Tim Stenovec

In fact, he made a series of very poor decisions.

It's just that I think, at least historically...

The narrative that's been described about him is that he didn't even understand what was happening.

I think he understood very well what was happening.

I think he had some of the wrong people in his ear, including Andrew Mellon, who was his treasurer's secretary, who he had a terrible, unfortunately, relationship with early on.

I think his decision on tariffs was...

completely misplaced.

Why did he do that?

He did that, by the way, for political reasons, because in 1928, as he's running around the country, desperate to get farmers to vote for him, he's pledging to them, vote for me, I'll help you.

And by the way, 1930 rolls around, every economist in America, all the bankers are saying, please don't do this, Mr. President.

And he says, well, I have to do it because I pledged to these folks that I would.

So you see these sort of repeat things.

And it's not that he didn't know what he was doing.

I think he just didn't understand.

He was also, unfortunately for him, a terrible, terrible communicator.

And I will say, maybe this is true of all presidents.

He had this view that he could somehow jawbone people into believing that things were better than they really were.

And I think we're seeing that now, by the way, with the last administration.

That is a bipartisan tactic by the White House.

I mean, selfishly, I felt like I now understood what actually happened just as a student of history.