Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I don't think there's anything going to.
[00:00:01] Speaker B: Get me in heaven. Okay.
[00:00:02] Speaker A: I really do.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: I think, I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in heaven right now.
[00:00:08] Speaker A: As we fly an Air Force One.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven, but I've made.
[00:00:12] Speaker A: Life a lot better for a lot of people.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. In a nation where in God we trust is etched on our currency, what does our 47th president really trust? Does he trust divine grace or does he trust deal making savvy the art of the deal. Today on Abraham's wallet, we're going to unpack Donald Trump's economic playbook that he's rolling out at the end of 2025 and many of his spiritual confessions. So Mark, my co host, is going to be talking. Mark, did you have an economics degree somewhere at some point?
[00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah, my degree was political economy from Princeton University, which used to be a very good college back.
[00:01:00] Speaker B: Okay, so you're going to talk us through some of Trump's rather bold money moves that he's made recently.
He's suggested 50 year mortgages, stimulus, windfalls. We've heard that before coming from government. And I'm going to wrestle through in the second half some of Trump's own words on God, Jesus, salvation and heaven, straight from transcripts. Do you want to dive into it? Is there anything you want to talk about up front?
[00:01:28] Speaker A: I just want to say that before we started recording this, I was thinking your, your name was on the lips of my wife and I because we were out in the backyard. Somebody, as, as happens to me and probably all of us who work in service professions, somebody canceled their appointment with me last minute and I found myself, happened to me this morning, found myself with an hour and I saw that my wife was in the backyard doing battle against the massive amount of leaves that have fallen.
And she does not enjoy that. So I said, I'll go help her. So we were sitting there talking and, man, we were talking about you, Steven, and the, the amazing purchase you made not that long ago of the leaf vacuum.
And I thought if I had a place to store one of those bad boys that would be added to my family post haste.
[00:02:19] Speaker B: Can we talk about the leaf vacuum real quick? You've brought it up. I'd love to talk about it.
We're probably by the time this airs, the leaf dyeing season will be over.
I have decided that this year I'm going to hit the yard at least once a Week.
I can listen to a podcast. I can listen to Albert Moeller talking on the podcast. I can do it in 20 minutes. You just walk around the yard and, and this thing sucks up all the leaves and I only have to empty it every time. Just throw it in the garage and keep moving on. There's never going to be a layer of leaves all over my yard because I'm just going to maintain and I'm very excited about it. The name of the product is Billy Goat. That's the, that's like the big brand of the leaf vacuum.
And I'm very into it right now. My daughter's kind of like, tease me about it because I'm like, oh, I see seven leaves out in the yard. Might be time for the Billy Goat. Yeah, I'm, I'm doing it and loving it.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Such an approach would be not possible in Utah because we went from full leafs to none in like a week and a half. And it was brutal. I mean, it's, it's 30 construction sized garbage bags of leaves.
[00:03:30] Speaker B: Oh, awful. All right, Mark, I want you to dive into Trump's bold money moves.
You are our resident policy wonk with a heart for the household money manager. So start talking us through Trump's economic gospel. What, what is he preaching these days?
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Well, I think that the genesis of this episode was because I read the news one day and I just needed to shout into the heavens. And texting you is sometimes how I do that. So I said, can you believe this ridiculous policy proposal I just read that's going to plunge us into the deepest, darkest depression ever?
And it was when I had read two things at once. One was a proposal that Trump is working on with Bill Pulte, who happens to run, I think, the fha, the Federal Housing Authority. Also, you might recognize his name as one of the larger home building families in the country.
So maybe not a totally neutral third party. Right.
But the, the proposal was we're going to create 50 year mortgages.
And I don't know if you've ever shopped for a home loan, but listener. I know, Steven, you've actually been a home loan originator in your life.
[00:04:51] Speaker B: Yes. And I was thinking this, Mark, you worked for Freddie Mac for a while, did you?
[00:04:56] Speaker A: That is true. And I worked for Freddie Mac in an interesting time in our nation's history. It was 2007 to 2008, which now is known as the GFC, the great financial crisis, which began and was centered around the mortgage business.
[00:05:14] Speaker B: So can you, can you summarize for the the average listener.
What was the, what, what was the genesis of the financial mortgage crisis?
[00:05:25] Speaker A: So if I just try to make it real simple, it's that the olden days of It's a Wonderful Life where you go to a bank and they've got a bunch of money and they loan it to you when you need to get a mortgage, those are long gone. Nowadays when a mortgage gets originated by a bank or a broker or whoever, they quickly sell it to one of these big government sponsored entities, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. And those companies package these mortgages into securities so that guys like you and me, Stephen, can go buy what sort of functions like a bond.
And we get those payments as people make their mortgage payments every month and they maybe pay off their loan early. You get some cash then. And so they, they become financial instruments that are tradable.
There's a lot of these out there, trillions of dollars. And what happened is during the great financial crisis, we started realizing, oh, the lending standards have decayed and there's a lot more defaults happening. So this is.
The stories were of like a housekeeper working at a hotel in Las Vegas could buy a $600,000 home just by saying, oh, I make $250,000 a year. Whether or not that's true, nobody was verifying. And then the mortgages were being made like this because house prices were just going up, up, up, up, up. And the idea was as long as house prices keep going up, worst case scenario, this person can't afford to make their payments, the bank will take the home back and actually make money on it because they'll sell it for more than they paid. That sounds familiar right? Now to some of the logic behind things like this 50 year mortgage, which.
[00:07:04] Speaker B: Is, by the way, is that moral?
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Is it moral for real estate prices to continue increasing?
[00:07:11] Speaker B: No, the, the, the dynamic that you just described, where it's not actual money that, that bought my house, it's some amorphous security that got packaged and sold and resold and it's a shell game of credit that's moving around.
It's not based on, there's no, there's no underlying security. It's, we're selling debt and credit and that's what's being swapped around. I'm just making the point that, which is unavoidable about what you're going to be talking about today, we're going to get into statements of morality, even though we're talking about economics and numbers, because there's, there is, there's moral right and Wrong. Underneath these things, I do want to.
[00:07:56] Speaker A: Clarify basically this system, when it's healthy, when the right checks are in place and things that are stated on applications are true and verified, really there's still a hard asset behind that loan. And so what, what the system I'm describing does is it provides extra liquidity that allows the bank of Omaha to compete with JP Morgan in New York City and they can all make loans.
And the idea was let's spur homeownership for everyone and give everyone a chance to participate. Again, going back to the assumption that this asset just keeps increasing in value over time. So it's kind of like worst case scenario, you just sell it, you make a little bit of money and move on.
So I don't think it's an inherently immoral system when it works. What is extremely immoral and what happened is there's a cut to be made at every step of this game.
So the mortgage broker, I get paid every time I originate a mortgage and I know exactly what to coach this person to write on this paper so that I can originate that mortgage. And it's not my problem once I ship it off and it gets sold into a security.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Right.
[00:09:08] Speaker A: The banks that sell these securities, they might be able to get them out of their hands fast enough that it's not their problem either.
And this happened and these securities were on balance sheets of every big bank in the world. It wasn't just, you know, countrywide home loans, it was everybody. If we thought the default rate was going to be say 0.04%, which is minuscule, and it actually was 0.4%, that's the difference in healthy global financial system and total disaster.
So that's what happened and what I hear today, so just to get us up to what's happening now is that there was this announcement, we're going to pursue 50 year mortgages. Just so the listener knows, we don't know what that means. We actually don't even know if it's real.
We just know that Trump likes it, the guy who's running Housing department likes it.
And that's about all the information we have. But if we just kind of assume. Well, the way the government might do this is that they might get together with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, these big companies that provide liquidity in the mortgage market. And they might even subsidize a 50 year loan so that there's a market for these banks can originate them. Freddie and Fannie will package them up into securities. And the banks don't have to hold them on their balance sheet.
It still assumes. And I've even heard specifically as Pulte describes the plan here, he says, well, people would just use these mortgages with a longer amortization period, which would result in a smaller payment, and they would just have them for the first 10 years, and then they would refinance into a shorter mortgage term once they're making more money and the asset has gone up in value.
So that sets my alarm bells ringing, which is we a say that everyone should own a home, and that should be a political goal. Now, I think it's a good idea for a lot of families to target homeownership. So I'm not opposed to it. But we have always, always, always going way back to the 19th century, gotten ourselves in trouble when we've used political policy and economic policy to try and spur homeownership out past what is affordable. So whether we're talking great financial crisis or savings and loan crisis in the 80s, we can kind of go back and there's been all these big financial crises that have happened when we tried to say everyone should own a home, let's change the laws to make it easier for that to happen.
[00:11:48] Speaker B: Isn't that. Mark, isn't that like doing an education, saying we want kids to get A's, like, that's that. That being the goal of education and working, trying to reverse engineer the outcome that you want, as opposed to, we're going to, we're going to set up a system that is equitable and free market.
I say free market to mean for an education system, which means if you, if you're smart and you want to work, you can get a good education.
Similar with an economic system that's free market. And if you want to work and save, you can get ahead. But, but if you don't want to own a home or whatever, that's your problem. It seems to me like having the gold, having the government assume we want this outcome always leads to bad stuff.
[00:12:38] Speaker A: Well, yes, especially, especially when we focus on the demand side of the equation. So just to give you, like Basic Economics 101, Supply and Demand always bounce out to equilibrium.
And when we think about something, use your college example, we did as a country pretty much say we think college, we should make college way more accessible to more people. But the way that we did that is we went and subsidized loans through the government to students.
Well, what has happened since we started doing that? College has gone from something you could work a job waiting tables and pay for a Cheap apartment and your tuition to cover to. A lot of people are spending $350,000 on an undergraduate degree that will not generate enough income like that. They can reasonably expect to pay off those, pay back the debt ever.
