Speaker 1: By Billy Cunningham, the Great American. Of course, we're figuring
Speaker 1: up the pieces of what happened last Trunesday with the
Speaker 1: election of Donald Trump, which is shocked to many, but
Speaker 1: what a wonderful advent this has been. And now that
Speaker 1: he's won the electoral vote also one I believe the
Speaker 1: popular vote by about two and a half million votes.
Speaker 1: The Democratic narrative is that the product we sold was great,
Speaker 1: the candidate to that being Kamala Harrison, is really unbelievable,
Speaker 1: and that they don't know what happened to him or
Speaker 1: how it happened to him. Now the resistance is forming
Speaker 1: from the governors of Massachusetts, the governors of Illinois and California,
Speaker 1: et cetera. There's going to be a resistance. I guess
Speaker 1: elections don't matter. Joinan you and I now is David Bonson.
Speaker 1: He's a renowned financial expert and staunch defender of free markets.
Speaker 1: He's been a contributor to many conservative I Think tanks
Speaker 1: over the years, National Review contributor and also author of
Speaker 1: many books. And David Bonson, Welcome to the Bill cunning Show.
Speaker 1: First of all, from thirty thousand feet you look down here,
Speaker 1: we are about six seven days after the election. What
Speaker 1: happened on Tuesday? And I remember the fifth.
Speaker 2: Well. I think that a lot of the consensus post
Speaker 2: game commentary has been spot on that you know, there
Speaker 2: is a Democrat Party in this country right now that
Speaker 2: surge so leftward in the last ten to fifteen twenty
Speaker 2: years that they've lost connection with certain voting blocks that
Speaker 2: were a vital part of the coalition. And I think
Speaker 2: the most stunning and dramatic is how President Trump performed
Speaker 2: with Hispanic voters and young voters, the working class, you know,
Speaker 2: white male voters, and talked about for some time, but
Speaker 2: all of these numbers have moved, and all of them
Speaker 2: moved last Tuesday, even more than expected than. One other
Speaker 2: comment I just want to make that isn't getting enough
Speaker 2: coverage is the states he didn't win and how much
Speaker 2: he moved the needle in certain blue states that yes
Speaker 2: he's still lost, but he lost a New Jersey by
Speaker 2: four points, not seventeen. He lost Virginia by five points,
Speaker 2: not eleven. He lost Chicago, Illinois by seven points, not
Speaker 2: seventeen or eighteen. That's a huge difference. He lost the
Speaker 2: state of New York, where I'm sitting right now by
Speaker 2: the lowest margin since Reagan won the state in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty four. I mean, those things are just crazy and
Speaker 2: they speak to blue state failures all across the board.
Speaker 1: Was it a product or was it a personality? For
Speaker 1: those who I kind of called Donald Trump the Pete
Speaker 1: Rose of politics, you know, we're celebrating and to an
Speaker 1: extent here in Cincinnati, the life and times of Pete Rose,
Speaker 1: who had a big event at the Grand American Ballpark
Speaker 1: yesterday for Pete and Donald Trump and Pete Rose are
Speaker 1: both and the World Wrestling Federation Hall of Fame. But
Speaker 1: the personality of Donald Trump attracts many to a side
Speaker 1: and repels many other And the personality that Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: says exactly the same thing. So was it the product
Speaker 1: or was it the personality? Or was it both?
Speaker 2: With presidential politics, it's always both. Donal Trump is a celebrity,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump as a persona and there are people attracted
Speaker 2: to it and there are people who are put off
Speaker 2: by it. And yet when you combine the element of
Speaker 2: celebrity and personality with the moment, with the basic frustration
Speaker 2: people had around the key issues inflation, immigration, and the border,
Speaker 2: you add to it. I think a really really bad
Speaker 2: set of cards that the Left was playing a bad
Speaker 2: incumbent candidate, a bad replacement strategy for that candidate, just
Speaker 2: the timing of everything, and also a national frustration that
Speaker 2: there's been no day of reckoning for around the way
Speaker 2: those people handled COVID. I think that that's a huge
Speaker 2: element in this election. In twenty twenty four, you got
Speaker 2: to see something we didn't see in twenty two in
Speaker 2: the midterms, and that is that a lot of people
Speaker 2: do not appreciate the way their lives were altered by
Speaker 2: the COVID moment.
