GOP's Brooks Defends Proposed U.S. Budget as 'Responsible'

and international relations. Find Bloomberg Surveillance on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, Bloomberg dot Com, and of course on the Bloomberg Gabriela Santos with US with JP Morgan Asset Management. She would only appear on Bloomberg Surveillance with a Dow or higher. What do you tell people when you say they go twenty one? I never imagined it. How do you frame that?

For sophisticates and those like me less sophisticated, We would say that less important than looking at the index level is actually looking at the underlying earnings for companies, which is exactly what's led us to these higher index levels is the fact that US companies are making again uh an incredible amount of profits every single quarter. That's really the most important piece here. Rather than a particular index level.

When it comes to volatility, what do we learn last week and we had that spike or at least thing and nine point nine point nine for what do we learned last week from that? When I think about the VIX and I think about volatility in the market, um there as the volatility in terms of headlines, right and those certainly we have plenty of both in the US and around the world. But also if we think about economic volatility, that's really decreased over the past year or so.

A lot of the risks that have been threatening the global economy have receded from plunging commodity prices to a Chinese hard landing too uncontrolled currencies, and that's what is keeping volatility low, I think, is the removal of a lot of those economic uncertainties. How do you look at at Europe playing off of that a little bit? We have the political story when following that for for many months now, and then there's the economic story. Do you cleave both of them? Do you look at them in

concert with each other? How do you how do you look at the European market economy? Right now? We place much greater weight on the actual economic story, and that's been positive for quite a while now. In Europe, we saw some very good growth out of Europe in the first quarter, two per cent um growth that's being driven by a rebound in consumption as well as investment UH and growth that's very diversified by country, and that's very,

very encouraging in terms of its sustainability. When you look at at opportunity overseas UH and emerging markets are at the AAR zone, where do you see the greatest opportunity at this point? So we see in exactly both of those regions you mentioned, so the Eurozone specifically speaking, and when we think about companies, we want companies that are able to access that domestic story in Europe, so companies that can tap into that rebound in the European consumer,

for example. And we also look at emerging markets and say, with so many, so much stability in these external variables China, commodities, currencies, that's actually a good environment for growth to continue improving in e M with within this is the feeling that it's the greatest bowl market since time began, and people say it's unloved, is it really? I mean, you're out in the trenches what do you hear from institutional people desperate to make the benchmark? And what do you hear

from high net high net worth people. You know they're in cash, their scirits off. What do I do with the next three million dollars? Now that we have that problem, But what's the mood out there? It has been incredibly unloved and I think it's still like Dan Saunders H David is adamant about this, it's still totally unlooked. And we feel that when we're on the road speaking to clients,

both of the institutional and the individual variety. Our job for the past few years has been talking people off the brink thinking that the US is about to go into a recession, companies will never make enough money again. And that's what I think has made it very unloved.

Is this distrust of economic and earnings data. Um perhaps that's starting to shift as we're starting to see some fading of those concerns, but we still see a lot of special especially individual investors, that are still very heavy on cash and fixing income. Is dividend grows still work? We got seconds the just the theme of our lifetime is dividend growth Still the religion. Well, you have to think about sustainable dividend growth and whether you also have

earnings growth that's associated with that. So it's not just purely chasing dividends and utilities and Telecom's chasing companies that are able to grow their dividends and their earnings. We want to give us a name or to just you know, try to, you know, someday we can speak to in terms of sectors, I would think about financials. Is actually a great dividend and earnings play the reason you have Gabriela Santos back, we didn't cover financials. How about that?

She is with JP Morgan with our question. Our interview of the day was on China on the misinformation, the miss and the reality as we can perceive it of their financial system. This was Donald Strassheim. We did this on Bloomberg Television earlier and we are thrilled to go further now on Bloomberg Radio. David Guraw was just great on that new fragility and mystery of what they're doing. Yeah,

thanks for it for sticking a right. Let me ask you, first of all, what we know about China's death picture. We saw the news of the downgrade yesterday China out It's Moody's fifth highest investment great tick down a notch. What do we know about the debt picture? There's all of this shadow banking. How much of it is still a mystery? A lot of it's still a mystery. Um, there is uh a mystery in terms I think of

actual levels. There is a mystery of whether there is a mismatch of maturities of all these various paper How much, um, how much of long term projects are being financed with short term money? This is inherently a problem to be to be avoided. Are we are we seeing defaults? Are we beginning to see more defaults in China? Not materially that's one of the problems, I think quite frankly, Um, you need to have HUM. I don't hesitate to use the term, but an honest system, and failures are part

of the process. And what we see rather is um loans that are clearly non performing get evergreened and they

rolled over, they get rolled over again and again. And bonds that are financing some four thousand seat opera house uh in some middle size city that there's just not four thousand people to go there every Friday, and Saturday night for the next decade, and these get rolled over and over and when when that kind of thing happens, Uh, it just creates uncertainty and doubt and it's a bad thing,

not a good one. How do you dovetail this that the conversation about China's debt with what the Chinese president unveiled at that form a few weeks back we saw the meeting at the State Guesthouse with with Vladimir Putin all of that, How does that complicate the dead picture the ambitious plans of creating this new Silk Road. Actually, I don't think it really does complicate it. Uh. Anything that happens in this so called new Silk Row one belt, one road project is going to be agreement among um

kind of consenting adults. And so China is going to have a deal with Country X and this or maybe a multilateral deal on some infrastructure project or whatever happens to be. UM. Unless all parties agree to this, it's not going to happen. So we don't really know the scope of this project yet and we won't uh, And it'll be a constantly moving target. Given how important debt has been to fueling the Chinese e comedy. What what will the Chinese prison do? What options are available to him? Uh?

Would he scale back the reliance on debt? Is that even a possibility? But does he have to keep counting on it to maintain the level of growth we've all become accustomed to? There? He he has to continue. Uh, they are reliant on debt, they're addicted today. He has to continue that. He can't do He can't reduce it in any kind of uh precipitous way. But their growth rate is going to come down, and it's going to

come down a long ways over the next decade. And it is a myth to think the new normal, just to use bill growth term from a few years ago. The new normal is not any number. Well, it's a lower number every year. I want to go back to. And I'm gonna mispronounce this, sir. The Guaso opera house is Guiso on the Pearl River, right, So they build an opera house. Maybe it's that one, maybe it's one of ten others, and they have debt for that. Who

holds that debt? The banks, the state owned banks, the state owned the issue bonds to build an opera house. I assume the government issues the bonds. Who owns the banks? The banks not like a mutual fund that this is not usually owned by guys like you and me over there are there in solvent If they own Guangcho opera house bonds, they are. They are solving so long as the lender of last resort is prepared to make them solves.

So this is my key question. I don't have time, but do they have the cash to be lender of last resort? The answers they do. The answer is they do? What do they they? Well, what's the hurry? Okay, well, the hurry maybe the international markets. The whole issue is they control both your kids side of the liabilities side of their own ballet, don we Gotta go, won't play Pocito dumno? Here to get us out down strass, I'm on Chinese opera houses. This is Bloomberg. We promised this

a few minutes ago. Eager to have is he commnual joining us now? I could spend five minutes reading all of his various professional titles. I'm just gonna say here. He's a Vice Provost for Global Initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, Senior fellow at the Center for American Progress will flag his new book as well forthcoming. Uh. Here I think in early June the book called Prescription for the Future, the twelve Transformational Practices of highly Effective Medical

Organization zeke. Let's start with that CBO score highly anticipated. Another iteration of scoring on this on this bill, the American Healthcare Act. What did you take away from what the CBO had to say yesterday? Well, basically, it's the same as be born. It shows you that the MacArthur effort to quote unquote soften the houses affordable American Healthcare

