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Speaker 2: Ballots and Power on Joe Matthew alongside Kaylee Lines in Washington,
Speaker 2: where there's so much talk about the Doge. Kayleie, we
Speaker 2: all remember when Elon Muskin, the aik Ramaswami came to town.
Speaker 2: This has been a massive conversation and there are a
Speaker 2: lot of questions about, well, how could this become policy.
Speaker 2: We've asked a lot of those questions, Connecting the dots.
Speaker 2: Is it possible to cut two trillion dollars in government spending?
Speaker 2: As Elon Musk had said at one point? The Governor
Speaker 2: of New Hampshire has the answer. He says, the mission
Speaker 2: of the Doge is achievable.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Writing a new opinion piece in the Hill today for
Speaker 3: models of efficiency, Musk and Doge should ignore DC and
Speaker 3: look to the States. And I'm pleased to say joining
Speaker 3: us live here in our Washington, d C studio is
Speaker 3: the new Hampshire Governor Republican Kristin, you know, is here
Speaker 3: with us on Bloomberg TV and radio. Governor, and nice
Speaker 3: to see you again.
Speaker 4: Nothing like a governor coming to Washington.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly your favorite town.
Speaker 3: Well, and you don't necessarily speak kindly of Washington in
Speaker 3: this piece in tern fiscal functioning, My question, I guess is,
Speaker 3: if we're looking to the states, we're dealing with smaller numbers. Right,
Speaker 3: State budgets are measured in billions, whereas the US federal
Speaker 3: budget is measured in trillions, and they want to cut
Speaker 3: two trillion of that? Is that really realistic?
Speaker 5: It's realistic, probably not tomorrow, and you know, structurally they're
Speaker 5: going to have to get into the big things that
Speaker 5: nobody wants to talk about, Social Security and medicare. Again,
Speaker 5: that is not likely going to happen tomorrow, unfortunately, but
Speaker 5: it has to be dealt with kind of the crux
Speaker 5: of this pieces. As a lot of folks and you
Speaker 5: guys have discussed, in about eight years, one trillion in
Speaker 5: interest payments goes to one point eight trillion, right, just
Speaker 5: in interest payments, So Security, Medicare go, and solvent a
Speaker 5: lot about the same time. So you're gonna have kind
Speaker 5: of this perfect storm of financial crisis if Washington does
Speaker 5: what they typically do and wait till the last minute.
Speaker 5: That's not a solution, that's just reacting to the crisis.
Speaker 5: Does is very interesting and this election is very interesting
Speaker 5: that it has created a very unique situation where you
Speaker 5: have an outsider in Elon, an engineer obviously very partial
Speaker 5: to engineers, as I am one myself, so he's not
Speaker 5: beholden to the establishment. He's all about fixing and big
Speaker 5: challenges and fixing and finding efficiencies in big systems, so
Speaker 5: he's ideal to do it. The key is, you, like
Speaker 5: anything as an engineer, you have to know how the
Speaker 5: system works before you can really figure out how to
Speaker 5: tinker with it. Well, there's gonna be some low hanging
Speaker 5: fruit with potential executive orders, but you're gonna have to
Speaker 5: use political capital, and he actually does. He's an outside
Speaker 5: of Washington that brings political capital with him. When Elon
Speaker 5: Musk walks in your office and you're a congressman, believe me,
Speaker 5: you're going to listen, not just do whatever he says,
Speaker 5: but you've got their attention. So if he uses that
Speaker 5: capital in the right way, and the best part about
Speaker 5: what they've done, which gives me a lot of optimism
Speaker 5: is they've put a time window on it, right, they
Speaker 5: got two years till July of twenty six to get
Speaker 5: this stuff done, get it all moving in the right direction.
Speaker 5: So and because it won't be some long lasting additional
Speaker 5: piece of government. But as I warned in the piece,
Speaker 5: a lot of presidents have failed at this attempt. This
Speaker 5: is a highlight, pivotal moment for Trump for his administration.
Speaker 5: They can't blow it. And the last big piece here
Speaker 5: is Washington has to look to the states. Because states,
Speaker 5: especially Republican states, but really all states, they make tough decisions.
Speaker 5: They've found efficiencies. You know, one example I give is
Speaker 5: in Iowa, they went from thirty seven agencies to sixteen.
Speaker 5: Did Kim Reynolds get penalized through that, No, she got champion.
Speaker 5: The voters thanked her for doing it. So what was
Speaker 5: traditionally seen as making tough decisions and getting politically penalized
Speaker 5: in the past, if you don't make those tough decisions
Speaker 5: now to Congress, you're going to get penalized. And that's
Speaker 5: what the Speaker has to understand. It's in his political
Speaker 5: interest to do the hard work that no one's been
Speaker 5: able to do before.
Speaker 2: We can nibble around the edges here for a while,
Speaker 2: but to your point, long term, a balanced budget amendment
Speaker 2: should be reconsidered. There are a couple of them that
Speaker 2: have been proposed. They tend to not get as far
Speaker 2: as you want them to hear. But the question is
Speaker 2: can you do that and make it work without getting
Speaker 2: to You just talked about it. Social Security and medicare
Speaker 2: That's why this never goes any further.
Speaker 5: So again, those things are going to become insolvent in
Speaker 5: very very short term, so at some point they're going
Speaker 5: to need.
Speaker 2: To trust this administration to deal with it.
Speaker 5: I trust this administration more than the next one, and
Speaker 5: I don't even know even who the next one is.
Speaker 5: And that look, Trump was elected not just on policy.
Speaker 5: He was elected to be a disruptor, to break that
Speaker 5: establishment mold as an outsider, and he's brought outsiders with
Speaker 5: him to do it. And he's got a lot of
Speaker 5: a very significant political mandate and more experience than he
Speaker 5: did even in the first term. So the wins are
Speaker 5: in the sales to get it done. My argument on
Speaker 5: a balanced budgetment, it's so critical. By the way, forty
Speaker 5: nine states have balanced budget moments. We all live in those.
Speaker 5: I could tell you there's no state that's a bigger
Speaker 5: financial mess than California, right, But even they have a
Speaker 5: bounced budget amendment. I mean, they end up taxing their
Speaker 5: citizens and not handling it very well. But they are
Speaker 5: managed better on a fiscal basis than the federal government,
Speaker 5: and that should be a warning shot across the Republican's bow.
Speaker 3: I want to return to something you were saying about
Speaker 3: Elon Musk, specifically that he might be uniquely suited to
Speaker 3: this role because of his nature of being a political
Speaker 3: outsider but still having political capital. He also has just
Speaker 3: normal capital. His worth went to four hundred billion dollars yesterday.
Speaker 3: Is there not some conflict of interest here you are
Speaker 3: worried about in him? Specifically, who has companies that contract
Speaker 3: with the US government having a say in this?
Speaker 5: So surprisingly know and I'll tell you why, because he's
Speaker 5: so rich. I mean four hundred billion, a couple billion
Speaker 5: more here or there.
Speaker 4: This isn't a guy that lives.
Speaker 3: Extravagantly cares about the fate of say SpaceX.
Speaker 5: Of course he does, but that's not doge right. So
Speaker 5: you can talk about Grant programs and all of this
Speaker 5: sort of thing. But this place needs a complete structural overhaul.
