do you go to New York much Uh never I I closed my house Oh wow I basically uh I tricked my wife You know how your wife always wants to uh renovate your house No idea So my wife that's like my wife always wants to renovate my house right Every minute I've been alive my wife has wanted to renovate parts of my house So we moved out once a year and a half ago Uh uh we moved out for a year and a half about six years ago And she only did half the house And she still rued the day that she only did half the house Really Yeah So that so this so that was the deal What I did is I uh bought a house wash and said "You want to renovate the house?" She said "Yeah." I said "Great We hired a contractor." Wait you brought Brett Bear's house No Yeah that's a beautiful house We can I can talk about whatever you want By the way I'm happy to talk about serious things casual things No let's just do this Let's roll because he's roll You're already running right He's on fire All right besties I think that was another epic discussion People love the interviews I could hear him talk for hours Absolutely Oh he crushed your questions I made it We are giving people ground truth data to underwrite your own opinion What do you guys think That was fun That was great Howard thanks for being here Thanks for joining myself and David Freeberg on the All-In podcast I want to take a step back before we talk about today and instead talk about your friendship with the president how it started how you guys got to know each other and walk us through the moment when you you know frankly went out on a limb a little bit stepped up became the campaign finance chair and then just that evolution So I've known the president since I was 30 years old So I used to go on the uh call we call it the charity circuit in New York Sure So there's basically a charity party every night when you live in New York Like the rubber chicken dinner Like literally the rubber chicken And and uh so sort of every night you go out and uh and so the boss of my company Bernie Caner he got tired of going right So he didn't want to go So he would send me with his wife and I would be her walker You know I'm the 30-year-old CEO of the company and I'd take her to the party and uh and after the party I'd put her in a limo and she'd go home and DJT would say "Well let's go out." And so we'd go out It wasn't planned but he was at the party He's 45 I'm at the party 30 And we chase the same girls Okay It's basically it worked out fine And and by the way here's the thing about Donald Trump He was the most famous the most fun Yeah the most interesting person 30 years ago 33 years ago I mean here's the best thing He's been on the cover of Time magazine 59 times No way And then he leans over to me and he goes "And 20 were good." Like but who can take that Yeah I mean who could take like other people when you have a bad cover of Time magazine you'd crumple right and be sand on the floor and said he's like but so Howard is is it that he's just totally wired to understand that moment like of being a public figure or like what is it that's so unique about what constitutes the ability to navigate that over 40 years I think it it it adds energy to him to him Right So everybody else's energy what they don't understand is people bring negative energy to Donald Trump right And they're just charging his battery Okay Your energy around him comes to him So when I come at him with a lot of energy he comes back with a lot of energy Right Right It doesn't matter He never he never steps back He just sort of takes it like the centrifuge and then hurls it back at you And he's been that way always So this is not new This is just who he is This is who he is So so those other people who attack him they think they're attacking him they're charging his battery They're literally charging his battery So he comes back bigger stronger bigger stronger And once you understand the man the most intuitive person that you've ever met Yeah And people say "Well okay so people who know me I don't suffer fools." And they have all these derogatorial my left liberal friends all these derogatory statements about the guy right And they know me really well Yeah Right And they'd say "Well how can you work for him?" I'd say "How can I work for him?" The most intuitive person he senses it He knows it He calls me up and he says "Panama Canal." That's what he says He goes "Panama Canal." It just feels wrong Right And then he sends me on the quest to go I I didn't do anything I just start the quest to go look at it Yeah Right The mouth that's east is a deep water port by the Chinese The mouth that's west is a deep water port by the Chinese They're building bridges over it So our ships and our military ships should go under right in our hemisphere a Chinese bridge So then I said "Okay let's go prove it." So I have a a friend of mine He's owns a big shipping company I said "Take two iPhones put them on a stand and just go through the Panama Canal." You know the Panama Canal they sort of drag ships through like this And I said "Just go video both ways." No just video both ways 70% of every letter is Chinese Then I'm talking like the sides of containers ships the stores like I'm not talking like signage just just random signage like you're riding on a road It's all Chinese And then I do the research and I call him back and I say the magic words between me and him I have your path which is I've done it I've done the legal work I've done everything Right So when you start talking about it you have a foundation It's not just you talking So people think he's just talking He's never just talking Yeah He has people behind him who bring him his foundational structural outcome And then what does he do He went and played golf that afternoon He called me at 7:00 in the morning He said "What do you got?" We talked from 7:00 to 8 He went and played golf right And that afternoon there's the American flag in the middle of the Panama Canal in some you know truth he puts out right And that's the fun part right So you work for the the most intuitive guy Yeah Unbelievably smart unbelievably thoughtful who knows what he's doing So it's so fun for me Howard let's just go back one second So you have this deep relationship with him You guys are friends Scott Besson told us the story that about 18 months ago though he saw all this data about what was happening under Biden and he was just so concerned that these deficits and debts were getting so out of control he went to the president and said how can I help can I help that's a story um but was there a moment for you that was like rooted in something other than friendship like was there something on the ground where you said hold on a second this is a train wreck and we need to do this you were the finance chair for the campaign Well no I wasn't the fighting chair I was the transition chair Transition Okay So I ran transition which we'll talk about but so let's go through So I'm friends with him right But I'm building my business Young guy building my business And then 911 happens Yeah Okay So I'm friends with the guy I'm just friends with the guy But then 911 happens Kind sweet calls me all the time Just good human being Nice warm caring good human being Right But then I'm knocked out So what do I do next I try to rebuild my company take care of the families of 911 You know I had I lost 658 people who work for me And uh and we had a policy We want to work with people that we like So when we had an opening we didn't use head hunters We would say to everybody at the firm does anybody know anybody who'd do this job No And so you know young lady works for me says you know my best friend is an HR person They have to have capacity Yeah But once they have capacity imagine we hire that person Yeah Now what happens is it's it's not one big happy family Yeah But people really really care about the company and that's our company that's on the top five floors of the World Trade Center on 911 when the plane hits it Kills everybody at the office My brother Gary he dies at 36 My best friend Doug he dies at 39 Uh I had just turned 40 that summer I had a party 65 couples It's my my 40th birthday 40th birthday Yeah Right 27 people at my party get killed Jesus My friends These are my friends So I'm driven to take care of the families of the people who who died And I commit 25% of all of our profits Uh but the company's destroyed So we go from making a million a day I was a rich guy right What's the definition of a rich guy No personal debt no corporate debt Ken Fitzgerald no debt So how do you survive 911 If you don't owe anybody any money the only money you're losing is is your money Is your money So we survive and we take care of our friends families and then we build the company back up So you could see like I'm uh I'm a special guest on the Celebrity Apprentice the first season of Celebrity Apprentice Piers Morgan wins Did he fire you No no I wasn't a contestant I'm a little beyond being a contestant I was a special guest I'd come in like if you see during the auction I'm standing next to him at the auction you know and I'm helping him like I'm just his friend sort of as an extra all along the way you know every once you kept the friendship going as you're rebuilding We're friends all the way but I'm rebuilding my company Yeah And then so I'm not interested in politics Okay I don't do anything in politics because I'm I got my head down Right We had the financial crisis Cander children's great in the financial crisis Had you ever donated to candidates at all or not Yeah New York candidates Okay Right New York C So think about it You're in New York You try to pick uh social liberals fiscal conservatives right If that even exists anymore Right But they if you're in New York you have to pick and look I grew up in New York so I'm socially liberal What else could I possibly be Yeah So you know so early when Chuck Schumer was young before he became what the president now calls a Palestinian you know you know he you know I raised him you know I I raised him money and gave him money Donald Trump gave him money Same I I did too Yeah I mean because he was he was uh that's what he said he was He was social liberal fiscal conservative and and uh so I you know we'd all give to those kind of candidates but mostly giving to get along right and to be able to you know ask him a question if you needed to ask him a question but there was really no I had no drive right in that like I said the first four nights I slept in Washington in the last 20 years when when Donald Trump was elected I had never slept here I'd come down visit a little go home go home What am I staying here for So he calls me at the end of October 23 Okay So he's already had his first term You didn't you didn't support or get No I was so I gave him money and I gave Hillary money You gave Hillary money in the first term Yeah because Hillary was incredibly helpful to me post 911 Remember she was a senator right And New York needed help right And Hillary was incredibly helpful and I was driving the team to help New York rebuild because I had relationships with a whole bunch of congressmen and they were going to do nice things Like Bill Young ran House Appropriations right Bill Young was my friend right through a whole variety of things that had to do with um I used to go to Bethesda Naval Hospital and I used to walk around and I would bring music there for the men who got hurt from the military who were in Bethesda Naval Hospital And uh we would walk around I go with my wife and then I would engage the young man with music I give him music and ask him what CDs he wanted this is when CDs were there and I'd bring up a Walkman and my wife would pull the family outside and uh she'd pay a year of their mortgage and all their expenses because what people don't realize is your son loses his leg right Dad and mom come flying in and they're going to stay by his bedside What job do these people have that allows them to be at their son's world And their world is falling apart cuz their son lost his leg So the world is falling apart but at home their world is falling apart Falling apart And so my my wife uh would just just try to figure out how much money was and just give them a check Yeah And no no form no nothing Just give him the money Yeah And and help them So I would bump into Billy Young and