And so what we did is we made the demand for college way bigger because we said all these people who previously, if the college said it's 350k, they would have gone, well, I just don't have any way to get my hands on that. So it doesn't matter how bad I want it.
Now we're saying we can make it possible for you.
And so the demand for college has gone up. Well, what do the universities do when that happens? Well, they just keep raising the prices and they say, keep giving us that government money.
[00:14:08] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: That's what happens. In all of these scenarios we're going to talk about today.
We've said, instead of saying, okay, housing prices have been out of control. And that is true. I think Cincinnati is probably one of the more insulated markets and even their housing prices have gone up like crazy. But here, my home is worth three and a half times what I paid for it in 2017, which is, whoa, bananas gorilla. Now, I've done some improvements and so you could maybe say a third of that is because of work we've put in. But, man, my city has gone from a low cost of living city to, I think we're in the top 10 now. And that happens in less than a decade.
And so that's a problem, right? It's a problem even for me as a dad. I go, I want my kids to be able to afford homes in the place we live.
But instead of approaching it and going, well, what is the solution to the problem? Well, if we, if we had a whole lot more housing, then we would have a lot of supply and prices would go down. But instead what we've done is say, let's fix this by trying to make it easier. Easier to get into a more expensive home. Yeah, instantaneously. What this does is, you know, it's like when the, when the stimulus checks came out, which we're going to talk about stimulus checks, did it, did it help inflation or did eggs get more expensive?
[00:15:33] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:15:35] Speaker A: Because everybody had money in their pocket and the stores didn't go. Now it's our American duty to keep prices low right now. Or the Ford dealership didn't say, we're not going to, we're not going to raise the price on pickup trucks.
No, everything got way more expensive instantaneously because everybody suddenly the demand spiked because people could get their hands on more cash. And that primarily is what I'm nervous about when we talk about stimulating the demand side of the equation to make housing more affordable.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: Yeah, it's surprising to me.
I'll just admit my biases.
Biases here that with the Biden administration there, they just couldn't write checks fast enough. Let's give PPP loans to everybody. Let's actually stop down the whole universe and then just pay everybody for being alive. I thought, well, that, that checks out. That's, that's, that's kind of how that platform thinks about money and government.
Government money, which can just be printed in Lee and I think, I thought this Trump guy, he comes from a business background. I think he's going to be more fiscally responsible.
So to see him doing this kind of stimulus stuff and as you say, screwing with that side of the supply demand ledger, it seems like, Wait, wait, what, what's going on here? So I just, I feel, I feel all thumbs kind of go like even understanding, where are we at? Do I trust, do I trust the president administration financially? More and more, I don't.
[00:17:13] Speaker A: Right. And keep in mind that most of the stimulus checks that went out went out under Trump, the majority, the first administration. So we have a track record. Even though Biden's PPP stuff and another wave of the rescue act checks and all that.
It's just, we can't boil it down like you said to this is one political party has a jacked up view of, of, you know, we can just give the kids money and promise them, you know, soda machines in every classroom. It feels like we're in the realm of third grade class president campaigns, which I do need to, at a later date give you an update on third grade class president campaigns because we just had a victory here in the parrot family.
[00:18:03] Speaker B: But important get us into the details of like the 50 year mortgage. Let's say that Johnny Paycheck is listening to this podcast. Does he like the idea? Are we, are we for them? Is that good? Should I be rooting for that when they come out? If and when they come out, Do I get one?
[00:18:21] Speaker A: Let me give you some numbers. If we consider a $500,000 house, which I think that would have been a really fancy house a few years ago and now is probably like a starter house in a lot of cities.
Let's say that you put $100,000 down as a down payment. You've done a good job, you've saved your money.
Now we've got a $400,000 mortgage. And I just want to consider what would the difference be if we got a traditional 30 year mortgage.
[00:18:50] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:18:51] Speaker A: Or a 50 year. And I ran two different scenarios. So let's say at today's rates, about 6% interest rate, 30 year mortgage, $400,000, your payment is going to be $2,398 a month. That does not include any taxes or insurance or anything. That's just your principal and interest on that loan.
Over the 30 years, you're going to pay $463,000 in interest for that loan. Okay.
Now if we go to a 50 year loan, keep in mind that if you, if you today go shopping for a mortgage and you say, I want to see a quote on a 15 year and a 30 year, the 15 year is almost always going to have a lower rate because the bank is not sending their money out for as long. It's like we're going to give you a lesser rate because we're going to get our money back faster.
So I said, if you have a 50 year loan and it's only half a percent more of an interest rate, what does this mortgage look like? Well, at 6.5%, a 50 year loan, your payment has indeed dropped. It's now $2,254 a month.
So 2,398, now it's 2,254.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:10] Speaker A: Your lifetime interest again, the 30 year, it was $463,000. Now it's $953,000 that you're going to pay in interest.
