Picking Through the Rubble
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. So this is a special edition of Hacks on Tap here at my home base, the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. Both these guys have been very much a part of the Institute of Politics from the beginning and appreciate being with you guys. And the good news is one week after the election, we are still at large.

Okay, so we feel good about that. Speak for yourself. I got a ticket to Portugal at midnight. Let me see, are you wearing an ankle bracelet?

You what? I said I have a ticket to Portugal at midnight. Thank you all for coming. I haven't been in this room since I got my degree in Harry Potter studies years ago. So it's good to be back. Is that a Milton Berle joke right there? No. But, yeah, probably the folks listening to the podcast don't necessarily understand the reference. Well, Harry Potter they would. Yeah.

It took Mike exactly 30 seconds to fuck up the thing about how you shouldn't describe things, talk about things you can't describe. But anyway, we are a week after the election, or just about, and we've had more time to pick through the rubble. So give me your top lines, both of you guys. Please, Michael. Age before beauty, as they say. You're screwed, future generation, but only in the short term.

- It's grim. I mean, I'm a right wing nut Republican. I'm even for some of the policy stuff, but I'm not a big Trump fan. I haven't been since 1993 when I first bumped into him in New Jersey and I was working for the governor. As far as what's going on now, it's gonna be a bumpy ride for a while, but this country is strong and you get another shot in 767 days. - Maybe.

- Yeah. - No, I think so, but yeah. - But, all right, you start with what just happened before, we'll give the reassurance at the end, but what just happened? - Well, this is what's been different since Saturday is what's happened since we last-- - And we last got together on Saturday. - We last got together on Saturday. What's gotten clearer since then is just the depth of the problem.

that the Democratic Party faces is much clearer to me and starker to me than it was then. And I think that we knew on Saturday that Donald Trump was likely to win the popular vote.

I don't think I had really spent enough time with the numbers at that point to appreciate the inroads that he's made with non-white voters. I think there was some question about that. At that point, people were saying, yeah, he did well with Hispanics, but didn't really gain much with African-Americans. That turned out to be wrong. He didn't do as well with African-Americans as he did with Hispanics, with Latinos, but

If you look at the Latino number, the African-American number, the Asian-American number, it's not an overstatement to say that at least for this election, and the question of whether this is a realigning fact that changes our politics for years to come or not is still to play for. But Trump assembled a genuine working class multiracial coalition, something that I think most people would have thought totally impossible in 2016. And even in 2020, though, he was starting to do it in 2020.

The main thing that I cannot still quite process is that the guy who has promised the largest mass deportation in American history, 20 million undocumented immigrants he claims he's going to try to mass deport, won 45% of the Latino vote in America.

And that is still just a sentence you could never have imagined saying. There's interesting reasons for that. We could talk about them. But I think it's stunning. And that is a Democratic Party that is losing 45% of Latinos to Donald Trump, losing around 12 points among African-Americans and losing. He's in mid-40s with young voters. And he's competitive with...

with most female voters except for black females. It's not a landslide. It's really not. But it is a real indication of how weak the Democratic Party position is right now in America. Yeah, but let me just say on the...

Yeah, he carried Hispanic men. Yes. And there is definitely a male cut here. Yes, and white women. But there's also some assumptions. What you're saying is the assumption that the Democratic Party made, which is that Hispanic American voters would take that issue, that one issue, and that would

the same concerns that other working class voters in this country had about the cost of things and also the idea that they are a culturally, somehow a culturally progressive community. Or that they're monolithic, which they're not. Right. And I praise Brother Murphy here whose line I stole. He doesn't need encouragement. Shamelessly, although I did credit him on real time on Friday night when I said that Mike said on our show the other day we should stop calling people

Hispanic Americans, we should stop calling them that, we should start calling them Americans. And I think there's some truth to that. I'm not making any assumption. I'll tell you what I'm making is an assumption that there was an election last time where Joe Biden did a lot better. Yeah, he got 65% of that vote. As did Hillary Clinton, as did Barack Obama. And Donald Trump, of all people, is the one who's clawed that back, given some of his rhetoric.

Forget about mass deportation, just, I mean, throughout his, he's made anti, he's made racist comments about all races, but he started his campaign with anti-Hispanic racism. It still is just, history will write this and be like, whoa. Let me pitch, you know, we can break in among the left-handed. Fundamentally, Trump did the best in the marketplace of votes of any Republican in 20 years.

He absolutely broke the meter with Latinos, and he broke the meter with young voters under 29. So big, big macro thing. And I would say if there's one lesson to be painfully learned here is that those of us who look at elections, particularly in the media,

tend to look at it through the postmodern mainspring of so much, which is identity. All Latino, deportation, Latinos should vote against that because, however, Latino voters define themselves as Americans and feel the same economic pain.

So we tend to lump people together into what group they belong to, which is often how the Democratic Party has looked at elections. That formula no longer works. This was an ejector seat election.

