The Fed Moves and Rahm Emanuel looks at 2028 9/17/26

23:58Rahm Emanuel, the career Democrat now weighing a run for the White House in 2028.

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25:50You're listening to Squawk Pod. Welcome, Becky. Thank you. All right, welcome back, everybody. Joining us right now, Rahm Emanuel. Of course, he's the former U.S. ambassador to Japan. He's also the former mayor of Chicago. He served as President Obama's chief of staff, former congressman as well. And Mr. Mayor, Mr. Congressman, Mr. Ambassador, thanks for being with us today.

26:11Rahm Emanuel:I was talking to President Clinton yesterday. I teased him on all the introductions. My role as senior advisor to you has been dropped off, so there's a statute of limitations working for you. Well, what I actually wanted to say is you are a lifelong Democrat. You are somebody who has defended the party and has led with your beliefs the whole way through on this. But you are an old-time Democrat, and you've had some real problems, I think, with where a lot of the energy in your party is coming from today. You have said yourself that you think the Democratic Socialists of America should run on their own party.

26:40Rahm Emanuel:Well, they are their own party. Okay, well, tell us about the state and what's happening. I do, but one family note, I mean, my grandfather, when he came to this country, was a socialist, but Roosevelt made us, he basically, the family, became Democrats. And as I used to joke, I said, in my family, a Democrat was one of the 10 lost tribes, and that's what we believe in. Now, look, I've challenged the party when I think it goes wrong historically on different policies, etc. Look, the Democratic Socialists, six weeks ago, had a convention in Chicago as a party. Okay, you want to do defund the police, which is not our position.

27:20Rahm Emanuel:You want to open up the borders, and it's not our position. You want to let prisoners out of jail, not our position. Go run in November. I'll see you in November. If you're confident that that's what people want to support, go for it. But you're not, until you change those positions, you're not a Democrat. Now, we will have in the party a very good, and I welcome it, healthy debate between the pragmatic wing and the progressive wing. Progressives want Medicare for all. I believe in early retiree for Medicare, meaning people early retiree, 58 and older, buy into Medicare. That's a healthy debate.

27:53Rahm Emanuel:We should have that debate. How do you expand health care coverage to people that are vulnerable? But their positions put them not in the party, outside. You had a convention. I'll see you in November. Now look, the party in my view over the years has got intellectually flabby. A lot of people in the party have allowed Trump to occupy the frontal lobe of their brain. We have to prove to the country we can not only fight Donald Trump, we can fight for America. So I've laid out a whole set of policies, not only on education from pre-K to BA, but more importantly, when you hit 75, mandatory retirement over all three branches of government.

28:32Rahm Emanuel:Stop all the stock trading from all three branches of government. Stop and prevent anybody in the federal government at any level and family member from participating in the prediction markets. There needs to be an absolute ethics repackage to change Washington's culture from age to what they do. Now, I happen to think the biggest challenge we have for the country is that everything that we agree and is accessible to us and to our families is not accessible to average Americans. The whole basic agreement of owning a home, saving for your retirement, your kids' education, and your health care security has fundamentally broken.

29:12And the

29:12Rahm Emanuel:moment the American dream became unaffordable for American people is exactly when democracy became unstable. So if you want to restore democracy and its functioning, restore the promise of the American dream. Let me just stop before we dig deeper into... Yeah, there's a lot to unpack. Let's go back to the party, because if you can't win an election with your Democrats and the DSA combined as a coalition government, how do you do it? Well, I actually think this will come out a little later today in my column in the journal. I actually think the bigger story in this election is what I call, for lack of a better label, the Romney Republicans that are leaving the Republican Party.

29:50Rahm Emanuel:Jolly in Florida, former Republican congressman running under the Democratic label as a governor. The governor in Arizona, now that they have a ticket, she picks a Republican mayor of Mesa to be on the ticket. Amy Acton, our nominee for governor in Ohio, is one of her credentials is she was head of public health for a Republican governor. Sand in Iowa, who's running for governor, said, I'm going to put Republicans in my administration. The real truth of this election is that there's a whole wing. They're not Democrats yet. Number one is the Republican, what I call Romney or McCain Republicans, are not part of the Donald Trump party anymore.

30:28Rahm Emanuel:I was joking when I said coalition government, but what you're talking about is a coalition government. Number two, as I repeat, we've had three presidential elections in a row. Seven states, 500 ,000 voters across seven states have determined who's the president of the United States. Swing voters in swing states swing elections. Now you graduated from the Kennedy School of Government. That's it. And if you want to win the presidency and you want to win the Congress and the Senate and be able to govern and put progressive policies like universal health care in place. Universal pre-K in place. Swing voters in swing states.