Act did almost nothing. Uh. It's spent a bunch of billions of dollars and had negligible impact even on the number of uninsured or on the total cost of healthcare for Americans who would buy insurance. Uh. You have twenty three million people going to be thrown off insurance. Uh. The uninsured rates going to go over fifty million Americans by twenty UM. I think you know I've u this word before to describe the American Healthcare Act. It's cruel. I don't. I find it's hard to analyze it any

other way. It grows twenty three million people off of coverage. Uh, it raises insurance premiums, especially for people who have illnesses. UH. And it gives a big tax break to healthcare corporations and the rich. UM. This does not sound like the kind of plan most Americans want. UH. It seems very

very cruel. We had Michael Cannon on your friend, Michael Cannon from the Cato Institute just a few minutes ago, and he was talking about, yes, this particular piece of legislation, but also what he thinks is wrong with with the Affordable Care Act, and he plays his blame squarely on the the regulations imposed by that law. I just want

to get your response to that. When you when you look at these insurance companies pulling out of market places in places like Kansas City or Iowa, Virginia, how much of that is attributable early to to to what's called for by the Affordable Care Act. Well, a lot of it's attributable to UH. I would say, let's put it this way. You could easily stabilize all the insurance markets. And you should remember the Congressional Budget Office said they're

here to stay, they're not going away. You could easily stabilize them by enforcing the mandate. UH. Strongly and telling reminding people to have to buy insurance. That will get some people to buy insurance. Second, of all, those cost sharing subsidies that the Republicans keep threatening or at least making uncertain, means that insurance companies don't know whether to bang on them or not, and so are raising rates

and are or or withdrawing. And the third thing you could do is the reinsurance, which remember Marco Rubio pulled out at the Affordable Care Act, was solidly in the Affordable Care Act and he changed the rules halfway through the game. Do those three things and there are someone to better targeted advertising, and those marketplaces are stable and

actually the rates come down. So I agree that we could do more with Cannon, but that's not to say you throw the whole thing out that talks about reform not repeal. He is scathing and we've got a huge response against Mr Cannon. Thank you all of you for emailing uh In, particularly Matt in London. Ze Commanuel, the first thing you said is a distinction of do a mandate, So everybody's covered. That seems to be the not Democrat,

not Republican, but the libertarian complaint. What is your study and analysis of the outcome of mandating everybody to do this. What happens, Well, the public doesn't like I mean, and I'll be honest. The poems suggest that it is the single part of the Affordable Care Act which the public doesn't like. A mandate. You cannot but the public has

to be educated. And again I would say that we democrats but not do a good job of educating them to say, Look, you want no pre existing condition exclusions. You want everyone to be able to get int at a reasonable rate. You have to have a mandate or you have to have Why can't we do that? Where's the courage, where's the will to say this is what we believe in. If you don't like it, this is the outcome. Yes, I think I think we have to

do a better time to explain that. But I would say so for my standpoint, if we don't like the mandate, the only alternative to really getting a stable market with pre existing disease exclusions is we're going to auto enroll everyone into an insurance package. Everyone gets it by default of being an American. We do that with Medicare, party, we basically do that with Social Security. I think that's it Okay, the alternative. Here's what we're gonna do. We're

gonna come back. David Gura just wrote down that smart response from Dr Emmanuel. This is a raging debate. What we're trying to do with surveillance, folks, is give you many conversations on this so you can decide. We hope you're accomplishing that with us. Right now, Doctor Emanuel, I've got a sore elbow. Maybe you can help me with it later, Zeke Manuel. The new book will be prescription

for the future. David Gura is unleashed, Doctor Manuel. One of the most important photographs in the history and courage of American medicine. Eighteen forty seven the Massachusetts General Hospital Southwestern Haws early operation using ether for anesthesia. That is a spiritual place in America, that dome at mg H and the photograph. I'll put it out on Twitter, folks.

The photographs extraordinary. I think it's eight six. John Warren did h and he was the nephew of one of the great American unknown American revolutionary heroes, Joseph Warren, who was a physician in Boston and the leader of the Boston Revolutionary Group. And I know this photo. I know this from Joseph Warren and Johnny Tremaine, which I read when I was ten years Oh, zeke Emanuel, here's the

emotion that everybody faces. If we go to a socialized medicine further on than Obamacare, where everyone's covered, we will lose our technical and research excellence. Will we lose our worldwide excellence in medicine if we go to where everyone's covered? Oh? Absolutely not. Just quite the contrary what you see once you do cover everyone, as you see a focus on trying to dramatically improve equality and lower the costs of healthcare,

