Making America Affordable: Hakeem Jeffries & Dr. Oz 8/14/25

0:00Bring in show music please. Hi, I'm CNBC producer Katie Kramer. Today on Squawk Pod. It's the economy, stupid, where the data tells us our money is and what that means for policy. People assume it's that we're in a tailwind environment right now, not in a headwind. And that makes you nervous. Always. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, on the Democrats' response to the quickly moving Trump agenda that is remaking America. You pass one big, ugly bill that's now law on a partisan basis that represents the largest attack on health care in American history. People all across the country are going to experience increased premiums, co-pays and prescription drug prices.

0:44That's a problem. On this 90th anniversary of Social Security, Mehmet Oz joins us. He's gone from TV doctor to running the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. It's reprehensible to criticize the president on this, I think, very earnest effort to save Medicaid, to allow it to provide care to our most vulnerable. Plus, The Apprentice, Federal Reserve edition, and it's good to learn new things. You know I lived in a period where there were no pagers even. There were no phones. There weren't even flip phones. I know. It's Thursday, August 14, 2025. Squawk Pod begins right now. Extend, Andrew, bye. In 3, 2, 1, cue Andrew.

1:53level since late last year, people seem to be very chill. That's like the chill-o-meter right there. Is it a chill-o-meter or a chill-o-meter? I like a chill-o-meter. Chill-o-meter. Chill-o-meter. But it's really chill-o-meter. You don't call it a speed-o-meter. It's a chill-o-meter. Chill-o-meter, yeah. Chill-o-meter. Anyway, take a look at crypto. We'll see whether people are chilling on that or not. Bitcoin, 121 ,684 Ether. It's still sitting,$4 ,760. They're not chilling there. You could say for Bitcoin, either it's because it's risk-on, or you could say it's risk-on because of a rate cut, and rate cuts also are what the base theoretically easing, and it makes the dollar weaker and makes Bitcoin more attractive long-term.

2:50All the things. All those things. President Trump says he's going to name the next Fed chair a little bit early. Says he's considering, in his words, three or four people for the central bank's top job. The president's making those comments to journalists at the Kennedy Center. God, I love the people he picked. I know we don't need to talk about it, but the way it used to be when I'd see who was there, it's like, oh. Because, you know, it's like an Academy Award speech. The people that you see, he picked John Voight. I saw Sylvester Stallone kiss George Strait, one of the greats. I just like this world a little better.

3:30That's just me. I don't I don't expect you to agree. However, we've heard the president will consider as many as 11 candidates to lead the Fed. President Trump also, again, criticizing current chair Jay Powell. Literally. No, seriously. Yes. he says that rates should be three or four percentage points lower than they are. Now, I believe we should be three or four points lower. So that's over a trillion dollars we pay every year in interest. And it's really just a paper calculation. You sign a document and you save almost a trillion dollars because that number equates very much to the bonds that we have to buy.

4:12I think he means on the long end. I think that's what he's talking about, obviously, Because if it's from where the Fed is, we'd be at zero. That's a little hard to control. It's hard to control. But if he meant where the Fed is in terms of rate cuts, we'd be negative, though, or getting close. Speaking of which I would like, wouldn't you like someone to pay you to keep your mortgage? That makes sense to me. I think that seems like it might not be great for cooling off an economy necessarily. necessarily. But we've done it before with negative interest rates and negative oil prices and things like that.

4:47Those were the golden days, the good old days. Speaking of interest rates, Chicago President, and then we're going to talk about this, Fed President Austin Goldby says he wants to see more data, including today's PPI number, before deciding if a rate cut is warranted. And Atlanta's Rafael Bostic says the healthy state of the U.S. job market, it puts the Fed in a good place. It allows the Fed the luxury of not having a new rush to adjust monetary policy. And here's what I was, I already checked, Andrew, because, okay, today is, is it the 13th or 14th? 14th. So we get CPI and PPI about this time.

5:23So for me, the tailwinds right now for the Fed, cutting, you know, we had that labor report, which was a little bit weak. So now we've gotten some data on CPI 2.7 or 3.1. So my question was, if the PPI comes in, similar to the CPI, then we really we have a jobs report on the first Friday of September. And then we have we will have two inflation reports before the Fed meeting next month. It's the 16th. I think it's a 16th. You're assuming that you can change mortgage long term. No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm just I'm saying I'm sure that these guys have the maybe they don't have the influence.