his wife who were they were just they ran then defense appropriations and they were there just being good human beings And so we became friends And he said to me once he said 'Is there anything I could ever do to help you I'm like look you run you're like a congressman from Florida who does defense appropriations And I'm like a Jewish guy from New York who's in finance If there ever were two skews that we're never going to meet this is two ships going like right we got nothing So I said to him look we're just going to be friends right We're never going to do anything And then he runs House Appropriations And so when New York needs money to rebuild after 911 they go see Bill Young to try to get a bill passed And he said "How can you come see me without Howard?" Yeah You know this is post 911 So I'm running New York And Hillary does a really nice job Okay For New York Yeah And I told I told uh DJT I call him DJT because I've known him for always I said I told him that I can't forget Yeah I'm just not the person who's gonna forget Of course I gave him money right But I give it and and by the way he still tortures me for it So like and you know what the best part is A good friend does Yes Right You know what the point is See other people would would you know sort of curl back Yeah Right So here right after he gets elected okay here's a story for you So right after he gets elected he has a dinner in New York right So he invites me to the dinner in New York cuz I'm his friend And then while he's giving his talk to his first dinner in New York he goes "Wait wait Hillary's supporter and he points at me right?" So I stand up I go "Hey everyone." And I sit down You know he's just sassing me okay Cuz I gave him tons of dough He knows I love him and it's fine Okay So we're 2023 So we're 2023 and he calls me and he says "Will you help me?" Yeah And I had not thought politics Now I I gave him money in 2020 re-election Yeah Probably gave him 10 million bucks I raised him 15 million bucks So I I was you know once I I'm on a side the whole way through I'm raising him money in 17 18 19 20 While he's president I'm totally on his side Yeah And I'm But I'm just his friend I'm not engaged Yeah Okay Because I'm still rebuilding my life Yeah Okay And then 2023 calls me says "Will you help me?" And I actually thought about it like and that was the first time I really thought politics And then I said "Yes." And I gave him 10 million bucks right then and there And then I started talking to him I started going on the campaign trail I started doing research I started doing knowledge I wanted I talked to him about everything I talked to him all the time about everything Did you love it Cuz our our friend Sachs we were talking at dinner last night He seems to love it Like there's nothing not to love As Donald Trump says this is a thousand Super Bowls right For him and for me it's only a hundred Super Bowls I mean if if you're dedicated to America and you're willing to wear America's clothing and to stop worrying about yourself and only care about America Yeah and have no objective post Yeah the president hates when these people have like they raise money post from people they've met in here So I'm never going to work again Okay I'm never going to work This is all I care about I'm just going to help America So he asked me to help him and I start thinking about it I start studying everything and I read everything and I read everything about the White House and I read everything about everything I can possibly read because I'm I'm just that way And uh and then I start helping him Yeah Right And I went to learn how he picked the judges right and the Supreme Court and why it didn't And and uh I'm just very detailed And so I started studying what transition is right Right And I started studying it and I started studying tariffs cuz he wanted to talk about tariffs And he's always thought the trade deficit was wrong and basically a ripoff of America And I started studying everything about it Yeah And so he and I would talk about it and we knew everything about it And then he picked me to run Transition Okay So we're going to talk about terrorists in a sec but so double click into Transition What did you find that was so interesting Like what's I'll give you an example So there's a book called The Gatekeepers that was written that people gave me "Oh you should read this book." And it's about chiefs of staff Okay And basically there's another way to call it It's called The Jerks right Because what they do imagine you're the gatekeeper Yeah You're the gatekeeper of what Yeah of the man who was elected president of the United States of America that he needs the gates kept from him And if you listen to Nixon tapes you hear him scheming to try to learn anything because what happens is the chief of staff everybody reports to the chief of staff and the chief of staff reports to you So you can't get on Air Force One without asking the chief of staff You can't get a document unless you have the chief of staff No one can come see you unless you have the chief of staff And if they take your phone away you know what you are You're imprisoned And that's the gatekeepers So I said to Donald Trump I said "Look you fired Ryance Prieous who was your chief of staff Then you fired John Kelly as the chief of staff Then you fired Mick Mulaney as chief of staff Then you would have fired Meadows but you didn't get a chance cuz you cuz the the the the next election So I said "Why don't you fire the job What you need is a chief of staff who's actually your chief of staff not who's the gatekeeper." Right Right And so that was an example of how I changed it And so Susie Wilds is perfect for Donald Trump You know why She lets him be him John Kelly took away his phone right So he couldn't communicate with anybody Whereas Susie embraces who he is helped him get elected ran a great campaign She's perfect for him in this role And so that's what I brought So I brought like an an understanding of him right And an understanding of the role right Right And that's why I convinced your friend David Sax Every time he said "I can't do it." Yeah I would call him and say "It's an emergency It's emergency I need to see." You'd fly and go "What is it?" I go "You need to join the administration." He goes "That's what the emergency was." I go "Of course." And was And Howard was that when you conceived originally Doge in that initial Was that during the transition All right So Doge yeah we should talk about Doge and tariffs Okay so Doge comes it's it's October of uh before the election Okay Early October October 2024 October 2024 Yeah Like the beginning Yeah of October 2024 And I called the president and I said "I need uh I need to spend an hour with you because I have my big ideas." Yeah Right So he gives me he says "Look I'm not sure what to do October 7th right Why Why don't we figure out what I should be doing October 7th So we decided we're going to go out to the Oell which is uh uh a super religious uh hedic Jewish um Messiah You know the the people who wear black hats think he's the Messiah And they have a crypt for him where you write a note and you put a note in All right And so we agreed we'd go out to that uh to that grave site and we'd probably win 60,000 of those kind of voters which is pretty cool for a day And then we drove there and back together the two of us So I had an hour and a half just he and me talking And I said I want to balance the budget in the United States of America And I this is the way we're going to do it We no one's ever checked the just under four trillion dollars of entitlements Every politician thinks what you have to do is you have to take the retirement age from 65 and make it a 70 right And you have to do this and this and this and this because they never think about the money Totally But people like us totally would say what's the first thing you do What's the value I'm getting for my money Totally right And what you find is if nobody ever like as in ever like I could say the word ever 12 times has looked at where the money goes Totally And so there's not even a process to get it back when you send it to the wrong person You just send another one out Yeah Like think about it You just Well I sent it accidentally or accidentally Notice how it's accidental It's always accidentally sent to the wrong person Really You wouldn't ever say the 5.9 million people who work for the government there could be some crooks in there right No no no It's all accidental What a load of nonsense this is There's some percentage of this But you would say and you would say no just zero base it and let's figure out where it's got to be 25% Yeah we'd all say if it's never been checked how could it not be 25% How could it not be And the answer is that's a trillion dollars a year right Okay So I said I think we're going to cut a trillion dollars a year in expense and then I think we can through tariffs and other means we're going to get revenues have a trillion dollars incremental revenue incremental revenue and we're going to balance the budget but all but sorry let me just ask one question how do the tax cut to the extension of the tax cuts there they're there is zero basis that means where I was yesterday and where I am tomorrow like oh it's a tax cut no it's not it's the exact same thing as yesterday as today to say continuing yesterday tomorrow is like silly So let me ask you let me ask you on tariffs Having studied it yourself When there's higher tariffs people purchase less things cost more No we'll talk about tariffs Let's let's just finish Let's just finish uh Doge So I'm in the car with him right And I said "We're going to balance the budget." And I said "I have one favor to ask of you If we can balance the budget for you will you agree to wave all income tax I see for every person who makes less than $150,000 a year for the United States of America which by the way is about 85% of America Right Right And the reason you want to work for Donald Trump is he looks at me he goes "Sure." You realize the president of United States said "If you balance the budget sure." And he's not lying He's not kidding He's like "Yeah that seems that seems like a great idea." Right Right And so and then I tell him "Okay I'm going to go recruit Elon because Elon's allin." Yeah Right He's already said he's all in He's already said he's going to Pennsylvania Yes Right So I call Elon and I don't know Elon I don't know But he's perfect for this So I use my superpower which is I call everybody else I know who knows him and they arrange and I'm texting with him and he agrees to meet me on October 14th So I fly down to Brownsville Texas Uh he's going to catch the rocket on October 14th Right So that's what he invites me down for the rocket catch That's right Having nothing he's not inviting me for the rocket catch He's just inviting me down that that's a good day for me to meet him So I fly down I see the rocket catch which is awesome Yeah Awesome Awesome Awesome Awesome And then I expect to meet him By the way very pivotal day in the in the campaign If you remember Biden sort of didn't pay as much attention to it Trump was pretty engaged Elon was supportive of Trump So when he actually caught the rocket the media was almost like frozen waiting for it to fail and it didn't fail and it worked and it was just incredible I was waiting for Elon Okay So I flew down to see Elon and uh with with my uh with my son and uh so we watched the rocket right And then they say "Okay he's gonna go hang out with his engineers and party with them." Seems reasonable It's like an hour hour and a half And then he just goes dark You're still waiting I'm just sitting there waiting And then they take me and I go to like a the equivalent of a Margaritavville you know where you have like a a basket and you can get quesadillas and get and you get a Diet Coke in a in a in a red sort of plastic thing that's about this tall It's like got 4,000 ounces of Diet Coke in it that comes with this big But now to his credit he sends me all the executives from SpaceX are hanging with me but he's dark And what happened is he took a nap He was up all night doing the engineering and he went to sleep So then when he finally wakes up so I'm just sitting there like you know doing the like I don't know him really So I'm just doing the thumb twiddle