We won't go into the deep details of amortization, but if you look at your mortgage, if you have a 30 year loan and you've been making your payments once a month for five years and you pull up what's my balance? You might be a little crestfallen because the way amortization works is at the beginning of the loan, you're paying mostly interest.
On a 50 year loan, I haven't pulled the full table, but my guess is five years in, you've paid almost nothing that you borrowed back. Almost nothing. It could be a few thousand bucks.
And that's a problem because again, going back to the assumptions here, it's, well, if somebody gets in trouble here, they could just sell the house. In five years from now, it will have gone up in value. And I have bad news for our Gen Z listeners. House prices do not always go up.
It's, it's been a while since they've dropped in the United States. But they have dropped. And we don't want to get into a position where we're relying on my bailout option. Looks like the house goes up in value.
So again, I think this is exposing families to a massive amount of risk and a huge lifetime cost for really minimal savings, even under best case scenarios.
And I think for that reason, in addition to the fact that if we somehow, if it succeeded and the payments were 300 bucks a month less for the average family, that just gets cooked into house prices immediately. Because most people, unless they're wealthy enough to pay cash for a home, they kind of shop for houses based on the payment they can afford.
And if they can afford this payment, well, the price is going to increase to fill that bucket. You're right. And so this is why I don't like this particular.
Okay, since we're here and we don't have to like revisit the whole thing, I want to just kick in. The other suggestion that was made, I think it was on the Truth Social network that Trump runs is we're also doing 15 year car loans.
I'm shopping for a car right now. I'm generally disgusted by car prices these days.
But I remember thinking, because they just assume now when you walk into a car dealership, if you're looking at an expensive car, which might just be like a Suburban, now that cost. A suburban costs what a Ferrari cost when I was a high schooler.
[00:22:50] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:22:53] Speaker A: And you could walk into a dealership, they assume you're looking at a 60 month loan, but also maybe a 72 month loan.
So five or six year car loans is kind of the assumption now. Not that long ago, that was crazy town. People thought 48 months is the longest you'd ever want to borrow to finance a car.
And part of the reason is unlike a home, we know that a car is going down in value. It's going to go to zero pretty fast in the grand scheme of things.
[00:23:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: And so I just ran some numbers. If you took a $43,000 vehicle, so that's what I paid for my wife's car that she's still driving 11 years ago. And let's say you put $5,000 down and the rate is 5%, if you have a 60 month loan, you're going to pay 717 bucks a month.
And in five years you've paid it off.
The total amount of interest you're going to pay on that loan is about $5,000. $5,026.
If you have a 48 month loan now, your payment has gone up to 875amonth, but it's paid off in four years and you've only paid $4,005 in interest. Okay, so you save some money, but it's not that big of a deal. Right. Because you're either paid off in four years or you're paid off in five years. And most new cars these days, it might still be under warranty in five years, but it's very unlikely to be valueless five years from now.
[00:24:28] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Conversely, if you have a 15 year loan, your payment has dropped dramatically. You are now down to a $300 a month payment, which means going back to our principal. Do you think the car companies are going to go, let's lower prices now because we just want to participate in the healthening of the American. No, they're going to say, everybody can afford these suckers.
The problem is after 10 years. So if we think about my wife's car, you still owe $16,000.
Well, I think our Toyota Highlander is a fantastic vehicle, but the trade in value today is $11,000.
And if I bump that up to a Suburban and say I bought it for 85,000 ten years ago. I looked up the, the value today of the average 2015 Chevy Suburban and it is around $15,000.
And that loan would still have a $33,500 balance.
So you get yourself into some nasty territory by using lending terms, extending them on and on and on.
It's not great. In housing, it's disastrous when we talk about to, to purchase consumable items that we know are depreciating in value and probably won't even be on the road 15 years from now. Most cars don't make it that long.
[00:25:58] Speaker B: That's right.
Wow, that's shocking.
It makes me think of there's one truth behind both of these that's applicable to every single person listening and the truth behind. Let's play with the numbers so that we could make it seem like more people can get into a house that's desirable to them for whatever reason.
It just makes me think of what it was like for my parents, what it was like for me as a 20 year old getting started.
And the assumption that if you're young and starting out and you don't have financial footing under you, you will make do with very, very little in the way of a housing situation.
Very, very little in the way of a car situation.
But what seems to have happened is that even new families getting started, there's a cultural expectation that you're going to Have a kitchen with granite countertops somehow. And so how do I get into that kitchen? That's what we want. We've decided this is the kind of thing that we really like. No kidding? No kidding. That's what you really like? Oh, you like all power accessories on your car. You like a moonroof. Oh, I'll be darn.
Yeah, no kidding. Everybody likes more bells and whistles, but it just seems like the willingness to go through the pain of, of having less while you build up savings, while you build up equity in a small home, et cetera. It seems like that patience has gone down, down, down. And I just have to throw out like you just don't need a $46,000 car. I'm sorry, you don't. Nobody does. I don't, I don't need a $46,000 car if I can afford it.
