The Rule of Three
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. She's terrible. But she's getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing. And actually, she looks very much like...

Our great first lady, Melania. She didn't look like Camilla. That's right. But of course, she's a beautiful woman. So we'll leave it at that, right? You know, it takes a lot to make Elon Musk sound a little nervous and embarrassed. But he did it. Trump did it. Elon Musk into Ed McMahon there for two years.

hours. Yeah. Did you listen to the whole thing? I couldn't take it. I got bored, which is kind of the problem with the Trump campaign. I think it's still going on right now. What are you talking about? I don't think you can listen to the whole thing. Technical difficulties. So I only heard a little bit of it, but enough of it to know that it was a kind of a big turd for

Trump, I don't think it advanced the ball. And it certainly wasn't good for Elon because they were 45 minutes late due to their own technical difficulties. But you know who doesn't? I could hear DeSantis cackling with joy all the way from Florida, though. The trophy has been passed. He's probably the guy who pulled the plug.

And speaking of passing trophies, we have a special and frequent guest here, but we have a big announcement to make. Give us some horns here. Yeah, do we have like the fanfare, budget fanfare? I'm like waiting for a sad trombone to play here, like wah, wah, wah. Well, we got that too.

All right. Really? That's all we got? That's all. Jesus. Because now that John Heilman— I know we pay minimum wage, but really. Now that John Heilman is officially joining the team here— That's right. One of the conditions was that we make some budget cuts, so that was all we could afford was that little rim shot kind of whatever it was, flourish on the drums.

He's a man who needs no introduction. You know him from MSNBC. You know him as the creator of the circus on Showtime. He's the...

co-author of the bestsellers Game Change and Double Down. He is a columnist for Puck News and does podcasts there. He is everywhere, and he is now a hack on tap. Welcome, John Heilman. We've been bereft since our man Robert Gibbs went off to more lucrative pursuits.

He just bought his own island, by the way. I just heard the news this morning. So we've been looking. We've been looking for a third member. That's my backup plan in case there's a change of parties in the fall. We have Trump coming. Gibbs is going to put me up on that secret undisclosed island there. You guys, I'm delighted. I'm delighted to be here, as always, and delighted to be joining this august show.

And it is August, so it's perfect. Oh, man. You're going to get used to it, man. I signed up for that. You get only the best stuff here. I think there's some codicil in my contract that limits the number of puns from Axelrod. But I will say that I'm old enough to remember when Hacks on Tap was just a two-man show back in the ancient days of Odd Eleven, you know, whenever it was. Yeah, when was that? Yeah.

Prehistoric. Yeah, the prehistoric, the Mesozoic era. But, you know, you can't take Robert Gibbs's place. No one can fill those shoes. Those are big shoes to fill. And I do hope at some point that I get a job where I'm paid as well as he is paid now, that this is the fast track.

This is the way you get to make big money in America. SpectraVision may be online, too, for a com director. Who knows what could happen? They all listen to this show seeking talent. My apprenticeship. It's my apprenticeship, so to speak, for my job working for a dying giant media company. But in all seriousness, Heilman, you're a brilliant addition here. You're great. You're a great guy.

My hackishness precedes me? Is that what you're saying? When you're looking for the hackiest hack you could find? You spent a lifetime working to develop it, and you're now ready for the big time. Or the medium time, depending. That's what Mr. Rogan would say. As an author, as a commentator, as an MSNBC author.

Wait, where are you now? Gasback. I think at Puck. Puck. There's Puck. There's MSNBC. It's a 24-hour Don Rickles channel. It's incredible. I am. The brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning author. I mean, we could not have done better, Murph.

24-7 gas battery. I agree. I don't want this to turn into the telethon here because I think you're going to break into a song there, Axe, but we got the guy. So it's going to work, Hacker Roos, like it has before. Sometimes it'll be all of us. Sometimes it'll be two of us. We're going to kind of rotate around and we're going to keep you entertained, informed, insulted, stimulated, occasionally bored, whatever we can do from the bottom of our toolbox. And I couldn't be happier, Johnny, that you're

You're in the scam now with us. You can take all that big hacks on tap money and probably get a subcompact car and a good lease deal with it. So let's get down to business here. Musk and Trump last night, the whole exercise, more than two hours of kind of freeform chatting, following that kind of crazy trend.

Rally he had in Montana, the press conference last week. You know, that campaign has a candidate problem, guys. There's a strategy here that you'd think they'd pursue that might have a better chance to win. But he's like freaked out.

Oh, yeah, he's broken. You know, it's interesting. First, the Dems had a candidate problem with the president. Now the candidate problem monsters move over to Trump, who we all know is an insecure guy who can't handle bad stimulus. And polls are driving him crazy. Crowds, everything he cares about has gone wrong. And he is when there is an actual campaign to be had.

But as we predicted on the pod, once the going gets tough, the so-called wonder machine of Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, they're not going to be able to control him. And he's just doing his one man, damn the casino, I'm going all night, mad dog ad lib now. And it's hurting him. It's giving her more energy. I mean, you guys know better than I do that whatever a candidate's strengths and weaknesses are,

In general...

The candidates don't like the things that don't, what doesn't generally happen is that when candidates face the maximum adversity, they, they, they perform to the, at their best, at least initially. Right. There's always this period of like, holy shit, what's going on. Right. And Trump has always had these problems that we're talking about here in terms of discipline, focus, clarity, message, all that stuff. But his showmanship would often override it. I actually think part of the problem here is not only that it's freaking him out and he didn't expect this and he doesn't have another gear, but

I think that the stuff that relates to his age and cognitive decline, this is where the rubber's meeting the road. Because, you know, this has been coming for a while and people in general in the filter didn't focus on it the way that they might have because Biden's had the same problems and then had this kind of this affect that drew all the attention to him. But with Biden out of the race...

