Kevin Hassett on Tariffs & Ken Burns on The American Revolution 11/17/25

Summary

Squawk Pod: Kevin Hassett on Tariffs & Ken Burns on The American Revolution (11/17/25)

Episode Overview

This episode focuses on two central themes: economic policy and American history. The Squawk Box anchors (Joe Kernen, Andrew Ross Sorkin, Becky Quick off today) discuss recent developments in markets, White House policies on tariffs and affordability with economic advisor Kevin Hassett, market valuation with Lori Calvasina of RBC, and later dive into the importance and complexity of the American Revolution with documentary filmmaker Ken Burns.

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Key Segments and Discussion Points

1. Market Update and Economic Jitters

• Bitcoin & Equities:

  • Bitcoin saw an 8% decline last week, dipping below $95,000, raising eyebrows about volatility and its non-correlation with other assets.
  • Major focus on forthcoming Nvidia earnings report, considered a bellwether for tech and AI stocks.
  • Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway took a surprising $5B stake in Alphabet (Google).
  • Ongoing concerns about high equity valuations and breadth in S&P 500.

• Notable Quotes:

  • “I don’t know if anyone really thought it would hold 100 [Bitcoin]. I think Novograd said it would, but he didn’t really have a lot of conviction…” — Joe Kernen [02:54]
  • “The NASDAQ's been ... you know, the AI stocks obviously feeling the nosebleed territory.” — Joe Kernen [03:30]
  • “We’ve been talking about this for two weeks now... It feels like the whole game is riding on this [Nvidia].” — Andrew Ross Sorkin [03:56]

2. Market Valuation & Private Credit Analysis with Lori Calvasina (RBC)

• Valuation Concerns:

  • The market faces a “plain old fashioned valuation problem,” with major AI and tech stocks carrying the market — raising risk of indigestion but not necessarily a crash.
  • S&P 500 ex-top-10 trades at approx. 18x earnings, not expensive compared to history but at the higher end of post-COVID recovery multiples.
  • Tech (esp. AI) margin expectations are up, but industrials and materials down.

• Private Credit Worries:

  • Increasing focus on private credit’s lack of transparency, compared to earlier fretting over commercial real estate.
  • Caution is warranted but systemic risk perceived to be in check due to vigilance, especially compared to pre-2008.

• Notable Quotes:

  • “You don’t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.” — Lori Calvasina [09:27]
  • “We have to consolidate a bit, have a little bit of indigestion.” — Lori Calvasina [09:27]
  • “The breadth had been improving...” — Joe Kernen [11:20]

• On Sentiment:

  • Investor sentiment has stalled, matching choppy sideways market movements after a strong rally.

• On Private Credit:

  • “The lack of transparency makes people nervous ... there are enough of us with gray hair around to take some lessons from those [past crises].” — Lori Calvasina [16:02, 16:20]

• Timestamps:

  • [09:15–13:47] Valuation & margins
  • [14:35–17:20] Private credit & past financial crises

3. Interview: Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)

• Tariffs and Food Price Inflation:

  • President Trump has cut tariffs on over 200 food items (e.g., coffee, beef, bananas, tomatoes) to reduce prices on goods not produced in the U.S.
  • Purpose: Blanket removal to avoid piecemeal exemptions.

• Inflation and Living Costs:

  • Affordability remains in focus because past high inflation led to lasting price increases; real wages fell during the previous administration but have seen a $1,200 increase this year.
  • Hassett assigns blame for inflation primarily to his predecessors’ policies.

• Fed Independence:

  • Strong emphasis on maintaining Federal Reserve independence, despite past criticism.
  • Counsel for Fed to “turn a page” and rely on data.

• Workforce and AI Productivity:

  • AI credited for rising productivity, possibly leading to slower labor market expansions as firms can do more with fewer people.

• Notable Quotes:

  • “Purchasing power has gone up ... real wages ... have gone up by about $1,200 this year. So the way to think about it is that we've dug a $3,000 hole because of Biden policies, and we've gained $1,200 on the way out already...” — Kevin Hassett [26:00]
  • “It’s just kind of astonishing to me that the cost problem is somehow being blamed on us.” — Kevin Hassett [01:04, echoed at 26:00]
  • “What the president just did with food is decide to make, like a blanket movement so that we weren't going through each deal and picking this and that.” — Kevin Hassett [01:12, 27:57]
  • “I totally reject that ... if you go in and you're going to be the Fed chair, your job 100% of the time is to run an independent, data driven Fed.” — Kevin Hassett [29:57]
  • “Firms are finding that AI is making their workers so productive that they don’t necessarily have to hire the new kids out of college.” — Kevin Hassett [18:08, 31:28]

• Timestamps:

  • [23:30–33:20] Tariffs, wages, Fed, labor market

4. The American Revolution with Ken Burns

• Film Motivation and Scope:

  • Burns describes his nearly 10-year journey to create a comprehensive series on the American Revolution for PBS.
  • Aims to present the Revolution as both a world war and civil war, emphasizing its complexity, bloodiness, and transformative impact on citizenship and democracy.

• Storytelling Approach:

  • Extensive use of reenactment footage and 400 first-person quotes read by A-list actors.
  • Avoids direct political analogies but acknowledges the Revolution’s constant relevance.

• Modern Relevance:

  • Advocates understanding the Revolution’s complexity to foster greater perspective and national unity amidst today’s divisions.

