Monica Crowley’s Take on the Economy and 2024

CLAY: We’re joined now by Monica Crowley, former assistant treasury secretary under Donald Trump. Monica, we appreciate you coming on with us. I want to start with the massive myths when it came to new jobs and expected number of 573,000. It came in at 210,000. Why do you think that is?

CROWLEY: Hi, Clay, thanks so much for having me. It’s great to be here. Well, yeah, we got another huge disappointment in the jobs report for the month of November. And actually over the last four months, three out of the last four, Clay, have been disasters, starting in August, September and then November. October was sort of a more positive report, but even that is being revised a little bit downward. So it’s clear now we’re back into a downward trend.

It’s also clear that the labor crunch that we have seen essentially since Biden became president is still in full effect, and there are a number of reasons why we’re not seeing jobs take off. The first thing is that during the emergency last year, President Trump made the very difficult decision to do a wholesale shutdown of the U.S. economy, and that was warranted because we had no idea what this virus was or how it was going to behave and the whole world was shutting down.

There was no way that the United States could be the only country not shutting down before we had a real handle on what this was all about. So when we did that, the government also understood that it needed to step into the breach. So we had to do this emergency-level spending and create all of these programs to get American workers and businesses through the most acute period of the crisis.

Well, that being said, the crisis is now over. The emergency is long gone, Clay. But you’ve got unified Democratic control in Washington between the White House and Capitol Hill, and what they have done is maintained emergency-level spending absent the actual emergency, paying people more to stay at home than to go to work — and I don’t care who you are, most people are economically rational, and if you pay them more to stay at home than to go to work that’s exactly what they’re going to do.

The other thing, too, is over the last few months you’ve seen such a very soft labor market, you’ve seen these vaccine mandates. Certainly, in October and November, when the discussion really started ramping up about putting all these vax mandates in place you’ve seen a lot of people get fired and a lot of people very hesitant to get the shots, so now their futures are very uncertain. They’re leaving the labor force. Some are coming back in. We’ve seen an interesting dynamic there. But I think government policy is really continuing to have this big wet blanket over the labor market.

CLAY: It’s fascinating to think about the difference between — I started off the show talking about this, Monica — red-state recovery economically versus blue-state recovery. While Biden is trumpeting the success of his policies, really it’s red-state America that is successful. If everybody looked like blue-state America right now… The numbers I have in front of me right now:

California still has a 7.3% unemployment rate. New Jersey has a 7% unemployment rate. New York, 6.9 %. These are the states that are most aggressively embracing Joe Biden’s economic policies, and they’re failing relative to the Floridas, the Texases, the Alabamas, the Tennessees of the world.

CROWLEY: Yeah, in fact, 17 of the top 20 states for job recovery — we’re not talking about job creation here; we’re just talking about job recovery, post pandemic. We’re still in that phase. So when the White House talks about, “Oh, we’re creating all these new jobs,” that is false. This is a job-recovery operation, not a job-creation operation at this point. Seventeen out of the top 20 states with job recovery, they’re all led by Republicans.

To your point, red states have been far more successful with this economic recovery than blue states. You mentioned some of those blue states with their unemployment rate. Clay, New York City has a 10% unemployment rate. You see the same in a lot of these deep blue cities like Chicago and Philadelphia and so on. Look, policy matters. We know what works.

We saw it for four years under President Trump, who put in place a pro-growth economic agenda: Tax cuts, regulatory relief, fairer trade deals and unleashing our great energy sector. The direct result was a booming economy, with unemployment at or near historic lows for every demographic group, and poverty at a historic low, including for African-Americans.

So we know what works. The problem now is we’ve got unified government under the Democrats who simply don’t care. It drives me crazy, Clay, when I hear people talk about incompetence. “Oh, Biden and his team are so incompetent. The Democrats are so incompetent.” That is false. This is not incompetence. This is totally deliberate.

This is all about reengineering the U.S. economy into a more collectivist, socialist kind of model. That’s what they want. They do not care about policies that actually work for American workers and businesses and industries. They do not care about that. This is an ideological jihad to reengineer, reshape the country through the U.S. economy.

CLAY: How important within that construct is it for the Build Back Better bill to not become law? Given that, I think you probably agree — by the way, we’re talking to Monica Crowley, former assistant treasury secretary under President Trump — that Republicans will sweep back into power, certainly in the House in 2022 and probably in the Senate as well.

That means the Democrats wouldn’t be able to pass anything for the remaining two years of the Biden administration, at least not with a lot of Republican support. Do you think they’re going to be able to ram through the Build Back Better bill — this massive, multitrillion-dollar cost package — with Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema kind of sitting on the sidelines still uncommitted? Or do you think this thing is going to die on the vine?

CROWLEY: Well, I know a lot of people say, “Look, this is for Democrats who are essentially Marxists for the most part.” There are some exceptions, like the two you mentioned, but this is essentially a Marxist party now. They view politics simply as a vehicle to get their agenda done: The fundamental transformation of the nation.

So just like with Obama when he rammed through Obamacare, and then the Democrats suffered mass losses in 2010 and both houses flipped and you saw thousands of Democrats lose their positions at all levels of government across the country, for them, they actually think that… They’d rather be empowered than not, Clay. But if they have to lose power and control temporarily, for them it’s worth it if they can slam through the agenda and move the Overton window even further and further left.

So their whole view is, “Well, you can’t really make a socialist omelet without breaking a few eggs.” So if we have to lose a few national elections here and there, it’s, “Okay, we’ll come back at some point,” right? They’re just trying to advance the ball down the field. Will they get Build Back Better done? I know a lot of people are saying, “Well, yeah, because it’s worth it for them to slam something through,” and it is possible.

My view is that if we can make it past January 1st without them getting the bill done, then the odds go way down because you still have a lot of vulnerable Democrats in purple states and districts or red states and districts who are coming up for reelection next year. Do they really want to go back to their constituents and say, “I raised your taxes during an election year?”

I’m not convinced that all of this is going to go through. Now, I could be wrong and the Democrats could slam something into place, and they’ll probably get some kind of compromise. But I think the timetable is going to be really crucial here. Just keep leaning on all of these people — especially the most vulnerable Democrats — that if they do this, they’re committing political suicide.

CLAY: We’re talking to Monica Crowley, former assistant treasury secretary under President Trump. Last question for you, Monica, and I appreciate the time: Do you think Donald Trump is going to run for reelection in 2024?

CROWLEY: I do, actually. I do. He certainly hasn’t told me and he hasn’t told anybody else for sure. But my sense is that he is going to run, and I think he’s going to run for a number of reasons. First of all, he talks about having to bring America back, Make America Great Again again. And he’s frankly the only one who can bring the U.S. economy back a third time.

He did it when he first came into office. He did it last year during the pandemic, when we were coming out of that. And he’s the only leader on the scene, as far as I can see, who could do it a third time. So I think he still loves the country. I think he’s going to do it for that reason. But also, I think he wants to clean up the historical record. I really think that he sees what happens in 2020 and he wants to give it another run.

Again, I’m only speaking for myself and speculation, but knowing the president as I do and knowing how much he really cares about this country, I think… Look, if all things are equal and his health stays great and Biden continues to mess up the country beyond all recognition, I think he is going to likely make another run at it, and I think we’d be blessed if he were to do that.

CLAY: I know I said last question, but if he runs, it seems clear that Mike Pence would not be his running mate as vice president. Is there somebody you’d like to see him pick? Is there a vice presidential candidate? They would only have four years to serve, but his vice-presidential pick would be so massively important, because if he won in 2024 the presumptive candidate in 2028 would be that vice president. Is there somebody you love that you think would be a good match?

CROWLEY: Well, no one in particular, but I do know that the Republicans have an extraordinary deep base of talent who are populists as well as conservatives who could really work with Trump. If Trump doesn’t run, they can certainly run on their own and be extremely successful, I think.

Look, whether it’s Trump or anybody else, Clay, the truth is that Biden is making such a catastrophe out of the country and frankly out of the Free World, that all the candidate would have to do is stand there and point to the Biden and the catastrophe that he has created and win.

I think you’ve got Ron DeSantis and you have Kristi Noem, you have Tim Scott out of South Carolina. You’ve got Mike Pompeo. We’ve got a deep bench of very talented people. Ted Cruz. So I think whether or not Trump runs, I think we are in very good standing going into 2024.

CLAY: I agree with you, Monica. We appreciate your time. Thanks. Have a great weekend.

CROWLEY: My pleasure. Thanks, Clay.

CLAY: Thank you.