The Fight (with Tim Alberta)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. And I think we all can agree whether people like them or not.

or they don't like him, in light of what happened to him on Saturday, he has proven to be one tough S.O.B. So, Mike Murphy, we're missing you here in Milwaukee, but...

I understand why you wouldn't want to.

And neither are true this year. So I'm more than happy watching it from my book. But you could have gotten a using there's bratwurst. I mean, think about that. No, my day is past. I was interested, though, to hear. That was from Sean O'Brien that...

boss of the Teamsters who gave an effective speech, although as an old Republican, it's new for me to hear about economic terrorism from the, uh, dais of a Republican national convention. That was quite a U-turn there. Well, listen, there's, there's nobody who, uh, knows, uh, and has chronicled the evolution of the Republican party in this country better than Tim Alberta of the, uh, Atlantic who is with us, uh,

Good to see you, buddy. Tell me, you know, I watched that speech by Sean O'Brien and I looked at the crowd and other than the SOB line,

I think people were trying to figure out what to do. Yeah, they were, Axe. And Mike, thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, it was interesting. So I'm actually up in my perch right now in the press risers where I was last night during that speech. And, you know, this is my fourth Republican convention, and I was really carefully scanning the crowd. And during those moments, it was interesting because up until then, I really found myself marveling at how

incredibly unified, for lack of a better word, this convention is. I mean, especially relative to 2016, when half the conventions... Except when Mitch McConnell was introduced. Except when Mitch McConnell was booed. Yeah, that was interesting. But, like, you think back to 2016 in Cleveland, guys, half the delegates here were anti-Trump. I mean, you didn't see...

very many MAGA hats on the convention floor back then. And, and to see how dramatically the party apparatus has been transformed in those eight years is really something. And that's why the O'Brien speech was interesting because it was really the only moment last night I felt that

where there was discomfort in the crowd. There were a lot of sort of glances being exchanged and people not quite sure how they should be reacting, because it's one thing to talk about being sort of pro-labor as a general construct, as we're, you know, talking about the realignment of the Republican Party to become this multiracial working class coalition. That's all fine in the abstract. But when you start attacking corporations as individuals,

You know, as committing economic terrorism, like you said, David, that's that's a very different message than we're accustomed to hearing at Republican events. In my view, it just proves and I'm not going to try to grind my axe because I get why they did it.

But the Trump world politically is a temple built upon cynicism. So they're like, get the Teamster guy to raise the roof and talk jobs in the economy, our issue, all good. And if he wants to get into his Eugene Zeb stuff, fine with us, because content doesn't matter. It's all theatrics. Any kind of populism works.

And some of those delegates are still old line repubs who've kind of seen a lot. They smell winter on Trump. No other place they could be by choice anyway because there's no viable, you know, other path in the party right now. But I could feel the mouth vomit as an old Republican at some of that stuff. But the Trump world doesn't matter.

I mean, Reagan was buried at this convention ideologically. I mean, this was more than about showmanship or messaging. Tim, it was also about blunt transactional

Trump wants to stop the Teamsters from endorsing Biden and try and get them to endorse him. And the price of it was to let O'Brien speak at the convention and put him in a featured role. So that, you know, that was the that was the tradeoff. But they have they did know that.

Well, let's just go through this because we're sort of burying the lead here, but we will get back to it. They have made a huge, he's making a huge bet on economic populism, and that was reflected in his choice of J.D. Vance as the running mate. Tim, talk about that and what your read on that whole thing.

deal is and what impacts it's likely to have now and what impact it's likely to have in the future. For months, David, what I've been hearing from people close to Trump is that

The conversations around a running mate were really always operating on parallel tracks. On the one side, there was conversation about effectively a caretaker VP, someone who would be sort of vanilla and non-controversial and who could help to, you know, maybe rough off some, sand off some of his rough edges. R.E. Governor Burgum.

i.e. a Doug Burgum, maybe even a Glenn Youngkin, somebody who, you know, although Youngkin's maybe a little too young in age to fit the bill exactly. And too tall. And too tall and too handsome, right? But Burgum was like... You know, wouldn't kneeling work? I think kneeling seems to work. Kneeling would work, yes. Or just cut him down to size a bit. Mega face tattoo. I think that was on the menu for possible fixes. But, you know, they had... And the interesting thing, guys, is that

For the bulk of the campaign, as far as I've been able to report it out, Trump was really leaning heavily in that direction for a whole host of reasons. The other track, though, running parallel, was this idea of picking, effectively, an heir apparent to the mega-empire, picking his successor to the movement. And I think Trump, for a long time, was really uneasy with that idea. He kind of preferred to...

