BUCK: We have Monica Crowley with us now, former assistant Treasury secretary under Donald Trump. She also has a new podcast, the Monica Crowley Podcast, which debuted last week. Monica, thanks so much.

CROWLEY: Hey, guys. Great to be with you. Thanks for having me back.

BUCK: So, these prices and the inflation that it’s causing to surge, any reason to believe it’s gonna get better anytime soon under the Biden presidency? What’s going on here, Monica?

CROWLEY: No. No. And, in fact, if you trace back to when the real inflationary pressures started, they started as soon as Biden and the Democrats in Congress passed what they call the American Rescue Plan in March of 2021. They claimed that the economy needed ever-greater support coming out of the covid pandemic, so they passed a nearly $2 trillion package, which was a whole lot of left-wing wish list items and not a whole lot geared for actual covid support for communities and businesses.

So, they passed this $2 trillion — that we don’t have, that was unnecessary spending — and as soon as that happened, guys, you saw the inflationary pressure start, and you started to see prices climb. That spiral — once it begins and once it becomes entrenched — is very difficult to get rid of, very difficult to dislodge. And then on top of that, you’ve got the pressures coming from the energy sector, which Joe Biden and his team have crushed.

And so you’ve got fuel, which is factored into everything that we use and consume; those prices have gone way up. Those prices are extremely volatile because of that and also what’s going on in the world with Russia and Ukraine and so on. So between those two things — your inflationary pressures coming from out-of-control Democrat spending plus the Fed going crazy all these years plus the inflationary pressures coming from fuel going sky-high, those two things — are a double whammy for every American consumer.

CLAY: Monica, we’ve got people who are who are… I read a study on the amount of wage increases. They’re actually under what our inflation rate is right now, and there’s a denial of what the impact is being. The more you have to spend out there in the community on a day-to-day basis, the more inflation impacts you.

How much of default tax are we dealing with right now so many working-class people who are having to spend all of their money to products and are making far less when you look at the inflation rate than they are bringing in, and they feel that month to month in their pocketbooks?

CROWLEY: Yeah. It’s a really important point. Inflation is a tax. Sometimes it’s called a hidden tax because it’s built into the prices of everything that you buy. But it’s not so hidden anymore. It’s right there in our faces, guys! Every day, we go to the grocery store or go to fill up our tank, it’s right there. But it’s also a regressive tax, meaning that when prices are higher, it actually impacts the middle class, the working class, and the poor most of all because they’re least able to withstand price hikes.

So while the Democrats run around and talk a good game about wanting to lower unemployment and champion the little guy and the workingman and woman, that’s all nonsense because inflation is hitting them most of all. When you talk about wages, yes, wages are going up, and that’s generally a good thing. We all want to make more money, right?

But when you’re in an inflationary environment like this, what happens is if inflation is outstripping your wage increases, well, then you’re actually in a deficit and you keep getting in a deeper and deeper hole with every passing week or every passing month of inflation. And it ends up being a very destructive spiral, because if you’re not earning enough to pay for basic items, you’re gonna go to your boss and say, “I need to make more money.”

Now, he may or may not give that to you, but prices continue to go up. And so in order to afford those things, you have to earn more. It ends up being a very vicious cycle. And as we learned from the late seventies and early eighties — the last time we saw this kind of inflation — it’s a very painful thing to dislodge. And last time we saw this, we saw interest rates at like 18, 19% and we saw massive, massive recession.

And President Reagan came in with his Fed chief, Paul Volcker, and Reagan said to Volcker, “Do what you need to do to fix this.” The levers that they used were very painful. And, guys, I’m not sure that the average American or certainly people on Capitol Hill or in the Biden White House understand what needs to be done — and if they do, maybe they just don’t care, because they like the economic chaos. They need it in order to slam in their bigger socialist agenda.

BUCK: We’re speaking to Monica Crowley, former assistant Treasury secretary under Donald Trump. New podcast out, just debuted: The Monica Crowley Podcast. Monica, the energy component of this I think has been really interesting, and I would hope that people would spend more time — well, the media won’t do it. But if people look, they can find that the Russians were funding anti-fracking movements in the West, of course, because they realize that was in their geostrategic or geopolitical interests.

And the Biden White House still seems to cling to this, “Well, we’re not in the way of energy production, but we also want the energy production to switch to clean energy, and also the ‘profiteers’ are what we should call the people running the oil companies, for example, and maybe everyone should just go buy a Tesla and stop being such peasants.” It doesn’t seem like it makes sense. They can’t have it both ways. They’re either opposed to fossil fuel production or they’re not.

CROWLEY: Right. Well, yes. They talk a good game about, “Wow, you know, we’d like to see more domestic energy production,” but they don’t really mean that. And, you know, you see Pete Buttigieg and others just saying sort of like this sappy line about, “Well, if things really stink, just go have a margarita and go buy an electric car. (laughing)

And that’s why their poll numbers are down in the gutter. But the one big thing that I think everybody needs to understand is that when Biden and the Democrats talk about, “Well, we need cleaner energy,” that topline sounds like a very good thing. Everybody wants cleaner energy. Then they talk about, “Well, we gotta end our dependence on fossil fuels, and so therefore we’re gonna really cripple American domestic production because that will force us into cleaner production.”

What you need to understand is that they are… (sigh) There’s some concern among them about the environment and climate change; yes, that’s true. But the bigger reason they are doing this is because energy is the biggest lever available to them in the economy to transform the economy. So that’s why they keep targeting energy. Yes, they’re crushing small businesses. Yes, they’re assaulting other sectors. But energy is the biggest one of them all.

That’s why they are so relentless in crushing production here, because once they do that, they’ll be able to reengineer the U.S. economy in their own image of a more collectivist, Marxist kind of model. And once they knock out the United States, then the world follows. Now you’ve got your one-world economic system that’s a more Marxist kind of model. That’s why they’re targeting energy, and that’s why they do not let go.

BUCK: Monica Crowley, everybody. Check out the Monica Crowley Podcast. Thanks so much, Monica. Great to have you on.

CROWLEY: Always a pleasure, guys. Thank you.