31:08Rahm Emanuel:Swing presidential elections. Full stop. And the biggest political way you do that, as President Clinton showed, as President Obama showed, both getting elected and reelected, is a coalition between Democrats and independent voters. That's the coalition you build that not only wins elections, that helps you govern in a majority position. Is that a message that resonates with Democratic leaders, with the party? Forget Democratic leaders. What resonates, the biggest thing, look, I've been up front. Others have kind of, oh, we're flexible. That's an understatement. Yeah, okay, look, I'm a former ballet dancer.

31:42Rahm Emanuel:I'm not flexible enough to let Democratic socialists in. Okay, I'm flexible, not that flexible. Okay, but I'm... Let me, one finish. I want to finish one thought. I've been clear about that, where others haven't. That's okay. But I've been clear. I haven't been ambiguous about that. But I think the key point here is on, as it relates to governing and the election in the party, is what is it, if you want to see a minimum wage, getting a blue district to go midnight blue ain't squat. Flip red to blue. That is, the last time there was a minimum wage increase in this country was when Nancy Pelosi took the gavel in 2006.

32:17Why do you say it's OK that the leaders of the party aren't echoing what you said? You've got one other guy besides you, and that's Fetterman. And I've pointed out how many times it's like glaring to me that they don't have the political courage to say the most obvious things. We're not going to close down the prisons. They won't even say that. Mark Warner. I don't even.

32:38Rahm Emanuel:I haven't looked at everything he said. Look, everybody will speak for themselves. I don't think anybody. But now you're doing it. Tell them to do it. Tell them to. Do you have your cell phone? I'll call them for you. No, look, let me. Oh, no, it's all right. Let me be really clear. I've been very clear. And if I decide to do the next step in my career or decide to put my. It sounds like you are going to do it. I mean, this lane is wide open. I said that to Westmore the other day. It's not wide open. Look, I think post Trump, the most important thing, I think there's going to be a premium around candor, authenticity and strength.

33:15Rahm Emanuel:I'm going to tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear, because the country is at a tipping point. We've had two presidents, and both parties are at fault, two presidents back to back who have tried to restore a past that's not coming back. Focus on the future. Tone it down. Keep everybody focused on that goal, because here's the thing. The thing that I learned, and I knew this before, but really focused. For the first time in American history, we have a country three times our size. We've never faced a country bigger with a purpose to both bury us and replace us. And if we don't focus on getting our stuff together, investing in the American people in America, that country will replace us.

33:54And game over. Lights out. Grass tax. So we spend 24 percent and we take in 18 percent. Yeah. You want to restore the American dream. Can you do it without going to 26 percent?

34:09Rahm Emanuel:Because all Democrats want to do is even spend more money. Okay, there's five things. Look, you're talking to a guy who for seven consecutive years as mayor, seven out of my eight years, we were the number one city for corporate relocations and number one city in America for direct foreign investment. Five things will lead to growth. Invest in the American people's education and skill. I've laid out every stage. We invest a lot. We still don't get anything for it. I'm going to finish the answer. Number two, invest in the modernization of our energy infrastructure, both the generation, distribution, and transformation.

34:37Number three, double the size of our R &D.

34:41Rahm Emanuel:I've called for it. I have 20 % tax on the prediction markets. It goes straight into an innovation fund for NIH National Science Foundation. Number four, the Dignity Act that has 23 Republicans and 23 Democrats in the House on immigration reform would do right by legal immigration and right by illegal immigration. Get it behind us. Number five, we're going to have to actually stop having a tax code that is corrupt, in my view, that rewards what I call economic preservation rather than economic creation. And we're going to have to change the tax code and then put a cap on spending to bring this fiscal house back into balance.

35:16Change the tax code, meaning what? Raise taxes across the board or get rid of loopholes and special taxes?

35:21Rahm Emanuel:You're going to have to flatten it out and thin it out because we all know, and a lot of people watching your show, I'm sorry, the code is corrupt. It rewards people at the top to preserve wealth, not to create wealth. you're able to pass it on to generation and never pay taxes. A lot of those people did create a lot in the first place. They did create, but that doesn't mean they're allowed to preserve it. You'll never get a cap, Rom, with what you want to do. You can't cap spending. Six weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had a story. I'm going to cap spending. Six weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal had a story that said there's conferences being run to help kids who inherit wealth how to manage it.

