We have some key primary elections coming up tomorrow and I want to take an opportunity to do a podcast on Donald Trump and the Trump phenomenon
A lot of people are under the impression that I am endorsing Donald Trump because I have said some positive things about him and his campaign
But I want to make it clear that I am not doing that
I am not convinced that he is going to be a good President, although it's possible that he could
I think there's no chance that Hillary Clinton would be a good President, that's clear
Donald Trump is a wild card
I do have a lot of problems with much of what Donald Trump says
What is more telling is that he has so much support because he is tapping into a vein in the Republican Party, in fact, outside the Republican Party because he is getting Independents and Democrats to cross over and vote in Republican primaries because some people find his message so appealing
The country is in much worse shape than the media or the Federal Reserve or Congress are leading people to believe
Everybody keeps talking about the recovery, especially President Obama, but the people who are showing up for Trump at these rallies know there is no recovery
In fact, the economy is in even worse shape than even Donald Trump recognizes, but at least he is talking about the enormity of the problems
He's right - America isn't great. There are a lot of people who are in denial
They say we don't have to make America great again, because it's still great
No, it's not
Based on any measure, the U.S. economy is far from its greatest
Donald Trump recognizes that American has lost her greatness and he wants to restore it
Voters want to make America great again and they believe Donald Trump can do it
Donald Trump probably believes he can do it and that is part of the problem, because he can't make America great again
Only free market capitalism can make America great again and I'm not sure Donald Trump understands this
He believes America is in trouble because we're run by a bunch of idiots, by incompetent people who are in charge of the country - and he's right about that
They are incompetent, but just changing the politicians, having more competent leaders is not going to make America great again
If we have big government, it doesn't matter whether Donald Trump is in charge or the current crop of politicians
There is no way to make big government work
Smarter people at the helm won't steer this massive ship any straighter
Donald Trump believes that because he's successful in business and he's built a high net worth that he can run the U.S. government and make it profitable for American citizens
He thinks he can get in there and get rid of the waste, fraud and abuse and we're going to negotiate better trade deals and this is going to bring our jobs back, and America will be great again
None of that is true
We don't need better negotiators. We don't need trade deals. We just need free trade
The problem with trade deals is that they're not free - they're managed
There are all sorts of nonsense in these agreements
The fact that the U.S. has these huge trade deficits, and the fact that we're losing all our high-paying manufacturing jobs is not because we got outsmarted by the Chinese in negotiations
Our trade deficits are a symptom of the problem - they are not the cause of the problem
The reason we have deficits with everybody is not because we have bad trade deals
It is because we have too much government
Even if Donald Trump is the leader of that government, he's not going to make it work any better
What he needs to do is to talk about how he is going to dismantle government
Not how he's going to make America great again, but how the American people will make America great again when they are free from government
If Trump is going to dismantle all the regulations and the spending and the taxes that are the source of our problem,