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Thank you, my friend. Merry Christmas. Back at you. Before we go, the numbers that the President goes to celebrate with are really one to celebrate. You look at the GDP growing at 4.3%.
They picked up from 3.8% the previous quarter, easily built the forecast of 3.2%. And then you have corporate earnings that are extremely high and other indications that the economy is doing quite well. What are your thoughts?
Well, first of all, let's be clear. Really good numbers. They were really good numbers for two reasons. One is spending by the upper 10 to 20 percent of the population, and then some decisions that had been made with regard to international trade. To make this sustainable, we've got to broaden this prosperity, and that means that as the effects of the look, we can't depend on the top 10 and 20 percent continuing to power the economy at this rate.
But the broad-based tax cuts that were in the big, beautiful bill, in essence, the renewal of the 2017 tax cuts, are going to help people as we go into the new year. And while we can't sustain 4.5 percent GDP growth, we can have it in the 3 percent range, and that's very strong and very good. And it's going to be possible because the broader impact of the tax cuts.
So I want you to hear Howard Luttnick yesterday. Says, compare this to the rest of the world, cut six. The whole world out there in the third quarter, the United Kingdom grew 0.1. The European Union grew 0.4. And Japan fell 0.6%.
Fell 0.6%. Donald Trump's economy grew. The United States of America, the biggest economy in the world, 4.3%. What that means is that Americans overall, all of us, are going to earn 4.3% more money.
So, I mean, he's a cheerleader. I got it. And there's nothing wrong with that as Commerce Secretary. But I think the best thing to do now, USMCA, go recut the deal. We had to study the last one.
NAFTA got updated.
So now that evaporated.
So if you want to give these businesses more predictability, go redo that deal, right?
Well, or just affirm it, we actually have a pretty good deal in place. And just walk it in. You know, it's really important for us to have stability in our trading partners, our relationship with our big trading partners. And look, Put it in context. We produce 25% of the world's economy, of all the economy in the world.
25% is here. We're 5% of the world's population. We hold half of the world's wealth.
Now, having said that, let's not do the mistake that Joe Biden made. Remember when Joe Biden kept going around saying Bidenomics is working and people didn't feel it? We've got to temper the administration's rhetoric. It's got to be weird. We have a big hole to dig our way out of, left to us by the previous administration.
We have a lot of work to do. Things are starting to get better, but the best is yet to come if we stick at what we're doing, which is controlling the spending, cutting the taxes in a pro-growth way, encouraging the growth of our economy, particularly when it comes to trade. And, you know, but under-promise and over-delivered. That ought to be the. We can't win this debate today.
We can't say, oh, everything's great, and don't you feel? Because that's not where people are. But if it keeps going in this direction, they're going to feel increasingly positive about the economy.
So have confidence. We have 11 months before the midterms. Under promise and over-deliver.
So the one thing I heard that Senator Kennedy keeps saying is that they're just you would do another reconciliation bill focused on housing. He said, get it together. He goes, you'll get enough momentum behind it. Is that something you would put you would back? You know, look, you do reconciliation when you have something that you know that everybody agrees on so you can pass it with 51 bills and it fits within the reconciliation rules.
We aren't there yet. Please describe to me what it is in the reconciliation bill that's going to solve our housing problem. I mean, look, we couldn't even pass a permitting bill that, in essence, removes unnecessary government rules and regulation and constraint upon big manufacturing and energy development and minerals development projects. We couldn't get that passed.
So I hear Senator Kennedy. I understand where he's coming from. But please, what is it that the federal government can do to help encourage housing? For example, give me two examples, one good and one bad. The bad one is we have a tariff on Canadian lumber.
Now softwood lumber, which is used in American home construction. And we did it on the basis of national security concerns.
Now, how that fits, I don't know. Last time we built a warship out of wood was like in the 1860s.
So if we took that tariff off, it would reduce the cost of lumber that would go into the housing, thereby reducing housing and making it more accessible. The good thing is a lot of communities are starting to look at their rules and regulations regarding development and saying, why are we making it more difficult for people to build housing and more expensive for them to build housing? And we, you know, even sort of liberal enclaves, here, I live in Austin, Texas. You talk about, it's Moscow on the little Colorado River. But even here in a liberal town, they're thinking, why do we have all these rules and regulations and these delays in allowing people to build housing that local residents can afford?
And I think that's a healthy movement, and it's happening all across the country.
So to your point, consumer confidence actually. Went down this month.
So it was at 91 percent. It went down to 89.2 percent. It doesn't help when 60 of 61 economists at Bloomberg predict that the economy is going to suffer in 2025, and they were wrong. It doesn't help when Goldman Sachs twice said that we're heading towards a recession. That doesn't help, does it?
Yeah. No, it doesn't. It does not. And look. We've got to place this in perspective.
Yes, these were great numbers, and yes, those economists were wrong. I mean, you know, economists are sort of like lawyers. On the one hand, this and on the other hand, that. But we have the makings of a strong economy. We just need to stay at it.
We had some unusual circumstances that made the 4.3% better than expected and strong. Let's not kid ourselves that we're not going to be able to necessarily repeat that again. But we can have above-trend growth if we stay focused on pro-growth policies. The administration, for example, is doing a terrific job behind the scenes of getting rid of the regulatory burden imposed upon us by the Biden administration. Think about this.
