Mixed Messages (with Sasha Issenberg)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. Many people have asked me what my position is on abortion and abortion rights, especially since I was proudly the person responsible for the ending of something that all legal scholars both sides wanted and in fact demanded, be ended.

Roe v. Wade. They wanted it ended. You know, David, this explains everything because when that decision came down, I couldn't walk around without seeing judges and lawyers skipping down the street with joy. It was a big uniting moment. I've never seen them happier. Yes, yes. Don't you remember those halcyon days when everybody got along and we were all unified as a country wanting to do away with Roe v. Wade? I forgot about that.

Yeah, me too. But the former president hasn't. I'll tell you who else hasn't is our guest here,

who can unfurl the mysteries of the campaign world as we know it, the digital campaign world as we know it today, Sasha Eisenberg, author of The Lie Detectives in Search of a Playbook for Winning Elections in the Disinformation Age. Sasha, good to see you again. Great to be with you, Hax. Thanks for coming, and please tell me you did not bring the lie detector here, right? Because this show cannot take that. We'd go on tilt.

Yeah, it would explode in a shower of sparks. No, it's a polygraph-free zone, yeah. Okay, great, then let us proceed. Good, back in business. But listen, as a strategic matter, this is interesting, because he was trying for—no one would ever accuse him of having the wisdom of Solomon, but he was trying, or his campaign team was trying for some Solomonic—

solution to his problem of having campaigned for years to do away with Roe versus Wade and visiting this turmoil and heartache on the country. He now is running in a general election and he tried to split the Murphy. How,

How successful do you think he was with that? I feel like not very. Well, you know, it's just it's so ludicrous. In Republican meetings struggling with the abortion issue, which is, well, our base wants it, but nobody else does. What do we do after about 1 a.m. when the whiskey is empty and everybody's desperate to go home? Somebody always pops up. But why don't we do the constitutional law angle, which is let the states decide that way we're off the hook.

Problem is you're totally on the hook because this is the ultimate multiple choice position. So Donald Trump is totally fine with abortion on demand in some liberal place and total restriction, you know, completely illegal go to jail doctor in a conservative place. So he doesn't have a position which you can see it. Susan B. Anthony, one of the leading Republican pro-life groups, put out a hot statement about it.

And the Dems still have the issue, which is he totally supports taking away the right to abortion. It just depends on what zip code you're born in. So it looks completely slippery and political. The Biden campaign was very quick on this, and Biden jumped on it. Yeah, they had a spot. Sasha, this seems like a kind of viral sort of issue.

uh that pounces around what what goes on describe what happens he puts this out on truth social biden puts his thing out what's going on on on line on on an issue like this that's as volatile as this

Yeah, I mean, this is probably actually a pretty good example of conventional politics at work, which is a politician tries to take a split the baby position and has to explain it. We're talking about interest groups. It's very old fashioned, actually, how this is playing out. So are we. So proceed. Yeah, right up our alley.

Yeah, no, I mean, so, yeah, no, I think that this is sort of the old rules at play. Trump felt like he was getting squeezed between Susan B. Anthony and some of the other pro-life groups and some of the evangelical activists who were close to him and people telling him that the electoral calculations of this nationally are sort of atrocious, I think.

I think the zip code thing is interesting because Trump happens now to be registered to vote in a zip code where this is going to be on the ballot in November. And so problem for him, if he thought that he was punting on ever being asked again, how many weeks you think a limit should, should start at, he's going to have to reckon with the fact that six weeks in Florida, six weeks in Florida. Yeah. And so, um,

I'm not sure that he's wriggled out of this one the way he thinks he might have. Yeah, every local reporter gets to say, well, what do you think it ought to be here in Michigan? How are you going to vote in Florida? Well, I think this question of how you're going to vote in Florida is one that's going to dog him here. Yeah, I agree.

Until Sasha's absolutely right about that. And by the way, I didn't realize until just this second that you are rocking a Paul Simon for president t-shirt there. Rule one of podcasts, hand her to the hosts. Do you have these things printed up? Because.

Before you go on, yes, I was the media consultant in that campaign. Oh, that Paul Simon. I was humming Kodachrome here. So wait a minute. I had this in the John Engler, but he picked out for the morning, and this one won out. Bring it on. Bring it on. Michigan's greatest governor. Paul Simon, the singer, came to campaign for Paul Simon, the senator, when I was his campaign manager in 1984. And Paul Simon, the singer, you know, is what, 5'3"?

And Paul Simon, the senator, was 5'7", so he just reveled in people calling him Big Paul Simon when Simon came to campaign for him. The bow tie. Hey, one other point on abortion. Mike Murphy, so good to see you. You. Anyway, go ahead. One other just point on abortion. Beyond the wiggling on the hook, slimy operator, double-cross Donald, whatever the pro-lifer is going to go to,

It also just because it's complicated, it makes the abortion issue bigger, which is better for the Democrats and for Trump. You know, he's trying to make it go away. He shot it full of miracle grow, I think. You know, this is interesting. Sasha's absolutely right. What they did was a very conventional move. And it was clearly campaign dictated because he was reading from a script that was written for him on and released as a video. They didn't.

trust him to go out there and ad lib on the thing. But his strength has been non-conventionality, right? I mean, improvisation is his thing. And so you see this tussle between the kind of conventional... And they've served him well, and they're smart, the conventional campaign folks who have gotten him this far in this campaign.

and what his general modus operandi is. But one thing, Murphy, where he did improvise clearly was he went on a kind of tirade online all day yesterday, attacking, of all people, Lindsey Graham.