That, that I'm sure that would enjoy. That sounds very nice. What? We don't need those things.
And it's so easy to believe based on marketing and, and yes, the way that a bank will handle a loan and the way that you can get credit is part of marketing. It makes you, it makes you think differently about what I'm going to have.
I just, I just would put a warning out to every young dude listening that those things can't be your standard. As you said, Mark, when you walk into a used car lot, they. One of the first questions is what kind of payment are you looking for? You're asking the wrong question, pal. That's not the way I'm thinking.
Anyways, I have to give the editorial.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: I had a funny experience because we, we have been doing what I always tell people to do.
I told you, my wife's car is over 10 years old.
We've been making a car payment.
We actually borrowed some money to buy that car but paid it off I think in two years. And so nine years now we've been making a car payment to ourselves.
And you can imagine the market's done well over that time.
We have a lot of money sitting in that car fund. And I, and my wife's like, you know, we have funded kind of our retirement needs. We've done a lot of these things. We've been generous. I wouldn't mind maybe a luxury car. And I said reasonable. And we were at the BMW dealership two weeks ago looking at these cool SUVs. We took one out for a ride. It's the super sporty thing. It's fun to drive.
What is it?
[00:29:32] Speaker B: I don't know. I Don't know about it.
[00:29:33] Speaker A: It's like an X6.
[00:29:35] Speaker B: Entice me.
[00:29:36] Speaker A: It's a BMW X6 is what she liked. She likes the chunky looking things. But we went to, and I was like, the sticker price is high, but we could afford it because we've saved all this money.
And the, the sales guy, I'm sort of talking to him, here's my priorities. I, I like to keep cars a long time. I don't mind maintaining them, but I don't want something that's just going to bust in four years. That's not my style.
And he's thinking, well, this guy seems like he's got enough money to afford the car. I think I'd like to try and talk him into a lease where I can get him switching cars every three or four years.
And so he starts giving me the pitch and I had to stop him midway through and he starts saying, you know, you really don't want to own these more than four years. This is after I said, hey, I like to keep my cars for 10 to 15 years. Yeah, I, I said, I said, you are really good at selling. I'm just not sure you were selling what you thought you were selling. Because you have completely convinced me that I don't want to own one of these vehicles.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: But because you told me that they.
[00:30:38] Speaker A: Don'T last, I could afford the payment. But then you started saying, well, you know, really, you should consider a lease because this service at six years usually costs about 18 grand. And all I'm like, I'm out on that. And yep, what I was thinking internally was I would need to make about $1.5 million a year to want to put that much of my income towards a vehicle.
And I think that's something a lot of people just don't think about. Is. Is We've talked about it over and over on the podcast. They walk into a situation like this, they go, what can I qualify for? That must be what's right for me to spend on that. And I would just warn our listeners, don't do that. And especially don't do that as they start allowing you to qualify for things that will snare you and financially strangle you. Don't think that because this comes from Trump, if you're a Trump fan, that it's good for you, it might be total disaster for you.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: And if you hate Trump, whatever, like I just say, like, you got to view this type of thing with clear eyes.
[00:31:42] Speaker B: Yes. The Christian family has got to be really Good at taking off. I don't care what camp. I do care. But your little political hats, oh, there's an R on the cap. So I'm rooting for whatever these, there's a D on my cap. I root for it.
That's not your interest when it comes to your finances. We're not hoping, oh, I hope Trump makes good decisions financially.
What do I care? My concern is my home. I want to make the wisest moves for building the capitals of my home.
And if that guy sitting in the White House recommends some things that I sit back and I go, I'm not sure it squares with scripture. I don't think it's responsible for us to do. We're not, we're not walking forward in them. I don't care. We're not here to. We're not, we're not rooting for a team. Except for team my family. That's the team I'm rooting for.
[00:32:34] Speaker A: One thing I wanted to throw in before we move off of this is I was listening to the chief economist at Schwab talking about kind of some of these proposals and he did say something that if you're listening to this and you're 24 going, those chuckle headed boomer types are talking about homeownership like, I just want granite countertops and I just want to afford a home. You're not totally off your, off your rocker because the average age of homeownership has gone from, I think in the 80s it was 29 is when the average American married person purchased a home. Okay, the average first time homebuyer age today, what do you think that number is?
[00:33:17] Speaker B: Gosh, I guess you're going to surprise me.
I, I would have thought, if you hadn't just said that, I would have thought it was 26, but I guess it's 33.
[00:33:29] Speaker A: It's 40 this year. It went over the 30s. It's for the first time it has hit 40.
And so this is a problem because.
[00:33:41] Speaker B: Every economic indicator on the dashboard of the United States is blinking. It's just, I just hate these kind of things. It's so bad.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: And I think the decision that we have to make is, well, do you have to own a home? The answer is no, you don't have to own a home.
