, the Chinese Communist Party
Speaker 2: under She wants to dominate the world. As I travel
Speaker 2: waiving the Heritage flag internationally, the most common thing that
Speaker 2: I hear as a worry by international friends is the
Speaker 2: success politically and economically of the Belton Road initiative of
Speaker 2: China's great infrastructure program Internationally, Now, the infrastructure, the technology
Speaker 2: has up to this point been terrible, and you don't
Speaker 2: want to be doing business with She and the CCP.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, what Trump is doing, using really sophisticated policy
Speaker 2: and great leaders like Scott Bessant, is initiating a conflict
Speaker 2: that the Chinese thought the United States no longer had
Speaker 2: the spine to initiate. But they discounted even Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: even though they knew how he operated from his first term.
Speaker 2: And so what I'm saying in a certain extended way,
Speaker 2: even though it's early, is that even beyond the very
Speaker 2: obvious early fruits of this Trump agenda, I think We're
Speaker 2: going to reap some long term benefits from him completely
Speaker 2: upending the status quo, particularly as it relates to what
Speaker 2: has been a real cowardice towards China by both the
Speaker 2: right and left over the last several years.
Speaker 1: When you look at the Chinese challenge, it clearly makes
Speaker 1: us come back and look at ourselves. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have to fix our education system if we're going to
Speaker 1: compete in the long run with China. We have to
Speaker 1: fix our regulatory system. You know, the Chinese have twenty
Speaker 1: nine thousand miles of high speed rail. We basically have none.
Speaker 1: And our buaqocricy in our union work rules are such
Speaker 1: that it's virtually impossible to imagine how you're going to
Speaker 1: get there without very dramatic change. And so in that sense,
Speaker 1: I think the very act of thinking through what is
Speaker 1: it going to take not just to compete with China,
Speaker 1: but to succeed in making sure that the United States
Speaker 1: remains the leading country in the world, which is very
Speaker 1: important for the projection of freedom. A world in which
Speaker 1: China is dominant is a world in which to tolitarianism
Speaker 1: will spread pretty darn rapidly. One of the projects you've
Speaker 1: been involved in, which I thought was very daring and
Speaker 1: fits this whole cultural change heritage, actually got IBM to
Speaker 1: commit publicly that they were going to uphold viewpoint neutrality
Speaker 1: and move away from race and gender based hiring. I
Speaker 1: mean that is an extraordinary achievement. Can you share with
Speaker 1: us how you did this?
Speaker 3: Sure, it's a team effort.
Speaker 2: When you work at Heritage, you are able to work
Speaker 2: with a lot of smart people. And so our motivation
Speaker 2: for doing this is that we believe, at Heritage, having
Speaker 2: been a leading public policy organization in the country. I
Speaker 2: think we're the largest conservative think tank in the world,
Speaker 2: that we have to update how we do business to
Speaker 2: reflect changing politics, to reflect a changing country, which is
Speaker 2: to say, we'll always do the academic quality research with
Speaker 2: the primary audience being policymakers in Congress and now thirty
Speaker 2: state legislatures. We've added state based work to our suite
Speaker 2: of arenas, obviously also the presidential administration. But the point
Speaker 2: is that we've spent a lot more time thinking about
Speaker 2: other arenas where we could use the credibility we've earned
Speaker 2: over our fifty two years of existence and frankly wield
Speaker 2: the influence that we have. And I say that without hubris,
Speaker 2: but just to say people understand that Heritage has got
Speaker 2: some influence and so corporate boardrooms, we believed was one
Speaker 2: of those frontiers that we needed to enter using not
Speaker 2: just the capital we have to invest, but being able
Speaker 2: to assemble the capital of like minded investors, whether they
Speaker 2: be individuals or organszations, and put some pressure on those
Speaker 2: corporations to remember their primary objective, which is to earn
Speaker 2: a profit, not to implement wokeness, which of course costs
Speaker 2: money for the shareholders.
Speaker 3: And we are.
Speaker 2: Really really happy that the early first fruit of this
Speaker 2: partnership with Robbie Starbuck, who's been such a wonderfully effective
Speaker 2: activist along these lines, has borne this fruit with sort
Speaker 2: of the quintessentially American company IBM. And so we're not
Speaker 2: going anywhere either from the policy arena or now from
Speaker 2: corporate boardrooms. You can tell I'm really proud of my
Speaker 2: colleagues for affecting this change. But I should say that
Speaker 2: a lot of people have tilled the soil, both at
Speaker 2: Heritage and outside Heritage over the last several years, and it.
Speaker 3: Leads me to this conclusion. I talk often.
Speaker 2: I wrote about it in a book that I published
Speaker 2: last year about the new Conservative movement. And the claim
Speaker 2: that I make is one that you've actually made your
Speaker 2: entire career, and that is just because you decide as
Speaker 2: a conservative to use different tactics to meet the changing
Speaker 2: landscape of the day doesn't mean that you're leaving your
Speaker 2: principles aside. In fact, as I think Ronald Reagan would
Speaker 2: remind us if he were sitting here and having this
Speaker 2: conversation with us, you're actually being smart if you're applying
Speaker 2: those principles using some different tactics, and so getting involved
Speaker 2: selectively in some of these corporate boardrooms on behalf of
Speaker 2: common sense is something that Heritage will continue to do
Speaker 2: and we see now as a central part of how
Speaker 2: we go about affecting public policy.
Speaker 1: Tell us about your book, Dawn's Early Light, Taking Back
Speaker 1: Washington to Save America.
Speaker 2: Ultimately, I was trying to articulate how the conservative movement
Speaker 2: could move out of what had been an unintended decade
Speaker 2: or so maybe longer, of complacency and complacency, if I
Speaker 2: may say, with some good reason, a lot of policy success,
Speaker 2: frankly because of a role that you played as speaker
Speaker 2: in the nineteen nineties, success because of Ronald Reagan's success,
Speaker 2: because of Heritage and other conservative groups. But when we
Speaker 2: won the Cold War, the really hard earned peace dividend
Speaker 2: actually just became an opportunity for well intentioned conservatives to
Speaker 2: sort of celebrate successes of the past. And when I
Speaker 2: became President of Heritage three and a half years ago,
Speaker 2: I was given the charge by the wonderful board here
Speaker 2: in my colleagues to chart a path not just for
Speaker 2: this institution, but for the entire Conservative movement, a path
Speaker 2: that would be filled with a lot more energy, much
Speaker 2: more robust agenda. And so what I talk about in
Speaker 2: the book is that just as our founders at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the revolution had to work to refound the
Speaker 2: country in the Battle of eighteen twelve, from which we get,
Speaker 2: of course the phrase dawnt early Light from our national anthem,
Speaker 2: we're having to do the same thing in the twenty
Speaker 2: first cent which is to say, the new Conservative movement
Speaker 2: has the same principles that conservatism has always had, going
Speaker 2: back to Burke and even Aristotle, but our tactics need
Speaker 2: to be different. We need to be willing to mix
Speaker 2: it up a little bit more. We need to be willing,
Speaker 2: as Trump and Dvance have shown, to build a coalition
Speaker 2: that to working class and multi ethnic. We need to
Speaker 2: be willing to tell our allies around the world, if
Speaker 2: you want to continue to be an ally with us,
Speaker 2: you're going to have to pony up the same percentage
Speaker 2: of your GDP as the Americans do. And finally, I
Speaker 2: will say, with tremendous credit to jd Vance, who helped
Speaker 2: me understand this during his even before his Senate campaign
Speaker 2: when we became friends, you have to look at public
Speaker 2: policy not through the lens of Washington or from Wall Street,
Speaker 2: but obviously through the lens of everyday hardworking Americans. And
Speaker 2: the more conservatives do that, the more we realize that
Speaker 2: the three legs of the conservative fusionism stool are mom, dad,
Speaker 2: and kids. The more we realize that the most important
Speaker 2: institution is the family, The more we realize the most
Speaker 2: important part of the public square is our dinner table.
Speaker 2: The more we realize that local politics are more important
Speaker 2: than Washington because it's there that we build the power
Speaker 2: and influence to revitalize federalism, the better off conservatism will be.
Speaker 2: And none of these ideas are very few of them
Speaker 2: newt as you know well.
Speaker 3: Are not original to me.
Speaker 2: But what I try to do in the book is
Speaker 2: put them together in a way that is sort of
Speaker 2: a ten thousand foot view of where we can go
Speaker 2: over the next twenty five and even one hundred years
Speaker 2: in this country.
Speaker 3: Donald Trump and JD.
Speaker 2: Vance's election in November, of course, is providential because, as
Speaker 2: we've talked about thus far in this conversation, we're ahead
Speaker 2: of schedule when it comes to building this new conservative movement.
Speaker 1: I think you have played an extraordinarily important role in
Speaker 1: relaunching conservatism with a new dynamism and a new excitement.
Speaker 1: I say this is some who came to Washington in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. It's a great joy to me to
Speaker 1: see you modernizing, looking forward, realizing both at the most
Speaker 1: local level and at the global level, that there's a
Speaker 1: role for conservatism and that it's vital in that sense.
Speaker 1: I think you're really doing a remarkable job for heritage
Speaker 1: and for the conservative movement. And that's part of why
Speaker 1: I was thrilled that you could discuss with us today.
Speaker 1: The first one hundred days the president has had in
Speaker 1: the country, said, a remarkable launch. As you look forward
Speaker 1: to the next hundred days, what concerns you the most.
Speaker 2: Top of that list is Congress taking too long to
Speaker 2: pass reconciliation, not just because it would be bad policy
Speaker 2: to wait on the extension of tax cuts and attendant
Speaker 2: budget cuts, not cuts to medicaid, but cuts elsewhere to
Speaker 2: the point you made at the top of our conversation,
Speaker 2: but also because of the context in.
Speaker 3: Which reconciliation exists.
Speaker 2: That context right now is being dominated by this rightly intentioned,
Speaker 2: largely good tariff regime, one in which tariffs are going
Speaker 2: to be, as I see it, a short term tool
Speaker 2: of state craft in order to isolate the Chinese Communist
Speaker 2: Party and re establish truly fair trade, which of course
Speaker 2: is what conservatives believe in. But that has created fairly
Speaker 2: or unfairly market uncertainty. But even beyond the market uncertainty,
Speaker 2: it is created because heritage is very much in touch
Speaker 2: with main street conservatives before we're in touch with Wall
Speaker 2: Street conservatives. Uncertainty by small capital and it's small businesses,
Speaker 2: as you know well, who are the engines of this economy.
Speaker 2: And so the longer to get to the punchline here,
Speaker 2: the longer Congress takes to introduce more certainty on tax
Speaker 2: cuts and on reducing government spending in the near term
Speaker 2: and midterm, the longer the market and the media, corporate
Speaker 2: media have to sort of undermine the certainty that they
Speaker 2: have that Trump and his economic agenda are going to
Speaker 2: be right for this country. You and I both know
Speaker 2: that that's the case. Trump's economic agenda is a very
Speaker 2: important reset that's long overdue. But if Congress fails to
Speaker 2: act soon enough, then I think they're going to miss
Speaker 2: the opportunity, to say the least, to accentuate the momentum
Speaker 2: the president has. And if you fast forward a year
Speaker 2: from September of this year, if in fact Congress waits
Speaker 2: that long to pass reconciliation, then, as you have said
Speaker 2: in recent media interviews, the economy will not have the opportunity.
Speaker 2: Americans will not have the opportunity to invest the capital
Speaker 2: in the economy for us to see what will be
Speaker 2: a Trump economic boom. This is one of the lessons,
Speaker 2: as you no doubt remember that Ronald Reagan took from
Speaker 2: early in his presidency in not acting soon enough to
Speaker 2: make the changes so that in nineteen eighty two midterms
Speaker 2: there wouldn't be the blood letting.
Speaker 3: Politically, that's what we have to avoid because.
Speaker 2: If in fact there is a blue wave election in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six, besides the fact that that would be
Speaker 2: terrible and include a lot of goofy Democrats who are
Speaker 2: looney liberals, they're going to impeach Trump. They're going to
Speaker 2: decap what is so promising, not just for the next
Speaker 2: four years, but as we've talked about in this conversation
Speaker 2: Newt potentially the next century.