Speaker 5: And that's what he's actually really really good at taking
Speaker 5: on giant challenges. People didn't think there was going to
Speaker 5: be a privatization of going to space. He said, no,
Speaker 5: we can do it, and he figured it out. So
Speaker 5: it's not all on him, but he provides the political capital,
Speaker 5: and in a way, because he's so wealthy, he doesn't
Speaker 5: have a direct financial interest in this per se that
Speaker 5: is appreciable to him at all. Everybody in DC does.
Speaker 5: Everybody in DC wants to keep their job. They're all
Speaker 5: elected official, they are all have a bigger conflict of
Speaker 5: interest to do nothing than to actually listen to someone
Speaker 5: like Elon and the recommendations that come out of this group.
Speaker 4: You got to find efficiencies everywhere. I think you can.
Speaker 5: What they're doing with defense is going to be great.
Speaker 5: Having an audit, I think that's very important. You don't
Speaker 5: have to lose a single gun, bullet or soldier just
Speaker 5: by becoming more efficient, creating more competition within what is
Speaker 5: kind of a cabal right now of contractors and contracts
Speaker 5: within the Department of Defense. I mean, you could save
Speaker 5: one hundred billion there about. I didn't do the details,
Speaker 5: but there's about sixteen executive orders alone that I counted
Speaker 5: over ten year, one and a half trillion, just on
Speaker 5: Biden's executive wards, by the way, So there's a lot
Speaker 5: of low hanging fruit there. But structurally they're gonna have
Speaker 5: to to take up something more substantive at some point.
Speaker 5: Doesn't mean it all happens tomorrow, and getting too A
Speaker 5: bounce A bounced budget amendment agreement basically says this, we're
Speaker 5: going to go forward in such a way that we
Speaker 5: eventually get to a balanced budget. We bring things back
Speaker 5: into the into the fold the right way. We make
Speaker 5: that compact with America that says your family has to
Speaker 5: live by a balanced budget, and so don't we That
Speaker 5: in itself will reinstore so much trust that Washington doesn't have.
Speaker 5: They have it with governors and state legislators and mayors,
Speaker 5: but they don't have it with Washington. So it's in
Speaker 5: their political interests to.
Speaker 4: Do the hard work.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 5: I think it's gonna take time, of course, But you
Speaker 5: know what I hear, I get a little concern. I
Speaker 5: hear Republicans say, well, we're gonna cut that program and
Speaker 5: that program well, that sounds fine. You want to cut them,
Speaker 5: cut them, I don't care. But that's nipping on the edges.
Speaker 4: That's political speak.
Speaker 5: You need real structural of financial structural reform here, and
Speaker 5: now's the time to do it.
Speaker 2: And this administration wants to advance the Trump tax cuts,
Speaker 2: make them permanent, likely add to the deficit in the process.
Speaker 2: Where do you draw the line how much is palatable
Speaker 2: until the cuts start to kick in.
Speaker 5: So I think the cuts they have now and continuing
Speaker 5: them is very, very important because you need a growth
Speaker 5: model here too. And what as you guys I think
Speaker 5: have talked about, there's so much cash being held by
Speaker 5: so many of these large corporations right where it's four
Speaker 5: and fifty billion just being held by Berkshire, Hathaway or
Speaker 5: whatever it is, right, and then you multiply that with
Speaker 5: all these other large because these companies were holding onto
Speaker 5: it because all the inflationary risk that comes with the
Speaker 5: regulation of a bit of the change or not change.
Speaker 5: If Kamala were to win of administrations, right, there was
Speaker 5: so much regulatory inflation there. They were holding their cash
Speaker 5: because they didn't know where things were going to go.
Speaker 5: Hopefully with the tax cuts in this administration, private equity
Speaker 5: starts moving a little more, deal flow starts moving a
Speaker 5: little more, cash starts being released and.
Speaker 4: Really promotes that growth.
Speaker 5: So while we're making some tough cuts, while we're making
Speaker 5: the tough decisions, block ranting things back to the states.
Speaker 5: I mean, think about it. Department of Education is the
Speaker 5: one they talk about all the time. You can get
Speaker 5: rid of ninety percent of that bureaucracy, save tons of money,
Speaker 5: and still block rent the same money back to states
Speaker 5: and allow states have the efficiency of reinvesting those funds
Speaker 5: how they see fit. What's good for Massachusetts is different
Speaker 5: than Minnesota, or Nebraska or New Hampshire. So let them decide.
Speaker 5: I can tell you as a governor, when we look
Speaker 5: at all these programs and all this money that comes
Speaker 5: from DC, there are so many strings attached. We have
Speaker 5: to say no to some of this money sometimes because
Speaker 5: it's so not in New Hampshire's interest to take the
Speaker 5: money because of all the additional attachments to it.
Speaker 4: You block rerant things back.
Speaker 5: Believe in the States, as you've probably heard me say
Speaker 5: before them founding fathers, they were wicked smith As we
Speaker 5: say in New Hampshire, they really were Federalism works States
Speaker 5: have done already done a lot of what DOGE is
Speaker 5: looking to achieve on a smaller level, to be sure,
Speaker 5: but a lot of it is just copy and paste.
Speaker 5: We've done the hard work. It's not some newfound crazy idea.
Speaker 5: It's actually Washington is the last one at the table
Speaker 5: to try to figure this out.
Speaker 3: Well, you obviously are still speaking with us as an
Speaker 3: incumbent governor, but your term is almost done.
Speaker 5: TikTok, twenty nine days August ticking.
Speaker 3: So of course we're wondering what the future holds for you,
Speaker 3: and I do wonder, given that it does seem the
Speaker 3: American people delivered this mandate of more efficiency in government,
Speaker 3: more disruptions, not just with the election of Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: but with the Republican majority in both the House and
Speaker 3: the Senate. With that kind of Republican leadership mandate, does
Speaker 3: that make you rethink how much you want to be
Speaker 3: involved in politics in the next four years or no, twenty.
Speaker 4: Ye maybe long term.
Speaker 5: I would come back into thinks long is longer. Nothing
Speaker 5: I'm thinking about. I can tell you I do want
Speaker 5: to stay involved, and that's why I'm going to keep
Speaker 5: writing off eds and maybe do some media and all
Speaker 5: that sort of thing. I left to resume at the
Speaker 5: front desk for y'all. But you know, I'm economically driven,
Speaker 5: I'm a business guy. I'm an engineered That's why I'm
Speaker 5: so passionate on the dose thing. And again I go
Speaker 5: back to governor, not just myself, but governors all across
Speaker 5: the spectrum have really done a lot of this hard work.
Speaker 5: I think that needs to be championed. We talk too
Speaker 5: much on the national level of just what happens in
Speaker 5: this bub DC, but frankly, the bubble of DC, both
Speaker 5: media and otherwise, is never talks to the real people
Speaker 5: out in the rest of the country. That's why when
Speaker 5: around mid September it was clear to a lot of
Speaker 5: us that Trump was going to win handily, and it
Speaker 5: was like, well, how can you say that? How can
Speaker 5: you say that? The people that were questioning that were
Speaker 5: in New York and Washington, the rest of America was
Speaker 5: going Just talk to your neighbors. You could see it coming,
Speaker 5: you could see where this was all going. So again,
Speaker 5: I like to keep that political itch scratch a more
Speaker 5: of an economics guy and a private equity guy and
Speaker 5: a market sky. So I'll stay involved somehow and I'm obviously.
Speaker 5: I think the first of the nation primary in New
Speaker 5: Hampshire is going to be really big with an open
Speaker 5: race in just four years, and maybe both parties about yeah, right,
Speaker 5: undoubtedly both.
