Howard Lutnick | All-In in DC! | All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg

You're a New York much?

I never, I closed my house.

I basically, I tricked my wife.

You know how your wife always wants to renovate your house?

No idea. So my wife always...

My wife always wants to renovate my house, right?

Every minute I've been alive, my wife has wanted to renovate parts of my house.

So we moved out once a year and a half ago.

We moved out four year and a half, about six years ago.

And she only did half the house And she still rused the day that she only did half an hour.

Really? Yeah. So that was the deal.

What I did is I bought an house in Washington and said, do you want to renovate the house?

She said yeah. I said great.

We hired a contractor.

Wait, you brought Brett Bearer's house, no?

Yeah, that's a beautiful house.

I could talk about whatever you want, by the way.

I'm happy to talk about serious things, casual things.

No, let's just do this.

Let's roll because he's on fire.

You're already running, right?

He's on fire. I'm doing all of you.

All right, besties.

I think that was another epic discussion.

People love the interviews.

I could hear them talk for hours.

Absolutely. You may crush your questions.

I'm a Howard thanks for being here.

Thanks for joining myself and David Freeberg on the all -in podcast I want to take a step back before we talk about today and instead talk about your friendship with the president how it started how you guys got to know each other and and walk us through the moment when you you know frankly went out on a limit a little bit stepped up became the campaign finance chair and then just that evolution.

So I've known the president since I was 30 years old so I used to go on the call call it the charity circuit in New York sure there's basically a charity party every night when you live in New York like the rubber chicken dinner like literally the rubber chicken and and so sort of every night you go out.

The boss of my company, Bernie Cantor, he got tired of going.

He didn't want to go.

He would send me with his wife and I would be her walker.

I'm the 30 -year -old CEO of the company and I'd take her to the party and after the party, I'd put her in a limo and she'd go home and DJT would say, let's go out.

We'd go out. It wasn't planned but he was at the party, he was 45, I'm at the party 30 and we chased the same girls.

Okay, it was basically, it worked out fine.

And by the way, here's the thing about Donald Trump.

He was the most famous, the most fun, the most interesting person, 30 years ago, 33 years ago.

I mean, here's the best thing, he's been on the cover of Time Magazine 59 times.

No, and then he leans over to me and he goes and 20 were good Like but who can take that yeah I mean Who could take like other people when you have a bad cover of Time magazine you'd crumple Right and be sand on the floor and said he's like, but so Howard is it is it that he's just totally wired to understand That moment like of being a public figure or like what is it?

That's so unique about What constitutes the ability to navigate that over 40 years?

I think it it it Adds energy to him to him, right?

So everybody else's energy what they don't understand is people bring negative energy to Donald Trump, right?

And they're just charging his battery.

Hmm. Okay, your energy around him comes to him So when I come at him with a lot of energy comes back with a lot of energy, right?

Right, it doesn't matter he never he never steps back He just sort of takes it like the centrifuge and then the hurls it back at you and he's been that way always.

So this is not new.

This is just who he is.

So those other people who attack him, they think they're attacking him.

They're charging his battery.

They're literally charging his battery!

So he comes back bigger, stronger, bigger, stronger, and once you understand the man, the most intuitive person that you've ever met.

And people say, well okay so people who know me, I don't suffer fools.

And they have all these derogatorial, my left liberal friends all these derogatory statements about the guy right and they know me really well yeah right and they say well how can you work for him I'd say how can I work for him the most intuitive person he senses it he knows it he calls me up and he says Panama Canal that's racist because Panama Canal just feels wrong right and then he sends me on the quest to go I didn't do anything I just start the quest to go look at it yeah right The mouth that's East is a deep water port by the Chinese.

The mouth that's West is a deep water port by the Chinese.

They're building bridges over it.

So our ships and our military ships should go under, right, in our hemisphere a Chinese bridge.

So then I said, okay, let's go prove it.

So I have a friend of mine is owns a big shipping company.

I said, take two iPhones, put them on a stand And just go through the Panama Canal.

The Panama Canal, they sort of drag ships through like this.

And I said, just go video both ways.

Just video both ways.

70 % of every letter is Chinese.

Then I'm talking like the size of container ships, the stores, like I'm not talking like - The signage.

Just random signage like you're riding on a road.

It's all Chinese. And then I do the research and I call them back And I say the magic words between me and him.

I have your path. Which is I've done it.

I've done the legal work.

I've done everything.

Right? So when you start talking about it, you have a foundation.

It's not just you talking.

So people think he's just talking.

He's never just talking.

He has people behind them who bring him his foundational structural outcome.

And then what does he do?

He went and played golf.

That afternoon he called me at seven in the morning.

He said what he got.

We talked from 7 to 8.

he went and played golf, right?

And then afternoon, there's the American flag in the middle of the Panama Canal and some, you know, truth he puts out.

And that's the fun part, right?

So you work for the most intuitive guy.

Unbelievably smart.

Unbelievably thoughtful, who knows what he's doing.

It's so fun for me.

Howard, let's just go back one second.

So you have this deep relationship with him.

You guys are friends.

Scott Besant told us this story that about 18 months ago, though, he saw all this data about what was happening under Biden, and he was just so concerned that these deficits and debts were getting so out of control.

He went to the president and said, how can I help?

Can I help? That's a story.

But was there a moment for you that was like rooted in something other than friendship?

Like was there something on the ground where you said, hold on a second.

This is a train wreck?

Because you were the finance chair for the campaign.

Well no I wasn't fighting the chair, I was the transition chair.

I ran transition, which we'll talk about.

But so let's go through.

So I'm friends with him, but I'm building my business, a young guy building my business, and then 9 -11 happens.

So I'm friends with the guy.

I'm just friends with the guy, but then 9 -11 happens.

Kind, sweet, calls me all the time, just good human being.

Nice, warm, caring, good human being.

But then I'm knocked out.

So what do I do next?

I try to rebuild my company, take care of the families of 9 -11.

I lost 658 people to work for me and we had a policy.

We want to work with people that we like.

So when we had an opening, we didn't use headhunters.

We would say to everybody at the firm, does anybody know anybody who'd do this job?

Yeah, and so, you know young lady works for me says you know, my best friend is an HR person They have to have capacity But once they have capacity Imagine we hire that person.

Yeah. Now what happens is it's it's not one big happy family Yeah, but people really really care about the company and that's our company that's on the top Five floors of the World Trade Center on nine eleven when the plane hits it kills everybody at the office My brother Gary, he dies at 36, my best friend Doug, he dies at 39.

I had just turned 40 that summer.

I had a party, 65 couples.

It's my 40th birthday party.

27 people at my party get killed.

My friends. My friends.

So I'm driven to take care of the families of the people who die, and I commit 25 % of all of our profits.

But the company is destroyed.

So we go from making a million a day, I was a rich guy.

What's the definition of a rich guy?

No personal debt. No corporate debt.

Candidates, Gerald, no debt.

So how do you survive 9 -11?

You don't owe anybody any money.

The only money you're losing is your money.

So, we survive and we take care of our friend's families and then we build the company back up.

So you could see like I'm a special guest on the celebrity apprentice the first Season of celebrity apprentice Piers Morgan weird fire you no, no. I wasn't a Contestant, oh, I'm a little beyond being a contestant I was a special guest. I come in like if you see during the auction I'm standing next to him at the auction, you know, and I'm helping him Like I'm just as friend sort of as an extra all along the way, you know but I'm rebuilding my company.

And then, so I'm not interested in politics, okay?

I don't do anything in politics because I got my head down, right?

For the financial crisis, Canada's great in the financial crisis.

Had you ever donated to candidates at all or not - Yeah, New York candidates.

New York candidates.

So think about it, you're in New York.

You try to pick social liberals, fiscal conservatives if that even exists anymore.

But if you're in New York You have to pick and look, I grew up in New York.

So I'm socially liberal.

What else could I possibly be?

Yeah, so You know so early when Chuck Schumer was young before he became what the president now calls a Palestinian, you know You know, he you know Raised them you know, I I raised the money and gave money I did too.

Yeah, I mean because he was he was That's what he said.

He was he was social liberal fiscal conservative and and And so we know, we'll give to those kind of candidates, but mostly giving to get along.

And to be able to ask them a question if you needed to ask them a question.

But there was really no, I had no drive in that.

And like I said, the first four nights I slept in Washington in the last 20 years when Donald Trump was elected.

I had never slept here.

I would come down, visit a little, go home.

What am I staying here for?

So he calls me at the end of October 23.

So he already had his first term.

Yeah. You didn't support or get involved.

So I gave him money and I gave Hilary money.

You gave Hilary money in the first term.

Yeah because Hilary was incredibly helpful to me post 9 -11.

Remember she was a senator?

Right. And New York needed help and Hilary was incredibly helpful.

and I was driving the team to help New York rebuild because I had relationships with a whole bunch of Congressmen and they were gonna do nice things like Bill Young ran House appropriations right bill young was my friend right through a whole variety of things that had to do with I Used to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital And I used to walk around and I would bring music there for the men who got hurt from the military who were in Bethesda Naval Hospital.

And we would walk around.

I go with my wife and then I would engage the young man with music.

I'd give him music and ask him what CDs he wanted.

This is when CDs were there and I'd bring up a Walkman and my wife would pull the family outside and she'd pay a year of their mortgage and all their expenses.

Because what people don't realize is your son loses his leg, right?

Dad and Mom come flying in, and they're gonna stay by his bedside.

What job do these people have that allows them to be at their son's world?

And their world is falling apart, cause their son lost his leg.

So the world is falling apart.

But at home, their world is falling apart.

And so my wife would just try to figure out how much money was and just give him a check.

No form, no nothing, just give him the money, and help him.

So I would bump into Billy Young and his wife.

They were just, they ran then Defense Appropriations and they were there just being good human beings.

And so we became friends and he said to me once.

He said, Is there anything I could ever do to help you?

I'm like, Look, you run, you're like a congressman from Florida, who does Defense Appropriations.

And I'm like a Jewish guy from New York who's in finance.

If there ever were two skews that were ever gonna meet.

