Lloyd Blankfein & David Rubenstein Remember Charlie Kirk & 9/11 9/11/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. 30 years as a business news institution. We're marking Squawk Box's anniversary in a conversation with the Carlyle Group's David Rubenstein, who's been with us for decades. The Dow started the year under 4 ,000 30 years ago. And the most popular TV show, Steinfeld and Friends. Those don't seem that long ago to me. And it is a somber day, remembering 9-11 and the shocking death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, CNBC's Eamon Javers reporting. You know, we don't know. There's a manhunt underway. We don't know anything about who the shooter was, what the motive was.

0:44Grappling with a culture that could have encouraged a political assassination with former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and former Senator Heidi Heitkamp. What does it say to us as a country? It says we need to do better. That's what it says. It's more than doing better. Then Lloyd Blankfein, former Goldman Sachs CEO, a little wary about industrial policy and about his own optimism. I feel very, very good about things. And in fact, but there, you know, but kind of informs my sense of foreboding that I haven't felt this good since 2007 or 1994. It is September 11th, 2025, and Squawk Pod begins right now.

1:30Today on the podcast, three big discussions across three major themes driving the news. We start with philanthropist, private equity pioneer and amateur historian David Rubenstein, co-founder of the Carlyle Group. He joined Joe Kernan, Becky Quick and Andrew Ross Sorkin on our TV broadcast today. Becky kicks things off. Joining us right now is our special guest, David Rubenstein. He's co-founder and co-chairman of the Carlyle Group. He's also the owner of the Baltimore Orioles. And, David, there are so many directions we could go with you. I was thinking about starting with inflation because we have a consumer price index coming up in about an hour and a half.

2:10But you sat down and started talking about some numbers that you looked back. We're celebrating our 30th anniversary, and you looked back 30 years ago. What struck you when you were going through those numbers? Well, 30 years ago is a long time. But when I look back at it, the Dow started the year under 4 ,000 30 years ago. And the big news was, I think in February of that year, the Dow hit 4 ,000, which was seen as a record. At the end of the year, it finished about 5 ,000. Today, the Dow is about 45 ,000, so it's gone up a lot. The price of oil 30 years ago, about$11 a barrel. And the most popular TV show 30 years ago were Steinfeld and Friends.

2:49See, those don't seem that long ago to me. Those shows still are large. One ended and the other one replaced the must-see TV on NBC. Right. I mean, they weren't on at the same time. Correct. But the most popular TV show turned out to be the O.J. Simpson trial. So last night I couldn't be at your party. I'm sorry. I appreciate your being invited. Why couldn't you be there? Well, I had to go to a baseball game. You were in last place. Well, hope springs eternal. But we won last night. But I just have a gift for you from somebody who also celebrated 30th anniversary. It was 30 years ago that Cal Ripken broke Lou Gehrig's record of 2 ,130 games.

3:30So Cal Ripken asked me to give you this jersey. Wow. For each of you. We each get one. Wow. There you go. Cal Ripken jersey. Here you go, Becky. Quick. Thank you. And remember, think about this. He paid 2 ,131 games to break the record. Ultimately, he went to 2 ,632 games. Wow. So pretty impressive, 30 years. I remember watching him play, going to see him. I also have for you a bobblehead of your favorite baseball team owner. Oh, wow. Is that really of you? Yes. Does it nod? Oh, that's great. It does everything it's supposed to do. Here, let's take it. There you go. I'm going to take it out of the box.

4:10So, you know, on the show, we did have lava lamps. We also had some bobbleheads, if I recall. I don't know. Do you have your own bobbleheads? Was this your idea? Well, it wasn't my idea, but they gave away 15 ,000 of them. I didn't. It wasn't my idea. Can we get that in the camera there? Do fans want a bobblehead of the owner? They gave away 15 ,000 of them, but we like it. But it's going to be tough to do this because of tariffs, we won't be able to make bobbleheads as readily or as cheaply as we were able to before. So this got in before the tariffs came over. Then the tariffs are good. What's the cost of a bobblehead, do you know?