okay, let's win, let's serve four years, and then I can be kingmaker for the rest of my life and be able to, from the sidelines, demand everyone come kiss the ring, and then I can sort of watch them fight it out for my affections later. Something changed, though, in the last, from what I've been told, like the last four to five weeks, his thinking on this really began to shift

And he really warmed up to the idea of hand-selecting his successor here, someone who he felt really had not only undergone this dramatic personal evolution to come to see the light on Trumpism, but who was able to better articulate the sort of the America-first populism that Trump has only really been able to describe in sort of

blunt, visceral, sweeping, nonspecifics. And in advance, I think he really sees someone who can actually put meat on those bones. And so it's a really, it's a fascinating evolution that Trump himself has been on, recognizing that, and let's be clear, I think the biggest drawback all along for Trump was the idea that

That he could be upstaged by picking someone who was younger, who was more ideologically committed, someone who might be a bigger draw than he is, frankly, in some ways. And yet he did come to embrace this idea and ultimately picked Vance. And I think that was surprising to some people. You know, in the end, he picked the son he wished he had.

Because, you know, it's the cleanest MAGA shot he could take. It totally resonates. Now, it is bizarro weird to somebody like me, because I knew J.D. back in his anti-Trump days. Liked him. Pretty smart guy. But it made me think back to one of the big Republican Party fundraisers in 16 for another candidate.

actually 15, called me up and said, well, I just spent an hour with Trump. And Trump said, look, I'm just putting on a show for the rubes here. You know, I get it, blah, blah, blah, which he did to a lot of people in the establishment back then. A face in the crowd. Right, total face in the crowd. And I think on a deep level, he connects with Vance that way because Trump's a cynic. Part of it is like, you believe they fall for this crap. And Vance is a guy who's done the 180 with a reckless abandon that's impressive.

to the point where in some ways he is kneeling down. He's done a total surrender to Trumpism and become a pretty good zealous convert. I don't know if he believes any of it or not, but I think even that cynicism is a point of binding with Trump.

So there they are. And you're right. He has set up, I predict, by the way, trouble in paradise here because Trump doesn't like rivals. He doesn't like somebody with more talent. So by setting up Vance's heir apparent, he's also set up future trouble should they get into the Oval. But anyway, I think it was the... Well, he'll start running for president.

Yesterday. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But he was also the hammer choice for all the talk. And maybe it's tactical spin for the convention. We'll see if they can execute the kinder, gentler Trumpism. Vance is a hammer.

And so it's going to be interesting to see if they can evolve. It's always been kind of a one note kind of hard grievance populism with Vance, who's a, you know, harmony player on that into something else post the assassination attempt. I see all of the stuff that you guys are saying. There's also like a short term, you know, short term play here. One is that he is a good television actor.

personality and someone who can go and says, by the way, you know, Don Jr., Sonny Corleone was pushing this for ever. And Tucker Carlson, you know, was pushing Vance as well. But I do think if you were making political calculations, you'd also say, well,

You know, this kind of populism sells in a lot of the places other than the cities in the Midwest. You know, and they know that the way Biden has, I mean, whether he has a path at all is something we need to talk about. But to the extent he has one, it runs through Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. And, you know, I think Vance is going to be in those states selling that. My question about it is...

He may up the turnout in those areas in between Pittsburgh and Philly, which is the state that really is going to turn this election. But what about the suburbs, you know, and how is he going to play there? A guy who is an anti-abortion, no exceptions guy, you know, a guy who is, you know, an isolationist and a January 6th.

uh, apology, uh, apologist, um, you know, I don't know. So, uh, Tim, I mean, how do you think you live in one of these battleground States? Uh, I, I do as well, but I actually live in a couple of them, but, uh, what, what do you think, what do you think happens? Uh, do you think that he is a plus or a minus in particularly those battleground States? Uh,

Or does it not matter? You know, I was just going to say, David, well, I guess two things. Number one, I think the Trump campaign...

views him as not a plus or a minus. They view, I think that they had done some polling. I think that they'd kicked the tires on a few different options here and ultimately came to the conclusion that really it didn't much matter who they picked as his VP, that Trump is the brand. Trump is the top of the ticket. And ultimately people are going to be voting for or against Donald Trump

pretty much regardless of who he picks. But then I think secondly, and more importantly, more to the point,

They think that this election's over. I mean, they aren't spending much time figuring J.D. Vance's appeal to the suburbanites in Oakland County. They believe that Biden's goose is cooked. And as one Republican said to me the other day when it was becoming really apparent that Vance was going to be the pick, he said,

Look, man, the revolution is on. Like these guys are already thinking way beyond November. And I think the Vance pick is a pretty good indication of that. He's culturally good for the metal bending. We like to call the pop states pop, not soda, which is the Great Lakes from my own beloved Michigan. But I totally agree with Tim. In a Trump world, it's all about Trump.

