Speaker 1: And we are back with another edition of the Federalist
Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent at the
Federalist and your experienced Shirpa on today's Quest for Knowledge.
As always, you can email the show at radio at
the Federalist dot com, follow us on x at FBRLST,
make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast, and
of course to the premium version of our website as well.
Our guest today is Derek Morgan, Executive Vice President the
Heritage Foundation, as we take a look back at President
Trump's first one hundred days in office. What an active
time it has been, to say the very least. Derek,
thank you so much for joining us on this edition
of the Federalist Radio Hour.
Speaker 2: My pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 3: Matt.
Speaker 1: You have an interesting piece up you look over one
hundred wins. You can find that at the Heritage Foundation website.
It says America's Back. Heritage celebrates President Trump's first one
hundred days in office. This is a pretty interesting list
and it goes into all kinds of different areas. In fact,
doctor Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation and Heritage
Action for America said this, I want to get your
take on it. In just one hundred days, President Trump
has done more for the everyday American than Joe Biden
managed in four years. He has taken a sledgehammer to
the bloated and out of touch bureaucracy, restored the rule
of law, and put Americans, not Washington elites first. And
I think there's a good deal of truth to that.
But I'll tell you what, the Washington elites and those
who don't value the rule of law have absolutely lost
their minds over President Trump doing that. Your assessment so
far of these first one hundred days.
Speaker 3: They absolutely have. I think the thing is the direction right.
We're changing direction in a fundamental way, and I think
the President's hoping to pick up speed in that direction.
But if you look at the border, you look at
certainly DOGE and the spending, and you look at what
they're doing on DEI and CRT and alphabet soup of
American Marxism, they've turned the ship. And so even that turning,
even if we haven't made as much progress I think
as many Americans want to make, after just one hundred days,
we have turned and we are facing in the right direction.
I think this has been probably the most consequential one
hundred days for the Republic, certainly the first one hundred
days of a presidency. So maybe since FDR it's that
big of a ship in mindset.
Speaker 2: And you're right that so much of Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: Where at one point recently seven of the ten richest
counties in America were in the Washington DC area, and
we now know that's probably largely due to USAID and
other programs like it that are just a total slash
fund for the left. They're not happy. They're going to
fight tooth and claw, and it's a good thing. We've
got a man of courage who's leading this fight in
Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Well, he certainly has taking a lot of slings and
arrows over the last ninety last three plus months as
he just gets going. But he seems to be to me,
and I have covered this man in politics for a
long time, he seems to me to be more emboldened more.
I think he's something happened deeply to him in Butler, Pennsylvania. Yes,
almost a year ago when he came within just a
fraction of an inch of being an assassinated former president. Yes,
do you believe that's the case. It just seems like
he is more determined than ever to do what he
believes is in the best interest of America first policies.
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 3: He's said nearly that almost in those words, in fact,
about he feels like he was spared, his life was spared,
and he has a mission to accomplish. And look, he
had shown quite a bit of determination even before that point.
Here's a man who could have retired like he talks
about and go play golf, which he does enjoy doing,
but he felt a real sense to try to finish
what he started in twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen. And you remember,
they threw four different prosecutions at him. They excommunicated him
from polite society in every way that they possibly could,
and it really emboldened him. And then to survive an
assassination by a fraction of an inch, like you say,
because he was looking at a chart on immigration and
explaining the American people, as he's so able to do,
in very common sense, plain language. You know, he was saying,
look at these numbers of the illegal immigrants coming across
the border, and boy, what a change we've seen in
less than a hundred days, he's basically got operational control
of the border. At least he's ninety nine percent of
the way there, and so I think we can all
be grateful and glad that he's willing to put aside
his own personal ambitions in that way and serve the
country at this time when it's really needed.
Speaker 1: What an absolute difference one hundred days make. Indeed, it
took one hundred days compared to four years of what
this country went through under the last administration. I would
say under the last president, but I think there's long
been concern about who actually was president of the United
States for those four years. That may be a different
conversation for another day, but it certainly ties into what
has to be accomplished, what has to be done. It's
interesting you note that the chart that the President Trump
was looking at on that day in Butler, Pennsylvania when
he escaped assassination, and I do believe divinely escaped assassination,
was the chart that was filled out by or put
together by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, who has been talking about,
you know, this illegal immigration problem for a long time.