• Notable Quotes:

  • “We wanted to do a deep dive into what I think is the most important event since the birth of Christ, the creation of the United States.” — Ken Burns [01:22, 35:32]
  • “It’s a complicated film. There are Native Americans involved. We can’t pretend they’re not involved. There are enslaved and free Black people involved. Women, half the population, are central to the success of the resistance...” — Ken Burns [39:58]
  • “If I had to say, and I usually don’t on any film, I’d like to put the US back in the US with this film.” — Ken Burns [41:00]
  • “He [Washington] gives up his power twice ... Everybody was happy for him to be, you know, president for life. And he said, no, the highest office in the land is citizen. He got what this experiment was.” — Ken Burns [42:49]
  • “Right now things are really complicated and the American Revolution is the beginning of that complication ... and we should celebrate that complexity.” — Ken Burns [33:33, 45:29]

• Timestamps:

  • [34:58–46:08] Ken Burns on the Revolution

---

Memorable Moments & Quotes

• Joe Kernen on Market Psychology:

  • “We’re not Pollyannish, not whistling past the graveyard. Maybe we can get a meteor.” [22:18]

• Ken Burns on Historical Complexity:

  • “It isn’t just great ideas in Philadelphia. It’s incredibly bloody.” [37:35]

• Kevin Hassett on Economic Blame:

  • “It’s just kind of astonishing to me that the cost problem is somehow being blamed on us.” [01:04, 26:00]

• Ken Burns on Reenactment:

  • “We have a cast of like 60 people... Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Sir Kenneth Branagh...” [39:03]

• Ken Burns on American Identity:

  • “The highest office in the land is citizen.” [42:49]

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Conclusion

This episode of Squawk Pod delivers a rich mix of real-time economic analysis, market skepticism, and political context, capped by an insightful, humanistic conversation about American identity and history. The interplay between urgent economic policy—tariffs, inflation, valuations, and AI’s impact—and the enduring lessons of the American Revolution is underscored throughout, with guests providing both numbers-driven and philosophical perspectives.

Listeners will walk away with a clearer understanding of why affordability is such a pressing issue, informed skepticism about market volatility and valuation, and a deeply textured sense of how America’s complex past holds answers and hope for today’s equally complex present.

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Detailed Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:25–03:56] — Market volatility, Bitcoin, and AI stocks
• [09:15–13:47] — Lori Calvasina on market valuations
• [14:35–17:20] — Private credit market concerns
• [23:30–33:20] — Kevin Hassett on inflation, tariffs, and the Fed
• [34:58–46:08] — Ken Burns on the American Revolution

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For further exploration:

• Kevin Hassett on direct payments & inflation policy: [23:30–27:57]
• Ken Burns, “I'd like to put the US back in the US”: [41:00]
• Discussion on market breadth, margin debt, and historical parallels: [20:13–22:30]

Transcript

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

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[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

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[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

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[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod affordability in America and the President's response to poor prices. He's cut tariffs on certain food items. A top economic advisor to the White House, Kevin Hassett.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

It's just kind of astonishing to me that the cost problem is somehow being blamed on us.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Is it enough to tame inflation fears?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

What the President just did with food is decide to make like a blanket movement so that we weren't going through each deal and picking this and that.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

And filmmaker Ken Burns.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

We wanted to do a deep dive into what I think is the most interesting important event since the birth of Christ.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

On his epic look at the American Revolution nearly 250 years after the history changing events that he says are as timely as ever.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

I'd like to put the U.S. back in the U.S. plus, is the bull.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Market of the last few years taking on too much debt?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This is where Joe Kernan, you may be right. Stick with me for a second.

[Joe Kernan]

I'm with you.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

After years of soaring equity prices, a noted bond investor says while hold on to your cash. Is this a turning point? RBC Capital Markets Lori Calvin joins us.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

I feel like we just have a.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Plain old fashioned valuation problem and puts things into perspective.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

You've got the stocks carrying the weight of the market, but there is still a tremendous amount of jitters around those stocks. So we do have some bad days thrown in with the good days.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

It's Monday, November 17, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Stand Andre by in 3, 2, 1. Q. Andrew.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Good morning and welcome to Squawk Box. Right here on CNBC. We're live @ the NASDAQ markets out in Times Square. I'm Andrew Sorkin along with Joe Kernan. Becky is off today, but we got a lot going on on this Monday morning. Let's talk about crypto because Bitcoin fell about 8% between last Monday and then Friday, dipped under $95,000 over the weekend. Had some people on edge. I don't know if you people will feel better this morning, but we're sitting just at about $95,570. What does that say to you?

[Joe Kernan]

Joseph Kernan, tough Monday morning, got the 92. At one point it was, you know, it was 125. So it is volatile. I did, you know, I don't know if anyone really thought it would hold 100. I think Novograd said it would, but he didn't really have a lot of conviction that was going to hold 100. We're going to talk about it today, but it certainly is volatile. It was, you know, I don't know what it's correlated with because the Nasdaq actually was up on Friday. I don't know whether that changes. The dow's down over 300 points, right?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

So that's supposed to be like a gold thing. Is it supposed to be your digital gold?

[Joe Kernan]

It sort of hasn't been correlated to anything except maybe AI stocks, you know, although, well, see, Friday, Friday, the Nasdaq did better. The NASDAQ's been, you know, the AI stocks have obviously feeling the nosebleed, their nosebleed territory. A lot of people think they're expensive. Get a look on on Wednesday, everybody. I mean, we've been talking about this.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

For the whole week. It feels like the whole game is riding on this.