4:46It's a couple dollars. The manufacturing cost of a bobblehead made in? Well, I think they're made in China. Made in China. That's the first thing you're doing. Right. But maybe we'll be making bobbleheads in the United States soon. Back to America, right? Do we want to be bobblehead makers, sneaker makers? I don't know. We want to be AI people here. But on inflation, clearly the Fed. Thank you, by the way. The Fed next week will obviously do something we all expect. I don't think it's going to be a surprise. You think it's 25 basis points or 50 basis points? It'll have to be 25 basis points. If the Fed were to go 50 basis points, it would scare the markets that the economy is weaker than the market thinks it is.

5:26And I think it would be too much for the market to absorb. I wanted to talk to you about this in particular because you were in the administration when we saw some runaway inflation back in the late 70s. Thank you for reminding me. More than 30 years ago. Well, as somebody who has lived through from an administrative perspective on this and watching how that plays out, lots of people are saying the Fed needs to focus on the jobs part of the mandate at this point because that's where we've seen the weakness. The inflation that had been anticipated has not shown up. How does that sit with you as somebody who has lived with runaway inflation?

6:04When the Fed was set up in 1913, its mission was really inflation and keep the currency in reasonable shape. In 1977, under the Carter administration, Congress passed legislation which said you should also worry about unemployment. And so the Fed has this dual mandate. It usually, it's like anything, what part of your body hurts the most, whatever is injured at the given time. So what part of the economy is the thing we should worry about the most, whatever is out of line the most. So if unemployment is very high, the Fed's going to focus on that. It's really not that high now. We're roughly about 4.2 percent.

6:38Inflation still is not at the Fed target. The target is 2 percent. We're still about 80 basis points above that. So I think the Fed is still worried about inflation. On the other hand, the pressure they're getting to lower interest rates is too much. We probably need the Fed to withstand at this point. And you've got some new people on the Fed board who are probably going to. I mean, wouldn't they just look at the data, though, and say the jobs picture is much weaker than we had anticipated? I don't think this is political. I think that for a while I've thought that the risk is more on growth than on inflation.

7:11I think right now the concern has been inflation. Remember, we predicted a recession last year at this time. A year ago, people were predicting a recession that would happen this year. It didn't happen. The economy is in reasonably good shape. We're not growing at 5 % a year, but we're growing for our economy, our size, reasonably well. Half of what we thought were added in jobs. 75 ,000 a month through the past year. That totally changes everything. In the 4.2, the weird participation rate moves. Some people say it's closer to 5%, David. Remember, the numbers are debated by many people. Some people don't think the numbers are accurate, as you know.

7:49And so I think... Well, they weren't accurate. The numbers will be adjusted, of course. But I think that, in the end, the Fed is more likely to reduce by 25 basis points than to do anything else. If inflation is the main thing, they should be raising by 25. If it's not a growth concern, they should be raising by, or at least stand in pat. One thing we can be certain is the Fed is not going to raise interest rates. No, I understand. But if inflation really is the part of the dual mandate that is most important, I think they're fighting yesterday's battle from what happened. We went to 40-year highs in inflation.

8:22They were sitting on their hands, and now they want to, you know, it's almost like they're fighting yesterday's battle. He said that he only cared about the inflation side of the Fed. That should be, some people think there shouldn't be two mandates. The Fed's target may have been lower than was realistic to get to. The Fed set a 2 % target. Maybe they should have had a slightly higher target and they'd be closer to it. Unemployment is now a concern, and I think for that reason, the economy weakening a bit, and inflation is not such a big problem relative to what they thought. I suspect a 25 basis point cut will happen.

8:54And the Fed has been very good about telegraphing what it's going to do. The Fed has not surprised people. if they were going to do 50 basis points, we would probably know by now. All right. Tell us what you think about the economy based on what you see from your portfolio companies. And tell us what you think about AI. My firm just had its annual investor conference. We had people from all over the world here, large numbers of people. And basically, the people's view is the investors view is the economy is in reasonable shape, but they're not sure what the impact of tariffs is going to be. The impact of tariffs was widely predicted to be much more serious than it has been to date.

