01
Peter Navarro>
nominee went on offense today with a serious speech on economics and a
frontal attack on Hillary Clinton. Former House majority leader Tom Delay
explains why he`s still on the fence about Donald Trump. Discussion of
Trump economic plan. Donald Trump hasn`t been shy in his attacks against
Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, but it`s getting worse as he just co-
opted some of her language being used against him.>
Hillary Clinton; Government>
Trump also criticized what he calls the Obama/Clinton economic policies.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Their policies produced 1.2 percent growth, the weakest so-called recovery since the Great Depression. It`s been written about all over. It`s a disaster.
And a doubling of the national debt during the Obama years. There are now 94.3 million Americans outside of the labor force. Homeownership is at its lowest rate in 51 years. Nearly 12 million people have been added to the food stamp, and these people are growing, and it`s growing so rapidly since President Obama took office.
We have the lowest labor force participation rates in four decades. One in five American households do not have a single member in the labor force, not a single member of the household. These are the real unemployment numbers. The 5 percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in American modern politics.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Of course, what Trump didn`t talk about was to give President Obama, who has a 53 percent job approval rating right now, credit for the economic recovery since he took office.
Under the Obama administration`s policies, the 2008 recession came to an end, the president pushed through a stimulus package to rejuvenate the economy, bailed out the American auto industry -- it`s still there -- pushed through health care reform, tax cuts, Wall Street reform and negotiated the largest trade deal in history.
And since President Obama took office, 10 million jobs have been added, 10 million. Job openings are at a 15-year high right now. The unemployment rate is down from 7.8 percent in January of 2009 to 4.9 percent today. And there are 15 million fewer uninsured health care people.
Anyway, Peter Navarro is a Trump economic adviser, and Jared Bernstein is a former economic adviser for Vice President Joe Biden.
Thank you so much, Peter.
Let me ask you, Peter, about this debt. Now, sometimes, Democrats talk about the debt, but usually it`s Republicans talking about the debt. And here`s a Republican presidential nominee who is talking about how he`s going to reduce the debt, he`s going to stop all these deficits with a huge program of tax cuts, reducing the top corporate rate down to 15 percent, the top individual rate down to 33 percent, all -- a big tax deduction for child care, good things, but no spending cuts, which means, by definition, even though, even with dynamic score keeping and all that babble, this guy is going to increase the national debt.
First thing he is going to do is increase the national debt, after campaigning against it. Your thoughts on that topic?
PETER NAVARRO, TRUMP ECONOMIC ADVISER: OK. Let`s see if we can put this in perspective.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No, just talk about that. Before you put it in perspective, let`s talk about the debt, the debt.
NAVARRO: Yes. Yes. Yes.
No, the benchmark is -- no, and we`re going to talk about the debt. The benchmark is...
MATTHEWS: When?
NAVARRO: ... is President Obama in 2008, $10 trillion in debt. He is going to leave with $20 trillion of debt.
So, how do you on attack Trump on that? So, here`s what you`re missing here, Chris.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Attacking Trump? Trump has been campaigning on reducing the national debt.
NAVARRO: This was a great day for Donald Trump, because this plan...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK. You do have every time. Peter, this is an interview program. And I ask some questions, and you answer them. That`s how it works here.
NAVARRO: I`m trying to answer the question.
MATTHEWS: I`m sorry...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK. This is an interview.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: My question is, how is he going to reduce the debt if he`s cutting revenue?
NAVARRO: By doubling the GDP growth rate -- by doubling the GDP growth rate...
MATTHEWS: Oh, doubling it.
NAVARRO: ... by regulatory policy, energy policy, tax policy and tariff policy.
That`s what everybody`s missing here. You can`t just look at -- you can`t cherry-pick the tax program, and not look at the whole Trump plan.
MATTHEWS: OK. Great.
NAVARRO: If he`s able to double the GDP growth rate back to its historical average of 3.5 percent...
MATTHEWS: Right.
NAVARRO: It`s been 1.8 for 15 years of bad trade deals -- we will have all the tax revenues we need to more than offset any tax cuts.