Stuff costs too much, inflation's killing me, fire them all. And the real, I think, challenge, particularly for your generation, is people think so little of politics now, they think as long as it'll change the cost of eggs and the personal stuff they are legitimately interested in, they think Donald Trump fits right in.

They don't see politics as a shining city on the hill anymore. You shouldn't just be the moderator here. We need to get you to wait. No, no, I was waiting my turn. I'm practicing. You knew where that would get you. Look, I think we talked a little bit about this on Saturday. If I went to the top, top line... I think it was Thursday, by the way. You guys are still drunk on the election. It was Saturday. You were there, remember? It was Saturday before the election. Then Tuesday the election, then Thursday.

Remember, was it Thursday? I have no idea. They started drinking election night. I'm not sure. I've been drunk for a month. They don't call us hacks on tap for nothing. So, look, at the very top line, only 28% of Americans said the country's on the right track. The president's approval rating was flirting with 40. Two-thirds of the country had negative ratings of the economy. And you just take those numbers,

and you'd look at those and you'd say the incumbent party can't win. No incumbent party has ever won with numbers like that. It's kind of remarkable actually that the election was as close as it was and it speaks to concerns that people had about Trump. But when you consider that they wanted to fire the administration, the fact that Trump was the one

The vice president was vice president. It's like, we want to fire that administration, so why don't we put the number two person in?

didn't compute for a lot of voters and particularly working class voters. But I've said, you know, before this whole discussion we just had, and it's appropriate to have it, you know, here, I think, is that part of the problem for the Democratic Party is that we approach working class voters oftentimes like we are anthropologists and missionaries.

We're here to help you become more like us. We don't listen very well, and we don't understand cultural, we don't honor cultural differences. I think that there's a certain arrogance that's happened. The only group in this campaign in which we're not

Kamala Harris did better than Joe Biden was among college educated white voters. That's the only group among all of the demographic groupings lost ground among many others. And as you point out, among some, you know, among Hispanics, among Asian voters, particularly so, there aren't that many

white college educated voters, that's a third of the electorate. - Yeah, let's just say that it's important to both of your points, and because this is an international institution of higher learning. There's one explanation for what happened, which is an explanation that is 100% true, and also I think problematic in the sense that it could lead to a kind of complacency on the part of the Democratic Party in terms of what it needs to do. But that explanation is that

After a global pandemic, basically every developed and rich country in the world had an inflation problem. Throughout the incomments. Had an inflation problem. Inflation is probably the most toxic thing

in all of politics over all time. It's the thing that kills incumbents. Inflation, a thing that touches everybody, prices go up, et cetera, et cetera. And in every country, we had more elections this year than in one year ever in the history of the modern world. And in every single one of them, the in-power party has lost, whether they've been liberal, leftist, centrist, right, or conservative. Across the spectrum, all incumbents have been losing. And so on one level, it's like, well, yeah,

Kamala Harris, the sitting vice president in a party that's presided over that inflation. It was not Joe Biden's fault. Didn't figure out how to talk about it in a persuasive way. But the fact that it's the least surprising thing in the world. On the other hand, when the Democratic Party, which, David, as you know better than the rest of us, because you're basically the same age as FDR, since the age of FDR has been the party of working people in America. That is what the Democratic Party DNA is built on.

When the Democratic Party is no longer the party of working people, and that is the clear takeaway from this election. Again, politics is malleable. They can become the party of working people the next time around. But right now, the party of working people in America is the Republican Party. And that screams out of what happened on Tuesday, and that is a big fucking problem. Well, the problem is perverse incentives.

which you guys here studying economics know all about, the incentives within a Democratic primary are not aligned with the incentives to go win these votes away from the populist Republicans. And that is the battle now. It's gonna be the mathematicians versus the priests in the Democratic Party. The mathematicians are gonna say, we can't get arrested by anybody who's a white working class voter, particularly males. And we can't get arrested with young males.

And the priests are going to say, yeah, because we're doing all this moderate shit, we ought to go to the real progressive agenda and go after the corporate overlords and the rich guys like these two, make them pay their fair share, etc., etc. And that battle is going to rage on for a while here.

But it was a clear message. The problem is in politics, in the internal world, this is true of both parties, people are good at taking any outcome and saying, well, that proves my point. And the permanent argument continues. So I, as a Trump-hating right-wing nut, am actually rooting for the Democrats. I'm a mathematician. I hope they go that way. But we will see. Compounding it all,

is generally, most of the time, almost all the time in recent history, the party of the new president has a rough time in the House in the first midterm, two years away. And so the Republicans look likely, we're still counting a lot of votes in California that come in by mail, but it is significantly more likely than not that Republicans are going to take the House. Not by a lot, probably medium-high single digits.

