Blitzkrieg of Bullsh*t
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that the first month of our presidency, it's our presidency, is the most successful in the history of our nation. By many. And what makes it even more impressive is that, do you know who number two is? George Washington. How about that?

There you go. He's pushing GW for number one, most successful president in his first. But you know what, guys? How many are with us?

You may recall that he previously claimed that he had done more for African Americans than anybody. Number two was Lincoln. It's so unfair because these guys are not here to speak for themselves. You know what I mean? Right, exactly. But it's amazing. Trump did it in only six weeks. I mean, he's already blown away Washington. They never had a chance. I knew in advance how this thing was going to roll out because...

Part of what Trump is selling here is just, you know, relentless action. And, you know, it's coming so fast and furious that you can't even like you can't sort of sit back and kind of consider what all of it is. But it is something that was set up for him by Biden. And he, of course, referenced Biden many times in the speech, including in this section, which

You know, we've done more in four weeks than the other guy did in four years. And other guys have done an eight and so on. You know, people had come to think that Biden was sort of sedentary, somnolent, you know, ineffectual and sort of paralyzed. So that sort of set Trump up for this sort of blitzkrieg. And he's still living off the fumes of it. The result of all that stuff is,

Well, that's the thing. You know, the results take a little time. I call it the blitzkrieg of bullshit or the blizzard of bullshit. Cause that, you know, every Trump speech is like a good iteration where Trump talks to himself about what he believes is true. He thinks he's the greatest president. And you know, there's this just blizzard of statistics that are all untrue or curated or half baked. So if you listen to it,

I agree with what you're saying, David. It seems like Action Man is out doing all this stuff, and the stuff all sounds great, even though two-thirds of it, and I'm being generous, is made up or completely a lie. But to the casual listener, it's like, we got Action Man there, and he's getting so much done, which, you know, is Trump pleasing himself because I think he believes it all. The problem is, like cheap paint and one coat,

as the weather wears on, it's going to fall off like the cheap plating it is. But in the meantime, he looks like large and in charge. Action. And also, isn't the problem that the two-thirds of it, Mike, you just said are made up, and the other third is really unpopular? Yeah, that's a good point. He's attacking the VA. He's attacking cancer research. He's, you know, he's doing... The trade, the tariff...

which we'll get to, I'm sure the market yesterday when it closed, when the market closed yesterday, all of the S and P's gains since election day had been wiped out. We're back to, we're back to the state of the stock market on the day of the election.

And it's not like it all happened in one day. The market is starting to basically gradually absorb the fact that Trump's economic policies are horrible, and it's been on a steady slide, including Trump having lost, I believe, a third of the value of his ridiculous social media stock. He's seen a giant –

fall off in his own net worth. These are pretty unpopular things to be doing. He taxed us security yesterday. He is a master at creating his own reality. At some point, the real reality kind of bites. Bites hard. I was on TV last night talking about this, and I woke up this morning thinking I should be more clinical about it because I react as you guys are reacting. For him,

understanding that he basically is talking to 48% of the country, you know, that speech probably landed pretty well with his base.

You know, it's interesting. Did you see the CNN polling afterward? Yeah. Now, I'm suspicious of these instant polls. Except when you agree with them. Well, then, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A tactic I learned from somebody else on this call. But it was interesting because he did okay in that poll.

But CNN post-election flash, you know, basically they said 44% gave it, you know, I forget what the category, but very liked it a lot, you know, very positive, which is below the mean. Yeah.

if you compare it to other presidential speeches, including C minus against the average. So not terrible, but the interesting thing was it was the most Republican viewership ever. Cause a lot of Democrats just want to, why, why am I watching a car wreck here? And they turn it off. So, um,

Among an audience that was more Republican than Norm, he did kind of a bit sub-Norm. And to me, I agree. It was his crowd watching. And I'm sure most of them, you know, got the MAGA child they were looking for. And they believed the phony statistics and the false claims. But...

In the bigger picture, it should have been a real spike there, I would think, above average if the sample was that tilted. Yeah, it was a Republican leaning without question. But you know what this is, Hyman? This is Mike Murphy in his cave, and he thinks he sees a light in the distance, and he thinks there's another guy in the cave who...