It's throwing Trump's cognitive difficulties in really sharp relief. And he has them at the moment. Like, he's a 79-year-old man who's always been a little bit crazy, who's never been that smart, who's also kind of losing his mind generically. And then you throw this curveball at him. Like...

You know, octogenarians, borderline octogenarians aren't generally great at like catching up with a speeding train. And that's what's happening. The poetry of it is beautiful because first we, you know, every election kind of creates a thing. So we create this age monster and it eats Biden.

And now the age monster is still out there in the public psyche. And Trump, even though he kind of has a vibe of a little more vigor in his own way, he is clearly out of it old. And now the age monster, at least the lens we've created, is looking at him and he's not doing well under it. Right. Well, the contrast is the contrast is pretty stark because she's out there.

And she is young and sort of contemporary. And yeah, you know, the joyful... I got a little clip here from the... You know, he's doing his doom and gloom stuff. I mean, he had an... I don't have the clip, but he had an amazing riff in Montana where he...

just described the apocalypse approaching if she gets elected. Let's listen to what she said in Nevada. Together, we are running this campaign on behalf of all Americans. From red states to blue states. From the heartland to the coast. And when elected, we will govern on behalf of all Americans. All Americans. So Nevada...

Ultimately in this election, I believe we each face a question. What kind of country do we want to live in? A country of chaos, fear and hate or a country of freedom, compassion and rule of law?

So, you know, Kamala's out there and she's selling this sort of positive vision of what America can be. And Trump is selling this apocalyptic vision of what America will be if she gets elected. And he sounds, you know, it may play with his base. I don't know that those swing votes. I mean, it's just reminding people what life with him is. Yeah.

Yeah, he's doing Voldemort and she's doing Ted Lasso. And I think after a rough time and flat middle class incomes, of course they want hope. One of the greatest lessons of Hollywood history is during the Great Depression,

People did not want sad movies. Life on the bread line. I ate a rat today. No, no, no. Ballroom comedies, screwball comedies, people in dinner jackets running around. Right. And so if she can give him an escape from this is the whole politics of joy thing that Walt likes to talk about. There is rocket fuel in that. And he's deciding to go be the villain foil to it.

It's a gift to her. The shorter version of this is the split screen that was helping him before is killing him now. Like the split screen with, with her is the split screen on that debate with him and Biden, the split screen, you know, Trump just said there shook his head most of the time and, and, and,

and let Biden self-destructed. Now he's got, you know, picture of youth, picture of change, picture of optimism, picture of all that stuff and of all the positive stuff. And I, you know, not to be too, to take us too far out of the realm of, of hackaroo, the hacker universe. But like, there's this thing that's been happening for the last couple of weeks. I don't know if y'all noticed it. It was called the Olympics. Yeah.

It drove massive ratings. The country is looking at America that just was tied with China for the most gold medals and crushed the rest of the field in total medals by like 126 to like 91 or something, right? And the country loved these Olympics. They were watching them at unprecedented rates, displeased.

on the notion of American achievement on the globe. Does that, like when I hear Donald Trump say country in decline, you know, we're a nation in decline. Is that like the way America feels right now? Guess he hasn't seen Simone Biles, huh? Well, right. I would say if I were Harris or Walls, I'd say at some point, you know, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky, Steph Curry would like to have a word with you, but

Mr. Trump. I mean, we're not really in. Well, she kind of did say that. I wonder what they're doing next week in Chicago. She got off the plane the other day wearing an Olympic USA jacket.

It's just so out of step with the mood. And granted, it's very much in step with the anger, resentment, and grievance of the MAGA base. But where the broader country is right now is not in a place where what they're hungry for is visions of apocalypse. He's always locked in the Republican primary. That is one of his great weaknesses. Let's just sober up for a second here because there is still a right track, wrong track that's pointed in the wrong direction. I mean, he's not...

He is not, you know, sort of imagining this environment. And you would think that he could capitalize on that if he could control himself and focus. That's the problem. There's no subtlety to it. It's just, you know, he just does mad dog and no light touched the frame, the argument. He gets in his own way. If you were him, though, and you knew that if you lost, you were very much subject to potential consequences.

prison for the things that he's been convicted of and things that he may be tried for, that would get you a little crazy, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. But I would, I would decide, am I going to get out of this with blind rage or a brain? Of course, that would be the rational thing. That would be the rational thing to do. Crazy or a little focused, right? You think about concentrate the mind here, you know, like, Hey, you gotta really get with the program here. I just, I don't think,

I don't know. There was something about this last week, the combination of the Mar-a-Lago press conference.

which was, I mean, really even by his standards was so dissociative and crazy. This Willie Brown story that goes on and on now where we realize that some combination of him having confused Willie Brown with Jerry Brown and conflated the Willie Brown with the, with this African-American city councilman from Los Angeles, you got a race thing going on here. You got a name confusion thing. It's like Nikki Nancy. Like when, when he, when bird, when we confused bird brain, Nikki Haley with, with crazy Nancy Pelosi, um,