And he'll be a good messenger. He'll be aggressive. He'll be tactically effective. He'll work hard because of his own ambition. So I think on all that small stuff, he'll be helpful. But in the macro way, it's the Trump show. And I think even though no exceptions, you got those arrows at him, as long as the campaign is about Biden the way it is now.

Very hard to move that to somebody other than Trump. Hard enough to even try to move it to Trump. And they do think it's over, which is a hubris that if the election were held tomorrow, they're right. So I'm dubious. Yeah, no, I, you know, one of the things that's going to be interesting is this national political thing is a lot harder than it looks from the outside, right?

And, you know, he's he's going to be tested in ways that he never was tested. He wasn't a great candidate, Vance, in Ohio. You know, he he barely won a state while the governor was winning by, you know, 20, 20 something. He won by seven.

Uh, you know, now people grow, they learn he, but, uh, you know, he's going to be tested in a lot of different ways here. I wonder if the rest of the Republican party really is just now, uh, going to pledge obeisance to the, you know, to the prince as they do in Saudi Arabia. Uh, you know, is he going to be the, uh, ruler in waiting or are they going to, uh,

have their own ideas when, if, if, if Trump is to win this race, but listen, we bury the lead and the lead is, um, and you couldn't write the script of the last few weeks. I mean, if you were a novel writer, you couldn't write the scripts of the last two weeks, the, uh, the debate, um, followed by the Supreme court ruling that gave, you know, gave Trump, uh, unfettered

or presidents, but this is related to the Trump case, sort of this immunity for anything that's deemed an official action, anything. And then this horrible shooting and assassination attempt in

Pennsylvania, which I want to talk about. And then on Monday, his friend and appointee down in Florida, Judge Cannon, throws out what may be the most open and shut case, which is the mishandling of documents and the hiding of top secret documents. And then he comes into the convention basically as a martyr.

You know, bandage on his ear, sober, you know, you know, I mean, you know, Tim, you've written about folks think he's been sent here by God, that he's God's anointed candidate. And now God must be pissed.

Sorry, go ahead. More of an avenging angel. Well, I think the idea is that God actually, that this is more evidence that God saved him for this moment. These weeks, in a sense, are a microcosm of this race and why they feel so confident, because it starts with Biden's kind of breakdown at the debate.

Uh, and that's the image that people have now, uh, uh, that just cemented the image of Biden. And then it goes to, and then the companion image is a Trump who improbably, uh, you know, is shot as being led out by the secret service and has the presence of mind to pose for a hero photo on his way out the door that now is, will be on every Republican t-shirt for a generation maybe. Um, and, uh,

I don't think Trump is an unbeatable candidate, but I think that he may be unbeatable right now if the race continues to be between him and Joe Biden, because that dynamic is so strong. What's happened in the last few weeks has solidified the dynamic that has driven this whole race, which is Trump strong, Biden weak, Trump strong.

You know, world out of control, need strong man. It just seems like a very, very tough dynamic here. And you can see why the Trump people feel like they're headed more for a landslide, as you've written, than for a squeaker. Yeah, look, we all realize that campaigns are really...

in essence, moments. That's what voters take away. They take away moments. They take away key images. And if you had to name the two enduring images from this campaign to date anyway, one would be Joe Biden looking one foot in the grave at that debate and unable to finish his thoughts, looking pale, sounding very frail and feeble.

And the second image would be Donald Trump pumping his fist defiantly with the blood of the assassins would be assassins bullet dripping down his face. I mean, and those two images would already be quite provocative and evocative and effective on their own, David and Mike, but they actually.

play directly into the central organizing strategy of the entire Trump campaign, which is to make everything about strength versus weakness. As Chris LaCivita, the co-manager of the campaign, told me, it's all about a contrast in visuals, that Americans are visual creatures, that politics are becoming more visual than ever before. And

And everything they've wanted to do to frame this race around strength versus weakness has now effectively been done for them. So let's be clear. I mean, X, I was out at the IOP with you in Chicago several months ago, and we did this live event there where I said then that based on my reporting, I was starting to get a funny feeling that Trump might run away with this thing. And that, you know, and I think a lot of people looked at me like I was nuts and, and,