Speaker 2: I think you have a new cause. Though, if you
Speaker 2: read to the bottom of this op ed about the Doge,
Speaker 2: you write, by the way, eliminating daylight savings time big Well,
Speaker 2: let's not forget that. I could see you and Ed
Speaker 2: Markey joining together on this issue. You got to be
Speaker 2: kidne meed though it's dark till noon in New Hampshire.
Speaker 2: Know what, I'm fraid to New England that you're you're
Speaker 2: ready to do that?
Speaker 4: Does anybody want to keep daylight saving time? Have we
Speaker 4: found that guy yet?
Speaker 2: I don't know, Jesus, I think so, don't really what
Speaker 2: you want to?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: See on the kids see so they can get on the.
Speaker 4: School yester the morning.
Speaker 5: Oh there's there's we can handle all that.
Speaker 4: We can handle that.
Speaker 5: That going back and forth is just it's antiquated.
Speaker 4: It was created for farmers. It's just completely antiquated.
Speaker 2: So the farmers of New Hampshire are talking.
Speaker 4: And I'm listening.
Speaker 5: I'm for one m listening, as is my successor Kelly aot.
Speaker 4: She's listening to.
Speaker 2: What's your advice for Kelly at the first challenge she's
Speaker 2: going to face when she comes in. We've only got
Speaker 2: about a minute left.
Speaker 5: The advice is, uh, do right by New Hampshire first
Speaker 5: and foremost. Call the balls and strikes like you see him.
Speaker 5: If it's a Trump thing and he does right, give
Speaker 5: him credit. If Trump at the administration Republicans don't do right,
Speaker 5: call him out on it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: She has a platform as a governor, as someone who
Speaker 5: who understands how these things work and has is going
Speaker 5: to undoubtedly be working hard to keep that keep that
Speaker 5: lift for your die spirit strong to just call the
Speaker 5: balls strike. Don't over I say this, don't overthink the politics.
Speaker 5: Just do right by your state, right by your constituents,
Speaker 5: and it all work out in the end. The politics
Speaker 5: takes care of itself when you get stuff done.
Speaker 2: Twenty ninety is you're going to be on an island.
Speaker 4: What's the now, I'm getting a job. I'm listening to
Speaker 4: get a job.
Speaker 5: A wealthy man I a as a civil engineer and
Speaker 5: a guy who ran a ski resort. Neither of those
Speaker 5: actually paid very well, so well looking for a real.
Speaker 2: Job stay in touch with us. We'd like to keep
Speaker 2: this conversation going absolutely.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Great to have us, of course, Governor for now of
Speaker 2: New Hampshire, Christan Nunu, the Republican from the Granite State.
Speaker 2: Great conversation you'll only hear right here on Bloomberg TV
Speaker 2: and radio.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast. Can
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Speaker 3: New York is a popular place to be if you
Speaker 3: are an incoming member of the second Trump administration, or
Speaker 3: at least a secretary designate. As we saw this morning
Speaker 3: ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange
Speaker 3: was President elect Donald Trump, and he brought along with
Speaker 3: him some of those who will comprise the most senior
Speaker 3: levels of his cabinet, assuming of course, they get confirmed,
Speaker 3: including the likes of Treasury Secretary Designate Scott Bessant. RFK Junior.
Speaker 3: Was there others as well that we could talk about,
Speaker 3: but he of course was there because he was selected
Speaker 3: as Times Person of the Year this year, the second
Speaker 3: time that he has been awarded that, but he used
Speaker 3: it as an opportunity to make his case once again
Speaker 3: about what he intends to deliver for Wall Street.
Speaker 7: The economy, I believe is going to be very strong.
Speaker 7: We do have to solve some problems. We have wars
Speaker 7: going on that we didn't have. We have a lot
Speaker 7: of things happening that we didn't have that would have
Speaker 7: never happened. They would have never happened, but now they
Speaker 7: have happened, and I want to get him solved.
Speaker 2: Interesting if you're with us on Bloomberg Radio, to look
Speaker 2: at the cadre of officials behind Donald Trump. To your point, Kallie,
Speaker 2: it's interesting who was invited RFK Junior standing behind him,
Speaker 2: Scott Besant, We saw Kelly Leffler. Interestingly, Howard Lutnik was
Speaker 2: just off to the side. He was cropped out of
Speaker 2: that image. And Brooke Rollins, I thought was interesting to
Speaker 2: pick for agriculture, reminding us of how close they are
Speaker 2: in the roles that they're all potentially going to play
Speaker 2: here when it comes to setting policy in the new
Speaker 2: White House. Gregory Coording is with us now Bloomberg Politics
Speaker 2: reporter at the table here in Washington. It's good to
Speaker 2: see you, sir, with the New York Stock Exchange display
Speaker 2: this morning. Speak to the optics here of this incoming
Speaker 2: president being there for the markets.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think this. We hadn't seen Trump in public
Speaker 8: for quite a while. Perhaps this is the most we've
Speaker 8: seen of him since the election, unless I'm forgetting something.
Speaker 8: But it was a moment for him because, on the
Speaker 8: one hand, he could go to the stock exchange and
Speaker 8: tut this remarkable year that we've had in the stock market,
Speaker 8: which he takes credit for not even being in office.
Speaker 8: He has made the case. This is something he attributes to
Speaker 8: Scott Pisent is coming Secretary of Treasury, this idea that
Speaker 8: this stock market xuberance we've seen this year is entirely
Speaker 8: due to the fact that people predicted that Trump would
Speaker 8: win the election. We've crunched the numbers on that, and
Speaker 8: there's not a whole lot of statistical evidence that that's
Speaker 8: the case if you look at the poll numbers and
Speaker 8: how they're correlated to what the market's done. But has
Speaker 8: been an extraordinary year, and he wants to sort of
Speaker 8: tout that but also he was in New York because
Speaker 8: he's the time Man of the Year, and that gives
Speaker 8: that's something that cover is something that he's always coveted.
Speaker 8: He's gotten it twice now when he was elected the
Speaker 8: first time and now the second time. So it was
Speaker 8: a good moment for him to come out and basket
Speaker 8: a little bit in the transition.
Speaker 3: Well and talk more about things that we imagine a
Speaker 3: Wall Street audience is pretty receptive to, like say, lower
Speaker 3: corporate taxes. He talked about that fifteen percent rate once again.
Speaker 3: But we're reporting now here at Bloomberg that his team
Speaker 3: is considering a lift to the self cap, which many
Speaker 3: gathered there at the Nicey also care about, but only
Speaker 3: to twenty thousand dollars. And I wonder how that's going
Speaker 3: to go over.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, obviously there are people in the higher
Speaker 8: tax jurisdictions in this country, and the New York metropolitan
Speaker 8: area is one of them, which should say that the
Speaker 8: Washington DC area is also one of them, where people
Speaker 8: pay a higher proportion their incomes in property and state
Speaker 8: income taxes they had been able to write off on
Speaker 8: their federal taxes. Trump's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of
Speaker 8: twenty seventeen took away that deduction, or at least capped
Speaker 8: it at ten thousand dollars, made it really unfeasible for
Speaker 8: most people to claim it. Most people then took the
Speaker 8: standard deduction. This was a thornon Democrat side because who
Speaker 8: lives in New York and Washington mostly Democrats. But when
Speaker 8: Trump was campaigning, he went to Long Island, where there's
Speaker 8: maybe a little bit more of a reddish tint than
Speaker 8: the city, and this is an issue there as well.