Because I think for our listeners, the average American that doesn't own a home is actually spending all their extra money. So they're paying rent and then they're just spending. That's true if you're a discerning Abrahamic family. Leader, you could, if you lived in certain high cost places, go buying. Doesn't make sense right now, but I'm going to take all that money and invest it for the long haul so that when this whole house of cards comes tumbling down, I can afford to then take advantage. Like you don't have to own a home all the time, but for our country, it is, it is not just in your head and it's not just because you're greedy and want granite countertops and won't deal with Formica that you can't afford a home. Like affordability is a real issue. My. The bee in my bonnet is that we are trying to solve it by increasing demand, which is the craziest thing you could ever do. If you're, if you're trying to solve the price of beef right now, you don't get everyone interested in powerlifting and hand them all a hundred bucks and send them to the grocery store because they're all buying steak. You know, that's kind of what we've done with house prices, with vehicle prices and a lot of these things.
[00:35:10] Speaker B: Okay, I want us to come down the home stretch on the financial subject. Is there, is there anything else that's being posited by the present administration at the end of 25 that you want to comment on or give people coaching on?
[00:35:24] Speaker A: The only thing we need to just highlight is that the other idea that was thrown out was a $2,000 check sent out to everyone in America, excluding high earners, which was not defined, and calling it a tariff dividend. And so all I would say, make no mistake, if you're one of these folks that has been wringing your hands about Mamdani in New York City and socialism and communism, this is wealth redistribution. This is just the same. It will have inflationary effects on the economy.
Now, there's things we can do to defend against that as thoughtful stewards of wealth, but it's, it's bad News Bears. We've already played this movie, guys. We did this during COVID under Biden and under Trump, and we got 16 dozens of eggs, which is no bueno. So. That's right. If you have any opportunity to push back against this type of thinking, even at the local level or whatever, you know, I'm really hoping this doesn't happen. And the tricky thing for me is a tariff dividend when the whole selling point of tariffs was we've got a $33 trillion national debt, maybe we should pay that off and then we can talk about, you know, companies that send out dividends. If you own a dividend producing stock, it's because the company is going, well, we're making all this money and we don't have any money to invest it in. That would be better than just sending it back to our shareholders. So here you go, here's your dividend. That's not what's happening in the United States. It feels again like we're just saying we'll give you money so you will like us. And I don't think it's a coincidence that this all happened right after the Republicans got slapped upside the head in the off cycle elections. That just happened. Yeah.
[00:37:20] Speaker B: When I heard about this, check my math on this mark. But this is, this is what I, this is what I think happened. One, we know that Trump kind of did a political end around where he basically declared these tariffs which it's, it's nebulous slash, not possible for a, for a president to just declare this is going to be our nation's economic policy. So what he wanted was he wants Congress to pass laws so that these tariffs will be permanent.
So what I think happened was that he kind of floats out there the idea of, hey, all your constituents are going to end up getting $2,000 checks. Hey nation, hey nation's voters. Does everybody like this idea?
Why don't you tell your congressman that you like the idea of these tariffs and it's a way to turn the screws on making the, making Congress pass the tariffs that he wants to be law anyway by throwing some bread and circus at the people in the cheap seats.
I, I don't, I don't. It makes me mad because we know the long term economic consequences of the government writing checks. I just have to say this again to our listeners because it has to be repeated about, I don't know, once a month.
The government doesn't have any money and they don't raise money and they don't earn money. They have two ways of coming up with money.
One is taking yours and the second one is printing it out of thin air. And every time they do that, the money that you currently hold in your bank account becomes worth less.
We don't like it when the government says that it's going to, quote, give anybody money ever.
The government doesn't have any money. So I don't like it when they say they're going to give anybody any money anyhow. It, it's all stinks to me that the whole thing. And, and, and we said this during.
Every time that the government puts a, a check in your mailbox, we always say, take the check. It is actual human money.
Don't, don't go on a spending spree as if it's imaginary money. You should, if you can possibly afford to invest it, put it away, write yourself that monthly car payment like Mark did or whatever. Do something shrewd with it. But in general, we don't like the policy, and I don't want, I want our people to be savvy about the way that government works and the way economic works and go, like, we don't, like, we don't like the idea of the government sending people checks.
[00:40:05] Speaker A: I could talk more, but you get to, to your point, and I'll chime in as, as I can.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: Okay, let's go, let's, let's pivot to the spiritual ledger of, of, of Trump's beliefs. Mark's been talking to us about, apparently, his economic beliefs, which are confusing to me.
But here's the thing.
Evangelicals, I don't know if any, if people know this.
Evangelicals gave Trump 80% of our vote in 2024.
So my question is, do his 2025 words match the born again blueprint of John 3? Remember, Jesus talks to Nicodemus, Nicodemus comes to Jesus. He goes, what does it take?
What do you think it. What's it. What's it all about? Talk to me about eternal life.
And in this conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus says, you know, you got to be born again.