Trouble in paradise. Has anybody been more of a supplicant to Donald Trump than Lindsey Graham? Well, Lindsey, as you know, has been everywhere. He was originally the hardest core anti-Trump candidate when he ran for president himself. And then he decided he wanted to

be somebody in MAGA world. And he did the next snapping one. He wanted to survive in South Carolina, as Trump pointed out yesterday. Trump took full credit for his winning reelection in South Carolina and sort of intimated that it was a mistake, all because Lindsey disagreed with him about his position on whether there should be a national standard on abortion. Lindsey Graham supports a 15-week limit nationally. And Graham made, you know,

I mean, he made cogent points about why the state-by-state thing is a problem. And Trump just unloaded on him. What's up with that? Well, I don't think Trump likes any lip from one of his factotums. You know, Lindsey's job is to pour the coffee and praise him and lose an occasional golf game. So, you know, I think he's also bringing out the old whip to remind Lindsey how the world works.

And Lindsay will scamper back to him. You know, you're not going to see any profiles and courage here. Yeah. Well, but I just thought in one day you saw the collision of the conventional and the unconventional in one place. But the other thing I would say about it is whether the coverage was bad or good, it

Joe Biden went out there yesterday of Trump. Joe Biden went out there yesterday and we'll talk about this in a second and released his student loan, his new student loan plan to cut debt for 30 million. Forgive loans, forgive loans, forgiveness, right? To forgive loans, student loans, huge issue with young people. They had a major thrust, sent people to multiple cities. He went to Madison, Wisconsin, where the university of Wisconsin is and,

And he got covered. But there were like seven Trump stories to one Biden story on this. You know, I mean, that was sort of interesting to watch as well. I wouldn't be mad if I were Biden. I'm curious what Sasha thinks. If Trump is putting abortion in the center of the campaign, that's a good day.

Yeah, no, I think if you ask the Biden people what they want the highest salience issue of the year to be, it would be abortion. Which also will motivate those younger voters, by the way. Absolutely. And having the abortion debate on Trump's terms is probably as good a way for Biden to

to enter this as possible, especially when Trump, even when he was trying to sort of split the baby, made a big show of taking credit for ending Roe as you guys started this. And I think that's the starting point for this conversation. I think as a tactical matter, the fact that the White House literally chose to schedule this announcement at the time of the eclipse was

If you had to figure out what, I don't think you need to read your Daniel Boorstin to understand like this was the most scheduled news event of the year. And it was pretty obvious that,

that cable and others would be covering it live. And I, it's sort of astounding to me that you want to make news, uh, and you choose to do it contemporaneous to, uh, to, to this thing that happens once every 40 years. Yeah, literally. Yes. Literally, literally be eclipsed. Murphy, he tried this once it was thrown out by the Supreme court. They're coming in with a different legal interpretation, a more surgical, uh, but,

Probably this thing doesn't get litigated until after the election. So he'll have the ability to campaign on it and to campaign on that. He's fighting for it. Does it work? Well, yeah, that's my question. I mean, I'd make two quick points. One. Yeah. Despite the eclipse, it was like a pander off. Yeah.

You know, Trump's telling both sides of the abortion debate, I'm with you. You know, you can have whatever you want. Don't make me take a position. And Biden is saying, hey, hey, put down those, you know, Hamas flags for a minute and love me. I'm going to write off all your student loans. Free money, line right up, vote for Biden. So it was like a double pander off. I don't know what the student loan forgiveness thing, and I haven't looked at data on it, but it was a rocky start before.

And they're treating it like an easy home run. I think it's kind of a mixed bag for them. And it makes them look like an old wheeler-dealer politician. Hey, kids, here you go. Here's some money. Buy some of those rock and roll records with it. Vote for me. So I don't know. I don't feel a big masterstroke in this thing. Maybe there's some power to it. I don't know. I think he's got more fundamental problems with that group. You know, you pull kids is going to be popular. Yeah.

But if you look at the wider electorate, more free money, give me your vote. Not so sure. You know, Sasha, these young people, if you get them in focus groups and so on, economics comes up as much as any other issue and sort of the burdens that they feel and the pessimism about what they're doing.

prospects are in the future economy. What's your sense of the resonance of the student loan initiative? Murphy's absolutely right. I mean, every story that's been written on this is in a play for

young voters and the response of the Republicans is, you know, you're talking about 13% of the country who has, you know, student loans. You've got a lot of people who didn't go to college. That's the, you know, more now the Trump base, people who paid off their loans. What do you think the efficacy of this and how does it all pan out? Because Biden right now is not pulling what he needs to pull. He won voters under 29 by 18%.

uh, 24 points last time. It's, he's running closer to even now, maybe a little bit ahead. Uh, what does this do for him? I've seen polling that suggested actually it's high education, uh, voters who are the most resistant to student loan forgiveness. You know, I think this is a place where we'll see how sort of deep the educational realignment between the parties run. I don't think it's just young voters that, you know,

I think when we say young voters, we think about 19 year olds are casting their first ballot. A lot of people are dealing with college loans or, you know, right in their 30s. Yeah. And and if the Democrats are going to be the party of college graduates and sort of own that realignment, then I think you probably need to.

start owning those people as they grow older. And I wonder whether, you know, this is a sign of a sort of shift from thinking about the Democrats as a New Deal coalition to whatever we call the new the new one that that kind of has to look out for for the interests of college graduates as a discrete voting bloc, the same way that that Hubert Humphrey looked out for the the interests of of working class, non-college educated industrial workers.

Yeah. I wonder, though, if you parse that too much. First of all, I mean, it is a middle class squeeze issue, so I think it's a little bit murky. But, you know, my my view has been and continues to be that the Democratic Party is.

even as it works on initiatives that are helpful to working class voters, has become so much of a college educated kind of cosmopolitan party that it has sent sort of kind of

you know, Margaret Mead-ish sort of we're here to help or study the natives kind of feelings to people who work with their hands, people who work with their back, people who aren't necessarily going to college but are getting technical training. They seem to know that to some degree because Biden's talking about those people. But

I would not completely bank on college educated voters here and just give away. And you see the leakage just with black voters and Hispanic voters as well. So, uh, Murphy, you know, um,

This was a surgical strike, but it's something the whole country sees. Maybe it's very helpful, but that remains to be seen. I think it helps in some places. Just like a mixed bag kind of conversation. You know, we will see. I think there's other Biden offense. I mean, if he can't, you can argue this is a middle class economic issue, but it's also a giveaway. And then people say, well, why isn't he helping me?

You know, the college kid, when you graduate from college, you're going to make much better money than if you didn't. So they ought to be able to pay something back. It's all moral hazard aspect. So I don't know if this is the wunderweapon that's going to turn the Biden campaign around. I'm skeptical. But it does speak to his concern about young voters. Time to pay the meter, but we will be right back. Now, let's hear from our sponsor. ♪

I have to tell you guys, I did an event at Arizona State University yesterday with Nancy Pelosi. There were demonstrators, Gaza demonstrators on the outside for in the event. It was interrupted four times briefly. And it underscored the fact that this continues to be interesting.

a issue of concern. And Murphy, I know, you know, I think you have the Israeli flag on your, I refuse to say X feed, on your Twitter feed. Yes, I stand with Israel. And we did a podcast over there together, you and I, not long ago. And, you know, my view is BB's screwing everything up, so I'm not lockstep.

But yeah, yeah, I, you know, there was a ceasefire and then Hamas broke it with a murder spree. I see this in simple terms. Yeah, no, listen, we've talked about this before. Son of a Jewish refugee. I feel a strong sense of identification with Israel. Horrified by what happened October 7th, but still, but horrified as I often have been by the way Bibi has managed this and managed to isolate Israel from Israel.

The entire world. So I had this conversation with Pelosi, who, by the way, led on in this conversation that her father, who was the mayor of Baltimore and, you know, a good old ward leader type of guy, Italian-American, obviously, learned Yiddish and spoke to his Jewish friends.

constituents in Yiddish, which was a very, very strong supporter of Israel. But anyway, she had blistering words for Bibi Netanyahu. I think we have a little bit of it. Can this be resolved with Netanyahu as prime minister? Are you worried about that? I don't think, I mean, I've said this to Netanyahu over the years. I don't know whether you don't know how to make peace. You don't want to make peace.

or you're afraid of peace, but you could be doing so much more instead of just throwing red meat to the crowd, which is what he did. So I don't know that he... I tried looking at his family background. You don't know his family background, the rest. Yes. But he... No, I think that he's interested in one thing, his own survival.

And that's it. You know, I think that this thing is coming to a head. He's talking, he announced yesterday because the right wing demanded in Israel Murphy that there, that he, you know, there's a date certain for the operation in Rafa where over a million Palestinians are now sheltered. So, which, you know, promises to be very, very costly in terms of civilian deaths. How does this issue work?

play over the next six months for Biden. Sasha, talk about this issue. There's obviously a big effort online around this, some of it not coming from the U.S., and it's been a big issue on TikTok with young people and so on. Talk about the impact of this. TikTok is one of the most difficult platforms for the campaigns to deal with because

we get some visibility into what's moving on Twitter X and on Facebook, and you can search the platforms, you can save links. None of that is possible on TikTok. So, you know, the contents of female by design, the algorithms are totally impenetrable. You get stuff from people you don't follow. It drifts by. And all that means is that it's like even more perplexing for campaigns to get a read on what the conversation and information flow is there. And I think that, you know,

On one hand, I think people then project a lot of refluxing anxieties that they have about the electorate onto TikTok as though Joe Biden's problem is his kids on TikTok, as opposed to the fact that he can't really explain what his his policy is vis-a-vis Israel. And we see very different things in terms of what the policy is and what we read in stories he's saying on background to Israeli officials. But I think TikTok becomes this sort of easy platform.

sort of way of channeling that anxiety. But the major electoral fact is we're six months out from the election, seven months out from the election, and Joe Biden is still working to shore up what we would have thought of as core parts of his coalition on some major issues that are where

where the facts on the ground are going to change in the next, in the next seven months. I don't, it's, I can't imagine that's a place anybody wants to be. Yeah. It's, um, and just to reinforce for our audience, cause my, my crowd is young and hip and on the cutting edge, but X's folks are all, your crowd are getting hips is what's happening. Yeah. So, so TikTok as a political weapon leaves no fingerprints. Um,