Speaker 8: He promised to do something on it. We'll see how
Speaker 8: this all mix comes into the mix, because he also
Speaker 8: promised no tax on tips, no taxes on Social Security benefits,
Speaker 8: no taxes on overtime. There's a lot that he wants
Speaker 8: to do in addition to extending the tax cuts of
Speaker 8: twenty seven.
Speaker 2: That's for sure. Stephen Moore, talking to Bloomberg about this idea,
Speaker 2: by the way, said they're opposed to an unlimited deduction, which,
Speaker 2: as Kaylee mentions, is kind of the news here because
Speaker 2: that would amount to quote, the biggest tax cut for
Speaker 2: millionaires and billionaires ever unquote. So did they just find
Speaker 2: the number that they think could pass.
Speaker 8: There is one sort of policy disagreement with this from
Speaker 8: the beginning is that, unlike other deductions, it's not doubled
Speaker 8: when you are married filing jointly. There is a marriage
Speaker 8: penalty to this salt tax cap that stuck in a
Speaker 8: lot of people's across so effectively doubling it to twenty
Speaker 8: thousand dollars kind of lets you perhaps that's the mechanism
Speaker 8: to do it, or maybe they just double it. But
Speaker 8: that was one I think legitimate policy question around the
Speaker 8: whole salt tax cap.
Speaker 2: But unlimited wouldn't have been palatable too a lot of states.
Speaker 8: I mean, OK, when you talk to people at the
Speaker 8: higher end, now, you know, the fact is that a
Speaker 8: lot of people on the higher end structure their income
Speaker 8: in such a way they don't pay a whole lot
Speaker 8: of taxes anyway. And you know, one thing that did
Speaker 8: benefit them was a sell tax cap, but they had
Speaker 8: other ways of reducing their income as well. We do
Speaker 8: get some data on how it's structured. Yeah, absolutely, people
Speaker 8: at the top of the top death style of incomes,
Speaker 8: not surprisingly got the biggest.
Speaker 2: Benefit from it.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 3: Gregory Cording, Bloomberg White House and Politics reporter, thank you
Speaker 3: as always for joining us as we consider something so
Speaker 3: important to our audience here on Bloomberg TV story that
Speaker 3: salt cap pretty much everything related to salt, I feel
Speaker 3: like always rockets to the top of most read on
Speaker 3: the terminal.
Speaker 2: Gregory Cordy, Salt correspondent, H it's the best job in
Speaker 2: the room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, function of the day read go on the terminal.
Speaker 3: You see what people are reading, and we certainly know
Speaker 3: our political panel is paying attention to these stories. To
Speaker 3: you joining us today, Rick Davis, Bloomberg Politics contributor, Stone
Speaker 3: Court Capital partner and Republican strategist, alongside Democratic strategist Brad Howard,
Speaker 3: who is founder at Corkoran Street Group. Thank you both
Speaker 3: for being here. Brad, I would love to have you
Speaker 3: weigh in on this salt question because, as Gregory was
Speaker 3: just telling us, this is actually something that a lot
Speaker 3: of Democrats in blue states would like to see go higher.
Speaker 3: Is this Donald Trump's way of making sure he has
Speaker 3: the requisite votes to get whatever other tax cuts he
Speaker 3: wants through.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And I was on My boss was a ways
Speaker 9: it means committee member, and we were part of the
Speaker 9: negotiations on a lot of the you know what we
Speaker 9: did in the Inflation Reduction Act and there was a
Speaker 9: big push for salt thin. If you recall, the problem
Speaker 9: with salt is that it's incredibly expensive once you repeal it.
Speaker 9: And you know, I think when the Republicans did it
Speaker 9: in twenty seventeen, they thought they were doing a a
Speaker 9: I guess a dig at, like you know, high tax
Speaker 9: states like New York and California and trying to send
Speaker 9: them to states like Texas and Florida. So as a
Speaker 9: Florida member, you know, we supported the reinstatement of the
Speaker 9: tax or you know, getting rid of the cap there
Speaker 9: or keep supported that effort anyway, like we're not. What
Speaker 9: I'm saying is that when you're from a low tax state,
Speaker 9: this doesn't really impact you, but the high tax state.
Speaker 9: So you talk about there's Orange County Republicans that lost
Speaker 9: elections over this issue. So it's a very real thing.
Speaker 9: And you've got this interesting bedfellows of Democrats and Republicans
Speaker 9: in New Jersey, in New York and California that are
Speaker 9: pushing this. And keep in mind, again one to four
Speaker 9: seat majority that Johnson's got to do. You're not going
Speaker 9: to get a single Democratic vote on reconciliation none, because
Speaker 9: it's a purely partisan process. So I don't know how
Speaker 9: they put this together and compromise on this and keep
Speaker 9: it in and within a reasonable price tag.
Speaker 2: Rick, you know the importance of this issue as someone
Speaker 2: who spends as much time as you do in the Washington,
Speaker 2: DC and New York City areas. What lines, however, will
Speaker 2: the Trump team find when it comes to all of
Speaker 2: these tax proposals. We can talk about salt all day long,
Speaker 2: but as Greg RECORDI reminded us, it was no tax
Speaker 2: on tips, on overtime, on so many other issues that
Speaker 2: when it comes time to sit down and talk about
Speaker 2: extending the twenty seventeen tax cuts, it could get to
Speaker 2: be a more complicated conversation.
Speaker 7: No.
Speaker 10: Yeah, because then you're talking about the deficit. And the
Speaker 10: reality is that Donald Trump campaigned as much on trying
Speaker 10: to reign in government spending as he did on these
Speaker 10: tax cut giveaways. Now maybe not, maybe he said more
Speaker 10: about tax cut giveaways than anything else combined, But the
Speaker 10: reality is all this costs us an enormous amount. As
Speaker 10: bad points out, this is massive budget impact. I mean,
Speaker 10: this is how he paid for a large portion of
Speaker 10: the twenty seventeen tax cuts was by putting a cap
Speaker 10: on salt and reaping the benefits to the treasury. So
Speaker 10: how you replace that, especially if you are adding additional
Speaker 10: tax cuts beyond the core twenty seventeen tax cuts. And
Speaker 10: we've heard nothing really from the team around Trump about
Speaker 10: maybe excluding and letting fall by the wayside some of
Speaker 10: the twenty seventeen tax cuts to try and maybe upgrade
Speaker 10: the policy to be more relevant to tax reform than
Speaker 10: just tax cuts. And so it's a real problem for them.
Speaker 10: They can't look like they've come into the office and
Speaker 10: spent hundreds of billions of new dollars on defense, hundreds
Speaker 10: of billions of new dollars on the border, tax cuts everywhere,
Speaker 10: and they wound up spending more into the deficit than
Speaker 10: Joe Biden did in his four years. And that would
Speaker 10: be a real problem for MAGA and the Republicans.
Speaker 3: But that's the point of the doge, right Rick Gett,
Speaker 3: Elon Musk and the vacant there to recommend a lot
Speaker 3: of spending cuts that could help offset this.
Speaker 10: Well, yeah, but if you're adding hundreds of billions of
Speaker 10: dollars to the to the to the pile, it's not
Speaker 10: just cutting this, but you know, making up for it
Speaker 10: in addition to the cuts that you're already planning on. Look,
Speaker 10: I mean in the budget today is the expiration of
Speaker 10: the Trump tax cuts twenty seventeen in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 10: So you know, it's a huge windfall right now for
Speaker 10: the federal government if you look at how you plan
Speaker 10: for the next ten years. The more they take out
Speaker 10: of that planning for the next ten years, the bigger
Speaker 10: that deficit's going to get. And of course, you know,
Speaker 10: we haven't proven yet whether or not the dogs will work,
Speaker 10: and you can actually go find trillions of dollars in cuts.
Speaker 2: Fair enough talk to us about the doge Brad Howard.
Speaker 2: You spent enough time in the House to see a
Speaker 2: couple of blue ribbon panels go by. What makes us
Speaker 2: think any of this will actually end up in policy?
Speaker 9: Yeah, I think when you look at so it's not
Speaker 9: a real department. You know, it's called Department of an Efficiency,
Speaker 9: but it's not and you would have to create it
Speaker 9: by statute, of which Democrats could filibusters. So I don't
Speaker 9: see it coming to fruition as as an agency. It
Speaker 9: may just stay this quasi kind of working group. There
Speaker 9: is a subcommittee under oversight that's going to come to
Speaker 9: fruition on the House side, but they don't really have
Speaker 9: much jurisdiction over the you know, able to introduce bills
Speaker 9: in this space because it's strictly kind of an appropriations thing.
Speaker 9: So you're going to see appropriators kind of balk their
Speaker 9: heads at this effort. But you've got a pretty powerful
Speaker 9: duo in that Roaminswamy and Elon Musk, and with Elon
Speaker 9: Musk threatening to fund primary challenges against Republicans now who
Speaker 9: don't fall in line, they it's could have some real weight.
Speaker 9: We'll see the problem is that Democrats are very concerned
Speaker 9: that the Republicans are going to drive up deficits so
Speaker 9: high in the national debts, so high that they're then
Speaker 9: going to demand or force spending cuts. And so essentially
Speaker 9: what you're doing is cutting taxes for the wealthy and
Speaker 9: multinational corporations, and you're strip You've already seen Republicans talk
Speaker 9: about cutting social security benefits, they're going to cut food stamps,
Speaker 9: they're going to cut all infrastructure dollars, they're going to
Speaker 9: cut all this investment in green energy. So we really
Speaker 9: start to see massive deficits and massive cuts, and Americans
Speaker 9: are just left high and dry, and I think that's
Speaker 9: the concern when you have billionaires running the presidency.
Speaker 3: I want to ask you both about something else. As
Speaker 3: we mentioned, the reason that Donald Trump was at the
Speaker 3: New York Stock Exchange today talking about these ideas around
Speaker 3: taxes was because he was selected as Times Person of
Speaker 3: the Year and sat down with an interview with time
Speaker 3: for an interview because of that, and in part they
Speaker 3: talked about the war in Ukraine, and Trump said, quote,
Speaker 3: I want to reach an agreement, and the only way
Speaker 3: you're going to reach an agreement is not too abandoned.
Speaker 3: When he was asked directly if he would abandon Rick,
Speaker 3: what is that signal to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Look, I mean he's a negotiator, and he knows that
Speaker 10: Biden's in the process of chunking as much cash and
Speaker 10: weapons into Ukraine as he can get done between now
Speaker 10: and January twentieth, and that that's tens of billions of
Speaker 10: dollars on top of everything else we've already spent, you know,
Speaker 10: to get the number closer to one hundred billion. And
Speaker 10: Donald Trump sees at his leverage. And the point about
Speaker 10: his leverage of this shouldn't be mistaken is it's only
Speaker 10: leverage if you agree to suspend those payments or those
Speaker 10: weapons shipments if there is peace. Right In other words,
Speaker 10: you know, it's great to say, hey, I've got you know,
Speaker 10: fifty billion dollars in the pipeline that I can cut
Speaker 10: off if you make peace with me. The problem with
Speaker 10: that is it's cutting off that economic aid too. And
Speaker 10: so yeah, I think it's a positive in the sense
Speaker 10: that we've always thought that this would be the approach
Speaker 10: that Donald Trump would would make, is that you know,
Speaker 10: we've got all this work and effort and weapons and
Speaker 10: money going toward helping Ukraine beat back the invasion of Russia.
Speaker 10: And that's a great negotiating position until at which point
Speaker 10: in time you give it away, and then the question
Speaker 10: is what guarantees did you get that Russia isn't going
Speaker 10: to play bad actor in the region Again, Brad.
Speaker 2: Howard, we're just about out of time, so I'm going
Speaker 2: to set you up here. It's only a minute left.
Speaker 2: We're going to be talking later this hour with New
Speaker 2: Hampshire Governor Chris Sanunu, who is calling for a balanced
Speaker 2: budget amendment. He says it's time to reconsider the idea
Speaker 2: as somebody who has spent enough time on Capitol Hill
Speaker 2: to know better. Does it stand a chance?
Speaker 9: Well, no, and here it's mainly the public opinion is
Speaker 9: there for it. My boss was introduced a balanced budget
Speaker 9: amendment when she was in Congress nearly every term and
Speaker 9: fought hard for it. The problem is a constitutional men
Speaker 9: requires two thirds vote in the House and Senate and
Speaker 9: then ratification among the states. The President actually has no
Speaker 9: role here other than the champion to oppose it. H
Speaker 9: But when you look at the question is there's several
Speaker 9: bounced budget minutes out there, the real question is do
Speaker 9: you protect Social Security Medicare in those amendments or do
Speaker 9: you ban for instance, Republican BBAs with your bounced budget amnutes.
Speaker 9: They opposed tax increases, which you're gonna need to bounce
Speaker 9: the budget. Democrats opposed cutstant programs like earned benefits like
Speaker 9: SOB Security Medicare. So there's never an agreement and it's
Speaker 9: an impossible test.
Speaker 2: No easy answer. Brad Howard and Rick Davis, great panel,
Speaker 2: Thank you for the great conversation.
Speaker 1: You're listening to. The Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast catches
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Speaker 3: I'm kiddy lines alongside Joe Matthew here in Washington, which
Speaker 3: was absolutely rocked a week ago Sunday by the news
Speaker 3: that President Biden was pardoning his son Hunter, despite of
Speaker 3: course insistence for an extended period of time that he
Speaker 3: would not do so, and it opened up a question
Speaker 3: as to what more pardons could be coming from this
Speaker 3: president before he leaves the Oval office. We've of course
Speaker 3: heard rumblings about the notion that he could, for example,
Speaker 3: pardon the likes of former Congresswoman Liz Cheney or former
Speaker 3: Congressman Adam King Singer. But those aren't the pardons we
Speaker 3: got today, though we did get a lot of them,
Speaker 3: thirty nine to be exact, and nearly fifteen hundred sentences
Speaker 3: commuted by the President Jack.
Speaker 2: It's a number that jumps off the page. And Donald Trump,
Speaker 2: I should say, Joe Biden pardon me made clear that
Speaker 2: he's not done. The quote from the President of the
Speaker 2: United States, I will take more steps in the weeks
Speaker 2: ahead unquote. We do have questions about what this means
Speaker 2: for the rest of course, the Biden administration and the
Speaker 2: incoming Trump administration, and Kaylee and I have really been
Speaker 2: taken since that Hunter Biden pardon by the work of
Speaker 2: Kim Whaley with some of the best analysis. She literally
Speaker 2: wrote the book on this law professor at the University
Speaker 2: of Baltimore School of Law, author of Pardon Power, How
Speaker 2: the pardons system works, and why Kim, it's great to
Speaker 2: see you. Welcome to Bloomberg TV and Radio. I don't
Speaker 2: know if we're done yet, it's sounding like we're not.