Speaker 1: You're a great economist to have a point here about
Speaker 1: the resilience of free markets. You say, the average four
Speaker 1: year market return with thirty three percent, regardless of the
Speaker 1: party and office, demonstrates the robustness of free markets. I'm
Speaker 1: looking at Dalla straight ahead. It's up one hundred all
Speaker 1: time high. You can only imagine if Kamala Harris had
Speaker 1: won by hook or crook, what would have happened to
Speaker 1: the markets, What would have happened to the now orders
Speaker 1: flowing in from Europe to get liquefied natural gas, the
Speaker 1: telephone calls to putin bite Donald Trump, the Saudi Arabians
Speaker 1: back involved in the peace process. I mean, all good
Speaker 1: things are going on, and I often wake up in
Speaker 1: a cold sweat, like James Brown, if I could just
Speaker 1: have a nightmare that really Kamala Harrison, Tim Waltz won,
Speaker 1: and the markets are in free fall, and the caravans
Speaker 1: in Mexico continue to push a across the southern border.
Speaker 1: It's a road not taken. Was this similar in your viewpoint,
Speaker 1: David Bohnsen to nineteen eighty when at the end of
Speaker 1: the last week that people said, Jimmy Carter, we've had enough,
Speaker 1: and the personality the policies of Ronald Reagan came in
Speaker 1: and the rest is history. Is this similar to nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's entirely possible that there are similarities
Speaker 2: in how the voting block moved, but I'm not convinced.
Speaker 2: Unlike in nineteen eighty, See, in that case, what's the
Speaker 2: big difference. Ronald Reagan had to sell himself to American
Speaker 2: people still as someone who could govern and lead, where
Speaker 2: this is very rare since Grover Cleveland didn't have television
Speaker 2: or social media, that President Trump was having to basically
Speaker 2: say you already know that you know what I'm like,
Speaker 2: you know what you don't like about me, which is
Speaker 2: which is why stuff like that Puerto Rican joke at
Speaker 2: Madison Square GUARDI and other stuff. It's why it was
Speaker 2: so dumb for them to focus on it, because look,
Speaker 2: if people were offended, they were offended. Now those were
Speaker 2: not people who were going to be voting for him anyways.
Speaker 2: Those things are pricing. What we talked about in financial markets,
Speaker 2: there's something called things being priced in. And the negatives
Speaker 2: on Donald Trump, which I should be cleared a whole
Speaker 2: bunch of them. I don't like either, Okay, I don't
Speaker 2: appreciate the way he acts all the time. But the
Speaker 2: American people already decided that they either liked or didn't
Speaker 2: like that stuff. In the end, I just think that
Speaker 2: it was a terrible moment for the progressive left, and that,
Speaker 2: by the way, they had every opportunity after President Biden
Speaker 2: won to go in and govern to the center, and
Speaker 2: they chose not to do it. They doubled down on crazy,
Speaker 2: and that brand was rejected. And so yeah, the combination
Speaker 2: of President Trump's personality and the moment really.
Speaker 1: Pulled it through. I think a lot of people thought
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty. Okay, Joe Biden, we know Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: we know Scranton Joe. He says all these things that
Speaker 1: are crazy leftist ideas, like telling a six year old
Speaker 1: girl you're in the wrong body, or telling a San
Speaker 1: Jose State volleyball player a six foot three jumps out
Speaker 1: of the gym identifies as a girl. Suddenly a person
Speaker 1: can become a different genre by announcing it one hundred
Speaker 1: and four different genres, dei reparations, all the other crap
Speaker 1: put out by the radical level. Many people thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: once Joe Biden gets in there, he's not going to
Speaker 1: do that at all. In fact, he doubled down on crazy.
Speaker 1: It got worse, and maybe it was because of his
Speaker 1: lack of mental alertness that he permitted the leftists around
Speaker 1: him to dominate, which is why they lost, and they
Speaker 1: lost big.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Secondly and lastly, perhaps his energy. You have a great posting.
Speaker 1: Energy independence and economic strength are tied together. Energy, whether
Speaker 1: it's a gas, natural gas, coal, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: reproduce those items and safer and cleaner way than any
Speaker 1: country in the world, any country in the history of
Speaker 1: the world. But the left says, shut down the pipelines.
Speaker 1: We're not going to allow any more LNG exporting. We're
Speaker 1: going to do things to the coal manufacture, the coal
Speaker 1: that makes it impossible to get out of the ground,
Speaker 1: and that permeates through every aspect of American society no
Speaker 1: matter what you use. And I'm looking at a pen,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at a phone, I'm looking at a TV.
Speaker 1: I drove hare and my Chevy Blazer. Everything I do
Speaker 1: in life is relatable to energy, and the insurance and
Speaker 1: the insurance costs of also skyrocket. But what does a
Speaker 1: new energy policy of Donald Trump mean for inflation in general?
Speaker 2: Well, there's a couple of different aspects, and sometimes it
Speaker 2: takes a bit more nuanced because a lot of people think, oh, well,
Speaker 2: now we're going to start drilling more barrels of crude
Speaker 2: oil per day, where right now we're at an all
Speaker 2: time high at one point three five million barrels. The
Speaker 2: difference is building infrastructure so that we can continue doing
Speaker 2: so in the future cheaper and with rest regulation. And
Speaker 2: then liquefied natural gas exports. Why the Bide administration chose
Speaker 2: eight months ago to put a pause on approving permits
Speaker 2: for new export terminals from a geopolitical standpoint from a
Speaker 2: four and policy standpoint, our ability to export liquified gas
Speaker 2: to Europe and Asia to allies of ours, a huge
Speaker 2: growth industry that provides all kinds of military heads against
Speaker 2: bad actors in the Middle East, against bad actors in Russia.
Speaker 2: It's totally insane, and so I think those are where
Speaker 2: you're going to see some of the lowest hating and
Speaker 2: fruit out of energy policy is deregulation and eventually US
Speaker 2: being able to export and sell some of these great resources.
Speaker 2: We have the oil companies right now. If if Harris Biden,
Speaker 2: Trump or Santa Claus were president, they're not going to
Speaker 2: be drioling a lot more than one point three five
Speaker 2: million barrels per day just based on the seventy dollars price,
Speaker 2: their break evens, their economics, their supplied demand balance OPEC plus.
Speaker 2: I think that we're producing plenty of oil right now,
Speaker 2: but I think you need to deregulate the process. And
Speaker 2: that's where I think Trump with Secretary Rick Perry this
Speaker 2: first term, did a good job. And this is a
Speaker 2: great example, by the way, but you just said a
Speaker 2: moment ago, when Biden came in and doubled down on
Speaker 2: crazy symbolically canceling the Keystone Pipeline on first day. Those
Speaker 2: types of things. He had every opportunity to come in
Speaker 2: and say I'm going to be more of a centrist
Speaker 2: on energy, and he couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: David bonson one of the great things I've mentioned for
Speaker 1: the last several decades. Two things that's going to destroy
Speaker 1: this country completely is unbridled immigration from third world poverty,
Speaker 1: grinding us the cities into collapse, which is well underway.
Speaker 1: And Milton Friedman's on my Mount Rushmore of Conservatism often
Speaker 1: spoke about unbridled immigration living actually third world grinding poverty
Speaker 1: and importing that into our cities. And the second thing
Speaker 1: is the looming debt crisis. We borrow every day about
Speaker 1: six billion dollars of brand new money. The accumulated national
Speaker 1: debts about thirty six trillion. We pay over a trillion
Speaker 1: day on interest. That's on its way to fifty trillion.
Speaker 1: And when Trump was in office or Bush was in office,
Speaker 1: it still went up doubled every four years. That debt doubled.
Speaker 1: Right now it appears we're on track to have another
Speaker 1: two trillion dollar deficit. We can't afford it. Talk to
Speaker 1: the American people about deep State, about the looming debt crisis,
Speaker 1: which is going to You can't keep taking up brand
Speaker 1: new credit cards to pay interest on the other credit card.
Speaker 1: At some point that debt pyramid will collapse. Explain that
Speaker 1: to the American people.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the most important issue is that people
Speaker 2: have to understand that all debt is coming from future growth.
Speaker 2: The way in which we service the debt is paid
Speaker 2: for from economic resources. And the one thing about the
Speaker 2: debt that blew up during the Bush years is the
Speaker 2: debt to GDP ratio. Basically, the mounted debt we had,
Speaker 2: which went up a lot divided by the size of
Speaker 2: the economy was the same. The debt to GDP did
Speaker 2: not go up. However, since the Obama years, through the
Speaker 2: Trump years, through the Biden years, our debt has grown
Speaker 2: faster than our economy every single year. Our annual budget
Speaker 2: deficit as a percentage of GDP is the highest in
Speaker 2: the free world. It's now higher than Japan, higher than Europe. Now,
Speaker 2: our total debt to GDP is not higher than those countries,
Speaker 2: but our annualized addition to the debt as a percentage
Speaker 2: of our economy. So people go okay, Well, you need
Speaker 2: to get more economic growth. Well, I agree. I was
Speaker 2: one of those people screaming for it as an economist
Speaker 2: thirteen fourteen years ago. That ship is sailed. You are
Speaker 2: not going to grow your way out of this period.