Obviously, everything we've seen since then has really only accelerated those trend lines. It's just become very difficult to see a scenario in which Biden can beat him. And I think it's frankly, it's much easier to envision a scenario where Trump does push 320, 330 electoral votes. I think that's a more plausible scenario at this point than Biden winning this squeaker running the table in the Midwest.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Biden, it's almost as if the Biden we have now at 81 was invented in a lab to make Trump's strengths the center of the campaign and not his weaknesses. And so that's got to change, which is why I do think this change nominee thing is not over. Parties don't like suicide missions. So, you know, we will see. There's going to be a crescendo next week because if the R's have their stuff together, and there's a chance they don't.

it's still the Trump world. I mean, the first night we saw last night is always kind of freaks and weirdo night. You get them all out of the way. Marjorie Taylor green. All right, Christ, get ready to pull the mic. And the gimmick was the teamster guy, though the real gimmick, which was back to the point you guys are making was Trump doing his triumphant enter did his, uh,

His raised fist salute, you know, the martyr Tucker Carlson there grinning like a Cheshire cat. It was a good night for Trump. And if they can take some of the wackadoodle edges off, not natural for them, but they have something to lose now. They are in control of the race. They are out front. Biden is in a swirl down the drain. They're going to come out of this with the best data advantage over Biden they've had yet.

And then the Dems are going to react to that over the next, you know, post-convention week to 10 days. And something will happen or it won't. And that's going to be it. That's going to be where the die is cast for this race. Now, let me just finish. If somebody new came in,

It could turn everything upside down. I mean, this will be the most exciting presidential ever because it could be a disaster. It could be a reset. You know, right now, the Trump campaign just needs to kill every possible day without controversy and they win. But, you know, it's in Biden's hands whether or not that happens. Yeah. A lot of golf would be a good political prescription. Yeah. Inspect the Fiji Naval Base. OK, then let's take a break right here and we'll be right back.

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This thing is going to intensify now because the story has surfaced that the DNC is going to try and hasten the nomination of Biden to weeks before the election in a virtual vote. They had originally scheduled that because Ohio said they needed to to be certified for the ballot. Ohio changed its law, so now it's clearly not about that. This is about trying to crush the Republicans.

And that immediately has spawned a huge reaction. So you have the image of one party leaving its convention, you know, feeling hale and hearty and relatively unified, other than the aforementioned booing of rhinos.

And the other party, you know, undergoing a civil war in the days leading up to its convention.

I do think Trump, I mean, you look at the data dispassionately and clinically, and I think Chris LaCivita is a very, very smart and very good and deserves a lot of credit for how this campaign has unfolded and for the discipline that they've showed. Unlikely for Trump or unusual for Trump.

But he's still a vulnerable candidate. There's no question about it. I agree on La Cevita, but he's had the easiest Trump to ever deal with because Trump's always been ahead.

There's really never been a bad Trump week in this campaign. And that's where Trump starts to chew the manacles and go and take his own counsel. So Chris has been able to do a great job of keeping cruise control moving there. It'll be when something, and it may not now, they're on the railroad tracks. But if something bad happens, that'll be the real test. And you're right. The debate can never be Trump, not Biden, right?

then it could be a different race. But one thing the assassination attempt did is it made Trump about bigger things, at least right now, than all Trump's own flaws. Trump's now a symbol for democracy under attack, and that elevates him, man. That's a whole different Trump. The question is, can Trump run with that? Or will he be back to doing the enemies list and the grievance? The irony of the whole thing is that it, you know, and I said the night that it happened, you know, now,

nominee vance shot out at a tweet almost immediately you know blaming biden for encouraging this and i said at the time you know people should hold their i said he should be disqualified for shooting that out when he did that uh that tweet which um you got an angry retort from don jr but um uh

But, you know, the shooter, it turns out, was it looks more like the kind of story that we've seen a million times by now, which is that you had a disturbed young kid who got a hold of a gun and for reasons still unknown, but not apparently politics, decided he was going to, you know, do what he did. But the effect.

It's been framed now as an assault on democracy. It's been a frame as an and yeah, you're right that that that strengthens him. Listen, getting to Biden, he did this Lester Holt interview last night, and he's really, really fighting to stay.

And let's be clear, he has enough sway with delegates and with the DNC that if he wants to stay, he can stay. But listen to some, there are a couple of exchanges I want you guys to listen to, and then let's talk about it.

Mr. Trump has said he's giving you a chance to redeem yourself, basically the idea of engaging in another debate. We're going to have another debate. Yeah, you're going to have one in September that's on the books. Would you be open to doing one in the next few weeks? I'm going to debate him when we agreed to debate, and I'm going to debate him in September. But if the opportunity came up to do one between now and then, is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

I'm on the horse. Where have you been? I've done 22 major events. There are thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening.

