Updated on: May 24, 2026 / 12:31 PM EDT
/ CBS News
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The following is the transcript of the interview with Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, that aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on May 24, 2026.NANCY CORDES: Welcome back to Face the Nation. We turn now to the Director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett, who joins us from the White House North Lawn. Kevin, thank you so much for being with me.KEVIN HASSETT, DIRECTOR NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Great to be here. Thank you.NANCY CORDES: I want to start by getting your take on the state of the economy, because a kind of confusing picture emerged this week. The Dow Jones hit an all-time high, and yet consumer sentiment hit an all-time low. Mortgage rates hit a nine month peak, inflation is up, earnings at big box stores like Walmart are up, in part because people from across the income spectrum are being drawn to low prices right now. Are there storm clouds gathering in the economy?: No, I don't think there are storm clouds gathering at all. And, in fact, let's start with the consumer sentiment number, because that was a number that was very striking to me and to you. I know when it came in very, very low, and what we did is we went to their website and we looked that they actually break it out by political affiliation, so they have it for Democrats, independents, and Republicans. And if you look at it, consumer sentiment at the sort of peak of the Biden inflation, the stagflation was way above 100 and it's dropped all the way down into the low 30s now, about the lowest it's ever been for Democrats, but for Republicans it's held about steady, and if you look at it, independents and Democrats are really highly correlated, which suggests to us that their sample is Democrats, and so if you go to consumer confidence, which is something that's actually, I think, a more scientific survey, the consumer confidence is consistent with all the other positive numbers we're seeing right now. NANCY CORDES: But you don't dispute that the war has taken a toll on parts of the economy: Right now, consumer confidence is the highest it's been since the beginning of the year, and so you don't see a toll of the war on consumer confidence, which is the Conference Board survey, but again, GDP now, the Atlanta Fed's estimate of second quarter GDP is north of 4%. We've got initial claims for unemployment insurance as low as they've been since the 60s, and so there's so much going on that is really, I think, surprising people that think that the disruption from the Middle East is going to harm the economy. It's just not there in the data, except for the consumer sentiment data, but I actually think that we should stop calling it consumer sentiment and start calling it political sentiment, because the variables really are- it's really a political variable and not an economic variable.