[Joe Kernan]

For two weeks we've been talking about Nvidia. It's important. Big week ahead for the markets in the economy. On the squawk planner, the bellwether Nvidia is going to report third quarter results after the bell on Wednesday. It's also a key week, though, for retail. We're going to get results from Home Depot, Lowe's, Target, Walmart and more. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is going to release the shutdown delayed September jobs report on a Thursday. So it's going to be a jobs Thursday. And Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will visit the White House tomorrow for talks with President Trump. Trump, Saudi Arabia has pledged hundreds of billions of dollars in US Investments in May when the president visited the Middle East.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Meantime, Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway taking a stake in Google parent Alphabet. This one was surprising. We learned about it over the weekend. The Conglomerate's end of Q3 equity snapshot revealing a nearly 18 million share position in the company worth roughly $5 billion. Unclear if Buffett, of course, made this call himself to buy Alphabet could be some of his other teammates now. The equity snapshot reflecting Berkshire's position from the end of September. So again, things may have changed even since then. But at Berkshire's 2019 annual meeting, Buffett and Charlie Munger said they had, quote, screwed up by not buying Alphabet earlier, even though they saw how well Google Advertising was working for Berkshire's own operations. Of course, they did double down on Apple at the time, and that was.

[Joe Kernan]

A worthy bet laid on Apple for.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Them in a big way. They were late on Apple, but late on most. You know, being in this case, being late on Apple for him was not so bad.

[Joe Kernan]

Lighten up on him. I don't think it's him, by the way. I don't. I'm not sure he gets involved in much anymore. I think he's sort of passed the baton at this point. He's kind of implied that.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Yep.

[Joe Kernan]

What do you do with Disney and. And Apple? Lightning up on both of the. Or not him. What did Berkshire do?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I think that they did.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

For on both of those cases. But let me just give you a little.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah, you got your 13F right there.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Just trying to find it. You know what? Hold on.

[Joe Kernan]

We'll, we'll return.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We'll come back to that in one sec.

[Joe Kernan]

Trump administration taking steps to reduce food costs in the U.S. president. Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Pared back on Apple, but I don't see Disney that you're talking about. I don't know.

[Joe Kernan]

Maybe not if he was to be sure.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't remember him being in Disney. He owns actually piece of News Corp. Interestingly, by the way. Amex, bank of America, Coca Cola. When was the last time he was in Disney?

[Joe Kernan]

He's not then. Obviously it's not wrongly prepared back never was in it, I guess. If you say so. I thought I saw a headline that said Disney Buffett. All right. President Trump cutting tariffs on more than 200 food products, including coffee, beef, bananas and tomatoes. The White House fact sheet says given progress on trade deals, the president decided certain foods could be exempt from tariffs because they're not grown or processed in the U.S. here's how a National Economic Council director, Kevin Hassett the prices for.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Those goods weren't necessarily going up just because of tariffs. And so the prices will go down? Well, the prices will go down of.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Course, but because the tariffs have been taken off.

[Joe Kernan]

Right?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Well, because the supply of the goods into the US Is going to increase.

[Joe Kernan]

Wall Street Journal reports President Trump's aides are working on a plan on plans to deal with voters frustrations over the cost of living in America, including potentially striking more deals with pharmaceutical companies, green lighting, more offshore drilling. We're going to speak with Kevin Hassett.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Bond investor Jeffrey Gundlach recommending a 20% cash position to hedge against a severe market downturn which he sees brewing in an overhyped promise of AI driven transformation. Gundlach making those comments on Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast and he criticized what he called garbage lending and flagged concerns in close to $2 trillion of what we've all been talking about the private credit market Unlock saying he thinks the US Equity market currently among the least healthy he's seen in his career. And so we're going to talk a little bit more about that this morning. As you look at those equity markets.

[Joe Kernan]

I never pay attention to him on equities and it's been that has served me well.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Served you well.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah. With bonds it seems to know but there's been multiple times and it's always negative hugely on the stock market. One of these days it could be right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I guess we're getting closer to right than than right. Like 4 years ago if he said.

[Joe Kernan]

That he was retrospect over the past and every time he said it's like when Bill Gross used to talk about stocks. It's like Bill, they never write about great bond investors. That doesn't always translate. He's warned so many times about here at the table.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We do she actually is an equity expert.

[Joe Kernan]

He's not in a great mood.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Who might have a view on all.

[Joe Kernan]

LORI calvin, RBC he's in a great mood.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

This came out of hair makeup.

[Joe Kernan]

What about the stock market? You worry about margin debt? I think a little bit. Are you not?

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

I feel like we just have a plain old fashioned valuation problem. Like you know, I know there have been some extremely cautious voices out there. There are some extremely exuberant voices out there. I'm somewhere in the middle. I think we can still have a good year next year. I still see more upside into next year. But you know, we have valuations bumping up against the ceiling and that's making people very, very nervous. And that doesn't mean we have to go back gfc, you know, type downturn. That doesn't mean this has to be the tech bubble. Sometimes stocks do get a little bit over our skis and you know, we have to consolidate a bit, have a little bit of indigestion, but you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[Joe Kernan]

Well, what did you calculate this past earnings season? What? Earnings gains were much better than people thought, were they not? Where did it come in at you? 12%, 13%, 14%?

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

I forget the exact percentage, but if you look at earnings beats and sales beats versus consensus, not just beats, but above. Yeah. And they ticked up, you know, versus we had even better beat rates than what we had had the prior reporting season. What you did see was that operating margin expectations came down just a bit and that was really offsetting strength that we saw in tech. Tech margin expectations went up but things like industrials, materials energy went down. Right. It was really the AI versus kind of cyclical economy type dichotomy that you saw in that data.

[Joe Kernan]

Investor sentiment got less bullish, which is not, that is not bearish, is it?