6:04I'm saying whether they're in cutting mode now. Right. The next thing that comes will be we'll get two more. I was wondering, do we get two more inflation reading? Yeah, we do. We get that before the next Fed meeting. But in September, you would think they're doing 25. Well, they're probably doing 25. That's 70 percent, isn't it? 50 is not. But they're probably doing 25. Unless what could what could come in the way of that? The inflation number or a really strong jobs report, which is the first Friday of September, which was coming. But it is coming. And as we talked yesterday, there's a lot of people assume it's that we're in a tailwind environment right now, not in a headwind.

6:46And that makes you nervous. Always. I'm nervous either way. Chinese AI startup DeepSeq reportedly delaying its next generation R2 model after having trouble training it using chips from Chinese tech giant Huawei. This is a pretty interesting story because the Financial Times reporting that DeepSeq ran into problems as it worked to train the R2 model with Huawei's Ascend chips, which had been pushed by the Chinese government, Joe. The article says that that led DeepSeq to fall back on NVIDIA chips for training while using Huawei's chips for inference. That refers to an AI model making its own predictions after it learns from a large amount of data.

7:27So this goes back to two issues. One is that basically the first version of DeepSeek probably was built on the back of NVIDIA chips the whole time. Really? That's the lesson of this whole situation. And if you remember, we had Alex Wong on our broadcast. I defer to you. This you were right on. You thought you liked it. Not good. The GPT-5 rollout. Not as good as I want it to be. Shows strain. And it's slower and it says something weird here. It's like a colder tone. Criticize the colder. What does that mean? It's not as friendly? Does it not say I like you, Andrew, or something? You know, the voice is as friendly as ever.

8:13I think she's too friendly. I don't like that voice. How is that possible? I love it when people are short. The woman who talks to me? I'd love some woman talking to her. Oh, my God. I'm always telling her to stop it. It's crazy. Really? Oh, it's so bubbly and over the top, it's outrageous. You're not used to it. Is the next generation R2 chip the R2-D2? It's not an R2 chip. It's an R2 model. Model. Is the next generation model the R2-D2? It is not. How do you know? Wouldn't you do that? You would, except that it's not ready yet. It's not good enough. and you're going to need an NVIDIA chip to make it work.

8:48Oh, okay. Think about an R2-D2 with an NVIDIA chip in it. Think about that. It probably had one. We just didn't know because they were so ahead of their time. So you, at this point, the poly market, they were right to put that. It's not in the lead, this GPT-5. It may not be in the lead. And the craziest part about this, which is the thing I've been thinking a lot about and talking to a lot of people about it in the past couple of days who are living in this AI world, is, you know, you basically train these models. It's almost like baking something in an oven. And then you open the oven and wait to look and see how your pie looks.

9:23It's a very strange phenomenon. Like, you don't really know what's going on inside the oven. And then you open the oven and you see the thing you've made. Even the people that are doing the designing aren't sure what they're going to get? Not exactly. They don't know exactly how it's going to turn out. That's pretty fascinating. And then they open the oven, they look at the pie, and then it's not always clear that just because you think you knew all the new cool ingredients to put into the pie that the pie is therefore better. Do you have any idea how to fix the things that aren't? That I don't know.

9:51I mean, clearly they're trying to work on that. Because, you know, you have no idea how to do my app, obviously. Yeah. Well, the funny part about that is... You should blame GTP5 on that. Well, I should blame GTP5 and I should move to Claude. That's what everybody has told me. That's up to you. I can't help you. For this purpose. I can't help you there. Okay. You make that. I have no idea what you're. Claude seems fine. I don't know. Claude's anthropic. How's Llama? 12th center of Llama. Big hitter at Llama. I'm told Llama's not as good for this. No? No. He's tight, too. Not a big tipper at Llama.