Speaker 2: But these fifteen roughly one hundred people released from prison
Speaker 2: placed on home confinement during COVID was this an appropriate
Speaker 2: use of the pardon power.
Speaker 6: It looks like this was to allow these folks to
Speaker 6: not be reverted back to prison in this moment. So
Speaker 6: the idea behind the pardon power is primarily mercy. That
Speaker 6: the president has a tremendous amount of discretion to assess
Speaker 6: what the conviction was, what the sentence was, and whether,
Speaker 6: in fairness it makes sense to lift some conditions of
Speaker 6: that criminal conviction. So this does not, you know, I think,
Speaker 6: fall into a troubling pardon, although it's unusual for a
Speaker 6: president to do it in these numbers of course, Joe
Speaker 6: Biden had done it once before with non violent, low
Speaker 6: level marijuana convictions as well well.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about a pardon then that many did
Speaker 3: find troubling, which was the pardon of his son Hunter,
Speaker 3: not just because of the fact that he said he
Speaker 3: wasn't going to go ahead with that, but also because
Speaker 3: of the unique nature of that pardon. He wasn't just
Speaker 3: pardoning him for the crimes he was convicted of, but
Speaker 3: essentially giving him a year's long period of time for
Speaker 3: which anything he did he could not be prosecuted for.
Speaker 3: He was pardoned for Kim, and I wonder what precedent
Speaker 3: has now been said as we consider whether or not
Speaker 3: Joe Biden might look to issue a similar pardon to
Speaker 3: the one he gave his son.
Speaker 6: Well, it was actually, I think longer, it might have
Speaker 6: been ten years. It's not unique, however, in that there
Speaker 6: have been presidents in the past that have issued general
Speaker 6: pardons without anything specific. For example, Jimmy Carter issued pardons
Speaker 6: for people who dodged the draft. The pardon is actually
Speaker 6: quite vague. It doesn't identify any people in particular, and
Speaker 6: something more I tailored to an individual would be of course,
Speaker 6: Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, which was not just
Speaker 6: for the crimes that were ready to go in an
Speaker 6: indictment against Nixon that wasn't actually filed against him, but
Speaker 6: it was ready to go, but any crimes additional crimes
Speaker 6: that he could have been charged with within that particular
Speaker 6: time period around Watergate. I believe that the Biden part
Speaker 6: in the Hunter Biden what you're identifying as unusual was
Speaker 6: likely an anticipation of the incoming president, Donald Trump's promise
Speaker 6: to use the Department of Justice as an arm of
Speaker 6: retribution and to go after folks that he believes just
Speaker 6: should be should be prosecuted for having taken action that's
Speaker 6: inconsistent with Donald Trump's interest. Now that's not Hunter Biden,
Speaker 6: but Hunter Biden by virtue of being Hunter Biden has
Speaker 6: definitely been had a target on his back politically in
Speaker 6: ways that other folks that engaged in the kind of
Speaker 6: behavior that gave rise to his plea deal, his plea
Speaker 6: deal as well of his conviction for lying on a
Speaker 6: gun application in Delaware about his drug addiction, and then
Speaker 6: in California some tax problems that he later paid back
Speaker 6: with interest. These are not big, high level crimes of violence.
Speaker 6: But I think the concern across the board is what's
Speaker 6: the Justice Department going to look like under a second
Speaker 6: Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, just the idea of these preemptive pardons, if
Speaker 2: we can call on that, has been getting a lot
Speaker 2: of talk around Washington. Some folks are raising their hands.
Speaker 2: Benny Thompson was asked about it, the former chair of
Speaker 2: the January sixth Committee in the House, concerned about being targeted.
Speaker 2: We've heard Liz Cheney's name banded about Adam Kinzinger. What
Speaker 2: would that mean for the precedent in this administration if
Speaker 2: Joe Biden went there.
Speaker 6: So those people actually to the extent to which they
Speaker 6: were taking actions in connection with the speech and debate clause,
Speaker 6: there's arguably some immunity they already would have. I think
Speaker 6: the bigger concern really is the lower level folks that
Speaker 6: maybe participated as witnesses. You know, these documents, some of
Speaker 6: it is probably not even public that Donald Trump would
Speaker 6: then have access to that kind of retribution. But absolutely
Speaker 6: this would be a precedent setting action. But my view
Speaker 6: is that it would be in response to a precedent
Speaker 6: setting plan for the Department of Justice. You know, arguably
Speaker 6: under Hoover, there was a JEdgar Hoover. There was the
Speaker 6: Justice Department used to spy on political enemies, famously Martin
Speaker 6: Luther King, for example. That was a you know, not
Speaker 6: a proud position part of American history. What Donald Trump
Speaker 6: and what looks like his cabinet it picks, seemed to
Speaker 6: promise is widespread, potentially vindictive prosecutions. And for that, yeah,
Speaker 6: this is would be setting a brand new president with
Speaker 6: a lot of problematic implications around the across the board.
Speaker 3: Well, so as we consider what future preemptive pardons might
Speaker 3: be given to, say members of the January sixth Committee,
Speaker 3: there's also the question of pardons for people who have
Speaker 3: been convicted of crimes on January sixth. Just today, in
Speaker 3: an interview published with Time, the President elect, who of
Speaker 3: course is Times Person of the Year, was asked if
Speaker 3: he would pardon all January six defends. He said yes.
Speaker 3: When asked, you're going to do all of them, he said,
Speaker 3: I'm going to do case by case and if they
Speaker 3: were nonviolent, I think they've been greatly punished, And the
Speaker 3: answer is I will be doing that. I'm going to
Speaker 3: look to see if there were some that were really
Speaker 3: out of control. Keeping in mind here, Kim, that there
Speaker 3: are already hundreds of people who have been convicted or
Speaker 3: pleaded guilty to crimes related to their activities on January sixth,
Speaker 3: with the majority of those receiving some time behind bars.
Speaker 3: But given there have been different crimes and different sentences here,
Speaker 3: can he just do this in a blanket way or
Speaker 3: will it have to be case by case, single names.
Speaker 6: He could do it in a blanket way, or it
Speaker 6: could be case by case. The pardon power in the
Speaker 6: constitution's extremely broad. There's very few cases that have made
Speaker 6: it to the Supreme Court to narrow it or put
Speaker 6: any limitations on it. And of course, in the Trump
Speaker 6: versus us Immunity case, where the Court created criminal immunity
Speaker 6: for presidents, it went out of its way to get
Speaker 6: out of black sharpie and underscore that the pardon power
Speaker 6: is extremely broad as far as the president's authority, you know,
Speaker 6: to answer your question on January sixth, that would be about,
Speaker 6: you know, lawyers crafting the language of a more generic
Speaker 6: pardon to be sure that it captures the folks that
Speaker 6: Donald Trump would want to be included in that. I
Speaker 6: think there are over eighteen hundred prosecutions at this point.
Speaker 6: If he's talking about violent offenses, that kind of language
Speaker 6: sort of accepting maybe people from the part in if
Speaker 6: they engaged in violence, maybe that would be in there,
Speaker 6: or he could give a list. I think it's on
Speaker 6: the Justice Department's website fairly straightforward to easy. But that
Speaker 6: kind of pardon I think is of a concern in
Speaker 6: a way that say, the Hunter Biden pardon was not
Speaker 6: because of the nature of January sixth and the violence
Speaker 6: that was part of that. We have to ask ourselves
Speaker 6: with pardons, going back to George Washington, is a pardon
Speaker 6: being issued going to make the country less safe, either
Speaker 6: because that person will go on to commit crimes or
Speaker 6: because the pardon is being done in a self interested way,
Speaker 6: in a corrupt way, in a way to allow the
Speaker 6: president to commit crimes. Those are different categories I think
Speaker 6: of pardons than pardons under the traditional way for mercy
Speaker 6: that go back before the King of England, back to
Speaker 6: the Bible. Jesus Christ was denied a pardon and that
Speaker 6: gave birth of the Christian religion. The whole idea is
Speaker 6: the criminal justice system, people fall through the cracks and
Speaker 6: there needs to be a fix survey done this summer,
Speaker 6: both Republicans and Democrats, a majority of both did not
Speaker 6: want to see pardons for the January six and people
Speaker 6: that participated in that because of the concern of violence
Speaker 6: around elections and an emboldening of the energy around what
Speaker 6: happened on that day.
Speaker 2: Kim, you're writing in an op ed in The Hill today,
Speaker 2: say goodbye to federal protections and hello to Trump's advancing
Speaker 2: loyalist army. You're writing about Schedule F, which we've heard
Speaker 2: a lot about, and of course some of the names
Speaker 2: that could be coming into government here and the many
Speaker 2: that could be leaving as Donald Trump promises to drain
Speaker 2: the swamp. What would it mean for the Justice Department, for.
Speaker 6: The SCHEDULEF for the Justice Department, That's a great question.
Speaker 6: There are scheduled officials within the Justice Department. And when
Speaker 6: I say that and explain in the op ed, what
Speaker 6: does that mean. Basically, in the there was what was
Speaker 6: known as the spoils system that kind of took hold
Speaker 6: of the federal government early in the late nineteenth early
Speaker 6: twentieth centuries, where presidents just put their cronies and loyalists
Speaker 6: in across the board, populating the American federal government, and
Speaker 6: Congress responded that to that and said, no, we don't
Speaker 6: want that. That doesn't create an effective workforce. There's a
Speaker 6: lot of incompetence, and loyalists don't breed a democratic spirit.
Speaker 6: So they passed a law and said we want competent,
Speaker 6: neutral civil servants, and that's pretty much been the standard
Speaker 6: since then. But there's exceptions. Those are called schedules that
Speaker 6: schedule a E and then F is what Donald Trump
Speaker 6: promises to add, which would be converting some of these
Speaker 6: folks into basically people that aren't protected by the other
Speaker 6: protections for the civil service workers and could be fired
Speaker 6: at will. But you raise a great question, which is
Speaker 6: how will the Justice Department operate under Donald Trump? Number two?
Speaker 6: Will they be loyalists or they uphold the rule of law.
Speaker 3: We all have to wait to find out. Kim, thank
Speaker 3: you so much for joining. Kim Wailey is author of
Speaker 3: Pardon Power, How the Pardon System Works and Why, also
Speaker 3: law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
Speaker 3: Here on Balance of Power. Some quick breaking news to mention,
Speaker 3: Emmanuel mccrone's office says a new French premier will be
Speaker 3: announced Friday, morning, so we'll learn the replacement of Michelle Barniery.
Speaker 3: We'll have more here on Bloomberg.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Balance of Power podcast kens
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Speaker 1: Just Say Alexa Play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Speaker 2: One of the best pieces of news I heard today
Speaker 2: was that Jessica Roth was coming on. And I'm pretty
Speaker 2: sure I could talk to Jessica Roth about anything, but
Speaker 2: she is not here to talk salt. We have another
Speaker 2: big story when it comes to the pardons and commutations
Speaker 2: here out of the White House with my gosh, these
Speaker 2: numbers jumps off the page. When you start reading into
Speaker 2: the names though, and the justification, it might not be
Speaker 2: quite as fun as it seems. The President, though, is
Speaker 2: commuting the sentences of some fifteen hundred people released from
Speaker 2: prison and placed on home confinement during COVID. He's also
Speaker 2: pardoning thirty nine Americans convicted of nonviolent crimes, and he says, well,
Speaker 2: he's not done yet. Co director the Jacob Burns Center
Speaker 2: for Ethics to the practice of law at Cardozo Law.
Speaker 2: Former federal prosecutor sd NY, Jessica Roth, It's great to
Speaker 2: see you, Jessica. Thank you so much for coming in.
Speaker 2: This got your attention. Surely were these justified?
Speaker 11: Well, it appears that they were, and were consistent with
Speaker 11: the way in which the extraordinary power entrusted to the
Speaker 11: president by the Constitution to grant pardons and clemency has
Speaker 11: been exercised. Obviously, I haven't gone through and looked at
Speaker 11: the details about every individual, but in terms of the
Speaker 11: reasons that the President gave for granting his power as
Speaker 11: he did for these groups of individuals, these are traditional
Speaker 11: reasons to exercise these extraordinary powers. Some of these people
Speaker 11: were home sent home from prison during the COVID pandemic
Speaker 11: and conducted themselves in an exemplary manner, suggesting that they
Speaker 11: did not require being returned to prison. Other people were
Speaker 11: convicted of crimes that might have been prosecuted differently today
Speaker 11: under current rules or laws or norms about prosecution with
Speaker 11: respect to drug offenses. So these are the kinds of
Speaker 11: considerations that have typically been taken into account by the
Speaker 11: presidency and also those working with the president to help
Speaker 11: the president exercise this power. There is a whole apparatus
Speaker 11: within the White House and the Department of Justice for
Speaker 11: reviewing petitions for pardons and clemency to really look at
Speaker 11: the individual records and the circumstances and also some of
Speaker 11: these issues about whether laws and norms have changed. So
Speaker 11: these seem to be consistent with that tradition.
Speaker 2: Josh Wingrove just said, these aren't fifteen hundred hunters. Well, well,
Speaker 2: the President says he will take more steps in the
Speaker 2: weeks ahead. And I want to ask you about this
Speaker 2: idea of preemptive pardons in a minute. But the previous record,
Speaker 2: I didn't know this was a Barack Obama three hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty in one day before he left office in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. But this is a COVID phenomenon, right, I
Speaker 2: guess these are extreme times that call for an extreme number.
Speaker 11: Professor, Yes, my understanding is that the vast majority of
Speaker 11: those pardons and clemencies that were announced today, the clemencies
Speaker 11: were for people who were sent home to home confinement
Speaker 11: during COVID and so obviously that is an extraordinary set
Speaker 11: of circumstances.
Speaker 2: What do you think about what we're about to hear
Speaker 2: Benny Thompson, who chaired the January sixth Committee, Democrat in
Speaker 2: the House, says he's open to a pardon. I believe
Speaker 2: the quote was, it's his barrogative. If he offers it
Speaker 2: to me, I would accept it, but it's his choice.
Speaker 2: Liz Cheney has been on the list, along with a
Speaker 2: few O there's what do you think of the concept
Speaker 2: of a preemptive pardon, doing this for somebody who's technically
Speaker 2: not in any trouble.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I'm troubled by the concept of the preemptive pardon.