I'm going okay you know this guy's got a couple I'm hoping he sees me right So then he wakes up He says "Come to my house right I'll see you in my house." So his house is 1,200 feet It's got the furniture in it that I had when I graduated from college Yeah Right Okay I'm not kidding I'm not kidding It's 1,200 feet and it's got the furniture plastic chairs and Okay So I say um we're going to balance the budget I need to cut a trillion He's like I'm in He says "I think we should cut 80% of the federal government because the essential employees if the government shut down essential employees are 450,000." Yeah Okay And there's 5.9 million people who work for the government How can 450,000 be essential and there's 5.9 million So he says "Like Twitter I think we should cut 80%." Yeah And I say "I know how to cut 50." And he says "I want to cut 80." I said "I know how to do 50." He goes "Are you with me or against me?" I go "I know how to legally do it What do you have?" And my son says it was like two alpha dogs just like fighting with each other for the first half hour And then and then um so then X comes in right And then he's got to walk X he's got to walk his son X out So he walks his son X out And I'm thinking maybe the meeting's over right Because we've been together a half hour 40 minutes and maybe it's over because he got up and he walked out He comes back and he sits down He goes "Har this meeting is right." That's what he says this meeting and we sit down and we map out the plan I tell them what a gratus vendor is Yeah Because I designed cuz I was not going to go into the government I was doing transition What is a gratus vendor A gratus vendor is uh is a an approved vendor for the United States of America that gives product to the government Doesn't sell it Okay So therefore I don't have to go through the whole process of becoming a proper vendor because you're giving it to us And then if you give it to article two which is the president's stuff then the president can accept it right Because it's give Sorry how what's an example of this Like just to make I write some software You write some software I write some software for the commerce department to do a better job of XYZ Mhm You just give it to me and then I do QA on it and I can take it If you sell it to me for $1 we go into government hell right The whole rigomearole right But if you give it to me right And then I set up you know so I said I'm calling it Doge and I registered the name Doge You said that of course And were you familiar with Dogecoin and Elon It's Elon So what happens is in in the Defense Production Act in World War II yes In order to get all the great executives Yes of America to help with production They named everything after jazz singers or the things that of the people who were on the committee that it would make them laugh and smile Okay Right So I picked Doge so he would laugh and he said get the f out of here Like when I said we're going to name it Doge the Department of Government Efficiency which I didn't think of It was on the internet sort of floating around in June Yes Right But I literally registered it right as the department of government efficiency like make it a real thing as a gratus vendor and I said this is how I've done it for me Yes So that I can run Caner Fitzgerald you can run SpaceX right You you're not you don't have to sign the conflict form and all this stuff because you're not working for the government You're just giving stuff to the government You are literally giving of yourself right But you're not looking for anything You're not taking any money You're not owning anything You're not doing anything You're not on that side of the wall You're on this side you're outside Yeah Right And so we we had fun We talked for two hours And then on my Twitter feed I took a picture of me and Elon outside and I put up "Welcome to Doge We are going to rip the waste out of our $6.5 trillion uh government and balance the budget We must elect Donald J Trump president." Yeah Right and and I posted that with my I probably at the time had 25,000 viewers and I got 45 million views Wow Right So it was me and Eli Yeah And that was the beginning of Doge Yeah Right Then I ran transition which is so for the transition we had I had a room in Maraga Yeah Okay Big conference table in the middle Four 85in screens on one side and mirror four 85in screens on the other side so that you and I could talk to each other So the president sat across from me Yeah Elon sat Oh and then I'll tell you one other story about Elon So he wins the election President wins the election He accepts it like Wednesday at 2:00 in the morning right Elon's not on stage If you see I'm on stage Elon's way in the back of the room There's a thousand people in the room 2,000 people He's way in the back He he goes home Thursday afternoon I call I'm doing a dry run of the launch of my transition right And the president is superstitious He's never had one conversation with me about transition He totally trusts me He wins the election Now he's got a look you know I said on Jess he hasn't talked to you ahead of time about who he about one job about one thing So until the election because he's superstitious like don't waste your time Don't jinx it right Just go win You got to go win So what happens is he So I'm I'm doing a dry run So I call Elon and I said 'Where are you?' He goes 'What do you mean I'm in Austin Texas or whatever I go what are you doing I mean what is the point of you spending three weeks living in Pennsylvania helping the guy get elected if you're not going to help him pick the cabinet Like come on Right Because the way President Trump works he makes decisions by orchestra He likes lots of views and opinions He likes them And anybody who says "Oh the last person who sees him gets them." That's because they don't know him at all Right Right The answer is it's an orchestra Right And I would say "Okay I'm the first violin." You know at the time I would say I was you know I would describe myself as second violin Yeah Right So this is an orchestra So the president's not going to make a decision with me and him alone Yeah No No He's gonna have So he So it went like this president sitting across from me right at the conference table Elon to his left Suzie to his right right JD to my left Linda McMahon who was my co-chair right But she wrote all those EOS that he did That was she was responsible for and I was responsible for personnel but she was with me for personnel So she's sitting to my right JD sitting to my left Don Jr right Steven Miller any and and he there was always 12 people in the room They were never like me and him hushed in the corner doing this and that Never And what we would do is I would put eight candidates on one screen Right Right And then big candidate on each screen Most beautiful AI picture of you've ever seen Right And people would walk in and go "Where'd you get that photo?" I'm like "What do you think I did I took three of your photos." I've heard secondhand stories of this room during the transition that there you walk in and everyone's photo is up on the screen Everybody's on the room And so that's a candidate for a role And then you guys would debate it And so what happened was a big picture of the person Yeah they're they're key highlights of the resume not boring their education right And then you would click a button and you'd see them speaking 20 seconds at a time four of them right So it's about 80 seconds and you're not speaking about the job Just like how do you present Totally And what you can see is his whole cabinet can talk Totally All of them Totally because he picked them knowing I need you to be able to talk to be able to present our ideas and our concepts out there and that's key to him and what I would the way I would joke to people is say how do you do it I go watch pitch so you throw him a curveball he wouldn't swing you throw him fast ball he wouldn't swing you throw him a slider he hits the ball hits it to my glove I go here you go you go well how do you know that I go because I know the guy for 33 years I know what he wants and he loved the process and you know what happened you saw what happened right first A eight candidates 12 jobs national security Okay He says "What do you want?" I go "Eight to four." I put up eight candidates I recruited everybody I had 150 of the best Republicans in the United States of America They each gave me five people who then gave me 10 people I had thousands of people to pick from The whole government was set up to pick from And then we picked candidates I had eight for every job Yeah Eight Eight Eight Eight 8 to four That's Friday Sunday comes in 4 to 2 in the morning I fly everybody in for the two I prep them We go in and meet them Two to one Final interview Give him the job Wow Bang Bang Bang Bang Bang Monday T Monday We're done with national security Okay Now we're rolling on And it just pounds out Why Because he had every candidate Everybody knew it Everybody was prepped Everybody was aware Everybody was done You know that's why I had to beat the heck out of David Saxs because I needed David Sachs to be in the government I recruited David I pounded on David You can ask David right I beat him and beat him and beat him until he finally said "Okay I'm going to do it." Right And I did that for everybody Yeah Right And I made sure he had the greatest choices And then every once in a while he would call me at night and say "Throw this guy in Throw this guy in Throw this guy in." We did a vet on everybody But I didn't take out anything negative I am not a negative person You can tell I'm positive So why would I discuss anything negative about any candidate until I get picked There was no game theory A lot of people speculated there was game theory that we'll put a mix of people that will assume some won't make it out of committee and then we'll end up with the ones that we do want Everyone was the number one choice Only one Only one Only one And that was Matt Matt Yeah What happened what happened with Matt Howard How did that process He he was tortured by his attorney general in the first term and we were not going to have that ever again Right So we needed strong backbone strong capacity of which Matt Gates has it Yeah And I know Matt Gates and he has it Right But we did not know what that vet was going to say from that report from Congress So here was the idea We fight for him and we fight for him to get through and then we read the report The report's not bad Remember the president's been tortured by people blaming him for stuff that never happened Oh 30 years ago he raped this woman in the in the dressing room of Bloomingdales I mean what a load of crap right It's just not true None of it's true It's ridiculous So he he comes at this saying I know you're going to get tortured with ridiculous right So then he says if it's if it's ridiculous then we support Matt and if it's not we have Pam right here right now So that was lined up so that everybody knows it's right here right now And it's 3D chess So we read it Pam Okay It's like Pam in a hundth of a second right And Pam is a rockar And you could argue that you would say "Well why didn't you pick her first?" You know what He's the president He plays 3D chess He did it his way And you know what But there was no candidate up there Yeah Who wasn't right Yeah Right And we could talk about all the detail and how we thought about it what it went But it was so thoughtful so intuitive and so right And what does it produce The greatest cabinet ever The most capable thoughtful best able to communicate I mean it's so fun to be in a room with these people because these are worldclass people the best ever in government We shouldn't betray confidence but I mean we were in a room earlier this week with several of them and everyone had a moment to speak It was unbelievable I mean look every single one of them you're like could have been a leader of the country Like they're all great That's the point He picked He picked greatness Now I was the recruiter So I was a recruiter and chief but I can understand why now by the way Well but think about it If you take someone like me Yeah and you say "Just be a head hunter." Yeah I swear to you I can be the greatest head hunter ever to live Because think about it What's the odds of saying "Okay Howard