Let's talk about what this president has done in the
first one hundred days of the border you really do
delve into you know, there's there are more than a
dozen meaningful executive actions that the president has taken. I
wrote a piece on this recently in The Federalist. But
if you want to talk, there are so many things
that he has accomplished. But when it comes to his
campaign promises of returning restoring a border, he really has
done that has not He has.
Speaker 3: He's done it in record time, and honestly, we knew
he could do it. We had written kind of a
game plan, if you will, even late last year, if
this is how you can fix the border crisis, even
without a new congressional legislation. And you remember, and in
fact you point this out in your article in a
good way, there was all this talk about needing new legislation,
and in fact, even some Republicans fell for that trap,
where it would have codified having thousands of people come
across the border every day as normal, and only if
it got above I think it was four thousand a
day would it be considered a problem. And now you've
got more like seven thousand in a month. That's what
the number was in February, just because the president has
empowered you. Tom Homan, my former colleague here at Heritage,
as the borders are, he knows how to close the border.
Speaker 2: He's effectively done it. And you know, just hats.
Speaker 3: Off to him and the hard working people at the
Border Patrol of course, and at ICE as well. They
have gotten control of the situation. Part of that is
just to say we're going to stop all of this nonsense.
President Biden did not want to secure the border. He
wanted to essentially invite as many people as could make
it here to come into the country. He even had
an app to do that, where you could set an
appointment to enter a port of entry as a way
to try to fool the American people to say, look,
entry between ports of entry is down.
Speaker 2: That's because you created.
Speaker 3: An app to let people make an appointment to come
to the United States and to claim asylum and then
to be able to stay here until they ever got
their day in court, which could be years later. In
the meantime, be able to work and all that. So
he was essentially opening the doors to everybody. And when
you do that, you not only have the problem of
people coming to the United States unlawfully skipping that line, Matt.
You probably know, I know lots of legal immigrants, some
of whom are now citizens. They tell you how long
it took to come to this country, and they followed
the process.
Speaker 2: They dotted all the eyes and crossed all the t's, and.
Speaker 3: Then you have this, You go on an app and
make an appointment is just slap in the face.
Speaker 2: And so you change that.
Speaker 3: You remain in Mexico and you do not let people
stay here until their court date. You still provide a
process for the relatively few numbers of asylum cases that
are legitimate, but you don't you don't let everybody in.
Speaker 2: You have a remain in Mexico policy. So that was
a huge, huge part.
Speaker 3: You've got other things as well. You've got the Lake
and Riley Act signed into law. Good to see Congress
get in on the action. They're about to do that
again in reconciliation and provide hopefully provide more resources for
the president to be able to go secure the border
even more than he already has, and then also do deportations.
Speaker 2: He ended catch and release. You know, it's just.
Speaker 3: It goes on and on and on, and I think
he's also even used other levers of policy to try
to get Mexico in Canada to a lesser extent, to
be a part of the solution, you know, using even
tariffs on Mexico to make sure they get the border
under control, because we've got to get this fentanyl under control.
So really a plus plus plus for the president in
the first hundred days. It may be his biggest accomplishment.
The one thing I worry about is he accomplished it
so fast and so quickly. I just hope the American
people will remember that in the years to come.
Speaker 1: I hope they will too. And the question is will
the American people sustain him? Because you know better than
anybody the barrage from the usual suspects and the accomplished media.
You know, our good friends at NewsBusters the Media Research
Center just came out with something that shouldn't be surprising.
The first one hundred days of this presidency, ninety two
percent negative coverage from the network, the broadcast networks, ABC,
NBCCBS with this And again, this is what amazes me
is that there is some sort of sense like I
can't believe Donald Trump is doing this. I can't believe
Donald Trump is going after violent illegal immigrants, and you know,
the border patrol moving in to you know, to remove
these people from our country. How could they possibly do this?
Are you surprised that this is the hill that the
Democrats the left have decided to die on the removal
of extremely violent gang member, a terrorist list, illegal immigrants.
Speaker 3: It's shocking on one level and not shocking on the other.
Shocking because even fifteen years ago this was actually kind
of the bipartisan viewpoint. Even in the early Obama years,
he would at least say he wanted to secure the
border and keep dangerous phones out. But you know, Trump
derangement syndrome is a very powerful disease, corrupts the thinking
all reason leaves, and I think that's what's happening is,
you know, from their point of view, if Trump's for it,
I'm against it, no matter what it is, even to
the point of wanting to go visit a gang member,
you know, in Central America. It's really shocking on that level,
not shocking on the other level to see they're just
not willing to cut him any kind of break on
things that are just common sense. So that one might
be the top one, the other top one might be
dying on the Hill of letting men compete in women's sports. Yes, yeah, absolutely,
it's easily in eighty twenty, maybe a ninety ten issue
among the American people.