It's a perfect place to put something that's not true. No surprise that PRC loves it so much. And then it evaporates. So it's kind of the murder weapon that leaves no trace in political communication and other communications. So

Yeah, look, Biden's in trouble politically. He's got this revolt on his progressive left over this, and he doesn't want to isolate Israel internationally because then Israel's enemies profit, and the situation can get even worse. You've got Hezbollah up north full of weapons, much militarily stronger than Hamas, and they see an opening. This thing is going to really, really explode, and then you're going to see more American involvement. So

Bibi is a problem. And there's a clock that's ticking and Biden is going to be forced to push more and more, which is not in Israel's interest. So it is it's not good. I mean, she summarized it there at the end. You know, Bibi is for Bibi. And it actually serves his purposes with his base to stand up to the U.S. on issues like.

This settlements, a two state solution. You know, he is using Biden in some ways for his own political purposes. So, you know, he's obviously. No, just he's playing MAGA games, too, you know, which is you never want to break up the relationship by partisanship. I'll just add, though, the real problem here is nobody loves civilian Palestinian casualties more than Hamas casualties.

that they weaponize it. So when your enemy's strategy is for its own people to die and get it on television, it's an incredibly hard war to fight. Yeah, that was predictable, you know. Yeah, true. So it probably bespoke a need to be

more surgical, much more surgical than the Israelis have been. Yeah, I mean, I think that you look at the sort of contours of the electorate, Sasha, and Biden is doing well with older voters.

you know, sort of better than Democrats generally do. He's holding his own. He's doing what I think he's going to do well with these suburban voters. The it's the old

you know, the coalition that he built in 2020, uh, that is lagging. And by the way, this, uh, issue also has reverberations with some younger African-American voters, uh, the Gaza issue. So, um, he's got to really hope that this thing is resolved and resolved in a way that, uh, uh,

where he can point to the US's influence in bringing about a more just result because

Because it's hard. I think he's in a terribly difficult position, but it's hard to be the guy fighting for humanitarian aid and fighting for a just result and a two state solution and also support the free flow of bombs and planes that are.

helping Israelis effectuate their campaign. It's just so hard when the other guys don't want a two-stage solution. They want a no-Israel solution. But go ahead, Sasha. No, I mean, you know, in electoral terms, obviously he wants to get caught trying on the student loan forgiveness issue. I don't think there are points for getting caught trying on this conflict because it's going to play out over the, from now until November. And one of the things that I think is important

One thing we will not have by November is a two state solution. So like there's the, the, the dream outcome, you know, for, for, for Biden, um, is sort of hard to see on, on the U S electoral calendar. And, and, and unless there's an Israeli election by, by November, which I think it sounds like it's possible, um,

It's hard to see the sort of conditions changing enough for him to claim that whatever he was doing worked or produced a sort of stable long-term outcome. Look, I think probably what—and I think it's a very valid question—is where do these young people think things would be if Trump were president? And I think Trump, Murphy, understands this because he has taken a surprisingly—

hands off kind of, you know, he's been lecturing as with, I think we talked about this, but he's been lecturing the Israelis and get this over with. It's got, we've got to have peace and so on. So I think that he understands he's trying to stay out of that, uh,

But, you know, he was a green light for Bibi guy throughout his administration. Yeah. I mean, Trump doesn't want a real position because that's complicated and has political wins and losses. He wants to hover above and say, well, if I were president, everybody knows I'm a tough guy. I'd straighten this thing out in a weekend. But Biden's too old to know what day it is. He's not going to seriously engage the issue. He doesn't seriously engage much of anything. But.

This is a good transition, and we're going to need that lie detector from Sasha because I was shocked and amazed to see that the Trump campaign claimed that their big fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago, they raised $50 million. Now, call me a babe in the woods here. You're a babe in the woods. But...

ask Sasha, do you ever think campaigns might fib a little about fundraising reports? Has that ever happened? I mean, I don't want to make anybody cry here, but I think there may not be a Santa Claus. And I think maybe the Trump campaign is capable of not telling the truth. What do we think? We've seen, we've seen campaigns, you know, try to, uh,

lie about less in fundraising numbers than this. We'll know in a few months, right? And so it's not like it's non-falsifiable. I would note that it seems almost perfect that they picked a number twice as much as Biden raised with Obama and Clinton last night. Easily divisible by 5 million. You knew this was going to happen. This was so predictable because for Trump, this is like challenging his manhood.

Right. Biden says, oh, I raised more in one night than Trump raised in one month. That cannot stand. So you knew whatever happened in that room with 141 people, mostly billionaires, that millionaires and billionaires, as Bernie Sanders would say, whatever happened in that room, he would he would have this event and he would claim that it was massively more successful than the one that that Biden had in New York.

We'll be right back with Hacks on Tap. Sasha, talk about your book and talk about the contours and the rules of the game

in a campaign with ever more complex technology, including AI, and what that means for this election and future election. Yeah, so in my book, The Lie Detectives, I write about this shift that I think really became clear to American political communicators after the 2016 election, which is a recognition that the internet had just fundamentally changed

The communications landscape, and that in many ways sounds cliche, but I don't think that for so much of the, let's say 2000 is kind of the dawn of the moment when campaigns started to get websites and do things. The general idea was you took campaign functions that you were doing offline, and if you could make them faster and cheaper and more available online, you migrated them there.

