Newsmax host: “It's felt like maybe a recession was needed to a lot of people”
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From the March 11, 2025, edition of Newsmax's Rob Schmitt Tonight
ROB SCHMITT (HOST): The president right now is doing a very dirty job, one that most politicians would never even attempt to do. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of meeting Javier Milei, who is Argentina's new president at CPAC, and he's done the same thing. He has slashed a bloated government in a country that had terrible inflation and a cratering economy, and he's managing to turn his country around. And you believe that Trump is doing the same thing here. Do you think that our president can find the same kind of success that he has found?
JOHN STOSSEL (GUEST): No, because Trump is already getting tremendous pushback and he's just on a sliver compared to what he did. I mean, Milei fired a higher percentage of workers. He shut down whole ministries, 200 state entities and government offices. He killed two regulations per day. So if Trump — and I think Musk is the main doer — if they do that, it would be great in America. But I doubt that will happen.
SCHMITT: Do you think was it simply that that Argentina had fallen so much further? We've been able to prop up — you know, using debt and all of the spending, we've been able to prop up a lot of the prosperity of this country. I think Argentina was in a much more dire situation. So the populace there was more willing to accept these these radical measures.
STOSSEL: I think you're exactly right. If we had 200% inflation, maybe people would be ready for more radical change. But in terms of financial responsibility, the only way you get there is to age limit Medicare and Social Security, cut it in some form. And they aren't even talking about that.
SCHMITT: Yeah. It's felt like — you know, I think to a lot of people it's felt like this is — you know, they've been telling us for a couple of years now that we have this great economy, but obviously people can't afford much. It's felt like maybe a recession was needed to a lot of people, that everything was so unaffordable. You know, you talk to people that are looking for houses and they're like, when's the housing market going to crash? So they can finally buy in. People saying, you know, when's — when are we going to get something to slap all this down so that affordability can come back? And you wonder if, you know, the recession that's been — I think they've kind of pushed it off using more and more deficit spending. Do you think it's going to hit?
STOSSEL: I do, but I've been predicting the recession for the last 15 years incorrectly. And we certainly don't want a recession. Far better if we just got rid of some of the bad regulations and allowed more people to build things without three years of groveling for approvals.