35:56Rahm Emanuel:That is outrageous in a country where people cannot get a first-time home. That was a political. That's not a political. No, no, no. That's an observation of fact. No, I'm saying your stump speech. I'm going to cap spending. Great. You're going to cap. What does that mean with all the things you want to do? No, you'll never be able to do it. Let me say. No, you're going to make tough choices in the way that Graham Rudman in the past and pay for in the past made you make some choices inside the budget. And it's exactly that. Cap it. It's not going to grow for four years. But you can do that with universal health care and universal pre-K.

36:28Rahm Emanuel:Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, you can. First of all, you have universal. So I'll give you two things I would do. Get rid of the exchanges and put everybody in the federal employees exchange. If it's good enough for your congressman, it's good enough for you. I advocated this in 2005. The best health care exchange in the United States of America is the one that insures the president, the Congress, the Senate, every federal employee. 27 insurance companies compete for all the federal employees. You have a lot of rural districts where insurance companies have pulled out because of the exchanges. They don't do that on the federal employees.

36:59Rahm Emanuel:So everybody that's in an exchange goes into the federal employees. That's the public option. Because guess what? It's insuring the president and his family. It's insuring your congressman. It's insuring your senator. It should insure you. Two, you spend$1.5 trillion administrating health care costs, 2 % at Medicare, 25 % at hospitals. You want to take$150 billion out of the health care system? That would slow down the rate of inflation? Like a national hospital system? No, you standardize the way that the four big insurance companies, as you know, is their system for what they pre-approve. And I hate to give a shout out to my older brother Ezekiel, but his plan to find that type of efficiency, you would actually make the system simpler because you have insurance companies.

37:51Zieg's plan was also to like at 75. I was going to say that. You had the same number. When he had the retirement at 75, I thought it was the same number.

37:57Rahm Emanuel:government. Emanuels have a lot of problem with 75. Yeah, well, suddenly he's pushing in on 75 now. He's changing his suit. I told you, we, Ari and I used to tease, don't worry about 75 because we're going to kill you at 70. I cut you off. I apologize. I just wanted to get back to this, the very idea of the energy in the Democratic Party and whether it matters to you, insofar as you may be very attractive to people who are sort of center-left, if you will, and maybe that's where you think the country really is, except that it appears at least right now, if you look at Calci or anything else, that the energy in the Democratic Party, I'm not sure, you may have a very negative view of prediction markets.

38:35Rahm Emanuel:I think you want to tax them. They should be. Life science and cancer research. But I do think there's this question mark about, you know, talking about an AOC or talking about a Mondani. You have President Obama, at least it appears, from these background sources and stories that you read that this sort of what people seem to think where people in your league are now praising them or at least trying to give them space. Okay. My thing and what I think, I've told you what I think is happening in the election. If you, and since of the four people at this table, one of us has been a six for six for winning election and five for five on national elections.

39:22Rahm Emanuel:So let me just, if you look at what's going on, even with, quote unquote, the surge in Michigan, in Wisconsin, across the country, in the governor's race in primary in New Jersey, right over the river. You had five candidates. You had the mayor of Newark. You had the mayor of Jersey City, the president of the teachers union, two members of Congress, the most moderate and conservative. They got 50 percent of the vote. You look at what happened in Wisconsin, Michigan. 50 percent of the vote went to what I would call the pragmatic wing of the party. And you guys have missed the story nationally. Now, also, in Illinois, three congressional races, Democratic Socialists went down.

40:00Rahm Emanuel:Virginia, two congressional races, Democratic Socialists went down. I actually think you're missing, if I notice. No, no, it's fair. Aaron, this will be the tutorial class. I actually think in this process, as I said way before, and there's a story today in The Times, I said this about three months ago, the big story is a surge of black vote that's coming out because of the Voting Rights Act decision by the Supreme Court. Now people are catching on that there's this massive energy in the African-American community. The second thing that is happening is that independent and Republicans who aren't Democrats are rejecting the MAGA Trump Republican Party.

40:36Rahm Emanuel:And the pragmatic wing of the party in both the Manhattan Institute poll, the Third Way poll about three months ago, 4 ,000 Democrats, 50 % of them describe themselves as moderate, another 25 % as pragmatic liberal. And if you look across the country to vote, I'm not saying there isn't energy on a kind of very progressive. But I will tell you, having read this really good book called Mutiny, comes out about 18 months ago. It's about the Democratic, it's about the downwardly mobile college educated. And if you look at what's happening in politics, we have a bunch of young men and women and their parents did exactly what was expected of them.