Because they both are women whose names begin with N, if you recall this from the New Hampshire primary. It's like the brown thing. And then you also toss in another black guy who actually did take a helicopter with him. No wonder the guy can't keep it straight. And then this thing accusing her of the AI images. Yes, yeah. Crab size! It's so bonkers. This crazy tweet, or not tweet, but he's posting on Truth Social. Truth.

basically promoting this conspiracy theory that these crowds that we see around her are all being generated by AI. Jonathan Shade in New York Magazine said this thing about how that truth thing about the fake crowds is...

is crazier than the conspiracy theory that we faked the moon landing. Because there are thousands of witnesses to these events. Thousands. And nobody witnessed the moon landing in person, right? But there's literally tens of thousands of people who've been to these events who can all validate the fact that there are tens of thousands of people at these events. And yet he still thinks somehow that's going to convince someone. I think the real tell here, and the real kryptonite that is the truth of him, that the campaign is scraping away under the hot lights...

is he actually believes all this crazy stuff. He thinks it is rape. I mean, he thinks it is an AI conspiracy. Because he can't believe someone would beat him at his own game. I mean, that's just... Well, he's projecting. That's what I do. I fake the crowd, you know. But it just shows how untethered to reality this guy is. He creates his own reality to feed his needy insecurity, and then he bleats and bloviates it.

making himself now the crazy old guy who wants to rain on the God bless America parade. I mean, it's beautiful. Okay, all right, you guys. I tried to steer you away from this euphoric. I'm not being euphoric. No, no, no. I get it. I mean, he's nuts. And it is all tumbling out now at a most inconvenient time. Let me take your premise because I agree with it.

How could she screw this up? Because she's had it has been a sugar high. She got a post Biden. Oh, my God, we're not going to lose tornado free ride that picked her up and put her in the air. And she's done a great job managing it. I think they've been tone perfect. They were slow on advertising. They finally got some up. But I'll put out something. I don't like all the prosecutor fighting because when a Republican campaign with a blindfold and

half-drunk, can't run a law and order campaign against a progressive prosecutor from Oakland, California, the world has ended. I think they've got to be careful. They're betting heavy on that. Let's do this. Here's the latest Harris ad, and it will be followed by a Trump response.

Kamala Harris has spent decades fighting violent crime. As a border state prosecutor, she took on drug cartels and jailed gang members for smuggling weapons and drugs across the border. As vice president, she backed the toughest border control bill in decades. And as president, she will hire thousands more border agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking. Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

MS-13 gang member here illegally robbed a pregnant woman, then released, then executed a San Francisco family, another illegal, arrested, released, then killed this young boy with a sword. Illegal immigrant convicted, released, then violently fractured a woman's skull. Who released every one of them?

So there you go, Murphy. There's your fight. Obviously, the campaign, the Harris campaign, and she's doing it in speeches and talking about what she would do on immigration as well. But they're trying to

immunize her against what they know is a potent attack, which is she there is a perception that she was the so-called borders are she wasn't. She was assigned a very discreet assignment, which was to talk to the countries from which

These immigrants were fleeing to try and stop the flow of those immigrants. But nonetheless, it is a tag that they are trying to stick her with. And, you know, there's a lot of fuzziness about exactly what her role is.

was, what do you guys think about that exchange of ads? I think that's a campaign over time Trump would like to have. Well, it would be. Heilman wouldn't. This is the issue certainly he wants to fight on. That's the campaign his campaign would like to have. Yes. I don't know what the hell Trump wants. That's kind of the issue, right? It's like there's a, you know, I was reading your buddy, your old buddy, Alex Castellanos, Mike, who,

posted a long thing about this that sort of was like trying to give the Trump campaign some direction. And he basically said something like, you know, the, there's an obvious campaign to run here, this campaign, the one that, that, that exchange of ads. It's just plus liberal. It's make it ideological. Right. Make it ideological. And he said, you know, the problem is that right now they're running 10 campaigns instead of one and they're just throwing, it's just kitchen sinks. And Trump and Trump is the embodiment of that. And David, that's why I'm, when I'm commenting on Trump's,

mental decline, it's not to say that there's no way that Harris can lose. And it's not to say there's no way that the Trump campaign can win. It's just to go back to your very first point, which is given the dominance of this candidate, given how much Trump is the campaign, if you can't fix Trump, you can't, it's not going to matter what Chris Lossaville does. All every Republican consultant in America knows what the playbook should be here against Harris. It might work. It might not. But if Trump's just going to be Trump and worse and worse,

you're not going to be able to turn that thing around. I mean, Harris will win. One of the things about presidential races is that this paid media is important. Overrated. Well, it gets overwhelmed by what people see. And, you know, they're not going to, their eyes don't deceive them. They see what they see. And that story is the storyline that, so you need to have harmony between what your candidate is saying and doing and what you're trying to,

communicate. They don't. It took Trump over an hour to get to any kind of a real message against Harris last night on that on that Musk thing. He talked for the better part of 45 minutes late and then he talked for over an hour about stuff that had nothing to do with her. You know, just he just they're just babbling. He's flailing. He's an id monster. I mean, we you're totally right. It's a candidate thing. But back to this, if I were the Harris people, they got a decision to make.

All right, we rolled out the tough prosecutor thing. We tried to build a little armor so we only get killed on this by seven or eight points, not 20. How do we pivot to the issue that comes, the economy? And we have a huge opportunity here, a gift from God, which is she, because nobody knows anything about her, the vulnerability and the strength,

She can have the Harris plan for the middle class now and get a little distance from Biden before they spot Biden. They're rolling out. She's doing an economic speech tomorrow for just that.