JARED BERNSTEIN, FORMER CHIEF ECONOMIST TO VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Chris...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me go back to -- let me go to Peter for a second here.
You want to respond to that? Because here`s the question. They are talking about cutting the corporate rate, the individual rate, giving tax deductions for child care, all that good liberal stuff. It used to be good liberal stuff. Now it`s conservative supply-side.
But here`s the problem, and then raising tariffs.
BERNSTEIN: Yes. So, look...
MATTHEWS: And the cost of goods all go up across the country.
BERNSTEIN: If you could eat ice cream sundaes all week and never gain a pound, then supply-side economics would work.
When their -- their initial plan lost $10 trillion in revenue over 10 years. That was scored by the Tax Policy Center, nonpartisan group. So, they went back to the drawing board and said, that`s too much on the debt and the deficit, so they recalibrated. And now they`re -- they haven`t said how much, but probably something in the neighborhood of maybe $3 trillion they are going to lose because they lowered that.
But it may actually be a lot worse than that. And you are exactly right to focus in on this inconsistency between the idea of massively cutting taxes, a corporate rate that goes down by more than half -- there`s something called a pass-through rate here that`s going to be a huge incentive for everyone to pass their income through their personal side. That`s going to be a big revenue loser.
And Donald Trump says he`s going to hold Social Security constant, he`s going to hold Medicare constant, he`s going to add to defense spending. Once you`re losing this much revenue, you can`t possibly do that without doing one of two things. You either raise the deficit and the debt, or you have to cut a whole lot of spending or...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Peter, my question to you is, once -- Peter -- I mean, Jared makes a point here.
If Trump was confident of his economic nostrum here, of his plan for lower tax rates, just three of them, the three -- the three rates, why did he raise them? If he thought lower tax rates meant more revenue -- I mean, more GDP growth, why did he raise the rates?
NAVARRO: Because in terms of the deal that`s got to go through Congress, that makes sense.
But let`s look at the synergies. Why do you want to cut the corporate tax rate? It`s not to enrich the corporations. It`s to make sure that they are not pushed to Mexico because we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world.
MATTHEWS: Yes. OK.
NAVARRO: This is what you guys are missing. You just want to do this Robin Hood kind of thing, where just look at taxes.
MATTHEWS: No, no, he`s doing the Robin Hood.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: He`s doing the Robin Hood.
Let me ask you -- OK.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: In `86, we lowered the top rate down to just about 28 percent, and Reagan...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK.
NAVARRO: We grow another GDP point, Chris.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I know you`re setting all these goals out here, but they don`t mean anything yet.
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: Believe me, if supply-side -- hold on, Peter. Hold on, Peter.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: This is not supply-side, Jared. This is not supply.
BERNSTEIN: Yes, it is.
NAVARRO: This is not supply-side.
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: When you talk about...
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: Listen, when you talk about...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Let me go back to basics, where most people watching are going to pay attention to this.
The economy, according to the American people, we are heading in the wrong direction. Let`s face it -- 32 percent of the country says we are headed the wrong direction.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Is that a problem for Hillary? If the country is happy with the current economic policies, why are more than two-thirds of people against the way things are headed?
BERNSTEIN: I actually think that when the people -- when people look at the alternatives in terms of the economic plans that you are hearing, the choice becomes...
MATTHEWS: No, but think of what is happening right now.
Why do two-thirds of the American people-plus say we`re going the wrong direction? Why are they saying we are heading the wrong direction?
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: Because the growth in the economy is not reaching them the way it should.
And that`s something both campaigns happen to agree on. The problem -- and this is very much in the context of what we are talking about -- the Trump campaign looked at this problem that the GDP growth isn`t reaching the middle class the way it should and they said, that`s why we have to enrich our corporations and enrich the wealthy and eliminate the -- eliminate the estate tax, eliminate the estate tax, and cut the top rate from 40 percent to 33 percent.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: He`s going to eliminate the estate tax?
BERNSTEIN: He`s going to eliminate the estate tax. He`s going to eliminate the estate tax, which affects 0.2 percent of estates.
MATTHEWS: Why is he doing that, Peter?