your whole job is just be a head hunter Find the best guys I promise you I'll be really good Okay Can we go back to Doge So you talked about the Gatus vendors Maybe there's other stuff that you can do with executive action the president can do with Doge etc Can we talk about congressional budgets How how do we actually balance a budget without bringing Congress along And is the plan to bring Congress along I've asked this of Bessant I've asked this several times since we've been here And it's the thing that gives me the most heartache and the most headache is I worry about whether this actually gets there given congressional interests I think Congress works with something called scoring Yeah Right That that if it comes from their pen it counts If it doesn't come from their pen it doesn't count But the fact is money always counts It just doesn't count for their scoring But their scoring is only part of the game right The outcome of the game is what matters to me Elon our cabinet and Donald Trump Okay The outcome of the game And I'm telling you the outcome of the game by me and Elon Now a funny part of it is so I invite Elon to Madison Square Garden He doesn't want to leave Pennsylvania right Because he you know Elon he's committed to Pennsylvania Yeah So I convince him he's got to come and we have a plan I'm going to say to him so I everyone else gets introduced by the voice of God I'm the only one who introduces Elon So Elon comes on stage with me There's the two of us on stage in Madison Square Garden The only time the two of us are on stage I'm the fourth speaker He's the third from the end JD is second from the end And Donald Trump is last Okay So he's supposed to say when I I say to him "How much are you going to cut?" The deal was he's going to cut $1 trillion And then he's supposed to say "And how much are you going to earn?" And I'm supposed to say "1 $1 trillion." And then we're supposed to say "Together we're going to balance budget United States of America." That's that's the little sort of thing So I ask Elon "How much you going to cut?" And he because he said he said two trillion Well because we're in front of 22,000 people and the place is erupting He says two trillion and then I'm sitting there going and I'm like I think I said allighty then or something like that you know like what was I supposed to say you know so later when he walks back to a trillion no you were you were caught off guard but I mean it's quite how much you going to earn No cuz he said two trillion I got it all don't worry like like I said all righty then and that was that So then I walked off stage and you know he said two trillion so like what am I going to say But the answer was always right that 25% of the waste for an abuse is a trillion dollars right And he's got to cut and find the waste for an abuse of a trillion dollars Okay Okay And that my job is to raise $1 trillion of exogenous new revenues new revenue for the government And we Right I'm telling you I've been here now two months Yeah Right I am more confident it's going to happen and more excited Tell us how it happened Well hold on a second So Howard let's let's finish this and then we'll move to tariffs and revenue generation So there's a lot of domestic terrorism Is that the response to try to slow down the expense side of the house Is it is it basically to put fear into people that are trying to find this waste and fraud Is that is that what that is The burning of the dealerships The If you're I I describe it to people this way Let's say Social Security didn't send out their checks this month My mother-in-law who's 94 she wouldn't call and complain Mhm She just wouldn't She'd think something got messed up and she'll get it next month Yeah Mhm A fraudster always makes the loudest noise screaming yelling and complaining And if all the guys who did PayPal like Elon knows this by heart right Anybody who's been in the payment system and the process system knows the easiest way to find the fraudster is to stop payments and listen Yeah Cuz whoever screams is the one stealing Yeah Cuz my mother-in-law is not calling I mean come on Your mother 80 year olds 90 year olds they trust the government They trust Okay maybe it got screwed up Big deal They're not going to call and scream at someone But someone who's stealing always does So what happens is we need to get to so the people who are getting that free money stealing the money inappropriately getting the money have an inside person who's routing the money They are going to yell and scream But real America is going to be rewarded because here's the key benefit of the doubt Not one penny should stop going to we're the richest country on earth Yeah Here's the way I say it I said "We have we have a $6.5 trillion budget We have $4.5 trillion of revenues." Yeah Okay We lose $2 trillion a year We have a $29 trillion GDP right Which people don't understand and which I'll explain a little bit And we have 36 trillion in debt Yeah What number didn't I say to a business person What's our balance sheet worth Right Right I say 500 trillion Right The president says a quadrillion But at 500 trillion or quadrillion 36 trillion we're rich We don't have to take one penny from someone who deserves social security Not one penny for someone who deserves Medicaid Medicare What we have to do is stop sending money to someone who's not hurt who's on disability for 50 years It's ridiculous And they have another job And do we have to monetize our assets We We need to be smart That's all we need to be And I'm going to tell you things that are just smart They're not oh my god there's the most brilliant thing ever This is just smart There are so many smart things we can do Like you know we'll talk about the post office right Think about this The post office has 625,000 people who work there and they go to your house every day You know what the census does The census hires 625,000 people trains them teaches them has interviews 2 million people trains and teaches them hires cars How about this You're genius That's pretty smart Howard Right Okay Like obvious right But here's what it is I'll tell you what I'm going to I'm really good at pattern recognition Okay Here's one like tell me 625 of one and I can point out 625 of another This is the genius I bring to the government Seriously this is this is core fun By the way you're responsible for all the core data collection as well aren't you Isn't commerce responsible for generating a lot of the GDP for economic Oh that's I get to talk about GDP and how I'm going to how I'm going to clean up the nonsense is in GDP You know I can explain that if you make a tank and someone buys a tank that is GDP Yeah But a thousand people thinking about buying a tank right who take your tax money and I give it to them and they go I wonder should we buy a tank or not That's not GDP right You're saying government spending should not be counted in GDP No government spending to buy a tank right should be right Government spending that's nonproductive Non-productive This is so important I don't think I don't think a lot of people realize this How how much of GDP is nonproductive government spending How about we do one thing Yeah G DP D means domestic P is prod domestic production It's not consumption Right If I go out and buy a Toyota right Right That's not GDP Right If I buy a Chevy that's made in America that's a D Right So people think it's like a consumption model right That's not it And you could check another one is is there's gross domestic income right That's also good So by the way they're about they grow about the same rate It's it's kind of fun So the key for me is to take out the part that if I cut nonproductive a million government employees who are nonproductive meaning they don't make tanks Right Right If I take that out it's going to look like our GDP declined But you'd say "But what really happened?" No Our expenses went down This is so important by the way because people talk about a recession and a lot of people create a lot of red lights and alarm bells about we're going to go into a recession if we cut all this spending But the followon effect of cutting nonproductive spending is that the workforce and those dollars flow into more productive parts of the economy where we make more things we create more jobs we create higher wages And that's the theory that you guys are trying to execute against I don't think a lot of people in the general public fully understand that is so important to kind of explain and get across here Okay If we put three people behind us and they sat behind us and they did nothing and each of us gave them $125,000 just like this Here you go And they just sat there right What is that right That's not GDP That's actually me taking my money and giving it to them We produced nothing We've no purpose of the earth It was my money The income however I earned my income was mine and I just gave it to them They didn't really earn income It's really a transfer pricing model that is currently considered in GDP and it's nonsense So if I stopped paying them okay right What would I do The first thing you'd say is well then why am I paying so much tax Bang Okay So now we're in the concept of where Howard do you have an intuition on what the actual GDP number is I'm sure you if you take out non-productive spending Yeah But I I'm not going to talk about it until we release it because that's the proper way to do stuff Got it Right But and I'm going to break that out I think it's 25% and I'm going to break it out and I'm going to break it out for the last 20 years and what you're going to see 15% every time the quarter just before an election All the government spending happens right then and there And all of a sudden you have this jump in GDP right Total lie right Total lie They basically they just take all this money and they jack it into the quarter so that we have that and you'll see it It goes Whoop And then they can what do you think the first quarter is Whammo or the second quarter is whammo Why Because you pre-spent it Right Right Right And then you have this whole and it's it's gross Yeah Okay That's the only way to us You're like really But it's so manipulated Let me ask and the answer is I mean and to your point the the the game that's being played is we're going to take taxpayer dollars that people don't understand once you give it to the government We're going to create these waves of fake growth that try to tip elections so that then the grift and the waste and all the fraud can then continue for as many years until the jig gets replayed over and over again And it seems like the buck is stopping with you guys because you've exposed it It's going to and that's the idea The idea is to take a trillion of waste fraud and abuse out Yeah and then make a trillion from having other people um resetting global trade and once you understand global trade and how it makes sense and where it came from Yeah Can you explain that to us Sorry Before before we get there I want to ask one last question on on on the cuts Can we speak in um do we need to speak in a more empathetic way because that trillion dollars of spending flows into someone's pocket some percentage of that pays people a salary and they live on that income And I think a lot of the Okay I think this is important for you to highlight because a lot of people are reacting to Elon and Doge and the budget cuts saying you're destroying jobs You're taking money away from people that need their jobs Why are you why rich people are taking away I'm going to give you a sad example And so like help us understand are people going to lose their jobs I'm going to give you a sad example We all remember during the co there was the PPP money Yeah Remember that Yeah Totally So it was proven that 200 billion of the 1.2 trillion was going to Chinese fraud gangs What Why that proven You just make up a company right You know Joe's Delhi Yeah You make it up Joe's Deli right Say you're in trouble File and they sent you money Yeah So why wouldn't Chinese gangs do that Come on So we show not we but people showed the government those people that money and instead of stopping they said yeah but we can't stop because there are real people who need the money And so what happens is because there's no no one's ever been fired ever for sending money to the wrong place People