But that means that majority is gonna be very vulnerable in the midterms. - Can I just interrupt for a second? - Yeah, I just wanted to set the table. - I wanna finish up what just happened and then we can talk about what's likely to happen. You keep trying to push the bad memory of last Tuesday away and push us into the future. - No, no, we talked about it last week. - Let me ask you this question though. Mike, by the way, what you just said totally supports my opinion. You're 100% right.

I don't know what the hell's going on here. It was a joke about what you just said, a joke we all tend to do anyway. You've already forgotten what Mike said. What's your question? My question is this, too. There's a lot of discussion right now among your fellow Democrats about the extent to which identity politics, wokeness, and so on is what caused Harris' loss. Yes. And there's a lot of discussion like that.

At the same time, on this show and other shows like this, people pointed out correctly that Kamala Harris did not play identity politics. She rarely talked about... This was a point you made. Yeah, but the subtext was there. But there was not... She did not tout her that she would have been the first female color person. She didn't make that explicit. Not like Hillary Clinton. She did not make that an explicit part of her appeal. So just how do you...

What role do you think that played in your loss? Because I don't think the campaign just, the campaign was not defined by the hundred days that Kamala Harris was a candidate. The campaign was defined by the way, you know, the several years before it. In some ways, and this is where I disagree with Mike, it was defined by the several decades before it. You're a Trump-loathing right-wing nut. I'm a...

a self-loathing rich guy who actually believes that working people have been screwed for the last four decades by the changes that have happened in the economy and uh i just you know between automation and globalization the financial crisis the fallout from the uh

from the pandemic. I think that middle class people feel like they've been rocked. And you look at sort of how wages have grown relative to productivity over the last 40 years. There's a pretty good case for that. So, you know, we can haggle over solutions, but that's a real thing. And so when Joe Biden goes out and argues that, you know, Bidenomics works and when they have video of Kamala Harris saying Bidenomics

works, it just says to people they have no idea what's going on out here. - Well, I'd say further than that, just to put a fine point on this, you had Kamala Harris ending her campaign

Her big speech is she's on the Washington Mall, on the Ellipse. Yeah, where she shouldn't have been. The White House right behind her. Government employees pouring in from Northern Virginia to fill out the crowd. And she spends the last two weeks of the campaign, and I understand why they did this, but campaigning with Liz Cheney. And boy, look at the breadth of our coalition. We go all the way from Liz Cheney to Liz Warren and all of that. Democracy and mentality.

And most people in the country are like, democracy has the institute. These institutions you're campaigning in front of, we hate that institution. We don't like politics. We don't like Washington. We don't like our miners in Washington. We don't think these institutions have served us well. And you're talking about all these insiders. Well, I said the night that they announced that they were doing her final speech on the Washington Mall that I wished she were doing it at a suburban mall.

because the topic should have been sort of how people, the struggles people have in their lives. They should have done an Independence Hall, not with the damn White House everybody's furious at behind her. Hey, I'm part of that. But to your point, Swine, you're right. Real wages have been frozen for a long time. That equals middle class rage. Middle class rage turns into Donald Trump. You know, we've conducted that experiment twice. Your point about wokeism, it's part of it. It's like the binding agent. But...

There's no Kamala Harris campaign that I believe could have won this election. - Yeah, I agree with that. - And you are correct, Johnny, that she gave a few speeches and she tried to get to the center.

But the brand of the Democratic Party, particularly the brand of the wing of the party that she represented until this campaign was the fund the cops, you know, we're talking about the Transat, all that stuff. And those are indelible images that don't go away very easily. She was incapable, or her machinery was, but I think her too, of saying, I was wrong on fracking. I care about American jobs in Pennsylvania.

Couldn't do it. Every time she answered the question, it was like a deposition. You know, well, at 12 o'clock on a Thursday four years ago, I said I was kind of okay maybe with franking, cracking, let's not talk about it. So even though they didn't overtly try all the woke stuff, it's still out there. Let me just finish. They have to ban the hyphens. If you look at Hillary's website and others, it's all groups.

Left-handed Irish-American former Republicans for Hamela. That's you. Eskimos for, I know, I'm the only guy in the group, and it's friggin' lonely. That's why I keep saying forget the therapy session. Onward to victory. Sharp sticks. Hill. Two years. But bottom line is enough with the groups already. Republicans always do the big idea. MAGA, make America great again. Reagan, shining city on a hill, the friendly version of make America great again.