This is two ships going, shhh.

so I said to him, look, we're just gonna be friends.

We're never gonna do anything.

And then he runs house appropriations.

And so when New York needs money to rebuild after 9 -11, they go see Bill Young to try to get a bill passed.

And he said, how can you come see me with that Howard?

This is post 9 -11. So I'm running New York and Hillary does a really nice job for New York.

And I told DJT, I call him DJT because I've known him for always, I say, I told him that I can't forget, I'm just not the person who's gonna forget.

Of course I gave him money, right?

But I gave him, and by the way, he still tortures me for it.

So like, and I, you know what the best part is?

As a good friend does, yes.

Right, but you know what?

The point is, see other people would, would you know, sort of curl back?

Yeah. Right? So here, right after he gets elected, the guy has a story for it.

So right after he gets elected, he has a dinner in New York, right?

So he invites me to the dinner in New York because I'm his friend and then while he's giving his talk To his first dinner in New York.

He goes wait. Wait Hillary supporter and he points at me And I sit down, you know, he's just sassing me, okay, cuz I gave him tons of dough I love him and We're 2023.

So We're 2023 and he calls me And he says will you help me?

And I had not thought politics.

Now I gave him money in 2020 reelection, probably gave him 10 million bucks.

I raised him 15 million bucks.

So I was, I'm on a side the whole way through.

I'm raising the money in 17, 18, 19, 20.

While he's president, I'm totally on his side.

But I'm just his friend.

I'm not engaged, okay.

Cause I'm still rebuilding my life.

Yeah. Okay, and then 2023 calls me says will you help me and I actually thought about it Like and that was the first time I really thought politics.

Hmm, and then I said Yes and I gave him 10 million bucks right then there and Then I started talking to him.

I started going on the campaign trail.

I started doing research. I started doing knowledge I want to I talk to him about everything.

I talked to him all the time about everything.

You love it because our friend sex We were talking at dinner last night He seems to love it like there's nothing not to love as Donald Trump says.

This is a thousand Super Bowls For him and for me it's only a hundred Super Bowls I mean if if you're dedicated to America and you're willing to wear America's clothing and and to stop worrying about yourself and only care about America, and have no objective post. The President hates when these people have, like they raise money post from people they met in here, so I'm never gonna work again, okay.

I'm never gonna work, this is all I care about.

I'm just gonna help America, so he asked me to help him, and I start thinking about it, I start studying everything, and I read everything, and I read everything about the White House, I read everything about everything I can possibly read because I'm just that way and then I start helping him.

And I went to learn how he picked the judges in the Supreme Court and why didn't.

And I'm just very detailed.

And so I started studying what transition is.

And I started studying it and I started studying tariffs because he wanted to talk about tariffs.

And he's always thought the trade deficit was wrong and basically a ripoff of America.

And I started studying everything about it.

And so he and I would talk about it, and we knew everything about it.

And then he picked me to run transition.

Okay, so we're going to talk about tariffs in a second.

But so double -click into transition, what did you find that was so interesting?

I'll give you an example.

So there's a book called The Gatekeepers that was written, people gave me, oh you should read this book.

And it's about chiefs of staff.

And basically, there's another way to call it.

It's called The Jerks.

Because what they do… Imagine you're the gatekeeper.

You're the gatekeeper of what?

Of the man who was elected president in the United States of America, he needs the gates kept from him.

And if you listen to Nixon tapes, you hear him scheming to try to learn anything.

Because what happens is the chief of staff, everybody reports to the chief of staff and the chief of staff reports to you.

So, you can't get on Air Force One without asking the chief of staff.

You can't get a document unless you have the chief of staff.

No one can ever see you, unless you have the chief of staff.

And if they take your phone away, you know what you are?

You're imprisoned. And that's the gatekeepers.

So I said to Donald Trump, I said, Look, you fired Reince Priebus, who was your Chief of Staff.

Then you fired John Kelly, who was the Chief of Staff.

Then you fired Mick Mulvaney, who's the Chief of Staff.

Then you would have fired Meadows, but you didn't get a chance because the next election.

So I said, why don't you fire the job?

What you need is a Chief of Staff, who's actually a Chief of Staff, If not, who's the gatekeeper?

Right, and so that was an example of how I changed it.

And so Susie Wiles is perfect for Donald Trump.

You know why? She lets him be him.

John Kelly took away his phone, so he couldn't communicate with anybody.

Whereas Susie embraces who he is, helped him get elected, ran a great campaign.

she's perfect for him in this role.

And so, that's what I brought.

So, I brought, like, an understanding of him and an understanding of the role.

And that's why I convinced your friend David Sachs, every time he said, I can't do it, I would call him and say it's an emergency, it's an emergency, I need to see, you would fly in and go, what is it?

I go, you need to join the administration, and he goes, that's what the emergency was?

I go, of course. And Howard, was that when you conceived originally Doge in that initial...?

Okay, so Doge... Was that during the transition?

All right. So Doge...

Yeah, we should talk about Doge and tariffs.

Okay. So Doge comes...

It's October of before the election.

Okay. Early October.

October 2024. October 2024, like, the beginning of October 2024.

And I called the president.

it, and I said, I need to spend an hour with you.

So I have my big ideas.

Right? So he gives me, he says, look, I'm not sure what to do October 7th.

Right? Why don't we figure out what I should be doing October 7th.

So we decide we're going to go out to the O -Hell, which is a super religious Hasidic Jewish Messiah.

The people who wear black hats think he's the Messiah, and they have a crypt for him where you write a note and you put a note in.

So we agreed, we'd go out to that grave site and we'd probably win 60 ,000 of those kind of voters.

Which is pretty cool for a day.

And then we drove there and back together, two of us.

So I had an hour and a half, just he and me talking.

And I said, I want to balance the budget in the United States of America.

And this is the way we're gonna do it.

We, no one's ever checked the just under $4 trillion of entitlements.

Every politician thinks what you have to do is you have to take the retirement age from 65 and make it a 70.

Right. And you have to do this and this and this and this because they never think about the money.

Totally. But people like us.

Totally. Would say, what's the first thing you do?

What's the value I'm getting from my money?

Totally. Right? And what you find is if nobody ever, like as in ever, like I could say the word ever 12 times has looked at where the money goes totally and so there's not even a process to get it back when you send it to the wrong person you just send another one out yeah like think about it you just well I sent it accidentally or accidentally notice how it's accidental right it's always accidentally sent to the wrong person really you wouldn't ever say the five point nine million people who work for the government there could be some crooks in there right no no no it's all accidental what a load

of nonsense this is there's some percentage of this What you would say and you would say.

Like just zero base it and let's figure out where that.

It's got to be 25 percent.

Yeah. We'd all say if it's never been checked, how could it not be 25 percent?

Right. How could it not be?

Right. And the answer is that's a trillion dollars a year.

Right. OK? So I said I think we're going to cut a trillion dollars a year in expense.

And then I think we can, through tariffs and other means, we're going to get revenues over a trillion dollars.

OK? Incremental revenue.

Incremental revenue.

Yeah. And we're going to balance the budget.

But sorry, let me just ask one question.

And how did the tax cut to the extension of the tax cuts?

There is zero basis.

I mean, where I was yesterday and where I am tomorrow, I get, oh, it's a tax cut.

No, it's not. The exact same thing as yesterday is today.

To say continuing yesterday, tomorrow, is silly.

So let me ask you on tariffs.

Having studied it yourself, when there's higher tariffs, people purchase less.

Things cost more. We'll talk about that.

So let's just finish Doge.

So I'm in the car with him, right, and I say, we're going to balance the budget.

And I said, but I have one favor to ask of you.

If we can balance the budget for you, will you agree to waive all income tax for every person who makes less than $150 ,000 a year for the United States of America, which, by the way, is about 85 % of America.

And the reason you want to work for Donald Trump is he looks at me, he goes, sure.

You realize the President of the United States said if you bounce the budget, sure.

And he's not lying.

He's not kidding. He's like, yeah, that seems that seems like a great idea.

Right? And so and then I tell him, okay, I'm gonna go recruit Elon.

Because Elon is all in.

Yeah. Right. He's already said he's all in.

He's already said he's going to Pennsylvania.

Right. So I call Elon and I don't know Elon.

I don't know. But he's perfect for this.

So I use my superpower, which is I call everybody else.

I know who knows them and they arrange and I'm texting with him and he agrees to meet me on October 14.

So I fly down to Brownsville, Texas.

Uh, he's going to catch the rocket on October 14th, right?

So that's what he invites me down for the rocket catch, having nothing.

He's not inviting me for the rocket.

Catch. He just invited me down that that's a good day for me to meet him.

So I fly down. I see the rocket catch, which is awesome.

Yeah, awesome. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

And then I expect to meet him.

By the way, a very pivotal day in the campaign, if you remember, Biden sort of didn't pay as much attention to it.

Trump was pretty engaged, Elon was supportive of Trump, so when he actually caught the rocket, the media was almost like frozen waiting for it to fail, and it didn't fail, and it worked, and it was just incredibly - I was waiting for Elon, okay.

So I flew down to see Elon with my son, and so we watched the rocket, right, and then they say, okay, He's gonna go hang out with his engineers and party with them seems reasonable.

It's like an hour hour and a half And then he just goes dark You're so waiting I'm just sitting there waiting and then they take me and I go to like I'm the equivalent of a Margaritaville you know where you have like a Basket and you can get quesadillas and you get and you get it a diet coke and a red sort of plastic thing That's about this tall I love four thousand ounces of diet coke in it that comes with this big love that but now to his credit he sends me all the executives from SpaceX are hanging with me But he's dark and what happened is he took a nap He was up all night doing the engineering

and he went to sleep.

So then when he finally wakes up So i'm just sitting there like, you know doing the like, I don't know him really.

So i'm just doing the thumb Twiddle i'm going.

Okay, you know this guy he had a couple take that he isn't I'm hoping he sees me, right?

Yeah So then he wakes up he says come to ask Right?

I'll see you in my house.

So his house is 1200 square feet, it's got the furniture in it that I had when I graduated from college.