And I agree with you that, you know, that the way, you know, and I have a little experience with this from 2012, the way a Democrat or incumbent or an incumbent party owns the economy in an environment like this where people are jaundiced about the economy is to make it a question of who's on your side. Yeah, motive. Yeah.

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for 15% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode. They took a swing at this with a spot that, you know, I have some questions about, but it certainly suggests that they know that this is where they have to go. Let's take a listen to that. She grew up in a middle-class home. She was the daughter of a working mom, and she worked at McDonald's while she got her degree.

Kamala Harris knows what it's like to be middle class. It's why she's determined to lower healthcare costs and make housing more affordable. Donald Trump has no plan to help the middle class, just more tax cuts for billionaires. Being president is about who you fight for, and she's fighting for people like you. I'm Kamala Harris, and I approve this message.

You know, one thing that there are two little discord notes as an ad guy. First, on the earlier spot, quickly, they keep using John Dolman as the voiceover, who's a very good character actor. Played a corrupt cop on The Wire. I don't know if he's right. And on this, maybe it's just hitting me in a weird way, but treating working at McDonald's like a Silver Star won in battle.

It seems a little precious to me, but, but these are quibbles fundamentally. It's a middle-class motive message and I'll take it though. It could be better, sharper. Yeah, I agree. And I think that, you know, if they want to link her to these stories, then she ought to be articulating it and talking about her own experiences and, and their experiences or,

But I think they'll get there. One thing I will say is they are trying to fly a plane and retool it in midair. And so you're not going to get perfection. But that spot, which I agree with you, I also...

Yeah, there's a spot which talks about she doesn't want you to have to have two jobs to have a decent middle class life, which I think is a stronger spot. And that is her narrating. That was the one I was looking for and didn't find. But that is her narrating. You know, that's from her speech.

where she talks about her economic values, you know, and that was a spot on. That was a spot on. I love that. And I'm seeing it a lot on the Olympics, at least here in New Hampshire. But she can do the plan thing. It's a little bit of a cliche, but that gives her a way to earn some Biden distance and a reset because she's not linked to Biden enough to really hurt her on the economy yet. We just saw the first polling coming out for once. She's not 15 points behind like Biden was on running the economy. Need to see more polls. It was the

cutting edge, but you know, it was tied low forties. And that, that is a good sign. I'd like to ask you two geniuses, this thing, you know, the, because we talked about it a lot on this show over the last year, which was, you know, the, the point, which was that one of Biden's chief failings in talking about the economy was the

that there wasn't enough, I feel your pain, right? He would always be talking about the achievements that have his achievements. But not talking about, you know, the particularly cost of living related stuff, right? He didn't want to acknowledge that inflation was real, that people were paying more at the pump, that the price of eggs, all that stuff, right? How much of that, if the two key democratic economic messages are always, I'm on your side and I feel your pain in some mixture, how much do you guys think that Harris needs to

to, how much I feel your pain does she need? Does she need any? What's the way, she's not linked to Biden's economic record in the way she is on immigration. How much of that though, how much do you want to hear her, you two want to hear her enunciate something of, I know the last four years have been hard. We've recovered a lot, but I know it's still been painful and I know it's still been, there's still a lot of anxiety out there. She's doing a little bit of that. I actually think that the ad that Mike referenced

And maybe we'll get a hold of it and stick it in here. But the ad that Mike references...

was the right tone, which is she talks about not having to work, you know, two jobs to pay the bills. She, she describes the, uh, the challenges that people are facing in a way that was seemed authentic and real and, uh, connected. And I think that's what, uh, she has to do. Um, you know, I think she's, she's not going to walk away from, uh, you know, the reality that,

By that, you know, the last four years, you know, have produced a lot of growth and jobs and so on. But you really have to turn hard into the butt. Yeah, it's been a it's been a hard journey. But here's my compass. I think she does have to be careful. That's why the McDonald's thing bugs me.

Because she is a multimillionaire, lives in Brentwood, California. You know, there's no Bill Clinton grew up in the tar paper shack thing going on here. Maybe when she was younger, but I'd be careful of that. Her whole thing is a little patrician, her vibe, but it's somehow become to her credit, likable patrician now. Yeah. Cause she's riding on this happy cloud now and people like her and her smile's great and it's all working. Um,

But she shouldn't push that too far. She sounds like... Well, to your point, Mike, the thing that bothered me about the spot was the line, you know, she knows what it's like to be middle class. It's sort of like, you know...

An exaggeration of the present. Yes. I mean, the present sort of belies that. So that's why storytelling from her would authenticate that, I guess. Especially compared to her running mate, who really does know what it's like to be middle class. In fact, you know, like Tim Walz is actually almost lower middle class. Let him be in the bookstore window on that. You know what they're charging for a battery-operated drill down at Holden Depot now? Inflation.

You know, let me ask you a question relative to the VPs. Obviously, you know, he he's played very well, certainly among Democrats, I think probably among swing voters. So interesting to me. I get you know, I don't know if you say Eric Erickson's maybe he was just trolling, but he

He did a tweet saying, you know, the Republicans have damaged Walsh so badly. Will she replace him at the convention and all of that? But they kind of believe, you know, they believe that they've mortally wounded him. And I guess my question is now there's a piece in the journal today about his as governor. He, you know, like a lot of Democratic governors, he.

signed a bill that allowed driver's licenses for illegal immigrants, free college tuition, and healthcare. I kind of think that this is, I don't quibble with any of those things, and I can make the argument for all of them from a public policy standpoint. This is the thing that pisses off voters, you know, the idea that people come here and then they get benefits.

