Speaker 1: By Trump coming in with the ferocity that he has,
it's going to make all those arguments, it's going to
put him front and center on the public public stage
in America. Is going to get to you know, throw
their support behind it, and hopefully the courts do the
same thing. And you know, we can accomplish a lot,
but you know, we're we're in the early innings and
this game, this game is going to be going on
for a while. But I do know that Trump is
really thinking in terms of a deadline. He thinks he's
not thinking like day fifteen. He's more thinking like what
is it, you know, two years minus fifteen days, and
we've only got so many more days.
Speaker 2: To accomplish accomplished.
Speaker 1: So he's he's acting with a sense of urgency that
we've never seen before.
Speaker 3: You were listening to Carrie Let's's Financial Survival Network, where
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Speaker 4: And welcome. You aren't listening to the Financial Survival Network.
I'm your host, Carrie Lutz, And man, what a January.
It has been two weeks of January eleven days and
now we're barely we're not even three weeks into the
second term, non consecutive term of President Trump. And well,
Bill Walton is with us, host of the Bill Walton Show. Bill,
you are a vice chairman of CPAC, long term CEO
of the New York Stock Exchange traded investment company. So
you kind of know business and you know politics, and
if you're like me, you probably prefer business, but politics
become unavoidable. This has been the most incredible opening salvo
of an administration that I had ever seen. You agree
with that?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and uh and and and uh and.
Speaker 1: I like most of it. Fantastic. You know, I worked.
I worked on his transition in twenty sixteen. I headed
up all the financial agencies, writing action plans and landing.
You know, had headed up landing teams and this is
night and day and this is just you know, before
they he wasn't really prepared.
Speaker 2: Now he's totally prepared. I feel prepared.
Speaker 1: I feel like he's been like Eisenhower planning D Day
and he's uh he's hit the beaches and he's but
he's not just did a couple of beaches. He's hit
ninety five of ninety five different things in a little
over two weeks.
Speaker 2: It's great.
Speaker 4: And it's called the opposition flat footed, hasn't he Yeah,
shock and awe, shock and all. They're back there. They're
back on their heels, that's for sure. And yeah, I
live in the Washington, DC area, and it's yeah, so in.
Speaker 1: Ninety five percent of the Kamala vote, and you know,
it's a great pleasure to watch them suffer.
Speaker 4: Friends. Yeah, yeah, So you know, I'm going to talk
about what do you think the three most significant things
that he's done actions he's taken in the first I
mean we're at three weeks, right.
Speaker 2: Not even two and a half weeks, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Two and a half weeks. Pretty it's a remarkable start.
I mean, I've followed politics and I've heard a lot
of people say they're going to come to Washington and
change the culture, and invariably the culture changes them, perhaps
going back to Reagan, you know, I mean I was
barely alive when Kennedy came with his eggs as they
called them, you know, the best of academia, and they
screwed things up even worse. And then you know LBJ
all that awful. But Reagan was really going to be
a disruptor and everything else. And to some extent he
slowed down the pace of spending, but he was never
able any cut taxes, of course, but he was never
able to effectuate the change. This is something we've never
seen anything like before, have we never.
Speaker 1: Not in the history of the government employees union, that's
for sure. And yeah, when was a civil service forum
in eighteen seventy eighteen eighty after I guess Grant's administration.
You know, they used political appointees to pay people off,
and they thought, gee, we'll create a permanent group of
bureaucrats and they'll be much better than political appointees.
Speaker 2: Well they were wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, well they're the most entrenched. But the so
we're looking at, you know, these executive orders, which I
guess presidents have always had this power to issue them,
but these are so directed and so focused and disruptive, right,
I mean, it's just well, yeah, and.
Speaker 2: You know, here's here's here's where we are.
Speaker 1: Though he's he's been rapid fire executive orders, and I like,
there might be one I don't like, but I haven't
seen it, and issuing executive orders to you know, end
DEI and climate change mandates, the Holy government approach to
that under Biden. And so he just put the stroke
of a pen says every department of the federal government
is going to purge itself of its DEI emphasis. And
also the their programs have also been supporting the climate
change agenda. So and then you know we're all watching
with with just discussed really what what U. S a
i d has been up to, and you know, with
the stroke of a pen, he's shut down U.
Speaker 2: S a i D.