And maybe there are more people in the game. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I see Trump underperforming because, as Heilman said, he's starting to make classic political mistakes that are going to grind him down. He ran on the economy, but he's screwing up the economy. And that is a formula for political disaster over time for Trump. And I'll bet money.

You keep betting and doubling down, and I'm worried that you're going to lose your house. Don't you worry. It's a very nice house, and it's paid for because I win a lot of bets. So don't you worry about me, pal. I'm as prone as anybody to make fun of Mike Murphy. But, I mean, David, your analysis raises the question of, like, again, what's the standard by which one judges a Trump speech at this moment? Is it good for his base? Sure. Yeah.

No, I'm just saying what he views it. No, I understand. I know I understand. But I mean, you do the political now. I understand what he – this gets to kind of what is he trying to accomplish here. Because in any normal – and I know we – when you say any normal political calculus, we say, well, Trump doesn't – but normal political calculus, I don't apply to him. The reality is that he is behaving like someone who –

Isn't worried about the fate of the Republican party or about his ultimate reelection, either because he accepts that this is his last term in office or because he thinks he's going to stay until they cart him out on a, on a stretcher. But he's, he's acting like he's,

He's the tariff thing makes no sense, you know, in the sense that, that he is to Mike's point, we know why he got elected. He got elected because of inflation and because the economy, he's doing things to make the economy worse. The stock market is tanking, which is his metric, which is his metric. And,

On top of that, well, one thing we're hearing from focus groups all over the country is he doesn't seem to be paying attention to the only thing I gave a shit about, which was inflation. I said that last night, you know, 40, the noteworthy thing about the last

43 days is that amid all this flurry of activity, he has spent virtually no time talking about the thing that was the most important thing to people. And the things he's doing are actually, as you say, going to compound the problem. Things price are going to go up and not down. And if I'm a Republican sitting there, I'm thinking,

This is not a good deal for me. I actually have to run again. And some, and a lot of them have to run in. Yeah. Holy crap is what I know. So let me hack this up a little. Did the speech, let's simple question.

Did the speech last night help or hurt the Republican chances in two years of holding on to the House of Representatives? I would say it hurt. I don't think it matters. I think that the other reality of these speeches is they are, you know, evanescent. They just disappear into the midst. I don't think it's going to matter, but it is a window into his mindset.

And that matters. And, you know, they're about to sail into he spent virtually no time. He addressed very briefly, you know, the price thing and blamed it all on Biden, which is going to get old very quickly. But he also spent very little time talking about the budget that is coming up here. That is where he's going to have to square the circle because he's telling people I'm not going to touch anything.

anything that you care about. And he's telling the Republicans in the House, you know, we'll get all the cuts you want to pay for my tax cuts. And it doesn't all cohere. So he's treating them like voters with double talk and phony promises. But the rubber will hit the road. That's the thing about, you know, the laws of gravity of politics. And you can't escape them forever. Do we know what the ratings are for the speech yet?

I don't probably out there, but I haven't, I imagine that it'll be in the, you know, 30 millions, but it's almost irrelevant because they will carve it up. Everyone will carve it up. I understand. I understand that. But, but I, but, but the reason I raise it is that, you know, we, we should talk about the difference, uh, right before we started Dave. Now we're talking a little bit about this, about a Jeff Greenfield piece about how different the speech was in the 2017 thing. But, but before we do that, I just want to say this.

It is really hard for anything that happens in Washington to break through where like almost everybody in the country knows about it. And, you know, Elon Musk has broken through. Everyone in the country has an opinion about this. And many people, including people who are, to Mike's point, are swing voters in battleground contested districts in the House and in some of these states that are going to be in play in two years. People are like...

you know, the voters you care about are like, what the fuck is that? Like, why is this, why is Elon Musk running things and why is he doing it the way he's doing it? And you know, it's true because Republicans are telling each other, this is not a pundit view. Republicans are saying, don't hold any more town halls.

because like this is bad for us, right? And yet here's Donald Trump. Let's play this. This is what Donald Trump had to say about Elon Musk. And he shouted him out and Elon stood up. He actually was wearing a tie and a jacket. This is what Trump said about- There was a clip on a tie, by the way, but anyway, go ahead. About he can't afford a real tie or doesn't know how to tie it. This is Donald Trump on Elon Musk. Very hard. He didn't need this. He didn't need this.

Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Everybody here, even this side, appreciates it, I believe. They just don't want to admit that. Yeah. Yeah. So he doesn't need the FAA contract for Starlink either. Don't you think the Democrats appreciate Elon Musk a great deal politically right now? Well, he's a great he's a great foil here. So let's let's go back to back.

I was going to if we if we were an orderly bunch, we would do this in sequence. But since we aren't and we're we're the hacks on tap, I want let's talk about let's play a clip of Alyssa Slotkin, the senator from Michigan, who delivered the and we'll talk more about this, the response to Trump whenever you like at dawn when she finally got a chance after he finished the longest speech of its sort.

in modern history. I think he's up for the Castro Award. The jury is out today, but I'll bet he's a cinch. Here's what Alyssa Slotkin had to say about Musk. While we're on the subject of Elon Musk, is there anyone in America who is comfortable with him and his gang of 20-year-olds using their own computer servers to poke through your tax returns, your health information, and your bank accounts?

No oversight, no protections against cyber attack, no guardrails on what they do with your private data. We need a more efficient government. You want to cut waste? I'll help you do it. But change doesn't need to be chaotic or make us less safe.

The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer only to rehire them two days later. No CEO in America could do that without being summarily fired. I thought that was a pretty good.

pretty significant takedown right there and hit a lot of the hot. Yeah, it's just such a thankless job because you're standing in the basement from a curtain, you know, forcing a smile. But I thought she did a good job. Yeah, a thankless. But I mean, let's leave the critique of her side for a second. No, no, no. I'm winding up to it. I thought the yes, the 20 year olds on the loose thing is good. Yeah, I think she laid out a roadmap for people on in a lot of different ways. I mean, but

But on this, Musk is a, you know, he's unpopular and he's getting more unpopular. He is a drunk on his own power. So he shows up at, you know, right wing meetings with chainsaws.

You know, gold chainsaws, of course, gold. And I do think that that is unsettling to people outside of the base. I mean, what they are thriving on right now. Look, let's be honest, you guys. You can say to anyone in the country. And one of the reasons I thought Slotkin was smart was she said, yeah, let's let's do this intelligently.

You know, everybody knows that there's waste in government. Everybody knows that government can be cut, rationalized, made more efficient. And so when you stand up and say we're going to cut waste, fraud and abuse, like who's going to be against that? Well, dumb Democrats. It's a trap to get them to defend against what people think. So I'm with you and I'm sure, Johnny, you're in the same place.

riding that wave and not getting in front of it that, yeah, let's get the waste out of government. But their waste cutter is a lunatic man child with an army of interns on the loose. That is a good attack. And he's, it's like, I, it's like George W. Bush and mission accomplished. It's like you running around with an actual chainsaw. Like that's like the way that,

It seems really dumb politics. The numbers, by the way. Post-election, we had done a poll on Elon. And you look at Tesla sales now worldwide, they're dropping through the rock. I mean, in France, a bunch of hotheads set a dealership on fire.

So it is, you know, the Elon product is not selling. The Elon cause sells, but the product is sinking the cause right now, which is chainsaw-wielding techno-arrogant bro. I don't think he's going to come out behind financially on this deal. I feel pretty confident about that. Well, I don't know. Tesla stock, his main wealth has given up all the

value again. It's down like 40% now. And he's going to get shareholder lawsuits because he's materially affecting the brand. So we're seeing, on the other hand, he is trying to rate contracts like the FAA. I think this whole bunch is going to come out way ahead, to be honest with you. I think this is new oligarch America. I don't know. I think it ends in flames, but I know you think I'm being too dreamcasty about it. Well, I mean, only because you've been predicting it for three years.

Well, I'm eventually right. It's like being, you know, in anything else. If I, if I, if I get it right, I'll beat the Gene Dixon. Timing is the hard part. I think we need to sneak in a little break right now. So let's do that. And we'll see on the other side.

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By the way, I want to flag one thing because we don't have the clip, but because we're talking quickly about the FAA thing. One thing that in the normal time, this line alone would have stroked outrage. But when Trump was doing his rampage about DEI, he said you should not choose air traffic controllers based on the color of their skin.