And that meant that if you could raise money online, Murphy was there. McCain raised what was then an astronomical sum right after, uh, I believe New Hampshire in, in 2000 was the first time that people had raised real money online. So it's like a fundraising. We can stop sending out direct mail and do it faster and cheaper online. That makes a lot of sense. Uh,

David, you saw in the Obama campaign, let's figure out that we can take a bunch of, you know, instead of making people come in and get clipboards, we can have them print walksheets at home and not have to come into a field office and get their volunteer contacts done more quickly. But campaigns were really slow to communicate in a way that the internet works. And what became clear after 2016 was that a whole lot of other people were comfortable trying to affect American elections there who were not...

sort of constrained by the typical laws, norms that constrain campaign behavior, where you have to report your fundraising and spending, where you have to disclose to a TV station which ads you're buying. And that created an environment where if you're running a campaign now, often your opposition is not your opponent. It's not another candidate. It's not the other party. If they lie about you, you cannot try to...

hang it on them through the media or through your own paid communications because if they're an anonymous person in their basement or they're a foreign intelligence service or they're Macedonian teenagers trying to make money off of advertising clicks, they don't care about getting solded by the editorial page for lying. And so this book is an attempt to sort of explore how

campaign professionals, mostly in the U.S., but I've spent some time in Brazil reporting there, sort of are dealing with this asymmetry. And a lot of it is about disinformation. So what do you do when people are lying about you online? But I think the broader thing is how do you work in a decentralized media environment, very different than the ones that you guys sort of learn politics in, where you could, you know, we're three television networks and some newspapers and news magazines. Right, you have one stage.

You know, one courtroom you're litigating and now everybody in the jury, the voters, has a wire in their ear and God knows what they're listening to. Talk about AI in this mix, because now we have the additional and we've seen it already deployed in in New Hampshire and the Democratic primary there with a phony.

phone message from what sounded very much like Joe Biden, basically discouraging people from voting. It was a voter suppression call. But come October, how vulnerable are we to some viral piece of AI kind of tipping a very close election?

I would think less likely to tip a presidential election or a high-profile statewide election than some down-ballot election that we're not talking about. I mean, I do think that there's a little bit of what I would sort of think of as like the magical disinformation fallacy that otherwise smart people fall prey to, which is to— I think he just took a shot at me, Murphy. But—

No, on one hand to know how difficult it is to persuade people with traditional media. We know, uh, how hard it is to move voters and, and, and, and, and stop them from backsliding with TV ads. Uh, we know how hard it is with direct mail or with, with traditional robo calls to change people's votes. We know that, uh,

billion will be spent in this election cycle and to make a mark in that on public opinion, especially in a presidential race for, I don't know, 8%, 11%, 12% of voters are actually persuadable. On one hand, we know all that rationally. And then I do think that people often think, oh, well, if it's disinformation, all of a sudden it'll change people's minds in a snap. Let me just push back on you for a second on that because I accept most of what you say. But if you have...

video that goes to low information voters who are the ones who are really in play here at the last minute, who don't watch these sort of media referees and so on. Don't you think that has some that could have some influence? Yeah, I think that it could. I just think that like let's let's recognize how difficult it is for anything to break through.

with the intensity that we necessary do to, I mean, you know, I do remember when, when the Mueller report said that, that the internet research agency in St. Petersburg sent a hundred thousand dollars on a, on,

on Facebook ads, there are a lot of people on MSNBC who went into a tizzy about, oh my God, they swung the election. And I think any campaign professional would say, you're not swinging, you know, a city council race with $100,000 of spending, let alone, let alone a presidential. So I think we should have like bring a level of skepticism to it. And I think that it's important to look at the ways that AI will make certain types of, of deceptions, uh,

easier and cheaper, right? Audio, video. I worry about what I call the biological hacks because right now if a hologram of a panther lunging at me pops up into my office, half of me will be thinking that's a pretty amazing bit of hologram projection. The other half of me will be jumping out the window because we're just wired to believe our senses. So when I start seeing grainy

elevator security footage of two doctors talking about how they covered up Biden's health care problem, the advanced dementia, and it's sprayed around on TikTok and places like that. And hard for the campaign to know how deep it goes, but it's hard to unforgettable. Famous political scientist George Lakoff wrote a book we all know, Don't Think of an Elephant.

And so the extent where I think the big leap in technology is going to be dangerous is we're going to go from, you know, kind of fake Facebook posts or whatever that make an argument to video, to visual stuff that looks very real, that we're trained to believe our brains are. And that's going to put a dent in. Now, I guess the good news and the bad news is,

It's going to be so ubiquitous that there might be a canceling out effect and people just start to not trust it and or trust it less or at least build some barriers in their head to it. But we're entering a new world of being able to hack the way we process information involuntarily. And that's going to be trouble.

Just parenthetically, let me say, and Sasha lives in this world and he keeps making this point and it's such an important one. The world of communication is so fractionated now and so dispersed that to get anything across is a challenge.