NAVARRO: Look, here`s the issue.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Peter, why is he getting rid of the estate tax?
NAVARRO: Jared and Clinton want to do the standard Keynesian stimulus, right?
MATTHEWS: Yes.
NAVARRO: We know where that has taken us.
We have doubled our national debt. We have got a crazy balance sheet at the Federal Reserve with all this easy money. We have gone eight years and we have got the weakest recovery since World War II.
MATTHEWS: I know. OK.
(CROSSTALK)
NAVARRO: Obama could -- got a free pass for the first year or two in office. He`s been in there eight years.
Trump is attacking this economy from a structural point of view through comprehensive tax reform, trade reform, regulatory reform and energy reform. He wants to leverage on all the strengths of our economy. This economy, energy economy alone, we are blessed, and Hillary Clinton wants to put coal mining out of business. She said so.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I know, Jared.
Jared, I got to end with a thought, which is, you want to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat. The Republicans who are voting against Obama are doing...
NAVARRO: Reagan Democrats, Chris.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: No, all Republicans. Anybody with wealth in this country is doing incredibly well. The stock market is up to 18500. It was down around 6000-something.
BERNSTEIN: Right.
MATTHEWS: Obama tripled it, tripled the wealth of people with money in the market in the last eight years, tripled it.
NAVARRO: Chris...
MATTHEWS: No Republican has ever done that. And why do they want to change that policy? Explain that, Peter. Why don`t they like what he`s given them?
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: The one sector that`s actually been really profitable is the corporate sector.
NAVARRO: Because the American people in this country are taking it in the shorts because of bad trade policies.
(CROSSTALK)
BERNSTEIN: The one sector that`s been deeply profitable is the corporate sector.
MATTHEWS: OK. Well, all I know is that...
BERNSTEIN: And so they want to make...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK.
NAVARRO: All our jobs are going from Detroit to Mexico.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK.
BERNSTEIN: I`m sorry. I don`t mean to talk over...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Yes.
The problem with this -- that plan is, why do Republicans think that the best way to get people who are rich to do more, work harder, is to give them tax breaks, and the best way to get working people to work hard is to cut their programs?
It`s a weird thing -- punish the poor, reward the rich. It just seems very inconsistent.
By the way, this program is all about tax cuts for the rich. Look at this stuff.
NAVARRO: No, it`s not. That`s what you`re missing. It`s all about reducing the trade deficit, the Trump trade doctrine.
MATTHEWS: Top corporate rate, 15 percent.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK, thank you. All right.
BERNSTEIN: There`s not one thing in this plan that reduces the trade deficit. There is not one thing in this plan that reduces the trade deficit. All it is tax cuts for rich people. I`m sorry. I have to talk over him because he won`t let anybody get a word in. We have tried this a million times and it never works.
MATTHEWS: -- Jared, we will continue with this and I will clarify later.
Coming up, tough talk. There`s nothing new for Donald Trump to use harsh words for his critics. Now it seems a lot of the language he`s choosing comes from Hillary Clinton`s own campaign language and her allies. The roundtable is coming here next with that.
You`re watching HARDBALL, the place for politics.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Unstable Hillary.
She`s really pretty close to unhinged. She`s like an unbalanced person.
She`s a dangerous liar and you saw that with the FBI director.
Honestly, I don`t think she`s all there.
He made a deal with the devil. She`s the devil. He made a deal with the devil.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MATTHEWS: Can he get worse?
Welcome back to HARDBALL.
Donald Trump hasn`t been shy in his attacks against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, but it`s getting worse as he just co-opted some of her language being used against him. Watch him. He`s throwing it back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Somebody who makes those kinds of statements doesn`t have the judgment, the temperament, the understanding to occupy the most powerful position in the world.
TRUMP: She lacks the judgment, temperament and moral character, moral character, to lead this country.
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.
TRUMP: Hillary Clinton furthermore can never be trusted with national security.
CLINTON: There is no doubt in my mind that Donald Trump is unqualified to be president and unfit to be commander in chief.