The question is, do people impute to her what he did? Well, that's the thing. If they think they killed him, and I think they're wrong, because this stuff, his tone overwhelms all this stuff. Yeah, he's a good performer. But if they think they killed the wrong target, then, you know, vice president's overrated. He's the thing of the moment because he's interesting. He's charismatic. He's different than the average Democrat in tone.

He looks like he could actually change his spare tire, which many Democratic nominees do not give that vibe. But they're not going to kill him. And if they do, it's not the material thing.

And he's always going to do better than Vance. I just can't believe I agree with Mike as much about this as I do, because I would like to agree with Mike wholeheartedly, especially my first, especially my first coach. I know. Don't worry. We're fine. Something is, but I mean, honestly, like he's the, the paradigmatic normal vice presidential candidate. They,

They cleared the bar. Let's move on. You know, Gibbs never said paradigmatic. Well, I'm trying to let the... You've already kind of classed up the show here. Right. He's... But, I mean, seriously, right? He's... She cleared the bar.

They're done. There's not a single American, there's not a single voter who's going to vote for or against Kamala Harris because of Tim Walz. Not one. And nobody's going to think he's the problem. Yes. He's out of the way. I mean, the idea that he embraced, I mean, to the extent that Republicans could, and the Trump campaign, if they were focused, could try to portray...

him as a reflection of her ideology in the broadest values-based way. There's maybe a little bit of headway you can make there, but on specifics of policy, I don't believe it. Your old boss, Barack Obama, David, I remember him once waxing about this in his post-presidency about how culture trumps politics.

now in America that like the way that people perceive these candidates is not through the lens of, of any one specific policy. Did you pass this bill or that bill? It's more like, you know, they read a different set of signifiers and with walls, this is where I think Mike is so right. I just don't think anybody's like, you know, if they, if they're Republican and they're MAGA, they're going to hate him and they're going to think he's a socialist, whatever tampon Tim. Like they think that's like, that's going to move votes against Kamala Harris. Fucking crazy. Um, I,

I just don't see, I don't see that as being, I just can't imagine disqualifying, even if they did disqualify Tim Wallace somehow on the basis of being too left up, but tampons in schools or, you know, driver's license for undocumented immigrants, whatever. How's that stick to her? She's got her own problems in that area, but they're not his problems. Yeah. No, the culture thing is, is so important. That's why, you know, the one guy who's probably in the, of the four who've, who's kind of had the biggest problem in the last couple of weeks has been

Vance with a stupid cat lady thing, which be, you know, which, which transcended politics. Everybody kind of got that, by the way, on culture, one of the advantages that she's had, I don't know if I said this earlier, but, you know, Biden was absolutely a dead weight when it came to social media and particularly tick tock. He just, you know, he was getting out done, uh,

You know, by a 10 to 1 margin on TikTok, she's become a sort of social media sensation. And Walt's improbably in some ways has become a social media sensation because he's smart and he knows how to cut stuff in a way that becomes viral.

Well, yeah, and the age of the supporters. You know, the center of gravity is more TikTok in the Democratic half of the country. Although, you know, Walsh doesn't exactly look like the demo. No, no, but the people posting it are younger and more D. It's just more organic. Bernie's probably created some TikTok material over the years. Well, that's right. That's the thing about Walsh is that for, it turns out that like young people, it's not really about how old.

old you look or how old you are. It's how old you seem. And yes, you know, Bernie Sanders, I keep telling myself that it's Bernie. The young people like really like Bernie Sanders. They really like Larry David cranky, old, authentic kind of, you know, I think it's just like a big piece of this huge piece of it. Big, big piece of this equation. All right. We're going to take a minute to pay the bills and we'll be right back. No man, Murphy.

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Where do you guys think this race is at? And I have a specific reason for it. No, she's ahead. Election held tomorrow. I think she'd win the pop states. I think she'd carry that Omaha CD. And I think she might even get Georgia. You know, I think this is I think I'm much closer to if it were today, he might win. But it's a coin toss.

But she's got momentum. I'm not sure that he would win Pennsylvania today. I don't know that he'd win that state. I don't know that he'd win Michigan today. I think he'd win Wisconsin. I think she's in striking distance to take those states. And, you know, she's probably, yes, competitive in Georgia. One thing I wanted to raise is yesterday the Secretary of State certified an abortion rights bill.

amendment in arizona and put it on the ballot for her and that's that is that is good news uh for harris so we've got this big convention coming up next week you guys hey david yes just i only want to point out something that's flattering to you on your previous question about where the race is yes you know democrats are just didn't are overjoyed about the new york times siena polling and yeah

They have every reason to be, and the momentum is obviously headed in her direction. And I'm probably a little more with Mike than I am with you about this, but I did note that you called out...

The crazy numbers in those New York Times-Siena polls with like non-college whites. Where she's at like 42 or something with non-college whites. The tabs don't hold up too well in those. I mean, Hillary Clinton did, I think, 29 with non-college whites. Biden did about 35. These were in those three states. But even in those three states, I think Biden got somewhere between 36 and 37 in 2020. So 42.

you know, is, is kind of unimaginable. The, uh, they also had her leading among women by 20, which is much higher than I've seen anywhere else. And there was sort of a democratic bias to some of the sample, but, um, as someone was talking to me about the Wisconsin piece, uh, you know, I, I see a lot of data and not all of it is public, but, um, to me, uh,

This is and I trust the data that I see. I think that the listen, it suits her and it suits her supporters not to do what the Republicans did, which was throw a big victory party at their convention only to find out that, oh, my God, we're in a race. Yeah, yeah. We missed the whole race. No, I totally agree. I saw something was a better place to be.

private that I trusted in Michigan that was plus, depending on how you weighed it, three or four yesterday. But the point is, she's moving in the right direction. And unless they screw up the convention, which I would bet they will not do, and they don't get pulled into woke craziness identity, and they don't run the Hillary campaign, occasionally there are little signs they've stumbled that way, but generally they haven't. They're going to be in great shape in Labor Day. But then comes the second look.

so what can the convention do to help with the segue here uh to cement that in i think they motive middle-class economics and she has a plan forward so she's not biden 2.0 that would be my prescription i'd lighten up on the prosecutor crime war yeah she's not elliot ness well listen i i sort of disagree with you there i think you know one of the things that you're uh

over in the Mitt Romney campaign in 2012 did, that was a mistake is they robbed him of his biography because they thought it might be, uh, might be a problem for him. And the result of it was they kind of, he wasn't a whole person in that. Oh, I agree. And I think, I think, you know, there is a pretty good backstory as to why she became a prosecutor and, uh, and it's very personal to her. And, uh,

you know, I, I think it's important. It grounds her, it grounds her, you know, in a really significant way, but generally the, what you say, Mike is exactly what they should do. I suspect it's what I, they know, uh, that, uh,

they have to do and what'll be in, you know, I think they're going to give Biden the gold watch on Monday. And then it's going to be all about, uh, all about Kamala and the middle class and her values, you know, do you guys think that she needs to, there's a, there's some popular wisdom out there down among people who are doing focus groups in, in, in some of the polling as well, which is that she really just needs to talk less about Trump.

Trump is self-destructing at this point. Trump is kind of a built-in thing. Trump's numbers don't move and Trump does himself no good. She ought to grab the future and connect to people on middle class economic values and she'll do great.

Listen, a majority of voters in this country don't want to vote for Donald Trump. That's been clear from the beginning. She has a simple task here, which is to introduce herself to the country and make them comfortable with her as the alternative to Trump. If this were a Biden convention, it would be 80 percent negative on Trump because they would need to make Trump more powerful.

more unpopular than Biden. She is a much different place. And I think for that reason, the tone of this convention is going to be much different. Last last thing. It ought to be joy, by the way. They ought to run with the Olympic spirit and all that stuff and just glue it to her. The future versus those choleric, the grinding negative past.

I mean, what was Shapiro's line? Donald Trump should stop shit-talking America. This Joy thing, if I were them, the convention handout gimmick would be heart-shaped American flags. I would make that the thing of the campaign. Own patriotism. Own the Olympics. Own, you know what, this greatest place in the world. And let him be Voldemort.

You know, the thing that made that clip that we heard before from her from Nevada so affecting was she wrapped herself in America. She wrapped herself in the flag. You know, she's talking about she and waltz and their stories, everything.

She's talking about her own story and Walsh's story and how phenomenal it is that this country allows folks like them to be on the doorstep of going to the White House. And she, you know, she just it was it was very much about us as a country.

And that plays so well against Trump, who just divides for fun. You know, he divides for fun and profit. He frightens people for fun and profit. He, you know, he is a—he is—the most hilarious thing about the Republican convention was—

You know, this wasn't hilarious. I mean, Trump almost got killed and they said this was a life changing experience. And he had 12 prompter lines. His speech was going to be all about unity. Well, yes. Ten minutes in.

You know, he saw the unity thing wasn't playing in the room and he threw it away. He said, screw that. I'm going back to my routine. You guys can all relax. Mr. Hyde is back. Exactly. It doesn't play. Exactly. Before we get to questions, which we are going to do. Yeah, this time we're going to do it. The orchestra is ready to go. They're going to hit overtime. So this won't be long.

But the debate, we talked a little before about should she, shouldn't she. She kind of won the debate on debates. The 10th is apparently coming, but he's got a box off right there. Yeah, you were right, by the way. I was wrong on that. No, no. No, no. It has to be said. It happens once a year. I want to acknowledge that. Once a week. But anyway, what's her next move to keep the debate offense up? Does she lock in on the other, or does she agree in principle to Fox and CBS afterward?

Because I think she's got the catbird position here and she shouldn't give it up. She's given the heart attack, not him, which I like. Yeah, well, she should say, I think I would say, let's see, you know, I want to see that he shows up for this one. And then we can talk about the next one. The question is, will there be a VP debate? That would kind of be fun to see. Oh, I think America wants it, too. He wasn't so bad on the Sundays, though. The smartest political observer in Canada, a guy named Tom Long, called me up.

who's a great, great, well, dual citizen. So great American too, but he said he was surprised advances Sunday performance. Just,

Just a little sharper and less goonish than he expected. He was sharper and goonish, but I think in a debate— Or less goonish. Less goonish, yes. But, you know, look, he's not stupid. He's a smart guy. He was particularly smart in his Never Trump days. I used to like him. It would be interesting to see him with someone who was—

in a more adversarial role than Dan was. I did enjoy Mike referring to whoever you just referred to, Mike, as the greatest, most astute political observer in Canada. Is that like the greatest? No, he's the most dangerous man in Canadian politics. All our Canadian listeners, and we have a lot, are nodding right now. It sounded a little like the greatest Jewish power forward of all time, you know? No, no, he's run some good campaigns. My word for the guy, too, let's do full disclosure.