I mean, that is the most racist thing. He's going right after the plane crashes. Well, he did it right after the Washington crash. Yeah, he did it. Yeah. Yeah. But this was even more stark and direct. The subtext was, you know, those damn liberals have a bunch of black guys at the FAA or crashing planes. And it's the most racist damn thing out of a president's lips in modern history. And it just deserves condemnation. Can I, before we leave Elon Musk, can I ask you two geniuses this question, which is, um,

I think it's been on my mind and been asked for the last three months.

From the election day till now, Elon Musk has been at Trump's side. And there's not been a single moment really where there's been, even though you hear stories every once in a while, well, the cabinet officials are mad at Elon and eventually Trump and Elon will break up. He always breaks up with these people. He likes them and he casts them aside. None of it, there's been no sign of any daylight. Trump just continues talking about how great Elon Musk is. And yet the continued prediction is that at some point he'll obviously break with Elon Musk because that's what Trump does.

I asked the two of you what, a, why do you think that this marriage has been more enduring and that there's less daylight between the two of them than many people expected in B and

Do you not think that part of what's going on here is that Trump is setting up Elon politically to be the fall guy where Republicans in Congress run against him? They can turn on Musk two years from now without having to turn totally on Trump. And they basically cast him back out, not into the wilderness, but as a political he's politically convenient. So there are explanations I've heard from from the benign, which is that Trump.

Elon has a shit ton of money that he's willing to spend on Trump's behalf in politics. He is a hammer against these recalcitrant Republicans who fear that he'll spend that money in primaries against them. Uh,

you know, your explanation, which is he's a convenient fall guy and he's, you know, doing stuff that's useful for Trump now. But when he becomes a liability to the point where Trump decides he has to go, he'll go. But and then there are more there are more involved things which, you know, like truth socials losing a ton of money and a little merger with X and

uh, would, uh, be very beneficial, uh, to Trump because I, I don't know, call me crazy. I, I, the monetary incentives are never far from Trump's mind in my view. So, uh, it could be any of those things, but I do think at the end of the day, or all of them, if it's the last one, he'll have a lot more patience with, uh, with the Musk than, uh, the first, the first ones.

Yeah, I Trump is still Trump. I mean, we have this in the Internet and age now with the every 20 minute news cycle. We have the 20 minutes kind of like jump to. Well, now it's 18 minutes. It's always 18 seconds. Yeah. So we want this whole thing to resolve quickly. Give it time. Bannon had a good 12 weeks, you know. So, no, I think one.

Trump's a transactional guy. When it's in his interest to tank Musk, and it may be a master plan, it may just be feral instinct, he'll do it. And over time, I believe it will end badly, and it'll be in Trump's interest for it to end. But not yet. It's so early. My Trump answer, which bores people, is generally give it time. Almost any question. You're ignoring the last piece, which is

If it is a financial incentive, it may last longer than... Yeah, that's a force to extend it. On the other hand, I'm not where you are that Trump is 100% about finance. I think it's maniacal ego followed by finance. Well, and Mike, to your point is that on the other angle on the X thing is that even if X doesn't come to Truth Social's rescue financially...

The reality is Elon does control now the central clearinghouse for the central media platform for Trump-related transactions.

Trump adjacent and Trump related conspiracy theories and propaganda conspiracy. There's the benefit MAGA and propaganda that benefits MAGA. And Trump's never had anybody who had a controlled immediate platform with that degree of reach. Totally control it. I mean, I, I, I, have you seen how much the man tweets every day? No, no, no. And everybody gets his tweets by the way, whether you want them or not. And I see how the algo pushes his tweets out. I get all that.

But control would allow him to do a lot more censoring than he does. I think he has massive influence. He's like the publisher of a paper that leans on the editorial team. I get it.

But I don't know if control is right. I really don't know. I mean, I'm interested in what that algorithm does, John. I, you know, I don't know. We don't know. You could be what you call the algo. We don't know what it does and how it's set and how stuff that is how stuff that is, you know, critical of the president gets circulated and how stuff that promotes the president gets circulated. It is a tremendous point of leverage. And let me point one other thing out. And John, I want you to address this.

In the next 45 days, they have to make a decision about TikTok. And, you know, the president has laid out his conditions pretty clearly, which is half ownership by some entity, either some entity of the U.S. government's sovereign wealth fund that he wants to create or some friend of his buying it. So if he has friends running TikTok and X in this environment, that is that is state media right there.