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

So it's bullish. I think we're at a range now where you should be up about 10% or so over the next 12 months if you look at the four week average on the AAII net bulls. What's really interesting about that data set though is it's just been chopping around over the last few months and it basically went back up recently to the highs that it had seen earlier this summer, earlier this fall and then pulled back in a little bit. And you know, if you look at things like nfib, you look at the consumer sentiment surveys, there seems to have been a little bit of a stall in sentiment across the board. Some of those indicators are stronger than others. But we've been in a very sentiment driven market. So you're sort of seeing this stall in the sentiment indicators and you're seeing the market kind of chop around and trade sideways in here, which you know, makes a lot of sense after a big run.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah, the breadth had been improving most recently. In your comments you're saying you mentioned bad breath.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

Yeah, yeah. We looked at a stat where we're just looking at the percent of stocks that are above their 50 day moving average or their 100 day moving average and start to see that come in a little bit. And even in the post Covid era usually get a little bit of a pullback in that broader S&P 500. When that happens, it hasn't happened this time. And what I think we're seeing, it's really, really odd because you've got The AI stocks carrying the weight of the market. But there is still a tremendous amount of jitters around those AI stocks. So we do have some bad days thrown in with the good days. But if you look at momentum, you know, we've had just a very strong run in that factor. You're starting to see high quality act a little bit better, low volume act a little bit better. Health care is having a big move as people are getting a little bit jittery on this market. So you're starting to see some of these kind of more defensive factors and sectors act a little bit better in here.

[Joe Kernan]

We've had people talk about the S&P 500 trading at whatever 23, even though it's not as bad as it was because earnings did so well. But the s and P 493 trading at much lower multiples. So you talk about hitting a valuation ceiling.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

Yeah.

[Joe Kernan]

That'S still concentrated in certain names.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

You know what's really fascinating? So we look a little bit beyond the Mag 7. So we have this one data series where we look at the top 10 market cap names in the S and P and we rebalance it every week and we go back a few decades and then we look at the rest of the S And P, the 490. I think the 490 is trading a little above 18 times right now. It's not expensive, is it? It's not expensive, but if you look at it in the context of history, in 2021, we got a lot higher than that. You know, when we kind of had all this stimulus money, you know, people goosing, you know, on the retail side, big, big surge out post Covid, putting that peak aside, this is about as good as that particular indicator gets. And then if you look at the top 10 names in the S&P 500, we're trading around 28 times now. That's nowhere near the tech bubble highs, but it's pretty close to the kind of post tech bubble highs. And I think recently I've seen that go as high as 30, but it really hasn't been able to break above that level since the fall. So both of these areas. Right. Even the rest of the market, which doesn't look that bad on the multiple itself in terms of its own history, this is about as good as both of those tend to get.

[Joe Kernan]

I remember that we had, I think it was Jared Bernstein came on. He had written a piece about valuations and we kind of challenged him because the valuation he used for Nvidia was based on a trailing twelve month price to earnings multiple. When you look at a future pe, it was half of what it was because it's growing so quickly. This just highlights how important that Wednesday number is. But Nvidia Future on forward PE, it's not like 1999. Nothing like 1999.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

That's what our data shows.

[Joe Kernan]

But some of the stuff that they're forecasting obviously is circular and they've got all these weird relationships.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Where do you live in the private. What do you make of what's happening in private credit? Back to the Gundlach point, which is, I think there's a real anxiety among some, especially focus on that space, that we actually just don't know how, how interconnected some of these loans are, how collateralized they are. All of the things that you, in a normal world you would want to know. And probably by the way, back even in 2008, you'd have a better idea of knowing given that so much of the loan volume came out of banks.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

Back then right now. And look, I used to be a small cap strategist, right? And one of the things we talk a lot about in the small cap world is a lot of stuff that might normally be bought by small cap value investors and still sitting in the public markets has now been kind of sucked into the private equity world. So I would say, you know, two things. One, I do think the lack of transparency makes people nervous. You know, back when we had sort of at the beginning of reporting season, right, we had a couple of these issues come up and Dimon made his cockroach comment. This was a big, you know, kind of point of conversation. And I think going back to the valuation comment and just how far we've run, people get more worried about this kind of stuff when you have these sorts of valuation levels. They're a little bit easier to not worry about quite as much when you haven't had a big run like this. Someone compared it to me recently to kind of the commercial real estate issue, which we were all up in arms about a couple years ago. There was a lot of focus on that issue. There's a lot of focus on this issue now. But I do think, you know, you kind of run into the transparency.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, but does that worry? So that is interesting, by the way. That's a great comparison insofar as we talked about it incessantly. Yeah, we wrung our hands. This is where Joe Kernan, you may be right. If you want to stick with me for a second, I'm with you because everybody went crazy. Yeah, and guess what turned out to be kind of ok. Yeah.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

And I remember I was doing a presentation at one point where this to a group of financials folks, to be honest, you know, this issue of commercial real estate came up a few years ago and they were asking me what I thought. And I said, well, I care more about what you think. And I said, you know, I'm listening to everything all of you are saying. And the fact that there are so many eyes on this. I've lived through the gfc. I've lived through the tech bubble. The fact that you're all so vigilant gives me a little bit of comfort. And I think that's something we have to keep in mind. Right. When you go back to these past crises, we never exactly repeat the same mistakes. Right. There's so much nervousness from people who lived through those things, frankly, you know, when we see, you know, sort of these discussions of risk emerging. And I think that's really what this is all about. Is there just kind of too much risk in the system? This tends to happen. And I think older folks are a little bit more nervous about the younger folks who haven't lived through the GFC or lived through the tech bubble. I think there are enough of us with gray hair around to take some lessons from those.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't see any gray hair.

[Lori Calvasina (RBC Capital Markets)]

It's all covered up very expensively.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You're doing great.