And to reach the people who are probably going to be most influential in this election is a greater challenge because these people are not looking at traditional news sources and they're skeptical of sources. And so we you know, this is an issue. But there's going to be a vote this week, Murphy. And I know this is something you care deeply about on Ukraine.

It appears as if they're finally going to vote on Ukraine funding. And to Sasha's point about malign actors, The Post did a story this week, or I think it was this week or maybe last, about the degree to which Russia is using social media to influence public opinion about Ukraine.

and to push the Republican or the populist Republican line and the Trump line about Ukraine.

funding. And here's what Mike Turner, the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said over the weekend. We see directly coming from Russia attempts to mask communications that are anti-Ukraine and pro-Russia messages, some of which we even hear being uttered on the House floor. I mean, there are members of Congress today who still incorrectly say that this conflict between Russia and Ukraine is over NATO, which, of course, it is not.

Vladimir Putin having made it very clear, both publicly and to his own population, that his view is that this is a conflict of a much broader claim of Russia to Eastern Europe, including claiming all of Ukraine territory as Russia's. Basically, he's saying we've got members

who are basically submitting to propaganda that flows online, which I thought was interesting. The political point of this, Mike, is that, and I talked to Pelosi about this, I mean, you've got Marjorie Taylor Greene and some other foreign policy geniuses who are threatening to oust the Speaker Johnson. And it's very clear to me, talking to her,

watching the White House and so on, that they have a deal with him, that they have his back if he puts this on the floor. They're not going to let him get thrown out for this, which is positive. Yeah, no, I think we're going to get the aid, thank God. And we're not going to let Putin run the table here. Kind of two problems. One is the obvious one, which is we've got knuckleheads parroting the Kremlin line on the floor of the U.S. House.

I mean, this is the biggest propaganda victory the Russians have had since 1917. On the floor of the U.S. House and maybe the Republican nominee for president, too. Yeah, I agree. Look, big, big problem. We used to have one or two cranks doing the Kremlin line, and they weren't in my party. Now it's been a reversal. I mean, a bunch of my old Cold Warrior buddies, if they passed away, if they saw this now—

Um,

their heads would explode. It's unbelievable. But anyway, I think Johnson's going to, in the final chapter here, do the right thing. He's going to get the right help, and we're going to be able to pass it. That is my prediction. I can't tell you I'm certain, but I think it's most likely. Might be the end of Johnson. He'll get another, you know, we could be back in the Republican speaker craziness. We're heading toward an ultra-thin margin with Representative Gallagher, one of the bright lights of the House, tragically retiring, but I think he's had it. Ken Buck's had it.

and we're going to plunge into more madness in the House. But I think we are going to pass, thank God, the Ukraine bill. I mean, this seems like the type of area where a disinformation campaign would be more effective than something about, let's say, Biden's age. Voter opinions are a lot more malleable on, you know, on the Russia-Ukraine situation. Voters have

haven't spent years sort of firming up their views the way they have about Trump and Biden. It's by one reason that if we think that sort of pro-Hamas narratives have spread quickly on TikTok among young people in the United States, it's because they didn't have well-formed opinions to begin with. So one piece of information can be far more formative. And I think these are the sort of

places where we should see the power of disinformation to really leave a mark on public opinion is the places where we haven't polarized yet along party or tribal lines in the U.S. I'd like to leave a mark on the Russians, so fund Ukraine, send them weapons. Sasha, the other place where the internet can actually be a tool for exposing strategies and

sort of attitudes. And we saw in New York in the last week where a state coordinator, state director for the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. campaign kind of disclosed what her thinking was about why it

you know, why it was important for Bobby Kennedy to do well, even in New York. And here's the agenda she disclosed. It's pretty clear. Things, I guess, will change over time because you do have to only pick one candidate at the end of the day. But the Kennedy voter and the Trump voter, the enemy, our mutual enemy is Biden. Since Biden is counting on us with Bobby in the mix.

My thought is for the Republicans. See, Bobby right now, he's pulling from both sides. Right now, he's actually pulling a little bit more from Biden, which explains why the DNC is kind of ganging up on him. They have a special committee to go after independent candidates. Yeah, they say independent candidates, like non-affiliated candidates. They really mean Bobby because Bobby is the only third party candidate.

that anybody's taking seriously. So they developed a committee just to go after him and to get him off of the ballot in any way they can. Especially, it seems as though they're going after the battleground states more than the deep blue states. Bobby's moving the blues on his own. If the Republicans accepted the fact that New York, Maryland, Illinois, California,

New Jersey, Connecticut, most of the Northeast is going to go blue. Why wouldn't we put our vote to Bobby and at least get rid of Biden and get those 28 electoral votes in New York? The card's a little wrong. It says 26 electoral votes. Give those 28 electoral votes to Bobby rather than to Biden, thereby reducing

about reducing Biden's 270. And we all know how that works, right? 270 wins the election. Well, there you go. Pretty clear. To where she concludes is if we if we can make common cause with Trump, Murphy and throw this to the House under the rules of the House, you go by delegations that are more Republican delegations and they'll elect Trump.

So yeah, no, no, it's very, look, it's, it's completely a tactic to put Donald Trump in the Oval Office. That's what the RFK, that's what the RFK campaign is about, Junior. And she admits it and she's a high ranking official there. Now they threw a carpet over and threw her into a re-education camp. We're not going to, we're not going to see her in daylight again. They also pulled that clip off the internet. Yeah. They're probably calling Putin now. You got an extra, you know, third rate hotel. We can stash her in for the rest of the campaign. But,

you know, there it is. This thing is not complicated. It's not honorable. It's a scam. It's, it's a scam to put Donald Trump in the oval office and anybody voting for our K junior ought to think about that. I,

I'm a little surprised that they went to the trouble in a sort of old school way to disown her in these comments. When AI offers this great opportunity, we talked about how you can, you know, Murphy came up with the idea of you could create frauds to, to, to confuse people with video. The other thing is it gives you a sort of get out of jail free card. Every time a video comes out of, of you saying something you didn't like, I have to imagine that if, if,

The Access Hollywood tape had come out in this technological environment. Trump would have said immediately, no, that was AI faked. And we would... I think this is the sort of the rewiring of our brains part we need to deal with is how...

how nobody really has to take responsibility for anything they say anymore either. Yeah, the fungible nature of truth with question marks around it. Yes, I think, you know, from the beginning, the truest thing that was ever spoken was Kellyanne Conway two days into the administration when she said,

He has alternative facts. Well, AI allows you, you're right, one more vehicle to claim, well, this isn't true. This was, you know. Right. It's the new version of those are doctored photographs. That is not Miss Tractorpole. I was never there. The old excuse is now more credible because there are a lot of doctored facts. Okay, then let's take a break right here and we'll be right back. Music.

Before we go to the mail, I saw or heard about an interesting piece in Politico recently. Murphy, have you read anything that caught your eye? Well, talk about a doctored fact. That was the best phony transition in the history of the world to plug. An op-ed I had in Politico yesterday wearing my hat as head of evrepublicans.org. And

you should check it out. Easy to find on our website or in the Politico. It's all about how the Republican party with the endless EV bashing is making a mistake in 2024, because while Republican Paul's might tell you, Oh, they're all bought in California by liberals. Most EVs and EV components are made in Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, many of the key swing States. We're talking about tens of billions of dollars in new manufacturing jobs in

Those are going to become famous, and I think bashing American manufacturing jobs that pay well is going to be a political mistake. Anyway, you can check it all out. I want to save you from trouble lest people accuse you of being bought by liberals in California. You're working for the EV folks now, right? No, I'm funding it myself. I'm a lunatic. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah, can you believe it? Breaking my rule. I can't believe it, Murphy. Yeah, I put up the seed money. We did a big poll. It's fascinating stuff. Now, I'm getting calls. I had a great chat with one of the big auto CEOs last week. I'm going to go see another in Europe next week. So my guess is I'll get some funding. But we're just...

trying to make the American national security case. And by the way, go drive one. Go to the dealership, borrow one for two hours. They're fast. You don't pay two grand a year in gas. You don't pay the same maintenance. They're better. That's why I'm for it. I'm a Detroit guy. I want the American industry to survive, and they're better. I've been listening to you these past few weeks, and I just bought one. So...

So we'll talk offline about this. Oh, my God. You finally traded in the Pontiac Aztec I remember you used to drive? No, it was a Ford C-Max I've been driving from 2015. But we got to go to questions, guys. Let's do it. Listener mail.

If you have a question for the hacks, including EV questions, which I'm now taking, just email it to us at hacksontap at gmail.com, hacksontap at gmail.com. Or, because we've entered the 20th century reluctantly, you can leave a voicemail. And if your question is good or filthy, we may play it on the air. Just keep it quick. Keep it about 25 seconds and be sure to tell us your name. What's the magic number? I can't remember.

773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471.

So there you go, Sasha. That's actually AI at work. It sounded so much like Mike Murphy too, didn't it? I thought that was amazing. It's pretty incredible. All right, Murphy, we have a question for you from John. Greetings, this is Dean Tax. This is John from Urbana, Illinois, home of the University of Illinois. Could you explain the financial incentives, personal financial incentives, for political consultants to recruit candidates and

and for the recruited to become candidates. Thanks. Well, John, I'm shocked. Since we now find out that you fund your own projects, Murphy, don't ruin it for everybody else in the business, okay? Not for long, believe me. I'm the seed money guy. I'm not crazy.

so I am shocked, shocked that you might think financial incentives have something to do with the honorable business of political consulting. Um, well, let's put the Lincoln project aside for a minute. Seriously. Consultants are entrepreneurs. It's also an unlicensed business. So there are a lot of bad consultants are some great consultants. Most consultants deep down are the quote, a book you can currently buy on sale, uh, believers, uh,

they're in it for a reason and they become professionalized operatives because they want to win. They want to learn how it's done. But then they get businesses and they start making money and they get business competitive. So there is a financial incentive. Political consultants get paid.

Often not very well at the beginning, but if you get to a point in your career where you're in demand, you start making decent dough. Then there's corporate work and all kinds of other ways that you can have a successful business out of it. Now, as far as when you recruit a candidate, good consultants don't always do that, but I have to say that whenever a billionaire announces they might run, there will be no shortage of

of consultants knocking their door down. Murphy has him on his speed dial. Yeah. Wait a minute. I can, I can dive into your, uh, a lot of starving, starving, uh, young Patriots on that either. I, I,

But the bottom line is, yeah, it's part of the equation. I don't think, believe it or not, it's the biggest part of the equation, but there's a business aspect to it. As far as candidates, I never tell a candidate to go into politics to make money unless maybe in Chicago or Long Island. Other than that, it's not such a good financial thing for candidates. They should be believers.

