JOE WEISENTHAL (CO-HOST): So what do you mean “by accident”? How do you come to this conclusion, by accident or without the right reasons?
PAUL KRUGMAN: Oh, I mean, he's just looking for stuff. Trump has been on all sides of almost every issue, except on economics. He's, except that he hates China and hates trade, on everything else, he's for tax cuts -- tax increases for the rich, tax cuts for the rich, it's been on all sides of it. So this is probably something he heard somebody say “we should borrow for infrastructure” and so he's, this week he's saying that's what he wants to do, but there is no actual plan there. There's no discussion of what the spending should be on.
SCARLET FU (CO-HOST): I think that's critical what you said, this week he's saying this. What does his own history of borrowing and spending to build his empire tell you about how he would approach boosting the national economy?
KRUGMAN: I think basically nothing. One of these things, we have this delusion that business experience has a lot to do with running economic policy, they're just very different domains. Even genuinely great businessmen, which I don't think he is, but genuinely great businessmen often have no clue about macroeconomics. And the idea that this tells us much about what he would do, in particular the Trump style, which is to borrow a lot of money and then, you know walk away from it and go bankrupt, or have some entity go bankrupt while he himself is able to walk away, that ain't going to work for the United States government, so not useful.
WEISENTHAL: So regardless of whether he stumbled into this by accident, his economic viewpoint does not seem to be, to strictly be in line with sort of the classic conservative or Republican views we've heard lately. What strikes me, is that a lot of these old supply-side stalwarts, your Larry Kudlows, Stephen Moore, Art Laffer, have gotten behind him. What do you think the reason that is?
KRUGMAN: It's the usual suspects, the same old gang. First of all I think they are making a judgment that what he would actually do -- the parts of his program such as it is, that would actually happen are the ones they want. Also, they just, their thing has always been let's be in with where the power is, and they think this is their best chance. Among other things, obviously there will be no room for them in a Hillary Clinton -- no one will be listening to them if HRC wins, so this is their chance. I think the really important thing to say is they've never really cared about deficits. If that's what you thought, ever, if you thought any of these people ever cared about how much debt there was, except as a stick to with which beat President Obama, they never cared about deficits.