And, and I, and I, and Mike, I take your point. We don't know exactly control. Maybe if we want to be really picky about the words, um, you may be right. He doesn't control everything that happens on it. He does have 220 million followers and I see his stuff way more than I see your stuff or access stuff, or, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, even with media figures that have millions of followers, his, his,

His reach is enormous because he tweets 200 times a day to his 220 million followers. And there's been an incredible growth of things like Libs of TikTok and the right wing, the MAGA friendly accounts.

are way more prevalent in my timeline than they ever were before. So I don't know. I'm not trying to be scientific about it, but man, his influence is enormous on that platform. Even if he doesn't have his fingers in every piece of the, he's like controlling it as if it's like his own printing press, but it's a big deal. And he's, and Trump's never had that before. You know, Steve Bannon was whatever, pick any of the people Trump's fallen for at various times. Have any of them been able to finance out of their pocket a,

a primary challenge against any Republican who strays without batting an eyelash? No. And have any of them controlled a media platform as influential as X? No. Those two things together,

are very powerful reasons for Trump to want to stay friends with Elon for a pretty long time. Maybe we'll find out. This is going to be the big sports casting of the Elon Trump drama gone for a while. My response is all true. Still give it time. I think it's fundamentally flawed and politically to get back to hacky stuff, it'll be in his interest to tank him eventually. Yes. And that may be, I agree. I think it'll last. I think it will eventually end, but it will last longer than many people thought. Yeah, that's fair. We beat this to death, but,

If he doesn't think that he's running for reelection and if his goal is to maximize his franchise, aren't the incentives different? I hear you, Murphy. He wants to be popular. He craves that. And therefore, if Elon is inconvenient, he'll dispatch him. But there are so many other incentives here that it's complicated.

Yeah, yeah. I think the next chapter will be Elon business trouble because Tesla stock's dropping like a bomb and most of his other businesses are not profitable. And he is going to get heat in the media. And whenever Elon gets heat in the media, brand trouble follows. You know, you can see it all over Tesla sales around the world and in the U.S.,

They just offered 0% financing. They're desperately trying to goose sales here. Well, if Elon is in a sea of stockholder lawsuits and everything for ruining the Tesla consumer brand in six months, that narrative is going to take on. And then it stinks of failure, which Trump hates too. So we'll see. I think it's a complicated mix of different forces pushing in different ways.

Axis question leads us back to the speech and to a thing that I raised earlier that I'd love to hear you guys talk about that we can all talk about, which is this Jeff Greenfield piece. And I, you know, like I'm I'm I'm very much in the camp of like, I don't I don't these speeches, I think, don't mean in the long run are inconsequential, especially when Trump is doing so many really significant things to the Justice Department and to on the actual on immigration, whatever.

But Jeff Greenfield wrote this piece that came out right before the speech last night where he hearkened back to the 2017 Trump speech. And Murphy, I shared a little bit of this with Axe already. In the 2017 speech, February of 2017, Trump's first term, he did all of the following things. He...

did a hat tip to black history month in the civil rights movement. He had a call for long-term agreement on immigration reform. He sang the praises of NATO all night long. He talked about the need for direct, robust and meaningful engagement with the world, uh,

with our allies across the globe. He sang the praises of Justin Trudeau in Canada. He voiced support for paid family, family leave. And he talked about how we are one people with one destiny, all bleeding the same blood, all made by the same God. You could not imagine a Trump more different than the Trump that who actually spoke at the beginning of when he came into office in 2017.

What does the difference between the Trump we saw last night and the Trump we saw in 2017, what does that suggest about to David's point about his different incentives, right?

He was trying to do something different with his speech in 2017 in terms of being popular, what he thought his gig was going to be, what his political interests were. He's doing something really different now. Well, now we have Trump unplugged. Back then, you know, they walked in. Trump's intimidated by the new office. He had a bunch of mandarins around with long history in the government and the Republican Party. And they said, all right, this is where you do the poetry. We brought in Poindexter here to write it for you. Okay.

Now it's all old hat to Trump. So it's like the old joke about the, you know, the bad singer in Vegas, screw the casino. I'm going all night and start singing Polka off key and it gets worse and worse. So this is authentic Trump. Yeah. This is Trump, you know, allowed without control with enablers around him to go. That old Trump was Trump with trainers and leashes and things like that around him. And those days are over. Yeah. Which is part of the scary part.

