Reason TV, Released on 1/31/24

Reagan’s former budget director, David Stockman, says pro-inflation policies destroyed prosperity—and that the only solution is a new, anti-statist political party.

Stockman made enemies among Democrats by pushing hard for cuts to welfare programs—and he ultimately made enemies among his fellow Republicans by pushing equally hard to slash defense spending. His memoir of the era, The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed, is a legendary account of how libertarian principles got sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

Stockman’s new book is Trump’s War on Capitalism, and it takes a blowtorch to the former president’s time in office. “When it comes to what the GOP’s core mission should be…standing up for the free markets, fiscal rectitude, sound money, personal liberty, and small government at home and non-intervention abroad,” he writes, “Donald Trump has overwhelmingly come down on the wrong side of the issues.”

At a Reason Speakeasy event in New York City, Reason’s Nick Gillespie talked with Stockman about his political journey from being a member of Students for a Democratic Society who protested the Vietnam War to being one of Reagan’s main advisers to his denunciation of Donald Trump and his hope that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s candidacy helps throw the 2024 election into the House of Representatives.

Stockman also explains how Trump led the charge on Covid lockdowns, got rolled by Wall Street and the Federal Reserve, and why his nativist views on immigration are inimical both to freedom and economic growth.

David Stockman is a former Republican congressman from Michigan and was President Reagan’s budget director from 1981 to 1985. After leaving the White House, Stockman became a managing director at Salomon Brothers, and he later founded a private equity fund. David is the founder of David Stockman’s Contra Corner, and he is the author of The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America, Trumped! A Nation on the Brink of Ruin… And How to Bring It Back, The Great Money Bubble: Protect Yourself from the Coming Inflation Storm, and Trump’s War on Capitalism.