Speaker 2: And they seem to want to stay on that hill.
Speaker 3: Very few of them are retreating from the radical standpoint
that a man can declare himself a woman and then
be allowed into women's restrooms, women's prisons if they're a prisoner,
and on women's sports teams. It's just sickening. And I
think the President had a great signing ceremony where we
had girls, young women who were in sports at the
White House, showing that he's a real true defender of women.
The party that claims to be a defender of women
is now on the side I guess of trans men.
Speaker 1: I hope that is never a popular position.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I think there were a lot of people, including yours truly,
you know, as somebody who values information, a guy who
makes his living on it, and I read a lot
of different things. But you know, there was a time
in these last four years what I thought, did America
suddenly just do in a complete one point eighty did
they change on this sort of stuff where they thought
men and women in sports, that's a good idea, because
that's what we heard everywhere. No, it turns out that's
one of the big reasons why Donald Trump, you know,
received the popular vote along with the electoral vote, because
people were tired of that. Let's talk about the president's accomplishments,
not just there, but just in DEI in general. Diversity,
equity inclusion has become a cult for the left. It is,
without a doubt, one of the most divisive things I've
seen ever grip this country. And it feels it felt
like a fever. It seems like Americans have awakened from
that fevered dream. What are the main areas of DEI
that the president took on that you think will have
the most meaningful impact moving forward.
Speaker 3: Well, it had infected every part of the federal government
under President Biden. They were asking every grant recipient, pretty
much pretty much every agency of government, what can you
do to try to advance these principles of DEI.
Speaker 2: It got to the point, Matt.
Speaker 3: Where Corporate America was getting into the act as well,
where companies were talking about it on their earnings calls.
They were changing the way they're paying executives, doing board members,
all the rest, and it just made you wonder, do
we throw out the fourteenth Amendment?
Speaker 2: What about equal protection? Here?
Speaker 3: The law hadn't changed, but the customs had really changed.
And what President Trump did as he came in and
did an EO, he said, we're going to follow the law.
People are going to be treated equally. The American people
have it changed on that. We've seen polling. We've even
done some polling that shows it's a pretty durable standpoint
from the American people that people should be treated equally
regardless of their race. So if you have that as
you're guiding star all of these DEI programs, they're not
meant they sound reasonably good. Right, equity versus equality? Okay,
what does that mean? Well, we should have paid attention
to Kamala Harris who in twenty twenty, I think it
was a day or day or two before the election,
she did a long video explaining what equity is and
it's really warmed over Marxism where she talks about it's
not about equal chances, it's about equal outcomes.
Speaker 2: And that's what they mean. Just by that slight change.
Speaker 3: Even though to the common man equity and equality sound
pretty equal, they mean two very different things. Diametrically opposite things. Similarly,
with diversity, we as Americans are very familiar with diversity.
People from all over the world, either recently or six
generations came here from somewhere, you know, may not go
to the same church and all that, but you know,
we respect diversity. We're fine with people being different. We
don't have to all be the same. But that's not
what they mean. They mean there is forcing in and
forcing out people according to their race, and that's just
fundamentally on American And then inclusion sounds so nice, We're
going to include everybody. But I remember one incident in
them all of America where a gentleman was wearing a
religious t shirt witnessing about Jesus Christ, and they said,
you're not welcome here because you're not inclusive.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: And so that kind of was the flavor in the air.
Speaker 3: And a lot of that happened around twenty twenty twenty,
nineteen twenty twenty, and then got even worse under COVID
when you remember, we weren't allowed to go to church.
But if you were going to go to, you know,
a Black Lives Matter march, that'd be okay by them.
Speaker 2: And I think people just woke up about it. You know.
We did some.
Speaker 3: Polling for the American people in twenty twenty four open ended.
We also did some focus groups and some key places
around the country and we just opened into the asked
them what they thought about issues, and it came to inflation,
to the border, and people brought up transgenderism and DEI
and just what's happening to our country. These weren't conservatives
that we were talking to. These were, for the most part,
fairly a political moderate folks. They would bring it up
on their own. And I think the American people have
had enough, and you see what's happening with President Trump.
Those parts of Rugenda are very very popular and it's
not abating at all.
Speaker 4: The people out there that follow their politicians off a
cliff are a bit of a problem. The watched aut
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how it affects your wallet. Many pensions are down billions
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Speaker 1: I think a lot of us got tired of the signs.
Remember the signs are still out there, of course, and
you live in the DC area, I'm sure you still
see the yard signs. In this house, we believe, you know,
these righteous indignation about where folks are and what they
should say on those signs. In this house, we believe
a lot of different things, but when it comes to
DEI we're going to fight what we believe to be
the lie of systemic racism with more racism, you know,
with more discrimination. And Americans I think grew very, very
tired of that. In the post twenty twenty Marxist BLM
movement that we saw out there, they really really drove that.
Our guest today is Derek Morgan, Executive vice president of
the Heritage Foundation, as we take a look at President
Trump's first one hundred days in office, a robust one
hundred days to say the very least. We talk about
a lot of issues and immigration, the border crisis, obviously
was a big issue in the twenty twenty four election.
DEI and all of this sort of stuff trans women
of men and women's sports in general. That was a
huge issue. But nothing is bigger than the economy. What
say you about the first one hundred days of Donald
Trump's presidency when it comes to those issues the economy,
and then right under that is inflation of course.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, he's really had taken bold action in some
good ways and in some ways that are going to
take some time, and it's incredibly important that Congress comes
alongside him and passes a good reconciliation bill that cuts
spending and cuts taxes.
Speaker 2: So unpack that a little bit.
Speaker 3: You see when the President ca Amen there was a
lot of enthusiasm for the deregulatory agenda.
Speaker 2: He is continuing that. He is pushing that very quickly.
Speaker 3: He's certainly got the Environmental Protection Agency, which is probably
the most runaway federal agency. He's put them back in
a cage in a way to focus on real environmental
issues and not everything on climate change. At whatever cost,
we're going to try to address this problem. So I
think that he gets an A plus four and all
of that right the taxes. He wants to extend his
tax proposals from his first term that were very effective,
things like expensing immediate expensing so that people invest in
the United States get an immediate tax recognition of that
and can build in America. And so that hasn't happened yet,
but he's certainly leading in that direction and Congress will
hopefully follow suit. And probably the most controversial part has
been his tariff policy. And of course tariffs can be
used as a tool of state craft. We saw that
he wanted to use that with a bordering country is
on finanyl and undoubtedly fentanyl is a crisis. You're approaching
one hundred thousand deaths each year from that, you know,
more than the Vietnam War, the entirety of the Vietnam War.
It is just a huge crisis in America. And so
he is playing hardball with our neighbors and with China
over that issue.
Speaker 2: And that's an.
Speaker 3: Effective and perfectly legitimate use of tariffs. And then he
opened another front on the tariff war by trying to
get to more reciprocal trade policies. And essentially what he
means there is breaking down barriers for American produced goods
to be sold overseas.
Speaker 2: And so that's ongoing. Now.
Speaker 3: He's made some good progress with some of our closer
and bigger trading partners, countries like South Korea, which by
the way, he negotiated a new trade agreement with them
his first term, so he's looking to improve even on
that this time around.
Speaker 2: Japan he's had some good.
Speaker 3: Talks with as well several others, so that's promising and
we hope that that'll lead to better trade agreements and
even hopeful freer trade so that we can compete on
a level playing field. We haven't had that in a
lot of cases, where a lot of countries are putting
up tariffs, but even more so non tariff barriers for
our goods, and so we need to let that work
out over time as well, and we're hoping that it
would be even better. He's got a ten percent baseline
tariff that he wants to use as kind of a
revenue source and also as a way to more level
the playing field. This gets a little wonky, but that's
what the federalist hour is all about. When you look
at our tax system in the United States, we're about
the only one that penalizes exports and incentivizes imports in
our income tax system because of the way it's set
up territoriality. What he wants to try to do, we
think in what we think would be even the best
idea is to have a border adjustment mechanism so that
we're crediting our exports and taxing imports at a reasonable level.
That's what every other country does value added taxes, and
it's you know, you add that onto the price of
a Ford Mustang over in Europe, and whereas if you
have say Evolvo coming here to the United States, they
don't have any import duties at all. So we think
that could be a good measure that would be pro
free market. It wouldn't distort the markets, could raise some revenue,
and makes the world trading system more fair. So we've
been pushing that on the hill. We think that's probably
a better way to do it rather than a tariff.
But if you add all of that together, at the
end of the day, if you extend these tax cuts
and hopefully improve them, if you get the regulatory burdened down.
We just did a report over trillion dollars a year
could potentially come in from those from that regulatory reform.
You do those two things, and you get tariffs toward
good negotiated settlements, you've got a recipe for a booming economy.
And right now we're saying, let's get all three done,
and let's do it as quickly as you can to
get the economy even on stronger footing than it is now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as you mentioned, I mean, these things take time,
you know. I know President Donald Trump likes things to
have immediate impact if he possibly can. I think he
understands that there's there's a lot of time, there's a
lot of energy that goes into these sorts of things.
We're into the first one hundred days now, all the
tariff question. I know, you know, there are folks, obviously
on the left, who are trying to make political hay
out of this with the volatility that naturally comes from
the stock market when you're engaged in, you know, a
tariff battle when you are trying. By the way, which
should be explained in this coverage but never obviously, is
from the usual suspects of corporate media that for years,
for decades upon decades, American businesses, this country, you know,
has we have been absolutely bludgeoned by tariffs that are
in the best interest of other countries and never in
the best interest of America. Of course, that's it. I
get it. If you're a baby boomer and you're nearing
retirement or you're in retirement and you see the value
of your retirement starting to fall, you get nervous. Where
do you think all of this is going? Given the
public relations battle that goes on with this attempt to
redefine where America is in terms of tariffs, in terms
of world trade.
Speaker 3: I'm optimistic. I think that we can get some really
good trade deals. We're already seeing people in some countries
come to the table, and so if we can bag
a couple of wins there early, I think that builds
momentum and you build on it one by one by one,
and you get morefare trade deals for our producers here
in the United States. And it's about time that that's happened.
Once that starts to happen, it's already started to happen.
I think you see the market is regaining some confidence there,
and I'm hopeful that we'll be on a strong trajectory,
especially if the deregulation keeps going and if the tax
cuts get done as a full package, that's going to
make America the best place in the world to invest. Look,
there's a reason why our manufacturing sector has been struggling.
It's not all trade, possibly could be part of it.
The biggest part has been the regulatory strangle hold that
the EPA in particular has, and you think about NIPA
and environmental permitting. It's just very hard to build things here.
It costs three times maybe five times as much in
some cases, and it's just hard to make that investment
decision here. If we get those things fixed, if we
get our tax system more on even keel with the
rest of the world, I think you'll see investments sore
the United States. And in fact, that was one real
silver lining with today's economy report was at a twenty
two percent increase in investment, and so over time I
think you'll see more investment come into the United States.
You're already seeing that American companies have had not a
great experience, shall we say, in China, the Communist Chinese,
the Chinese Communist Party is very much about supporting their
businesses at the expense of Western businesses, and so many
of them have been hurt and seen at firsthand.
Speaker 2: That they're not even arguing.
Speaker 3: Like they would have twenty years ago, that no, this
is the future, we have to be here. They're only saying,
give us some time to restructure everything. And so it's
kind of the same analogy with what he's doing at
so many other fronts. He's turned the ship. We're heading
in a new direction. It'll take a little time to
build up some speed. If you think about like an
aircraft carrier and turning an aircraft carrier. We turned it
awfully quick, and now we've got to kind of pick
up some speed. And so I think with all that
taken into consideration, it's going to be a very very
strong economy.
Speaker 2: Another boom.
Speaker 1: Where do you see we've talked as we talk today,
of course, the numbers come out on GDP and some
other important indicators this week. What did you think of
the GDP numbers released this week? How much of that
is hangover, how much of that is tariffs? And where
do we go from here on that front? Where do
you see? As you just mentioned, you have made a
pretty abrupt about face. Now eventually you're going to get
on the path where your cruising along. But there are
some rough choppy waters before you get there, of course
there is.
Speaker 3: And look, American businesses, like all businesses around the world,
don't like uncertainty. And there's a little bit of uncertainty
right now with teriff rates being here and then there
being a pause, and then there's going to be negotiations
and people are trying to figure out their supply chains
and all the rest.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there'll be some bumps and bruises.
Speaker 3: Along the way, for sure, but hopefully that'll be a
transition and fairly short one as we get good trade
deals done and that can put us onto a better path.