And Nicodemus goes, how could I possibly be born again? I'm a grown man. And Jesus says, you got to be born by the spirit. And this is. This leads to the famous verse of John 3, 16 and Jesus. It's very cool to imagine this scene because Jesus talking about himself, and he says, God loved the world. He gave his only son. Ding, ding, ding. That's the guy sitting in front of you. That whoever would believe in him might not perish, but would have eternal life. So there's a transaction. There's something that happens when this believing in him means being born again in Jesus's parlance, and that's changed the evangelicalism and what we understand to be salvation. Ever since that day that John chapter three happened. Well, I hear things coming out of our president's mouth. I'm always interested in leaders, people who are leaders, our cultural leaders, our national leaders, when they start talking about salvation. And by the way, if I can give a little cultural coaching for you, discerning how culture works, whenever people describe how we're going to save the world, I want you, as a Christian family leader, to lean forward, and I want you to narrow your eyes and I want you to say that again. What are you saying when they say the way that we're going to save the world is you lean forward and say, what's that?
So the climate change people, they do have an answer to this question, how do you save the world?
Socialists and Marxists, they have an answer to the question, how do you save the world? It's not our answer, but when the world gives an answer to that question, I want you to be aware of it. Because if you don't know what they're promising as salvation, then you can accidentally start to be influenced by them and you can actually be pulled off sides and you can.
You can pollute your own faith by believing lies. So I want you to be aware of that. For your sake and for your family's sake, I want you to. I want you to know that what is called salvation really matters.
So there have been statements that have come out from Trump in the years since he's been such an important national figure that make you scratch your head. Some things you go, I think this guy gets it. And then some things, some he'll say, I'm not sure if this guy gets it. So I just want to walk through some things that he said. You might recall that at his inauguration, January 20, 2025, Trump said, I was saved by God. Remember, there was an attempt on his life which failed, and he said, I was saved by God to make America great again.
And he said at that same. At the same time, if I'm good, I'm going to heaven.
Now, I don't know what you. I. I think that salvation comes from the Lord.
Was it an angel that moved the bullet that didn't strike Trump in the head and. And saved his life? I don't know. I believe every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of heavenly lights, as James says.
Do I think. Do I like that statement, if I'm good, I'm going to heaven? I do not. The Bible doesn't. The Bible wouldn't support that statement.
The Bible would tell us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And we know from Ephesians 2 that if we're going to go to heaven, that is, experience eternal life. It's not going to be because you did good things.
It's going to be by the grace of God alone.
There. There are going to be. I can just tell you theologically, on the other side of being Born again. There are good works. There's obedience that comes as a result of being born again, but you're not going to get to heaven because you did good works. So when he says things like this, and he said that, he said that very statement, that God saved me so that I could basically lead America back to whatever he thinks.
They paint God as a patriotic ally of his and not a savior of his.
So that's not the talk of the born again, what he says. It's more like, I was, you know, not born again, but I was born to lead. I'm, I'm focused on what he's going to accomplish as opposed to any, any sense of repentance or turning toward the Lord.
Now, I'm going to share with you the most confounding quotes that happened this year, and they were around Holy Week in April.
I'm just going to give you a list. They've happened from Palm Sunday all the way to, like, the White House Easter Egg Roll. That happens. I'm just going to tell you everything he said. He said, as we focus on Christ's redeeming sacrifice, we look to his love, humility and obedience.
Let me repeat that. Donald Trump says on Palm Sunday of 2025, as we focus on Christ's redeeming sacrifice, we look to his love, humility and obedience.
I'm going to continue the quote. Three days later, Christ's followers found the empty tomb. Jesus had defeated darkness.
Am I happy that my president is quoting Bible truths? Yes.
That's not my question. My question is, does he know the Lord?
Easter celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of our Christian faith.
Okay, good, good. And at the Egg Roll, he said, we're honoring Jesus Christ. We're bringing religion back to America.
So, again, my analysis is we're hearing that Jesus as kind of the hero of American tradition, everything that he said is true. And, and holy cow, would I rather to have my president talking about Jesus's sacrifice and the empty tomb and Christianity is the national religion.
[00:47:08] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:47:09] Speaker B: Of course. I would.
I just would like to, to, for all of our, you know, people who are kind of rooting for Trump and hope that. I hope this guy believes. I just want you to know that every single thing he said is believed right now by every demon that exists in the universe.
Every demon that exists believes that Jesus raised from the dead. They believe the tomb is empty. They believe that he had a redeeming sacrifice, that he is loving and humble and obedient to the Heavenly Father. All of those things are True. And believing that they're true doesn't make someone born again or a follower of Christ. It doesn't bring new life believing those truths.
Is that right, Mark? Is that how you understand things to work?
[00:47:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:47:59] Speaker B: So now we're, now we're coming into this. The last quarter of quotes from his ending with the quote that started our episode today, which troubled me deeply, talking about heaven, specifically in August at a. On a Fox interview, Trump said, I want to try to get to heaven if possible.
I know my mother's in heaven now I have to throw this in. A lot of people don't know this. Did you know that Donald Trump's great aunts were.