[Joe Kernan]

You're doing great, Lori. Thank you. You know, AI, as imperfect as it is, it's. There's receipts and you can ask just about any question. And what's the question? Well, how many times has Gunlak predicted either a crash or that stocks were way too high? And it will give you serially all the dates and times and receipts for when it's happened. So you can't get away with outliving your bad calls in the past.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Cheese will be next.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Coming up, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett will break down the White House plans for tackling food inflation. What's next for the Federal Reserve and what might be driving a quiet time in the markets?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I think that there could be a little bit of almost a quiet time in the labor market because firms are finding that AI is making their workers so productive that they don't necessarily have to hire the new kids out of college and so on.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Squawk pod will be right back. Our state has changed a lot in the last 140 years. We know because Multicare has been here guided by a single making our communities healthier. That comes from making courageous decisions, partnering with local communities to grow programs and services, and expanding healthcare access to those who need it most. Together, we're building a healthier future. Learn more@ multicare.org trading@schwab is powered by.

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[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

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[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Welcome back to Squawk Pod from CNBC Today with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin.

[Joe Kernan]

I'm efforting something.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Efforting.

[Joe Kernan]

I don't like that word.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I don't know that term either.

[Joe Kernan]

Efforting.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

But I am efforting something.

[Joe Kernan]

So it I will Laurie mentioned and we're talking about private credit.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yep.

[Joe Kernan]

Margin debt is hitting a record.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And just to explain to the audience, margin debt is when folks are basically buying stock or other kinds of equities or or other instruments using margin meaning using loans. Yeah, this is what I've been talking about for the last month and a half. Incessantly.

[Joe Kernan]

Private credit or margin debt?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Both.

[Joe Kernan]

Well, margin debt, it goes up and it can keep going up and you never know when it's peaking but it's at a record. And in the past there have been other times where margin debt gets very high and you do get an S and P consolidation. So I'm efforting to get a 30 or 40 year FINRA margin debt chart along with correlated to the S and P and there could be there can be significant pullbacks from but this was.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

The problem in 1970.

[Joe Kernan]

I understand it always rhymes differently and like anything, valuation usually doesn't all of a sudden cause a big. Just because things are expensive, you can't say that it's going to crash next week.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

That's true.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Or that it's going to pull back.

[Joe Kernan]

But there have been times, we just should say that in the past there have been times where. But as the margin debt is going up on the chart, it's a new high here, it's at a new high here, it's at a new high here. And then finally in hindsight, you can see that it was predicting or not predicting.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Here's the thing. J.P. morgan did it did put out a chart, I want to say about a month ago. And if you looked at that chart and you looked at timing the market, anytime you got above sort of a 23 times P E multiple, if you had bought into the market at that point on the index, 10 years later you're up not you would have only been up between up 2% or down 2%.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah, but then there's other things that show if you're out of the market two or three days, important days, bottoms that you can. It's better just to go ahead. And if you have time, if you're.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You know, if you have time, if.

[Joe Kernan]

You'Re not 80, look, if you have.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

30 years, you're in good shape.

[Joe Kernan]

But you know, so they hit margin debt hit a high in July of 2007 and then it went down. Okay, May of 2018, it hit a high and then, you know, things happen. March, March of 2020. Then came Covid and we know what happened there. So there have been times in the past. Doesn't mean it's going to happen anytime. But margin debt is very high. So we're not Pollyannish, not whistling past the graveyard. Maybe we can get a meteor. President Trump cutting tariffs on more than 200 food products. The administration saying that certain foods could be exempt since they're not grown or processed here in the US Join us now to talk about the cost of living tariffs and the possibility of sending Americans $2,000 direct payments. White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. Good morning, Kevin. How are you?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

You guys had a great marriage session there. Marriage counseling session. I think there's hope for you too.

[Joe Kernan]

There's hope. We got. Maybe we cover the COVID of the gambit. Professional optimist, professional skeptics. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Kevin and I have been fairly optimistic. When people come on about of the US Economy, I can find a lot of positive things. Why do you think affordability is such a buzzword right now. I mean, we live through 9% inflation. And I think Biden years, they averaged over 5% for those four years. We're at the highest levels that we've seen recently at 3%. Why all of a sudden, is it, I don't know, is it Trump's fault?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Right. Well, I mean, for sure, people still are trying to dig out from the big hole that was dug by the previous administration's policies. So if you figure the typical mortgage payment, monthly mortgage payment, about doubled. If you look at a typical bag of groceries, the monthly bag of groceries cost about $400 when President Trump was leaving office last time and about $512 right about when President Trump took office. And since then, it's gone up almost not at all. I think it's like $515, but it hasn't gone back to $400. And so what the Democrats are doing is they're saying that this runaway spending that we gave you guys, that created runaway inflation is 100% your fault because you haven't fixed it already. And of course, that's very economically illiterate. And I don't think really many people in markets are buying it.

[Joe Kernan]

Well, I'll tell you, Kevin, one of the reasons I think that people are, and I'm going to highlight both sides, one of the reasons people feel like they're not keeping up is because real average weekly wages fell during the Biden years because of the inflation.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

$3,000. That's right.