I'm on the horse. What I'm doing is going out and demonstrating to the American people that I have command of all my faculties, that I don't need notes, I don't need teleprompter. I can go out and answer any questions at all. And I stood there when NATO was in town. I stood there for an hour and answered questions. 23, skidoo. Yeah, not good. Who do you listen to on deeply personal issues like the decisions whether to stay in the race or not?

Me. I've been doing this a long time. The idea that I'm the old guy. I am. I'm old, but I'm only three years older than Trump. Number one. And number two, my mental acuity has been pretty damn good. I've gotten more done than any president has in a long, long time in three and a half years. He keeps pointing to what he's done in the past and

as evidence of what he's going to be like in the future. And it's just not... At one point in the interview, he said, I know people want to know what I'm going to be like at 83 and 84. But he didn't answer any... He can't answer that question. Here's the president with Lester Holt, and Lester Holt is asking him, is he eager to debate again? Is there a sense of wanting to get back on the horse?

I'm on the horse. Where have you been? I've done 22 major events, met thousands of people, overwhelming crowds, a lot happening. I'm on the horse. What I'm doing is going out and demonstrating to the American people that I have command of all my faculties, that I don't need notes, I don't need teleprompter. I can go out and answer any questions at all. And I stood there when NATO was in town. I stood there for an hour and answered questions.

If you were to have, continue to run and be officially nominated, what happens if you have another episode like we saw during the debate? What happens if I have another? Yeah, what happens if you have another performance on that par, on that level? I don't plan on having another performance on that level. All right. Mr. President, it's always good to talk to you, good to see you. Thank you for making some time for us. Sometimes come and talk to me about what we should be talking about. All right. Okay, the issues.

Always happy to talk. You know, so, guys, this is exactly the fear among Democrat elected officials that I've spoken with. They believe that Biden, number one, is keeping his own counsel to the point of that first audio clip, that ultimately there's nobody he's going to listen to about any of this.

And that number two, she doesn't even recognize the extent of the damage that was done by that debate. So when he says, oh, there's not going to be another moment like, you know, this is. And of course, even when he was asked that question, he seems to not understand the question that was being asked. And he had to pause and sort of scrunched up his face and had to be asked again. It's that interview.

only exacerbated the concerns that I'm hearing that you guys are both hearing from a lot of democratic officials. And here's the thing, Biden's answer about, well, I've been doing this a long time. So you got to trust me, right? Like, well, and, and, you know, a professional ball player who's got a long and storied career behind him, but who's clearly lost his fastball and is no longer as effective as he used to be and is getting hit all over the ballpark.

You know, that person saying, well, I've got, you know, that guy saying, well, I, you know, earned a couple of Cy Young's back in the 90s. It doesn't mean much anymore. Right. And especially in politics, it's supposed to be about the future. It's supposed to be a vision casting. Biden is spending so much time reassuring people that he's fine based on what he's been able to do in the past, that he's not able to articulate any sort of forward thinking message about what the future is.

looks like and what his administration would do with another four years and why he is a better choice for all of these anxious,

middle-class families outside of Detroit and Milwaukee and Philly and Phoenix than is Trump. And so all of this has become, it's like the gift that keeps on giving for Republicans because not only has it created this total sense of turmoil and disarray inside the Democratic Party, but it is completely saturated all

all of the media, all of the messaging around Biden. And he's been just he's been prevented from offering any sort of a prescriptive vision for what his presidency would look like in a second term. And I think that's just as damaging. Or contrast, Mike. I mean, that's what you're talking about. When you're an embattled incumbent, you want to put the opponent in in the focus and

and he can't do it. They don't have a candidate. That is the Democratic problem here, because when they hide them, it gets worse. When they put them out to show it's fine, it gets worse. And we've talked about this for years.

Biden has, as a candidate, one speed, which is, let me tell you about my great record, you owe me your vote. He's never been a future-oriented candidate. He wants to talk about all the great stuff I did for you, the economy's better than you know. It's a terrible way to communicate with voters, as Tim says. It doesn't communicate to their anxieties. And he can't escape the old thing because the more he does to try to show he's not too old, the more too old he looks.

