Pat Toomey appearance on Bloomberg Surveillance, June 15 2023.

Patrick Toomey is one of our more interesting Senators a former Senator he is of Pennsylvania it's his fault the Phillies lost and he accident after that and he joins us today he's on the board of Apollo now among other uh good duties here in his former career what's the biggest difference of moving from the August Senate of Washington into the private space well there are a lot uh having control of your own schedule is one of them the majority leader gets to decide when votes will occur and you have to be on the floor in person to cast a vote when you're out of the Senate you have a lot more saying just a human huge difference in the house right now where there's one or two people away and that changes it for speaker McCarthy and that can happen in the Senate also how much do you kind of feel like you wouldn't necessarily run if the Dynamics were the same now as they were when you started in politics lastly for me I was in federal office for 18 years 12 consecutive years in the Senate and prior to that a gap and then six years in the house for me that was enough I was ready to move on I have no regrets I mean I really enjoyed and appreciated the chance to pursue the policies that I believed in but I don't like the idea of being there forever uh for anybody myself included you're Cut From a Different Cloth I mean there's Morgan grenfell and then you're in Rookie's restaurant you know Lehigh Valley and all that but what you're really acclaimed for is standing up to the former president saying the behavior is not appropriate we have seen an absolutely historic moment for the nation that will continue in the coming weeks right and in months what is the best practice right now of Centrist Republicans is they address this indictment in Miami well so I'm a Conservative Republican um and my conservatism sort of requires me to call out the completely unacceptable and egregious behavior of the former president as it manifests itself periodically um look I think Republicans should call it for what it is this is a completely unforced unnecessary outrageous abuse of the responsibility that the American people gave this President he knew those documents didn't belong to him but it wasn't just a a sloppiness it wasn't just a matter of okay a few papers got mixed in with some of my mementos it was lying about it it was hiding it it was suggesting to his lawyers that they make it disappear it was discussing it in in front of reporters someone writing a book and recording this and apparently if if we can believe the allegations which uh I think they're there for a reason uh it included very sensitive military secrets of the United States of America so as is often the case Donald Trump Is His Own Worst Enemy he makes a foolish mistake and then compounds it massively and uh look this is indefensible behavior I went back and looked at the September effort by Philip bump in the Washington Post working off Pew research and I was Thunderstruck at the countable research of how small mega is it's not that great a part of the American Pie how does the broader sense of Republicans in Independence not defend themselves but just react adjust and move forward if mag is really not all that big boy their megaphones large yeah but uh the the unfortunate reality in my mind is the president still the former president still does have a large level of support and it's complicated right it's it's a part of it is historical part of it is a sense of the the Grievances that he uh and part of it is the perception that he's being unfairly treated and so even if he did something wrong uh it's uh it's it's not a fair treatment so it's complicated here's what my theory is the cumulative weight of all of the drama all of the unnecessary Misery all of the the lawsuits the allegations all of this is going to cause increasing numbers of Republicans even if they've been sympathetic to Donald Trump to say okay maybe he did a good job as President we got to move on one of the rare things about you is that you can really dovetail from Washington to Wall Street and that's sort of been your background going back and forth and we're talking about the politics of the moment at a time when fed policy is going to dictate a lot on Wall Street for the next couple of years how concerned are you growing given the politician politicization of the inflation debate How concerned are you that this fed is not really convicted enough to go through with their mandate and get inflation back down to where it should Bay so I lean in the other direction I think this fed is very very concerned about um you know their legacy their reputation they know that they got this badly wrong they kept rates way too low monetary policy way too easy for way too long they established a flawed Paradigm for determining when they would change they got behind the curve I think the risk is that they overdo it and partly for the same reason that they went too far in my conversations with fed Governors and Senior staff I was always surprised and how dismissive so many of them are about money supply how dismissive they are about what Milton Friedman taught us and how focused they are on things like inflation expectations rather than the 40 growth in M2 that they were responsible for in 18 months so they might miss the collapse of the growth in M2 for instance and misdiagnose what's going on in my view I think there's a great risk they go too far are you agreeing with Elizabeth Warren um I don't think so because I think Elizabeth Warren was opposed to any kind of normalizing of interest rates I think I may be a mischaracterization but I think that's true we now have positive real interest rates I would argue you know certainly if you're looking on a month-to-month basis we have had money supply growth go to zero uh we have the FED uh shrinking its balance sheet we have the treasury is going to go out and absorb what a trillion dollars worth of cash from the economy so he put all that together and you look at how inflation is obviously rolled over um and I think we're probably on the right trajectory now I'm not in the camp of easing by any means I think the pause is probably the right thing to do but you look at the Dot Plot and it looks as though they're going higher from here so maybe that's the right call I'm just I think the era is more likely to occur on excessive tightening Bloomberg surveillance has a a great affection for politicians who come from a different territory than just pure Politics as well I was talking to our Greg gerone he looks at the mess which is known as the coming presidential campaign and I would just suggest sir that you consider here in your private moments private citizen moments that we need a LaSalle Academy ticket now I think governor raimondo and Pat Toomey could get together and bring Rhode Island into the nation what's in the pixie dust at LaSalle Academy Province Providence Rhode Island that gives us the Commerce Secretary and the former Senator uh I think our Commerce Secretary is a very capable uh very capable person one of the more impressive members of the entire Administration um but our World Views still differ considerably and I had a great experience in LaSalle Academy it's a great School but she and I won't be teaming up anytime soon what's the world what's the world view you see at the debates of the Republican party I believe they start in August there's some very big ones right and this is really important there's what is our role in the world I mean you have a wing of the party and thinks we shouldn't even be helping ukrainians I think that's crazy but but there's people who aren't advocating that you have a wing of the party that wants to a completely explicitly reject market capitalism and have Central planning of industrial policy we're gonna have to leave it there after your Apollo board meeting please come back and continue on we do want to talk to you about China I think that's really fun center it as well thanks for having me he is with the Paul Patrick Toomey is a former Senator of Pennsylvania please stay with