Or a lot of the scary part. I mean, we should allow for the fact that Trump was dead and buried in 2021. And he came back. And he came back, he thinks, by being himself, trusting his instincts, being more authentic and true to his fundamental beliefs. And mostly his beliefs is, you know, like...

mining these kind of very, very explosive kinds of issues and sticking it in the, uh, uh, sticking it somewhere, uh, against the establishment and so on. I mean, he, he thinks this is how I got here. This is how I got back here. Screw all of those people screw, you know, right. I need nothing. And, uh, and, and so in some ways that, that thrills his base is his really hardcore base and,

Again, it doesn't speak to the reason why the people who put him over the top elected him, which were people who are very sensitive to the economy. I also think, you know, he must have mentioned Biden 12 times last night by name. Worst president in the history of the world. Yeah. Worse even than Buchanan or Polk. Yeah. I mean— Terrible. And blamed him for everything. That—

I thought it was discordant last night. It's going to get older. These are the two. Here are the two moments I think of most Trumpy Trumpiness. Okay. Like in terms of let Trump be Trump. And I want you guys to tell me which one of you think is more cruel. Okay. Do you want to keep it going for another five years? Yeah. Yeah. You would say Pocahontas says yes. Pocahontas.

So that was a reference to Elizabeth Warren and Ukraine. Pocahontas comes to the well of the House to the joint congressional speech. And now let's play where Trump is speaking about one of his own cabinet secretaries. Yeah, the knife. And we have Marco Rubio in charge. Good luck, Marco.

Now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong. Yeah, there you go. There you go. That was, of course, referring after he'd spent some time talking about how we were going to definitely get the Panama Canal back. That was the reference to we'll know who to blame if it doesn't go right. And there's this reporting out about how Marco's whining to his friends about he's not part of the policy loop and everything. You know, live like a spineless person.

Paul, die like a spineless Paul. You can just sense Trump's contempt. Well, I mean, that was most evident on the Ukraine stuff.

where he was one of the most vociferous supporters of Zelensky. Well, not that long ago. We're talking about six months ago. Same for Lindsey. He ought to be wearing a neck brace from the head snap. Yes, but on Panama, we should just note that he went and he got pretty much everything that Trump wanted. Trump wants the symbolism of the fight. And so Marco's...

He's probably sitting there thinking, what the hell am I, what am I, what is he expecting me, what do I have to do to satisfy him? Marco had the same look on his face last night as he did in the Olofs and Zelensky, which has been repeatedly referred to as the Homer Simpson being sucked into the hedge look. When Trump is talking about Greenland and when he's talking about the Panama Canal, they cut to Marco, the cutaway, and he just looks pallid and embarrassed. Yeah, it's the old Christie debate face from New Hampshire. It's his heart.

It's Marco back on his raised heels. The thing in the Zelensky meeting in the Oval was the scene of Marco sort of fading. He's a small man to start with and sort of melting into the couch. He's Homer Simpson. He's Homer Simpson being pulled into the hedge. It's the perfect thing. It's a sad story, really. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back.

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Visit BetterHelp.com slash hacks to get 10% off your first month. 10% off. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash hacks. I want to get to the Democrats. I want to get to the response. But what about, we should say, he got to Ukraine in like an hour and a half.

into the speech or whatever. It was very, very brief. Everybody was wondering what he was going to say. It had a clean-up on aisle five theory. You know, oh, by the way, he sent me a letter saying he loved me and I'm still in charge and everything's fine, which was discordant to both reality. We cut off intelligence.

It's possible that people died overnight in Russian bombing because of the lack of intelligence. We don't know the answer to that. I'm not saying that happened, but that's certainly the consequence when you don't get the intelligence. Yeah, it has a material effect because we have satellites and they don't.

Just to point out, the Pocahontas thing, that was how Trump talked about the Ukraine thing. He was basically saying, everyone wants the war. No one wants this war to go on except for Pocahontas. Pocahontas, do you want this war to go on indefinitely? That's how cheaply he decided to deal with the issue. He turned it into an Elizabeth Warren joke. No, no. When in doubt, he is a hack comic doing crowd work. That's really the persona.