So they are bringing a corpse to a knife fight here and Donald Trump is destroying this guy. So it's down to the Democrats. The real fight is the next two weeks in the window. Do they, are they able to pressure him enough publicly? And if they all act like Trump Republicans and whisper, Oh, I never liked this guy in the safety of their, their basement, you know, hideout, it's not going to happen. Democrats are going to have to go public. You know, one of the,

real linchpins to the Biden-Harris reelect from a messaging standpoint was always going to be, look at all of these Republicans who are affiliated or were affiliated with Trump who don't want to see him elected. So look at his own vice president, look at his cabinet secretaries, look at the people who worked with him in the White House and in the administration and the West Wing. All of these people are

have come out and said, Donald Trump shouldn't be president. And that was going to be a really powerful centerpiece of the Democratic messaging campaign this summer and this fall. But now you've got what?

over a dozen, I think we're coming up on a couple of dozen Democratic elected officials who were saying that Biden shouldn't be president. And so this is like manna from heaven for the Trump campaign because I know that they were very concerned about how that advertising blitz, splicing together all the comments of Mike Pence and Paul Ryan and Jim Mattis and others, how damning that was going to be. But in some sense now,

The Trump campaign is able to neutralize that because they're going to be able to point to all these congressional Democrats and say, hey, why do you think it is, American voter, that his own party officials don't want him on the ballot because they don't think he can serve another four years? They don't think he's capable of being your commander in chief. So I think in some sense, this is almost robbed Democrats of their secret weapon.

It also puts Democrats in a tough position, because if you go out there and argue that he is

able to serve four more years voters will look at you like you're nuts you're lying to them yeah and they already feel gaslighted oh they hit it's the new cover-up and the donors are our rate about that i mean i mean look at the basic chokehold trump has on everything who who's younger and more vigorous trump by 20 points even though they're in public perception even though the three points who will do a better job running the economy next year trump by 15 points

I mean, what does Biden have? What's his edge? There's nothing left. Now we've made this point. The question is what will happen. And I think this campaign will be decided in the next two weeks. Yeah, that's my view, too. Two or three weeks. If there's no change, if it's status quo, I think the die is cast. And the question is, does the president realize that this is not the legacy of

that he wants. By the way, I think he's done far better than he gets credit for now. And he has done things of historic importance. And I think history will record that. But when you go to voters and say,

look at what I've done. I just want to finish the job. And you've got a 38% or 37% job approval rating. They want to finish you. Yeah, exactly. So read a good Churchill biography. Hey, I won the second world war. Get out. We hate you. Go away. You know what's funny about that? You guys is so I moderated the final man. The sound check is killing me.

If you hear something in the background, that is authentic convention sound checks to just underscore the fact that Tim Alberta is right on the scene. Live report right from the middle of it. Absolutely. It's funny, guys. What I was going to say is I moderated the final Democratic primary debate of 2020, and

hosted by PBS and Politico, where I was working at the time. And I had the chance to execute a rather long and intensive line of questioning to the candidates about the question of age. And specifically, Biden and I had sort of spirited back and forth on this question of age, fitness, seeking a second term. And at one point when I was asking Biden this, I said,

You would finish your term, I think, as the oldest president in American history, and then you would be asking for a second term at age, you know, going on 82. And Biden actually interrupted my question and said,

Winston Churchill, which I found really interesting. I was just thinking about this again the other day because Winston Churchill was 81 years old when he left permanently as prime minister and in his second run on the job, that is. And so for Biden to compare himself at that point to Winston Churchill as saying, look, I'm an old guy, but I can still get the job done. Just give me the chance.

He conveniently now sort of neglects the fact that Winston Churchill, at the exact age Biden is today, decided that it was time to hang it up and walk away. And by the way, with all due respect to Joe Biden, who is a conservative, I will give some good accomplishments to.

You know, I knew Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill was a friend of mine. And Joe, you're no Winston Churchill. I mean, that's ridiculous. But it gives you a glimpse. Although people mistake you, Murphy, just visually. You have that Churchill look. Yeah, it's the cigars and my love of imperialism. But, you know, the thing is...

I thought we only had one egomaniac running for president. But tragically, it's clear we have two. Yeah, only I. You know, when he got asked in that press conference last Friday about why he wouldn't step aside and be the bridge he promised to be, he said, you know, basically he said, because no one could do what I could do. And there is...

You know, I mean, one of the things that's been complicated for people is their concern about whether Kamala Harris would do better than him. I think there's enough evidence that she would do better than him. The question is, could she do well enough? And could another candidate? Ify, but I'll take it right now because we know what he's not a bridge to the future. He's a diving board and it goes straight down.

Tim, they're not begging for her even though she has vulnerabilities. Isn't that right? No, that's exactly right. And look, let's be clear. You know, I don't think the Trump folks are particularly convinced that Kamala Harris is a rare political athlete whom they need to fear. But.

