Larry Kudlow, according to Linette Lopez at Business Insider, is going to get a chance “to be relevant again.” He is, sources have told CNBC, going to replace Gary Cohn as Pr*sident Trump’s National Economic Council director. More than 30 years ago, Kudlow worked in the White House budget office under President Ronald Reagan.
So. Yet another right-wing wacko gets to join the brigade that Trump has plunked into office.
Many of these—Rick Perry at Energy, Betty DeVos at Education, Scott Pruitt at the Environmental Protection Agency, Ryan Zinke at Interior—were chosen specifically to wreck the departments they are now running into the ground. The 70-year-old Kudlow may not be able to wreck the economy all by himself, but following his advice could certainly lead the nation down that path. He seems to believe the economy’s only chronic problems are the impact of government regulations and spending, not matters like income and wealth inequality, stagnant wages and a poverty rate well above that of most other developed nations.
Cohn resigned under pressure after disagreeing with Trump over his imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs. Kudlow supports free trade, pretty much along the lines that Cohn does. That didn’t stop Kudlow from endorsing Trump in the election. The man doesn’t have a graduate or undergraduate degree in economics. He has written no peer-reviewed papers on the subject. And he has regularly given terrible economic advice on his television show and in numerous interviews.
The announcement of his appointment could come as early as Thursday:
Kudlow helped to craft economic policy during the Reagan administration. He informally advised Trump on taxes and other economic issues during his 2016 run for president.
Business Insider noted that the appointment “is the perfect person to keep Trump's economic sham going”:
Kudlow will bring the perfect mix of star power and old Reaganite-GOP ideological nonsense Trump needs in his White House to make Republicans like Paul Ryan (and only Republicans like Paul Ryan) sleep better at night.
Everyone else should know better.
Media Matters has treated Kudlow to a marvelous smackdown that includes these bits:
• In 2002, Kudlow argued that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a U.S. economic boom.
• In 2007, as the Great Recession took off, Kudlow claimed “There’s no recession coming. The pessimistas were wrong. It’s not going to happen. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0.” In July 2008, when the economy shed a 213,000 jobs, he said, America is in “a mental recession, not an actual recession.”
• Kudlow “argued that banks that manipulated benchmark interest rates were the victims, rather than the criminals,” according to The Nation.
• Ranting about President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office, Kudlow said the president had declared “war against investors, businesses and entrepreneurs,” and “replac[ed] the rule of law” with ”political decisions.” He labeled “higher income inequality” as a “falsehood.”
• Kudlow said the best way to raise wages is to “slash business tax rates.”
• Kudlow said the country began stress tests on banks in 2009 because the Obama administration needed a villain.
And he didn’t confine his idiocy to economic matters:
• He falsely claimed that under the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, uninsured Americans faced “a $25,000 fine, or imprisonment, or both.”
• As CNBC host, Kudlow repeatedly denied that climate change is real, calling scientists’ work in the field as “a kind of scam analysis.”
• He claimed that Hillary Clinton’s “shriek” about human rights was something “right out of Lenin or Trotsky.”