Speaker 1: I think that's right. I think the twenty twenty sixth
Speaker 1: election is the critical moment because if we can keep
Speaker 1: the House and pick up a few seats in the Senate,
Speaker 1: President Trump will have an additional wave of momentum which
Speaker 1: will lead us I think, to keeping the presidency in
Speaker 1: twenty eight But if, on the other hand, because we
Speaker 1: fail to act promptly, we could end up in a
Speaker 1: situation where the economy is not strong enough. And I
Speaker 1: do think it's going to come down to a very
Speaker 1: simple question, do you think it's working, whatever it is
Speaker 1: in your particular list. If you think it's working, we're
Speaker 1: going to win. If you think it's not working, we're
Speaker 1: going to lose. It's not complicated, it's just hard. And
Speaker 1: I think in that sense getting this done, and of
Speaker 1: course you know full well and you have considerable ability
Speaker 1: to help with this. We have two wings. We have
Speaker 1: a very hardline fiscal conservative wing, which is always going
Speaker 1: to explain that we're not cutting enough. And then you
Speaker 1: have very vulnerable moderates who are looking back at their
Speaker 1: district worried about losing any votes because they are among
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable people somehow, And here I have enormous
Speaker 1: admiration for Speaker Johnson finding a way to balance those
Speaker 1: two get a package everybody agrees to vote on, and
Speaker 1: doing it in a timely way. And I agree with
Speaker 1: Speaker Johnson that you get it through the House before
Speaker 1: Memorial Day, get it through the Senate in June, get
Speaker 1: it signed by the President by the fourth of July.
Speaker 1: That's the ticket that'll get us the kind of boom
Speaker 1: that we need, and I think Heritage will play a
Speaker 1: significant role in shaping the environment in which that can happen.
Speaker 3: We're certainly trying.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned to a friend of mine who's an
Speaker 2: investment capital he lives outside DC. He was asking how
Speaker 2: optimistic I was about what you just described according to
Speaker 2: that timeline, I would be, and I said, actually, cautiously optimistic.
Speaker 2: I would be less optimistic if Speaker Johnson, with whom
Speaker 2: I'm very close had not shown over the last eighteen
Speaker 2: months and ability in spite of that thin majority to
Speaker 2: get good policy done. And if I think about his
Speaker 2: ability what seems to be almost all but one of
Speaker 2: the House Republicans being willing to row in the same direction,
Speaker 2: even accounting for different priorities that they have, and accounting
Speaker 2: for the fact that the Senate almost always wants to
Speaker 2: move more slowly that because President Trump himself is so
Speaker 2: involved directly in this, and with those of us on
Speaker 2: the outside at Heritage and Heritage Action really just wasting
Speaker 2: no resources and trying to make sure that we can
Speaker 2: be helpful from the outside. I think this will be
Speaker 2: a great independence stay gift to the American people, not
Speaker 2: just this year, but for many years to come. If
Speaker 2: they get that bill passed, it is all systems go
Speaker 2: for us to get that done and to aid these
Speaker 2: great leaders on the inside, like Mike Johnson.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you. You're doing a great job.
Speaker 1: You have certainly brought a level of energy and drive
Speaker 1: and a historic perspective to Heritage, and I know that
Speaker 1: you with your leadership, Heritage is going to continue. They
Speaker 1: have an enormous impact. So I want to thank you
Speaker 1: for joining me in. I want to tell our listeners
Speaker 1: they can learn more about the Heritage Foundation and Heritage
Speaker 1: Action from America at Heritage dot Org. Thank you Kevin
Speaker 1: very much.
Speaker 3: Newt You are terrific. I enjoyed the conversation. God bless you.
Speaker 1: Thank you to my guest doctor, Kevin Roberts. You can
Speaker 1: learn more about the Heritage Foundation on our show page
Speaker 1: at newtsworld dot com. Newtsworld is produced by Gagishtree sixty
Speaker 1: and iHeartMedia. Our executive producer is Guarnsey Sloan. Our researcher
Speaker 1: is Rachel Peterson. The artwork for the show was created
Speaker 1: by Steve Penley. Special thanks to the team at Gingrishtree sixty.
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Speaker 1: I'm newt Gannglish. This is Newtsworld.