send it on purpose I'm not saying everybody sends it on purpose I'm saying there are some people who send it on purpose some people who are complete morons and and an enormous number of people who work for the government who are awesome I mean amazing people right But what percentage Okay if there's 5.9 million people who work for the government you're like "Wow that's like so many and we're paying them all And how many do you really need?" I mean if the answer is 2 million wow And we could talk about how we understand it and how we're going to retrain society for the AI industrial revolution is coming which is going to create the greatest set of jobs and greatest set of growth ever Ever Okay But that but then and we can talk about that But the key is stop sending money to the wrong place so we can make sure we can always defend sending money to the right place I would never allow if I can stand it to not pay somebody who retired at 65 their benefits I find it disgusting when we're the richest country in the world and some politician says to in order to save Social Security rather than getting rid of the waste fraud and abuse we should move it to 70 Yeah How about How about No How about we're rich enough to give people the benefit of the bargain Yeah Mhm of being a great American but let's put great people in charge That's really well said I think that that's really well said Okay let's put a pin in let's put a pin in this because so let's Howard explain to us global trade as you understand it and then the context of tariffs and maybe historically and what role they played now So I I remind people that on the earth there was the dark ages So the dark ages meant that the world knew how to read and then because of religious and other actions they burned all the books Yeah Right And literally the earth stopped learning how to read for 500 years or 400 years We didn't know how to read And we knew how to read before So how could you forget So America was built on tariffs with no income tax No income tax till 1913 None Greatest richest country in the world So when Donald Trump says make America great again what he's talking about is from 1880 to 1913 when the country had so much money that we had blue ribbon commissions which you guys would have been on Yeah Right To try to figure out how to spend the money Right Right And no income tax Then we put in the income tax in 1913 Why Because we're entering World War I Yeah And don't we all need to contribute to protect democracy and to protect our way of life Right Then what happens is the world goes into chaos We come out of chaos right And then we're starting to think of what do we do What do we do And then 1929 the stock market crashes right 1933 we start to say oh oh god we forgot we need to do tariffs 1933 how can you do tariffs when the markets crash The world's in going into depression and you're going to do tariffs in 1933 You can't charge the rest of the world money unless the rest of the world's okay That's right So it was too little too late right So then we come out of World War II It's 1945 We need to rebuild the world Okay So we decide we're going to take our tariffs down and we'll let them here's the key we'll let them have tariffs be up and we will export the power of our economy to let them rebuild and we'll let them rebuild and that's what happens So 1945 we have the Marshall Plan right And we do it in Japan of course because they need to be rebuilt What's the difference right So they need to be rebuilt And then what happens We have the 50s and we have the Korean War So we let them rebuild which means low tariffs here high tariffs there Low tariffs here high tariffs there Then we have the Vietnam war right So now all of a sudden we have all of Southeast Asia low tariffs here high tariffs there You know what the best example I can give you to make it crystal clear Kuwait We spend what almost hundred billion dollars freeing Kuwait Mhm Right You know who has the highest tariffs against the United States of America The number one country with the highest tariffs against the United States of America Kuwait And you think what That's it But here's what it is If you go back to this understanding the way America thinks you need to be rebuilt You were just destroyed right all their oils were You remember red The guy's name was Red something and he was the guy who capped all the there were fires in all the the the oil wells and he capped them all and it was amazing So we let them put up high tariffs But you know what the problem is Then we forget right And we let it go Yeah So Donald Trump comes in and says it's got to stop Okay So that's an incredible context now for tariffs It's like it was a long-term strategy that essentially says "Okay great There's rebuilding to be done sort of almost out of the large s of America We're going to enable that to happen So we'll lower tariffs here and we'll support the high tariff regimes over there We let it happen We let it happen on purpose But it's an incredible thing you're also saying though which is that it's inexurably linked to this repetitive machinery of war because those create these boundary conditions over and over again Always where there's so much destruction abroad that America then feels compelled to have to do this Correct That's exactly That's exactly right So what happens is and then you say to yourself okay I get the 40s I get the 50s I get the 70s right But 80s 90s 2000 2010 What time out 20 So Donald Trump gets elected 2016 Who understands this Okay let me give you a hint Donald J Trump Who else Nobody Nobody Yeah Right You'd say "Wow he understand." And how long's he been talking about it 40 years Why Because in the 80s he's saying "What are you doing?" Well let me give you the economist's counter which and then you can respond to it which is tariffs on imports in the United States will ultimately pass to the consumer higher prices inflationary So the things that our consumers that our citizens are buying gets more expensive and as a result they buy less and it's recessionary It shrinks the economy it shrinks spending it shrinks uh consumption Can you kind of respond to the you know that's the the typical economist refrain on this independent and maybe they're isolating the imbalance Okay India has a 50% tariff on average 50 We have on average four Okay I would say to the person who said that can I ask you a question What are you talking about They're 50 and four Here's what you're talking about when we're all equal and everything is free and fair If you raise tariffs and they raise tariffs isn't it bad for society The answer is of course it is But there's two differences Number one let's do human beings first before we go to the math Let's go to human beings Once upon a time we had an auto industry in Detroit Okay And in Ohio but Detroit then some genius named Bill Clinton signs the North American Free Trade Agreement or corporations You can screw Americans and go get cheap labor in Mexico and break the unions by going to Canada Now if you were a General Motors I'd say it's like my birthday Yeah But if you're a worker who comes from Michigan or Ohio they just signed you know what they signed Worst statistic I'm going to tell you today Average life expectancy of high school educated workforce So by the way United States of America 23 is high school educated one-third is college educated The difference today of average life expectancy between those two categories is seven years Sevenyear average life expectancy It's not the air It's not the food It's not the medicine It's despair My grandfather worked in the auto factory My father worked in the autoactory I have a good life I'm going to do Friday night lights and football I mean it's gonna it's going to be a good life I have a good middle class life I'm a member of the United Auto Workers Life is going to be good The factory moves to Mexico and I am just screwed because the government of the United States of America had a didn't care about industrial policy and didn't protect me at all and let cheap labor in Mexico I'm sure the Mexican people got went from $4 an hour to $5 an hour and they're kicking it But I destroyed you And that is incredible failure of industrial policy which nobody wants to talk about But you talk about it at average life expectancy And you're talking about it about reassuring and building the life for the people who are America That's why you elect Donald Trump president you elect him because I didn't spend one minute doing politics until he asked me to help him But when he asked me to help him I started spending time with him When did I learn this And who taught me this The president of the United States This is not me teaching him You understand This is him teaching me And you can see him talking about it in the 80s Right Right He's been talking about this for and what it does is it means reshore So number one we have to care about human beings That's a globalist view Yes If I take my production and move it to Mexico it's better for me Mr Corporation Okay But it's not better for me Mr US citizen of the United States of America who's working at a car plant That's bad news for him Okay And that's number one And now let's go to number two which is the math of it all If we say free and fair trade I want to remind you there ain't no such thing There is no country in this world that is free trade Zero And we are the lowest and the dumbest because everybody else is higher and more protective Yeah So they protect their farmers Here I I'm sitting at the dinner Modi comes to town and I say to him when Donald Trump we have dinner and after the nicities Donald says "Go ahead Go ahead Howard." And I said "You have 1.4 billion people and you brag to us how amazing your economy is Why won't you buy a bushel of our corn We'll buy a bushel of our corn so our farmers can't go to him but his of course can come at us right Why is that okay?" You know and we can go into all the stuff that oh I mean I don't even want to go into it because if I had another hour I could retell you stories that are fun with that but just address the pricing inflation that arises from tariffs Talk to the average person who says the cost of a toy at Walmart just went up by 50% Inflation comes from printing more money Okay Let's say the United States of America had $1 trillion That's all we had That's it No more Okay And I want to buy a bottle of water and you want to buy a bottle of water One came from America and the other one came from Fiji right Then and I tariff Fiji then that water is a dollar and a quarter and this water's a dollar Yeah that's not inflation That means that one's more expensive but I can choose to buy this one Right Okay So you're right This toy might be more expensive and that toy is not I get it But that's not inflation Here's inflation Snap my fingers Now we have 2 trillion right That water is a $150 That water is a dollar and a quarter Yeah Everything's more expensive That's inflation Okay So inflation without tariffs is everything's a buck and a quarter Now what inflation with tariffs is a buck and a quarter right And a buck 50 And so you have to understand inflation doesn't come from tariffs Certain products If I put a tariff on a mango right We we can't grow mangoes in America The we just can't grow a mango If you put a tariff on a mango the mango would be more expensive Yes Okay But if the president chose to put a tariff on a mango then the mango is more expensive That's just becomes a consumption tax It's like a sales tax Yes Right It's a sales tax It's a consumption tax If I want to buy a mango it costs more money And you can offset that with a reduction in but that's so then that's just like another version of income tax How do you how do you Okay So the idea is to not do that Yeah That's the idea The idea is to is to choose things that are going to reshore Yeah Exactly Come here This is so important Hire my people Yeah Bring it home Yeah And by the way I want to just speak as an entrepreneur I see the economic incentive when I see the price for certain things go higher because you have to import and pay a tariff I'm like why don't we make that here We should be doing that And there's going to be a lot of that kind of entrepreneurial opportunity that will arise from making things And it this is just how the markets work Someone will say two trillion so far I mean he's been in office right like seven weeks eight weeks Yeah.