Joel Pollak, "The Agenda - What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days"

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Hi, I'm Kaitlin, a podcast producer here at C-SPAN.

This week on C-SPAN's Afterwards podcast,

Breitbart News' Joel Pollack discusses what he thinks

a potential second presidential term for Donald Trump

should focus on in its first 100 days.

Reason magazine editor-at-large Matt Welch interviews him.

So yours is not the only blueprint out there

for a second Trump administration, obviously.

Project 2024.

Has gotten an incredible amount of attention over the years.

And yet, I don't recall seeing an introduction forward

by Steve Bannon in Project 2025.

He seems to be having a lot more kind of insight

into the Donald Trump mentality

than the Heritage Foundation traditionally has.

So as a way of introduction to the book,

would you say that your book has more of a sense

of the vibe of Donald Trump going into,

a putative second administration and has a better chance

of looking like his administration will?

Well, I wrote this, The Agenda,

before I had even heard of Project 2025.

And I wrote it based on my familiarity

with Trump's policy preferences.

I have some disagreements with Trump,

and therefore the book doesn't include everything

that I would want him to do.

I wanted The Agenda to be a realistic set of, you know,

actions that Trump could take in January 2025

when he takes office.

And there are things I would like him to do

that I know he won't do.

There are things that he won't do

and that I've proposed that he do,

but it's not gonna happen.

So I just tried to keep this as realistic as possible

because I wanted people to be able to envision

what that moment felt like

when President Donald Trump takes office January 20th, 2025.

What can he do?

Now, Project 2025,

which was developed by the Heritage Foundation,

is a comprehensive bible, really,

of conservative thought and policy.

And it's very ambitious,

and it's very large and unwieldy.

It's larger than the telephone book.

It's 922 pages.

And it's attached, apparently,

to a broader project of reviewing resumes

for the potential Trump administration.

I don't know how serious that was.

I think that Heritage wanted to keep a database

of potential staffers,

by the way, they also have a service

at Heritage Foundation to help conservatives in D.C.

find jobs in Washington.

So I think it was part of that.

They want to be as much in the know

about who's who in the conservative staffing world

as they can be.

And there's also a fundraising aspect to Project 2025.

So although it wasn't officially connected

to the Trump campaign,

they hoped, I think, to have some input

into who would be in the Trump administration

and what kind of policies they would undertake.

But,

if you look at Project 2025 and you actually try to read it,

it's really about a longer-term vision

for what a conservative America would look like

if you could get Congress to pass all the legislation

that conservatives would like it to pass,

and if you could get the administration

to have the right people doing exactly this or that.

It's very ambitious.

It's really like one of those technical manuals

for a very expensive appliance or a vehicle

that nobody needs.

That's what it is.

It's fine print all the way so that

if you're an administration staffer,

somewhere down the line,

you can open up your 922-page policy Bible

and understand what the consensus is among conservatives

about what should be done.

I had no such ambition.

I wrote this out of a sense of frustration

that Trump was being put through this legal process

of prosecution and civil suits.

This to me was a Banana Republic type of tactic

by the Democrats

to keep him out of power.

But rather than just sit around and feel upset

about the situation, I looked to do something positive.

And I thought, well, let's think ahead to January, 2025.

What does it feel like when Donald Trump

actually takes office, overcomes all of these challenges?

And what hit me immediately was the thought

that he's going to be a lame duck president

as pronounced by the media on day one,

because he can't run for office again.

So they're going to try to neutralize

his second term in office.

They're going to want to talk about 2028 candidates right away.

They're going to deny him a honeymoon

as they did the first time,

but they'll also deny him a chance to govern.

They'll basically say, well, he's done before he's begun.

So I said, okay, what Trump has to do is come in with a splash.

He has to come in with things he can do right away

that don't depend on extensive debates in Congress,

that don't depend on waiting for confirmation processes

to put the right administrative appointees in place.

You know, all of that is great.

And you can achieve some of these long-term things

by working with Congress and by working on long-term reforms

within the agencies.

But I wanted to focus on what the president can do on day one.

So the agenda is a guide to things

that Trump can do through executive orders,

through executive actions, through memoranda,

through policy changes.

Many of them, if not most of them,

can be done in the first week he's in office.

And I think that's necessary for him to have an impact

and for conservatives.

And I think that's necessary for him to have an impact

and for conservative voters to know what they're likely to get

and not have to wait to see if the Senate leadership is able

to wrangle a few Democratic votes to get

through the filibuster or whatever.

You know, that's been the experience

of Republicans in the past.

Republicans had both houses of Congress in 2017,

still couldn't get a lot of what Trump wanted done.

So my idea was let's focus on what he can do within the limits

of his executive authority.

And I'm not a big fan of executive authority.

I'm very much about separation of powers.

It's very important to me.

Nevertheless, there are many things

that the president can do on various different policies

within the constraints of the Constitution.

And that's what I propose in the agenda.

One of the, and we'll get to the details in a second,

one of the things in the introduction that caught my eye

was that you said if he has a second term,

he will have a mandate the likes of which we haven't seen

since the American Revolution.

That seems like a pretty bold claim for someone who's, you

know, so far hasn't ever cracked 47% of the popular vote.

Was your sense of that just like if he overcomes everything

that's been thrown his way, that becomes a mandate

or you are anticipating something larger

than we've previously seen from him

in terms of the ballot box?

I think that the abuses of power

that have been perpetrated against Donald Trump,

the prosecutions, the civil suits, the investigations,

the committees in Congress, they've been so sweeping

and so egregious that I think if he overcomes those

and he wins the election,

I think he has a sweeping mandate for change.

And I think he can get rid of so many aspects

of what conservatives call the deep state.

And I think they know that's coming,

which is why I think you see some of the desperation

in the Democratic Party and in the media

to make sure he doesn't take office.

They're not even concerned about what he'll do.

They just want to keep him out of office because

they know that there's a reckoning coming.

And I suggest ways in which he can carry out

an agenda to rectify some of what was done.

For example, I think that he should fire the heads

of all the major national security agencies,

the Department of Justice, the National Security Agency,

the FBI, he's got to go through all of these, the CIA,

and there has to be a complete house-cleaning

at all of these agencies.

Because what we've seen is that the ideological rot

is not about one or two bad apples, it's part of an instance.

part of an institutional culture that has allowed this to happen. Since the Mar-a-Lago raid two

years ago in August 2022, when they went in with guns to Mar-a-Lago to look for some boxes of

documents that the president's lawyers were negotiating with the National Archives over,

we are living in a different kind of country. And in order to take that country back to what it was,

to a constitutional republic, you need to have sweeping change. So I mentioned firing the heads

of the security agencies and so forth, but there's so much more than that. I also think

the country's never had a reckoning with the authors of the Russia collusion hoax. There's

really never been any kind of punishment. There was a special counsel investigation. There was

one conviction, slap on the wrist for a CIA lawyer, or sorry, FBI lawyer who doctored a CIA email.

No apologies. Now you have million-dollar payouts for the FBI agents who traded text messages,

who are behind some of this plot.

And I think there needs to be one. So I think Trump has a mandate for changes within the

executive branch that are very far-reaching, and those he can do as president. I also think that

he has a mandate to set this country back on what Americans would regard as a normal path,

back towards things like economic growth, back towards national security,

and away from the kind of sweeping left-wing changes that have

marked the end of the world.

He has a mandate to set this country back on what Americans would regard as a normal path,

back towards things like economic growth, back towards things like economic growth, back to the Obama

administration and now the Biden-Harris administration. I think he has the opportunity

to do many, many things to put us back on track to be a leading nation again.

Speaking of sweeping changes, potentially at least, one of the things that you recommend

there in the law and order or the police reform type of chapter at the top is to have the Justice

Department investigate the Democratic Party, period. My question about that is what happens

when the team gets back on track? Is there a way to get the Democratic Party to investigate the

switch, which is generally the question one asks about extensive use of the pen and the phone

of the presidency to enact changes. How do we ensure that this is not going to be just a tit

for tat, whoever runs the White House is going to sick the Justice Department on the opposition

party? Well, it's already happened. The Democrats have already investigated the Republican Party.

The January 6th committee, the various prosecutions in various states, before that,

the impeachment investigations, Congress and law enforcement agencies have had unprecedented

access to private personal emails, to text messages, to phone records. They've been able to

monitor the conversations between the president and his lawyers. They pierced the veil of attorney

client privilege in D.C. in the documents case, which they then moved to a more unfriendly

jurisdiction in Florida. They've gone through the Republican Party with a fine tooth comb.

And what's never...

What's never happened is that the Democratic Party has ever been subjected to the same kind of scrutiny

in terms of its contacts with law enforcement. Hillary Clinton was somehow able to get the

Department of Justice to take her opposition research seriously, even though it was fake.

Why is that? Who's funding some of the things that go on where there are meetings institutionally

between some of these far left organizations and the Democratic Party? We have a party that has

a broad institutional reach into many, many different aspects of our society, and that needs to be

understood by the public. This is not operating like an ordinary political party anymore. It

operates as something much bigger. We saw some of the gloating about that. In fact, after the last

election, Time magazine did a story about the effort to, quote unquote, save the election. But

essentially, it was a story of a conspiracy between the Democrats and state agencies and the media and

social media companies to...

Create a new kind of voting system, vote by mail, to create a new sense of panic around the coronavirus

pandemic so that they could roll out their get out the vote effort just the way they wanted. And this

was openly admitted in Time magazine. So I think the public needs to know what went on there. And I

accept your argument that two wrongs don't make a right and tit for tat and all that. But two wrongs

may not make a right, but they do make a deterrent. And what we've seen in the past is that Democrats

push the envelope and cross the boundaries until it's done to them.

And my example would be the filibuster. Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader from Nevada, got rid of the filibuster for almost all judicial nominees and executive nominees in 2013, thinking that Democrats would win the next election and that it would all be smooth sailing. And then when Trump won the next election and he started appointing conservatives to the Supreme Court, Democrats then filibustered and Republicans got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. And I think that taught Democrats a lesson because they were able to get rid of the filibuster.

It was when they had an opportunity to get rid of the filibuster under Joe Biden, they didn't do it. And I think the lesson was learned that when you break things, they can be broken back at you. I do think they've tried to do it in other ways. And I think that the country is owed an explanation as to why so many things work the way they do in our country, where suddenly the talking points of the Democratic Party start filtering down into school district policy, into Hollywood.

into media, into the Associated Press style book. What is going on where we have a political party

that functions in this broad way that has so much influence, so many fingers in so many pies?