They were. These were godly. And I underword the word godly. These were godly praying women who were key players in a revival that happened in the Hebrides in Scotland.
And the Bible that he was sworn in on as president was his great aunt's Bible. I mean, this guy actually does have an astounding heritage of Christian faith. It's true.
So I don't know much about his mother, but I believe him. If he says, I know my mother's going to heaven, what he's saying is, I know my mother had a relationship with Jesus, which I believe, not knowing more than I know.
Okay? He says, I want to get to heaven if possible. Whenever somebody says that, you have concern about, well, how do you understand the gospel if you're saying, I hope to get to heaven, if that's possible for me, I have great confidence that I'm going to heaven.
Why? Because when I stand before God, I'm not going to do what what Muslims think they're going to do before God, which is there's going to be a balance of good and bad, and did I do more good than bad? I'm going to stand before God and, and there's going to be some kind of questioning like, why should I let you into my heaven? And it won't be. I think I've done pretty good. I mean, I think, you know, let's just check it out. It's going to be, like, covered by the blood of Jesus. That's it. He is. He is my only hope, as the old hymn says, you know, but the blood.
And that's my confidence. The Bible even says that that's my confidence when I stand before God, says, the book of Hebrews is the blood of Jesus. So I have great confidence about going to heaven. And it's not about. It's not about my personal score. It's not about a report card. So Trump says, I want to try and get to heaven if possible.
On October 7th on Fox and Friends. He says there has to be some kind of a report card up there.
There's no reason to be good except to get into heaven.
Oh, man, Trump.
And then this last quote on Air Force One, he says, you already saw the quote at the beginning episode, but I don't think I'm going to be able to make it to heaven. But I've helped a lot of people.
So I really feel sad for a guy that says that my heart really goes out to him. I, I don't know who has maybe shared the gospel with him in any version, but somebody that knows the Lord doesn't say that. I don't think I'm going to make it. But you know what? He still has in his mind he's the deal maker, right, Mark?
He's the guy that's still trying to make deals for 50 year mortgages. And he's trying to think in his mind, what do I have to bring to the negotiating table with God? I think I'm doing good things here. I think we're trying to save people. I think I'm bringing peace to the Middle East. Doesn't God likes those Jews, right? Israel? I don't know. It's in the Bible.
So I think that, I don't know, I don't know if I'm going to make it, but I'm helping a lot of people.
And I just have to say if you were asking my opinion and a couple of people have, I'm just going to tell my audience our understanding based on what we know is that and based on these quotes, Trump doesn't seem like a guy that knows the Lord. He seems warm to Christianity. It's certainly his family heritage.
I, of course, I like the idea that he would be seen in a church. You know, I like the fact that he has a Bible. He owns a Bible. At least the Trump's Bible was in the, was in the Bible Museum in Washington, D.C. last time I was there. Oh, that's kind of cool. President's got a, a used, you know, family Bible. That's great.
It doesn't sound like he's put his faith in Jesus. And for anybody listening and you think, well, good, you know, biblical, biblical finance, that sounds like a winner. It is a winner, actually. God does tell us how to do money. And I just have to say, for anybody listening, if there's never come a point in your life where you've said to the Lord God, you have an offer of salvation for me that's not based on how much good work I do, that the report card of my life is not going to work. The Bible says if you have failed God's law in any way, you failed it all the way. You, you only get that's pass fail and we all fail.
And if you, if you haven't, you must come to the Lord and say, if there's an offer of salvation for me that's based on Jesus taking my place, I want it and I trade it in. And I would love to hear Trump say at some point, you know what, if anybody gets to heaven, it's through Jesus and that's where all my hope lies.
Oh, I'd love to hear that. I have not heard that from him. I hear, I hear something about the deal maker talking about a report card and he hopes to do enough good to get in. That's concerning. I don't think we can trust his spiritual frame of mind.
What do you think, Mark?
[00:53:36] Speaker A: I don't disagree with anything you said. I think that as we kind of wrap up this episode, the so what of it all is the same so what that we gave you when we had a bunch of people really bothered and concerned about the Biden administration. Well, this guy seems to actually be a verbally hostile to our faith.
What should we do? And the answer is pretty simple. We should pray for our leaders.
That's so clear. The, and, and in the case of both Biden, the previous President Trump and whoever comes next, whether that's somebody that we think is a good leader or somebody who's wheels off, I think that we're praying for their salvation. We're praying that even if they aren't going to be a born again believer, we still believe God has total sovereignty and has put them in their spot for a reason.
We kind of hope it's not judgment of us, but it could be.
But we just submit everything to the king and say, hey, we're trusting you with our country and we're obeying you by praying for our leader in our country.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: I would say to every family leader listening, you are not to farm out the spiritual leadership of your family to the nearby church pastor. You're not supposed to farm out the financial leadership to the, I don't know, the head of the Fed or the president or anybody else. You are to run your home and your dough like the biblical boss that you are. And we bless you in doing it. We'll see you next week.