[Joe Kernan]

Right. So it fell. However, the President is constantly saying prices have come down now. Inflation is still 3%. It's still too high. Now. Oil prices, energy prices, there are certain things where they have come down. But when you keep saying prices are falling, that's not true, because inflation is still, it's. The 3% is on top of all the inflation we had during the Biden years. So we got all that inflation, plus an additional 3%. And we should, I think you should.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Admit that a more, a more precise way to say it, though, Joe, is that purchasing power has gone up. So real wages, that's W divided by P for our technical people audience, have gone up by about $1,200 this year. So the way to think about it is that we've dug a $3,000 hole because of Biden policies, and we've gained $1,200 on the way out already, which should give you a great deal of hope for the future, that the wage increases that we're seeing will continue. And even if inflation stays positive, make it so that people feel way better when they go to the grocery store and to buy a car. You know, we've reduced the cost of buying a car with the deductibility of interest. I mean, there's a million things that we're doing to fix this problem. But it's just kind of astonishing to me that the cost problem is somehow being blamed on us. Now, think about it, especially with the Obamacare thing. So Obamacare is 100% Democratic policy. It's always been 100% Democratic policy. What they did is they expanded the subsidies during COVID and then all those subsidies basically went right into the pockets of insurance companies. And Obamacare insurance policies have doubled in price relative to normal policies. And so the fastest inflation in the economy is these big government subsidies throwing at Obamacare insurance. Think about it. It's kind of like if you give lots of student loans, then the tuition goes up. It's that effect. And so now they're blaming President Trump for Obamacare as well. They should have fixed Obamacare in the first place. And President Trump had a plan in the big beautiful bill to give people some subsidies. But the Democrats didn't like it because the subsidies weren't going to their campaign contributors, the insurance companies.

[Joe Kernan]

The whole issue of tariffs, if we're reversing some tariffs to try to help affordability, isn't that acknowledging that the tariffs are responsible for some of the higher prices and for some of the inflation? That is still a problem.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Well, first, this is nothing new. If you go through all of the trade deals that we've been doing all the way through, then there have been things that we decided it was prudent, based on the economics of supply and demand, to exempt. And one of those things that we've been exempting all along is something that we don't make in the US we'll never make in the US or almost never. I know that in Hawaii, they make some coffee and so on. Shoring that production really doesn't make sense. It's not part of our strategy. And what the president just did with food is decide to make, like a blanket movement so that we weren't going through each deal and picking this and that.

[Joe Kernan]

What. What's going on with India? Just as an aside, in terms of a trade deal, we've been so close so many times. Were we ever close?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Yeah, we were, for sure. Very close. I've spoken to the ambassador and, you know, we've had visits. And I think that it's a complicated situation because the interaction between what India does with Russia and what India does with us. And so I think we're still quite hopeful, but it got pretty complicated because there are a lot of different variables in the India American relationship. But they're good friends and we're hoping we can work it out soon.

[Joe Kernan]

If you were the Fed, if you were running the Fed, I don't know if, if that's a possibility still at this point. I know the other Kevin has a, an op ed piece and more than two. Kevin.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I liked it.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah, there's, yeah, there's more than two, Kevin. But Kevin Warsh has a big piece. I don't know if you, if you care to comment on some of his, what he has about Fed policy.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

My good friend from down the hall at Hoover, Kevin Warsh, has a great piece of the Wall Street Journal. I commend it to people. I think that he's right, that it's time for the Fed to turn a page and go back to really being independent and data driven. I think they've made a lot of policy errors. I think Kevin and I agree about that.

[Joe Kernan]

And I guess that when people think of who would be the least independent to the Trump administration, people think it would be you, Kevin. But you're talking about, you're talking about independent.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I totally reject, I just totally reject that. I mean, the fact is there's a truck going by. You know, the bottom line is that you do the job that you have, and if somebody's going to go in and they're going to be the Fed chair, then their job 100% of the time is to run an independent, data driven Fed. And right now my job is to be at the White House to serve the President. Every day it's just a different job.

[Joe Kernan]

Is that truck headed over to the East Wing? Can you see it from there, Kevin? How's it looking?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

No, no, you can't, you can't see it from here, but it's just, it's a tiny little part of the White House. So the parts that you're used to seeing aren't really the East Wing.

[Joe Kernan]

There was some reason I brought up the Fed. If you had multiple choice, the Fed at this point, both sides of the dual mandate are at risk right now. Neither side is at risk right now for the Fed.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I'd say neither side is at risk. Certainly there's a Fed that has made some policy errors right now, and we need to get ahead of the curve on that. But no, I think that the Fed has a well defined mission, a mission that most of the time it's been able to accomplish and it certainly can again, if it just makes sure that it's not acting in a partisan way.

[Joe Kernan]

Well, I guess I meant is the labor market in your view? And we're going to hear more about it on Thursday. We'll finally get some numbers. Is it slowing at this point and is on the other side, the other part of the mandate is inflation. Are we seeing the beginnings of another trend higher or do you think that's headed low?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I think on inflation, you know, the last CPI report we got surprised 48 Bloomberg economists on the downside and even had some sort of temporary bad news because there was a refinery that was shut down. If you're looking at the top line number, I think that there have been mixed signals in the job market and really, really positive signals in the output market. As you know, we've got GDP now running close to 4%. We've got productivity running up around 3%. And so I think that there could be a little bit of almost a quiet time in the labor market because firms are finding that AI is making their workers so productive that they don't necessarily have to hire the new kids out of college and so on. But because there's so much output growth and income growth, that's the kind of thing that, you know, a free market will work out relatively quickly as, you know, new ways to spend money emerge.

[Joe Kernan]

When do you think we'll hear. Have you been updated on the Chairman Powell successor?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Yeah, I'm not exactly sure that that's a decision for the President. I think that if you, you know.

[Joe Kernan]

When we'll hear even. Excuse me, you know, you're not sure when we can expect to hear the beginning of next year. Could it be this year?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Well, I think some of it might depend on when Chairman Powell announces that he's going to resign. Right now. You know, we've got a lot of work to do here in the White House every day just to like first get the government open and now get a whole bunch of legislation passed. So that's what we're focused on.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah, we didn't really get to talk about it. You think there should be another reconciliation bill?

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Definitely. At least next year. Whether there's time for one this year is something that I think the people on the Hill are looking into.

[Joe Kernan]

Okay. All right. We didn't get to talk about the answer to Obamacare and how to reform it. But you have ideas there as well.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

I'll be back next week.

[Joe Kernan]

Okay, good. You will? All right.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Yeah, sure.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Yeah.

[Joe Kernan]

Okay, good. We'll see you then.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

Still to come on Squawk Pod, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns on his new series the American Revolution and how it connects to the country's political climate.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Right now things are really complicated and the American Revolution is the beginning of that complication for this project and we should celebrate that complexity. The heaviest metal credit card of all time, rumored to be one of only 18 in existence, plated with the very.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Same tungsten that forged the International Space.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Station.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And wielded at business dinners like a samurai sword.

[Joe Kernan]

It's a classic corporate power move, but.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

The real power move having end to end visibility on your most critical shipments.

[Joe Kernan]

FedEx.

[Commercial/Advertisement Voice]

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[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

This is squawk Pod standby.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

Joe, his mic here.

[Joe Kernan]

You're watching Squawkbox on cnbc. I'm Joe Kernan along with Andrew Ross Sorkin. Becky is off the day.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We're excited about this one. Our next guest has been making films for nearly 50 years and he says the subject of his latest series is one of the most important events in history. Joining us right now, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, whose new series the American Revolution is now on pbs. You've been working on this for a decade. A decade?

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Yeah, nine years and 11 months. Episode one was last night. Episode six will be Friday night. It's also available for streaming for free on the PBS app pbs.org okay, so.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Just take us back 10 years ago when you decided you were going to go.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

So I was finishing the Vietnam War film and I was looking at a map of the Central Highlands that we'd done, a 3D map. And I said, oh my goodness, we could do the British moving west on Long island towards Brooklyn because of course there are no photographs or newsreels from the American Revolution and it's at a remove from us. So what can we do to help bring it alive? And I remember looking up before the ink was dry on Vietnam series and I said, we're doing the Revolution next. Barack Obama had 13 months to go in his presidency, and yet people said, oh, you've timed this perfectly for the 250. We're like, no. We wanted to do a deep dive into what I think is the most important event since the birth of Christ, the creation of the United States. Before this, people were subjects. You know, the authoritarians wanted them dumb and distracted by conspiracies, and now they were something else called citizens. And that was a new deal, something new under the sun.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay. Did you think it was going to take you 10 years?

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Yes. Yeah.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You always knew that. Yeah, well, you didn't know. You didn't know what the politics of our moment would be today.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

No, no, no, no. And in fact, you know, Mark Twain is supposed to have said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes. You have to be disciplined to not say, oh, isn't it rhyming? I'll give you an example. We have a. The voice of a German general's wife as she's making the trip to join her husband at Burgoyne's army for the triumph of the British army. Doesn't work out that way. That's another story. But she's worried that Americans eat cats. Now, if our film had come out last year, last fall, people would say, oh, Ken, you did this completely to do this. You just keep your head down and you don't acknowledge or point signs at. Because you want people to be looking at this film 35 years from now. 35 years ago was my Civil War series. And today, which is a school day in America as it will be tomorrow, it's shown hundreds of times, not all of it, but 40 minutes on Lincoln or Gettysburg or whatever. And you want that kind of durability.

[Joe Kernan]

Collaborate.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

We could, we could, we could make.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

A film on the. On the great 1929.

[Joe Kernan]

Because you've done eight years, you wouldn't have to do 10 years. You could use some of his stuff and just barrel it.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

We've been using scholarship that has been going on for at least 50 years, new scholarship about the revolution. And it still takes to tell the story, a complete story that isn't just the superficial, kind of Madison Avenue sanitized version of our revolution. We need to be told a complicated story about what it's like. It's a Civil War and a world war in addition to this revolution. And it isn't just great ideas in Philadelphia. It's incredibly bloody.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

I have a filmic question for you, which is reenactments.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

So you.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You go down this Road.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Yeah, I did.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

You don't typically do this.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

No, I don't. And I had to get over myself because what we. I suddenly realized is I don't need to film reenactors reenacting a certain battle. We can, over five or six years in every season, at every time of day or night, from every vantage in all weather, film them and collect a critical mass of footage of reenactments. Impressionistic, you don't see faces. You're not wondering what the guy's going to do and whether he's going to end up at Taco Bell after this. They didn't have those keys. They didn't. But in reenactments they do. And so what we have is an ability to put the footage, treat them like paintings. Take the paintings and treat them like they're live. Add maps to it, documents. And we have not just the third person narration, but 400 first person quotes read by the finest actors in the world. We have a cast of like 60 people. Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Sir Kenneth Branagh, Morgan Freeman, Samuel L. Jackson, Claire Danes, you know, Paul Giamatti, Jeff Daniels, Josh Brolin. I mean, I've named a tenth of them and they help bring the story alive. And it isn't just the bold face names in Philadelphia, but it's children who are fighting.

[Joe Kernan]

It's probably a stupid question. With the Civil War. I hear that music and not only do I get a little teary, but it's the thread throughout the entire. I don't know who picked it out.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Me. You're going to be a pussycat for this one. We have some beautiful, beautiful.

[Joe Kernan]

Same kind of stuff as it repeats.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Same stuff and different stuff. We have Native American stuff, and that's.

[Joe Kernan]

Important the way you choose.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

And we've got a beautiful piece of music, which is our main thing, called Hector the Hero. That's almost as good as the Ashokan Farewell, which is the piece of violin music you're talking about.

[Joe Kernan]

If you read that letter from. What was this?

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

From Sullivan Bellot.

[Joe Kernan]

If you read that and play that music, I turn into a.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

A puddle.

[Joe Kernan]

A puddle, yeah.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

This is a really patriotic film, but it's a complicated film. You know, there are Native Americans involved. We can't pretend they're not involved. They're enslaved and free black people involved. Women, half the population are central to the success of the resistance leading up to the revolution and are there at every battle, sometimes fighting, certainly supporting the troops at home, running businesses and farms. And it's a. It's a It's an extraordinary sort of geopolitical story and an intimate family story and everything in between, including how it gets financed.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Okay, so this is an unfair question. An unfair question because people ask me this question. I never have a good answer. Is there one lesson you wish without. I know you don't tell the lesson in the story, but now that you're here.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Right.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Is there one lesson that you wish this audience would be thinking about as they're watching this?

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

I think when we. We're all complaining over, you know, the sky is falling, we're all divided. Nobody's whatever. When an individual is in a crisis, you go back and talk to a professional pastor or you know, somebody that can help you. Where. Where were you born? Where did you come from? You go back to your origin story and you find it. So I hope that. That learning the complexity of the formation of the United States makes people more aware of our founding and what the values were. Just the power. Last night, in the first episode, the power of the word liberty on a little kid, on a little girl, is so fantastic. So that I'd like to say, if I had to say, and I usually don't on any film, I'd like to put the US Back in the US with this film. And I think we can do it. This film is addressed to everybody. There's no focus group. I have said the same thing on the road to you as I've said to Joe Rogan, as I've said to the editorial board of the Times, to inner city kids in Charleston and Chicago and Detroit. Everywhere I go, this is our origin story. It's complicated, which is the neon sign in my editing room. And if you know it, it will make you a little bit more optimistic about the moment.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

And without giving it away, is there anything that, as you were working on this, you did not know before, that you think is like a. A little Easter egg, a little nugget, a little surprise that we should. Some episode that you're uniquely proud of, because in minute, you know, minute 28.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Almost at every juncture, there's something that you didn't know. There's a person that you didn't realize was central. And I remember presenting to some funders, you know, it's pbs, so it's all grant funded. And someone just very much says, well, who's emerging as an important figure? And I go, oh, George Washington. Let me just say, without him, we do not have a country. Is he flawed? Yes. Is he rash? He rides out on the battlefield at Kips Bay and Nearly is killed. And if he's killed, the whole project is over. He makes bad battlefield decisions.

[Joe Kernan]

Aura around him, though, isn't it?

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

But he thought he had an aura around him. But he's able to convince people from Georgia and New Hampshire that they're not from separate countries as they thought, but Americans. He's able to defer to Congress. He's able to inspire people to fight in the dead of night. He's able to pick subordinate talent without a fear or jealousy that they're better than him. And more than anything else, he gives up his power twice. First his military commission, and then after the presidency, everybody was happy for him to be the military dictator. Everybody was happy for him to be, you know, president for life. And he said, no, the highest office in the land is citizen. He got what this experiment was. And all of them speak to us. They talk about the unborn millions throughout this film. And it gets eerie after a while because you realize they're not just fighting for themselves. I mean, just think they say at the end of the Declaration, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. Washington may be the richest man in the country. Just think about that today. Willing to give up your life for a cause. Willing to give up your fortune for a cause. Whatever sacred honor is, we can understand, intuit what it might mean. Who among us would have the power to make a decision? Would I be a loyalist? It's a bloody civil war. Would I be a patriot? Would I be willing to die for a cause? All of that happens in the American Revolution. And we're all sitting here enjoying the fruits of their sacrifice.

[Joe Kernan]

I see people that run into burning buildings. They're still around.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

They're still around.

[Joe Kernan]

It's not me. I don't know if it's you, but I see people doing things that.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

This is what? Also on this level, where the political discourse is so fractured, where it's all either binary, you know, we have in our computer world ones or zeros. We have in our media world and political world, yes or a no, a red state or a blue state, Things are really complicated. And the American Revolution is the beginning of that complication for this project. And we should celebrate that complexity. And then all of a sudden, the person across the table that doesn't agree with me doesn't seem an enemy, just seems somebody like them who figured out how to say, okay, that politics is the politics of the half life. You don't get everything.

[Joe Kernan]

We were the good guys and English were the bad guys. Can I At least say you cannot.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

We have English soldiers.

[Joe Kernan]

I know. I'm kidding.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

But no, it's coming.

[Joe Kernan]

We did need to win.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

We are the good guys. We invented something that nobody else had done.

[Joe Kernan]

Exactly.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

We invented this idea that people could rule the thing. But if you were living here, and particularly you, both of you in your positions.

[Joe Kernan]

Yeah.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

You would be hard pressed in New York City, a loyalist stronghold making money in financial markets to say the British constitutional monarchy is responsible for my prosperity, my health, my literacy, the property that I own. Am I going to give this up for this idea that has zero chance of success at Lexington Green, which was the climax of last night's show. This is a big question for all of us.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Ken Burns.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Who am I?

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thank you. The show even call it a show.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

You can call it a show. It's a movie.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

It's a film. It's a limited series.

[Ken Burns (Documentary Filmmaker)]

Yeah. 6 part, 12 hours, 6 part series.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

On PBS right now. Go out and watch it. Thank you.

[Joe Kernan]

We're good with, with English. We're all friends.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Everything special relationship.

[Joe Kernan]

Fine. Very special.

[Host (possibly Becky Quick or Katie Kramer)]

And that is Squawk Pod for today. This Monday. Thanks for starting your week with us. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. And please follow Squawkpod wherever you get your podcasts for the best of our show whenever you want to listen. Have a great Monday. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow.

[Kevin Hassett (White House Economic Advisor)]

We are clear.

[Andrew Ross Sorkin]

Thanks, guys.

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