Speaker 1: Now, this is an example I think of where we're
going to end up six months from now. Is a
lot of this that he's doing. It's unclear whether he's
got the authority to do it. Some of it's got
to be Congress. And so this is this is gonna
you know, the armies of lawyers are just beginning, just
beginning their work. So this is once I think, you know,
I feel like we can take the beaches, but once
we start moving inland, I think we're going to meet
with a lot more resistance. It doesn't mean we can't
get things done, but it's it's going to look ugly
as as the infighting gets going.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, the US AID, which is there's no AID
in it really, it's the agency for where International Development
has always been a cutout for the CIA, a front
for them exercising American soft power. Yeah, there's like, yes,
they do feed people rice and beans around the world
health things, but you know, projection of soft power. But man,
the corruption there is just so deep. They're even financing
the lawfare prosecutors to go after Trump. They financed Trump's impeachment,
and then they're funding all the illegal immigrants coming into
the country a tune of like over half a billion.
I mean, this is insane here.
Speaker 1: Well, the other thing that's come out just recently is
that they just today they funded ten million dollars of
meals to al Qaeda link terrorist.
Speaker 4: I was nice to them where they hallal compliant.
Speaker 1: Probably, And you know it's interesting you call it a
uh CIA cutout, and that's that's certainly true. But the
thing to think about now is CIA has changed dramatically
in the last last decade two decades, and it's the
CIA has has become a bit of woke as many universities.
And uh, my friend Mike Waller wrote a book called
Big Intel. He has been along followed the CIA and
and they've been provoting these diversity programs and all the
various things that that Trump is reversing. And so the
CIA is actually exporting those diversity programs to uh, to
the U.
Speaker 2: S a i.
Speaker 1: D recipients. So it's, uh, it's not the it's not
your grandfather's CIA. It's a totally different different agenda.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and uh wow, it's just just to all of
the things that we're doing. And I assume we're going
to see this in many other departments. These slush funds.
I know for a fact that after the mortgage meltdown
in eight nine, the government sued all these banks and
they all set aside money for all these different purposes,
and basically they became slush funds. I'm sure they're still
floating around there right absolutely.
Speaker 1: Well, you know there's a there's a flush slush fund
sitting out and right out in the open. There's a
four hundred billion dollar fund at the Department of Energy
that in a long time ago was was the unit
that funded sulurin So Lindra, you remember that.
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 1: Now it's been run by John Podesta and it's been
doling money out to win mill of projects and solar
and so on and so forth, and uh, you know,
the amount of graft and corruption I think we'll see
once the Doge starts auditing that fun we'll make the
numbers at usai D look like chump change.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So Musk says he thinks he can save four
billion dollars a day, which would be the equivalent right
of about a trillion and a half dollars. Could it
possibly be that much waste?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1: But the waste is a funny thing because it's not
just spending extra money. Remember the Pentagon with their spending
you know, nine hundred dollars for a toilet seed or
something like that. There's that kind of waste, but there's
also just the you know, I would call it total
misallocated resources, hiring consultants that you don't need, you know,
grossing it up. And it's uh, you know, once you
start looking at what the purpose of any of these
agencies is, I think we're going to find that their
mission creep has been extensive and a lot of money
is getting spent on things that aren't even closely related
to what that agency is supposed to be doing, which
we're seeing in the case of aid I mean, AIDS
sent six point three million dollars to study men having
sex with other men in South Africa.
Speaker 4: Well that was necessary, you know. Well remember the toilet
seats at the Pentagon. Well now they're spending twelve hundred
dollars on these insulated cups for airplanes because they can't
leak or anything, and you could buy them on the
Amazon for like thirty bucks. You know, the waste is
just monumental. But yeah, it's crazy. And then they're paying
opposition liberal press, right, thirty two million bucks to Politico.
That's from all aspects of government. And then the people
who are writing the checks at the Treasury are told
never to reject the payment, to make every single payment
no matter what, whether it's fraud related, terror related, or whatever.
Is that any way to run an airline here.
Speaker 1: Bill, Well, of course not, it's And you know what
they're doing is they they came into the dark room
of the federal government and threw a bright spotlight and
do it. And all the cockroaches are running, running like
mad scattering, and so, as you point out, it's not
just USA D but all the other agencies have similar
kinds of misallocation of resources. And the thing I'm telling
you what the Match Labs chairman of Seapack and we
were talking this morning. The legality of what Trump's doing,
whether it needs to be Congress, is authorized by Congress,
is unclear in many cases. But what is clear is
it by the work that Elon Musk is doing. He's
exposing egregious behavior in public opinion, which has been behind Trump.
You know, his approval ratings that are all time high.
I think his public opinion ratings and the support that
American is going to have to put an end and
to dismantle this stuff is going to be unprecedented. I mean,
everybody kind of had a gas about this was bad.
We heard this do other but now you lay it
all out, and you know, I only showed you.
Speaker 2: I only mentioned one example.
Speaker 1: They're like thirty or forty examples usad of stuff that
you know makes you sick.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and we look, we knew the money was being wasted,
we just didn't know the specifics. We sensed it was bad,
at least this bad because from twenty nineteen, and we
weren't exactly spending money responsibly then to now the budget's
got up a trillion and a half dollars and it's
not like we're getting anything more for our money here.
So this is just But we talked last time, you
and I were among the few talking about it President's
impoundment authority. So do you think the Supreme Court will
say to the president, you got to spend this money
that Congress allocated, even if you're literally digging a hole,
putting the money in there and lighting it a blaze.
If the Congress says you have to do it, you
have to do it. Can the Supreme Court really rule
that way? Or is there a middle ground?
Speaker 2: Well, isn't that the thing that they nailed Nixon on? Yeah?
But that and go ahead.
Speaker 4: I was just going to say that was during Watergate,
really didn't put any attention to it. It went to
the Supreme Court. That was the war in court and
things have changed.
Speaker 1: Well, see that's my point, my earlier point about public opinion.
I mean, Nixon, when he tried to make that exert
that power, was one of the most unpopular presidents in
American history, and consequently ruling against him was a slam dunk.
I think with Trump with public opinion, when is it back,
I would I would suspect the courts are you know,
they pay a lot more attention to public opinion and
what people really feel like they want, then they will admit.
Speaker 2: And so the.
Speaker 1: More the public opinion climate and the legal climate, I
think it could be different. And if the president could
in fact invoke impowerment powers, that would be that would
be a massive improvement over what we have now.
Speaker 2: And I think I think there's a good chance that
that Trump was going to win that argument.
Speaker 4: I think so too. You got to it's got to
be a rule of reason here, right. You can't just
say that if somebody's driving the car at one hundred
and fifty miles an hour and heading to it's a
cliff that the state trooper can't pull them over. And
you know, it's the same thing here with the spending.
So there's going to be a middle ground. But you
can't have these discretionary spending programs at these agencies. It's
all got to be written down what they can spend
it on and what they can't. You know, that's part
of the problem here because discretionary spending turns into slush funds.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and I think Congress with that, you know,
Supreme Court ruled on Chevron, and what had happened was
Congress had really kicked all the decisions and power over
to the executive branches agencies, and the agencies were writing
the rules and regulations and government. Really Congress really wasn't involved. Well, now,
the ruling in its essence says, Congress, you've got to
you've got to specify what you want, which you don't.
And you could actually go to these agencies and say, well,
you're doing you're doing uh, you know, thirty five things
that were never authorized by law, So you've got to
stop doing it. So there's a there's a there's a
that's going to be a tool to choose, I think,
to implement a lot of the dogs recommendations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, we saw it like you know, E p
A a lot of these things. If we don't have
the right to to uphold these regular regulations or implement them,
then we certainly don't have the right to spend money
at the behest of these improper, improperly promulgated regulations. I
guess what the Supreme Court is saying, is uh, the
Congress got it, has got to do it's its job
under the Constitution. They can't delegate it to an agency
that will then run rough shot or or do its
own interpretation of it.
Speaker 1: Right, absolutely, absolutely, And by Trump coming in with the
ferocity that he has, it's going to make all those arguments,
it's going to put him front and center on the
public public stage in America. Is going to get to
you know, throw the support behind it, and hopefully the
courts do the same thing. And you know, we can
accomplish a lot, but you know, we're we're we're in
the early innings and this game, this game is going
to be going on for a while. But I do
know that Trump is really thinking in terms of a deadline.
He thinks he's not thinking like day fifteen. He's more
thinking like, what is it? You know, two years minus
fifteen days, and we've only got so many more days
to accomplish accomplished. So he's he's acting with a sense
of urgency that we've never seen before.
Speaker 4: And the psychological damage that he has inflicted upon his
opponents is immeasurable, you know, because they were not prepared
for this. They thought, Okay, so it's Trump point two.
We'll oppose him, we'll go through the game, we'll stop
him from doing what he wants to do, and that'll
be that. And nothing could be further from the truth.