Speaker 11: I was troubled by it, frankly when the President did
Speaker 11: it for Hunter Biden, although I understood in that circumstance
Speaker 11: why he would do it, given what some of the
Speaker 11: statements by President elect Trump and by his prospective nominees,
Speaker 11: for example, to run the FBI about intending to go
Speaker 11: after Hunter Biden and some of these individuals on the
Speaker 11: so called enemy's list. So I understand the rationale for
Speaker 11: doing it. That said, that is not the norm for
Speaker 11: how the pardon power has been exercised. The fifteen hundred
Speaker 11: people we were just talking about. That is the norm
Speaker 11: and how the pardon power has been exercised not to
Speaker 11: do it preemptively in language that essentially gives people immunity
Speaker 11: for everything they might have done, every crime they could
Speaker 11: have possibly committed during a period of time. I'm troubled
Speaker 11: by that becoming normalized. It also, frankly wouldn't insulate people
Speaker 11: from all harassment. So, for example, a congressional committee could
Speaker 11: still investigate individuals who had been granted a pardon, subjecting
Speaker 11: them to sort of the difficulties of responding to subpoenas
Speaker 11: and having to testify before Congress, having to retain lawyers
Speaker 11: to represent them in that regard. Other agencies government agencies
Speaker 11: could investigate them like the irs. So it's not like
Speaker 11: a pardon accomplishes everything that people might think that it would.
Speaker 11: It does pre empt a criminal prosecution of the individuals
Speaker 11: who are named, but it doesn't accomplish everything. And so
Speaker 11: because of the practical considerations of just how effective is
Speaker 11: it and its intended aims, and normalizing this idea of
Speaker 11: a preemptive pardon, and also suggesting that the people involved
Speaker 11: did anything wrong, for all of those reasons, I am
Speaker 11: terribly concerned by it, even though I do understand the
Speaker 11: rationale for doing it given these extraordinary times we find
Speaker 11: ourselves in where people are literally on an announced enemies list.
Speaker 2: You know, even Bill Clinton doesn't think it's a good idea.
Speaker 2: He was asked about this on ABC TV. It was
Speaker 2: on the View as a matter of fact, he said,
Speaker 2: I think it's a very personal thing. But then he
Speaker 2: stopped himself and he said, I hope he won't do that,
Speaker 2: this idea of preemptive pardons. And I wonder if it
Speaker 2: has to do with precedent. Professor. I know we're not
Speaker 2: in Bill Clinton's head here, but if Joe Biden goes there,
Speaker 2: what does that mean for Donald Trump in his nextern.
Speaker 11: Yeah, So when I said a moment ago, I'm troubled
Speaker 11: by the idea of normalizing this, I mean, that's really
Speaker 11: what I'm talking about is sort of setting a norm,
Speaker 11: a new norm about the use of the pardons in
Speaker 11: this preemptive broad way, setting the precedent that other presidents
Speaker 11: then would cite as essentially making it normal and something
Speaker 11: that is not extraordinary if they were to do so.
Speaker 11: I don't know in the case of former President and
Speaker 11: President elect Trump, to what extent the precedent set by
Speaker 11: Joe Biden would actually affect what Trump would do himself
Speaker 11: in terms of granting preemptive pardons, but in terms of
Speaker 11: how the public receives it, the media receives it, how
Speaker 11: people in our country think about it. I think it
Speaker 11: does matter whether Joe Biden does it first, and whether
Speaker 11: it becomes essentially an accepted part of political and legal
Speaker 11: actions that we just grow accustomed to.
Speaker 4: I hope it won't.
Speaker 2: As we spend some time with Jessica Roth here on Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: I have to ask you about Donald Trump's legal situation
Speaker 2: is personal legal situation, because Professor, we spent so many
Speaker 2: months talking about the four cases, the four federal cases
Speaker 2: or two federal cases against him. We had Georgia, we
Speaker 2: had New York, and it's interesting to see what's going
Speaker 2: on here. Jack Smith may be out of business for now,
Speaker 2: but Alvin Bragg says he's not opposing Trump's motion to
Speaker 2: have his hush money case dismissed. Is this going to
Speaker 2: follow him into his presidency or is his next term,
Speaker 2: I should say, or be waiting for him when he's done.
Speaker 11: Well, we don't know yet. I mean, we're waiting to
Speaker 11: hear the ruling from the trial court on these very issues,
Speaker 11: and then whatever the trial court decides would be subject
Speaker 11: to appellate review at the Intermediate Court in New York,
Speaker 11: and then the New York Court of Appeals, which is
Speaker 11: the highest court in New York, and then in theory
Speaker 11: before the United States Supreme Court. So we don't know
Speaker 11: yet what's going to happen. Certainly it appears from the
Speaker 11: filings by the District Attorney's office that they are not
Speaker 11: intent on going ahead a full steam. They are open
Speaker 11: to the idea of holding the whole case in abeyance
Speaker 11: while Trump serves out his four year term. They're also
Speaker 11: open to the sentencing going forward and whatever sentence is imposed,
Speaker 11: having that held in abeyance for the four years. They're
Speaker 11: also open to having the sentencing proceed and then there
Speaker 11: would only be essentially appeals and the service of the sentence,
Speaker 11: although again the District Attorney's Office is open to a
Speaker 11: variety of ways in which that fashion that sentence could
Speaker 11: be fashioned, including no prison sentence, a fine instead perhaps,
Speaker 11: or just essentially unconditional discharge. Would be no further action
Speaker 11: at all, and so the District attorneys offices laying out
Speaker 11: a whole host of options for the trial court in
Speaker 11: terms of how to proceed if the court is inclined
Speaker 11: to proceed currently, or how to essentially hold the case
Speaker 11: in abeyance for four years. And so we just need
Speaker 11: to see what the trial court's going to do, and
Speaker 11: then if there are appeals that ensue before even the
Speaker 11: next step at the trial court level, and I suspect
Speaker 11: that's going to happen. What's going to happen. I don't
Speaker 11: expect the trial court is going to dismiss the case outright,
Speaker 11: which is what Trump's lawyers are asking for. And so
Speaker 11: if that's the case, then I expect we're going to
Speaker 11: see immediate appeals before any sentence.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. I want to take one of your classes someday.
Speaker 2: You think I could pass her class, James, I'm thinking
Speaker 2: I'd get confused really quickly, but I know I'd learn
Speaker 2: a lot. It's like going to school. Whenever we talk
Speaker 2: to Professor Jessica Roth, I only have a minute left, Professor.
Speaker 2: Let's come full circle back to where we started. Would
Speaker 2: it not be whove Joe Biden to pardon Donald Trump
Speaker 2: on his way out?
Speaker 11: Well, that's interesting. Obviously he doesn't have the authority to
Speaker 11: do that for the state prosecutions. He would only have
Speaker 11: authority to pardon him for the federal cases.
Speaker 2: And no will be talking about Hunter anymore.
Speaker 11: It's true. I think people are going to be talking
Speaker 11: less about Hunter now that the president has exercised his
Speaker 11: authority to pardon many other individuals who are not related
Speaker 11: to him. The cases against Trump, the federal cases have
Speaker 11: already been dismissed without prejudice. I think there's very little
Speaker 11: likelihood that they would actually be resurrected after the four
Speaker 11: year term, so I just don't see that happening.
Speaker 2: I had to ask. It's great to see you as always,
Speaker 2: Jessica Roth, Co director Jacob Burns Center for Ethics and
Speaker 2: the Practice of Law at Cardozo Law. Thanks for listening
Speaker 2: to the Balance of Power podcast. Make sure to subscribe
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Speaker 2: weekday from Washington, DC at noontime Eastern at Bloomberg dot com.