9:28And no one knows when the tariff impact will show up, if at all. We just don't know. But right now, investors have money. They're still investing money. Deals are getting done. Exits are occurring. And IPO market has come back. A number of IPOs have occurred. The Klarna deal just happened. Another deal that I'm involved with, StubHub, is probably going to happen in the not-too-distant future. And so I suspect that the IPO market is loosening up a bit. And that's probably a pretty good thing and a good sign that the economy is not in big trouble. And it looks like a decent exit market for private equity money that maybe has been looking for a time to do this.

10:06Exits for private equity have slowed down over the last year or two for all the obvious reasons. But now I think it's coming back and investors are, I think, coming back into the market. They're willing to put money into funds. Funds are being raised at fairly large numbers right now. You know, David, you brought that out. I could almost make the case that Friends was like the end of linear, not the end of linear TV, but it was so, I remember, because we were here and we used to go to the upfronts, remember? Well, and do you remember when they supersized it? That's what I was getting to. It was so impossible to come up with.

10:38Jeff Zucker said, I can't find anything. So extend it. I can't find anything better than Friends. And I don't think we ever did, really. Did we? The Voice or something? Well, Seinfeld was pretty good, too. Seinfeld was prior, replaced by Friends. Friends was on for like nine or ten years and people still watch it. My kids have seen every single Friends episode. And then there was nothing that was going to help. So they supersized it. Do you remember that? Yeah, they supersized it. I remember. Zicker's idea. To keep it past the top of the hour when the Nielsen boxes. But Joe, I want to congratulate you.

11:07You were the person who was here 30 years ago. Yes, I was. Yes, he was. Yes, I was. So you started it on. Did you expect it would go this long? Yes. You did? No, no, no. Did you expect the Carlisle group to go as long as this has? I thought of a year or two, and who knew what would happen? But we are now nearly 40 years old, so who would have expected this? Let me ask you this. Are you planning to be around until the 50th anniversary? Because I'm going to be here on the 40th and the 50th. If you're here, I'll be here. Then let's do it together. All right. Do it together. We'll celebrate it in our wheelchairs.

11:40We'll be rolled in, and we'll celebrate it then, okay? We saw Xi and Putin. We're going to have all new organs, baby. AI, we're going to stay like this, like we are right now. Okay, I hope so. But congratulations on your 30th anniversary, and I hope you have another 30 more. Thanks for the bobblehead. Thanks a lot. Good luck next year. You know where hope does spring a turn? The Reds are only two games back in the wild card now. And you know who they've got to catch? The Mets. I mean, that's a good shot. That's a good chance. Why don't you come to an Orioles game at some point? I love that part of ballpark.

12:15We're redoing Camden Yards this year. Great ballpark. Gorgeous ballpark. We're redoing it, and next year it'll be redone, modernized. You still call them the birds? I love the birds. Yes. Remember we are family versus the birds? Yeah, absolutely. All right? So you're going to come next year, all of you. David, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Appreciate it. Next on Squawk Pod, understanding the assassination of Charlie Kirk and creating space for opposing views to meet here on our show. Democrat Heidi Heitkamp, former senator. And you think, where are we headed as a country? And former House Speaker Republican Kevin McCarthy.

12:50This is not something we could pass by. This is not something we just report. This is something as an entire nation. We cannot normalize this. We're back after this break.

13:05This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Here's Joe Kernan. 31, 31, 31 years old. Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during an event at a college in Utah. Eamon Javers is here with us with the latest details in the investigation. Good morning. Yeah, good morning, Joe. A horrifying and tragic scene in Utah yesterday, guys, as conservative political influencer Charlie Kirk was shot dead in front of a crowd of thousands at a political rally. According to the FBI and the Utah Department of Public Safety, The shooting happened at approximately 12.20 p.m. local time at a student event with Kirk's group Turning Point USA at Utah Valley University.

13:46Kirk was taken to Timpanegos Regional Hospital and pronounced dead hours later. In the chaotic aftermath, police took in two suspects. One, George Zinn, was released and charged with obstruction. A second suspect was taken into custody and released after interrogation. Now authorities say neither man has current ties to the shooting and a manhunt is on for the shooter. Kirk was an enormously popular figure on the right with a large social media following and regular access to the president of the United States. His YouTube channel had more than four million subscribers and had racked up more than a billion views.

14:21President Trump posted on social media, the great and even legendary Charlie Kirk is dead. No one understood or had the heart of the youth in the United States of America better than Charlie. He was loved and admired by all, especially me, and now he is no longer with us. Melania and my sympathies go out to his beautiful wife, Erica, and family. Charlie, we love you. Kirk was 31 years old, Joe. He leaves behind a wife and two children. Yeah. Sat right here. Was that with us? Three weeks ago. I was texting with him on Sunday. We were talking about mainstream media and how things were being covered down, actually the murder that had taken place down, was it, North Carolina.

15:06Yeah, I mean, his last social media post was about that murder and about whether it's appropriate to politicize a murder or not. And at the rally, the video shows that his last words were a discussion of mass shootings in America. as he was then the victim of a shooting himself in that same instance. I mean, just brutally horrific and ironic timing. And it just shows, I think, the degree to which these shootings are just swirling around our society to the point where you can be shot while discussing the political shooting, obviously. And we don't even, you know, we don't know. There's a manhunt underway.

15:46We don't know anything about who the shooter was, what the motive was here. Obviously, your mind goes to immediate suspicions, but until they catch that person, we're just not going to know. I mean, people have already lost their job on TV with some of the response. And finger pointing is obviously not, you know, no one should be doing any finger pointing before we know anything. But all I'll say is Luigi Mangione is not a hero. and watching that play out to this day is a commentary on something that needs to be fixed or we need to try to, I don't know what, it's a sick commentary on where things have ended up.

16:29I don't have anything brilliant to say about this. I don't either, I don't. The thing I can think about is whether we're at some kind of new moment in our society, whether it's a political, we don't know if this is a, I don't want to call anything a political act, but if it's murderers, politically motivated, or whether it's the United Health situation, or whether it's the attempted assassination, effectively, of the commissioner of the NFL that ultimately took the lives of executives, literally blocks from here, or you can go back and think about, there was a plot to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. Gabby Giffords.

17:07You can look at Gabby Giffords. You can go back to Nancy Pelosi and her husband, who were... Steve Scalise. Trump twice. Trump twice. And two assassination attempts last year. I mean, what strikes me about this, Andrew, is that you've got this specter of political assassination hanging over the society. And the focus is sort of lower and lower down in terms of more and more marginal figures, right? I mean, we've always had political assassinations in this country, assassination attempts against presidents. but then when you start to see CEOs and leaders of political organizations and much more diffuse set of potential targets out there, which is what's scary about this.

17:46Yeah, I agree. I guess we should have been worried already, but this certainly... I mean, I felt sick. I really did. I felt sick to myself almost all day, although they've gone through and now it's september 11th uh as well and you know there's two beautiful children and his wife and uh i didn't know i only you know we started corresponding and i invited him on the show and he came on the show and you know we're texting afterwards thanking him for coming on and i said you got to come on again it was great and uh so it's just I don't know it's uh it's not you don't know how to feel about that I feel sadness and grief but also anger that's starting to uh starting to replace well it won't replace the sadness for for his family but uh starting to get a little bit angry and you know we all got to hold our tongue at this point I got plenty of things that uh if if it comes out certain ways there'll be some finger pointing but right now the finger pointing isn't is inappropriate I don't think Yeah, I mean, the thing I worry about, Joe, is you look at the impact on society broadly, and you think, I think, historically, you know, for analogies here, you look at the Irish Troubles, I think, as sort of a parallel potential cautionary tale, right, where you have this cycle of political violence, you know, one from this side, one from that side, again and again and again, and that anger that you speak to leads to, you know, real rage and then retribution.

19:17and then you see that again on the other side and it just goes and goes and goes and that cycle of political violence historically has been so difficult to pull out of for societies and that's I think the real fear here as we look at this situation and of course the tragedy for Charlie Kirk and his family but more broadly for the society that we're in and to be talking about that on September 11th I know, that's unbelievable President Trump is angry And he's got to, I think he's got to get some of his comments right. I think he's got to, he's rightfully angry. Sure, the question is how do you channel that?

19:56Right, exactly. We need, you know, a leader at this point. And hopefully he will rise to the occasion. Thank you, though. Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

20:11The political world processing the assassination of 31-year-old conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Joining us now, CNBC contributor Heidi Heitkamp. She's a former U.S. senator and former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. He is chairman of the Alpha Institute. We, you know, we cover everything, obviously. Hasn't been 24 hours. I don't even know what we try to determine or discern about what happened yesterday. Heidi, I just... You know, I look at it, and this is what I do for a living right now at the University of Chicago. You bring in people with different perspectives and different points of view, and you hope that that engages in meaningful and respectful dialogue.

20:57And then this happens, and you think, where are we headed as a country? What is going to happen going forward with our civil discourse, with our dialogue when you can't even, it wasn't like there was a big rally and he was preaching, he was in a debate and this is tragic and one person could be taking away that opportunity from literally thousands to hear a diverse point of view and to respect First Amendment and we have got to fix this. We've got to fix this. You need a finger point at this point Kevin, I guess we can't, Mr. Speaker, we can't, can we draw any conclusions from this? Because it has for every, you know, you talk about Charlie Kirk, and then I immediately saw people saying Paul Pelosi.

21:40It's almost whataboutism, which was frustrating. Because this looked, we don't know yet, but it looked at, on the surface, as almost an assassination of someone for his viewpoints. It was an assassination. The shooter was 200 yards away. It pinpointed him. For those who didn't know Charlie, I mean, I met him like 10 years ago. This guy was a dreamer. He wasn't in this. It was more of a cause of movement, what he believed in. And it was about letting people on both sides debate on a college of what it's known for. Which we didn't see a lot of for a couple of years. Certain speakers weren't even welcome on college.

22:25But if you look at this, this is like where America was in the 60s. I mean, everybody has to ask. You can't sit there and say, oh, it's a sad day. You have to look at what nation are we? Who do we want to be? If an individual, because how did Charlie portray himself? He didn't go there to speak to people who only believed in him. If you had a difference of opinion, you got to go to the front of the line. You got to challenge him. That's what you want on a college campus. But somebody went there. Somebody had to have expertise to literally assassinate a person. And it's almost like every month we hear something else about this.

23:05This is not something we could pass by. This is not something we just report. This is something as an entire nation. We cannot normalize this. This is bigger than who we are. this is i went back and i was listening to robert f kennedy how he announced when martin luther king died you know and and this is this is where we revolted back to i i don't know that we move forward from this without everybody questioning what nation are we well it wasn't just normalized and we talked about luigi mangioni and united health care it's going to every that was that That was celebrated. And I saw celebrations yesterday on social media.

23:50I saw Trump next on social media yesterday. Yeah. Those opinions, those celebrations used to be in private. And now they're on social media. So all of a sudden people get this reflective, oh, that's what people think. The absolute vast majority of people in this country do not want to see political violence. They do not want to see this. They don't want to see two orphaned little girls. And so we've got to figure it out. But the leadership in this country needs to step up like you did during the Scalise shootings where everybody came together in Congress. It wasn't like, oh, these were Bernie supporters.

24:23It was we've got to pull together. And I think that's a great example of leadership. But Charlie was not elected. I met Charlie because he didn't even go to college. He worked with young people to get them involved in ideas, a political process. He was the very first guest of Gavin Newsom. He would go across the aisle. And these are the people they want to target? It wasn't like somebody walked up to him and got in a fight with him. This person sat, knew he was coming, and had to be an expertise and did it in front of everyone. Here's the question. So I think this is actually interesting because it also crosses generations.

25:02By the way, I have two sons who are 14 who are intimately familiar with Charlie Kirk. They know him. they like Charlie Kirk they think he's they were they were fascinated by his opinions and so I think there's a whole it's not just and and so the question is how do you or how do political leaders and what generation is going to reach out to I mean I think this is one of those moments this is actually like a moment like a true moment um that I think is scarring and the question is I mean beyond sending our sympathies to his family and everything else I'm just saying as a country How do you communicate to all these different generations about this?