$2 $2 trillion dollar of committed domestic production coming back because of his tariffs TMC saying I'll build uh you know semiconductor wafers Yeah Um you know everything we do they're going to build it here That word is never coming Yeah Yeah Unless the tariff So what happens is you bring it here you create the jobs here and then they avoid the tariff And by the way those jobs are better paying and they're more productive than the government funded What do you what do you want to do about like the the narrow set of products that are more high value than the mango that maybe can't be made here or at least can't be made here in the next 5 to 10 years So TSMC can make chips I think that's great ASML who makes the extremely complicated lithography machines as an example can't necessarily do that for another five or six years here So there's these narrow cases where tariffs can exploit a market or perturb a market where there is no multi- vendor solution right But that's still critical How do you think about that set of stuff You know the the beauty of putting Donald Trump in the White House is it's it's it's giant three-dimensional chess Yeah Okay So we all have Stockholm syndrome for the Internal Revenue Service We think we like the Internal Revenue Service and we don't say it but when we say we're going to charge a tariff and other countries who lean on us who rely on us who bleed on us who can't live without the oxygen that is our economy Cuz remember the thing about our economy is while we have a $29 trillion GDP we are the consumer of 20 trillion Yeah Right And this is the key thing We buy everybody's stuff So who's more important The let's say they have an economy that produces stuff and we have an economy that buys stuff Yeah The customer is always right We all know the customer is always right because if no one buys it they can't produce it right So everybody needs our economy when now I mean to the fact that China consumes less than 10 trillion and primarily tries to figure out how to sell it to itself Yeah Right So they don't buy anybody else's stuff Right So we are the world's consumer We're the world's customer Right Right So that's point number one So we want them to come here and if they can't come here what if you pass Okay Now let's say there was a 20% tariff and in order to sell his goods he knows he can raise the price 10% but he can't really sell it raise it 20 So he eats 10 and the price goes up 10 Let's just say that 20 goes into the coffers of the United States of America from the president of the United States who said we're going to balance the budget and then his goal is to drive down income tax United States of America including waving tax So what has he said so far with that in his pocket knowing that this is what we're going to try to do What does he announce No tax on tips no tax on overtime no tax on social security Why is he saying those things Right because he knows that he's got Elon's going to cut and Howard's going to raise and he's going to have the tools to deliver on his promise more money for folks to spend and they'll have more money to spend right so if you if you actually get the external revenue service right which of course I named you know I named it but you know but you know what the funny part is I came up with the name I wrote a truth right and I sent it to to DJT and I wrote this is my huge idea you know with one of those things that goes like this Yeah You know on the like my huge idea right And because it's the external revenue service but it only matters because I work for him Mhm Because if I worked for Joe Biden or anybody else they wouldn't care at all So the fact that he loves a great idea the minute you say it and it becomes his idea My idea is useless A good idea in his hands Okay So speaking of all the value in the world So the external revenue service if it if we went back to make America great again Yeah Which is pre-1913 which is let them pay you don't pay And what that means is let them pay try to wave balance the budget Try to wave tax on everybody who makes less than 150,000 Yeah Right And look what you did for America Holy moly Look what you by the way labor costs come smashing down because it's taxree Yeah So if their earnings are taxfree right Then they're happy to work because they get the money right So what happens is cost of labor comes down because we're run correctly as a government This is what I'm trying to do Speaking of potentially great ideas can you tell us about the Trump card Sure So whose idea was that And how did that come about John Pollson had a call with Donald Trump and was talking to Donald Trump and was kicking around the idea of we should sell right Why do we give away visas We should sell them And they're talking about it Uh Donald Trump calls me gets me on the phone right We all talk about it right And then we go from there And then my job is to figure out like I always figure out how to do it What's the path Let's go figure it out Of course about two weeks from today it goes out Okay Elon's building me the software right now Yeah Right And then out it goes And by the way uh yesterday I sold a thousand Oh you did I got a poly market I created on how many are you guys going to sell this year So yeah Curious to see how many That's fantastic Do you want to tell people just the rough terms Okay Yeah So if you're a US citizen you pay global tax Yeah Okay So you're not going to bring in outsiders going to come in to pay global tax So if you have a green card which used to be a green card now gold card you're a permanent resident of America You can be a citizen but you don't have to be And none of them are going to choose to be What they're going to do is they're going to have the right to be in America They'd be pay $5 million and they have the right to be an American They have the right to be an American as long as they're good As long as they're good people and they're vetted and they're vetted and they can't break the law We could always take it away if they're like evil or mean or bad or something Not mean but you know if they do something horrible you could take it away right But but the idea is if if I was not American and I lived in any other country I would buy six One for me one for my wife and my four kids because God forbid something happens I I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport to go to America and them to say hello Mr Lutnik Hello Mr Lennox and the Latin family Welcome home Right That's what I want to hear I don't want to hear I can't come here when there's a you know a a horrible war a horrible whatever right I want to be able to go home right And once I'm home I might as well build a business Yeah So you have the most productive people in the world going to start spending time here They're going to have a family office They're going to hire some people and you're not going to tax their external worldwide income I only tax the money they make in America which is what we do now But their global income stays out and they pay 5 million And how many people do you think there are that could qualify in the world How many There are 37 million people in the world who are capable of buying the card in case you were wondering 37 million That's a lot more than Chad GPT told me Who are capable of buying Who are capable of buying it Now I'm not saying they will but they're capable of buying How many do you think he'll sell Uh the president thinks we can sell a million So five trillion trillion dollars I think a million is reasonable I mean look as as an outsider who came in and got his green card and then got his citizenship and now pay global tax every which way known to man if this were available 15 years ago after the Facebook IPO that's what I would have done It would have been much better for me theoretically Now I'm happy I'm happy to pay the tax So the idea So the idea is um and it's going to go fast Meaning you apply right We take your money and you know the way computers work now they have these cool things like these computer things They're amazing You like you know you put stuff in and they actually check everything It's It's fantastic I don't You don't even have to plug them in anymore It's amazing Like they get them they get the information through the air I mean you could do a better vet Yeah Than anybody in government has ever done it before in one second right Better than they've ever done it before So I'll I mean I'll tell you a quick story Monday night Elon was telling us about this Nean Sachs And one of the things he was saying is he's been helping you build this site these builders But one of the most difficult parts of it is it turns out like all of the CPB infrastructure to do all these checks it's like a lot of cobalt mainframes and the amount of technology that has to get rewritten And so this is a question big opportunity It's incredible that the most advanced nation in the world deployed systems in 1970 which at the time probably felt very cutting edge to everybody in the room at the time but to your point has not evolved in the last 50 years It's always there's always a reason okay and the reason is it's a great reason which is that uh in the mid70s we changed the way government accounts for software we we took a 10-year contract and you have to take the contract up front So if I if I'm signing a contract with you for 10 years a million a year I have to take it against my budget for 10 million So I'm not doing it See I'm only here for four years So what happens is when was the last time we bought software 1975 Where Everywhere Yeah Why Cuz it's illogical Now what I'm doing is I'm saying okay I got to collect tariffs right So I go to one of the great software companies of the earth and I say I want you to give me you're going to build for me for America You're going to build the greatest customs processing ever We're going to take a photograph It's going to know what it is It's going to go through AI It's going to know what it is It's going to know what the tariff is It's going to determine the percentage It's going to know the weight So when you weigh the thing plus the package you'll know what it weighs You don't even have to open it It'll weigh exactly the right amount And you'll do this and that And these are all things that I know and all things I could figure out Cuz you know the way gold works like gold bar is about 40 pounds You know the way I know that gold bar is they weigh it and they weigh out 13 digits of decimals So basically if you touch the thing it's not going to be 13 digits of decimals So you have a perfect scale and you weigh it and that's like the code Yeah Right Because you can't touch if you touch it you'll change the and you can't get it right out 13 digits It's just not possible So that's we do with stuff You know what it weighs right Three t-shirts on a if you send in the same three t-shirts they always weigh the same But what's incredible is you're convincing these companies to basically like do right for America and build this software for you You think that's going to be a movement throughout the government or is that here's the idea I say "Build it for me for free." Yeah I put it in for free I don't know what other countries in the world you think going to buy now Right If it works for us well remember you have to you have to connect to me Yeah So every country is going to buy right And it's a great business model Right Right If the greatest customer in the world says they'll take it Yeah life's good right So what should the greatest customer in the world get I don't know a good deal Yeah Right And you got a guy like me there You know everybody else is like Howard you have to change how government operates if you're going to scale that You can't go negotiate every contract out there for every department I mean it's not that hard when you say it free You know free is like not that hard I mean you Yes it is And then what I do is I get the head of that technology company Yeah Because I then I use my superpower which is my friendship with Donald Trump and then I go in the Oval Office and we call him together right And we call the CEO together and make him promise the president Promising Howard is like really nice right Promising DJT that's something else entirely