TRUMP: Hillary`s central role in making Iran the dominant Islamic power that they are today in the Middle East proves that she is totally unfit to lead.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
MATTHEWS: Well, joining me in tonight`s roundtable is Howard Fineman, MSNBC political analyst and global editorial director for "The Huffington Post", and April Ryan is Washington bureau chief for American Urban Radio Networks, and Sahil Kapur is national political reporter for "Bloomberg".
You know, I think we should call this the playpen for politics. I mean, that is distressing. But there you have Trump using Hillary`s ammo, throwing back the live grenades.
SAHIL KAPUR, BLOOMBERG: To your point, there is a little bit of an "I know you are but what am I" quality to the way Trump is dealing with this. But I`m not sure what he`s going for, because he`s not going to win an election if the topic is temperament and qualifications. Let me give you some of the numbers --
MATTHEWS: How about if it`s Hillary hatred?
KAPUR: Well, if he can get her on trust, if he can talk about status quo, coziness with Wall Street, being secretive, things that people -- concerns people have about her. But on temperament, a Monmouth poll out today said that 61 percent of Americans believe Clinton has the right temperament to be president, 27 percent said that about Trump.
Qualifications, "The Washington Post" poll yesterday, 60 percent said she`s qualify to be president, 38 percent said that about him. He`s not going to win if this is the topic of debate.
MATTHEWS: April, it looks like he thinks that he stops his freefall by hitting her hard because everybody has to say they don`t like Trump one week, then has to confront my option is Hillary so attack her.
APRIL RYAN, AMERICAN URBAN RADIO NETWORKS: You know, I mean, we all covered the RNC convention and all it seemed to be about --
MATTHEWS: Some of us enjoyed it more or less than others.
RYAN: Yes. Yes. You enjoyed it? OK.
Here`s the bottom line: it felt like the platform was nothing but -- anything but Hillary. Anything but Hillary. And where was -- where was the policy? Where was the initiatives, what I`m going to do in the first hundred days?
MATTHEWS: That`s not what`s going on here.
RYAN: I know, and that`s the problem. You cannot build a foundation on that. It`s about high school back and forth or grade school pulling my hair. It is ugly and it`s vile. It`s ugly.
HOWARD FINEMAN, HUFFINGTON POST: He`s got to begin somewhere. It reminds me, my analogy would be to Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knight keeps getting chopped up into pieces and saying it`s a mere flesh wound. That`s Donald Trump at this point. He`s been chopped to pieces.
MATTHEWS: I think it`s simply a binary choice. Nobody is thinking -- most people aren`t thinking about Gary Johnson or Jill Stein. They are thinking these two -- one guy, one woman and they are saying you don`t like me, how about her? You don`t like me, how about her?
FINEMAN: The reason he`s doing that is a very good one. You cited a bunch of statistics. The other statistics are that Hillary Clinton is still not particularly well-liked or trusted.
RYAN: That`s true.
FINEMAN: And if he can get leverage on her and get the conversation about her, instead of about him --
RYAN: That`s true.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: He wants a second look.
KAPUR: -- fractured at the highest levels, a lot of them don`t like Trump and they`re not satisfied with him. The one thing they can unite around is they don`t want her. They divided not only on things like temperament and things like tone. They are divided on major policy issues like immigration, like trade.
MATTHEWS: What`s the Hillary minimum?
KAPUR: I`m sorry?
MATTHEWS: How many people will vote just against Hillary? Thirty-three percent? Thirty-two percent?
KAPUR: I don`t know --
MATTHEWS: What can you get just running --
(CROSSTALK)
FINEMAN: But the problem is for Trump, is that he is now doing what he should have been done with many weeks ago which is trying to gather his base.
RYAN: Exactly.
FINEMAN: The base, those polls are showing that white voters are fleeing Donald Trump in huge numbers right now. He doesn`t even have a base. He doesn`t even have his base together.
MATTHEWS: But the basic reason is the fact they don`t like Hillary. That`s what --
FINEMAN: That`s the only way to get them together.
RYAN: This is a deflection off of a fact that he has no ground, no policy, and he`s let the genie out of the bottle and --
MATTHEWS: Well, he has a policy.