and that yields a lot of innovation. One of the things I like to say to investors is in the seven years, in the five years immediately after passage of the Affordable Care Act, venture funding and healthcare increase compared to the five years before. UM, there are a lot of talented people coming into healthcare because they see a lot of ways to innovate in the delivery of care, making it much more efficient, uh, making it much better

for patients. So I think, quite the contract, you're going to see a huge flood actually, uh with if we continue with the Affordable Care Act in universal coverage of innovation. UH, in lots of places we haven't seen innovation before UM, and that's very important. Do not think of innovation and healthcare is just a new pill or a new medicine. There are going to be innovative processes of care, innovative ways of trying to get patients to be more adherent

to their treatments and to lifestyle changes. And those are all serious and very vital innovations for improving our health, which is the ultimate outcome measure. I definitely want to talk a bit about that in just a minute here, But let me put a question to you that I

put to Michael Cannon a few moments ago. That is, if if you have a lot of these companies pulling out of marketplaces, do you think that that turns sentiment against those companies and makes makes Americans more willing to consider a single payer system where a government run healthcare plan. Michael Cannon, I don't mean to have you guys debate

by proxy. His response to that was he thinks that there are those in in Republican circles in particular, who think that was the plan all along, that this was going to May We're handicapped the insurance industry so much that we were going to get that universal coverage. I'll let you respond to that if you'd like, But I

just wonder what you what you think sentiment. First of all, I think that's a ludicrous analysis if you actually look what happened after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, UH. The insurance company UH number of members went up, their revenues went up, and their stock prices went up. Everyone thought this was a great bill for insurance companies. UH. Not the reverse that it was a covert method to

blow up insurance companies. Remember, the problem here for the exchanges has not been the Affordable correct It's been the Republicans pulling away the reinsurance and saying, well, we're not going to fund the cost sharing subsidies. That's what's thrown the insurance market into his tail spin. So it was not a covert way to get UH single payer at all.

And there are many people who worked on it, myself included, who were not did not think single player was something we're going to get in the United States, or maybe even the most a horrible way of delivering healthcare for a variety of reasons. So I think that's the absurd, uh conspiracy theory, UH fake news story. I look at your book here again out on June the six, so we have a preview you copy, but but one of them here, a chapter here is how to pick your doctor.

And I think that's something a lot of people wrestle within this conversation about where medicine is going, how it's being transformed. That's the notion of how you pick a physician changed. Yes, I do think we have better ways of trying to pick a physician. The first thing you want is a physician who's focused in uh in arranging their office on patients, not on making their schedule better.

So one of the things you want to ask is do they have something called open access scheduling, That is, they have open spots in the day, so if something comes up or you happen to have three times, you can actually see the doctor when you want, not when the doctor wants. The second thing that's really important is you want a doctor who's monitoring their quality. So you want someone who's evaluating on an ongoing asist their performance.

I recommend in the book you want a doctor who's got a patient centered medical home UM That's not the only way they could evaluate it, but it is one way many doctors do. I think those are probably the two best criteria. UM. I would say, you know, I'm sort of as the chapter suggests, I'm against concierge medicine, and I'm against just relying on word of mouth. Those tend not to be or the your local magazines. You know, fifty best doctors in the Washington, D c. Area wherever

it happened to be. Those tend not to be UM driven by any data. Let me ask you the same question I asked Michael Cannon. We had Missouri, Kansas City, Blue across whatever drop out of these programs yesterday. Michael Cannon of course mentions Tennessee. You know all these you know what zip codes are involved, et cetera. Where's the

tip point? Where's the point where you know, not that they're going to protest in front of sixtund Pennsylvania Avenue, whoever is the White House, But where's the tip point? Is insurance companies just say this isn't working? Yeah? No, I think the tipping point is going to be the elections. If you want to know the truth, I think if I were Mr Uh MacArthur in New Jersey. I'd be nervous, uh,

And I think a lot of moderate Republicans are nervous. Unfortunately, given the gerrymandering, the people who voted for it are are going to be you know, immune. But I think the Republicans are going to take uh, you know, this is an election issue and people have you know, taking away guaranteed insurance and guaranteed no pre existing conditions. People are very upset about that, and I think you are

going to see people pay the price. And then we're gonna get back to all right, how do we stabilize the market. What are the reforms we need? And again I'm I'm honest. We've had you known seven years. We need reforms. It's not like the Affordable Care Actors working perfectly. But reform is not throw everything out through millions. Okay, okay, but but you you hit the heart, you built this thing.