Speaker 2: You're going to have to get growth, but you're going
Speaker 2: to have to get spending under control. And that's the
Speaker 2: part there's no political will to do. And I just
Speaker 2: got to remind people listening, this is what we're talking
Speaker 2: about when we're not even in war. This is what
Speaker 2: we're talking about when we're not even in recession. You
Speaker 2: expect deficits as a percentage of your economy to go
Speaker 2: up during wartime and during tough economic times. This has
Speaker 2: been peacetime and economic expansion, and we're running one to
Speaker 2: two trillion dollar deficits. And by the way, the only
Speaker 2: thing we're debating is whether or not we want it
Speaker 2: to be one trillion instead of two trillion. Imagine that
Speaker 2: conversation with a spouse. You know we have one hundred
Speaker 2: thousand dollars credit card debt. Do you want to add
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand next year to the debt or ten thousand
Speaker 2: of the debt? And those are the only two options
Speaker 2: you need a balanced budget amendment. You need across the
Speaker 2: board spending cuts. Politically, it's impossible to do by targeting
Speaker 2: this and that, so you have to just do it
Speaker 2: broad based. Just say across all categories, we're gonna implement
Speaker 2: two percent, three percent, five percent spending cuts. It has
Speaker 2: to happen, and I'm hopeful President Trump and the people
Speaker 2: around him will take that a little more seriously than
Speaker 2: he was able to do in his first term.
Speaker 1: What happens, we have a minute remaining. What happens in
Speaker 1: three years, five years, ten years, and it's coming. If
Speaker 1: we don't do that.
Speaker 2: A lot of people in a lot of people on
Speaker 2: the right predict some sort of doom and gloom particular
Speaker 2: moment where we fall in the ocean. But see my
Speaker 2: predictions worse than that. Japan never had a moment where
Speaker 2: their society just collapsed. They just went thirty years with
Speaker 2: no economic growth thirty years. And so what I call
Speaker 2: Japanification in America where you just live with subpar economic growth. Now,
Speaker 2: could you, as something of your bond market rebel and
Speaker 2: have this real massive cataclysmic event. You could, but you
Speaker 2: might not. It may just be even worse than that,
Speaker 2: where you just live with subpar economic performance, and that's
Speaker 2: unacceptable for our kids and grandkids.
Speaker 1: And that's not a guess, that is a certainty that
Speaker 1: you cannot take new credit card debt out to pay
Speaker 1: off the interest and other credit cards. At some point
Speaker 1: the pyramid scheme collapses and America has guaranteed our kids
Speaker 1: and grandkids less of a quality of life and higher
Speaker 1: taxes because what we've done. And I hope Donald Trump
Speaker 1: he's got forty eight months in office, and I hope
Speaker 1: he's the one that says we got to have a
Speaker 1: two to three percent across the board cut in everything.
Speaker 1: Otherwise we're going to give the o to our kids,
Speaker 1: less great to country, and the evil forces in the
Speaker 1: world will take over. David Bonson, you're the best there
Speaker 1: is on this and once again, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: on The Bill Cunningham Show. And David Bonson, you're a
Speaker 1: great American. Is Donald Trump the Pete Rose of politics?
Speaker 2: Well, I love that example for you guys there in Cincinnati.
Speaker 2: It's a great analogy. And obviously everyone is celebrating the
Speaker 2: life of Pete Rose, and Donald Trump has the opportunity
Speaker 2: to leave a legacy next four years. I'm praying he'll
Speaker 2: do it. It's not easy. No, it's not a job.
Speaker 1: A lot of people would want no.
Speaker 2: And like I said, sometimes he can get in his
Speaker 2: own way, but we're gonna pray he get some good
Speaker 2: things done for our country.
Speaker 1: David Bonson, thank you very much for coming on the
Speaker 1: Bill Cunningham Show. And David, you're a great American. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thays Bill, God bless you. Let's continue with more if
Speaker 1: a line becomes available. Five one, three, seven, four, nine,
Speaker 1: seven thousand. Billy Cunningham The Grand American Live. It's home
Speaker 1: of the Bengals. According to Moeger, they're about to arise
Speaker 1: and win their next six or seven games and enter
Speaker 1: the playoffs. And I believe do you believe? I believe
Speaker 1: that we will win. I believe that we will win.
Speaker 1: A news radio seven hundred WLW