Marlow and Carney on ‘Kudlow’: Trump’s Top 2024 Issues Are the Border and the Economy

Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign is laser focused on two issues: the chaos caused by President Joe Biden’s open border and the inflationary disaster of Bidenomics, Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and Breitbart Finance Editor John Carney explained in a wide-ranging interview Thursday with Fox Business host Larry Kudlow.

The discussion focused on the many revelations in Marlow and Breitbart Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle’s exclusive sit-down interview with Trump.

How Democrat “Lawfare” Gave Trump 2024 Momentum

Kudlow kicked off the conversation with Trump’s claim in the Breitbart interview that if he wins the election he will fire Special Counsel Jack Smith.

“I think that what the president wanted to convey to us in the interview is he feels like the efforts to gag him are entirely inappropriate,” Marlow explained. “And they make it so that there can be a full offensive attack on him, but he doesn’t have the ability to defend himself.”

Marlow noted that Trump was particularly keen on conveying former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s role in the chaos of January 6.

“The point he wanted to reiterate to all of us is that he offered Nancy Pelosi 10,000 troops on January 6, and she turned them down,” Marlow said. “And he thinks Jack Smith doesn’t want him to be able to make that point publicly, which is why he’s saying flat out I’m going to can the guy if I get the opportunity. But he suddenly was making that point to me hoping we would print it, and we did.”

Kudlow also noted that Trump told Breitbart he feels that Smith is “losing momentum.”

“[Trump] thinks that the reason why Smith is engaging in tactics that he believes are unethical is because the political battle is failing,” Marlow said. “And he thinks that he’s getting more popular as these political persecutions go on – the weaponization, as he puts it – and I think this is undeniably true. I think I speak for a lot of Americans where I feel like the entire country changed that day when the Biden government was rifling through Melania Trump’s underwear drawer looking for state secrets. It was a true absurdity in any other era.”

Kudlow also argued that the “the excesses of the Jack Smiths of the world and all the lawsuits” have “propelled” Trump to his current dominant position in the 2024 polls.

Marlow, whose New York Times’ bestselling book Breaking Biden explores the controversies surrounding the current president, explained that he was “very pessimistic” about Republican chances of regaining the White House after the 2020 election, but he now sees that Trump has “got the edge.” However, he warned that the real question is what impact potential big tech manipulation, Democrat lawfare, and other “community organizing” tactics could have on the outcome.

“The big question… is what’s going to happen with the Democrats’ voting operation in terms of their ability to manipulate with big tech, their ability to get otherwise uninterested people to turn in ballots, to stuff ballot boxes, etc.” Marlow asked. “How much of that is going on? How much community organizing and lawfare is going to play a role in this election? That could be questioned. There’s no question though that the people are behind Trump at the moment.”

Biden Embraced “a Bad Term” Coined by His Detractors

Kudlow mentioned Trump’s belief that Bidenomics is “a bad term for Biden.” Carney reminded Kudlow that the term was actually invented by conservatives and later adopted by Biden.

“We started calling it Bidenomics,” Carney explained. “First, it was just an extension of Bidenflation. We were trying to point out that Bidenflation and Bidenomics were intimately related. He tried to own it, trying to say, ‘Yes, Bidenomics. It’s great.’ But it didn’t work. In fact, the popularity of his economic policies keeps going down. It’s his worst point in all the polls… His popularity is 39 percent, but his economic approval rating is down at like 33 percent.”

Kudlow noted that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre “is still out there blaming the Trump tax cuts and saying how they’re going to cut the budget deficit” despite it now doubling to close to $3 trillion.

“It all comes back to the original sin of the Biden administration, which was the American Rescue Plan,” Carney argued. “They came in and spent $2 trillion right away that we didn’t need. That set a very high baseline. Yes, now they claim, ‘Oh, we’re not spending 2 trillion extra dollars every year. So, therefore, we cut the budget.’ That’s nonsense.”

Will the Federal Reserve “Goose the Economy for Biden”?

Kudlow was especially interested in Trump’s statement to Breitbart that Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell could play a key role in helping Biden get re-elected.

“Trump believes that Jay Powell, the Fed Chair, is going to goose the economy for Biden this year,” Kudlow said.

“He’s not the only person who believes there’s going to be rate cuts,” Carney noted. “What he’s saying is that one of the motivations for that is to help Biden keep Trump out of office.”

Indeed, as Carney has extensively reported in Breitbart Business Digest, the stock market firmly believes that multiple interest rate cuts are coming this year despite data showing that the economy is not responding to the Fed’s tightening and is, in fact, re-accelerating.

As Carney noted in Thursday’s Breitbart Business Digest:

[A] rate cut early this year could be very risky because the Fed could find itself cutting just before a re-ignition of inflation. Even more explosively, the Fed could find itself in the unenviable position of cutting during an election year and then having to raise rates following the election.

In the increasingly unlikely event that President Joe Biden wins re-election, this would be bad enough. Donald Trump has already predicted—in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News—that the Fed will cut rates to keep Biden in power. An election year cut followed by a rise in inflation and then a new hiking cycle would cement the view that the Fed acted on political motives.

“Jawboning” and “Jockeying” Jay Powell

Trump had an acrimonious relationship with Powell in the past, Carney reminded Kudlow, who served as the director of the National Economic Council in the Trump administration.

“Trump gave Powell a very hard time. You remember. You were in the White House when this was happening,” Carney said.

“Although, he said during the pandemic Jay Powell was most improved when he went to zero,” Kudlow quipped.

“Maybe somebody can send Powell that memo because I’m sure Powell does remember that, and it wouldn’t be his favorite thing to see Trump take office,” Carney replied.

Carney speculated that Trump was unlikely to reappoint Powell as Fed Chair if he wins in November, noting that Trump told Breitbart that Powell “wasn’t his choice — that it was [Treasury Secretary] Steve Mnuchin who pushed it on him. That was his way of saying that he kind of regrets doing that.”

Trump’s claims about Powell in the Breitbart interview had an important subtext, Marlow argued.

“He was implying to me in the interview that he thinks that Jay Powell is a political person, and he can be worked,” Marlow explained. “And Trump was bragging about working him — ‘jawboning’ was Trump’s term — and getting him to change his maneuvers based on political pressure. That was a very subtle and important dig at Powell that could set a lot of framework for the next year.”

“I think there is something to that,” Kudlow agreed. “As I said, I was in the White House when all that jockeying went on. And, you know, Trump is the quintessential salesman.”

Trump Wants to Expand the MAGA Base

Kudlow was impressed with Trump’s statement to Breitbart that he intends expand his base by campaigning aggressively in  states like New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Minnesota, and New Mexico.

“When you look at the polling numbers, the so-called Biden coalition – of young people, I’ll say, Hispanics, African Americans – appears to be falling apart,” Kudlow noted. “And if Trump does expand the Republican reach, it just might succeed.”

“I think that he’s very fired up, and he sees some paths in certain states,” Marlow explained. “We know Biden is doing poorly with Muslim voters in places like Michigan and Minnesota. It feels like there’s some level of working-class Republicans rising up in places like Virginia and even New Jersey. Trump threw out there New York. I have to bet that’s sort of Trumpian trolling, but it was so great to hear him say that. He’s talking about having a rally at Madison Square Garden.”

Border and Economy Are Trump’s “Bread and Butter” Issues

As for the issues animating this campaign, Kudlow said Trump’s “bread and butter” issue remains the border, but the state of the economy comes in a close second.

“You must know the president very well,” Marlow said. “Because he said specifically the border and the economy [are] the top two things on his mind. He thinks that there’s an effort to have a mass migration into this country. He says other countries are emptying their mental hospitals and insane asylums and sending all their worst people to America. He’s going to go so hard on this issue. It’s going to be incredibly intense, and he’s got all the evidence to suggest that Biden has opened up the [border] I believe in impeachable way.”

“And next on his list is the economy,” he added. “Those are the top two things that came up over and over throughout our time together.”

Kudlow asked Carney whether Trump’s claim to Breitbart that he doesn’t think Joe Biden or Kamala Harris will be the Democratic nominee was meant “tongue-in-cheek” or whether he really believes that.

“I think he thinks if the Democrats were rational, they would try to find better candidates than the ones they have; and this is a little bit of Trump predicting the maximum chaos outcome,” Carney said. “Look, if I were the Democrats, I would be looking at the weakness of Joe Biden and scramble to find a replacement. I don’t think that they’re going to be able to do that in time for the election.”

“How can they? They won’t let anybody else on the ballot,” Kudlow quipped. “Biden won’t let any Republicans be on the ballot, much less Democrats.”

Read more of Breitbart News’ exclusive interview with Donald Trump here.

Rebecca Mansour is a Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on X at @RAMansour.