They have in every way optimized this campaign that they're running to be a very specific race against a very specific opponent. Straight witness Biden-Trump. Yes, all of it.

Anything new is trouble for anything. I totally would force them to fundamentally recalibrate in ways that they don't want to, because right now they think that they're cruising and from all appearances they are. So whether it's Harris or whether it's Newsom or Whitmer or anybody, they just don't want to see a change, period. They believe, as I said earlier, that Biden's goose is cooked and there's no uncooking it.

Mike, did you watch the thing last night? I watched parts of it. It is a painful experience for me as an eight-time GOP convention attendee and operative. But I watched everything that counted. I sped through some of the ham and egg speeches. I missed the Tim Scott brilliant oratory.

But since you're since you're so venerable, how did it compare to the Eisenhower Taft Convention? Far inferior, far inferior. Those were grownups. The Trump moment was a big moment and it was you would expect it to be his demeanor kind of made it more powerful because he wasn't the preening peacock that he usually is. He seemed very somber and and.

and moved. And so that was what it was. They did a lot of work last night on trying to reach out to communities, particularly the African American community that I thought was interesting. And I'm not going to play the clips, but I was really struck by a couple of speakers, John James and Tim Scott, working the angle of they've done more for immigrants than

illegal immigrants than they've done for our communities. And I think that's a big vein that's running through both the African-American community and parts of the Hispanic community right now. But on the whole, Tim, all I could do was sit there and think, man, this is an anachronism.

Just all these guys, these long speeches, one after another, after another. You know, the Democratic Convention 2020 was probably the best convention that I've seen. I mean, I thought we did a good one in Denver and putting it in the stadium and so on. But the ability to mix in video and do interesting things to make it a more contemporary show was... I just...

You know, and plus there weren't that many great speakers last night, I thought. And they had to get their nut balls on there, too. You know, so Marjorie Taylor Greene and Charlie Kirk and so on. But what was your impression generally, both you guys? What was your review of what you saw?

Well, you know, David, I would add to everything you just said and note that the big draw yesterday, the big, suspenseful, dramatic thing that everybody was waiting on, which was the announcement of a running mate, wound up being completely anticlimactic because Donald Trump said,

put it on Truth Social at about two o'clock in the afternoon, right in the middle of the states going through their roll call and the opening ceremony on the convention floor. So a lot of delegates didn't even see Trump's announcement. And then suddenly, very abruptly, Mike Lee, the senator from Utah, who had just been given the news like a minute earlier, when he stood up to announce Utah in the roll call, Mike Lee said, well,

We cast our 40 votes for Donald J. Trump and his newly announced running mate, J.D. Vance. And a bunch of people that I was around, delegates on the floor were like, what did he do? What did Mike Lee just did? Mike Lee just announced Donald Trump's running mate. It was very bizarre. I mean, it was very, very, very strange.

And so I think that felt anticlimactic. But look, let's be clear. Even if the people in the arena are treated to the lousiest show on earth, which I don't think they will be, but I'm just making the point here. This doesn't feel like a convention, David. This feels like a jumpstart.

on an election night victory party. I've never seen a convention full of people so entirely convinced that the race is already over. It's really, that's been my overriding takeaway from being here for the last couple of days. One side of that is I've been treated very nicely here.

Well, we're working on that, David. We're going to see. I would say, I mean, I agree with Tim. It was a giddy appearing convention, not an electric one. It's kind of ersatz and crated. The only thing that counted yesterday was keeping the nut balls somewhat under control and the big Trump moment. They got the big Trump entrance moment, and that was well executed. On little things, just nerdy stuff, I've noticed one.

we have had a definite increase in the number of state delegation leaders who don't blink. Some real wackadoodles led by Corey Leandowski. And the other day we were a little careful about that too. And this is just a nerd thing, but the convention world is its own subculture within the parties. I don't like the design. It looks like a big shattered mirror to me. There's no central focus to it for television. These are little things, just practitioner things, but

The shattered world of a thousand screens really bothered me visually. I assume that they got out of it a bunch of social media stuff that they're shooting out there. And maybe that's good enough for them. It should be a start, turn, set. And just finally, the real test will be tonight and tomorrow night.

When you start having big keynote speeches, will they react to what happened to Donald Trump to move him up to a wider appeal? Or is it going to be the greatest hits parade that they would have planned a week ago? I'm curious to see if they can adjust their rudder or not.