41:20Rahm Emanuel:Worked hard, sacrificed, made choices so their kids could get an education. And rather than be launched, which is what has happened for all of us and for our children, those kids today aren't in an apartment, aren't in a house. They're in the basement of their parents' house. The parents are taking money out of their savings account to get to the 31st of the month because the paycheck doesn't make it. The health care that they thought would give them a peace of mind has become a nightmare because the only word that UnitedHealth knows is no. They haven't learned anything else in the English language.

41:51Rahm Emanuel:And so everything that they said that they strove for has been taken away from them. They're not socialists. They are angry at a corrupt system that is rigged for our success against them. And somebody has to break that up and get it back dead center on what is the future of this country, which is the people that are stuck in America's basements. Rahm, we're almost out of time, but you yourself said you've won every election you've ever run in, run every election you've ever been involved in. Yeah. What's going to make your decision as to whether or not you run for president? What has to happen?

42:24Rahm Emanuel:Whether Ari hikes his fee for his contract. No, here's what I'm going to do. Look, as I travel around the country on a serious note, I've been fortunate enough to work for two great presidents. You're humble. You have to be humble. Humble is not a natural quality for an Emanuel. You have to be, you're humbled by that job. You hear the pain and anguish in people's voices, but also the hope. They haven't given up on America, but they feel like America's given up on them. Do you have what it takes to know both the answers and the drive to get this done? Now, leadership, in my view, is about knowing why you're doing what you're doing and then having the strength and the courage to get it done.

43:10Rahm Emanuel:I've seen it up close. I've done it as a mayor in making sure that kids in a broken education system were the number one education system in the country. So as I go around, do I understand what is ailing America, both not only economically, but I think there's an emptiness in young men's eyes that I would never accept in my own son. Never. And we have a generation of people that have not only lost faith in America, are losing faith in themselves. Do I have what it takes to answer that question and then the drive to get it done? I think you think you do. I think you're also a pragmatic person. Can you get to that position to have it?

43:48Rahm Emanuel:Listen, I just got to be honest, I haven't talked about it. I'm at a point in my life, I'm going to tell you what you need to know, not what you want to hear. So if I believe that, and if you don't like what I've said and I don't win, I'll go fly fishing. I'm okay with that judgment. What did you make of Gavin Newsom's comment that he would not run if, in fact, Kamala Harris was going to run? As an avid fly fisherman, my recommendation when you're fly fishing, don't talk, focus on flying fishing. That's an unsolicited piece of advice. But if she were to run, would that prevent you from running?

44:24No.

44:26Rahm Emanuel:I don't care about the field. He cares about the party. No, I don't care about the country. Well, you care about the country. I care about the country. I care about the future. Here's the one thing. Seriously, my grandfather came to this country a little over 100 years ago. My father, 70 years. I think being an American is winning the lottery ticket of life. I have won the lottery ticket of life. I've told my kids, which they're doing, you must do a year of national service to this country that has been a gift to us. Now, I want other people in the party to run because I think we need a solid, good, healthy debate.

45:03Rahm Emanuel:Put Trump, put the past behind us. Focus on showing the American people we know not only how to fight Trump, but more importantly, how to fight for America. And so to me, in the end of the day, other people will run. I'm going to make a decision. Do I think I have the answers to what's ailing America? And then the strength, courage, and determination to see it through. It's a very simple question. Well, if you got elected, Rom, you'd be 75 just under the wire finishing your second term. So you better do it now. Let me say this. You're going to be 67 in your room. Your ability to spot the obvious is a gift.

45:36Rahm Emanuel:So I want you to keep it. 75, man. Thanks. Thank you. Rom, thank you very much for coming in, Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Congressman. Thank you. We appreciate it. And that is Squawk Pod for today. Thanks for listening. Squawk Box is hosted by Joe Kernan, Becky Quick, and Andrew Ross Sorkin. Tune in weekday mornings on CNBC at 6 Eastern. To get the smartest takes and analysis from our TV show right into your ears, please follow Squawk Pod wherever you get your podcasts. We'll meet you right back here tomorrow. We are clear. Thanks, guys. Thank you so much.

46:19This episode is brought to you by Schwab Market Update, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Join host Keith Lansford for this information-packed daily market preview delivered in 10 minutes or less, including projected stock updates, monetary policy decisions, and key results and statistics that may impact your trading. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash marketupdatepodcast or find Schwab Market Update wherever you get your podcasts.