Chris Wallace Challenges Larry Kudlow: ‘Let Me Interrupt Your Campaign Speech’

Chris Wallace Challenges Larry Kudlow: ‘Let Me Interrupt Your Campaign Speech’

Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow is very confused.

This is true not just as a general statement, but as a specific reaction to Kudlow’s appearance on Fox News Sunday this week, where Chris Wallace challenged his rosy view of the economy.

Wallace played a clip of Sen. Elizabeth Warren stating at Wednesday’s Democratic debate that the economy might be great for people who have money, but the majority of people who were not already wealthy when Trump took office are still struggling. Asked to respond, Kudlow could not wrap his mind around it:

“I don’t understand what planet they’re describing…The blue-collar workers, the nonsupervisory workers have done the best. The one running wages, their growth and income and wages as exceeding the growth of their supervisors. The unemployment rate is low. We just had the best June stock market the Dow Jones in over 80 years. That’s going to fill up the 401(k)s of middle-class folks everywhere.”

The stock market is not a measure of how workers are doing. As far as filling up those 401(k)s, will Kudlow still brag if the next economic downturn wipes out much of that value, as happened during the Great Recession ten years ago and the tech bust a decade before that?

Guys like Larry Kudlow can ride those ups and downs of the stock market. The ordinary worker hoping to live off the savings in a 401(k) after retirement cannot.

Wallace pushed back a bit, saying “Let me interrupt your campaign speech,” which left Kudlow nonplussed.

The Fox host then played a clip of Bernie Sanders talking about income inequality, a problem that Trump’s allegedly booming economy has in no way mitigated. (In fact, most of the gains from tax cuts he and the Republican-led Congress pushed through have gone to the wealthiest Americans while his tariffs have hurt everyone else.)

Asked what Trump will do to reverse or at least mitigate economic inequality, Kudlow responded with some gibberish:

“What we are doing right now, the best manufacturing autos, blue-collar work recovery, the fastest increase in jobs, the fastest increase in wages. Those are facts. This goes on for many decades, the best performance.”

It’s not the best economic performance in decades. But beyond that, none of this addresses Wallace’s question. If there is a downturn, the rich people like Larry Kudlow who have benefited from income inequality that shoveled ever more money into their pockets will be fine. It’s the blue-collar workers about whom Kudlow is feeling so beneficient who will be hurt.

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

Gary Legum

Gary Legum has written about politics and culture for Independent Journal Review, Salon, The Daily Beast, Wonkette, AlterNet and McSweeney's, among others. He currently lives in his native state of Virginia.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *