Cheney Interview

I’m down in D.C. where I just finished my interview with Vice President Cheney. We’ll air the entire interview on CNBC’s Kudlow & Company this evening.

A few highlights:

I mentioned that stocks have been going up while GOP polls have been going down, and whether the market was signaling it wants a divided government after 6 years of GOP rule. Cheney doesn’t think so. He talked about how Republicans passed the investor tax cuts - and how this has boosted the U.S. stock market and economy, and reignited growth

We discussed Charlie Rangel telling CNN this weekend that he didn’t want to raise taxes and how Nancy Pelosi told me in our interview last week that she wants tax hikes as a last resort. Despite all this, he still believes they’re tax hike threats.

Mr. Cheney took the no new tax hike pledge and although he can’t speak for the President, he believes he would veto any potential tax hike bill.

On the midterms, the Vice President was still very much optimistic for a GOP victory on November 7th.

With respect to backdating stock options: he’s concerned about this, but he’s not in favor of additional regulation on hedge funds and private equity funds. He also said he’s willing to work with Pelosi on easing the overreglation of Sarbanes-Oxley.

He was not hopeful of capturing al-Sadr whose death squad militias are causing sectarian strife throughout Iraq. Nor was he hopeful about a “big victory” event that would give hope to people like myself who want to win the war. I mentioned Vicksburg and The Battle of Midway and he basically said this isn’t that kind of war.

Tune in to the show tonight to catch the whole interview…