Hello listeners this is political's nerd cast I'm Scott Bland this week on the

nerd cast the White House is weighing all sorts of different policy

proposals new cuts to corporate taxes payroll taxes among other measures, to try and cushion the U.S. economy ahead of their worst fear heading into 2020, a recession that could damage Trump's re-election hopes.

Plus, we're going to go inside the president. could damage Trump's re-election hopes.

Plus, we're going to go inside President Trump's feud

with one of his closest friends,

or we should say former closest friends,

and just how that fits into his administration's

freewheeling policymaking.

As always, we're taping this on Thursday, today that's August 22nd, so it's all up to date

as of then.

So in public, President Donald Trump and his administration are always talking about how great the economy is.

This is one of their big selling points in general, also heading into re-election.

But political White House reporter Nancy Cook, who's with us this week, found out some new information about what his administration is saying about the economy behind the scenes.

Nancy, thanks for joining us.

Oh, thank you for having me.

So you had a big story this week that I got behind the scenes with the White House Chief of Staff

Mick Mulvaney talking to Republican donors and sounding a different note than we're used to hearing

about the economy.

Absolutely. So I would just say broadly,

White House AIDS are very worried

about an economic downturn.

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