Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago?
Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?
Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?
Do you feel that our security is as safe, that we're as strong as we were four years ago?
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John Smith joins us now.
He spent four years as an advisor in Donald Trump's White House, John Smith.
What were some of the roles you served in some of the projects you worked on when you were in the White House?
Sure.
I originally served as Director of Urban Affairs and Revitalization Policy.
I became a special assistant for domestic policy, later special assistant for legislative affairs.
And ultimately, I was his deputy director of domestic policy and also served some time leading the Office of American Innovation.
And what have you been doing since?
Since I've continued to still do some social impact work.
I have some campaigns around mental health, around public safety.
And I've also done some advocacy work around criminal justice reform.
And this piece from Newsweek recently dated October 21st, Donald Trump is benefiting from a huge political realignment along class lines.
You are one of the co-authors of that piece.
What do you mean?
What kind of realignment?
So what we did at our firm, CGCN, is establish a research report called Class Dismiss.
And we looked at the poorest medium and average income households.
And we found that some of the poorest households come from some of the most polarizing caucuses and members of Congress.
For example, the four poorest medium incomes were white, black, and Hispanic.
And the members that represent those districts are members of the Republican Study Committee and members of the Freedom Caucus.
And then on the left is members of the Hispanic Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.
And so we also found that in some of the highest medium income average incomes come from some of the wealthiest districts, which are usually some of the bipartisan caucuses like the Problem Solvers Caucus and some of the groups that are pushing for bipartisanship.
And so what we found with that is that some of those poor districts, the reason why you're seeing such polarizing reactions is because people are really trying to push the current establishment to do more for their constituencies because things haven't changed.
And so what we're arguing is that we're seeing a real realignment.
Trump came in and I've been associated with Congress over 20 years.
So I've kind of seen this stuff build out.
You know, I was a part of the Tea Party movement, but people don't know that Jim Jordan started an anti-poverty caucus or the original person who talked about the opportunity economy was Tim Scott and I worked on an opportunity agenda with him.
But it wasn't until we had a president like President Trump who started to kind of work on issues that help working class voters.
And so you see a different Republican Party than the party that I came into is now a party of the working class.
And you're seeing a different Democratic Party that's representing more of the elite individuals.
And we're seeing less trust in institutions like media, big corporations.
Even Jeff Bezos just came out with a news article talking about how people don't trust newspapers anymore, you know, like the Washington Post.
And so what we're seeing right in front of our eyes is a real political alignment, realignment, where you're seeing more working class voters want to vote Republican.
Class bias setting media narratives is something you talk about in this piece.
What's a few examples of that?
So, for example, I mean, look at the USMCA policy.
You know, very bipartisan in essence.
Basically, you had both parties vote for this legislation.
And what did that legislation do?
Legislation basically recreated a new trade deal, a new NAFTA deal between Mexico, Canada, and America.
And it was a focus on, you know, working class voters, unions, more jobs to the United States, you know, easier to kind of create more supply chains.
And people saw that as kind of real kind of movement by the party to help working class voters because what they saw under the Trump administration was high wages, low inflation, and more economic mobility.
I think in the 40 years that preceded me working in Congress in 2000, economic mobility has been at an all-time low.
And then what you saw under the Biden administration was high inflation costs, less opportunity.
And so people are voting their pocketbooks.
That's the most important issue.
And then if you look at other issues around public safety and immigration, you know, I think that the Democrats have started to kind of lose trust with some of the voters that they've talked about advocating for for decades.
What did you make about two weeks ago, maybe it was a week at this point, it's all blending together, about the debate over Donald Trump working at a McDonald's and whether that was authentic or not?
I think it was authentic.
I mean, I've had my experience with the president where, first of all, he likes going to McDonald's.
He even talked about us going once when I was riding with him in the Beast, but it takes a lot to kind of do that for a president.
But I think that what he sees as a cure with all of our issues that we're dealing with in America is everyone having success.
He thinks success for the least of these kind of can transcend races and some of our class differences.
And so the part of the reason he told me that he ran for president is because he couldn't sit back on the sidelines and watch these wide disparities continue to happen.
And so when you hear the slogan, make America great again, it's about making America the land of opportunity again for all Americans.
Jeron Smith with us until about 8.45 Eastern, taking your phone calls, phone lines split, as we've been doing as we get within just a couple weeks of this election.
If you're a Trump Vance supporter, 202748-8001 is the number.
If you're a Harris Walls supporter, 202-748-8000.
And then if you're undecided or neither, 202-748-8002.
As folks are calling in, did you listen to any of Kamala Harris's interview with Charlemagne the God yesterday?
I didn't hear all of it, no.
In part of that interview, she denied that she has a problem with support from black men in this country.
Would you agree with that?
I think that Kamala Harris surrounds herself with some of the most elite African Americans in our country, and she's a bit disconnected from working class black men.
You know, I've traveled the country working on public safety and having wealth seminars on how people can buy a home with America Property Owners Alliance and use that to build wealth.
And more and more, I find more working class individuals, you know, whisper to me and say, you know, the economy was a lot better under Trump.
You know, I don't trust Harris.
You know, she hasn't had a record of kind of doing things that are affirmative for black Americans.
I mean, when she ran for vice president along with Joe Biden, they promised the Voting Rights Act, and they also promised police reform, and they both failed to do both of those things.
And I think that's the thing that we need out of a leader.
We need to have a leader that's willing to kind of work with both sides and actually get things accomplished.
And President Trump has actually had that record.
He passed a historic criminal justice reform bill that freed 30,000 people from prison.
And we've also had low recidivism rate as a result of that reform.
And so he also did stuff around opportunity zones and helped with supply chain by, I mean, his last bill he signed into law was called the Emergency Capital Investment Program, which put money into CDFIs, something that the Democrats hadn't done in a long time, kind of focused on that capital structure to help working class and new entrepreneurs.
And so you see a variety of different ways that President Trump has built trust through policy.
And I think all you're hearing from the Harris campaign is empty promises, where she has had no history of actually accomplishing whatever she runs on.
I'll let you chat with a few callers.
Tia's up first out of Delaware.
It's Newcastle, Delaware.
That line for undecided or neither.
Go ahead, Tia.
Good morning, Mr. Smith.
If I could believe what you're saying, and the evidence is in what you see, not the words that are coming out of your mouth.
You say that all of these programs were put in place to help the middle class.
But it's not, I don't see them.
I don't see them.
All I saw were efforts to take away.
In addition to that, you're saying that he's doing these things.
I don't know why, because his actions look like he's trying to help the rich more than the middle class or average people.
At the same time, and I hate to get distracted, but you're saying he's saying how he feels about minorities and people who don't have.
And you're acting like he's not saying these things, and people should believe that he is for them when he's obviously not.
And it pains me to see a man as intelligent as yourself, well-spoken, talk in his behalf as if he's someone that we should trust.
He's telling us who he is.
He's showing us who he is.
He's showing us what he will do.
Tia, got your point.
Let me let Jeron Smith jump in.
Well, thank you for your question, Tia.
I think that the issue with the Democratic Party is that they've continued to issue rhetoric for over decades that the Republicans are for the rich and that the Republican Party is racist and that they're the party for the working class.
I think that that hit a ceiling when Barack Obama was elected and he promised hope and change.
And we lived through one of the greatest recessions known in our generation.
And we also didn't have the access to capital, the access to job, or criminal justice reform.
And then you had President Trump come into play and he created a robust economy where they said there wouldn't be growth, the type of growth that we had right after World War II.
We were able to kind of have a very robust economy.
He was able to deliver on criminal justice reform, do stuff around working with police and communities, and then do things around HBCUs, which, by the way, at that point in time, had several of them had dealt with financial issues and were at risk of closing.
And he was able to kind of step in and do some work that Obama didn't do, that Bush didn't do, and at the same time, keep the country safe.
And so, I think what you've been listening to is a lot of rhetoric, which is why most people don't trust the news anymore, because what you're actually seeing and feeling is the wake of the Biden economy.
But when Trump was in office before the pandemic, we had robust numbers that created the lowest unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, and working class white Americans.
And that came from some of his policy changes.
And I'm going to be honest with you, the media didn't cover that work.
The media didn't cover when the president wrote a plan called the Platinum Plan that he's recommitted to that gave half a trillion dollars of new capital to black Americans.