So I do think there needs to be some level of investigation as to whether there is some

racketeering involved. What's going on here? I think we need to know.

You talk of a chapter on the border and immigration and make the suggestion that we

should stop migration across the southern border, period. Can you think of an example

of a free country at peacetime that has essentially closed its longest or second longest border?

Sure. The state of Israel just comes to mind, and I write a lot about the Middle East, but

until October 7th, they had peace with Egypt, let's say. They still technically have peace

with Egypt, but that's their longest border, I believe, within the Middle East.

And they've closed it off. There's no migration allowed at all across the Egyptian-Israeli border.

There are other countries that have put up that kind of fence because of security threats,

because of people infiltrating the country. And I think that it's a temporary measure. I don't say

that we should always close off migration across the southern border, but we certainly need to

temporarily until we've sorted things out. And then as you go on in the book, you'll see I have

recommendations for how to change the border. And I think that's a temporary measure. I don't say

that we should change our policy of legal immigration to prioritize skills and to make sure we are

importing people who want to be here and who we want to be here, people who are hardworking, people

who bring skills. So I think that's a better way to go than simply having the situation we do now

where our government doesn't do what it does have the power to do and where one party at least is

committed to making sure there is no enforcement. I think we need to stop the migration across the

southern border.

Sort things out. Reinstate the remain in Mexico policy for asylum cases. And make several other

changes to make sure that we have a controlled border. You can't have a border that's completely

uncontrolled. And again, our problem isn't with Mexico. We're not at war with Mexico. But our

problem is with the smuggling cartels. And our problem is with countries that allow their citizens

to leave and to do this. And I suggest in one other part of the book that we apply sanctions

to countries that allow their citizens to leave and come to the United States.

illegally. And they're not just coming from Central America. They're not just coming from

Latin America in general. They're coming from Asia and Africa and Europe and all kinds of

other places. We are not the world's open border. We can't be an asylum for the world. We can't

offer economic refuge for everybody. We just can't function that way. And it's unfair to

American citizens who are seeing and feeling as if their country is being taken away from them

because they no longer control who comes in. So I think you have to establish, at least for some

time, that you can completely control that southern border. How do you square that approach,

which has a fair amount of popularity and certainly among Donald Trump and his advisors,

with a problem like Venezuela? Venezuela has exported more humans than any other place,

refugee crisis. They're fleeing authoritarian socialism desperately.

And so those aren't people who are necessarily trying to come in and blow up the country,

but they are overwhelming the border. What do you do with that? Donald Trump placed sanctions

on Venezuela. I think every administration has had some level of sanctions on Venezuela

for a variety of things that the country has done badly. So how do you approach

a humanitarian catastrophe involving human beings in our own hemisphere?

Well, in general, I'm favorable toward policies of asylum,

when it involves religious or political persecution. So I think we should have a policy

eventually, once we've secured our border, that allows for that. But we can't be the escape valve

for Venezuela or any other part of the world. And again, under international law, if there are

refugees leaving Venezuela, they can find asylum in the first safe country they get to. But we're

not the first safe country on the way out of Venezuela. So that's why we have the Remain in

Mexico policy. And then, you know, we need to look at the countries that are going to be in the

first place. And that's why we're propping up Venezuela, Russia, Iran. These are countries

that are exerting influence in our hemisphere, contrary to the Monroe Doctrine. You know,

John Kerry said the Monroe Doctrine is some kind of colonial vestige of the past. But actually,

it was a way of protecting our hemisphere from outside intervention, from people like Vladimir

Putin and from regimes like Iran. But they're bankrolling and arming the Venezuelan regime.

The Cubans are doing it as well, which is another question.

But I don't think we can solve the problems in Venezuela by being an escape valve for people who

simply want to come here and leave Venezuela. I do think there's room for asylum in specific cases.

But as in the Remain in Mexico policy, you have to adjudicate those cases carefully. And people

need to be in safe third-party countries, not the United States. They can't just come here

and expect that they can stay here indefinitely, whether they make their court date or not.

Some of the things that you advocate,

having to do with immigration and the control of border, are things like being more serious

about the E-Verify employment identification system, having the census be more intrusive or

collecting more information about the immigration status of people, including more immigration

status on federal forms of all kinds. Does any of that get your hackles up or get your suspicions up

just in terms of human rights?

Do you think it's a good thing for human beings in the U.S. having to ask for permission from the

federal government to work and for basically having more of a papers please type of situation?

No, it doesn't. And that reference to Nazis looking for people's papers.

It's not Nazis. It's the border. It's the 75-mile zone inside the border where they can't actually ask for your papers in the United States. Just something that, as a civil libertarian, I don't like. No, I don't think it's a good thing for human beings in the U.S. having to ask for permission from the federal government to work and for basically having more of a papers please type of situation.

I don't see it as a Nazi reference.

I get that. That line is used. I remember Democratic members of Congress using that line when Arizona tried to enforce federal immigration law. And they lost it to the Supreme Court. And Arizona was told immigration is a federal policy.

I don't know why then you have sanctuary states and sanctuary cities taking it under their own power to ignore federal immigration law. But I don't think there's anything wrong with asking somebody who's not legally present in the United States to demonstrate their right to vote.

demonstrate that they belong here. I also think that there has been an effort by Wall

Street, frankly, to turn a blind eye to illegal migration, to people working here illegally

because it lowers wages, it lowers costs. It's not fair to American workers and it's

created a general breakdown of rule of law. I think you can ask people on the census whether

they're here as permanent residents, whether they're here undocumented or whatever. And

the Trump administration actually tried that in Trump's first term. They just had it thrown

out of the Supreme Court on a technicality. It was the only major case that Trump lost,

by the way, at the Supreme Court. We were told for four years that everything he was

doing was unconstitutional. All of it was upheld by the constitution except that census

question about residency and immigration status. And it was a technicality. They hadn't done

it right administratively or whatever.

So it can be done. We know it can be done if it's done the right way. And I think that's

important also, not just for the work purposes in E-Verify, but because Democrats have been

able to use uncontrolled migration to boost population, particularly in blue states that

are otherwise losing population to red states because of their economic policies, their

tax policies. And if the census counts every human being in a state without regard to whether

they're legally entitled to be there.

Then you're allowing Democratic states essentially to retain more congressional districts. They

become more politically powerful for defying the law, for having sanctuary state policies.

And I don't think that Democrats should benefit politically from their refusal to enforce

laws that were passed in a bipartisan manner and signed into law decades ago that both

parties know they have a responsibility to enforce. So I'm not as perturbed by that.

And I take your point. I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree

with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. I agree

with you. I agree with you. I agree with you. But I think Democrats tend to lean more toward

the Libertarian side on a lot of issues. But I think when people are here illegally,

it erodes the rule of law.

I think civil liberties presuppose a boundary. It's a luxury of safety and security to be

able to be as free as possible in our own country. But when there are no boundaries

whatsoever, and people can come here and do what they like, then actually we're less

free to enjoy our liberty.

So I think that it's entirely reasonable to ask people about their immigration status.

Thank you.

Tom, this is a surprise to people that in a brisk book with a handful or two handfuls of chapters,

one of them is called Faith and includes a lot of prescriptions of what the White House can do

in the promotion of faith. First of all, why is that one of the chapters? What is the problem

that you're aiming to address and why is it a big priority? And second, walk us through some

of the things that might surprise people, like having a moment of reflection from the White

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I think we are in the middle of a spiritual crisis in the United States. And I think that

the president can lead the way in helping resolve that crisis. Nobody is looking to Donald Trump to

be their pastor, okay, or to be their rabbi or to confess to him or anything like that. And I think

he would be the first to admit that he's not the right person to do that. But I do think that he

can set an example by showing us the role of the president in this crisis.

I do think that he can set an example by showing us the role faith can play in our lives without

imposing anybody's religion or any particular belief on anyone. I do think that it's constitutional

not only to start government meetings with a prayer, since Congress does every time it has a

session, but I think it's constitutional to have a moment of reflection where people are allowed in

that moment to reflect on whatever they want. But the idea is also that if you're a religious person,

you're reflecting on the higher power that is,

behind everything that we do that presupposes the Judeo-Christian values that built this country.

And I think that there is a sense of chaos in the country, kids growing up without any sense of a

higher authority. There's a sense of purposelessness that I think we encounter a lot. We're seeing a

drop-off in church attendance. We're seeing a drop-off in marriage, in childbearing. There's a

massive decline in the birth rate.

It used to be said,

20 years ago, that the United States and Israel were the two Western countries that defied the trend of

having fewer children and declining population. Now, Israel stands alone and the United States has fallen

off. And I think there are a variety of reasons for that. But I think we need to emphasize the importance of

faith in our lives. I think the President can do that. I watch the White House press briefings every day.

And I have long recommended that they start with a brief invocation at the start of the briefing, simply

to set the right tone.

between the president's press secretary and the press

to make it more respectful

and also to set an example for the country

and say, look, this is something you can do in a classroom

and it doesn't impose anything on anybody.

It doesn't violate anybody's rights.

It doesn't make people feel uncomfortable.

What we do see instead is the press secretary walks in

and has several minutes of banter with the journalists.

How you doing?

Happy birthday.

Good luck in your next job.

It's all this nonsense really

that just illustrates the degree

to which there's an unhealthy coziness

sometimes between the White House and the press.

I think that it's the most widely watched

public meeting in America.

It should begin as many other public meetings do

with at least some acknowledgement

that there's a higher power.

And if you don't want to acknowledge that, that's fine.

It can just be a moment of quiet reflection.

But I do think that we're missing a connection

to faith as a faculty, as a human faculty.

And as a result, we're seeing not only families

failing to form and people feeling depressed and lonely,

but we're also seeing Americans

treat each other in horrible, terrible ways.

I think part of the division that we have in our country

is because people don't have shared experiences

of faith anymore.

I wonder if that's because of what happened to us on 9-11.

I do think that, I think that's my personal theory about it,

that this shocking event is one that's still taking us

a lot of energy to process.

We haven't really moved past what that means for faith,

for believing ourselves and our place in the universe.

And I think it's time that we did some of that repair work.

So I talk about faith.

I talk about the different things the president can do.

I'm in favor, for example, of having a rotating set of clergy

from whatever background, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish,

secular, humanist, whatever you want it to be,

coming into the White House and offering a spiritual reflection

once a week, not overwhelming people with it,

but at least offering some insight, some spiritual guidance

that's nonpartisan, that just helps establish the idea

that this is an important thing in people's lives.

And I think you can do things like that.

The president can lead the way and, you know,

put the pulpit back in the bully pulpit and say to people,

please join me in going to church.

You know, I thought Trump did a little bit of that

in his first term when he called for national days of prayer

during the coronavirus pandemic and things like that.

I think that needs to happen more often.

I think we need to be reminded that while we're at each other's

throats all the time, there is actually a higher power,

and you can believe in that or not,

but I do think it helps orient us toward working together,

working together in a more positive and productive way

and to thinking about our lives as having a deeper meaning

than comes to us from the news headlines

and from the ordinary routine of work and school and so forth.

You talk about families and birth rates.

Obviously, that's in the news, the J.D. Vance discussion.

One of the things that may come as a surprise,

especially to left-of-center readers of this book,

is that you come out as a supporter of maternity,

paid maternity leave.

Federal level.

Talk about that, and is this sort of,

do you identify with kind of national conservative movements,

the nat cons out there who are making what sound like

on some issues of economics and family-related things

a little bit more left of where the Republican Party has usually been?

You know, the best idea that was never acted on

in the Trump administration was Ivanka Trump's idea

about paid maternity leave.

And I have three children.

Number four is on the way next month.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

And I'm doing pretty well,

and our family also struggles to figure out

how we're going to balance the budget for childcare

and for everything else we have to pay for.

The cost of childcare in this country is prohibitive.

It actually discourages people from having children,

people who would like to have more children.

And I think that we do need to take

a hard look at paid maternity leave

and understand also that there's a way to do it

that isn't coercive or socialist.

There's a way to do it that will result in returns

to the federal budget in the sense that

if you allow parents to work more

because you help them with childcare,

they're going to be making more income.

You can tax that income,

and it comes back into the federal fiscus.

We can make this a policy that pays for itself and then some.

I just think we need to take a look at that.

I think we need to take it seriously

because the cost is so astronomically high

and it's prohibitive and it's a problem

because we do need to have more children.

I would not have done what J.D. Vance did

in terms of disparaging people who don't have children.

Some people struggle for years to have kids.

I'm sure he regrets that remark now.

He seems like a very nice person,

so maybe he just said it off the cuff

in an interview with Tucker Carlson

in a sort of jocular way.

I think that the important thing

is not to think about who's not having children.

What we need to do is

to value motherhood.

We need to value it in every way,

including aesthetically.

We shouldn't have people in public life

running down motherhood or parenthood.

We need to also help with it financially if we can.

I think the cost of child care

is a major, major obstacle

to getting back to what a healthy society is like.

So I don't give a label to that.

I don't call it national conservative, whatever.

I just look at the contrast

between where we were 20 years ago

and where we are today,

and I think the cost of child care

is part of that problem.

Again, there are other reasons as well,

cultural and otherwise.

Smartphones certainly haven't helped, I don't think,

because people are spending more time

with their phones than with each other.

But I do think that it's worth looking at proposals

to create paid maternity leave,

paid child care,

and understanding that that could be a net positive

for the economy and for the federal fiscus.

One of your chapters is

about the problem of national debt,

which right now debt service, I believe,

has eclipsed military spending in the United States.

So congratulations to everybody involved, I suppose.

I will note perhaps dryly

that the debt hasn't seemed to be an overriding concern

of Donald Trump's political career.

Am I correct in assuming

that you are trying gently to suggest

to the possible next president

that maybe he should take it a little bit more seriously?

I don't think so.

Yes, I think you've picked up

on my gentle nudge in that direction.

I mean, obviously,

it's not something the president can address on his own, right?

He needs to have Congress involved.

But I think he can set direction for Congress.

And so one of the recommendations I have, for example,

is that the president can say

he's going to veto budgets

that aren't balanced in the future.

And that's something very tough to say,

but it's a way of getting the conversation going in Congress.

Okay, how do we cut spending

or how do we raise revenue?

How do we make this work?

And there were some good ideas

that were on the table that were thrown out before.

There was the Simpson-Bowles Commission under Obama,

and they came up with a plan

that most people had a problem with in one way or another,

but at least it was a plan

to start planning for the long-term fiscal health of the country.

And Obama just wrote it off.

He just got rid of it.

And then they had the caps

that set in under the Budget Control Act of 2011.

And they said,

and the caps hurt.

They hurt the country militarily.

And so when Trump was elected,

he got rid of them for the military,

which I actually think was the right decision

from a national security point of view.

But again, we're into this process,

into this problem of repeated budget deficits,

growing national debt.

Neither party wants to do anything about it.

It's the kind of thing that both parties need to hold hands

and jump off the cliff together

in order to solve this problem.

But I do suggest some,

ways that I think the president can start

to take actions executively,

again, without intruding

on Congress's financial or fiscal powers,

but ways in which he can start saying,

okay, we're going to stop this debt problem

from getting any worse than it already has.

So I think among the other suggestions,

saying you're going to veto budgets that aren't balanced

is one way to start.

You talk about inflation.

Americans talk about inflation.

It's right up there with immigration.

It's a top election.

Your issue this year

and just policies that make things more expensive.

Donald Trump is of the belief

that tariffs do not make things more expensive.

You support targeted tariffs against China in particular

or sanctions against countries

that are engaged in malfeasance,

Iran, Russia, some of the other ones

who were involved in the fentanyl trade.

Do you have a sense that Trump is missing out

on an opportunity to have a more aggressive,

low cost,

a type of policy by his enthusiasm

for more broad-based,

you know, 10% across the board tariffs?

Tariffs are tricky.

I was very skeptical of Trump's tariff policy

in his first term

because if you just do the basic economics,

if you're making something more expensive,

ultimately the consumer is going to pay for that

through higher prices.

But when he raised tariffs on China

and on other countries,

we didn't actually see a broad,

rise in prices.

When he left office,

inflation was around about 2% or below.

And when Trump raised tariffs,

it turned out that the economy

simply absorbed the cost in other ways.

It did not pass along those costs

to consumers in a way

that really had much of an impact.

And it turned out,

and I was, you know,

shown this by Trump's example,

but it turned out that tariffs

were a very effective diplomatic tool

as well as an economic tool.

And we had a lot more economic strength

versus China than we realized.

So I became converted

by the result of that experiment

to the idea that tariffs

can actually be used successfully.

Now, that doesn't mean

they always will be used successfully.

And of course, I can imagine

that if you set tariffs high enough

or broadly enough or too broadly,

you could see a general rise in prices.

So that could be inflationary.

But I think there are other things

that the president can do

to lower the pressure on inflation.

One of the things I suggest, for example,

is ending things like the student loan bailouts

and some of the other COVID holdover policies

that have allowed inflation to grow

because people aren't required

to pay their obligations.

And if they're not paying their obligations,

like their student loans,

then they're spending money on other things.

And that drives inflation up.

So I think there are things the president can do

to reduce the harms that we've seen

under the Biden and Harris administration.

Now, the most powerful policy

person or policymaker with regard to inflation

is the chairman of the Federal Reserve.

I do suggest that Jerome Powell should be replaced.

I think that he's done an okay job,

but I think that he's made a couple of mistakes.

He raised interest rates very high too quickly during 2019,

and then he lowered them dramatically,

and now he's raised them again very quickly.

And what we're seeing is that

in this fight against inflation,

interest rates are so high

that there's sort of a cascading economic effect,

that's hurting small businesses in particular

as they try to refinance.

And that means people aren't being hired.

It also has really darkened our economic outlook.

I think we need a different approach.

And again, while there are limits

to what the president can do on his own

with regard to federal spending,

there are certain things that he can do

within his executive authority

and using the bully pulpit

and using his authority, of course,

to sign or veto legislation,

where he can set the priorities for the legislature

and he can appoint new leaders

in the federal reserve and say,

look, we want to make sure that inflation is driven down,

not at the cost of growth,

and we want to make sure that we have the soft landing

everyone talks about with a sense of optimism,

not by looking to raise unemployment to bring down prices.

It always disturbs me when media pundits

and financial commentators say,

well, we want to see unemployment go up

to make sure inflation comes down.

That's not really the indicator we should be pushing.

I think we can do better.

You have some unusual, perhaps,

to most viewers' and readers' suggestions in here.

Maybe we can go over a few of them quickly

because they're fun, frankly.

Harriet Tubman on the $200 bill.

Yeah. I like Harriet Tubman.

I just don't think she should have replaced

or should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 .

I think the idea of bringing about a Harriet Tubman bill

is great.

Just put her on the $200 bill.

And, you know, we don't see $200 bills in circulation, really.

But one of the others, like, you know, I'd have to go out there,

the effects, unfortunately, of the inflation of the last four years is that people are

spending higher denominations. So let's give Harriet Tubman the honor of being on the $200

bill and keep Andrew Jackson on the $20. The parade for service members who served

in the war on terror. Talk about that. Yeah, there have been very few recognitions,

specifically of those who stepped up in the war on terror, who fought in Afghanistan,

who fought in Iraq, who contributed in other ways. And we've seen this before when there are

controversial wars. And the Iraq war was certainly very controversial. We've seen that it's tough to

have the public acknowledge the contributions of American servicemen, servicewomen. I think we need

to do more because my remembrance of that time is that it was very, very dark, very difficult.

People still, I believe, again, are still living with the shock of the post 9-11 world,

I also think that the Iraq war really divided this country. And I think we need to address

those old wounds. And the best way to do it is to acknowledge those who stepped up and who

volunteered and who did whatever they could. There's a generation that did. And I think we

haven't honored the heroism of that generation. We call that generation sometimes the millennial

generation or some Gen Xers. I guess I fall into that category. But that's something I think we've

missed out on.

And I don't think we should wait till everybody gets old to acknowledge that they did something

really wonderful and noble. And people feel that Iraq didn't end up going well and that Afghanistan

ended very poorly. But we shouldn't let the mistakes of policymakers shroud the sacrifice and

the heroism of that generation. And we can use it as an opportunity to bring our country together.

Three words for you. National bike path.

Yeah. National bike path.

National bike path. I mean, that was something that came up again during the first Trump term.

It didn't go anywhere, but it's very doable. The rights of way exist. We've got a wonderful

highway system already. We can use that system as a basis, but also deviate from it and create

a national bike path. I think it would be fantastic for national morale, for national unity.

It would be part of tourism to this country. And I had the opportunity last year of hiking a very,

very small portion of the Appalachian Trail. And it was just amazing. It's amazing to think

that you can go from one side of the country to the other along that trail. There's also a similar

trail in the Pacific here, mostly an equestrian trail. But we need a bike trail. Why not? And

I think it's just a great idea, one of those great grand national ideas that Trump had that I think

he can, using existing funding, implement as president. You had called for some kind of national

sovereignty fund or national sovereign fund. And with getting involved in crypto, it kind of

seems as if Trump has now embraced having a strategic crypto reserve. Talk us through what

your conception is and what it looks like that Trump is doing and why it's important.

Well, you know, hindsight is 20-20. But if the United States government had bought a bunch of

Bitcoin back in 2012, we wouldn't have a national debt problem today. I mean,

the value has risen so much that you could pay off the national debt. Now, that's, of course,

an easy example to cherry pick. But I do think that while the government shouldn't be picking

winners and losers, there's an opportunity for the government to invest in certain things that

can gain value over time. And that can be used whether to sell off to pay for the national debt

or they can be used as assets against which to balance our liabilities. I think that there's

an opportunity for the government to become involved in doing this kind of investment,

again, in a limited way that doesn't involve political favoritism and you have some kind of

independent oversight. But I don't see why President Trump couldn't establish some kind

of national sovereign wealth fund that looks at investing in infrastructure projects or investing

in cryptocurrency and things that can generate value for the American taxpayer and that can,

perhaps, help us overcome our staggering national debt.

You advocate for renaming the Environmental Protection Agency to a Department of

Conservation. What's the difference? Why is that an important thing to do?

You know, it's a really important distinction. And historically, in the American environmental

movement, there's been two approaches. The one approach associated, I believe, with John Muir is

the idea of protecting the environment, keeping it in a kind of pristine state,

and then there's the other idea associated with Giver Pinchot, which is the idea of conservation.

That is to say, we use the environment and we use our natural resources for the benefit of human

beings, but we take care of the environment as much as possible. The first approach is a kind

of idealized utopian approach. And the second approach is a more pragmatic, human-centered

approach. And I think the second approach is the better approach to environmental policy. I think

many of the groups that I work with are focused entirely on protection and preservation of this

kind of ideal wilderness model that we have in our minds. What that means in the West is massive

wildfires, for example, because if you're not allowing logging on some of these federal lands

or federal forests, you're allowing dead trees, you're allowing brush to grow, you're creating

more and more fuel for wildfires, and then you lose these forests and the species anyway. Whereas,

if you adopt a conservation approach,

we try to retain that feeling of wilderness, but we understand also that we have to manage it,

that we cultivate it for our own purposes. And that is, I think, a better approach. So I want

to shift the focus of federal environmental policy from thinking about keeping our environment in a

pristine state to thinking about how can we be better stewards of our environment as we use it

to make our lives better while also retaining natural beauty, species diversity, health of

ecosystems, and so forth. Obviously, your craziest idea is having the White House give a national

journalism prize. What are you getting after there? Well, the Polks and the Pulitzers are so

ideological. I mean, to me, the last straw really was the 1619 Project, the New York Times winning

an award for a project that

falsified American history. I mean, that's not appropriate, I think, for journalism prizes to do.

But, you know, if the Pulitzer Committee wants to do that, fine. But I think we need alternatives.

I think we need alternatives that recognize independent contributions to our media, to

journalism, to writing. And sure, there would always be accusations of political favoritism

and so forth. But, you know, there are many countries that do reward

writing and journalism and other achievements where the awards come from the government. And

I think it's appropriate to think about at least having some alternative to the left-wing

ideological bias of the existing journalistic awards. Towards the end of the book and the

conclusion, you talk about you're imagining Inauguration Day, including, you know, what

would be the Resistance 2.0 coming to put, you know, the New York Times and the New York Times

and the New York Times are making it clear they are going to use The Insurrection Act as a means for

fighting international terrorism. You picked up a bit on what Trump's

worried about, because you know, you're not a big fan of action. You're a big angler. You're a bachelorette.

You're a little bit of a bachelorette and you see the sand in the gears of everything. And you say that it might be

possible that Trump would have to use The Insurrection Act. What specifically would he have to use it

for? How would you use it in that case?

wire fences around the Capitol. And these are things that we don't want to see. But clearly,

if there are going to be riots in the cities, there needs to be a response. And I don't think

Americans should ever be intimidated again by the prospect of violence. You know, one of the things

I think that marred the 2020 election was the fear that many people had that if the result went one

way or another, that there would be rioting in the streets. We saw the storekeepers boarding up

their windows here in L.A. and in D.C. and in other places in anticipation that Democrats

might riot or Democratic voters might riot or whoever if Trump won again. And there were

organizations, there was one called Shut Down D.C. that called for people to go into the streets if

Trump claimed a narrow victory. So I think there needs to be an understanding that that's not going

to be tolerated so that people can vote with a clear conscience without fear of violence breaking

out in the country if things don't go the way of one.

You wrote this book beginning, as you say, in the introduction on June 1st and basically had a fever

of 10 days and wrote it very quickly and published it very quickly, which is commendable always,

one writer to another, to write fast. It's amazing to me, even with that really lightning

quick turnaround, how much the country has changed politically about the stuff that you're even

talking about, about this presidential race.

The intervening period. How has that intervening time, the assassination attempt, Joe Biden stepping

down, the debate that went horribly awry, Kamala Harris suddenly, Tim Walz, how has that kind of

affected either the thesis or your original kind of sense of motivation, sense of taking the

temperature of the country and of yourself on June 1st of this year?

It's such a great question because things have changed so much. And,

one of the things that I know Trump wanted to get done and that I addressed in the book is this

problem of American hostages overseas. Now, unfortunately, there still are American prisoners

in Russia, American hostages in Gaza, but the prospect of a Trump presidency, I think, helped

motivate the deal that saw at least some of the American prisoners released from Russia. So,

some of these policy priorities are already moving forward slightly. And so, look, I just focus on

January 20th, 2025. My vision hasn't changed. And I don't think the recommendations in the book have

changed because of all the crazy things that have happened since I first wrote it. You can imagine

how difficult it would have been had I written, you know, how Trump has to beat Biden, right?

You know, I'm convinced that the Trump campaign had a little trouble resetting after Kamala Harris

became the Democratic candidate, because imagine how many millions of dollars they put into

ads against Joe Biden and polls about Joe Biden. You know, they've had to reach out to

retool their whole campaign now for a new candidate. So, I'm glad I didn't write my book

about politics. That's, by the way, one of the things people have enjoyed about the book when

I've shown it to friends or to reviewers. They've enjoyed the chance to get out of the everyday

of politics and think about the future. And that's really what I wanted to do when I wrote it. I

thought, I'm so miserable and so upset about what's happening in a Manhattan courtroom that

I can't do anything about. Let me think ahead to what the future could be like once we

get through all of these challenges as a country. And I think people have enjoyed that mood when

they read the book. They think, okay, there's something positive. There's a light at the end

of this tunnel. So, you're absolutely right. So much has changed. And thank goodness the

assassination was unsuccessful. We'd be living in a very different kind of country right now.

But the priorities remain the same. The things that our country has to do remain the same. And so,

even though much has happened, and I'm sure we'll have an exciting road to go still until

November 5th, much will happen, hopefully no violence and so forth, no more

assassination attempts. But I'm sure there's a lot yet to come. But I think the priorities

remain the same. Do you ever close your eyes and imagine a future where it isn't these politicians,

it isn't this sort of like 10-year period that we've been living through, or 25-year period,

if you want to date it from 9-11, where there's just a different flavor, a tenor of politics

that's less apocalyptic in nature, and obviously with different individual

characters, was that at all part of what you were trying to envision? Or are you still,

you know, we're only a few months ahead of ourselves right now?

You know, it's such a beautiful idea that you just expressed. And maybe you picked that up a

little bit in the tone of the book. That's what I would like to help achieve. When I was learning

about politics in the 1990s at college, the big complaint from political activists was that the

parties were too much like each other.

They were different than the complaint you hear from conservatives now about a uniparty,

where both Democrats and Republicans are part of some establishment. The complaint was a little

different. It was that the two parties are too close in terms of policy, and there's no real

daylight between them because Bill Clinton had embraced a lot of Republican policies, and

people were upset with that. And therefore, things weren't political enough. It was too boring.

And I had some sympathy for that point of view, because obviously,

there are problems in our country that we need politics to solve.

But I do think that there are problems in our country that we need politics to solve.

think that what i'd like to do with a lot of my writing is to get rid of some of the craziness

some of the fear try to calm people down a little bit and say look we can get together and solve

some of these things we don't have to agree with each other and we may argue from time to time but

there are things we can do together and even if your side loses once in a while that's okay the

world isn't going to blow up i think we need to stop looking at each election as if it means the

end of the country or rather we need to get to a place where each election doesn't mean the end of

the country i mean maybe i'm so angry or the anger that motivated me to write this book and and then

to calm down in writing it was the idea that when you arrest the former president and the future

opposition candidate of the country that really is putting too much at stake in an election that

means the side that you're targeting is going to be the one that's going to be the one that's going

to be the one that's going to be the one that's going to be the one that's going to be the one that's

like you know going to be the one that's going to defeat your opponent and then you finally get to

see that the party that's not going to win and has to be the one that's going to have a whole

war to break through that pulled us off of a lot of things this is this is a huge moment similarly

for any party that has to win this has to win the election or they go to jail maybe they lose their

lives they're out of power they're subject to all kinds of other abuses we never should have raised

the stakes that high i'd like to get back to a place where we focus on doing what will make our

lives better and safer and more productive and i do think it's possible we were there 25 30 years

ago in some ways and look we can have a more exciting politics than the somewhat humdrum

the whole system down every time. I think we need to get back to that place. And look, I know Donald

Trump is a disruptor, but this would be his last term in office. And I think the value of that is

he can disrupt using some of the agenda items I have in this book. He can move the system back

to where I believe it ought to be. And then he will fade from the scene constitutionally termed

out. And maybe we can look forward to a new politics that is more cooperative and more

positive. The book is The Agenda, What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days. The author

is Joel Pollack. Joel, thank you so much. Thanks for the opportunity.

Thanks for listening to this week's Afterwards podcast. If you are interested in podcasts about

nonfiction books, listen to C-SPAN's Book Notes Plus podcast for interviews with authors and

historians hosted by Brian Lamb.

Thank you for listening to This Week in Politics. I'm Brian Lamb. I'll see you next week.