Right. Okay, I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding. It's 1200 square feet and it's got the furniture, plastic, chairs, and okay.

So I say, we're going to balance the budget.

I need to cut a trillion.

He's like, I'm in. He says, I think we should cut 80 % of the federal government because the essential employees, if the government shut down, essential employees are 450 ,000.

And there's 5 .9 million people who work for the government.

How can 450 ,000 be essential in this 5 .9 million?

So he says, like Twitter, I think we should cut 80%.

And I say, I know how to cut 50.

And he says, I want to cut 80.

I said, I know how to do 50.

He goes, are you with me or against me?

I go, I know how to legally do it.

What do you have? And my son says it was like two alpha dogs just like fighting each other in the first half hour.

And then, so then X comes in, right.

And then he's gotta walk X.

He's got to walk his son X out.

So he walks his son X out and I'm thinking maybe the meeting's over, right.

Cause we've been together a half hour, 40 minutes and then maybe it's over.

Cause he got up and he walked down and he comes back and he sits down, he goes, Howard, this meeting is, right.

That's what he said.

This is the meaning.

And we sit down and we map out the plan.

I tell him what a gratis vendor is.

Because I was not going to go into the government.

I was doing transition.

What is a gratis vendor?

A gratis vendor is an approved vendor for the United States of America that gives product to the government, doesn't sell it.

So therefore, I don't have to go through the whole process of becoming a proper vendor because you're giving it to us.

And then if you give it to article two Which is the president's stuff than the president can accept it Right because it's give sorry how what's an example of this like just to make I write some software you write some software I write some software for the Commerce Department to do a better job of XYZ mm -hmm you just give it to me and then I do QA on it and I could take it if If you sell it to me for one dollar, we go into government hell.

Right. The whole rigmarole.

Right. But if you give it to me, right.

And then I set up, you know, so I said I'm calling it Doge.

And I registered the name Doge.

You said that? Of course.

And were you familiar with Dogecoin?

Of course! It's Elon!

So what happens is in the Defense Production Act, in World War Two, in order to get all the great executives of America to help with production.

They named everything after jazz singers of the people who were on the committee that it would make them laugh and smile.

So, I picked a Doge, so he would laugh and smile.

He said, get the F out of here.

Like what I said, we're going to name it Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, which I didn't think of.

It was on the internet sort of floating around in June, right?

But I literally registered it.

Right? As the department of government efficiency, like making a real thing as a gratis vendor.

And I said, this is how I've done it for me, so that I can run, Kenneford Sterold, you can run SpaceX, right?

You don't have to sign the conflict form and all that stuff because you're not working for the government.

You're just giving stuff to the government.

You were literally giving of yourself.

But you're not looking for anything.

You're not taking any money.

You're not owning anything.

You're not doing anything.

You're not You're not on that side of the wall, you're on this side.

You're outside. And so, we had fun, we talked for two hours.

And then on my twitter feed, I took a picture of me and Elon outside and I put up welcome to Doge.

We are going to rip the waste out of our $6 .5 trillion government and balance the budget.

We must elect Donald J.

Trump President. And I posted that with my probably at the time had 25 ,000 viewers and I got 45 million views Wow, right.

This was a meaningless.

Yeah, and that was the beginning of doge Yeah, right then I ran transition which is so for the transition We had I had a room in Marlaga.

Yeah. Okay big conference table in the middle 485 inch screens on one side and mirror four eighty five inch screens on the other side so that you and I could talk to each other So the president's had a cross for me.

Elon sat, oh, and then I'll tell you one other story about Elon.

So he wins the election, president wins the election.

He accepts it like Wednesday at two o 'clock in the morning.

Right? Elon's not on stage.

If you see, I'm on stage, Elon's way in the back of the room.

There's a thousand people in the room, 2000 people, he's way in the back.

He goes home. Thursday afternoon I call him.

I'm doing a dry run of the launch of my transition.

Right? And the president is superstitious.

He's never had one conversation with me about transition.

He totally trust me.

He wins the election.

Now, he's got a, like, you know, I said on Jesse Waters.

But he hasn't talked to you ahead of time.

About who he wants.

About one job about one thing.

Because he... So, until the election.

Because, he's superstitious.

superstitious. Like don't waste your time.

Don't jinx it. Right?

Just go win. You got to go win.

So what happens is he, so I'm I'm doing a dry run.

So I call Elon. and I said, where are you?

He goes, what do you mean?

I'm in Austin, Texas, whatever, I go, well, what are you doing?

I mean, what is the point of you spending three weeks living in Pennsylvania helping the guy get elected if you're not gonna help him pick the cabinet?

Like come on, right?

Because the way President Trump works, he makes decisions by orchestra.

He likes lots of views and opinions.

He likes them and anybody who says oh the last person who sees him gets him That's because they don't know him at all Right, right?

The answer is it's an orchestra Right, and I would say okay.

I'm the first violin You know at the time I would say I was you know, I would describe myself as second violin Yeah, right.

So this is an orchestra.

So the president's not gonna make a decision with me and him alone.

Yeah No, no, he's gonna have so he so it went like this presidents sitting cross for me right at the conference table Elon to his left Susie to his right right JD to my left Lyndon McMahon who's my co -chair right but she wrote all those eos that he did that was she was responsible for and I was responsible for personnel but she was with me for personnel so she's sending to my right JD sitting to my left don jr right Stephen Miller and he there was always twelve people in the room they were never like me and him rushed in the corner doing this that Never.

And what we would do is I would put eight candidates on one screen.

Right. Right. And then big candidate on each screen, right?

Most beautiful AI picture of you you've ever seen.

Right. And people would walk in and go, wait to get that photo.

I'm like what do you think I did?

I took three of your photos.

I've heard secondhand stories of this room during the transition that you walk in and everyone's photo's up on the screen.

Everybody's on the room.

And so that's a candidate for a role.

And then you guys would debate.

So what happened is a big picture of the person?

Yeah. They're key highlights of the resume.

Not boring. With their education, yeah.

Right? And then you would click a button and you'd see him speaking.

20 seconds at a time, four of them.

Right? So it was about 80 seconds.

And you're not speaking about the job.

Right. Just like, how do you present?

Totally. And what you can see is his whole cabinet can talk.

Totally. All of them.

Yeah. Totally. Because he picked them knowing I need you to be able to talk, to be able to present our ideas and our concepts out there and that's key to him.

The way I would joke to people is say, how do you do it?

I go watch. Pitch so you throw him a curveball.

He wouldn't swing. You throw him a fastball he wouldn't swing.

You throw him a slider, he hits the ball.

Hits it to my glove I go here you go.

Well how do you know that?

I go, because I don't think I have for 33 years, I know what he wants.

And he loved the process and you know what happened?

You saw what happened.

Right. First day, eight candidates, 12 jobs national security.

Okay. He says, what do you want?

I go, eight to four.

I put up eight candidates.

I recruited everybody.

I had 150 of the best Republicans in the United States of America.

They each gave me five people, who then gave me 10 people.

I had thousands of people to pick from.

The whole government was set up to pick from.

And then we picked candidates.

I had eight for every job.

Eight, eight, eight, eight, eight to four, that's Friday.

Sunday comes in for the two in the morning I fly everybody in for the two I prep them we're going to meet them two to one final interview give them the job Wow bang bang bang bang bang bank Monday to Monday we're done with national security okay now we're rolling on and it just pounds out why because he had every candidate everybody knew it everybody was prepped everybody was where everybody was done you know that's why I had to beat the heck out of David Sacks.

Because I needed David Sacks to be in the government.

I recruited David, I pounded on David.

You can ask David. I beat him and beat him and beat him until he finally said, okay, I'm gonna do it.

And I did that for everybody.

And I made sure he had the greatest choices.

And then every once in a while he would call me at night and say, throw this guy in, throw this guy in, throw this guy in.

We did a vet on everybody, but I didn't take out anything negative.

I am not a negative person, you can tell.

So why would I discuss anything negative about any candidate?

Until I get picked.

There was no game theory.

A lot of people speculated there was game theory that we'll put a mix of people that will assume some won't make it out of committee and then we'll end up with the ones that we do want.

Everyone was the number one choice.

Only one. Only one.

And that was Matt. Matt, yeah.

What happened with Matt Howard?

How did that process?

He was tortured by his attorney general in the first term, and we were not going to have that ever again, right?

So we needed strong backbone, strong capacity of which Matt Gaetz has it, and I know Matt Gaetz and he has it, right?

But we did not know what that vet was going to say from that report from Congress.

So here was the idea.

We fight for him and we fight for him to get through and then we read the report.

The report's not bad.

And remember, the president's been tortured by people blaming him for stuff that never happened oh 30 years ago he raped this woman in the in the dressing room of Bloomingdale's I mean what a load of crap right it's just not true none of it's true it's ridiculous so he he comes at this saying I know you're gonna get tortured with ridiculous right so then he says if it's if it's ridiculous then we support men and if it's not we have Pam right here right now.

So that was lined up.

So that everybody knows it's right here right now and it's 3D chess.

So we read it, Pam.

It's like Pam and a 100th of a second.

And Pam is a rock star.

And you could argue that you would say, well, why didn't you pick her first?

You know what, he's the president.

He plays 3D chess. He did it his way.

And you know what? But there was no candidate up there who wasn't right.

Oh, right. And we could talk about all the detail and how we thought about it when it went but it was So thoughtful so intuitive and so right.

And what does it produce?

The greatest cabinet Ever the most capable thoughtful best able to communicate I mean, it's so fun to be in a room with these people because these are world class people the best We shouldn't betray confidence But I mean we were in a room earlier this week with several of them and everyone had a moment to speak It was Unbelievable.

I mean look I every single one of them you're like, I mean you could have could have been a leader of the country Like they're all great.

That's the point he picked he picked greatness Now I was the recruiter so I was recruiter in chief, but I don't understand why now, by the way Well, but think about if you take someone like me.

Yeah, and you say just be a headhunter Yeah, I swear to you.

I can be the greatest headhunter ever to live Think about it, what's the odds of saying, okay, Howard, your whole job is just be head up.

Find the best guys.

