Clay Travis (43:34)
There's this full stop right there. That's the affordability issue. And you ought to be able to explain that. Right? That's right. And look, I think that with the economic team, President Trump and the economic team led by Scott Bessant, you have people who very much understand this. And it was a. They were, they were thrown. You know what I would say the worst economy for the average American in my adult lifetime. In terms of the, like you said, the incredible increase in prices at the household. This is true and the case has to be made, but it is not sufficient on its own. All of you who call in, write in and say hey guys, hey Clay, hey Buck. The stuff is just too expensive where I am, particularly healthcare, housing, education, these things are just the price are out of control in some aspects, depends on the product. But groceries, gas prices are down. But many of you and the truckers out there, we love our truckers are saying diesel prices are still considerably higher than we would want to see them for a robust economy. Spending at Christmas time. I've seen some of the data on this one. Spending at Christmas time seems to be quite a bit down. People are not shelling out the kind of cash that they did even compared to last year. Now, I think there was tremendous ebullience about the economy because of Trump's victory. So that explains in part why last year people were spending cuz they thought, oh, we're going to have a good economy. And they were right. But now it's twofold. The challenge ahead on prices, affordability, a word I'm as I've said along, you have to prepare yourself to hear about this more than any of us are going to want to. But the power balance in D.C. and therefore the future of the country for the next few years is going to be largely determined. I think based upon that, the two big issues, it's going to be the affordability and immigration. Election midterms. That's what's going to, that's what's going to move the needle. And this is Republicans are seeing this early enough. Thankfully, I'm not having this talk with all of you in August of the election year or September of the election year. Hey Republicans, it's time to make the case. I think they're actually seeing this in advance and they have Scott Bessen, who is both very good at the job of Treasury Secretary and a very good spokesman for what this administration, the treasury, the economy, the Fed, all of this is doing. He's a very good mind, a very good mouthpiece on these issues. But this is what Democrats are going to hammer. They're going to hammer the discontent of the prices. Isn't this the most classic move that the Democrats could possibly come up with? They made it so prices get all jacked up. We told them don't. We said don't do it. This is going back to 2021. We said don't do it, guys. It's crazy. Don't spend the trillions. We've already put a lot, a lot of pressure, a lot of heat into the economy with all the shutdown spending. And that was under Trump. But that was, both sides were saying, oh, the world's gonna end. You know, the whole thing. Trump left it to the states whether to stay open or not. And with the exception of Florida, states generally did not stay open. South Dakota stayed open, but there's not very many people in South Dakota. So that was easier. Most states shut down, as you know. And so we had to do something. There was that whole emergency. But now telling people that the worst inflation in 40 years started four years ago is not really a winning strategy. Right. Or in five years ago. Whatever it's, that's not enough. I think that unfortunately is going to be insufficient as part of the narrative. Which brings me to the solutions and the things that Trump and his team are trying to do. Look at what has happened on trade alone. That's why I started with that. Look at where he is on tariffs. They said the so called intelligentsia. Trump's going to crash the economy based on the tariffs. He's going to mess everything up. No, in fact, the economy, the stock market has been booming, but prices have remained high. The only way to bring prices down is. Well, if we want to get really technical about it, technical about it, you got to see a. You can have a cessation of demand or you could have an increase in supply, but the best thing that we could see is an increase in efficiency of manufacturing of goods and services and spending and investment. And that's what will bring prices down. Mandates the Mamdani approach. Price controls. Price controls not only have made New York City and the whole state of California, but because of government regulation. But price controls in New York City have made real estate far more expensive. Anywhere where they try this, it makes real estate more expensive. And overall price controls in the economy is part of what has destroyed a large part of what destroyed the Venezuelan economy. I mean, there's many things, but price controls is at the heart of it. Oh, we're just gonna seize assets and then we can't make this stuff, we're gonna seize the factories. Right? This is the Maduro approach. We'll seize the factories and we'll make the stuff, but we can't make much money off of it and we're not very good at making it. So we'll just say it has to cost this. Well, that doesn't work that way because you can't make them at that price. So guess what happens? Shortages. And then the black market comes in with the real price. And all of this is very well established. But the Trump team has to get very dialed in on. Here is yes, talk about what the Biden inflation was. And that's why I played that former SEC chair. Talk about what the Biden inflation was, but also how it is coming down, how it is being addressed and how it is going to get better over the next year because of what Trump is doing. Republicans got to focus in on this because it is not an overstatement to say if we have a weak year of not just policy, but a weak year of messaging. And I'm going to say Republicans, where's the big legislation, guys? Ah, the big beautiful bill. Ok, it's a spending bill. Where's the legislation? Where's the, you know, the new approach to health care? Got to get, get together on this one and make some things happen. If you lose the House and you're Donald Trump, then it just turns into, all right, we got to wait for the next election. We got to wait for the, you know, the heir apparent of the Republican Party to take over for MAGA because the Democrats will just, they will, what's the phrase, cut off their nose to spite their face. I mean, they will just make everything stink and then blame it all on Trump. And you know that.