So I get these guys to promise Donald Trump that they'll build it right now Let's see him reag Yeah it ain't going to happen So you know when you get Elon to say "I'm going to build it for you." And he says it in front of the president like how great is that You got like the greatest technologist the richest guy in the world He says "I'll build it for you." You're like "Thank God." Right And then I get you know I go to the heads of Google and Microsoft and Amazon They're all for America building for us right For free right To make America better because they are great American companies And in exchange for that we're going to help them through all sorts of things that are towards fairness Just towards fairness because I you can't get me to do something outside the world of fairness But I tell you what if it's unfair I'll be on your side as hard and as positive as I possibly can be Talk to us about some of the hot button markets that you're going to have to navigate You know you are in charge of export controls which is a very important thing in AI We don't allow export licenses for the most advanced NVIDIA chips We don't want training necessarily to be done outside of the United States We're okay with inference happening outside the United States in certain conditions Maybe just talk about that for a second How like how do you how are you going to navigate AI How do you think about that from your seat All right So I I'll give you an example that's sort of live right now Yeah Right So we have DeepSeek we have Quinn we have DOBA Yeah Right And and I don't think we should be having apps in America And I don't think we should have their website in America because they all go back home Okay But it's open source And I want our American companies including college students to be able to download it and build on it Right But I want to make sure that there's no part of it that says send it home to Dada Right Or or store now and analyze later Right Right So I need that out So what I want to do is I'm going to embrace what you guys know You guys are used to product evaluations Yeah So let's do security val Exactly Right and say your industry and you can't let it get overwhelm overrun by Chinese because what happens is if there's a policy right all of a sudden a 100,000 people from China come in and they say they're John John Smith and and and Todd Peterson right But they're not and then you think the vote is this way Yeah And it's easily manipulated So we have to be very careful But my first instinct is to lean on and that and that's why I see it's important to have David Saxs as my partner right Someone who knows it and and someone who can live and breathe the industry right And so what we're going to have is we're going to have security evaluation and say if the security evaluation model says that this is a good model then people can download it Yeah but it's smell like what we're good at I don't want to create like oh this is what I don't want to do I want us to do it but I've got to figure out the right way to do that right And that's important Articulate the standards articulate sort of the concept and then let a lot of these private market actors kind of help fill in the gaps and compete The only thing I I think I really need to do and that's with regulatory is postquantum cryptography Yeah Okay I I think that is vital to us That's right Yeah Right That that you know as I would bet this happens during this administration He bets post I I know I'm gonna put it out because you know we all have passwords right For those who are watching who don't know this Our passwords called asymmetric right Yours is different than mine right That's the key and cryptography is just the computing So asymmetric key cryptography you have your password I have mine and they're the key That's right Right Obviously the central hub has our key Duh Okay A a quantum computer we know can break all of them in a nancond Like all of them in the whole world including the CIA all of them RSA 2048 all of them can get broken in a nancond by a quantum computer Yeah So the defense of it is called postquantum cryptography right We know how to do it and we'll come out with a rule that says America's got to protect itself New standards And by the way there are because every once in a while you need to have a new standard that says it's coming We know what it is Please God go put it in because we need to have it in We need America to deliver Great segue Let's let's sort of segue now to a couple things that we can enjoin together in this concept Crypto obviously Bitcoin You guys announced the strategic Bitcoin reserve but broadly speaking you also announced sort of this idea of the sovereign wealth fund Can we talk about that sort of what is the what is the vision behind that How do you want that to be executed How do you think it should be run What assets are on the table What assets and strategies may should never be on the table How are you thinking about it The greatest customer in the world the United States government the most powerful the greatest customer buys stuff We walk in we're gonna buy here's the example I like to use we're gonna buy two billion COVID vaccines When we buy it FISA and Madna stocks are going to triple They're going to triple because then we say everyone's got to have this vaccine If I were after Jared Kushner negotiated the best deal he could if Howard Lutnik walked in the room Howard Lutenic would say "What do you think 20% warrants Right 20% warrants right Right What So we'd make $50 billion off of who Nobody We didn't take from anybody We didn't do Okay The shareholders of Fizer who we've just tripled them with our order Right now how many of my customers in my life have required that from me All of them All of them Like this isn't like oh Howard this is the greatest new idea ever This is just business proper So I don't view risk of the sovereign wealth fund I view the first couple of years of the sovereign wealth fund or Scott Bessant and I making money Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday and Friday Say well but you can't invest and lose Don't you lose money No Why Well if I have big daddy of the United States of America behind me right And I'll give you I'll give you an example We buy missiles episodically Launch a missile buy a missile Launch a missile buy some missiles Right The people who sell us missiles have bad quarterly earnings or good quarterly earnings but they're episodic Yeah Here we go I will sign a contract with you 10-year contract cancel it at the end of five years to buy X amount of missiles and I'll pay you quarterly Then they can take that contract they can go finance it their financing costs go their earnings are steady and their multiple improves and their stock doubles up Yeah And I say in exchange for that reasonable thought how about a little warrants right Give me stock Just for people that don't understand give me some stock Give me a little bit of your stock But but don't give me some stock Just give me the upside If I if I help your stock go up just a little bit I I get to share it And you know what I do Wipe my beak a little bit And then I take the money Yeah For the United States of America and I put it into the social security system in the United States of America Okay So why have And then all of a sudden right So the social security system says it's 4 trillion in the hole Yeah Okay If we cut the waste for abuse out it becomes uh 1.5 trillion And by the way Frank Biznano the greatest executive the greatest payments executive ever to join the US government is about to get confirmed and take over the social security system Okay Frank ran Fiserve $120 billion public payments company And when Donald Trump asked him in his interview can you handle social security It's 1.3 trillion a year He goes well see I I handle 500 billion a day So uh Wednesday right And he goes my whole life I my whole life all I worry about is getting rid of waste fraud abuse That's all I care about every single day $5 $2 $1 He goes "This is going to be the most fun I've ever had." Yeah I mean this Yeah Like this is a Donald Trump administration This is something that's another planet Now of course I recruit Frank and you know I get to have my piece in the game But if we get rid of a couple hundred billion then it's only a trillion four in the hole We make a trillion four Yeah That baby's that baby is finished forever Is the sovereign wealth fund a balance sheet for social security Does social security become more than what it is today Does it over time offer bigger greater benefits And is it basically a pool that holds equities Historically and we talked about this on our show it's only ever held treasuries but it's really kind of a fake treasury It's got 2.7 trillion today but if we bought the S&P in 1971 when we went off the gold standard with the cash flows that have come in and gone out of social security we'd have a $15 trillion interest in the S&P today But you'd have that that would have had you have Donald Trump be the president the whole time which was not a thing right Okay But is that is that the objective is that the sovereign wealth fund is basically for the benefit of retirees in this country and it becomes like a sovereign wealth fund that we have a $36 trillion budget deficit I mean debt debt Yeah To the United States of America and we we have a budget deficit of two trillion So Donald Trump wants to knock down the two trillion Yeah And then he's focused on the 36 trillion of which the social security is part of it Yeah So how he allocates it He was elected president of the United States I was not Yeah Okay I like the social security idea because it's really easy to explain to people and sell to people and so they understand it But the fact is that it's the same money if I put it in social security or I put it on the debt of the United States of America And I'm going to let Donald Trump make that decision You know why Because it's all he's like and none of it's not mine So he will decide that Okay And he will play it his way But but Scott Bessant and I will make more than a trillion dollars for the United States of America during our term which is pretty darn cool right And we'll use that and if that reduces our debt right But that's not the policy of how we're going to balance the budget We're going to balance the budget Trump card tariffs getting rid of scams I'll give you a scam example Every boat you've ever seen like every single cruise ship super tanker container ship you've never seen an American flag ever In fact you ever think about the flag you've actually seen All of you would say "I have no idea what that flag is." Like why is it some flag I never heard of Liberia is number one And you go what No one even knows where Liberia is Because the answer is it's a flag of convenience They sell the flag for like 10 grand Like they literally here you can have a flag and you pay no tax So what happens is a cruise ship in the United States of America picks up American passengers goes in the Caribbean comes back to America and treats the port as an expense and all the profits are made in the Caribbean where it pays no tax That's what I call a tax scam Yeah I mean it's unfair to America We're going to fix that in America We're going to try to fix a whole bunch of these tax scams Ireland is my favorite The country of Ireland last year had a $60 billion budget surplus So we lose$2 trillion and they make 60 He'd say Ireland what do they do Oh they have all of our IP for our great tech all the tech companies All our great tech companies and great pharma companies And pharma Yeah They all put it there because it's low tax and they don't pay us They pay them So that's got to end So when those things end tariffs trump card getting rid of tax scams to get fair tax that's my trillion Elon's got to do his trillion So whenever I see him getting off the rails he and I go out and we have a strong conversation together that you've got to do your trillion So you got to focus not on small potatoes right Big big big big big I need you to do your side of the trillion Now as it turns out I'm going to do more than a trillion cuz I'm me Elon's probably going to do more than a trillion because he's him And then what we're going to do is going to our objective is to smash down the Internal Revenue Service and change America And then imagine America This is just an imagination moment okay We have a balanced budget in the United States We're starting to knock down the the deficit of America We can cut tax and we have a gold card a Trump card that you can come to America Which entrepreneur have you ever met who wouldn't buy one Yeah and wouldn't start building businesses when they think the tax rate here is going to come down and eventually it's going to come down to 20% and eventually it's going to come down to 15% You won't be able to find a plot of land in America You know what I predict will happen I predict the just like in the medallion industry for taxi cabs there'll be a financing industry that'll build up around these uh these gold cards or these trump cards that great entrepreneurs great executives will be able to finance their purchase along with someone getting venture capital interest or equity interest in their business But I'm going to we're going to take that money We're gonna we so we'll sell them every year Yeah Right So they'll knock down our budget deficit and then eventually Right If if Donald Trump is right and ultimately we can sell 7 million cards Mhm You realize there is no debt in America No debt in America is a trillion dollars a year in debt coverage Right Trillion dollars a year in debt coverage You know what that changes That changes the Internal Revenue Service You you start to rethink and I just want to remind you right We are the richest country on earth Our balance sheet is 500 trillion I give you an example What's the court system of America worth Right Right What's it worth Well how can Nvidia be worth three trillion without a court system that protects it Right There's no such thing So just our everything about us the infrastructure is awesome And you know what happens We we we actually like we get beaten upon and we actually believe it Yeah You could ask Doug Bergam about how undervalued a lot of our real estate is in this country and the potential for it We think about Biden closed 635 million acres This is this is electing Joe Biden head of Saudi Arabia and he closes the oil wells Yeah And all of a sudden Saudi Arabia falls off the face of the earth broke Like what are we doing Like we care about Americans Yeah Let's make Americans lives great Howard we want clean water We want clean air Okay We do it better than everybody else But if we don't Here's the one like the hypocrisy right We won't mine lithium in America to make a battery Yeah But so we so the Australians mine it with coal and it's messy because they do it like you know they do it messy By the way we breathe the air in 3.4 days but who's counting right Then we take it we put it on a truck We take put the truck and put it in a super tanker We drive this super tanker that pollutes the living heck out of the world across 12,000 miles of ocean puts it in a truck and gives it to Elon to make an electric car Why don't we mine the lithium in Nevada right And by the way we'd mine it cleaner right And by the way it's not just lithium Almost anything that we could possibly conceive of needing over the next couple of decades exists in the continental United States We just have had no incentive or no structure regulatory wise that enables the development of it which is this is we need to care for us make America you know America first How about there's another way to say well maintaining clean environmental first Well maintaining environmental standards Yeah Don't look we're never going to do something that's not like a hundred times cleaner than everybody else cuz we care about clean water and clean air There's none of us who don't care about clean water and clean air but you know like someone gives you a pill and says "This will save you." And then you look at the statistic and it saves one in a million people and you'd say "Uh why am I taking this pill?" You say "Well it'll it could save your life." You'd say "Yeah but it's like one in a million." Right That's not logical Right That's the point You know there's a regulation That's the right thing Yeah And there's a regulation that's that's the one ina million pill Like why do we give a baby a baby a hepatitis B vaccine Do you realize we have a brand new baby and we hold it up and we give it a hepatitis B vaccine You realize the only way you get hepatitis B was is from unprotected uh sex or a needle Like why are we giving them to a baby Like why And you know what it is You know what the answer is corruption that someone in the government got paid to put that in the rules and because there's no justification There's no I haven't met a medical doctor who says hepatitis B vaccines on brand new babies make sense because by the way you know what the worst part is They only last 10 years You need a booster in 10 years So the baby's going to be 10 We've got to really be fair to ourselves and be fair to Americans And I think we can be And I think that's why I'm so excited That's why our cabinet is so excited That's why it's so much fun to work for Donald Trump Because I am just speaking from his playbook right Because if you had met me before he said "Will you help me?" And he went out to dinner with me and said "So tell me about government." I'd say "Uh government You mean I pay them taxes?" Like that's it Are you having the time of your life the most fun ever because I have every idea either gets blown up or shot down Okay Meaning I come up with lots of ideas and he says "Nah too complex." And you know what That's fine Yeah But when I come up with the external revenue service and he says "Great idea." And then he speaks of it in his inaugural address right It's his idea Yeah Because I can't do anything with it Howard last question as we wrap Tell us about your family your kids how do they think about all of this Your son's running caner now How's that going Just give us the lay of the land How how's the Lutnik family All right So I have I have the best wife I've been married 30 years Uh she lets me be me and she's gorgeous spectacular I love my girl Um she agreed I mean imagine this I'm not I'm not joining the government I'm not joining the government I'm doing this Doge thing with Elon I'm not joining I'm not joining Honey we got to move Like honey we got to move two weeks after election day I'm like we're moving And uh we're going to in five weeks we're going to live in Washington okay And like so the fact that that wasn't unsettling would be the understatement of a lifetime But she's been the most supportive and fantastic I have four kids Uh my oldest son about to turn 29 I was taking him to kindergarten so that's why I'm alive My second son Brandon I dropped him off in nursing school and then took my oldest son to kindergarten Um so the two oldest boys are running caner now until I Deb asked Is it going well I don't know Oh you of course you're not supposed to know you It's kind of fun I would love to talk to them about it You have no idea but I'm not allowed Like I I literally am not allowed And you know we all know the phones Yeah So since the phone's always with me and I assume the phone is listening You know ever since we couldn't take our battery out of our phone you know the phone is listening So you know I'm not No So I never talked to my son So uh I'm sure they're happy but I don't know how it's going Guys if you're listening he's doing great as you can tell but and then my my daughter is going to go to med school Yeah And she's on a gap year now And my youngest son also on a gap year now and he's going to uh start Duke in the fall right So I have the best kids uh my kids have lived with me and they lived with this kind of energy and this positive sort of momentum and and my wife being just a spectacular mom just keeping them what we taught our kids which is a fun one is uh I taught him two things uh I would sit down with my kids and say how great is your life and this is only maybe something that people like we can say but I'm talking to my kids I say how great is your life they go great cuz they came home and they Hey I got a bad grade Teacher doesn't like me It's a classic line right Yeah And I said well how good's your life Really good I go could it be be any better No Well do you realize your teacher has given up her whole life Yeah And she makes how much money Yeah And she's given her whole life to teach you Yeah So can I ask you a question Is it her job to like you or is it your job for her to like you who's failing in what you just said right It's your job to have her like you So when she says raise your hand raise your hand Right And the other thing is do me a favor color inside the lines Okay In high school if she says this guy is orange the answer to the test is orange When you get to college you can argue with the professor all you want High school color inside the lines Give the teacher what she wants Make sure she loves you and you're getting a good grade That's the rules of life Yeah And my wife beat that into my children so that they would have it in their souls in their moral character Yeah Of someone who's fighting for you needs to have your love and respect back If you take them for granted if you treat them badly if you treat them like "Oh aren't I so great?" Then you deserve what you get And my wife has taught that moral fiber into my children and it it resides in them And the other thing my kids have is they have empathy which is a very unusual thing for young people And it's because they're they were raised with their father crying every day I cried every day until October 21st 2004 Wow every day because I thought of someone I hadn't thought of you know or someone would say 658 people died and I I just there was you can't process all of that death Yeah Without crying And and the only reason I remember is cuz as I fell asleep I told my wife that I didn't cry today and she wrote it down That's the only reason I remember So um my kids are are fantastic They've been incredibly supportive and uh and my wife's the best and she lives with me in Washington We bought Brett Bear's house so I have a nice house big enough for my ego to expand Very important Tomorrow hasn't found one that big yet to look at Howard you're an incredible American Thank you very much for everything This was really fun in coming to talk Honestly this is this has been one of my I mean my favorite conversation we've had Absolutely I mean like he's like this all the time I mean not just like we have dinner at like Nicasha's house who's a good friend of ours runs Paul Altera Networks and Howard's like you just push the button and you can just sit and just listen You can listen to him for hours By the way I will say I'll echo the point you made earlier I think every member of this cabinet is an incredible storyteller I mean you're like on another level but like the storytelling I think is what's so powerful about this cabinet and this administration And I think it's going to take some time to get the message out But man is are there incredible ambassadors to do so with they are so capable Yeah Each of them is so capable so thoughtful I mean I I am honored to be on this cabinet with them But we all get to work for Donald Trump who can intuitively tell you "Go fix eggs." Yeah Yeah And then Brooke goes fix eggs and eggs are down like 40% And Brooke fixes eggs I mean how awesome is that Right And gas is down 40 cents right And he's only just begun if we get if we get the Constitution pipeline in New York passed And I sat with him while Donald Trump lectured Governor Hokll on the unbelievable oil in fracking that they have in New York and the wealth that New York could have if they unleashed it but they refused to unleash it So he's going to force the Constitution pipeline which by the way will drop gas on the east coast of the United States of America in half M I mean this is and that's you know then you got that's Chris Wright that's Doug Bergam you got Brook Rollins I mean you could just go you know Scott Bessant you know so thoughtful and elegant I mean he's he just step by step by step and you have really the most fun cabinet working for the most intuitive smartest guy to ever sit behind the Resolute desk and we're going to make America great again not as a slogan but we're going to balance the budget we're going change America Thank you Howard Thanks [Music] Howard I'm going all in