About Kevin Hassett
Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, has been a frequent public spokesperson for the Trump administration’s economic policies. In press briefings and media appearances, he has characterized the U.S. economy as experiencing a "supply-side boom" driven by administration policies such as deregulation, tax cuts, and tariffs. He cited the May 2026 jobs report of 172,000 added jobs as evidence of this, stating that the number beat the highest forecast in a Bloomberg surveyched. Hassett has argued that the Federal Reserve should not raise interest rates in response to the jobs data, describing the growth as a "supply-side jobs number" that allows for growth without runaway inflationichel.
Hassett has also addressed high gas prices and inflation, which he described as a "temporary energy shock" caused by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. He stated that the administration expects prices to fall once the strait reopens, predicting that oil will flow "like you've never seen before" due to excess capacity from countries like the UAE. When questioned about low consumer sentiment, Hassett argued that the widely cited University of Michigan survey is "extremely partisan" and suggested it should be renamed "political sentiment," pointing to a separate Conference Board survey that he said showed higher confidence. He has also promoted the use of artificial intelligence by small businesses, claiming that firms using AI saw their sales double.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Kevin Hassett's recent appearances.
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✨ AI-enhanced transcript with speaker attribution
D
David0:00
After poll clearly don't buy. So who's right? Joining me now is Kevin Hassett, former Council of Economic Advisers chairman. Kevin, great to see you. Is there any way Americans are better off now than when Biden came into office?
K
Kevin Hassett0:14
You know, it's really strange for people to allow Biden to go out and say things. You know, the economy was growing 6% when he was inaugurated, and the V-shaped recovery was designed by Larry Kudlow and Steve Mnuchin, the president and myself, and it happened. And so, sure, there was a big drop in jobs, but there was a big recovery as well. And now what Biden's done with his terrible policies is he's put us in recession. GDP now is negative for the second quarter, it was negative for the first quarter. You get two negative quarters, that's a recession. So this idea that he's turned something around, well, he took 6% and turned it to -2%. That's not exactly something he should be bragging about.
D
David0:59
And we have negative growth with inflation. That's quite a trick.
D
David1:04
I mean, that's almost something that we've never seen before, right?
K
Kevin Hassett1:09
Yeah. I mean, it's very rare. It's stagflation from the '70s, and, you know, I think the bottom line is that Biden should be out there messaging solutions. Instead he's calling it like, you know, Putin's tax hike and Donald Trump was the worst guy since Herbert Hoover. It kind of reminds me, I don't know if you're an NBA fan, but there was this time when you knew Warriors were going to beat the Celtics because they're... that's what's going on with Joe Biden right now. He's whining at the refs when he should be playing basketball.
D
David1:44
And it's not Biden per se, it's his policies. And now he's getting beaten up on by Democrats and the media because they know he's a loser for 2024, so they want to get rid of him. The fact is his replacements, all the people they've mentioned from Buttigieg to the governor of California, for goodness sakes, they're all where he is on policies or even further to the left. So the only thing they would do is make matters worse.
K
Kevin Hassett2:11
Right. The only thing that can save Biden is a Republican Congress which comes in and then pursues some prudent policies because they care... if... the White House is saying really, really false things about the economy. You know, you're supposed to, back when I was at the White House, everything the president said got run through staff, it was carefully fact-checked. For him to say he's turned the economy around and that he inherited a terrible situation when he got here, I can't believe that the staff is letting him do that.
D
David2:45
Well, you can't believe it, I can't believe it, but more importantly, I think the American people can't believe it, and they don't believe it. And that's why 88% think that the economy's going down right now. An 88% wrong track figure is something I have never seen before. So I just don't understand why they continue to say something that they know Americans don't believe.
K
Kevin Hassett3:12
Yeah. Americans see right through it, and I don't really know who he's talking to anymore. Maybe he's just talking to himself. But the fact is that these problems can be fixed, that prudent if policies can increase supply and reduce demand and make inflation go down, but President Biden isn't proposing such policies right now.
K
Kevin Hassett3:32
When we were in the White House during the COVID pandemic with Donald Trump, we passed all these stimulus bills with unanimous consent. Every Democrat voted for Donald Trump's bills because we knew the economy was on the ropes, and we had to work with them to save the country. We gave 6% growth to Joe Biden, and now he's destroyed it, and he won't even talk to Republicans.
D
David3:55
We're getting a couple of hits on your mic, but I've got to ask you one final question. If you had one thing, if you had the power of Biden plus the power of Congress, what would be the one thing? I mean, I would pick releasing the energy that has been stopped up by Biden's anti-fossil fuel policies. Is that the thing you'd hit first in trying to turn this around?
K
Kevin Hassett4:17
Yeah, I'd try to get oil production back to where it was pre-pandemic, and I'd also try to pass a balanced budget to try to stop the runaway spending.
D
David4:26
Sounds like a good plan, but I don't think we're going to