I think it's important as we think about this too,
that it's really a geopolitical competition with China, And this
is a really important point. China has been cheating at trade,
at intellectual property, at the rules that they require our
businesses to operate under in China if they allow them
to operate.
Speaker 2: At all, which they don't.
Speaker 3: Several of our big tech companies, for example, can't even
operate there at all, And we're just not going to
take it anymore. Is that going to cause some disruption
in the marketplace? Sure, if you've got your supply chains
in China, But if you're a businessman, you should have
been looking at this the last ten years or so.
It's a bipartisan issue. It's not just Trump. He's the
one that started it in his first term, but Biden
largely kept the tariffs on China in place, and now
Trump's subtly and steadily, I think, putting his foot on
the accelerator, and American companies are trying to move as
fast as they can to get better supply chains. As
that's happening, as we're in this competition with China, we
need to be thoughtful about all of our allies who
we want to keep kind of in our block, if
you will. So you think about South Korea, you think
about Japan, you think about Australia, you think about large
parts of Europe. They hopefully can be operating on our
standards and we can have trade amongst ourselves to be
efficient and have scale that can match China and their
block which is forming, which is China and Russia, Iran,
some parts of Africa. Some of the bricks countries are
experimenting and kind of looking at both of these different
camps figuring out where they're going to go. We need
to really unite the world against the Chinese Communist Party.
It is unbelievably evil to its own people. It's committed genocide,
it certainly cheats at trade, and it does not have
the good of anyone in its sites other than the
Chinese Communist Party itself.
Speaker 2: So that's the really important macro issue.
Speaker 3: That we need to be thinking about, and I think
that Trump is thinking about, is how do we isolate
China and how do we rally the rest of the
allies in that fight.
Speaker 1: Those who believe that this is just about tariffs are
not certainly understanding the full picture here, As you say,
this is vastly about China, and what let's be honest here,
globalists in the US and elsewhere have done for decades
trying to artificially prop up the Chinese economy in the
name of profits for their particular interest. Americans have paid
the price and will continue to pay the price if
we don't get serious about that. That's what this administration,
I believe, has done in the first one hundred days. Yes,
and when you are so dependent on an economy, you
are so dependent on a country to supply because of
all of these artificial means, you know, dating back even
before the acceptance of China into the World Trade Organization
and all of the benefits that arrived therein it's going
to be bruising, it's going to hurt for a while.
But if you it's an addiction, and to break an
addiction is very difficult. That doesn't mean that it's not
worth your life, your body, your mind to break that addiction.
That's what's going on now, would you agree it is?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 3: And in addition to profits, and American companies saw a
big market in China, and you know, it even worked
for some of them for a time if you look
at for example, GM at one point was more profitable
in China than the US.
Speaker 2: But they're not anymore. They're basically getting out of the
market altogether.
Speaker 3: The Chinese have a way of inviting people in somehow
acquiring the technology of their Western partners, sometimes explicitly, sometimes
otherwise yes, and then when they have had enough use
of them, they essentially kicked them out of the country
and have their own national champions. So there's the profit motive,
and that turned out to be a bad bet. But
there was also a political motive that even some on
the conservative side of the ledger had a major bet
we thought if we openly traded with China, they would
come into kind of the global system, if you will,
and that they would adopt American norms. And that was
a total abject failure. There's no other way to put it.
And it was bipartisan, and it was multi decades long,
and in fact, if your listeners would want to read
more about it, the one hundred Year Marathon. Michael Pillsbury,
my colleague here at Heritage, wrote that book, and he
goes and he talks about how the Chinese Communist Party
had a plan from nineteen forty nine when they took power.
By twenty forty nine, they want to supplant the United
States as the world's hegemon, and in fact, they think
that they're ahead of schedule now and they're being more
aggressive now than they were ten fifteen years ago. President
g has certainly put an accelerator on that. But if
you want to know what's really on their minds, it's
knocking the United States off as the global hegemon and
instead they become the global hedgemon. And we have to
recognize that we're in a fight with another superpower, one
that is not content to just make profits off of trade,
but they want to dominate their neighbors. We see that
they want to intimidate Taiwan. We see that, and so
it's important that the United States have strong allies and
prevent China from making a really terrible move innovating Taiwan
for example.