Democrats are which group's getting screwed and how we're going to help you. Did you run a campaign for a guy whose thing was hope, I believe? Yeah. And change. And change. And by the way, in this election, the people who said, this was always a contest between what change was going to be. Kamala Harris defined it as change from the era of Trump.

the divisive era of Trump, and she tried to make him the incumbent in the race. The Trump campaign ran a much easier campaign to run, which is your bills are too high, things cost too much, they're in charge, fire them, she's one of them. And the woke stuff as represented by that. At the end of the day, 74% of people who said that change

was the most important thing to them, or who could bring the most, who has the best chance to bring change, 74% voted for Donald Trump. He won the change thing overwhelmingly. By the way, one other stat here, Biden had a 40-59 approval rating in the exit polls. That's how people rated him. Among the 45% who said that

who gave him a poor rating, she lost. Trump got 93% of that vote. I think it's fair to say that, I think one thing we all agree on, Donald Trump improved his performance in 92% of American counties. And he won 83% of them last time. And the country moved six points to the right in this election.

Yeah, here's a little... Go ahead, finish up. An election that shows that kind of movement. And no, this is not a landslide compared to Reagan, Reagan, George R. Walker Bush, Clinton, Clinton, Obama, Obama. Trump's wins by a very narrow margin compared to any of those much more impressive victories. But that shift to the right, anything that's happening like on that level,

That is not a thing that Kamala Harris giving a better speech here or going on Joe Rogan or not saying a dumb thing on The View. She had an incredibly hard job to be put at the top of the ticket in August and have 107 days to define herself and to fight off Trump. That is the degree of difficulty unlike anything I've ever seen before. So it's bigger things that we're driving in here. I do want to say, though, to Mike's thing, Mike, you can't ban the hyphen.

Because we're going to talk about, you said no hyphens anymore. We have Republican, we're going to talk about Democrats in a little bit. Backstabbing, finger pointing, blame gaming, shit talking. You need hyphens in all of those. I just want to say. You're going to put me out of business if I can't have a hyphen. Hacks on tap is not hyphenated. I just want to make that point.

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They're just short of 3,200 counties in America. The Democrats get all their vote from 400 of them. They're a prisoner, the 400 of them. And that's the problem. Tell your story about the Trump campaign. Yeah, yeah. Well, I want to get to that. You want to build to that? I want to say, look at the blue states.

where there are significant numbers of black voters, Hispanic voters, Asian voters, and all of them, I mean, New Jersey was won by 15 points last time. This time, Harris won by five. California down five or six points. Trump gained like 20 points in the Bronx. Yeah. And Staten Island. So here's an interesting stat that still blows my mind. Illinois, by the way,

He won by seven Biden won by 17 points Harris won by nine There is a precinct in the city of Chicago that represents only the Cook County Jail Okay, I've been voting there for years. Yes

Several times, several times. And that precinct voted 96 percent for Joe Biden in 2020. Ninety six. Ninety six. Ninety six. Ninety six. There are precincts in Chicago where he got one hundred two percent. Ninety six percent. And in this election, Donald Trump won that precinct. Forty nine to forty seven.

These are detainees in the Cook County Jail awaiting trial. Prisoners voting for one of their own. Exactly. Well, I mean, but I think that's a joke, but it's not a joke. We need about 20 of you to go rob a liquor store and go inside to tip the midterm election. But he was, you know, part of the appeal was she

She was a prosecutor. Yeah. He was a guy who suffered the injustice of the. Oh, yeah. Which I terrible. You know, I. Yeah, exactly. I don't think it's the same. But and there is this campaign that was directed not just as young black young black men, but also at young men generally. That was incredibly successful campaign.

Joe Biden won young people by 24 points, people under 29. There are a few of you here. He won them. She won them by 13 and lost...

and lost young men by a point. And I want you, John Heilman, as a guy who is not that much younger than us, but is all tatted up and believes that he is, I want you to talk about... He isn't, but his stylist is. I'm a 12-year-old stylist. What's the question? My question is, talk about the Trump campaign and how they used...

how they use social media, how they use podcasts, how they use the means of communicating in the media in which young people get information now. Well, I'll go back first just to say this about 2016, because you could see this then. And it's hard to think of Trump this way because...

you know, one doesn't want to acknowledge. You often call him like a feral genius. Feral genius, yes. You know, in 2016... He just heard the genius part. I'm sure. Very stable genius. In 2016, one of the most remarkable things about that campaign was Donald Trump was the candidate of the future in the sense that he was the candidate of Twitter.

and Twitter was the dominant social media platform in 2016, and you had Hillary Clinton who was, the echoes of this are so loud in this campaign. Hillary Clinton who would not do things like go on Howard Stern. Howard Stern who was for her, said he was for her, was anti-Trump.

She was too cautious. She wouldn't go on Howard Stern. And Trump would do anything anybody asked him to do. He would do local radio, any-- he would go on a liberal station, a conservative station. He'd do cable. He'd call in. He made himself available. He understood that in what was then a fragmented media environment, that ubiquity mattered more than anything else. You just had to be everywhere.

and Trump became the most accessible presidential candidate I've ever seen. A strategy that Pete Buttigieg, for instance, tried to adopt when he ran in 2020. And now you fast forward to this race. Again, Trump, everybody focused on the Joe Rogan thing. 46 million YouTube viewers and God knows how many millions of people on the podcast just listening to the audio of that. But Trump was for months going on podcasts you've never heard of.

with some of them very MAGA, some of them not very MAGA. Theo Vaughn, someone who is not super MAGA, but there's Donald Trump out there talking about cocaine with Theo Vaughn. This went on for months where he was out there

below the radar, again, a thing you don't ever associate with Donald Trump, but he was kind of below the mainstream media's radar, was out there pounding these channels that have extraordinarily large, for people we've never heard of, and extraordinarily loyal audiences. And there's at least one person in the audience here who knows something about this, who I've talked about this at some length with, who said to me one day, like, there's almost no one who can get someone

a large numbers of people to listen to, just to stay tuned into something. We have people constantly, apart from the fact that the media landscape is fragmented, our attention is fragmented. These are these podcasters you've never heard of

have people who listen to them for an hour, an hour and a half, two hours, and they listen intently to every single show. And that is how Donald Trump found this bond with a lot of voters, in addition to cultural affinity and other things, just persistence and ubiquity. Yeah, yeah. Well, our three million listeners certainly understand. Yeah, but they only listen to 35 seconds. As soon as Murphy makes a Milton Berle joke, they switch off. You know, we invented podcasting, yet it got away from us. If you're a historian, this is actually interesting.

Presidential campaigns are often where the next breakthrough media technology occurs. You go back to the Civil War, Lincoln, that was the first time the federal government had the telegraph, which meant for the first time Washington could know as much about what was happening locally as the local government. And that began a 150-year trend of power moving to the feds.

Then you had newspapers. They're pretty effective. You could start the Spanish-American War with a few good pictures. Newspapers? Yeah, they once were important. Newspapers? Then FDR and radio. He would have been a dead duck on television, but it became a unifying force. You could talk to the whole country at once with no filter. It was the first super direct communication. No newspaper publisher in the way. Then Jack Kennedy, good hair and makeup, won a debate against

the then perceived to be frontrunner, Richard Nixon. Then the internet with Barack Obama was able to organize electronically for free on the internet and raise a lot of democratized money. We had some of that in McCain 2000, but the tech wasn't ready to keep up with the appetite to give us small dollars. Now we're seeing the rise of kind of Gen 2 internet, which is audio programming and video programming that you don't need a TV network.

You don't need money for advertising to distribute. So we've created these titans of podcasts. But what you do need is to be able to perform. You need to present yourself as unscripted and authentic. And as George Burns once said, all you need in show business to succeed is authenticity. And if you can fake that, you've got it made. You've got it made.

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Now, you did like the early cave painting campaigns, right? That was when you, that was your first real technological breakthrough? Yeah. Yes. But this is the thing. Free bison meat for anybody who wants it. Let me just finish quickly on the tech. Let's take 10 seconds. The one thing we didn't see that I expected a lot of, and I was happy not to see it, but stay tuned, is deep fakes.

really going big visually. And that's kind of the scary next thing. That's what you say, but we are not actually here right now. Mike, why are you giving away our secret? Trump had us all killed last week. We're bullying. But this is the thing that you just said a second ago, which is one of these things that is true, is that all of these new... I said one thing that was true? Well, no, you said... I'm not saying you only said it. Okay, all right. But

But this thing of like, you know, new technologies come around and some in a lot of cases, multiple candidates try to exploit them. And there's a difference that your point about their their candidates who are really good candidates at online low dollar fundraising. Right. You know, Bernie Sanders was great at it. Hillary Clinton, not so great. Barack Obama, great. In your race, Hillary Clinton, not so great. It's like Trump is.

is like the perfect candidate for the kind of campaign that he runs, right? And he's the kind of candidate who, as we all said, in the last two weeks of this race, if you had said, what is that guy trying to do while he's trying to give a blowjob to that microphone stand, you would have said, he's trying to lose the election. He's obviously trying to lose the election. And yet, I don't think, not only do I think that didn't, not only do I think that,

that that didn't hurt him. I think his behavior is so on brand.

and reinforce everything that he's been building towards, that it actually helps him when he acts in these ways that we think are suicidal. That said, don't try that on your own. Mike, we don't have a mic stand up here. Don't worry. They wouldn't let us have one. It's the perfect rage scream against the system. And his authenticity is his course. Well, his willingness to do things that are absolutely offensive

to people who eat with a fork and knife. Shamelessness is a great virtue in American politics. But I shouldn't say that, because I actually don't want to mischaracterize the people who swear. But I think there are a lot of people who hear politicians speak in finely manicured, familiar political phrases, and they tune it out. And they say...

Uh-oh, I thought something was going on here in the middle. Yeah, I was serving a subpoena you wanted. You ready to turn to what's going to happen next? Yes, I was going to turn to what's going to happen next. Well, I mean, the thing is, we've gotten some clues from Trump, right? He's got some personnel decisions that he's made. He appointed his campaign manager, Susie Wiles. I got Amtrak.

Stephen Miller, Uber Alice. Yeah. They want to announce the Amtrak thing with you on the tracks and then they're going to back the train over. I think that's the plan, yeah. I'd pass. What is... Yeah, Susie Wiles. So Susie Wiles was Trump's campaign manager, a long-time Florida...

political operative her father was pat summerall who was a great football broadcaster and ex-wife of lanny wiles one of the heroic reagan advance guys who was a legend and later became head of advance in 2000 for john s mccain you don't get stuff like this anywhere else so yeah yeah so we're in the tall grass but but she but look she already has set a record for surviving two years as trump's campaign manager and she's done it

By giving him the advice he needs to get, by running the campaign around him while he does what he does, and by accepting that she can control what she can control and she can't control what she can't control. I think if you look at those appointments, you know, Susie Wiles is an appointment, she's definitely in the...

adult in the room category. And Wall Street and business people and the more mainstream part of the party are like, okay, that's a positive signal. The next thing he does is he names Stephen Miller to be deputy chief of staff. Which is, you know... And you guys know who Stephen Miller is, but Stephen Miller is... I heard a groan when I said Stephen Miller. No, Stephen Miller is sort of the...

People were very mean to him in high school. Now we're going to pay a price. He's MAGA. He's all MAGA. And then you have the guy who's going to be... All MAGA and very much the inspiration behind the throw all the immigrants out. And you now have the guy who's going to be running the deportation force who is...

Former acting ICE director. So it looks like they're going to move. Who is hardcore on this question of, you know, going, he has advocated using the military for this, really taking seriously the notion of trying to throw 20 million people out of the country in short order. But what it does signal is they are going to try and throw a whole bunch of people out very quickly. Yes. Well, I'm not sure. Actually, I'll take the contrarian side a little bit.

The big problem is when you take a Trump job, you get two business cards, chief of staff and former chief of staff, because it can change in rapid time.

But they send a normie signal with Susie, who knows how to run the trains on time, came out of the regular Republican world, then DeSantis, and now him. And then Miller, who's got lightning bolts coming out of his ears and an enemies list tattoo up and down his arm. So you wonder which one will go. He sent both signals. Now I'll tell you something about Susie Wiles. - I don't wonder at all. - She just, oh I don't, I don't wonder about intent, I wonder about competence. Susie Wiles is a risk manager.

And so she'll be arguing, the Army says they can't do it for a year, we don't have enough trucks. So they're going to try whether or not they can do it. And also every blue state governor is going to say, no way, we're not going to force it here. So I think the specter of overreaction

Overnight mass deportation is a... Yeah, well, we'll see. I think that they think this is a conspicuous promise that they think they have to keep. Pretty conspicuous. And the question I have is, there are all kinds of attendant... Forget about the human dimension of this. There are all kinds of

ancillary effects of trying to throw millions of people out of the country, many of whom help make the country go. And so what happens when, for example, all these agricultural workers are thrown out of the country and grocery prices go up? Well, what happens when, if you actually tried to do this, let's be clear, 20 million people

If you actually were trying to deport 20 million people from the country in anything like a single term of presidency, you would basically have to have all of local, state, and federal law enforcement doing nothing but that full time. They're not going to do... Even they say not 20, but still. It's a massive undertaking is all I'm saying. I think Mike said the thing last week, or whenever we last talked, Mike was like, what is likely to stop it in its tracks, if it's going to be stopped, is going to be...

The price of this, I'm not being cavalier about it, but I do think some seven-year-old kids are going to get shot in the head. Some terrible shit is going to happen where the political cost of it or the embarrassment of it is going to be so high that they are able to walk back from it. But I do think that at least at the outset, they are going to make a big public run at it. And that's going to be very upsetting to a lot of people who...

from any walk of life. When you start, again, I don't want to go down the Hitler path here, but it is a fact that the first thing that Hitler did in the Third Reich was issue a mass deportation policy. And it was done in order to create an us versus them attitude within the country because you can't do that kind of mass deportation without having to identify your neighbors.

without having to... It turns everyone into a snitch. It's like, that guy's here illegally. That gal's here illegally. That is us versus them politics deep in the heart of the country. Don't try to solve the migration problem at the border. Try to solve it from the center. It'll be interesting, though. You know, one of the things, Mike, that people... Like, Hispanic voters who were interviewed said, yeah, we don't really... We don't believe he's really going to do that. Or it's not going to affect any member of my family. It's not going to happen to my family. Well, he's going to try, but...

I used to fly around with Vice President Quayle, and we used to have a little game to see if any of the phones on Air Force Two actually worked, other than the security phone for the military. Most of them didn't. So the idea of this big government machine, all right, mass deportation, cut to the Army base, all right, the local cops won't do it, we're going to send in the 21st Division here, fall out, sergeant, sound off, Ramirez, Gonzalez,

Alconde, the US military is nearly 40% of color. And we're gonna send them into South LA to point guns at people? Good luck, California Guard even more. So they're gonna try, they're gonna hurt some innocent people, they're gonna screw up, and the Lanny Wiles of the world, and hate to keep going back to it, but the House Republicans are gonna have the majority by seven seats,

are going to freak out and say, how do we declare victory? I think you meant Susie Wiles, not Lanny Wiles. Susie Wiles, sorry. Brodian slip. They're probably going to deport Lanny now. I don't know how the divorce went. Run, Lanny, run.

And good luck finding them. I live in L.A. Two other things. Two other augerings here. So anyway, we record these things and then we go back and we find out who was completely wrong. And we change it in post. And then we erase it. Yeah.

Yeah, that's the new media in the Trump years. You can just erase it. Keeps us friendly because we've all gotten turned on each other. So the second thing that we saw was the president-elect posted yesterday that he wanted, there's a leadership fight for majority leader of the Senate.

And he says we're going to be Republican, Republican. And he sent out a tweet. I could read it to you. But the essence of it was that he wanted a the power to make progress.

Recess appointments are permitted in the Constitution when the Congress is in recess. The president, to fill emergency positions, can appoint someone without confirmation. He essentially wants to use that process to avoid the confirmation process for if he feels there's gonna be any controversy over his appointments, and all three

Within a few hours, all three men running for leader said, yeah, fine, we're down with that.

He also said that he wanted them to block every judicial appointment that the Democrats want to put through Congress between now and the end of the administration, which is kind of a typical thing. I mean, Trump pushed a whole bunch of nominations through back in 2020 and early '21. So the question is, what does that tell you about the level of

resistance there's going to be. And by the way, there's a leadership battle on Wednesday. They're going to vote for a leader on Wednesday. You've got three senators to replace McConnell running against him. You've got the normie McConnell guy, Thune, who's the frontrunner until now, who Trump can't stand. You've got the semi-normie guy, Cornyn from Texas.

who was kind of the compromise. And then you got Rick Scott from Florida, who's the pure Trump enemies list, Stephen Miller candidate. A lot of senators hate. They all hate him. He's hateable. But now Elon tweeted, we got to go with Scott. And Scott said, well, one thing I'll do is I don't know the word no. I'll run everybody through here. Absolutely. You know, whoever you want. And so the other two have been forced to agree with that now.

I still think it won't be Scott because it's the world's biggest rotary club. It's a secret ballot, which is interesting. Don't you have to be like a human being to have this job? Because if that's the case, Rick Scott's not going to get it.

Yeah, Bob Dole used to have a joke, you know, it's the secret ballot. I'm still trying to meet the 23 firm commitments I had for Senate finance chairman. I got 11. Yeah, no, no. Morris Udall, when he ran for leader, who was a Democratic congressman from Arizona, lost, lost, and said, I want to thank the 60 members who voted for me and the other 60 who committed to. So, yeah.

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Mike just mentioned the Elon Musk of it all. Yes. I'm curious what your thought is. Have you worked in a White House? Pardon? You haven't worked in a White House, have you? Oh, hell no. Okay. So I stayed out of the legal trouble. The Republic is safe. The only one who's ever been in a White House. Yes. Worked in a White House, that is. What's your assessment of the fact that we now learned that Elon Musk was on the call

that Donald Trump made with Zelensky. Well, I think this was really insidious because Elon Musk, his Starlink provides internet service to Ukraine. In a very helpful way. It was a turning point. Yes, and Trump, and they need what he provides. And I think, my interpretation, and if Trump...

If this wasn't his intention, he can come on the show next week and tell us so. But my sense was, my sense is, he was sending a message to, and who knows what was actually said, but the message was, you got to come to terms here with the Russians, and Elon's not going to provide benefits

this internet service forever to you if you're going to prolong this war. That's my impression. I think it was leverage to put Elon on that call. But I think the whole role of Elon Musk... But isn't it just fucking outrageous? It freaks me the fuck out. Well, I thought what I said kind of portrayed it as such. Yeah, it freaks me the fuck out. Yeah, well, that's another way of putting it. I mean, if you want to see a picture of oligarchy in action...

This is it. The richest guy in the world is now sitting in on the President-elect's phone calls with a nation that has been a long time United States ally that's under siege. The people that he's under siege from is run by Vladimir Putin, who's probably the second richest person in the world and also loves Donald Trump. They're going to run it like the boiler room in Glengarry Glen Ross. All the rules are out. That's what we're heading for. But put Elon...

and Trump together, I predict it won't last. They're both one-man bands, and we'll see how it goes. You are like a font of optimism here. Well, relative. So this is the difference between Republicans and Democrats. Oh, here we go. There's only one? We are the stupid party. They are the neurotic party.

