President Donald Trump has been on a high-energy roll to spur economic growth — not that you would know it from the way he is covered by the media, veteran financial guru Larry Kudlow, who served as the Trump campaign's senior economic adviser, told Newsmax TV.
"The energy level is so high and he's been on message nearly all the time," Kudlow, a Newsmax finance insider and CNBC senior contributor, said Wednesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"The guy's meeting with business leaders, he's also meeting with union leaders . . . with almost everybody under the sun. Probably the most important thing here is that he is following through on his campaign messages of economic growth, and tax cuts, and rolling back regulations.
"You see the pipeline orders coming in, and now there's some border security orders on immigration. It's exactly how he wants. He's following through with tremendous energy. I saw a poll today — Rasmussen — [and] he has close to 60 percent approval rating, how about that?"
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But Kudlow, who was a senior economist in the Reagan White House, says the media is not saying enough about Trump's impressive burst of energy out of the gate.
"The mainstream media will simply not acknowledge that this is going on, and they're all bogged down in extraneous, distractive issues," he told host Steve Malzberg.
"They don't see the meat and potatoes: Trump is a growth guy; Trump is going to help folks; Trump is going to make good on his promises; Trump's an optimist. Nobody wants to talk about that, but when he said we must think big and dream bigger, I love that.
"He's an action guy, right? He says the time for empty talk is over, now is the hour of action, don't let anyone tell you it can't be done. That's just fabulous stuff, [and it] reminds me of Ronald Reagan. We can turn America around, we can reverse the decline, and he's doing it on a daily basis."
Kudlow also believes Trump's promise to build the Keystone XL Pipeline will be a boon to "what I call hard-hat, blue-collar construction worker jobs and they need it." And it will bring a many of them into the Republican Party.
"They're going to vacate the Democratic Party, these hard hats," Kudlow said. "Hillary [Clinton] and [President Barack] Obama wouldn't touch them, and they're moving into Trump's camp. I think once they move into Trump's camp, because of his constructive policies, they're going to stay.
As far as Trump's promise to rebuild the nation's infrastructure — roads, bridges, tunnels — "it's not going to be easy . . . [but] it can be done. There's no question it can be done."
"On infrastructure, so much of it comes from the private sector," Kudlow said. "Take these pipelines for example. The government's not going to pay for this. The energy companies are going to pay for this, and the same would be true for new electric grids, for example, or for refineries or other areas in these energy sectors.
"When it comes to things like highways, at least, maybe some bridges too, this can be done with public-private partnerships . . . So, with emphasis on this, it may cost far, far less than we think to rebuild America's infrastructure.
"Trump's revelation a couple days ago, where he said we're going to lower spending by $10.5 trillion over the next 10 years, that's huge. He hadn't said that before. That's something we tried to work on during the campaign – we never quite finished it."
The cuts will balances out the spending increases and will also help pay for tax cuts, Kudlow added.
"Although I must confess, I think the business tax cuts will pay for themselves with 4 percent growth. So, I'm not really worried about that."
Kudlow also said he does not take issue with the United States fronting the money to build the U.S.-Mexico border wall to stem the tide of illegal immigrants — a project Trump insists Mexico will ultimately pay for.
"I don't have a problem," he said. "I don't think the numbers are gargantuan here, I really don't. I think border security is absolutely necessarily."
"[Trump] has already talked to the Mexican president, and they're going to get together soon and talk this whole thing through in an amicable business-like way. I don't see the hostility; I don't see the confrontation.
"This is with respect to financing border security and also many other U.S.-Mexican projects. I think this is helping the stock market get past tariff worries, and trade war worries, and it's all pro-growth, and it's all pro-American."
Kudlow is host of "The Larry Kudlow Show" and the author of "JFK and the Reagan Revolution: A Secret History of American Prosperity," written with Brian Domitrovic and published by Portfolio.
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