Speaker 1: Do you know how you do all of that? We've
just seen it over the last hundred days. You have
adults in the room. You have adults who actually say, listen,
if we don't deal with this now, this will be
so much more costly for this country moving forward. Obviously,
the economy, tariffs, all of it ties into domestic and
foreign policy. But one of the big areas I think
that we haven't discussed yet that I certainly want to
make sure that we give full attention to, and that
is getting our own house in order. Yes, the importance
of the Department of Government efficiency. Those has become a
household name. Whether you like it or you don't, but
it has brought to the American people the attention that
I think it deserves, and that is this bloated federal bureaucracy.
You know, the trillions of dollars a criminal waste you
mentioned usaid earlier. There are so many different areas, though,
where do you believe this issue is settling after one
hundred days in America?
Speaker 3: It's really fantastic. It's excellent work. He has captured the
Elon Musk and the folks that he's recruited out of
many of them. Meta Silicon Valley have captured the imagination.
I thought they've done a good job when they've been
in the media talking about what they're doing, finding very
simple examples of fraud, like social Security checks going to
people at a one hundred and twenty or more years old,
you know, very communicable, very easy to understand, and their businessmen,
and I think people understand that American people understand that
the government is out of control.
Speaker 2: They look at people react.
Speaker 3: Some of the government employees and how they react to
these layoffs, and they think, well, I've been having to
deal with this my whole life. No one's guaranteed a job,
and that should be the same if you're a public servant.
But let me give you just one example, Matt so
In thirty years ago, Heritage wrote a paper about USAID,
had all the facts in there about just how wasteful
it was, and even back then, thirty years ago, it
was completely left wing, and so, you know, undermining traditional
American values all around the globe. And we called for
its elimination, and we've done that many times since then.
But it took a man of courage. It took President
Trump and Elon Musk also to have that courage to
go after it.
Speaker 2: We know what the problems are. We know it's USAID.
Speaker 3: We know it's a Department of Education that hardly provides
any funding at all into schools. What it does is
create huge amounts of red tape and bloat administrator's budgets
and is overall a detriment to American vucation. After all,
we've spent, you know, hundreds of billions of dollars, even
at the federal level on education, and our education's worse
than when Jimmy Carter Carter founded the Department of Education,
when he made it at a cabinet level agency in
nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: It's bad enough the government waste money, but if it
wastes money and things are heading in the wrong direction,
you know you've got.
Speaker 2: A real problem.
Speaker 3: So it's a sea change, it really is, and it's
not over yet. It's maybe a second inning and I
just hope that when our starting pitcher, Elon Musk, has
to go and focus on his other ventures quite understandably,
that we'll get a good picture in from the bullpen
to continue this work. I think we will. I think
the president's very adamant about that. He's got the right
man at Office of Management and Budget and russ Vote
who will take these recommendations and implement them across the
administration agency by agency. Each agency had knows the President
means business on this, and it's glorious and it needed
to It should have been done thirty years ago. We
were just talking about the competition with China, right and
if you're a boxer, you've got to know your enemy.
Certainly be able to Bob and we Eve and all
the rest, but you've also got to have basic physical training.
And right now we're very, very overweight because we are
just wasting too much money, and believe it or not,
some of our allies are.
Speaker 2: Even worse shape.
Speaker 3: We had a meeting here this last week with a
very high ranking European official and he pointed out that
several countries in Europe spent seventeen percent of their GDP
on pensions and welfare, and so we're overweight, we're wasteful.
We have to get into fighting shape because our children's
future depends on it. We have to be strong to dissuade,
deter any kind of attack on the United States, and
so to do that, we've got to slim down.
Speaker 2: We've got to stop wasting money.
Speaker 1: Now you talk about wanting to make America healthy again,
take a look first and foremost at the morbid obesity
of our federal government. Yes, all of the money that
these taxpayers have been on the hook for for so long,
I mean, really is it is criminal waste. I know
Heritage has four years fought the good fight on waste, fraud,
and abuse in government. We are seeing it all laid
out in front of us, and I think there are
some Americans who are stunned. Were you surprised at all
by the visceral reaction though from the radical militant left
in this country and some you know who aren't in
I would consider members of that radical militant left. But
you know, looking at this and saying, you know what
I can understand, as we saw this report out recently,
I can understand why you know, someone would key Tesla,
why someone would would set a tesla on fire for
the love of God. In more so than that, there
are fifty five percent of those who lean left, according
to a Rutgers study recently that say that it's okay
to assassinate President Trump or Elon Musk. I mean, how
did we get here?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you've got polls of bureaucrats.