I promise you, I'll be really good at it.

Yeah, can we go back to Doge?

So you talked about the grottis vendor.

Maybe this other stuff that you can do with executive action, the president can do with Doge, et cetera.

Can we talk about congressional budgets?

How do we actually balance a budget without bringing Congress along?

And is the plan to bring Congress along?

I've asked this a Bessent.

I've asked this several times since we've been here.

And it's the thing that gives me the most heartache and the most headache is I worry about whether this actually gets there given Congressional interests.

I think Congress Works with something called scoring.

Yeah, right that that if it comes from their pen it counts if it doesn't come from their pen, it doesn't count but the fact is Money always counts.

It just doesn't count for their scoring But their scoring is only part of the game, right?

The outcome of the game is what matters to me Elon our cabinet and Donald Trump Okay, the outcome of the game and I'm telling you the outcome of the game By me and Elon now a funny part of it is so I invite Elon to Madison Square Garden He doesn't want to leave Pennsylvania Right because he you know Elon he's committed to Pennsylvania.

Yeah, so I convinced him he's got to come and And we have a plan, I'm going to say to him, so I, everyone else gets introduced by the voice of God.

I'm the only one who introduces Elon.

So Elon comes on stage with me.

There's the two of us on stage in Madison Square Garden.

The only time the two of us are on stage.

I'm the fourth speaker, he's the third from the end.

JD is second from the end and Donald Trump is last. Okay, so he's supposed to say, I say to him, how much are you going to cut?

The deal was, he's going to cut $1 trillion.

And then he's supposed to say, and how much are you going to earn?

And I'm supposed to say, $1 trillion.

And then we're supposed to say, together we're going to bounce the budget in United States America.

That's the little thing.

So I ask Elon, how much are you going to cut?

And he... He said two trillion.

Because we're in front of 22 ,000 people and the place is erupting and he said, two trillion.

And then I'm sitting there going...

And I'm like, I think I said, all righty, then.

Or something like that.

You don't have to be like, what am I supposed to say?

So later when he walks back to a trillion.

No, you were caught off guard. But I mean, it was quite a moment.

Did he ask you how much he gonna earn?

No. Because he said two trillion!

He's like, I got it all.

Don't worry. Like I said, all right.

All righty then. And that was that.

So then I walked off stage and you know, he said two trillion.

So I'm like, I matter what am I gonna say?

But the answer was always, right?

That 25 % of the waste for an abuse is a trillion dollars.

Right. And he's got to cut and find the waste for an abuse of a trillion dollars again, okay and that my job is to raise one trillion dollars of exogenous new revenue new revenue for the and we Right.

I'm telling you I've been here now two months.

Yeah, right. I am more confident It's gonna happen and more excited tell us how it happened.

Well, hold on a second so Howard let's let's finish this and then we'll move to tariffs and revenue generation, so There's a lot of domestic terrorism.

Is that the response to try to slow down the expense side of the house?

Is it basically to put fear into people that are trying to find this waste and fraud?

Is that what that is, the burning of the dealerships?

I describe it to people this way.

Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month.

My mother -in -law, who's 94, she wouldn't call and complain.

She just wouldn't. She thinks something got messed up and she'll get it next month.

A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming, yelling, and complaining.

And if all the guys who did PayPal, like Elon knows this by heart, right?

Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster Is to stop payments and listen.

Yeah, cuz whoever screams is the one stealing Yeah, because my mother lost I call me come on your mother 80 year olds ninety year olds They trust the government to trust. Okay, maybe got screwed up.

Big deal. Not gonna call and scream at someone But someone who's stealing always does so what happens is We need to get to so the people who are getting that free money stealing the money, inappropriately hitting the money, have an inside person who's routing the money, they are going to yell and scream.

But real America - Will give the government - Is going to be rewarded, because here's the key - Benefit of the doubt.

Not one penny should stop going to where the richest country on earth.

Here's the way I say it.

I said we have a $6 .5 trillion budget.

We have $4 .5 trillion of revenues.

Okay. We lose $2 trillion a year.

We have a 29 trillion dollar GDP which people don't understand, which I'll explain a little bit.

And we have 36 trillion in debt.

What number didn't I say to a business person?

What's our balance sheet worth?

I say 500 trillion dollars.

The president says a quadrillion.

But at 500 trillion or quadrillion, 36 trillion?

We're rich. We don't have to take one penny from someone who deserves social security.

Not one penny for someone who deserves Medicaid and Medicare.

What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who's not hurt, who's on disability for 50 years.

It's ridiculous, and they have another job.

And do we have to monetize our assets?

We need to be smart.

That's all we need to be.

And I'm going to tell you things that are just smart.

They're not, oh my God, this is the most brilliant thing ever.

This is just smart.

There are so many smart things we can do.

like, you know, we'll talk about the post office, right?

Think about this. The post office has 625 ,000 people who work there and they go to your house everyday.

You know what this census does?

The census hires 625 ,000 people, trains them, teaches them, as interviews, two million people, trains and teaches them, hires cars.

How about this? You're a genius!

That's pretty smart, Howard. Right?

Okay, right, but here's what, I'll tell you what I'm gonna say.

You're so right, yeah.

I'm really good at pattern recognition.

Okay, here's one. Like, tell me 625 -1, I can point that 625 on another.

This is the genius I bring to the government sir.

This is core. By the way, you're responsible for all the core data collection as well aren't you?

Isn't Commerce responsible for generating a lot of the.

Oh GDP. Good for economic.

Oh that's right. I get to talk about GDP and how I'm going to clean up the nonsense in GDP.

You know I can explain it, if you make a tank and someone buys a tank that is GDP but a thousand people thinking about buying a tank right who take your tax money and I give it to them and they go I wonder should we buy a tank or not.

That's not GDP. Right, you're saying government spending should not be counted in GDP?

Government spending to buy a tank should be.

Right, that's nonproductive.

This is super - this is so important.

I don't think a lot of people realize this.

How much of GDP is nonproductive government spending?

How about we do one thing?

GDP... D means domestic.

P is domestic production.

It's not consumption.

right if I go out and buy a Toyota right right that's not GDP right if I buy a Chevy that's made in America that's a D right so people think it's like a consumption model metric yeah right that's not it and you can check another one is is this gross domestic income right that's also good so by the way they're about they grow about the same rate it's kind of fun right so the key for me is to take out the part that if I cut nonproductive a million government employees who are non -productive meaning they don't make tanks right right if I take that out it's gonna look like our GDP declined but you'd

say but what really happened no our expenses went down this is so important by the way because people talk about a recession and a lot of people create a lot of red lights and alarm bells about we're gonna go into a recession if we cut all this spending but the follow -on effect of cutting non -productive spending is that the workforce and those dollars flow into more productive parts of the economy where we make more things we create more jobs we create higher wages and that's the theory that you guys are trying to execute against I don't think a lot of people in the general public fully understand that is so important

to kind of explain and get across okay if we put three people behind us and they sat behind us and they did nothing.

And each of us gave them $125 ,000.

Just like this. Here you go.

And they just sat there.

Right? What is that?

That's a GDP. That's actually me taking my money and giving it to them.

We produce nothing.

We've no purpose of the Earth.

It was my money. The income.

However, I earned my income was mine.

I just gave it to them.

What they didn't really earn income.

It's really a transfer pricing model that That is currently considered in GDP, and it's nonsense.

So if I stopped paying them, what would I do?

The first thing you'd say is, well, then why am I paying so much tax?

Bang. OK? So now we're in the concept of where you are.

So, Howard, do you have an intuition on what the actual GDP number is?

If you take out nonproductive spending.

Yeah. But I'm not going to talk about it until we release it because that's the proper way to do stuff.

Got it. And I'm going to break that out.

I think it's 25 % percent.

and I'm gonna break it out for the last 20 years.

And what you're gonna see is every time the quarter just before an election, all the government spending happens right then and there.

It's all of a sudden you have this jumpin' GDP, total lie, total lie.

Basically, they just take all this money and they jack it into the quarter, so that we have that.

And you'll see it, it goes doo, doo, doo, doo, whoop.

And what do you think the first quarter is?

WAMO? Well, the second quarter is WAMO.

Why? Because you pre -spent it.

Right. And then you have this whole, and it's gross.

Yeah. Okay. It's still.

It's to us. You're like, really?

But let me. It's so manipulated.

Let me ask you. And the answer is duh.

And to your point, the game that's being played is, we're going to take taxpayer dollars that people don't understand once you give it to the government.

We're going to create these waves of fake growth that try to tip elections.

So that then the grift and the waste and all the fraud can then continue for as many years until the jig gets replayed over and over again.

And it seems like the buck is stopping with you guys.

Well, it's going to.

Because you've exposed it.

It's going to. And that's the idea.

The idea is to take a trillion of waste, fraud, and abuse out, and then make a trillion from From having other people, resetting global trade.

And once you understand global trade and how it makes sense and where it came from… Can you explain that to us?

Sorry, before we get there I want to ask one last question on the cuts.

Can we speak, do we need to speak in a more empathetic way?

Because that trillion dollars of spending flows into someone's pocket.

Some percentage of that pays people a salary and they live on that income.

And I think a lot of the Okay I think this is important for you to highlight this a lot of people are reacting to Elon and doge and the budget cut saying You're destroying jobs.

You're taking money away from people that need their jobs Why are you why rich people are taking I'm gonna give you a sad example And so like help us understand our people going to lose their job.

I'm gonna give you a sad example We all remember during the covid.

There was the PPP money.

Yep, right remember that.

Yeah, totally so it was proven The $200 billion of the 1 .2 trillion was going to Chinese fraud gangs.

What? Why? Did that prove it?

You just make up a company.

Right. You know, Joe's Deli.

Yeah. You make it up, Joe's Deli, right?

Say you're in trouble, file and they sent you money.

Yeah. So why wouldn't Chinese gangs do that?

Come on. So we show, not we, but people showed the government those people that money and it's Instead of stopping they said, Yeah, but we can't stop.

Because there are real people who need the money.

And so what happens is because there's no no one's ever been fired.

Ever for sending money to the wrong place.

People send it on purpose.

I'm not saying everybody sends it on purpose.

I'm saying there are some people who said it on purpose.

Some people who are complete, morons and an enormous number of people who work for the government who are awesome.

I mean, amazing people.

But what percentage?

There's 5 .9 million people who work for the government, you're like, wow, that's like so many and we're paying them all.

And how many do you really need?

And if the answer is 2 million, wow, and we could talk about how we understand it and how we're going to retrain society for the AI Industrial Revolution is coming, which is going to create the greatest set of jobs and the greatest set of growth ever.

Ever. Okay, but that but then we could talk about that, but the key is Stop sending money to the wrong place So we can make sure we can always Defend sending money to the right place I would Never allow if I can stand it to not pay somebody who retired at 65 their benefits I find it disgusting when we're the richest country in the world and some politician says, in order to save Social Security rather than getting rid of the waste, fraud and abuse, we should move it to 70.

How about no? How about we're rich enough to give people the benefit of the bargain of being a great American.

But let's put great people in charge.

That's really well said, but that's really well said.

Okay. Let's put a pin in this because...

So, let's, Howard, explain to us global trade as you understand it and then the context of tariffs and maybe historically and what role they played now.

So I remind people that on the earth, there was the Dark Ages.

So the Dark Ages meant that the world knew how to read.

And then because of religious and other actions, they burned all the books.

And literally, the earth stopped learning how to read for 500 years or 400 years.

We didn't know how to read.

And we knew how to read before so how could you forget?

So America was built on tariffs with no income tax.

No income tax till 1913.

None. Greatest richest country in the world.

So when Donald Trump says make America great again, What he's talking about is from 1880 to 1913, when the country had so much money that we had blue ribbon commissions, which you guys would have been on, to try to figure out how to spend the money and no income tax.

Then we put in the income tax in 1913, why?

Because we're entering World War I.

And don't we all need to contribute to protect democracy and to protect our way of life?

Then what happens is the world goes into chaos.

we come out of chaos, right, and then we're starting to think about what do we do, what do we do, and then 1929 the stock market crashes, right?

1933, we start to say, oh whoa whoa God, we forgot, we need to do tariffs.

1933, how can you do tariffs?

When the markets crash, the world's going into depression and you're gonna do tariffs in 1933, you can't charge the rest of the world money unless the rest of the world's okay.

That's right. So it was Too little too late Right.

So then we come out of World War two.

It's 1945. We need to rebuild the world Okay, so we decide we're gonna take our tariffs down And we'll let them here's the key.

We'll let them have tariffs be up and we will export the power Of our economy to let them rebuild and we let them rebuild and that's what happens So 1945 we have the Marshall Plan right and we do it in Japan, of course, because they need to be rebuilt What's the difference right so they need to be rebuilt and then what happens we have the 50s and we have the Korean War So we let them rebuild which means low tariffs here high tariffs there low tariffs here high tariffs there then we have the Vietnam War Right.

So now all the way have all of Southeast Asia low tariffs here high tariffs there You know what the best example I can give you to make it crystal clear Kuwait.

We spend almost a hundred billion dollars freeing Kuwait.

Right? You know as the highest tariffs against the United States of America, the number one country with the highest tariffs against the United States of America?

Kuwait. And you think, what?

But here's what it is.

If you go back to this understanding, the way America thinks, you need to be rebuilt.

You were just destroyed, right.

All their oils were, you remember, red, the guy's name was Red -something, and he was the guy who capped all the, there were fires and all the oil wells and he capped them all, and it was amazing.

So we let them put up high tariffs.

But you know what the problem is?

That we forget. And we let it go.

Yeah, so Donald Trump comes in it says it's kind of stop.

Okay, so that's an incredible context now for tariffs It's like it was a long -term strategy that essentially says, okay great there is rebuilding to be done Sort of almost out of the largesse of America.

We're going to enable that to happen So we'll lower tariffs here and we'll support the high tariff regimes over there.

We let it happen We let it all on purpose, but it's an incredible thing.

You're also saying though, which is that it's inexorably linked to this repetitive machinery of war because those create these boundary conditions over and over again Always.

where there is so much destruction abroad that America then feels compelled to have to do this.

Correct. That's exactly right, so what happens is and then you say to yourself, okay, I get the 40s.

I get the 50s. I get the 70s, right?

but 80s, 90s, 2000, 2010.

What, time out, 20.

So Donald Trump gets elected 2016.

Who understands this?

Okay? Let me give you a hint.

Donald J. Trump. Who else?

Nobody. You'd say, wow.

He understands and how long he's been talking about it?

40 years. Because in the 80s, he's saying, what are you doing?

Well, let me give you the economists counter which and then you can respond to it which is tariffs on imports in the United States will ultimately pass to the consumer higher prices Inflationary, so the things that our consumers and our citizens are buying gets more expensive and as a result They buy less and it's recessionary shrinks the economy it shrinks spending it shrinks consumption Can you kind of respond to the you know?

That's the typical economist refrain on this independent and maybe they're isolating the imbalance.

Okay India Has a 50 % tariff on average 50 We have an average for Okay, I I would say to the person who said that, can I answer your question, what are you talking about?

They're 50 and four.

Here's what you're talking about.

When we're all equal and everything is free and fair, if you raise tariffs and they raise tariffs, isn't it bad for society?

The answer is, of course, it is.

But, there's two differences.

Number one, let's do human beings first, Before we go to the math, let's go to human beings once upon a time.

We had an auto industry in Detroit Okay, and in Ohio but Detroit then some genius named Bill Clinton Signs the North American free trade agreement or Corporations you can screw Americans and go get cheap labor in Mexico and break the unions by going to Canada Now, if you were a General Motors, I'd say, it's like my birthday.

But if you're a worker who comes from Michigan or Ohio, they just signed, you know what they signed?

Worst statistic I'm going to tell you today.

Average life expectancy of high school educated workforce.

So by the way United States of America 2 thirds is high school educated one third is college educated The difference today of average life expectancy between those two categories is seven years Seven -year average life expectancy.

It's not the air It's not the food It's not the medicine It's despair My grandfather worked in the auto factory My father worked in the auto factory.

I have a good life I'm gonna do Friday Night Lights and football.

I mean it's good. It's gonna be a good life I have a good middle -class life I'm a member of the United order workers life is going to be good the factory moves to Mexico and I am just screwed because the government of the United States of America had a Didn't care about industrial policy and didn't protect me at all and let cheap labor and Mexico I'm sure the Mexican people got went from $4 an hour to $5 an hour and they're kicking it, but I destroyed you And that is incredible failure of industrial policy, which nobody wants to talk about.

But you talk about it in an average life expectancy, and you're talking about it about reassuring and building the life for the people who are America.

That's why you elect Donald Trump president.

You elect him because I didn't spend one minute doing politics until he asked me to help him.

But when he asked me to help him, I started spending time with him.

When did I learn this?

And who taught me this?

The President of the United States.

This is not me teaching him.

You understand? This is him teaching me, and you can see him talking about it in the 80s, right?

He's been talking about this for And what it does is it means Resure so number one we have to care about human beings.

That's a globalist view Yes, if I take my production and move it to Mexico, it's better for me.

Mr. Corporation Okay, but it's not better for me.

Mr. U. S citizen of the United States of America was working at a Carplant That's bad news for him.

Okay, and that's number one.

And now let's go to number two, which is the math of it all If we say free and fair trade, I want to remind you there ain't no such thing There is no country in this world That is free trade Zero and we are the lowest and the dumbest Because everybody else is higher and more protected.

Yeah, so they protect their farmers here I'm sitting at the dinner.

Modi comes to town I said to him when Donald Trump we have dinner and after the niceties Donald said goes ahead go ahead Howard and I said You have 1 .4 billion people and you brag to us how amazing your economy is.

Why won't you buy a bushel of our corn?

We'll buy a bushel of our corn So our farmers can't go to him but his of course can come at us Right.

Why is that? Okay? You know and we can go into all the stuff that oh, I mean I don't even want to go into it cuz if I had another hour I could Stories just fine with that but just to address the pricing inflation that arises from tariffs Talk to the average person who says the cost of a toy at Walmart just went up by 50 percent inflation comes from Printing more money.

Okay, let's say United States of America had one trillion dollars.

That's all we had. That's it.

No more Okay? And I want to buy a bottle of water and you want to buy a bottle of water.

One came from America and the other one came from Fiji, right?

And I tariff Fiji. Then that water is a dollar and a quarter and this water is a dollar.

That's not inflation.

That means that one's more expensive but I can choose to buy this one, right?

Okay? So you're right.

This toy might be more expensive and that toy is not.

I get it. But that's not inflation.

Here's inflation. Snap my fingers, now we have 2 trillion.

That water's $1 .50, that water's $1 .25.

Yeah, everything's more expensive.

That's inflation. Okay?

So inflation without tariffs is everything's a buck and a quarter.

Now what about? Inflation with tariffs is a buck and a quarter and about $50.

And so you have to understand inflation doesn't come from tariffs.

Certain products. If I put a tariff on a mango, we can't grow mangoes in America.

We just can't grow a mango.

If you put a tariff on a mango, the mango would be more expensive.

But if the president chose to put a tariff on a mango, then the mango is more expensive.

That just becomes a consumption tax.

It's like a sales tax.

It's a sales tax. It's a consumption tax.

If I want to buy a mango, it costs more money.

And you can offset that with a reduction in income tax.

No but that's just another version of income tax.

How do you think about it?

So the idea is to not do that.

That's the idea. The idea is to choose things that are going to reassure.

Come here. This is so important.

Hire my people, bring it home.

By the way, I want to just speak as an entrepreneur.

I see the economic incentive.

When I see the price for certain things go higher because you have to import and pay a tariff, I'm like, why don't we make that here?

We should be doing that.

And there's going to be a lot of that kind of entrepreneurial opportunity that will arise from making things.

And this is just how the markets work.

Someone will say, $2 trillion so far, I mean, he's been in an office, right, like seven weeks, eight weeks.

$2 trillion of committed domestic production coming back because of his tax.