What did I do? You were in service of Long and the conservative party. Well, no, we worked together on a little caper called Mike Harris for Premier way back, the Common Sense Revolution. Right, right. It created a job for you down the road. Yes, it did. I appreciate that. And I also appreciate our singers who are going to send us right into the mailbag. What's in our mailbag? It's Listener Mailbag.

Thanks, gang. Take the rest of the day off, Mike. That's right. Take five, you cats.

Those jingles are over 40 years old, by the way. The singers aren't. They came out of retirement to help us out a few years ago. But anyway, let's go to the mailbag. If you, by the way, have an insightful or interesting mailbag question, or if you have a bad one, just stick 20 bucks in the envelope. Things can work out. This is kind of like radio. All you got to do is email us at hacksontap at gmail.com. Hacksontap at gmail.com. You can record a voicemail on your smartphone.

and email that to us too. Just use your name so we know who you are and let us do the bloviating. Not too long, maybe 20, 25 seconds. And finally,

You can call Axelrod's secret off-track betting parlor in Chicago at this number and leave it for us on the voicemail. 773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471. That was created by the same AI people who produced the Kamala Harris crowd, so let's give them a big shout out. So, for David Axelrod, we have a voicemail from Ted.

Ted. Hello, Hacks. This is Ted from Yarmouth, Maine. And my question is, will it be possible for the Democratic National Committee to convince a Republican leader to

a la Rusty Bowers, Fred Upton, perhaps a former Republican president from Texas and Kennebunkport to speak at their convention. Thanks. Well, I know you and Maine have an interest in getting someone from Kennebunkport to speak. I don't think that's going to happen, Ted. But I am absolutely confident that there will be a prominent Republican figure who will speak at the Republican convention.

At the Democratic Convention, you know, I think strategically it would be malpractice not to do that, not to invite someone and not to feature them. And I expect that that's going to happen. I'm not throwing out any names, but I have some confidence. Adam Kinzinger doesn't count. OK.

You know, I kind of like an action team. Get like five of them up there, the Flying Wedge, and let one do a lot of the talking. So it doesn't seem like one crank who, you know, couldn't get a parking space in the Capitol, but a bunch of them. And fearless Fred Upton, whose congressional district I believe you're recording this in, in Michigan, or his former district. There are a couple, and they ought to play wide with that.

I've got one here from Tom for John Heilman. Somehow the word leaked that Heilman was going to join the show. And Tom had a special question for him. So let's hear him.

Hey guys, this is Tom from Jersey. I have a vetting question. Whenever it seems like there's a scandal hitting a new candidate, a new VP, we hear if they've been vetted properly, the campaign would have known and they could have gotten out ahead of this. Can you give an example of when that has worked, when a campaign has successfully diffused something because they got ahead of it? I'm just curious, what are the ways they do that? Thanks.

Tom, it's a very good question. And I'm going to give you a really up-to-date example, although I don't actually know that this is true. That's right. The tax on tap doesn't have to be true. Yeah, this is opinion journalism. This could be true. Just a couple weeks ago, we suddenly saw a story in the Daily Mail about the fact that Kamala Harris's husband, Doug Emhoff, had had an affair with a teacher from his kid's school.

uh, uh, school, uh, in LA, uh, and the claim that he got her pregnant. And there was, you know, a bunch of other details in the story. That story came out on the Saturday, uh, before the BP pick was announced. Now, when I said, I don't know if it's true or not. Um,

I don't know, but the timing was so fortuitous and they knocked it down so fast. Doug was out, M off was out with a, uh, a statement to, to CNN within a few, like a couple of hours of when that story came out. There are a lot of people in politics who think that that was a story that the, that the Harris campaign decided to put out there so that it would, so they could take advantage of fortuitous timing, just knock it straight down. I don't know that that's true or not, but it very well could be. And I think my two fellow hacks here, uh,

uh, David and Mike can think of millions of examples where similar things have happened on campaigns they've worked on, where that's, that's how you deal with some of these liabilities. If you know, there's going to be a story about it, you put it out yourself so you can control the timing and knock it back, uh, on your own terms. The one thing about vetting is that, um,

You don't vet in order to knock down things once you nominate a candidate. You vet to know whether the things you find are disqualifying. Right. Yeah. No surprises. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive, though, access, you know. Yes. And Heilman's right. It's all timing. That's the only thing you can control. We've got two candidates in Texas.

in waltz and in vance here one of whom vance who was selected i mean trump knew for months and months and months that he was going to appoint of a nominated vice presidential candidate uh and so you presume he should have known about the cat lady stuff about the the voluminous correspondences in which uh vance uh called him you know hitler-esque and uh

all of that and ran down the police and, and there were, you know, there, there was a, there was a lot out there. There's a story that just surfaced today about his, he did this startup in Kentucky that, and the headline is workers alleged nightmare conditions at Kentucky startup, JD Vance helped fund, which also went bankrupt apparently. I mean, it's,

The question is, did Trump care about the vetting? Or did he get vetted and then did Trump care about it? Or was it just that he looked good on TV and his sons and Tucker Carlson thought he'd be a great troll for Trump? And call me simple. All right, you're simple. I just, I don't think vigorous staff work and vetting and Trump campaign necessarily go together that easily. Right.