Speaker 3: I think it was forty five percent so that they
would refuse to follow a constitutional order. So, I mean,
it's just you look across the board. It's scary where
we are as a country. Look the radical left. We're
going after their sources of funding in a lot of ways.
We saw USAID as funding very liberal causes around the globe.
We did an analysis and found I think was over
ninety three percent. I know it was in the nineties
of political donations went to Democrats from USAID, And so
if you go after their funding, they're going to fight
viciously for sure. So I'm not as surprised at that
that part of it. What I'm encouraged by is the
House Freedom Caucus and Speaker Johnson and Speaker Thoon are
talking about real spending cuts in the Reconciliation Bill. They're
going to do a down payment, hopefully with the recision package.
That'll be a relatively small amount of money. But recisions
package is Congress and the past appropriated money, and the
executive is saying, now we don't need to spend this.
That should be easy, right, that should be very low
hanging fruit. They're going to try to do that, and
then the next thing is going to be reconciliation. And
I have to credit Senator Leader Thun who has said
and Speaker Johnson who said they want to get over
tillion dollars of cuts. That's a real good down payment
and a reconciliation bill. So we have to hold their
feet to the fire. So the radical left us we
know about that. The more subtle battle that's going on
now is the kind of lobbying industrial complex in Washington,
d C. Trying to reduce all of these spending cuts.
And that's happening right now. And so we're in the
trenches right now encouraging them to be strong and to
remember what Milton Friedman taught us. He said, the truest
measure of government taxation is actually spending, because government's either
going to have to tax you, they're going to borrow
to tax you later, or they're going to cause massive inflation.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: Any of those three is taking money out of your pocket.
So we have got to get spending under control.
Speaker 1: You've been very generous with your time. I appreciate that.
Today your perspective on this first very robust one hundred
days of the Trump two point zero administration, as I
like to say, the Grover Cleveland of the twenty first century,
and it's a non consecutive term. I'll leave you with
this final question. We've seen what's happened over the last
one hundred days. What do you expect in the coming
one hundred days? And as we move up, you have
so much time before politics and politicking and elections kick
in and the campaign season, so there is a window
here of opportunity. What do you see in the months ahead?
And also with that the question of will Republicans in
Congress stay strong? We've already seen some weak need that's
concerning where do you see all of this heading.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the end of the next days, we've got
to have the reconciliation build done. It's got to be
done early to try to get the economy back on track,
so that's critical. And then the second piece is something
the president controls more of, which is the regulatory agenda.
He's issued great executive orders telling his cabinet agencies how
to deregulate. And now the proof is in the putting.
They need to get rule makings out, and they need
to take comments on those rule makings, and they need
to finalize those rule makings, and they need to do
that early in the president's term so that it can
make it all the way through the courts.
Speaker 2: To be a durable regulation. So what do I mean there?
Speaker 3: I'm thinking in particular of some of these EPA regulations.
The President talks a lot about making sure Americans can
buy the kind of car that they want, that they
don't have to all buy electric vehicles by twenty thirty
five or even twenty thirty and.
Speaker 2: So he's rescinded.
Speaker 3: He's directed his Department Transportation and the EPA.
Speaker 2: He's told them get rid of this rule.
Speaker 3: So they have to put out that proposal, get the
job done. So it's really in a lot of ways
focusing from eos, where here are my priorities, Here's what
I'm going to do.
Speaker 2: Here's a couple of early wins.
Speaker 3: Now it's the execution phase in the next hundred days
or so, and I think you can.
Speaker 2: Extend that out for the whole first year.
Speaker 3: But in particular next one hundred days, we got to
see a lot of movement, hopefully passage on the Reconciliation Bill,
and see a lot of these deregulatory rules come out
so that we can get the economy going and we
can be strong heading into next year.
Speaker 1: Yes, listen to that, Congress. The President has laid out
this ambitious agenda. He's accomplishing what he can do through
the executive branch. It is up to the first branch
now to codify the sea change that the American people
voted for. Let's not forget that the American people voted
for this change. Thanks you, Rich, Thanks to my guest today.
Absolutely fabulous conversation. My guest today Derek Moore, Executive vice
president of the Heritage Foundation. As we take a look
back at the first one hundred days of the second
Trump presidency, you've been listening to another edition of the
Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, Senior Elections correspondent out
the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then,
stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray