Gas & Eggs (with John Heilemann)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. Raleigh, Saginaw, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Vegas, Hotlanta, the Philly suburbs, Manchester, Dallas, and Houston. Donald Trump, as far as we can tell, has just been trying to win a third championship at his own golf course.

My question to you, sir, can voters trust a presidential candidate who has not won a single Trump International Golf Club trophy? At long last, sir, have you no chip shot? Well, look, I'd be happy to play. I told him this before when he came into the Oval, when he was being, before he got sworn in. I said, I'll give you three strokes if you carry your own bag.

All right, Murphy, there you go. The comic stylings of Bobo Biden there, working the main room in New York City, gold material. Radio City Music Hall. Oh, Radio City Music Hall. I'm waiting to see him at the Laugh Stop in Columbus. But, you know, I like it anytime Biden gets off a good joke at Trump's expense, because you're always making a 50-50 bet that Trump will explode and do something crazy, because he has, as we've discussed, no sense of humor. But speaking of no sense of humor...

We wanted to go in the opposite direction today with a very funny man.

a political expert, a well-known international media celebrity, dog owner, and a pretty good polka singer. A little secret, the one and only John Heilman. Johnny, welcome. Does anybody say he's singing polka? Is that actually a thing? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Really? There's money. I want to say, you know, hey, Murphy, you'll be happy to know. How do you think Murphy got through college? Well, I actually know that Murphy didn't get through college. That's the answer. Barely through high school. Hey, um...

Thanks for having me on, you guys. It's great to be here. And I will say, Murphy, just to please you, my lease on my current car is just coming to an end, and I'm going EV, baby. Oh, wow. Just because of Murphy? No, not because of Murphy. Murphy's got nothing to do with it. Despite Murphy. One, we're going to talk. Two, you've got to go to evpolitics.org and load up on merch. I'll give you the secret code.

Fantastic. Great stuff there. Slave labor in China has been working hard on our new line. It's like working with Donald Trump. It's like working with Donald Trump here. We don't do gold sneakers, though. I'm getting a bit. I'm getting a bit. Does anybody else get a little squirrely when you hear, like, I mean, Biden, I like it when he's funny about Trump, but, like, golf jokes? I don't know. It's just somehow, like, it just bums me out. It's very patriarchy. I'll spot you three strokes up, y'all. If you carry your bag, I'm like...

I have a, I have a question about the whole deal at radio city music hall. I mean, everybody, you know, it was treated sort of like a message event. It obviously wasn't because none of it was, uh, shared except for a few bites. Like the one I just shared with you, uh,

But, you know, a glitterati at Radio City Music Hall is not necessarily helpful in general. Forget the golf jokes. But 26 million is. Yeah, no, they're doing great on that. But a question on the event. Was this the three presidents thing? Was that at Radio City? Yes, that was it. The three presidents. Okay, how'd they peel Clinton off the Rockettes? But I guess that's a whole other topic. I knew that was coming. Oh, it's the easiest setup in the world. Come on. Come on. I couldn't resist it.

I know. That's why I knew it was coming. There we go. Here all week. Tip your server. So is it a win? I think it was a win. It was a money win. He got off the sound bite joke. But was it the message event of the century and was the venue right? I agree with you. A little inelegant, but I take the cash. Yeah, no. But my point is, my point, I guess I was leading into a question. He is crushing Trump on money.

And how much does that matter? You know, Plouffe was down here with Karl Rove and we did a thing at Arizona State University. And Plouffe argued that the money means less in a presidential race, which is true when both candidates are very well known. That was his argument, when both candidates are universally known. But there was a piece down here in Arizona last week saying,

that Trump has virtually nothing going on the ground because the state party is shattered. They have no money. Trump has no money. I think in these battleground states, that kind of stuff has to matter. Johnny, you want to grab that one and then I'll blow the. Well, look, I would say here. All of a sudden he's polite.

No, all the following things are true, right? One, back when – I remember the good old days back when Barack Obama would host his – would have his Jeffrey Katzenberg fundraisers. There would never be like Rockettes or anything else. They'd be hidden away somewhere in the hills, in the Holmby Hills. Nobody would know who all the people were at the Obama fundraiser. You never were like, hey, let's go to Hollywood and do a big fundraiser with Jeffrey Katzenberg and like trot that out because that's always good for your images in middle America.

But I do think the numbers were a flex, right? I mean, to do an event like that, what struck me was it's like, it's March, right?

Three presidents on stage together in March, not like in October of a presidential year. Like, hey, let's get all three of them together and kind of trying to rub Trump's nose in the fact that he's so broke. That to me was the message of it, which was, yeah, fuck you. We can keep doing this all day long or we're going to keep raising more money. We're going to crush you. And I do think Plouffe is right, though. You guys are all right. Look, the advertising thing isn't going to matter. You should be in politics.

Everybody knows Trump. Everybody knows Biden. What are you going to do? I mean, it's great to... It's really important to remind people that Trump's a lunatic. And they're doing a pretty good job of that, I think, of kind of...

of make taking people back to four years ago and showing them what it was actually like when trump was president they got to keep reminding people of how bad it was so having money on hand to do that is good they're not going to change anyone's perception of trump because the perceptions are all baked in but man in these battleground states were like where he won by tens of thousands of votes the margins are so thin that on the ground game the money totally matters yeah that's my view i

I think in the big picture, yeah, it's not the decisive thing, but Biden is not exactly the political home run king. So being able to bunt a lot is important and having the money advantage, which may really count to David's point,

This time, because Trump is kind of like a guy with a really good, high-paying job who happens to be a heroin addict on the side. So all the money is going to the needle, which is the legal stuff. I mean, Dracula could not have drained more stuff out of the RNC than they have. There's a good New York Times story on it today. And half this, well, not half, but a significant percentage of the key state parties are

are now essentially run by people with aluminum foil Napoleon costumes. So the Trump guys have real problems there, and no doubt. So I think, although I think Plouffe's right in the big picture, it's not a small thing, and because of Trump's weakness, it just becomes an even bigger thing.

So yeah, they get points for it and they're going to need it because they're the other stuff they're not doing so well. So they got to overachieve in some areas and looks like money is going to be one of the big ones. I love the bunting thing, breaking it out on like the opening week of the baseball season Murphy showing unsuspected cultural awareness. Not my first rodeo boys. I started out in radio in 1979. Yeah.

Isn't there also, there's also kind of a psychological element to it because of the many things that make Trump crazy. The idea that Trump would be like, like outspent by Joe Biden, that like Joe Biden could like put on, you know, he makes Trump crazy. He doesn't have any celebrities. He made him crazy in 16. It's not just the money. It's not just the money. There's a psyops element to this. Shunned in Manhattan by the elites is something that, that bothers Trump. Yeah. I, you know, you got, I wonder if they're sitting down with sort of, uh,

psyops people talking about, like, how do you get inside of Trump's head and make sure if that was the purpose, then his Easter weekend barrage of tweets or whatever they call them on Truth Social suggests that maybe they're scoring some pay dirt here because he is.

Absolutely. He went batshit crazy over the weekend, as he often does, by the way, on holiday weekends. You notice that till Christmas, Easter. Well, he's sitting alone with no crowd in a hockey arena, loving him and, you know, just the rage and, you know, reading the divorce letters from Melania that haven't come public or whatever. He's just a...

Lonely man. I think he may be jealous of Christ and Christ getting all that attention. Exactly. A hundred percent. Or as he would say, the other Christ. Right. Yeah, but I mean... The other Messiah. Yeah. The imitator.

Biden is creeping up and it's not it's marginal. This is going to be a marginal race all the way. But he is taking up from where he was at his nadir kind of in December and January. And the question is, and we've talked about this before, Heilman.

Does the general election spotlight on Trump hurt Trump? I mean, you know, he's been communicating to his base for the last so often, so many months. Does the fact that he's now getting general election attention hurt?

actually help Biden? Well, I certainly can't certainly hurt Biden. Right. I mean, the thing about Trump is that, you know, you guys remember this back in 2020, you know, we all used to say Trump's not communicating to, he's not trying to win over anybody. He didn't, who didn't vote for him in 2016. And they would say in response, the Trump campaign would say, yeah, that's not what we're doing. We're trying to find a bunch of voters, millions of voters who didn't vote in 2016 and are Trump friendly. And,

And if we can turn those people out, we're going to get more votes. And it turned out they were right. Their raw vote total went up. They found a bunch of those people, tens of millions of them, who were basically MAGA people who just hadn't bothered to vote in 2016. I just don't see how that's a deep well they can draw from this time. So you really are back in this kind of more general election mode. And the question is,

This goes back to the thing about reminding people about how bad Trump was or how offensive he was to their values is it goes back to these, these people who are, you know, traditional swing voters, people in the city, in the suburbs, in these battleground States. And I just, you know, the, the, for a lot of those people, they have been, I mean, we know no one's watching.

Everyone has turned off politics. Everyone hates this race. The network ratings are down. There's no Trump bump. Everyone is like thoroughly like, oh God, when am I going to have to actually tune into this thing? I don't want to tune into this thing. Most Democrats, most Republicans, just I will tune in eventually.

I will vote eventually, but just defer this pain as long as possible. And it does feel to me like the reality is that for some of those people who just want to switch it off for as long as possible, when we start to get to the place where they can't anymore and they start to really focus in their minds again about how just fucked up Trump is, that that will be a benefit to Biden. And again, on the margin, all these things are going to be on the margin, as you said, David. It's going to be a margin of error race to the last day. Yeah.

I think that's probably right. But I have the constant worry of every week at the Biden campaign, hey, Trump's getting more attention. Hey, we landed a good hit. All helpful. And at the end, the country said, oh, boy, that Trump. And they fired Biden because they want to fire Biden. So the hard meeting at the Biden campaign is not how do we screw Trump? Just give him a microphone. It's how do we try to help Biden?

And, you know, that that's the heavy lift because Biden is not that good at helping Biden. And, you know, I know it's on our discussion list, but the economic message is not what it needs to be for an incumbent president in trouble to get reelected. I want to park the marginal voter question for a second because it comes back to something else that Biden said. But a lot of the target of the barrage this weekend of Trump's.

was also generated not just by Radio City Music Hall, but something more significant, which was that he now knows he's going to trial on April 15th in New York. And a lot of the attention was focused on the judge and the judge's daughter, who apparently is some sort of message

digital strategist. Yeah. And, you know, so he's trying to make the case that the judge is hopelessly biased because his daughter is a political consultant. But the main thing he's doing, guys, and it was outrageous because he put a target on the young woman's back. And now the judge has imposed a gag order that extends to family members of people involved in the case. The big point here is

Trump does what Trump does, which is that he brands these things in advance. Before the election in 2020, he was branding the thing as corrupt. So if he lost, which he did, he could say that it was stolen. He does these things.

And now he's trying to brand this trial because I think he fears that he is going to lose. This is the Stormy Daniels hush money case in New York. Oftentimes, you know, we focus on the outrageousness of what Trump does, but we don't focus on the sort of strategic, whether it's probably instinctive more than strategic thinking of what he does. But he is trying to brand this trial in advance of

So that if it goes south on him, he can claim that the whole thing was...

fixed and a sham. Yeah, he tries to preemptively disqualify things, anything, you know, Crooked Joe, rigged trial. So nothing is legitimate but him. He's the only radio station and it gives his people an easy handle. All the trials rigged, you know, it's always a preemptive brand and it works pretty well for him. And, you know, part of it is he has a big hunk of vote, not a majority though.

that, you know, wants a party line. So he does. He kind of operates like an old school Bolshevik, to be honest. It's all the same stuff. I don't think I'm alone among people who think that Trump facing legal accountability is an important thing for Trump

Yeah, of course. Yeah, exactly.

Trump's people are all going to see this as it's easy for him to say black DA biased judge, New York city, New York city, New York city, right? This is just more persecution for me. I'm a martyr. They're all out to get me just like they're out to get you. You know, that that's easy with his voters. Does, does the suburban housewives outside Philadelphia or down David in Arizona where you are, they look at that and go,

you know, Stormy Daniels, hush money. This is a bullshit case. Or do people think business fraud? You know, this is a serious thing. 34 counts. He should go to jail. No, I've been saying for a long time that if you have to combine the words porn star and novel legal theory in the same sentence, you ought to think about whether you should bring the case. But one interesting thing, either one of those on its own though is fine.

You know, yeah, exactly. One of the one of the things that struck my eye this morning was that there's a report that Hope Hicks is going to testify for the prosecution at the trial. His old sort of public relations, you know, person who is very, very close to him.

Um, and the whole Trump argument in that trial is that he, he didn't hide these payments, uh, to Stormy Daniels because he didn't, because of the campaign that he did it. Cause he didn't want to embarrass his family, which on the face of it is kind of a, an absurd argument. So the whole of the last eight years knocks that down. Like if you're not trying to embarrass your family, there's like, oh, there's something that happens almost every day.

But she could specifically knock it down if she says, you know what, he was really concerned about that. If that story came out before the election, after the Access Hollywood tape, that that could sink him. And so he was very interested in keeping it from being publicized. That would be pretty bad for him. I think so. It would light up too social. Talk about angry, bitter, heartbroken Trump.

But the problem is, you know, what the average Trump, you know, voter, supporter will think, and this is kind of sloganeering within it in our postmodern era, they just quote the banner that probably ran over the DNC across top of the building in the 90s. It's only sex. So if it's only sex and it was okay for Bill Clinton who didn't go to jail, why should Donald Trump? Because the system is rigged.

And, you know, kind of an ironic twist, but it's the same defense and everything in politics has some symmetry to it. So, yeah, I think none of this is good for Trump, but I'm not sure it's killing for Trump. I agree with Heilman that this is the this if you if I'm sure that no one on the Biden side, you know, for all this bullshit of Trump's that Biden is orchestrating all this.

You would not orchestrate this as the first trial he faces. No, Trump would. Just a little bit of public service message here for your listeners. When Murphy said there was a banner over the DNC that said it's only sex in the 1990s, actually, there was not a banner over the DNC. Of course not. I'm arguing by exaggeration. But it was the mantra. In case anyone's confused about that, it just came out as a little bit like... We have a highly educated audience of political hacks, fixers, and...

I thought you guys were going mainstream. I thought this was like the smart list of political... Who told Heilman that he was the fact checker here? Yeah, exactly. Save it for Rogan. I've heard you guys are like the smart list of political consultants. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors. ♪

Something happened yesterday that was interesting. The Florida Supreme Court issued a series of decisions, one of which was essentially upholding the six-week abortion ban in Florida, which seems bad for the Republican Party generally. And obviously, Trump feels that way because he was very critical of the six-week ban.

uh, abortion ban, but they also put an abortion rights initiative on the ballot. Yeah. Along with, by the way, in anticipation of Heilman reaching his retirement age and moving down there, a legalized marijuana, uh, thing on the ballot down there as well. Uh, so, uh,

Which all of which should sort of change the nature of turnout down there. Murphy, you're a Florida hand. Yeah, I'll tell you, you know, it's this one really got on my radar because in 16, Florida was was pretty tight. But Dade County totally collapsed for the Democrats. And part of that was sending Kamala Harris down to a.

a county during kind of a perfect storm with male Latinos, the Venezuelan issue and everything. And the Democrats in Florida just have not been that good. You know, it's one of their weaker operations. The Washington generals have offered them some tips and that would probably improve things. But this, this could put Florida in semi play, which is another resource drain. So back to the money thing we opened with the Dems can afford to go sink real dough in there.

and try to light it on fire. And the Trump campaign, it's a resource drain. They're not really ready for it. It's another wobbly state party. You know, I would give Trump the advantage there. The state's been moving in a Trumpy direction, but this issue has power. It'll be on the ballot. So I think Florida goes into the interesting column now. It also forces Trump, who's a voter in the state of Florida,

Florida to take a position, whether he's going to support the thing or not. And it puts him right back in the middle of a issue. He doesn't want to have anything to do with. He's just going to attack meatball Ron for that six week abortion. That's a meatball Ron idea. I'm not into it. I don't like it at all. It's stupid. No VP for you. But the initiative itself is, I think, uh,

a problematical for him. Go ahead, John. A hundred percent. The Barack Obama wins, uh, wins Florida by three in 2008, which is by one in 2012. Uh,

Hillary loses it by one to Trump in 2016, and Biden loses it by three in 2020. Florida's getting redder and redder. Not trending, yeah. Not trending in the blue direction. In the right direction. And so I don't think it'd be in the Biden campaign today, says this is now a battleground state. No, no. I do think that people in the Biden campaign are...

are going to watch it pretty carefully. And to Murphy's point, spend a little money down there, make Trump, you know, be worried about it. If you get to September and the thing is getting tighter and tighter. It's one more reason having more money is helpful. Exactly. And if the thing is getting tighter and tighter, then you can start to really, and you have still that big financial advantage. You can really do some, you can really mess around down there. And the two big trends in that state, and I'm not from Florida and I will never live there in retirement, no matter whether they legalize weed or not. But

But the two biggest trends are what's happened is that they're colliding, right? Which is Trump's strength with Latinos is real. It's the reason why he – the whole difference between being Hillary by one and Biden by three has been the collapse of Hispanic support. Right. Exactly right. Especially in Florida. So you've got one trend line, which is that Trump is riding that wave of increased Latino support. And then you've got what really is the truism of our time, which is anytime the abortion is on the ballot, Democrats have benefited. Exactly.

Forget about what the polling shows every, you know, from Kansas on. Yeah. Yeah. We've just seen it. So it's like, you've got abortion, abortion politics playing for Democrats. You've got Latino ethnic politics playing up for Trump case. Probably it still means Florida's out of reach for Biden, but I can imagine you will look up in September and we go, uh,

hold on a second here. This thing's like really in play and the Dems can afford a $70 million bet there to light the place on fire. And that is a strategic move. That's smart. We've talked about this before, but this is not the only state where there is, uh, an initiative or potentially initiative on the ballot. Uh, Democrats are fighting hard to get the initiative on the ballot in Nevada, in Arizona. They're going to need it. They're going to need it in Nevada. No question. No question about it. Uh,

And look, this is one of the issues that will have real appeal to younger voters who are not very motivated right now and certainly not trending in the way that Biden needs them to trend. There's anger about a lot of it.

economic issues about the war. But this is one that really does rally them. By the way, Biden posted an ad this morning that is right on this point. It's very strong. Because for 54 years, they were trying to get...

Roe v. Wade terminated, and I did it, and I'm proud to have done it. In 2016, Donald Trump ran to overturn Roe v. Wade. Now, in 2024, he's running to pass a national ban on a woman's right to choose. I'm running to make Roe v. Wade the law of the land again so women have a federal guarantee to the right to choose. Donald Trump doesn't trust women. I do. I'm Joe Biden, and I approve this message.

That's a pretty straightforward, very straightforward, right, Adam, using his own voice. Comparative, Murphy. It's a contrast. This is like right down mainstream. It's a good play. I'll take the contrarian point on one part of it, though. Yeah. I love it. The set Florida on fire. It's great in Nevada, another state where it's on the ballot. You can overestimate the power of the abortion issue in Michigan and Wisconsin and to some extent Georgia.

Still a winner, but not quite the sledgehammer. People forget, I mean, you won't because, you know, you started with Wilson. But Michigan was a very strong Democratic pro-life state, kind of like Pennsylvania. Some of that's still there. So it's a double there, not a home run. Look at the midterms in Michigan. Yeah, no, I agree. They had it on the ballot. Gretchen Whitmer wins by over 10 points there for governor.

And they get the constitutional thing. Yeah, but it was a lot more than abortion with her. She's got a lot of... But all the candidates did well. All the Democratic candidates did well. It is a cushion for Dems. And in the upper Midwest, it's not as strong in a presidential race. In Michigan, it's the reason that Dems took over for the first time in 40 years, both chambers of the legislature in a midterm.

Third-less turnout. Well, they also—wasn't it also the Constitution? They also got a constitutional—didn't they also change the Michigan State Constitution? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a majority position, but I'm telling you, the Dems are clinging to this thing like, Biden's age doesn't matter, we have this issue. And I'm just saying it can be overrated. In those states. It's not overrated in many other—in most states. I agree. Let me ask you one question about this Democratic turnout. Democratic turnout has been disproportionately good. Democrats have been on a real roll since the midterms.

in special elections and regular elections. Since Dobbs. Right, since Dobbs, yes. I always say that the two most valuable players for Democrats are Donald Trump and Samuel Alito. But you get to... The question that hasn't been answered is, can you extrapolate from what's gone on in these elections to a general presidential election? It used to be... That's the key. It used to be that Republicans had an advantage in these elections because Republicans

Highly educated, well-to-do voters came out in greater numbers than what was then the Democratic base. Now the bases have sort of flipped. Flipped, yeah. So the question is, does that trend hold in a general election? Or do the more culturally conservative downscale voters who show up

Trump not as worried. But I don't say that's such a funny thing, though, because, of course, in midterms is when we normally think about that low turnout elections will always favor Republicans. And I just I feel like the Dobbs thing is is not as Murphy to your point. I'm not sitting here saying, no, Joe Biden's age is an issue and this will be the silver bullet and it's all fine. Democrats will be done. Biden's got it in the bag. But I do think that we've seen and

Yeah, and I was one of those people who, after Dobbs, was like, I have no idea what's going to happen. We've never seen anything like this before. A right taken away. Will people mobilize? Will people turn out? I don't have any idea. But every time it's been a testament in every state, red states, blue states, purple states,

It's been a giant motivator. And I just there's not been a contrary piece of evidence. We don't know what will happen in this general election, but there's not been one thing you can point to where the power of Dobbs has not been greater than expected by even people who are even people who thought it would change a lot are still kind of like blown away by how much it's changed. The whole question is the new factor, Biden, who they want to fire on the ballot.

That's the only new factor. And is that big enough to partially eclipse it or not?

I think it will eclipse it. The question is to what degree. But it's net a plus for the Dems on every level and almost every place. By the way, this Florida ruling, which will have reverberations in other states on the six-week ban, is going to reignite the issue again. The Supreme Court has some matters in front of it that could as well. But listen, you guys talk about these voters who are disinterested right now, not engaged,

uh, generally, uh, uh, economically, uh, on lower economic rungs, uh, and so on these voters, I mean, poll after poll after poll suggests that the economy is really a big issue for them. I want to play something that just, it just drives me nuts. And I'm going to say it every week until the president who's an avid listener of this podcast finally gets the message. Uh,

Here he is. He did a little interview with Al Roker on NBC on the Today Show yesterday for the Easter egg hunt at the White House. And Roker asked a pretty simple, direct question.

And listen to the president's answer. When people are saying, you know, but Mr. President, I'm feeling I'm feeling, you know, my buck isn't going as far. What do you say to those folks about the economy and what's going on? Well, I say we have the best economy in the world. We've got to make it better. We really do have the best economy in the world. Jobs are up more than they've ever been. We're in a situation where the lowest unemployment rate in 50 years is maintained. We have people just put people. Look,

I think we're going to find out that what happened is a consequence of the crisis we had in health.

is going to have a lasting effect. And we just got to get people to move again. We're ready. I mean, I think the country's ready to come together in a way that I've never, I mean that sincerely. I'm truly optimistic. Okay. So the question was about cost of living and he immediately goes to, we've got the greatest economy in the world and he does it again and again and again.

Yeah. I mean, what the hell? By the way, that crashing sound you hear is the president ardent listener of the podcast throwing yet another iPhone across the oval because he has dug in on this Irish stubbornness, which I know well. He just wants to grab by the lapels. And by the way, if you know all political consultants know when you work for incumbents,

You always have this conversation because every incumbent has already written the first ad and they hand it to you on a scrap of paper, which is here are the 28 things I've done for you. You sons of bitches, you owe me your vote. And that's the spot they always want. You have to pry it out of their, their mind. And Biden is not letting go of thinking he can jawbone people into thinking it's a better economy. And it is a big mistake. I hope he's not left in November, repeating the words of the immortal big bill Thompson, uh,

mayor of Chicago in the 1920s when he lost and said, the people have spoken, the dirty bastards. I voted for Big Bill Johnson. So is the answer to this, I mean, David, your answer to this is what? Is to basically, you have to grant the premise on some level, which is

Yes. We're not there yet. Well, and the thing is, but do you have to be specific about this one thing, right? Because the reality here is that, you know, whenever every president who's got the unemployment rates going down, but in truth,

it's a number. And if you don't have a job and now you have a job that affects you, but most people have jobs. The GDP growth doesn't matter that all of these things are just big aggregate numbers. Stock market. Here's the thing that affects absolutely every single person, rich, poor, middle-class, which is cost to eggs, cost to gas. Those things are still too high. Does this, but your view is Biden has to basically say, look, the difference is of course, rich people don't have to worry about the cost of eggs.

But most people do. And I think, you know, they're actually rich because they do worry about the cost of stuff. But can I just have one minute to just vent as I do? This is therapy for me. OK, Joe Biden is supposed to be the guy from Scranton. Mr. Empathy. This is what Scranton people in Scranton are talking about.

And this is you have to link up with people where they are. I mean, we learned that lesson in the Obama campaign when we we crowed about our economic achievements, when people were still feeling the effects of the Great Recession. And and what we ultimately figured out is we got to be on their side.

And it's fine to say, listen, in many ways, the economy is so much better than it was when we got here. And you can quickly list those. But that's not how people experience it. When you go to the supermarket, when you go when you pay your rent, when you go to the gas station, that's how you experience the economy. And that's not working for people right now. And it's not working for these reasons. And then I think I'd go right after, you know,

I'd go after sort of the corporate bad guys and so on for price gouging, which they're doing, by the way. They have all these things going, but they're not really highlighting them. They do one-offs on going after the big grocers for raising prices far more than their costs and blaming the pandemic. You know, they go after the price gouging on rents.

Justice Department is, but they don't, it's a one-off. And that's where he should be going. Put yourself on the side of people. Class warfare, damn it, it built the Democratic Party. Oh, God, yes. Hey, yeah, listen. I just want to say, Axelrod, I just, Murphy on the regular sends me a screenshot of a headline from Politico back in January, which said, Joe Biden called David Axelrod a prick. It won't shut him up.

And I was going to say, this is QED. I'm trying to help. QED, right here. I'm trying to help. I am sending you, did I give you a Pricks for Biden campaign button?

No, I don't have that yet. I want one. I qualify. Yeah. You don't have one, Murphy? No. No. Come on. I sent you all that EV merch. Come on. I have a tranche of them sitting in front of me on my desk. They'll be in the... Better have a union bug. Murphy's going to run the motor pool for that organization, fill it all with the EV cars, and I'll be the treasurer. I can do a lot of it.

embezzlement. Time to organize. But look, let me just say, I don't agree with some of this stuff ideologically, but as a matter of politics, God, why he can't start where people are, which is stuff costs too much.

And then say, we're doing the hard work. And the question is, as we land this thing and the economy does get better, whose side is who on? Trump's on his side. I'm on your side. 100%. That's what you have to pick here. Who's going to land the plane and on what runway? Runway for working people.

or the Donald Trump, you know, runway, which is not about you. The runway for Donald Trump, runway for Donald Trump. This should be center cut for Joe Biden. Center cut. This is what helped win 2020. It wasn't

the soul of America. Yes, people wanted more decency and they wanted more calm, but it was also, but it was empathy. And I understand you, what you're going through. I understand. I feel your pain. No, it's Clinton. I feel your pain. I know when you look at that grocery scanner every week,

And you see a bigger number and you wonder what the hell happened. You better have an answer for that or they can always get a new president. Trump's argument is, and I've said this before, Trump's argument is the world's out of control. Biden's not in command. Biden's argument should be, I'm fighting for you. Trump's fighting for himself. Exactly. And this fits right into...

right into that. But instead is saying is you're wrong about the problems. We're doing great. And I'm going to take a nap now because I'm old and I don't get it. The deadly attack on Biden is going to be he's too old to get the economy. He's out of touch, you know, and that is that's going to cut. The question is, does his pride overcome his better judgment here? So far, not. OK, then let's take a break right here and we'll be right back.

Last question that also came up in my session with Plouffe and Rove was, should Biden debate? Plouffe was very, very strong on he has to, he needs to. Where was Carl? Yeah, what did the Rovers say? Carl said he thought that the debates would be decisive. And Carl made the point, which is absolutely right, it's less what people say than how they say it in that debate. And if Biden holds up,

then, you know, that would be his stress test. And so the thing is that Biden has said when asked about this, we'll see how he behaves. Now, as I pointed out there, if that is the test, he's not biting. There's no debate, though. Somebody will be losing. There will be a debate. I think they're wanted. But I would amend what Plouffe said. It's really important that Biden have a good debate.

not really important to debates. Well, I think what Ploff's saying is that he needs to, he needs to do it to pass the test. Right. I totally agree with that. Like Reagan in 80, just to put it in parlance that you relayed to Murphy. Or like the State of the Union.

And like what he had to do in the state of the union, there's like these basic performance tests. Like I, you know, I know you guys talked about this on the, on the podcast, but it's like, you know, the state of the union was a big deal. It was a big deal. Cause a lot of people were like, you know, Joe, he's going to be basically be like a cadaver up there. He got up there. It wasn't a cadaver. It didn't matter what he said. It didn't matter how he said it didn't matter. They went too fast. Didn't matter that he, none of it mattered. All that mattered was that like, that dude was like, Oh, he's not a cadaver.

He's not drooling on his shirt. Great. And he knew who he was, and he was not out of his mind wandering around calling people by the wrong name. He exceeded expectations. One thing that he will benefit from in a debate is low expectations. Well, and also just...

Think back to 2020 when they debated. The debate, that first debate, was one of the great shit shows of our time. And the honest to God truth is that they both were terrible in it. But the truth was Biden didn't seem like a lunatic. So it was kind of like he ended up winning that debate, not because he was particularly good at it, but just because he was able to stand up there on stage and watch Trump like fulminate and do all this kind of craziness. They're seen as a win for Biden. I think that could happen again. I mean, Trump, this is a place where

There's this thing, you know, the liberal talking point, which is,

Trump is diminished mentally. Biden is diminished mentally. But people only pay attention to Biden. And Trump is worse and all that. And there's some truth to that. But the reality is that in this setting is when you could actually benefit from that. Where Biden being – no one's going to care if Biden stammers a little bit, stutters a little bit, if Trump's sweating, red-faced, raving. Well, and think about where Trump's head might be at that point. Bonk!

He may be convicted. We don't know whether he'll have been tried on the January 6th thing. But this is not just about winning election for Trump. This is like about staying out of jail, about staying out of jail. So there'll be an element of desperation there that might come into play.

into play. Well, we'll see whether that happens. Maybe on both sides, because Trump, Biden, with this economic message, could still be losing. Yeah, for sure. So it'll be two desperate old guys, you know, but again... These guys get off that mantle. To win, Biden needs a good debate. That is like golden rule of gravity of the campaign, and they ought to start working on that every single day. I'm sure they're thinking about it. You know, I don't know if they have any confidence in him. When they punted on the Super Bowl interview, the easiest thing in the world to do...

A really good chimp could get through that. And they were afraid to do that. That means there's a good day and bad. Something's going on on the staff level that makes them really afraid of their guy being out there. And I think it's an illusion for them to think they have a choice. Here's a great Hacks on Tap real insider thing. Deep, deep insider thing. See, Rogan doesn't have any of this. What does it mean, David...

to Biden's ability to debate to have to do debate prep probably without Ron Klain. Well, there are other people who are good at debate prep. I know. Karen Dunn. There are people who've learned at Ron Klain. There's great debate prep people. But Ron Klain's done every Biden debate prep forever, and he's the best one ever. Yeah, he's great. We had Klain and Tom Donilon back in 2008. And

Tom being very close to Biden as well. Look, I think that you want him to be comfortable in that debate prep, but you also and you also need people who don't want him to be too comfortable and aren't willing to tell him what he needs to do. Exactly. Maybe change it up. But I've been through debate. I've been through a couple of debate preps with Biden. You know, it's a he has his own

way of doing things. And, uh, David's also been through a color debate person, Barack Obama, who wasn't always the easiest to get through a debate prep, to be honest. Nobody debate prep is a pain in the neck, but listen, Obama was, he was mostly better than anybody I've ever dealt with on that. So, um, well, you know, who is really great at debate prep, the late Joe Lieberman, who I think we're going to do. How's that transition segue? Yeah. I just liked Joe. I did a speech gig with him about a year ago. He was sharp on top of it.

And he was appalled. This is the thing people don't know about Lieberman. He loved to talk campaign stuff and old campaigns. He was a total junkie for it. He actually wrote a book about a famous Connecticut political boss, uh,

And he was a good guy with a strong compass who didn't mind taking heat. And he was damn hard to beat in an election. So I just respected him on a lot of levels. And the only thing we disagreed on was this no labels madness. But he argued that case with Verve and Charm. And it just...

breaks my heart because he was so sharp and had so much left to give that literally an accident out of nowhere ended a full life of public service early. So I just wanted to

Give a little salute out to the late, great Joe Lieberman. He was one of the most delightful people, truly. I mean, put aside his stances on any given issues or whatever, and the left hates him and blah, blah, blah. Just as a reporter who talked to him a lot over the course of many years, he was one of the just most delightful, kind people.

Nice, true hearted, like public servant, funny, observant. I mean, he would, he could, he could tell a great story. Uh, sometimes on the record, some of his off, he was just a really good dude. And you could be like, I disagree with him a lot of things, but I always thought it was never, I never didn't learn something from talking to him. And I never didn't felt like he was, he was ever anything other than just generous with his time and, and, and, and, and, and really in the game for the right reason.

Yeah. You mentioned never losing an election. He, back in 2006, you'll remember, was in deep trouble because Democrats were angry about his support, his strong support for the war in Iraq. Is that the Ned Lamont election? That was the Ned Lamont election?

He went to a party dinner to campaign for Lieberman, at which Lieberman was booed, and Obama stuck up for Lieberman, and the anti-war folks were angry at him for doing it. The thing is that after the nomination, Obama endorsed Lamont, as did most Democrats, and Lieberman was angry about that, and he was angry—

I think in some ways it liberated him. In other ways, I don't think he ever got over the fact that people who he was close to walked away from him after he lost that nomination. And, you know, I think it...

in some ways got it. He didn't endorse Obama in 2008 because his friend John McCain was running, spoke at the Republican convention. Also didn't endorse him in 2012. This close to being John McCain's running mate. I knew I liked him. This close. But boom, I want to just, before we wrap it up here, one other plug, and I'm going to break our golden rule of selfishness here and plug another podcast. But our friend that bolstered Zach McCrary has a great podcast called pro politics and

You must have been on it, huh? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was like, yes, 15. You eventually came around, too. You've been on it, right? I demanded it. I said, if you had Murphy, you had to have me. Yeah, right. Equal time. Anyway, if you are a fan of old school Texas politics, he's got Ken Hance on the last episode. One of the great storytellers, Reagan stories. And I won't go into a long Ken Hance. I worked for him in one of his races.

It's a great podcast. People talk about working in politics in their career. But the Hans one is if you're any kind of political junkie and you love the old school Texas stuff, you got to listen to this episode. It'll get you hooked on it. And boy, is it fun to listen to Ken Hans, a legendary congressman from West Texas who originally beat a young George W. Bush in his first race and went on to being all over the Reagan stuff, switch parties, them to our. Anyway, it's it's really worth it.

What's the hacks on tap VIG on the ad revenues for that podcast? You guys are obviously in the tank for this thing. There's some money coming in from this for you guys. Yeah, yeah. We got some crumpled bills Chicago style. Either that or it goes right into Murphy's pocket, which may be... He's got a young child. He needs it. I understand. They're supporting my charity, Californians Against Seal Hunting, or CASH. You can just write down your check for that. We're doing important work. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back.

All right, if you have a mailbag question, just email it to us at hacksontap at gmail.com, hacksontap at gmail.com, or we got all fancy and now we have a phone number where you can leave us a voicemail. We'll do it on the air. Just use your name and try to keep it around 25 seconds, okay? We're not doing a two-hour pod here. I can never remember the numbers, so they made me record it.

773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471. Is that a Murphy AI right there? There's no way that was a human. There's no way that was a human reading that thing. But we should point out to our listeners that if you want to have your question answered, you got a better shot if you come in through the voicemail than if you send it in by email because we're, of course, an audio company.

production here so it makes nobody can remember the numbers so we only get a couple of voicemails so we're almost forced seven eight nine four five three nine two one one i sound like ramona lemmy somebody email us if you know who ramona lemmy was a great trivia question first question for brother axelrod this is from kenny and it's voicemail

Hey guys, it's Kenny in San Diego. If you were advising the Biden campaign, what strategies would you suggest to boost African American turnout and support?

Thanks a lot. It's a great question, Kenny. And I think it's probably one that is absorbing a lot of brainpower over at the Biden campaign right now, because as we've mentioned here before, if you look at poll after poll, Trump is doing better among African-Americans than Biden can afford right now, polling in the between 20 and 20.

as high as 24 or 5 in some polls. That is unacceptable. That can't happen. If that happens, he'll be elected president. So now the question is whether that's real. Bakari Sellers was on the show last week, and he said that...

that he thought the real contest was between Biden and the couch, not Biden and Trump. But either way, Biden needs those votes. He got 88 percent, 87, 88 percent of the African-American vote in the last election. And that's going to be the key in some battleground states.

And I think that two things. One is I think they have to make it's young black men who are peeling away most readily. And I think economic arguments are going to be very, very important there. And I think comparative is very important there. I think comparative, frankly, is the way they have to run this whole campaign. I don't think selling people on the Internet.

on the beneficence or whatever of the democratic party is going to carry the day. Uh, they need to understand the choice and what the implications are on the economy. Uh, maybe on criminal justice issues, maybe on, uh, uh,

education and student loans. They need a basket of issues, but it needs to be in a comparative frame so people feel like they have a stake in the choice, not just a stake in Joe Biden or the Democratic Party. Mike.