It's your fault. So seek if it's your fault, what does Chuck Schumer need to do because quote unquote it's not working perfectly. But well, I I've told you that there are many things to do. So first, stabilizing the insurance market. I gave you the three most important things to thank you. H. There's a lot of cost control things that we can do quickly. Change how we pay doctors in hospitals, so it's off fee for service and

it's on what are called alternative payment models. Give them one bundle or give them a set amount of money to take care of a patient, what's called capitation. UH. Make all the insurance companies that are contracting with the government, whether through the exchanges of the Federal Employee Health Benefit Plan or try Care, make them also go to an

alternative payment models. This is the best way of focusing them on keeping costs down, of keeping focusing doctors and hospitals and keeping costs down, And ultimately that's the best way of keeping insurance prices down. You need to handle the drug company, the drug costs. UH. President Trump has been very vocal about that. This bill. Ironically, zero zero planks in this bill about cost control. Nothing in this

bill and out cost control. So if you really want to keep insurance costs down for the long term, you need cost control. And they have said the Bay the Republicans have had nothing to say about that. Those are the things I would those are the things I would do, and there's a lot of there's a lot of sentiment in the public I think for those kinds of changes, But that's not the direction. You know, when I went in and met with President Trump, that's the direction I

advised him to go. That's not the direction of the Republicans have chosen to go. We gotta leave it there. Zekeimanuel, when your book comes out, Don't be a Stranger, Ezekie Omanuel M. D uh and one of the authors of Obama Care. The book is prescription for the future. As we said, he can come back on when he sells the movie rights. Brunt You by Bank of America. Mary Lynch. With virtual reality, virtually everything will change. Discover opportunities in

a transforming world. Be of a mL dot Com, slash vr, Mary Lynch, Pierced Fenner and Smith Incorporated. There's something new from Bloomberg. It's called Lens. Starting right now, you can use the Bloomberg iOS app off your iPhone or iPad or our new Google Chrome extension to read any news story on any website, scan it, and then instantly see the news stories relevant market data from Bloomberg. In addition, see all the bios of the key people mentioned in

the story. It's called lens, and it is just that, a lens into the people and the data of any story you may be reading. Again, Lens brings you the power of Bloomberg's news and data. Download or io s app or search for the Bloomberg extension at the Chrome Store to try lens out. Learn more at Bloomberg dot com slash lens. Folks, what you don't see off cameras here is Tom Ricks is so fired up. We have gone from Douglas MacArthur to General Maddis and no time

at all. David, why don't you bring in our steam guests. Yeah, he was for for a while a report at the Wall Street Journal in the Washington Post. We then saw him switch to military history, really in real time, as he chronicled the war in I Rock. Tom Ricks is the author of a new book, Churchill and Orwell, The Fight for Freedom, and joins us here in Bloomberg eleven three oh. Studios want to ask you this first of all,

about how this book came to be. You write about how Simon Schama has noted the relationship that these two gentlemen had. They didn't know each other personally, but admired each other's at work. How did you decide to to look at their two careers in tandem? And in fact, not only do they not know each other, they're so different. Yet the hero of Orwell's great novel his name Winston. Uh. How I came to this is after I finished my

last book, The General's for my own edification. I was going back and looking at out of twentieth century journalism, asking myself what last and what didn't. And I started with H. L. Mencken and I thought, interesting style, totally out of date. E B. White Good essays, good style, irrelevant to today. S. J. Perlman, not funny. Hemingway going to be forgotten in essentury. Wait minut. I was just at Hemingways in Paris and the martiniz are still good.

Hemingway on alcohol will be your thank you, probably his greatest legacy. Um. And then I picked up George Warwell and it's like, Wow, this is a contemporary voice. It's fresh, it feels like today. You could take an essay of Orwell's printed in the newspaper today and it would look like it was written for today. In fact, I think he invented the modern op ed style. What have you ever been body slammed by somebody you've covered? Yes, I

have that um in Afghanistan. After the show He Could Battle, I came back and I was interviewing the tenth Mountain Division Unit Battalion. They've been very involved and they were still so pumped up from combat. The sergeant major slugged me in the chest and knocked me down. There you go. I didn't expect that when I asked the question, But

what do you make what? What What should we read into what happened to yesterday's Guardian reporter in Montana being body slammed, reportedly by the gentleman running for Congress the Republic and running for Christ. What does that say about the level of discourse, the role that that we had, the role of the way that journalism is regarded right now in this country. Hitting a reporter, knocking down a reporter cross as a bright line. Uh, it's not just any citizen.

Violence against any citizen that's bad. Violence against a reporter actually violates the First Amendment freedom of the press. And I would say violence against a reporter is fundamentally un American. This is unamary connectivity, and we're seeing a lot of that I think a president who seems so comfortable with autocrats and uncomfortable with with with democratic leaders is an American church Churchill in Orwell. I was just in the Churchill War rooms in Britain. Churchill had a distance from

the general's. We have a president right now who seems to have an immense affection for generals, the modern generals in Dexter Filkins writing in New Yorker now on Jim Madison and all that. What do you perceive of this relationship of the general's not your book the modern generals to the president of the United States. Well, Trump combines affection with ignorance, which is a dangerous combination. Churchill combined

tough leadership with deep knowledge. Churchill fundamentally understood how the military worked. He had been overseeing the b Navy in World War One. He plunged deep into the facts of the matter. You know, I I was struck by a line or very early on in your book you say that the great man theory of history is much detigrated today, but sometimes individuals matter greatly. Uh, as you wrote this book, How did that kind of govern the way that you

approached the subject here? I mean, were you elected to do it in light of that. No, there's a real place for biography of people and key events. And while I do believe that there are large trends in history that are important to pay attention to, demographic and economic. Had Churchill not been Prime Minister in nineteen forty, which was really an accident of British history, world War two would have ended very differently. Had Churchill not been prime minister.

Chances are we know now that a British government would have negotiated a peace settlement with Nazi Germany under which the Nazis were given free reign in Europe in exchange for Britain being allowed to retain its overseas empire. Churchill said no. He becomes prime minister only on May tenth, nineteen. The Conservatives, his own party, don't like him. They don't applaud. The Labor Party applauds when he walks into the House of Commons for the first time as Prime minister. And

what Churchill does in that year is so stunning. In the summer of nineteen forty, his great speeches are all in that year. The phrases we know, blood, sweat and tears, fight them on the beaches also he leads the military in a time when they think the Germans are gonna land. He leads the British military and it's very well organized,

and he supervises it closely and they fight off. And then time works to dovetail Churchill and Orwell with your wonderful book The Generals, and to bring it to President Trump. Does President Trump have a military that can support him? Or are they just simply I say this with great respect for the courage out there, the exhaustion of a multidecade war into fronts Iraq and Afghanistan. Are they just

exhausted right now? Yes, m We've asked a lot more of our current troops than, in fact, we even did of a lot of our troops in World War Two. In World War Two, I think the longest any division was in combat was twelve months. We have people who have now had several years in combat. Uh. But the military right now is kind of the adult in the room. I'm not comfortable with having so many generals running our government, but it's a lot better than the alternative, which is

a bunch of bannonite yahoo's. What is your prescription for General Madds? He likes to be quiet, He is the quiet marine. He hates the phrase mad dog. To be clear about it. What is your prescription for the Secretary of Defense, Matt As I think of all the generals has done the best. Um He has been low key. He has basically run the Pentagon by himself, and he's fought off the crazies in the White House. General Kelly

at Homeland Security has not been done so well. I think he has um let a very rested group of officers and customs Enforcement, immigration and so on board of Patrol up go out and do some things that reflect poor discipline. General Flynn was a disaster. He blew up on the launchpad. General McMaster i've known since he was a major. He's now a National security advisor. It's been sad for me to watch him on the last We're gonna come back. David Girl is gonna do a solo

here with Tomers because I've monopolised way too much. How about this, folks, This is unbelievable. Animal Farm, which I would have guessed is ninety two, was published three days after the end of World War to David who was so successful their constraint on sales when they ran out of paper, they literally ran out of paper with World War two shortage. This is fabious Churchill in Orwell the

Fight for Freedom. The pictures alone, particularly last set of pictures of the two of them smoking their saving their tobacco at their table. They use their Remington typewriter whatever it was, to type this is back this. Michael bar is the only one that understands. Is you you? You? You actually had a real typewriter, right, My first resume was on a remicking type. Very good. There we go? Where were Tom Ricks? Will continue? Church Hill and or Well,

Simona let David grew up bringing her steam gust. David. I'm just gonna say, smarter than we are. You and I are grinding it out in New York. One morning in Maine, Sale woke up. She peeked over the top of the covers. The bright sunlight made her blank. Tom Ricks has got to be smarter than us. He lives up in Maine. That's very good, about one mile from the island that Sal lived on. Robert mccluski wrote, the sun and uh I still see Sal and Jane around town?

Is that right? That is very cool? South and Blue Brissal One morning in May and all those great books, um, and they still have the same haircuts they had. David glad to have here with us in New York and I live in three oh studios. It strikes me, and we were talking about tim President Trump's approach to the job. He's not a reader. We know that we have Andael James to read us on the show from time to time, and I'm always impressed by the depth of his knowledge,

his respect for reading and for history. I've heard the same thing about General James Secretary James Madis now as well. Do you get the sense that the president is learning anything from them and others? You can quibble with having so many generals in the cabinet. What are some positives that can come from that? Do you think almost none? Because I think it is simply too late in life for Trump to catch up with the knowledge space that

you really need to do that job. Well. I think it must be so humiliating for him all day long to sit there and basically find out he's the stupidest person in the room. These are not only very bright people, very energetic people at the top of their profession, alpha males of the type of respects. They also are incredibly well read and I think it must be just horrible for Trump. All all his life, he's paid people to

tell him how smart he is. All these people are basically, in one way or another saying, sir, you don't understand. So there's the frustration of the president as a result to that. What's the frustration like for someone like General hr McMaster. We watched as he came out of the White House a couple of weeks ago to say that something did not happen in the White House, which a few hours later the President confirmed did happen in the White House. How frustrating must it be for someone like

that to work within within the administration? Operating in that way. I think Trump destroys the souls of those around him. I think Sean Spicer's soul has evaporated entirely. I think Killian Conway lost her soul. And I think McMaster has given up a little bit of his soul. Shakespearean watching McMaster. This is not just any general. It's not just any

smart general. McMaster literally wrote the book on the Vietnam War, Dereliction of Duty, one of the ten best books on the Vietnam War, and its conclusion is Officers senior officers need to speak truth to the president, and instead McMaster has gone up there, I think, to retain his credibility with the president, and instead of protecting the country, which is the job of the National Scarity advisor, he's protecting the president. Why has he done this? Why has he

given up a little bit of his soul? And he's a very soulful man. When you speak to him, his voice thickens with emotion. When he gets angry, he rolls his shoulders to loosen his back muscles. Uh. Why has he done this? I think because he thinks he's the only person standing between having a disastrous national security advisor again, like Flynn. What's the lesson to be learned here from your book about how these two men at Church in

law Well approached that leadership. You look at Churchill his upbringing, talk about relationship he had a lack of relationship he had with with his father, What he learned and where he went from there? What can we in America in two thousand seventeen draw from from what molded them, what

made them into the leaders they were? Oddly enough? This book about Church when Worlwell concludes with looking at Martin Luther King and his Letter from Birmingham Jail, because it's very much in the tradition of Orwell's writing and Churchill's approach, which is number one, have principles. Number two, don't develop opinions until you understand the facts and really work hard to get to those facts, as Churchill did delving down into the military details of World War Two, and then

when you have the facts, apply your principles. And I think that's a good course to watch for. And I think in the current era what I'm particularly watching is people who like Churchill and Orwell, are willing to criticize their own side. Churchill breaks with his own Conservative party saying no, Nazi Germany is rearming, you cannot appease them. Orwell breaks with the Stalinists left and says, no, you can't suppress the truth because it disagrees with the party line.