To actually see, you know, an administration this prepared before
they walk in the door. He was doing this for
months and months, supposedly had his roundtable there and the
executive orders were stacked up and ready to go. And
you know, I think he'll let maybe let it settle
down a little bit and then the next phase will
come in. I mean, this is orchestrated. It's strategic, and
it's designed to do the most psychological damage to the Democrats,
and it's working.
Speaker 2: And that's you know, we're doing audio only, but I'm grinning.
Speaker 4: Ear to ear.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: He also he also has a way to you know,
people met an opposition to specific thing and then the
next day he comes out with something else that makes
their head spend. I mean, there's something else that came
out this week was Gaza in him basically standing up
like like the real estate developer that he is and saying, well,
you know, gazz Is Gays has got twenty five miles
of pristine beaches and some of the best clearest waters
in the Mediterranean.
Speaker 2: You know, this would make a great resort.
Speaker 1: And cutting through it, that's kind of And I don't
I don't think he's serious about that. But what he's
doing is he's changing. He's changing the debate and the
whole thing about two state, one state, the whole normle
thing we've been arguing over for fifty sixty seventy years.
This changes the terms of that and puts what he
puts h And I also don't see he didn't say
anything about bringing bringing American military to bear.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 1: We might show up with an army of real estate developers.
But that sets about it.
Speaker 4: Well the look and yeah, who's face and net and yah,
who's good poker player?
Speaker 2: Not not when he said.
Speaker 4: That, like his jaw dropped and his son. What is
he talking about now? But just to muddy up the
waters and to take over the news cycle onto the
next and the next. And I think the opposition's wholly
unprepared for what they're up against this time. And you
know they're it's going to take them while to regroup.
We're gonna have lawsuits everything else. But the fact is,
you know, a lot of things are going to change,
and certainly the open borders are no longer open.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so trumped arrangement syndrome though two point zero, it's
it's through the roof. And you know these people are like,
you can't even reason with him at all now, Bill, Well, they.
Speaker 1: If you look at who they elected is chairman and
vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee, they haven't learned
any lessons at all from the election, and they're still
coming out of that meeting talking about LBGTQ agenda, the
open border, you know, the climate agenda, the you know,
the EPA's attempt to sort of ban all all convenient
appliances because they use too much electricity, and the voters
don't want that.
Speaker 2: If you get a long list of.
Speaker 1: Things that they do care about, what the d n
c's articulating doesn't show up, and anybody's top twenty. So
they're not doing anything right now to retain or regain
public support for their agenda.
Speaker 2: But fact is they.
Speaker 1: Don't really have an agenda beyond those those cultural items.
I mean, they never had an economic growth agenda. You
couldn't you couldn't name a thing that Biden did that
was promoting economic growth. Everything they did was in a sense,
meant to crush the economy, not grow it. So you know,
they got to they got to figure out what Americans
really want.
Speaker 4: Right now they're lost totally. You know. It just reminds
me of that quote from Tallyrand they have learned nothing
and forgotten nothing. That's a good one, Yeah, I mean totally.
So what about the prospects of getting rid of the
income tax? Is that possible? Here? Do we switch to it?
You can't just get it from the tariffs because we've
got four trillion dollars worth of trade. It just can't
be done. Right now, we're collecting eighty billion in tariffs,
which is roughly a two percent across the board tariff
raid fifty times that is four trillion. It just can't
be done. But maybe a national sales tax. What do
we do?
Speaker 2: Well?
Speaker 1: I think that you got to break it into pieces.
Getting rid of the income tax. Don't see it not
enough revenue, but getting rid of the income tax code,
or at least most of it, and radically simplifying you know, Americans,
I forgot the number. I did have it on the
tip of my tongue. But we spend hundreds of billions
of dollars complying with the tax code and the preformations
do and I'll think of it all the time that
small business people spend dealing with their tax stuff and
all the other regulatory stuff. Just by dramatically simplifying the
tax code, I think that gets you a long way
to what we want, and that would free up entrepreneurial
energy to do something other than fill out papers for
tax bureaucrats in Washington.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I couldn't agree with you more so, but the
idea of a national sales tax just seems to be
better because it's automatic. Nobody complains about it, and it's
just passed through and that's that is. You're going to
pay it either way.
Speaker 1: Well, there's something else that we've all gotten used to,
but we should get get rid of. It is that
the irs with the income tax gets to know most
of all your personal business back through your tax filings,
and so the invasion of privacy that they've they've inserted
into the United States. And when do they start the
tax thing nineteen twelve, one.
Speaker 2: Of those those years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, so you know, just getting rid
of that and subsistuti a sales tax. I mean, if
they want to know what I'm spending my money on,
I'm okay with that. But knowing all my sources of income,
all the various you know, real estate properties, whatever it is,
the people are owned, federal government has no right to
know all that.
Speaker 4: And then decisions get made on purely economic grounds, not
on g it'll save me taxes here, Isn't that a
great thing? And the amount of time, like you say that,
we waste going into preparing taxes and I call it
my annual denial ritual. You know, I put it off
as long as I possibly can till I finally do it.
And yeah, it's just craziness here, really craziness. Well, a
lot of things they're changing here, Like you say, the
well Milton Friedman said it, and I guess it was
done during FDR's first hundred days. I wasn't around then.
This is probably the equivalent to FDR's first hundred days,
maybe even maybe even more than that.
Speaker 2: You know, I I'll go out on a limb.
Speaker 1: I don't know, not much of a m It's much
more than what FDR did in the first hundred days.
And the part of the reason is the government has
grown so enormously since FDR began implementing his so called
New Deal. Uh yeah, so just and and and Trump
is ranging across the whole scope of government for this
change is so yeah, I'd say this is this is
historical and and and and I mean, you know it,
it took it took the country coming to the brink
to get us to do that. And we were at
the brink, and he's pulled us back some. But there's
a whole lot we still got to get done.
Speaker 4: You know. I'd love to see is passing a rule
of the government saying that anybody that gets federal aid
and that has at least a half a billion or
a billion dollar budget, any governmental entity at any level, city, state, local,
you know, fire department, whatever, they got to set up
a doge in that department. You know. And some states
are actually passing statutes now setting up their own doges.
And I think that should be a basic requirement. A
one final thing. California. Is there hope for that state
now after what they've been through, what we've seen happen
as a result of governmental incompetence.
Speaker 1: Bill, Well, there's always hope, But have they learned anything
you know, the the politician and sacrament Sacramento have learned nothing.
And so long as the California voters want to want
to load up their legislature with the people who think
like they do and and passed the laws they've passed,
and they really driven business out of California. And I
think California is the largest homeless population, largest population of
illegal immigrants, you know, talk about living on the brink.
Speaker 2: Uh, So have they learned anything? I and will the change?
I don't know.
Speaker 1: You know, Gavin Newson is still trying to get in
front of the parade. So heat all that figured this out,
we turned water on. I I guess I'm I guess
I'm a little pessimistic that California is going to have
a new playbook. Unless California produces somebody like Trump to
become their governor.
Speaker 4: Well maybe Caruso will be the answer. Certainly they're going
to boot their mayor of LA I mean, that's inevitable.
The problem is the way it's set up is the
city council just picks another dupe, and that's not going
to accomplish.
Speaker 1: As long as long as we have Democrat governance of
all our major cities.
Speaker 2: They're not going to get turned around.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, Well, I think this election was a wake up.
You know, we saw the country shift to the right measurably,
even in the most bluest of places. So maybe if
they see these policies working, we could see some change here. Bill.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I say there's hope. I'm with it.
Speaker 4: All right. Well, we really appreciate you coming.
Speaker 2: We're talking again.
Speaker 4: A seapack event.
Speaker 1: When is it. We're in two weeks. We've got a
big seapack event at National Harbor, which is.
Speaker 2: Just across the river from d C.
Speaker 1: And uh, we've got a tremendous lineup of speakers and uh,
you know, President Trump always comes and we expect that
to happen this year as well.
Speaker 2: So it's, uh, it's going to be exciting.
Speaker 1: And you know, before the last several years, it's been
a little gloomy because of what was happening with Biden
and Kamala Harris. Now I think it's going to be
a joyous celebration and uh, you know, I think I
think it would be really fun for everybody to come
because this is going to be a good party.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it sounds like it sounds like it, Well, maybe
I'll try to join the there for this sounds great
and it's come yeah, definitely, And you.
Speaker 1: Know, the tickets are now, you know, ninety five dollars
for people want to do the general admission part of it,
and you get to see everything with that, and so
it's not a it's not meant to be. There's no
financial barriers to coming in and joining in the frolic.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, we'll throw a link to it in
the show notes. This interview on Financial Survival Network dot com.
Appreciate you coming on as always, Bill, we'll talk to
you again soon.
Speaker 2: Carrie, thanks for having.
Speaker 3: Me, Thanks for listening to Carrie Letz's Financial Survival Network,
your solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go
to Financial Survivalnetwork dot com. Financial Survival Network
Speaker 2: Now more than ever