But if there are folks out there who are thinking about going into politics and want to do this kind of work, yeah, follow your passion. Do it for a reason. Remember why you're doing it. One of the reasons I get along with Murphy, despite his wrongheaded ideas about so many things, is he cares about this stuff and he's passionate about it in the country. So I appreciate it.

that about him. And I'm still about the project of trying to straighten them out. We're doing okay on this, on this election and we'll see if we can keep them on the path. And now he's subsidizing electric car.

support. So that's good. Why, thank you, Axe. Yeah, I'm waiting for your donation on the evpolitics.org. All right, this is from Garrett. When Biden first became president, those in the White House claimed that Biden could prove a more effective president than Obama because unlike Obama, Biden would be able to achieve great things and sell those successes to the public.

Why has Biden had such a difficult time marketing his legislative accomplishments? What should he have done differently? And we're going to go to the East German judge on matters. Obama here, my dear friend, David. Right. No, you're playing fair. I'm proud of the I'm proud of the many achievements of Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act stands out and is still.

one that Biden is running on and should be. It was a generational accomplishment. But you know what? We didn't really run on that. We weren't able to harness that in 2012 because it hadn't taken effect and people were still feeling the effects of the recession. So we were talking about the future and we were talking about the battle for the middle class and so on. We weren't touting

our accomplishments. We talked some about them. Certainly, bin Laden came up and so on. But basically, people wanted to hear about the future and how you were going to fight for them. And I think if I had one critique of Biden, who has some generational accomplishments of his own, this infrastructure bill, the health care on health care, on prescription drugs, on climate,

I don't think no president should be asking for their report card on in a reelect. It's very, very hard to win a referendum on yourself. You want a comparative race. You want to talk about the future. I think the less that Biden seeks.

credit and the more he talks about why he's fighting the fights he's fighting and how that translates into what he's going to do in the future, I think the more successful he'll be and do it in a comparative context. Yeah, there is wisdom here, kids. Never run a backwards campaign. And Obama was a textbook example of that. Always pitch forward. That's a lesson that the

Biden people are still struggling with. Okay, last one. Look, it is a fact, and Axe can verify this, that when you're on the campaign trail and you want to know where to eat, you don't check the Michelin Guide. You don't call the fancy restaurant critics.

You turn to the ink stain wretches and you call Jonathan Martin and Sasha Eisenberg, the golden pallets of the, of the, of the trail. So this has to be. I just saw J Martin in Arizona and he was eating his way through that town. But, uh,

Anyway, go ahead. No, no. You should carry a sign with a warning, a bright warning patch on it saying, keep hands and feet no closer than four feet from this machine when it's feeding because you're going to lose a hand. All right. This is from Ali, and I hope I'm pronouncing it right. There are two L's, Ali. But anyway, great question. And

And Sasha, with the upcoming conventions in Milwaukee and Chicago, what are your favorite spots to eat in either of those wonderful cities? I won't dare weigh in on Chicago and current company, but I love Three Brothers in Bayview in Milwaukee. I'm a big fan of Balkan food, excellent Serbian restaurant.

and right up the street from one of my favorite little soccer bars in America called the Highbury Pub, named after the great Arsenal Stadium. Top of the table this week. So,

So anyway, if you are stuck going to the Republican convention this summer, which I can imagine will be in many respects a dismal affair, I do recommend seeking out three brothers. Just to prove that we are the hacks on tap, we took the world's foremost expert on campaigning in a digital age.

and its hazards and opportunities. And we asked them a restaurant question. So that's who we are. But I will say about Chicago, this is one of the really great restaurant cities in the world. And there are many, many great places to eat. But I always get the question of where's the best Chicago pizza? And I've studied this in depth. Yeah.

Yeah, there's been some field work I've participated in, and we might have different opinions, but you're the hometown hero. What do you say? After you go by my favorite Deli Manny's, where I've been eating for 40 years, I think Lou Malnati's pizza, which actually has now gone national, but I think it's really, really great. So if you're looking for Chicago pizza, that's where I would go. I'll give an honorable mention as only a visiting judge, not to be weighed as heavily, Pequod's.

All right. There you go. We covered it. Well, look, listen, hackaroos. If you buy one book this year,

that is a consumer guide to the election you're going to be dragged through. Get on Amazon, or we probably have it on our hacks.com slash book club, and buy The Lie Detectives. It is an essential consumer guide to what is happening to try to mind-twist you and your friends as you consume all the political communication. It's a wonderful book. It's important, and

And we give it our five-hack beer stein. And the dude is smart. You heard him. Yeah. Yeah. You got a taste for free. Now buy the book. I appreciate you guys. Thank you. All right, Sasha. Great to have you. Thanks for being here. Murphy, I will see you soon. Go ahead and sell some EVs, will you? I'm going to send you a car charger. Yeah, would you? With your name on it. Have you branded those yet?

the car chargers. We're working on it. We're working on it. We can get a t-shirt. Remember, if you do Axelrod, it's 10% off. Check out. Alright, see you guys. Thank you. ...