So what I'm looking for is people who have a willingness to break with their own side, to have principles and apply them. And fortunately, in this country we have a set of written, written principles for how to go for to operate. It's called the American Constitution, which I think is a great operating document and a great strategic document. Look for people who support the constitution and rule of law. Listen to them. I find myself especially now interested in

what anti Trump conservatives are saying. I'm thinking of people like William Cristo, Elliott Cohen, Um, Charles Crockhammer, George will These are the people who I think half principles, have a loyalty to traditional conservatism. And I don't think Trump is a conservative, He's a revolutionary reactionary. Those are the people I'm paying attention to right now. I'm great to see you. Thank you very much again for coming in. He's the author of Churchill and or Well to Fight

for Freedom. Tum ricks a joining us here in Bloomberg eleven three oh Studios. This is an important interview and not nearly enough time, and we will speak to him often. I'm sure. Mob Brooks is from the fifth District in Alabama, right across the north top of Alabama. He is running for Senate Cox. Good morning, Good morning. What have you learned about the Republican Party in the last two weeks. You're in the middle of a dining book of a

campaign in Alabama for Jeff Sessions. See there's been this district, that district council Republican Party doing right now. Well, I think that the national media, quite frankly is hammering Republicans on a regular basis, and they're doing it in kind of an alice in Wonderland, um arena. They aren't paying attention to the major challenges that America faces. Instead, they focus on small things which are big to individual citizens

around the United States. But by small, it's small in comparison to the debilitating insolvents in bankruptcy and the damage that we will be done if we don't do something to get our out of control spending under control. Uh And so I wish the mainstream news media would talk more about Venezuela, where sev of their population has had an average weight loss of nine teen pounds. I mean, that's huge because they can't get enough calories and enough

food to sustain their body weight. That's what happens when a central government goes to an insolvency in bankruptcy, and that is quite clearly where the United States of America's headed. If we don't do something about are our spending our deficits this year, well this past year, about seven billion dollars and it looks like it's gonna be worse going forward over the next decade. Corfferson Brooks, I wonder if you could just tell us what the path forward here is.

After the election, there was a lot of enthusiasmic expectation that a lot more would get done on Capitol Hill. We've seen the latest CBO score, We've got the White House budget, We've seen reaction from both parties. Uh, it's muted or dismissive of that president's budget. Where do we go from here? What do you say to constituency wonder where the action is going to be? Well, which issue do you want to talk about? Let's talk about Let's

talk about the budget first. Let's talk about the budget. Well, the budget I think that has been put forth by Mick mulvaney as the um UM Director of Office and Management and budget is extraordinarily responsible in the overall sense that it is trying to prevent America from going into

a debilitating and solvency and bankruptcy. Now, you can have disagreements over where the spending cuts ought to be, keeping in mind that overall it's still spending more money uh than last year, and and to me that's somewhat troubling, but I cannot over emphasize the danger associating with us continue to rack up these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars and deficits having to borrow the money because we don't have it, we can't afford to pay it back.

And long term, if you have even the smallest amount of economic sense, you understand that it's a very dangerous thing that we're doing and it's going to be devastating to the country until large degree undermine what it took our ancestors more than two d years to build. Cogs are not enough time today. We look forward to speaking to you at a greater length in Washington. Here David gern Times. Thank you to Moe Brooks of the fifth district right at the top of Alabama. I mean interesting,

it's not a Gerrymander district in that sense. It's just it's almost like a sane shape. It's almost David like, almost directane. They have the House podcast. Join us yere on our phone lives. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Surveillance podcast. Subscribe and listen to interviews on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, or whichever podcast platform you prefer I'm on Twitter at Tom Keene. David Gura is at David Gura. Before the podcast, you can always catch us worldwide. I'm Bloomberg Radio Brunch

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