On that point, the funniest thing was Ron Johnson going up there and making an incendiary speech. And then explaining that they had put the wrong speech in his teleprompter. They also mixed up Ohio and Iowa on the roll call. I don't know if anybody noticed that, but that would have been a cardinal sin back in the day. So, Tim, tonight, your old profile subject, Nikki Haley—

is speaking. That was a late addition. And it's really interesting because she comes the day after her whole campaign was so much pitched around national security, Ukraine, uh, standing up for NATO. And she comes the day after JD Vance, who is basically, you know, uh, on the Tucker Carlson Kremlin line on this, uh, on the Ukraine, uh,

on Ukraine and on foreign engagement generally. Talk about what you expect from her and what her presence there means. Well, to the second question first, we've heard a lot of talk about unity in these last couple of days, but I got to say, Axe, just being here, talking with delegates,

It feels a lot more like surrender than unity. Right. And and Nick, well, it's witnessed by the McConnell thing. Yeah. Right. And look, Haley, Haley, towards the end of that campaign with Trump, she really let it

let it fly. I mean, she basically said at one point that he wasn't equipped to be commander in chief and was really questioning his, um, his capacities for the job, uh, and his, whether he was fit for, for, for another term. So I think again, though, this comes back to something that we've been flicking at throughout this entire conversation. And I think maybe we should just make it really explicit in politics, like in sports, when you're winning, everything's

Easy, right? Like it's easy to be magnanimous. It's easy to turn the other cheek. It's easy to get along with people who you otherwise can't stand when you are winning. And and to the point about Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, you know, it's easy to keep a disciplined leak, mostly leak free campaign.

campaign running on all cylinders when you are winning and they've been winning for a while from my view and the real question would be what happens if suddenly the tide turned and they started to feel like they were losing absolutely

Yeah, Trump is not. Then the back door opens and the bar scene from Star Wars walks in. Yeah, Corey Landowski is back in charge. Just a quick note on Nikki. If she was smart, she should have gone silent and not been there to build her narrative for next time if there's a post-Trump reformation. Instead, she's selling cheap, which was a mistake for her. Now she'll be there bowing and kneeling and giving away whatever she had. Big error, in my view.

Yeah, her rhetorical abuse will be focused on the opposing party. On Biden, on Biden. And I think that's what it'll be about. And she'll talk about the border and she'll navigate around Ukraine. But Dean there just shows, you know, her need, her need for the attention. It's strategically dumb in my view. But she's never been disciplined. I've always found her to be very cynical.

Anybody who read Tim's profile of her in 2021 will not be surprised that she is there tonight. Though you did point out she absented herself from the convention in 2016, probably because she thought Trump was going to lose. Yep. Yeah. Well, yeah. And that's why 2016 just feels like...

a lifetime ago in so many ways, guys, because, I mean, you know, you had John Kasich skipping that campaign. You had a number of prominent governors skipping that campaign. You had all except Bob Dole, all of the previous Republican nominees skipping that campaign. And frankly, I can still remember, I think I have my notebook

books still from that campaign. I could go back through and find the interviews. I would say about 50% of the delegates I spoke to at that campaign were anti-Trump, even if they were bound to vote for him on the first ballot, they were still anti. Yeah. So, I mean, so when I say surrender, I think that that's probably a more apt way to think about this than unity because the entire party apparatus from the top down has been

has been transformed into his own image. And when you see some of these delegations now, some of the state delegations that I've covered over the years, because I've covered the RNC pretty closely for about a decade, it's a lot of new faces, a lot of people I don't even, I don't recognize. Right. A lot of the old pros are gone, you know, and you look at places like Michigan, the Michigan party now is, is Keystone Cops and Aluminum Foil Hats.

It is not the highly professionalized thing it used to be. And so these are this is the Trump fan club here. You know, this is they're the hobbyist class, but they now have a lot of jobs in the apparatus. Now, I think a lot of the operatives would say quietly the apparatus ain't what it used to be.

as far as useful in a campaign. But as long as Biden's handing over the White House, it doesn't matter. We want to apologize to our listeners. We will catch up on questions next week. But because of the convention, we went long on the conversation because we had...

A lot to cover. The great advantage of Tim Alberta here. We want to take full advantage of that. So, Tim, thank you so much for making the time on a busy week. Thank you so much, Tim. And I'll just – I'm going to do a Tim plug here. Hackeroo political junkies, go to your locally owned bookstore or if you have to go on Amazon.

Check out his books. A favorite of mine, American Carnage on the Frontlines of the Republican Civil War and the Rise of Donald Trump from 2019, and the latest one, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, which explains a lot. Tim Alberta. Buy an Alberta book. You'll be smarter and happier for it. And read them in the Atlantic. Yeah, absolutely. So, Tim, always good to be with you. Thank you. Yeah, you guys are too kind. Thanks a lot. It was fun.

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