You know, Trump's not really a give me the briefing book. I think that La Cevita and Susie Wiles, Susie Wiles and La Cevita are

pros i mean i think that they're right yeah they are but it doesn't count it doesn't mean anything the thing that's damaged him most as you pointed out earlier was we all pointed out the the the childless cat lady thing has done more damage to vance than anything else and i'm not sure that the trump campaign's cultural antenna that's not a thing that would you know it's not a scandal it's not a it's not some problem in his past that would come up in a normal vet but like

And I'm not sure that if they saw that clip that they would have been like, oh, that's going to be a huge cultural explosion. I'm not sure they're in touch enough to get why that thing has been as explosive as it was. That's the kind of thing that the vet could easily have missed. It was the idiot sons and Tucker Carlson on line two. You know, it was not.

I don't believe a real vet. Yeah. I mean, he said that he said the cat lady thing to Tucker Carlson, right? I mean, like, I mean, Tucker had a clue. He would have been like, Hey, I think this guy's great. Except you should really look at this one comment he made to me where that could get him in some trouble. Can you imagine? They giggle and high five. That's the kind of culture war offense. We need to shake them up. The Georgetown cocktail party circuit will go nuts. We love it.

So what we really need is Murphy wisdom for Andrew, who sent this question in with Biden being so unpopular and not really capable of communicating. What role do you think Biden could have at the convention? I know he's the sitting president, but how could the Dems let him stiffly shuffle his way on stage to address the delegates with a stutter and a mumble?

About how we beat Medicare. That's really kind of nasty, actually. Do you really want to do that question? Okay, so here's what I would say. One, Andrew, you can relax. It won't be that bad. First, I have heard from secret sources that the Tom Cruise stunt team has left Paris and they're heading to Delaware.

for a quick practice session. We're going to have a, well, you're going to fly on wire and then a motorcycle. No, there's going to be so much love for Biden Monday night. Monday will be Biden and then he's gone.

And it is going to be the gratitude. And by the way, when's the last time a national politician did something not in their direct interest lately? You know, he's earned that gratitude. They're going to love them and they should do Biden greatest hits. They should have a great video. Every key fight of the Democratic Party for the cause we believe he has been in the middle of doing the work. Yeah.

grateful nation. There won't be a dry eye in the place if he has a short, elegant prompter speech, which I would bet a car they will have. And he'll do just fine. And then the gears will shift and that'll be that. I'm not worried about that risk, assuming Monday is Biden night and then they change the channel.

Well, first of all, I agree with everything you said. And maybe it's a chance to highlight the things that he should get tremendous credit for that he wasn't getting credit for, because he does have a body of achievements. I think history will will shine on more than voters have in this election. The second thing I want to note is that you said you were going to bet a car and you talked about shifting gears and everything. You just have this EV thing.

on your head, man. You just can't let it go. You're like about cars all the time. I got a plan to win the presidency in the state of Michigan for the pro-EV side of the argument. And by the way, Trump backed off a little last night because Elon's checkbook was there waving in front of him. Yes, exactly. So funny. There was that quote the other day where he said, there was a quote before this where he said, I used to hate EVs, but now I've changed my mind because Elon likes me so much.

Talk about a lease deal, by the way. I wonder what kind of payment Elon's having to make. Well, you know, on this subject, I just got to play one thing on the way out here because I could see your head exploding, Murphy. This was him talking to Elon about global warming.

You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean's going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. And you'll have more oceanfront property, right? The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming. So nuclear warming...

I plan to park my boat at the submerged Mar-a-Lago in about 80 years. I'm taking aging pills just to avoid that. By the way, on the EV stuff, go to evpolitics.org. Learn all about it. Hey, I got to say, Murphy told me

to, he encouraged me when I was thinking about getting my Rivian and I will say, again, much as I like don't agree with Mike and also don't like thanking Mike, but Mike, you know, I've loved, I love the electric car, man. I love having it. It's downstairs in the garage. It's great. It's great. I tried to get him into a Ford. We tried a more advanced model. I couldn't handle it. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, I'm going to your personal project. I've offered to go to the secret underclosed location, uh,

where he will be during the throes of the election. And we'll take him down to Big Deal Ford, and maybe we'll get him into a Rivian, too. They're fantastic and built in America. Man, it feels so good to be off the tit of foreign oil. I've got to say, I love it. I love it. It's great. It's like I'm full of joy. Okay, just to beat this to death, then we'll let poor Axis escape. On this happy note...

All right. One sec. One sec before you drop the curtain on me. I drove a Volkswagen built in Chattanooga, Tennessee with a battery from Georgia, not China, from Los Angeles to New Hampshire here. Every charging station was not crowded except for the one in New Hampshire. And I straightened out Governor Sununu two days ago about that. They've screwed it up here.

all the way across the country, plugged it in at charge, no problems anywhere. It was the easiest trip I ever took. Cost me 40 bucks in fuel to get across the country. You know why they were open, Murphy? You know why they were...

uh free of people they saw you coming they saw you coming i was gonna say you pissed off biden enough you got to give him some credit by the way mike dewine has built the best charging stations with general motors for everybody to use on the ohio turnpike ever i gotta give a republican governor he's been the best on ev charging in the country every time i go on the ohio turnpike i get arrested i'm not going there

That's a story for another day. All right, fellas. Welcome aboard, brother. It's great to have you. This is going to be a lot of fun these next 80 whatever days. Holy shit. Yeah, I know. 84 days. All right, guys. See you next time. See you next week. Ship ahoy. When you sign up at WorkMoney, you could win $50,000. With the average renter paying around $2,100 per month, that means you can have rent covered for a whole year and more. So you can be more...

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