I'm going to give you a question from a guy named Mike. Oh, it's going to be good. Mike wants to know from Mike, why do third-party efforts always seem to focus on the presidency where they have no realistic electoral prospect except spoilers? Wouldn't a Congress-focused effort make more sense? Yeah, so what normally happens when you have a wrong-track election, where most people think things are seriously off on the wrong track and they're all grumpy,

You have a bunch of people who kind of want to vote against politics as usual. So that's when these independent things get kind of attractive, at least for a while. You know, you had Ross Perot, kind of a populist revolt. You had John Anderson, a wine and cheese liberal Republican revolt in 1980. So here we are, wrong track election. People don't like politics. They don't like the two choices. So it's fertile ground for one of these things. Now, often they fall apart late, by the way.

but they can still have in the right places an impact that's normally a spoiler.

So, yeah, I think it's kind of silly to focus on the presidency. Well, what about, but the question he asked is, what about third-party efforts on... Yeah, yeah, no, I'm winding around to it. I'm doing this Axelrod style. I'm running all four bases here. I'm double parked, so hurry up, will you? Yeah, you've got to move to a safe location because Biden's already sent out the ninjas. So...

You know, there might be a few congressional places where it's a better area to test it. I mean, Joe Lieberman, who we talked about, ran an independent campaign successfully for the Senate. So.

It's a better idea to try it in Congress, but it's generally hard. We're in a Coke-Pepsi system now. Now, once we might have voting on mobile phones and all the jets and stuff for the future democracy, that might break down some barriers. Though, having worked around the world, including in multi-party places...

you know, careful what you wish for. There's a certain focusing effect of our two party system, but it definitely, it's a waste on the presidential level and it could can lead to stupid spoiler things. And I think Biden faces that threat this year. Did you guys see that Bobby Kennedy clip when he was on that out of his mind?

On Aaron Burnett the other night? No, no, I missed that. It had family. And what happened? She basically said, do you think there's really any argument that Joe Biden is as great a threat to American democracy as Donald Trump? And Bobby Kennedy was like, I can make that argument. I can make that argument. I mean, like, I just haven't seen him be quite as nakedly anti-justice.

Like, this is so nakedly anti-Biden. Like, not like the idea that Trump, just to see him like kind of on television saying this thing about this. I mean, I don't know, whatever you think about Biden. Listen, for the Biden people, I think the more he plays to the Trump constituency, the

the better. You know, they need to strip away these young people who are attracted to him by his anti-corporatism and by climate and so on. All right, bat and clean up here for John from Ellen. If Trump loses in November, how will his power over the party change?

Will ours still feel the same need to bow down to him? It seems like there are a fair number of ours that are tired of living in fear of his retribution if they disagree with his insane ideas. What say you? Well, I say first that if Donald Trump loses in November, the first thing that will happen is he'll try to stage an insurrection. So we'll see how that goes. And then if the insurrection fails...

He's probably going to end up in jail. There's no doubt that a jailed, defeated Donald Trump is over as a personal kingmaker in the Republican Party. I think that fear of retribution has really never been the main issue with Trump. The main issue with Trump is that people in the party are afraid of Trump's voters. And the party has become magified by – it's a process that started before Trump and Trump accelerated it and then kind of consolidated it.

Will people in the Republican Party still be afraid of the MAGA base, that those voters who love Trump are still out there? And will the kind of voters, the normal Republicans, will they still be afraid of...

own voters. I think they will still be afraid of their own voters. Donald Trump, though, if he loses, will be a completely, I think, tight... He will not be a force any longer in American politics if he loses and then fails in his effort to try to steal another election. I agree. Wait, agreement does...

Murphy, what do you think about that? No, he'll be a husk. He'll be washed up, two-time loser. No, no, no, of course. Listen, I think his problems are... He's going to have other problems other than leading the Republican Party if he loses this election. I've always felt this election was his... Yeah, he's going to find out that in the can, hairspray costs more than a few cigarettes. It's going to be a hard time for him. I mean, I've always felt that this was his... That this was his...

legal defense strategy was running for president again. That was like a big part of what he was out to do. So I don't think the Republican Party, I think his constituency will live and there will be others who will try and grab a hold of it. And there'll be a fight as to who the new generation leader is of that movement.

And I'm not sure anybody can replicate what Trump has done, but I don't think that he is going to, having lost again and facing all the legal peril he has, is going to continue to be the leader of the Republican Party.

All right. There we go. Johnny Heilman, thank you. It's great to see you, brother. You've got to come back more often. I mean, how many invitations do we have to extend? Well, Murphy just somehow immediately loses my number. Basically, every time after I've seen him, this will be all. About six months from now, I'll be like, I requested you this week. I'm your only friend. Never forget that. And I'm going to call you about EVs. We're going to sort that out.

I look at you, I think Rivian. Yeah, I was going to say, is Rivian okay? You're calling him about E.D.? What are you talking about? No, no, he calls me about that. E.V.s, electric vehicles. Oh, I see E.V.s, yes. EvPolitics.org, America, join the movement. But yeah, I'm happy to hear it, Johnny. Whenever I'm feeling flaccid, Mike's my first phone call. I'll talk to you guys later. All right, now we absolutely have to go. Yeah, no, let's get out of here. All right, see you, pal. All right, okay, see you. See you later, guys. Bye. Bye.

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