TMC saying, I'll build, you know, semiconductor wafers.

You know, everything we do, they're going to build it here.

That word is never coming.

Yeah. Unless the tariff.

So what happens is you bring it here, you create the jobs here and then they avoid the tariff.

And by the way, those jobs are better paying and they're more productive than the government fund is.

What do you want to do about, like the narrow set of products that are more high value than the mango?

that maybe can't be made here, or at least can't be made here in the next five to ten years.

So TSMC can make chips, I think that's great.

ASML, who makes the extremely complicated lithography machines, as an example, can't necessarily do that for another five or six years here.

So there's these narrow cases where tariffs can exploit a market or perturb a market where there is no multivendor solution, right?

But that's still critical.

How do you think about of that set of stuff.

You know the beauty of putting Donald Trump into the White House is, it's giant three dimensional chess, okay?

So we all have Stockholm Syndrome for the Internal Revenue Service.

We think we like the Internal Revenue Service.

And we don't say it, but when we say we're going to charge a tariff, and other countries who lean on us, who rely on us, who bleed on us, who can't live without the oxygen that is our economy.

Because, remember, the thing about our economy is while we have a 29 -trillion -dollar GDP, we are the consumer of 20 trillion.

And this is the key thing.

We buy everybody stuff.

So, who's more important?

Let's say they have an economy that produces stuff.

And we have an economy that buys stuff.

Yeah. The customer is always right.

We all know the customers always right, because if no one buys it, they can't produce it.

Right. So everybody needs our economy.

When? Now. I mean, to the fact that China consumes less than 10 trillion and primarily tries to figure out how to sell it to itself.

Yeah. Right? So they buy anybody else's stuff.

Right. So we are the world's consumer.

Yeah. We're the world's customer, right?

So that's point number one.

So we want them to come here, and if they can't come here, what if you pass?

Okay, now let's say there was a 20 % tariff, and in order to sell his goods, he knows he can raise the price 10%, but he can't really sell it raise a 20.

So he eats 10, and the price goes up 10.

Let's just say that 20 goes into the coffers the United States of America from the president of the United States who said, we're going to balance the budget.

And then his goal is to drive down income tax, United States of America, including waiving tax.

So what does he said so far?

With that in his pocket, knowing that this is what we're going to try to do.

What does he announce?

No tax on tips. No tax on overtime.

No tax on Social Security.

Why is he saying those things, right?

Because he knows that he's got, Elon's going to cut and Howard's going to raise and he's going to have the tools to deliver on his promise and not only money, more money for folks to spend and they'll have more money to spend.

Right. So if you, if you actually get the external revenue service, right, which of course I named, you know, I named it, but, you know, but you know what the to DJT and I wrote, this is my huge idea.

You know, with one of those things that goes like this.

Yeah. You know, and then like, this is my huge idea.

You go, rrrrr. Right?

And, because it's the external revenue service.

But it only matters because I work for him.

Mm -hmm. Because if I worked for Joe Biden or anybody else, they wouldn't care at all.

So the fact that he loves a great idea the minute you say it, and it becomes his idea, My idea is useless a good idea in his hands okay so speaking of value in the world.

So the external revenue service if it if we went back to make America great again yeah which is pre -1913 which is let them pay you don't pay and what that means is let them pay try to wave balance the budget try to wave tax and everybody makes less than 150 ,000, right?

And look what you did for America holy moley look where you okay so by the way yeah labor costs come smashing down because it's tax -free yeah so if their earnings are tax -free right then they're happy to work because they get the money right so what happens is cost of labor comes down because we're run correctly as a government speaking out what I'm trying to do speaking of potentially great ideas can you tell us about the Trump card sure so whose idea was that and how did that come about.

John Paulson had a call with Donald Trump and was talking to Donald Trump and was kicking around the idea of we should sell.

Right. Why do we give away visas?

We should sell them.

And they're talking about it.

Donald Trump calls me, gets me on the phone.

Right. We all talk about it.

Right. And then we go from there.

And then my job is to figure out.

Like, I always figure out how to do it.

What's the path? You have a path?

Let's go figure it out.

Of course. About two weeks from today, it goes out.

Okay, Elon's building me the software right now, right.

And then out it goes.

And by the way, yesterday I sold a thousand.

Oh, you did. I got a Poly market I created on how many of you guys gonna sell this here?

Cool. Yeah, curious to see how many.

That's fantastic. Do you want to tell people just the rough, rough terms on it?

Yeah. So, if you're a US citizen, you pay global tax.

Yeah. Okay. So you're not gonna bring in outsiders who are gonna come in to pay global tax.

So if you have a green card, which used to be a green card, now, gold card, you're a permanent resident of America.

You can be a citizen, but you don't have to be, and none of them are gonna choose to be.

What they're gonna do is they're gonna have the right to be in America, they'd be five million dollars and they have the right to be an American.

They have the right to be an American, permanent currency as long as they're good people and they're vetted and they're vetted and they can't break the law.

We could always take it away if they're like evil or mean or bad or something not mean, but you know, if they do something horrible you can take it away, right?

But, but the idea is if I was not American and I lived in any other country, I would buy six, one for me, one for my wife, for my four kids God forbid something happens.

I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport, to go to America and them to say, hello, Mr. Lenick, hello, Mr. Lenick and the Lenick family.

Welcome Home. That's what I want to hear.

I don't want to hear, I can't come here when there's a horrible war, a horrible whatever.

I want to be able to go home.

And once I'm home, I might as well build a business.

Yeah, so you have the most productive people in the world gonna start spending time here.

They're gonna have a family office They're gonna hire some people and you're not gonna tax their external worldwide income I only tax the money they make in America, which is what we do now But their global income stays out and they pay 5 million and how many people do you think there are that could qualify in the world?

There are 37 million people in the world who are capable of buying the car.

That's a sure wonder 37 million That's a lot more than chat GPT told me.

Who are capable of buying.

Who are capable of buying it.

Yeah, I'm not saying they will, but they're capable of buying.

How many do you think you'll sell?

The president thinks we can sell a million.

That's $5 trillion.

I think a million's reasonable.

I mean, look, as an outsider who came in and got his green card, and then got his citizenship, and now pay global tax every which way, no demand.

if this were available 15 years ago after the Facebook IPO, that's what I would have done.

It would have been much better for me, theoretically.

Now, I'm happy to pay the tax.

So, the idea is, and it's gonna go fast, meaning you apply, right?

We take your money and, you know, the way computers work now, they have these cool things.

They have these computer things.

They're amazing. You're like, you know, you put stuff in and they actually check everything.

It's fantastic, you don't even have to plug them in anymore.

It's amazing. like they get the information through the air.

I mean, you could do a better vet than anybody in government has ever done it before in one second.

Better than they've ever done it before.

So I'll tell you a quick story.

Monday night, Elon was telling us about this, me and Saxon.

One of the things he's saying is he's been helping you build this site, but one of the most difficult parts of it is it turns out all of the CPB infrastructure, to do all these checks.

It's a lot of cobalt mainframes.

And the amount of technology that has to get rewritten.

And so this is a question.

It's incredible that the most advanced nation in the world deployed systems in 1970, which at the time probably felt very cutting edge to everybody in the room at the time.

But to your point has not evolved in the last 50 years.

Because there's always a reason.

And the reason is, it's a great reason.

Which is that in the mid -70s we changed the way government accounts for software.

We took a 10 -year contract, and you have to take the contract upfront.

So if I'm signing a contract with you for 10 years, a million a year, I have to take it against my budget for 10 million.

So I'm not doing it.

See, I'm only here for four years.

I'm not doing it. So what happens is when was the last time we bought software?

1975. Where? Everywhere.

Why? Because it's illogical.

Now what I'm doing is I'm saying, okay, I got to collect tariffs, right?

So I go to one of the great software companies of the earth.

And I say, I want you to give me, you're going to build for me for America.

You're going to build the greatest customs processing ever.

ever we're gonna take a photograph it's gonna know what it is it's gonna go through AI it's gonna know what it is it's gonna know what the tariff is it's going to determine the percentage it's going to know the weight so when you weigh the thing plus the package you'll know what it weighs you don't even have to open it away exactly the right amount and you'll do this and that and these are all things that I know and all things I could figure out because you know the way gold works a gold bar is about 40 pounds you know they know the gold bars they weigh it and they weigh it out 13 digits of decimals

hmm so But basically if you touch the thing, it's not going to be 13 digits or decimals.

So you have a perfect scale, and you weigh it and that's like the code, right?

Because you can't touch it, you touch it, you'll change the ...

You can't get it right out 13 digits.

It's just not possible.

So that's what we do with stuff.

You know what it weighs, right?

Three t -shirts. If you're sending the same three t -shirts, they always weigh the same.

But what's incredible is you're convincing these companies to basically like, do right for America and build the software for you.

Do you think that's gonna be a movement throughout the government or is that?

Here's the idea. I say build it for me, for free.

Yeah. I put it in for free.

I don't know. What other countries in the world do you think are gonna buy now?

Right, if it works for us.

Well remember, you have to connect to me.

Yeah. So every country is gonna buy.

Right. And it's a great business model.

Right. Right. If the greatest customer in the world says they'll take it.

Yeah. Life's good. Right.

So what should the greatest customer in the world get?

I don't know a good deal.

Yeah, right? And you got a guy like me there Everybody else is like Howard you have to change how government operates if you're gonna scale that you can't go negotiate every contract out there For every department.

I mean it's not that hard when you say it's free.

You know free is like that All right.

I mean you yes it is and then what I do is I get the head of that Technology company.

Yeah because I then I use my superpower Which is my friendship with Donald Trump and then I go in the overall office and we call them together And we call the CEO together and make him promise the President, because promising Howard is really nice.

Promising DDT. That's something else entirely.

So I get these guys to promise Donald Trump that they'll build it.

Now let's see them renege.

Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

So you know, when you get Elon to say, I'm gonna build it for you.

And he says in front of the President, how great is that?

You got like the greatest technologist, the richest guy in the world, he says, I'll build it for you.

You're like, thank God, right?

And then I get, you know, I go to the heads of Google and Microsoft and Amazon.

They're all for America building for us, for free to make America better because they are great American companies.

And in exchange for that, we're going to help them through all sorts of things that are towards fairness, just towards fairness.

Because I, you can't get me to do something outside the world of fairness.

But I'll tell you what, if it's unfair, I'll be on your side as hard and as positive as I possibly can be.

Talk to us about some of the hot -button markets that you're going to have to navigate.

You are in charge of export controls, which is a very important thing in AI.

We don't allow export licenses for the most advanced Nvidia chips.

We don't want training necessarily to be done outside of the United States We're okay with inference happening outside the United States in certain conditions.

Maybe just talk about that for a second How like how do you how are you gonna navigate AI, how do you think about that from your seat?

Alright, so I'll give you an example.

That's sort of live right now Yeah, right.

So we have deep -seek.

We have quen we have doe bow.

Yeah, right and and I don't think we should be having apps in America and I don't think we should have their website in America because they all go back home.

But it's open source and I want our American companies including college students to be able to download it and build on it.

But I want to make sure that there's no part of it that says send it home to Dada, or store now and analyze later.

So I need that out.

So what I want to do is I'm going to embrace what you guys know you guys used to product evaluations Yeah, so let's do security now.

Exactly, right and say your industry And you can't let it get overwhelmed overrun by Chinese because what happens is if there's a policy Right all of a sudden a hundred thousand people from China come in and they say they're John John Smith and and and Todd Peterson and right, but they're not and then you think the vote is this way and it's easily manipulated.

So we have to be very careful.

But my first instinct is to lean on and that's why I see it's important to have David Sachs as my partner, right?

Someone who knows it and someone who can live and breathe the industry, right?

And so what we're gonna have is we're gonna have security evaluation.

Let's say if the security evaluation model says that this is a good model, then people can download it.

But it's got to go through the industry and I wanted to feel and smell like what we're good at.

I don't want to create like oh this is what government's doing, I don't want what government to do.

I want us to do it but I've got to figure out the right way to do that and that's important for America.

Articulate the standards, articulate sort of the concept and then let a lot of these private market actors kind of help fill in the gaps and compete.

The only thing I think I really need to do and that's with regulatory is Post quantum cryptography.

Yeah, okay. I think that is vital to us.

That's right. Yeah, right.

Yeah that you know Asymmetric I would bet this happens during this administration.

He bets I know I'm gonna put it out because you know We all have passwords right for those who are watching who don't know this our passwords called asymmetric right yours is different than mine that's the key and cryptography is just the computing so asymmetric key cryptography you have your password I have mine and they're the key that's right right obviously the central hub has our key the okay a a quantum computer we know can break all of them in the nanosecond like all of them in the whole world including the CIA all of them RSA 2048 oh the can get broken in a nanosecond buy a quantum computer.

So the defense of it is called post quantum cryptography.

Right. We know how to do it.

And we'll come out with a rule that says America has got to protect itself.

New standards. And by the way, there are because every once in a while you need to have a new standard. There are says it's coming.

We know what it is.

Please God, go put it in.

Because we need to have it in.

We need America to live a great segue.

Let's let's sort of segue now to a couple of things that we can enjoin together in this concept.

crypto, obviously, Bitcoin, you guys announced the strategic Bitcoin reserve.

But broadly speaking, you also announced sort of this idea of the sovereign wealth fund.

Can we talk about that?

Sort of, what is the vision behind that?

How do you want that to be executed?

How do you think it should be run?

What assets are on the table?

What assets and strategies should never be on the table?

How are you thinking about it?

The greatest customer in the world, the United States government, the most powerful, the greatest customer by stuff.

We walk in we're going to buy as the example I like to use we're going to buy 2 billion covid vaccines.

When we buy Pfizer and Moderna stocks are going to triple.

Triple and we say everyone's going to have this.

If I after Jared Kushner negotiated the best deal he could.

Howard let me walk in the room Howard let me would say, what do you think, 20 % warrants?

Right, 20 % warrants?

Right. Right. What?

So we make $50 billion off of who, nobody.

Didn't take from anybody, but it's okay.

The shareholders of Pfizer, who we've just tripled them with our order.

Now, how many of my customers in my life have required that from me?

All of them? All of them.

This isn't like, oh Howard, this is the greatest new idea ever.

Yeah. This is just. Business.

Proper. So, I don't view risk of the sovereign wealth fund.

I view the first couple of years of the sovereign wealth fund or Scott Besant and I making money Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

Say, well, but you can't invest and lose – don't you lose money?

No. Why? Well, if I have a big daddy of the United States of America behind me – right?

and I'll give you I'll give you an example we buy missiles episodically launch a missile by a missile launch a missile buy some missiles right the people who sell us missiles have bad quarterly earnings or good quarterly earnings but they're episodic yeah here we go I will sign a contract with you 10 -year contract canceled at the end of five years to buy X amount of I'll pay you quarterly.

Then they can take that contract.

They can go finance it.

Their financing costs go, the earnings are steady and their multiple improves.

And their stock goes up.

And I say in exchange for that reasonable thought.

How about a little warrants?

Right. Just for people that don't understand.

Give me some stock.

Give me a little bit of your stock.

But don't give me some stock.

Just give me the upside.

If I help your stock go up.

Just a little bit. I get to share it.

You know, I have to do that money.

I'd wipe my beak a little bit, yeah.

And then I take the money for the United States of America, and I put it into the Social Security system of the United States of America.

Okay, so why have? And then all of a sudden, right?

So the Social Security system says it's four trillion in the hole.

Yeah. Okay, if we cut the waste for and abuse out, it becomes 1 .5 trillion, and by the way, Frank Bizignano, the greatest executive, the greatest payments executive ever to join the US government Is about to get confirmed and take over the social security system, okay Frank ran 5 serve 120 billion dollar Public payments company and when Donald Trump asked him in his interview, can you handle social security?

It's 1 .3 trillion a year He goes well, say I I handle 500 billion a day.

So Wednesday Right, and he goes my whole life.

I whole life all I worry about is getting rid of waste foreign abuse That's all I care about every single day 5 dollars 2 dollars 1 dollar he goes this is going to be the most fun I've ever had yeah I mean this yeah like this is a Donald Trump administration this is something that's another planet now of course I recruit frank and you know I get to have my peace in the game yeah but if we get rid of a couple hundred billion then it's only a trillion four in the whole we make a trillion four yeah and babies that baby is finished so is forever is the sovereign wealth fund a balance sheet for Social

Security. Does Social Security become more than what it is today?

Does it over time offer bigger, greater benefits?

And is it basically a pool that holds equities historically?

We talked about this on our show.

It's only ever held treasury, but it's really kind of a fake treasury.

It's got 2 .7 trillion today.

But if we bought the S &P in 1971 when we went off the gold standard with the cash flows that have come in and gone out of Social Security, we'd have a 15 -trillion -dollar interest in the S &P today.

But you'd have that that would have had you have Donald Trump be the president the whole time which is not a thing Right.

Okay, but is that the objective is that the sovereign wealth fund is basically for the benefit of retirees in this country And it becomes like a sovereign wealth fund that we have a 36 trillion dollar budget deficit That I'm in debt that yeah to the United States America and we we have a budget deficit of 2 trillion So Donald Trump wants to knock down the 2 trillion Yeah, and then he's focused about in the 36 trillion which the Social Security is part of it.

Yeah So, how he allocates it, he was elected President of the United States, I was not.

Okay? I like the social security idea because it's really easy to explain to people and sell to people, and so they understand it.

But the fact is that it's the same money if I put it in social security or I put it on the debt of the United States of America and I'm going to let Donald Trump make that decision.

You know why? Because it's all, he's like, yeah, and none of it's not mine.

So he will decide that, okay?

And he will play it his way.

But Scott Besant and I will make more than a trillion dollars for the United States of America during our term, which is pretty darn cool, right?

And we'll use that, and if that reduces our debt, right?

But that's not the policy of how we're gonna balance the budget, we're gonna balance the budget.

Trump card. Tariffs.

Get rid of scams, I'll give you a scam example.

Every boat you've ever seen.

Like every single cruise ship, super Tucker, container ship, you've never seen an American flag ever.

In fact, you ever think about the flag you've actually seen all of you would say, I have no idea what that flag is.

Why is it some flag I've never heard of?

Liberia is number one.

You go, what? No one even knows where Liberia is because the answer is it's a flag of convenience.

They sell the flag for like 10 grand.

Like they're literally here.

You get up a flag. And you pay no tax.

So what happens is, a cruise ship in the United States of America picks up American passengers, goes in the Caribbean, comes back to America and treats the port as an expense.

And all the profits are made in the Caribbean where it pays no tax.

That's what I call a tax scam.

I mean, it's unfair to America.

We're gonna fix that in America.

We're gonna try to fix a whole bunch of these tax scams. Ireland is my favorite the country of Ireland last year had a 60 billion dollar budget surplus so we lose 2 trillion and they make 60 it's a Ireland what do they do oh they have all of our IP for our greater the tech companies all our great tech companies and great pharma companies yeah they all put it there because it's low tax yeah and they don't pay us they pay them so That's got to end, so when those things end, tariffs, Trump card, getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax, that's my trillion, Elon's got to do his trillion, so whenever

I see him getting off the rails, he and I go out and we have a strong conversation together that you've got to do your trillion.

So you got to focus not on small potatoes, big, big, big, big, big, I need you to do your side of the trillion.

Now as it turns out, I'm going to do more than a trillion, because of me.

Elon's probably going to do more than a trillion because he's him.

And then what we're going to do is going to, our objective is to smash down the Internal Revenue Service and change America.

And then imagine America.

This is just an imagination moment, okay?

We have a balanced budget in the United States.

We're starting to knock down the deficit of America.

We can cut tax, and we have a gold card, a Trump card that you can come to America.

Which entrepreneur have you ever met who wouldn't buy one and wouldn't start building business when they think the tax rate here is going to come down and eventually it's going to come down to 20 % and eventually it's going to come down to 15%.

You won't be able to find a plot of land in America.