10:28I'll tell you what is pretty great. Grok. Grok is pretty great. I'm seeing that. And I'm seeing a lot of bragging from Elon and everything else. Grok is pretty great. But unfortunately, not a lot of people using Grok. And I think that's one of the things that's frustrating, Elon. And that's one of the reasons that he's lashing out at Apple and others, because I do think it's a pretty good model. Well, we have this is a well. And by the way, not just like because it is a good problem. This is a good problem to have. This is a good problem to have, I think. Right. I mean, they're really competing to make it.

11:02Yes, except all of these require so much capital. It's like everybody's just like burning money into a furnace. Which is also good. If you, I don't know, the velocity of money. I mean, we are in a, you know, we'll have Hakeem Jeffries on a little bit later. I'm going to have to ask him a question. I want him to point to like the worst thing happening right now. You're referring to? I don't know. Well, you know, 2.7 percent inflation, 3 percent unemployment, new highs across the board in the markets, the borders close, Iran's. I mean, I'm telling you my question, but give me the calamity. Is that a question or a statement?

11:46Where is the calamity right now? The only calamity that you have is is the end of democracy. Some and the answer is socialism. The answer is socialism. Well, just keep harping on orange man, mad he's Hitler and it's the end of democracy. That's all you got. You and I both agree that I think there's a lot of good things going on. Well, what do you mean? There's also a Marxist sense about how it's all being done. I think that's I think that's absurd. You think that's absurd? Totally, ridiculously absurd. It just sit back and just chill. Like you said, chill, relax. New highs. Interest rates are probably going to get cut.

12:25Iran has been set back probably years. I'm not going to sit here and tell you that things are terrible. I'm just going to tell you that. How about the trade deals? The UK, the EU, Japan. We're talking to China. We're going to Alaska. Our standing in the world. How about that? It's phenomenal. You think it's higher? Yeah. Why do you think trillions of dollars are coming here or earmarked to come here right now? You can't come up with a bad thing. Because there's been a shakedown, my friend. There was a shakedown. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever you want to call it. It's all about him. Did you listen to Charlie Kirk at all yesterday?

12:59These are all. I liked. Yes, you got your talking points this morning from Charlie Kirk. You've got nothing. So you, I was going to say, you have nothing except the nebulous end of democracy BS. And you came up with what he came up with. As I said to you, there are certain policies I like. Marxist what? There are certain policies I like. Oh, you mean the industrial policy. The industrial policy is a. Why didn't you say something during the chip set? It's a version of socialism. Why didn't you say something during the CHIPS Act? Well, because we had a whole conversation post-COVID and post-pandemic about how we needed to have a more resilient supply chain.

13:34That was the argument being made then. This is very different. Okay. All right. He might not come on now because it's going to be like checkmate. But coming up, we're going to talk. Who's that? Hakeem. Oh. The leader. Leader Jeffries. I'm going to tell everybody about this news story and then we're going to talk about the thing. And we're just going to talk. I'm going to I'm going to I'm going to plead ignorance, but pretend I'm not. OK, the first thing you're sure. So I'm not that. OK, totally. This is not that what we're about to talk about. This is just a news headline. It's pretty interesting.

14:06Veteran investor Mario Gabelli, obviously somebody who's been on the show so many times, filing a lawsuit and he sort of teased that he was going to do this for years over Paramount Global's merger with Skydance Media. Gabelli's firm seeking class action status on behalf of shareholders in one of his funds and other clients who held Class A shares of Paramount prior to the merger with Skydance closing last week. Now, that lawsuit is targeting former Paramount controlling shareholder National Amusements and that company's head, Sherry Redstone. Gabelli has complained that Redstone walked away from the Paramount Skydance merger with billions of dollars while other investors weren't compensated appropriately.

14:44And basically, he's making an argument about the two tiers of shares. and how that deal was done. Okay. Now we're going to go to a different issue. I'll start with what my question was to you. So I don't really use just Google when I have questions anymore because it's just easier to go on. Perplexity is on the front. I barely know how to move those things. I hear you. Those icons. So I go use that. So my question is why would they even want this browser when I basically use them for everything, and you started telling me they don't own anything perplexity. So the reason why perplexity would want to own the browser, if possible.

15:21First of all, the browser is valuable mostly because once you have the browser, you then control. Everybody goes in the bar there and puts in their search term. Right. And that's how you make money. People would use their browser or rather would use their service. Right. And that would create some kind of bigger moat around their business. Perplexity. Perplexity. The question mark around perplexity has always been what the moat is around their business, because underneath their service is not, for the most part, their own models. They haven't built any of those out. They're using Claude. They're using OpenAI.

15:59They're using all of the different models. In fact, the best thing they're doing is they've sort of built a custom service so that they can actually effectively ping different models to try to get the best answer in any given moment. Now, they've customized on top of it. But they're not using the top-level AI stuff. But it's not always their model. Because they're using free stuff. They're not using it. They use a lot of the free stuff. Some of the paints, if you are a paying user of Perplexity, they will route your question to sometimes other paying versions of other models. But they're not, they don't control the model.

16:28And one day, it's possible, OpenAI or Claude could cut them off. Right. That's also a possibility. Right. And so if you're trying to create, now, the argument is if perplexity can become such a big driver of business to all these other places that they would never want to cut them off. Okay. If you had the Chrome browser and you became such a big sort of player in the space, by the way, nobody could ever cut you off. And therefore, you'd have a real defensive mode around your business. Okay. That's the argument. Well, the thing that I didn't realize was that they haven't written all. Well, no, they've written, I don't want to say they've written no code.

17:04Because the other thing they've done. But it routes it to the other. But a lot of what they're doing is routing the questions to different places that are not their own models. Now, they have some of their own sort of mini models, if you will. And there's lots of sort of wrappers that they've put on top of the stuff. By the way, some of the best things that Perplexity has done revolve around financial information. So if you actually are searching for financial information, they have really tried to make a go of almost being like a Bloomberg. and they are routing information, but they're also then sort of wrapping it in a way that the other models don't do themselves.

17:37So there is, I don't want to say they're not, this is like they're just routing questions to other people and they got nothing going on. But it's just a different kind of thing. You know, they want to be valued at$20 billion and they're talking about spending twice as much on something just to get it, as you said, to be a real company, to be a real boy. Well, I think it also puts them into... Pinocchio. By the way, it also puts them into the story. I mean, some people have argued that they're never really going to buy TikTok. They're never really going to buy Chrome. But we're now talking about perplexity in the same breath as we are Claude or ChachiBT or whatever.

18:10Because, you know, I lived in a period where there were no pagers even. There were no phones. There weren't even flip phones. I know. There were just big Gordon Gekko. And those were new. I know. People thought those were great. And when I got one in my car, I was like, people thought of, I mean, people, you know, women became interested in me. When you had one of those phones in your car. Exactly. Wow. It was a Porsche. It was a Porsche. Hey now. Cheese will be next. Coming up on Squawk Pod, leader of House Democrats, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, with his take on the president's dealmaker-in-chief agenda.

18:51I think it's a disgrace. The Trump administration has attacked the free enterprise system here in the United States of America. And the impact he sees on institutions, from law firms and universities to government workers. The Trump administration has unleashed the largest pay-to-play scheme in modern American history, and everybody in corporate America knows it. Everyone in Washington, D.C. knows it.

19:22This is Squawk Pod from CNBC. Today with Joe Kernan and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Up in Andrew, Q. Welcome back to Squawk Box. Join us right now, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. There is so much to talk to you about this morning, about everything that's going on in Washington, about the BLS, the Fed. We could talk about NVIDIA, Democratic Party. But I want to start with this. And by the way, may it cope on me too. But I'm curious where you land. For the last several months, the Democratic Party, for the most part, has been publicly suggesting that because of these tariffs, that the economy was going to falter, that there was going to be a massive recession.

20:07And for whatever reason, that has not happened. And I'm curious why you think that hasn't happened and whether you think it was a mistake to be as critical as you have been. Well, good morning. Great to be with you. Donald Trump promised on day one that costs were going to go down. Costs haven't gone down. They've gone up. What we have seen, in fact, is job creation go down almost to record low levels. And so there is reason to believe that the economy is not moving in the right direction. The erratic tariff policies have created a great deal of uncertainty in the business environment. And uncertainty, of course, doesn't allow for the type of explosive economic growth that we would all like to see here in the United States of America.

20:51I think there's no real basis to conclude that Donald Trump has been successful, particularly as it relates to the core issue of driving down the high cost of living in the United States of America, which is too high, which was his fundamental promise to the American people. Costs aren't going down. They're going up. But are you surprised? I'm just asking just as a person. Are you surprised that the tariffs haven't had a bigger impact on prices, for example? I think it remains to be seen where this is headed. I'm deeply concerned that the tariffs are going to exacerbate the inflationary challenges that we already have in the United States of America, the affordability issues that we have in the United States of America, particularly as it relates to consumer goods and consumer goods that are going to be important to the American people as folks prepare to send their children back to school.

21:46I guess this week, I don't know about deflation and costs coming down. All I can tell you is that the inflation rate itself is was two point seven percent in the most recent read year over year versus it got to a high of nine percent under Biden. Stocks are at record highs. Unemployment is 4.2 percent. That's full employment. The GDP was 3 percent. The border is actually secure. We've got trade deals with EU, Japan, many more in the works and trillions of dollars of foreign investment coming here. Iran's nuclear ambitions have been set back indefinitely. And I just wrote down a few things. So I just have to ask you, where is the calamity that you're talking about?

22:33And it almost seems like for Democrats, socialism is the answer to to to these problems or I don't know what an end of democracy or something. We just don't get it. Well, actually, I'll tell you what we stand for. Joe, it's pretty clear. As Democrats, we believe in a strong floor and no ceiling in America. You work hard. You play by the rules. You should be able to live the good life. And there should be no ceiling on your success, on your capacity to do anything in the United States of America. That's the great promise of this country. At the same period of time, there should be a strong floor.

23:13Today is the 90th anniversary of Social Security. It was born 90 years ago today. What we've seen from this administration is an attack on Social Security, an attack on Medicare, an attack on the Affordable Care Act, ripping Medicaid away from millions of Americans. That actually is the type of strong floor that we should also have in this country. You pass one big, ugly bill that's now law on a partisan basis that represents the largest attack on health care in American history. Hospitals will close. Nursing homes will shut down. Community based health clinics will be unable to operate. People all across the country are going to experience increased premiums, copays and prescription drug prices.

23:59that's a problem for everyday Americans. I'm not talking about people who are already wealthy and well-off and well-connected. I'm talking about the everyday Americans that I represent in Brooklyn and that we're fighting hard for. In fact, those same Americans, food is being ripped out of the mouths of hungry children, veterans and seniors with the largest attack on nutritional assistance in American history. I find that problematic in the United States of America, and millions of people do so as well. Leader, where do you land on this mayoral race in New York, and in particular on Mondani, who is clearly now the frontrunner in this situation, won the primary?

24:42You have not publicly come out and endorsed him yet. And I'm curious what you're thinking. Well, he ran a strong race in the primary, obviously, relentlessly focused on affordability, which is a big problem, of course, here in New York City, along with every other part of the United States of America. and he outworked the opposition. He out messaged the opposition and out organized the opposition. But now during the general election, of course, he's going to have to demonstrate to a broader electorate, including in many of the neighborhoods that I represent in Brooklyn, that his ideas can actually be put into reality.

25:24And that's, you know, the conversation that he's having with me and having with people who are community leaders and residents in the 8th congressional district I serve. And that sounds like you're not convinced then yet. No. Well, we had one initial conversation. It was a constructive and candid conversation. It was centered around the community. And in that conversation, he indicated he'd like my help in putting together additional meetings with members of the congressional delegation, as well as leaders in many of the communities that I represent in neighborhoods like East New York and Brownsville, Canarsie, some of the more lower income working class neighborhoods that I may serve.

26:04I agreed to do that. That meeting is being put into motion right now. How do you think about him relative to Cuomo? And how do you think about the message of socialism or being a socialist and what that may portend for the Democratic Party? Well, I think, as I indicated, listen, in my view about what we as Democrats stand for, what we're fighting for, we need to lower the high cost of living in the United States of America. We need to fix our broken health care system. And we need to clean up corruption in Washington, D.C. So we actually have a government that works for the American people, for everyday Americans, for hardworking American taxpayers, as opposed to working for the privileged few.