So, I agree with that. They're going to doomcast and worry a lot. There are going to be a lot of meetings. And God bless them for all that. We think about how do we skin the enemy.

around the clock. Mike, are you telling me? I don't really want to project all the terror because I can't control it. What I can do is work on skinning the enemy in 766 and a half. Okay, well, let me have it. Let me skin out. We got Hannibal Lecter in the room here, skinning the enemy. Hannibal Lecter, how about Bobby Kennedy Jr.? I've heard you in the past. It's echoey, I can't hear. I've heard you in the past. Yeah. Somewhat concerned about what the ramifications of Donald Trump's election would be.

Yes. Right? So it's not just me doom casting here. These are things you were saying weeks ago. Oh, I'm a doomer, but I'm worried about everything. I'm particularly worried that Putin's going to run the table now. Yeah. Because he knows what's going on, and now he's got North Korean troops who can go die fighting for Russia. I think on that point, one thing we should all recognize is that there are a lot of people in this country who...

tired of 20 years of war, tired of the money that's being spent over there, who are like, enough, they don't want it anymore. So I am with you because I don't think having countries overrun other countries and empowering tyrants to do it is a good long-term policy for our security. But let's acknowledge... So on this project of the Democratic Party, I want to close out with a discussion because I have an idea.

And my idea is that this party needs savvy, strategic, aggressive leadership. Mike Murphy? Into who also believes in the Democratic Party. Oh, okay. I'm available for rent right now, but go ahead. Because we both came out with this today. We're happy to have you, but we know your bag is packed and by the door. Yeah, I know. I got plans for you guys later. But...

Here's what I would do if they said, well, what should we do? Who should lead the party? I would take Ambassador Rahm Emanuel,

and I would bring him back from Japan, and I would appoint him chairman of the Democratic National Committee because he is the most skillful political kind of infighter in the Democratic Party. He's been a member of Congress, he's been White House Chief of Staff, he's been the mayor of Chicago, now he's been ambassador of Japan, and he ran in 2005 and '06 the campaign to take back the House

when Democrats were trying to take back the House of Representatives. He knows how to do this, and he would be a presence in the media and so on, fearless about taking on Trump. I think that would be a really smart move. How many people in this room know who Rahm Emanuel is? Well, they all do. You're in Chicago, man. How many people in this room know that Rahm Emanuel is missing half a finger? Yeah. How many people in this room know that Rahm Emanuel is missing half his middle finger?

Not very many. And yet he still gets his point across. He can give someone the bird right to their face, and it's not totally clear that he's flipping them off. It's a great asset. Trust me, he's tried that trick about a thousand times. I have to tell a quick Rom story, and then I'm going to... Rom with half a finger is a speech impediment. Years ago, when he was mayor...

Axe and I went to a Bulls game, the great believer here, and we were having a lot of fun and Axe said, "Look, across the court, there's Rahm." And we waved and somebody handed us binoculars and he pointed at me and gave me the bird. So he is exactly the right guy. And I pitched the same thing on Substack earlier today, so great minds think alike. But I would not make him chairman of the DNC. I would make him dictator.

of the DNC. Because one weakness the Dems have is, all right, let's get the campaign circle together. All 23 of us, we all must be heard. Fuck that stuff. It's war. Republicans tend to have a much narrow command, and he is exactly the right guy for that job. You think the title would go over, though? I don't know. Everybody's a little ouchy about the whole dictator thing right now. Get a dictator, get a dictator. Who was the person that Rahm sent a dead fish to once? Oh, it was Alan...

I forget Seacrest, Alan Seacrest. The poster. Yeah. I was a young, was a young White House staffer in the Clinton administration. He was probably about 26, 27.

He was actually at the D-triple C in the mid-'80s. He got mad at a pollster and sent him a dead fish in the mail. Because the guy, I was involved in that race. If you can pull that off out here, any of you guys on your way, on your meteoric rise through your careers, if you get to a point where you're thinking, you know what? The right move now, send a dead fish to someone. Go for it. He's been in Japan. Because you ended up being the ambassador of Japan. He's been in Japan for four years. Imagine how many fish he's collected. Yeah.

He's got plenty. I wouldn't want to go through Rob's luggage when he comes home. Anyway, it's good to be here with all of you guys. If I'm reading the time correctly, I think we're at the end of this hour. And to our regular listeners, we're going to say goodbye to you now, and we'll be back next week, and we will take your questions as per usual. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

On November 7th, Thundercat, Carisoft, and NVIDIA teamed up to host a discussion with leading government panelists to speak on best practices and challenges agencies are facing with AI. Learn how we can plan to navigate complex policy landscapes, assess agency needs, and contribute to shaping the future of AI applications in the government. You can now tune into the conversation on the Feds at the Edge podcast, streaming on all major platforms. Visit thundercattech.com slash events for more info. That's thundercattech.com slash events.

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