This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 24th, 2017.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How should the government spend federal dollars on security?

The Transportation Security Administration is one area worthy of cutting.

So says John Mueller, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of the forthcoming

book, Are we safe enough?

Donald Trump, in addition to being a master showman,

and maybe these are two peas in the same pod,

is also a master of threat inflation and making certain threats appear

to be much greater than they actually are if you do the math on your likelihood of being affected by some specific act and your work

has a lot to do with making sure that we understand what the actual risks are and trying

to behave in a rational way rather than in a way that is merely an emotional reaction.

So what do you make of how he has performed thus far?

Well, it's been pretty incoherent, which doesn't make it unusual,

I guess.

So it's consistently incoherent.

What was impressive was the budget blueprint that came out just a few weeks ago.

And they had actually been willing to really look at the Department of Homeland Security

Budget, including the Transportation Security Administration Budget, and see about cutting it.

So I give them some points for at least you know taking on

sacred cows but they did it so incoherently and so foolishly that it was it was you know totally unconvincing. Basically, Mark Stewart and I just

finished a book which would be out later this year called Are We Safe Enough

...