You know what I predict will happen.

I predict, just like in the medallion industry for taxi caps, there will be a financing industry that will build up around these gold cards or these trump cards, that great entrepreneurs great executives will be able to finance their purchase along with someone getting venture capital interests or equity interest in their business.

But I'm going to, we're going to take that money, we're going to.

So, we'll sell them every year, right?

So they'll knock down our budget deficit and then eventually right, if Donald Trump is right and ultimately we can sell 7 million cards you realize there is no debt in America.

No debt in America is a trillion dollars a year in debt coverage.

Trillion dollars a year in debt coverage.

You know what that changes?

It changes the internal revenue service.

You start to rethink and I just want to remind you right we are the richest country on earth our balance sheet is 500 trillion.

I'll give you an example what's the court system of America worth?

Right? What's it worth?

Well, how can NVIDIA be worth three trillion without a court system that protects it?

It's no such thing.

So just our, everything about us is so awesome.

And you know what happens, we actually like, we get beaten upon and we actually believe it.

You could ask Doug Burgum about how undervalued a lot of our real estate is in this country and the potential for it.

We think about Biden, closed 635 million acres.

This is this is electing Joe Biden, head of Saudi Arabia and he closes the oil wells.

And all of a sudden Saudi Arabia falls off the face of the earth broke.

What are we doing? We care about Americans.

Let's make Americans lives great.

We want clean water.

We want clean air. We do it better than everybody else.

But if we don't, Here's one like the hypocrisy, right?

We won't mind lithium in America to make a battery Yeah, but so we so the Australians mind it with coal and it's messy because they do it like, you know They do it messy by the way, we breathe the air in 3 .4 days, but who's counting right?

Then we take it We put on a truck we take put the truck and put it in the super tanker We drive the super tank and that pollutes the living heck out of the world across 12 ,000 miles of ocean puts it in a truck and gives it to Eli to make an electric car Why don't we?

Mine the lithium in Nevada, right and by the way, we'd mine it cleaner Right, and by the way, it's not just lithium almost anything that we could possibly conceive of needing over the next couple of decades Exists in the continental United States.

We just have had no Incentive or no structure regulatory wise that enables the development of it, which yes, this is we need to care for us Make America, you know America first how about there's another way to say I'm maintaining cleaning our men Yeah, first while maintaining environmental standards, you know, yeah, look we're never going to do something That's not like a hundred times cleaner than everybody else because we care about clean water and clean air There's none of us who don't care about clean water and clean air but you know like someone gives you a pill and Says this will save you

and then you look at the statistic and it saves one in a million people and you'd say, why am I taking this pill?

You'd say, well, it could save your life.

You'd say, yeah, but it's like one in a million, right?

That's not logical, right?

That's the point. There's a regulation that's the right thing.

And there's a regulation that's the one in a million pill.

Like, why do we give a baby, a baby, a hepatitis B vaccine?

Do you realize we have a brand new baby And we hold it up and we give it a hepatitis B vaccine You realize the only way you get hepatitis B was is from unprotected Sex or a needle like why are we giving them to a baby?

like why and you know what it is, you know what the answer is corruption that someone in the government got paid to put that in the rules and because there's no justification.

There's no, I haven't met a medical doctor who says, hepatitis B vaccines on brand new babies make sense.

Because by the way, you know what the worst part is?

They only last 10 years.

They need a booster in 10 years.

So the baby is gonna be 10.

We've gotta really be fair to ourselves and be fair to Americans.

And I think we can be.

That's why I'm so excited.

That's why our cabinet is so excited.

And that's why it's so much fun to work for Donald Trump because I am just speaking from his playbook, right?

Because if you had met me before, he said, will you help me?

And he went out to dinner with me and said, so tell me about government.

I'd say, uh, government, I mean, I'd pay them taxes.

Like that's it. Are you having the time of your life?

Most fun ever because I have every idea.

Either gets blown up or shot down.

Okay? Meaning, I come up with lots of ideas and he says, nah, too complex. And you know what?

That's fine. Yeah. But when I come up with the external revenue service and he says, great idea and then he speaks of it as an inaugural address, right?

It's his idea because I can't do anything with it.

Howard, last question as we wrap.

Tell us about your family?

Your kids? How do they think about all of this?

Your son's running canter now?

How's that going? Just give us the lay of the land.

How how's the Latin Nick family?

All right, so I have the best wife.

I've been married 30 years She lets me be me and she's gorgeous spectacular.

I love my girl She agreed.

I mean imagine this I'm not I'm not joining the government.

I'm not joining the government I'm doing this doge thing with Elan.

I'm not joining. I'm not joining honey.

We gotta move Like, like, honey, we got to move two weeks after election day I'm like, we're moving.

And we're gonna, in five weeks, we're gonna live in Washington, okay.

And like, so the fact that that wasn't unsettling would be the understatement of a lifetime.

But she's been the most supportive and fantastic.

I have four kids. My oldest son about to turn 29, I was taking him to kindergarten.

So that's why I'm alive.

My second son, Brian.

And I dropped him off in nursery school and then took my oldest son to kindergarten.

So the two oldest boys are running canton now until I dev asked.

Is it going well? I don't know.

You have no idea. But I'm not allowed!

I'm literally not allowed. And you know, we all know the phones.

So since phone is always with me, and I assume the phone is listening.

Ever since we couldn't think of battery out of our phone, you know the phone is listening.

So, you know I'm not no so I never talked to my son So I'm sure they're happy, but I don't know how it's go guys if you're listening.

He's doing great But and then my my daughter is gonna go to med school Yeah And she's on a gap year now and my youngest son also on a gap year now and he's going to Start Duke in the fall, right?

So I have the best kids That my kids have lived with me and they lived with this kind of energy and this positive of sort of momentum and my wife being just a spectacular mom.

Just keeping them, what we taught our kids, which is a fun one, is I taught him two things.

I would sit down with my kids and say, how great is your life?

And this is only maybe something that people like we can say.

But I'm talking to my kids, I say, how great is your life?

They go great, because they came home and they say, I got a bad grade, teacher doesn't like me.

It's a classic line, right?

And I said, well, how could your life?

They're really good.

I go, could it be any better?

No. Well, do you realize your teacher has given up her whole life?

No. And she makes how much money?

Yeah. And she's given her whole life to teach you?

Yeah. So, can I ask you a question?

Is it her job to like you?

Or is it your job for her to like you?

Who's failing in what you just said?

Right? It's your job to have her like you.

So when she says raise your hand, raise your hand!

And the other thing is do me a favor.

Color inside the lines, okay?

In high school, if she says this guy is orange, the answer to the test is orange.

When you get to college, you can argue with a professor all you want.

High school, color inside the lines.

Give the teacher what she wants.

Make sure she loves you, and you're getting a good grade.

That's the rules of life.

And my wife beat that into my children so that they would have it in their souls and their moral character yeah of someone who's fighting for you Needs to have your love and respect back You take them for granted if you treat them badly if you treat them like oh aren't I so great Then you deserve what you get and my wife has taught that moral fiber into my children and it it resides in them and The other thing my kids have is they have empathy which is a very unusual thing for young people and it's because they're they were raised with their father crying every day I cried every day until October

21st 2004 Every day because I thought of Someone I hadn't thought of you know or someone would say 650 people died And I just, there was, you can't process all of that debt without crying.

And the only reason I remember is because as I fell asleep, I told my wife that I didn't cry today and she wrote it down.

There's no reason I remember.

So my kids are fantastic.

They've been incredibly supportive and my wife's the best. And she lives with me in Washington.

We bought Bret Baier's house.

So I have a nice house, big enough for my ego to expand.

Very important. I've been in the big house.

Jamal hasn't found one that big yet.

He's still looking.

You're an incredible American.

Thank you very much for everything.

This was really fun in coming to talk.

Honestly, this has been one of my favorite conversations we've had.

He's like this all the time.

We'll have dinner at Nikasha's house, who's a good friend of ours who runs Palo Alto Networks.

And Howard's like, you just push the button.

And you can just sit and just listen.

And you can listen to him for hours.

By the way, I will say I'll possible.

But Aleko, the point you made earlier, I think every member of this cabinet is an incredible storyteller.

I mean, you're like on another level.

But the storytelling I think - That's incredible.

Is what's so powerful about this cabinet and this administration.

And I think it's gonna take some time to get the message out.

But man, are there incredible ambassadors to do so?

They are so capable.

Yeah. Each of them is so capable, so thoughtful.

I mean, I am honored to be on this cabinet with them.

But we all get to work for Donald Trump, who can intuitively tell you, go fix eggs.

Yeah. And then Brook goes fix eggs, and eggs are down like 40 % and Brook fixes eggs.

I mean, how awesome is that, right?

And gas is down 40 cents, right?

And he's only just begun.

If we get the constitution pipeline in New York passed, and I sat with him while Donald Trump lectured Governor Hochul on the unbelievable oil and fracking that they have in New York and the wealth that New York could have if they unleashed it.

But they refused to unleash it.

So he's gonna force the Constitution Pipeline, which by the way will drop gas on the east coast of the United States of America in half.

Mm -hmm. I mean this is and that's, you know, then you got that's Chris Wright, that's Doug Burgum, you got Brooke Rollins, I mean you could just go, you know, Scott Pesent, you know, so thoughtful and elegant.

I mean, he just step by step by step.

And you have, really, the most fun cabinet working for the most intuitive, smartest guy to ever sit behind the Resolute Desk.

And we're gonna make America great, again, not as a slogan, but we're gonna balance the budget.

We're gonna change America.

Thank you Howard. Thanks Howard. Ah!

I'm going all in

[Howard Lutnick on Trump's Economic Vision, DOGE, and the Future of Government Efficiency]-[Howard Lutnick | All-In in DC!]

📋 Summary

Reimagining Government: Howard Lutnick on Strategy, Efficiency, and the Trump Administration

The Philosophy of 'DOGE' and Budgetary Reform

Rethinking GDP and Economic Productivity

Tariffs as a Tool for Reindustrialization

A New Era of Leadership and Diplomacy

Conclusion

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript