POPPY HARLOW (HOST): Like all candidates and all presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump is making a lot of promises. But his latest promise is a very big one. He told The Washington Post in a 96 minute interview that if he is president, he will be able to eliminate the $19 trillion U.S. national debt in eight years. To do that, though, you'd have to cut the annual budget of $4 trillion in half, basically to $2 trillion. And that's not all. Christine Romans, our chief business correspondent, here with me to break down how realistic, how can I even ask it that way? This is not realistic at all.
CHRISTINE ROMANS: It's not realistic. It's not realistic. Look, the cutting the national debt would be a good thing. There are a lot of people who have wanted to do it for a very long time, and we just haven't been able to. Nineteen trillion dollars is a lot of money. But I've heard this called “fabulous fiction,” fabulous not being a good word, psychotic, impossible. I'm calling it the magical mystery tour of math. It just is impossible. Eight years, $19 trillion. If you sold all the oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve right now, which some people who support Donald Trump are saying, sell assets. OK, sell all of that, by the way it's a terrible time to be selling oil into the global market -- you'd raise $5 billion. Real estate, all this real estate, all these assets, who would buy it? The Chinese, maybe, would come in? Well, isn't Donald Trump going to be at odds with the Chinese? You know, I just think it is a good thing to think about how to cut America's debt, because the more debt we have, the less room we have after paying for interest on the debt for other things, important things to do, but cutting it in eight years, it's just impossible.