The Biden administration, and I'm going to be off on the number, it may be like a trillion eight in additional burden on the economy in four years. That is twice as much as was done by Obama in eight years. And this administration, which in its first President Trump and its first First term undid a lot of the unnecessary red tape and regulatory excesses. His people are quietly going about that work again, and that's going to help next year. Understood.
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Over 500,000 new listings every month based on average new for sale and rental listings, February 2024 through January 2025. I want to go over to Venezuela and what our objective is. We have now put, they say a CV22 Osprey tilt rotor aircraft, which are used by Special Operation Forces, have flown into the region. Uh from Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. I was talking to a special operator already.
He says, No, there's special ops that are now on these ships ready to go. Here's what Marco Rubio said yesterday, cut 15. The current status quo with the Venezuelan regime is intolerable for the United States. The status quo, that they operate and cooperate with terrorist organizations against the national interest of the United States, not just cooperate, but partner with and participate in activities that threaten the national interest of the United States.
So yes, our goal is to change that dynamic.
So it's intolerable the status quo.
So you've seen these standoffs before. You're also not naive to the downside, should something happen. Your thoughts? But go on.
Well, I think the administration is pushing this policy appropriately. I think Secretary Rubio is exactly right. This is a threat to the United States' security interests. We have a regime that openly participates with our enemies, and not only that, but is illegitimate. When the international community, almost to every nation, says the last several elections have been illegitimate, you know something's wrong with the people who are in power there.
And it is in our national interest to have this vital part, this vital part of our hemisphere, to be governed by a government that is democratic. and legitimate. Representative of its people and a friend and ally of the United States. They have the largest reserves of oil in the world. Why would we not want that to be in the hands of friends of the United States rather than adversaries of the United States?
And I think the administration is playing this well. I bet you that in the coming year, Maduro is out of power and democracy and freedom returns to Venezuela. And when it does, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio are going to have been the architects of it. No, no question. But people get worried about Libya.
They see Libya. They see the regime change. It's still chaotic there. They worry about some other situations. Mike Pompeo, I asked him, what is our responsibility?
He's a former Secretary of State, Siegel. What is our responsibility? Should Maduro go? Cut 25. It'll be the Venezuelan people's responsibility, but there's many things we can do to support them.
Most importantly, we can help rebuild what's been a disastrous set of policies about their economy that's destroyed their capacity to thrive, which is their oil sector.
So American companies can come in and sell their products. Schlumberger, Halliburton, Chevron, all our big energy companies can go down to Venezuela, build out an economic capitalist model, which will restore Venezuela to what it was. Brian, you and I remember it was a great economy for so long, and this knucklehead has destroyed it.
So and the thing is, I guess he he feels as though if he lasts this long, I think something's got to let him know that you could either go to Belarus, Turkey, Moscow, or you could end up in jail the rest of your life.
Somehow that's got to be given him he's got to be given that choice. Yeah, well, first of all, three things. Venezuela was once the democracy, the democratic and prosperous example of what the Western Hemisphere could be, of what South America could be. And they were once prosperous. They're the most prosperous nation in South America.
And what happened was along came two despots, Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and they ruined the economy, destroyed the freedoms, and centralized it, centralized the authority in the government. The third thing is. Remember how he stays in power. He ships cheap oil to Cuba, and in return, the Cuban secret intelligence services provide him the bodyguards and security apparatus to keep him in power and the military guidance to keep his military under his thumb and again to keep him in power.
So, by breaking the flow of cheap oil from Venezuela to Cuba, we're pressuring not only the Cubans, but we're also pressuring the Venezuelans because they can no longer afford to pay the Cubans.
So, again, it's going to take time to roll out. There are going to be lots of opportunities to go sideways. And I think Secretary Pompeo is absolutely right. It's going to take American involvement to help them through that difficult period. But the Venezuelans turned out in the last several elections and overwhelmingly voted to throw Maduro out of power, and he had to dummy up the election returns in order to claim that he could stay in power.
So gross. that even the international community rejected his claim to power. No question. Lastly, J.D. Vance got the endorsement of Turning Point USA's Erica Kirk and probably.
That whole, you know, all the people that attended 30,000 plus and maybe people watching around the country. Is it his nomination to lose? Yeah. Well, look, there it was. It was a great get for him, particularly since the turning point announced that it was going to organize all 99 counties in Iowa for him.
And J.D. Vance is smart enough to know there are several geological ages that are going to come and go before the 2028 contest frames up. The Mesozoic, the Paleozoic, the Jurassic. And he's smart enough to know, don't take it for granted. Yes, vice presidents of sitting presidents tend to have, if they want the nomination, they get it.
It was 1960, Richard Nixon wanted the Republican nomination. He got it. 1968, Hubert Humphrey wanted the Democratic nomination. LBJ was leaving office. He got it.
1988, George H.W. Bush wanted Ronald Reagan's slot, and he got the Republican nomination. 2000, Al Gore. You see a pattern developing here? Having said that, only twice in American history has the sitting vice president succeeded.
The president in whose administration he served: Martin Van Buren in 1836 and George H.W. Bush in 1988. And Vance is smart enough to know that there's a lot between now and 2028 that could make that nomination both his or not his and worth having or not having. He's focused on trying to make it worth having. And how Trump finishes could really help J.D.
Vance if he finishes strong, right? And he is a player in the administration. Carl Rove, always great, insightful. We love having you on. Thanks so much, Carl.
Have a great Christmas. You too, buddy. Merry Christmas to you and yours. You got it. This is Ainsley Earhart.
Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told. Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