RYAN: What`s the policy?
MATTHEWS: I don`t like trade, I don`t like immigration, I don`t like stupid wars. He`s got a policy.
RYAN: Yes, his daughter talks about helping women. That`s what his daughter saying --
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: We are not stupid. They`re for him for their reasons.
KAPUR: The Monmouth poll Trump says he has not gained a single point with Republicans. This is the base he needs to consolidate --
RYAN: He`s not telling us all his policies.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: OK. The roundtable is sticking with us.
And up next, these people tell me something I don`t know.
We`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Welcome back.
And join us at 11:00 tonight. We`re going to have a special live edition of HARDBALL tonight. It will probably be wilder, with the latest on Trump`s hopes for a comeback such as they are in this wild race for 2016. That`s 11:00 p.m. tonight Eastern, right here on MSNBC, the place for politics.
HARDBALL back after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: We`re back with the HARDBALL roundtable.
And we`re starting with Sahil. Tell me something I don`t know.
KAPUR: The most important number to watch for is the share of the white vote in this election because Trump is not going to do well with minorities. He is at 43 to 52 percent right now with the whites, according to the two latest polls. Mitt Romney got 59 percent in 2012 and lost. Trump has a very steep hill to climb.
MATTHEWS: April?
RYAN: The Democrats are looking for a new Southern strategy. They`re in hopes of gaining -- they think they can win Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Louisiana, all by not dealing with the issue of guns right now, because they feel everyone in the South likes guns, what-have-you, and they --
MATTHEWS: Yes, good point. I like that. They`re going to cool it on the guns in Louisiana.
RYAN: Yes.
FINEMAN: OK, there`s a minor third party --
MATTHEWS: The gun rights (INAUDIBLE) are.
FINEMAN: There`s a minor third party anti-Trump candidate who announced his interest today in Utah. Don`t totally dismiss him because the filing deadlines are still open in Utah, Colorado, and New Hampshire. Three states where if he can take a view votes away from Donald Trump, he can stop it.
MATTHEWS: No one is big in Utah.
Anyway, Howard Fineman, April Ryan, Sahil Kapur.
After this, we`ll be right back. I`ll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
MATTHEWS: Let me finish tonight with a Trump conundrum. This failure of a presidential campaign to be anything more than an everyday assault on something the Republican candidate for president just said. The problem with it is that it`s not getting us anywhere. What we need out of every presidential election is a debate, one of consequence to all of us.
Today, less than a third of people in this country believe we are headed in the right direction. What about the rest of the country? Are they wrong? Are they stupid, ignorant, ungrateful? Are they unaware of the glory these times deserve?
Well, this is what this election should be about -- it should be about changing what needs do be changed, a re-charting of the country`s economic course. And that is precisely what we`re not talking about because we`re talking so much about the malapropisms of the Republican candidate, the gaffes which become the conversation pieces of daily coverage.
I`m not saying they don`t deserve it. And certainly anything to do with nuclear weapons needs our attention, but they are crowding us out of getting to where this country is headed. Don`t you think we should look at what these trade deals have done to us, what part they`re played in our plank in the hollowing out of our manufacturing, the death of so many industrial jobs? Don`t you think we should take a hard look at these wars in the Middle East, the Bushes have taken us into and left us there? Don`t you think we should take up the question of why this country lacks a working immigration policy? Why it`s really about cheap labor and the lack of any real enforcement against illegal hiring?
All this is getting lost in the daily chase after the latest Trump buffoonery. All this could be lost after election should the country decide to reject Trump as unfit without ever really taking to heart the bad direction of the economy in a culture which rewards an educated elite but punishes those as a Clinton once said, his name was Bill, work hard -- people who work hard and play by the rules.
What I fear most is the smugness of those who watch Trump lose and act as if his complaints about this country`s direction lack merit, because they merit our attention, and action very much.
And that`s HARDBALL for now. Thanks for being us. Join us again, 11:00 Eastern tonight, for a special live edition of HARDBALL.
"ALL IN WITH CHRIS HAYES" starts right now.
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