Again, you know, our initial premise was at the end of the day, people judge things through the prism of their own experience. I'm sure the Ukraine stuff, it's deeply divisive. There were Republicans in that chamber. That's one issue on which Republicans actually still are willing to speak out. And the Republicans in that chamber, who I think are really upset about it. But as a voting issue, you know, probably not.

Now, we'll see how the thing unfolds. You know, it's horrifying to me to turn over to essentially undercut Ukraine and Europe the way he is doing. But we'll see how this all turns out. But.

David, isn't there a question though? I mean, to me, there's a salience question here always, but it is the reality that every poll that gets done has like 80 to 90% of Americans thinking that Putin is untrustworthy and shouldn't be America's ally. Yeah, they hate Putin. So seeing Trump doing the work of Vladimir Putin against Zelensky, I raised the question, how politically salient is that? I don't know. It's not just the work of Putin, but

declaring that he trusts Putin. It's cutting off American counterintelligence, cyber operations against Russia. It's basically everything he has done. We've been in a cold war with Putin and we're thrown in the towel and Trump is bragging about it because he thinks he'll get a Nobel prize. You know, the real tell, and I agree with David, there's a lot of Republican quiet heartburn about this. It ought to be public.

But normally in a state of the union, when a big thing comes up like that, their job is to jump to their feet and wildly applaud the peacemaker. There was none of that. You know, even that that that parliament of fluffers there that, you know, normally will bend over anything for Trump.

That one didn't work. You know, Trump didn't get the big peacemaker standing ovation. And that's the tell. You know, we should listen. We should we should listen to Slotkin on on this because just on the. Let it go, Johnny. Murphy just Murphy just said Parliament. Stop, stop, stop. It went flying by. We're like the audience. I want to relish it. I want to relish it. Do it on your own time. President Trump loves to say peace through strength.

That's actually a line he stole from Ronald Reagan. But let me tell you, after the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave. We all want an end to the war in Ukraine. But Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity. And that scene in the Oval Office wasn't just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump's whole approach to the world.

He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends like the Canadians in the teeth. He sees American leadership as merely a series of real estate transactions. I thought that was pretty strong as well. And it kind of goes to what you guys were talking about. Listen, we should talk about the Democrats because I think what we saw last night was in some ways a microcosm of the state of American politics.

Each party is sort of a captive to its own constituencies. I think there are a lot of members in that Congress who come from 80 percent Democratic districts who are deeply incensed by what Trump is doing. And there are so many reasons why you might be.

but they're hearing it from their constituents. When are you going to fight? When are you going to fight? And so, yeah. So they brought their fighting path. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And, and waved their cane at him and got ejected and so on. And I mean, you know, I, the left was very unhappy when I said this last night, but I don't think that helps anything. No, no, all this performative stuff. You can't out Carney Trump. Yeah.

If I were the Democratic image guy, I would have said, sit in silence and hold little American flags. And get up when you should get up. I mean, if you're cheering people like a little kid who had brain cancer, stand up and applaud for the kid. But I do think that there's such a level of...

you know, kind of panic and anger and sense of urgency among a lot of Democrats, you know, as they watch him sort of flout all of the and destroy, you know, the FBI. Well, that's the other thing going on. The standards are going out the window. That was a professional wrestling interview masquerading as a, you know, State of the Union speech.

And Trump just destroyed standards. So it's hard for the Dems, I think, to know how to either ape them and you wind up in the same pit of people hate politics. I thought Slotkin, you know. No, no, Slotkin did, but she had a microphone. You know, she had a camera on her microphone. Understood. But it also was a blueprint, John, don't you think, for where Democrats need to be?

to win these marginal races, but also to revitalize itself as the opposition party in waiting. I think that focusing on... I like Slotkin's... her kind of plain-spokenness and her clarity and the focus on, I think, in the end, these economic issues that we started talking about earlier, the reality of...

You know, we used to say that that part of the problem for Joe Biden was that he was trying to convince people that things were better than they really were. People were like, Mike, the eggs are too expensive. The gas is too expensive. And Biden's like, well, look at us compared to the other eight countries in the G7. You know, that same reality is going to apply to the Republican Party and to Trump if if he continues to not pay attention to the economy. And I like that Slotkin is basically saying, you know, in a very straightforward way,

They are acting like they're let's fine. Let's cut, cut government down, but let's do it in a rational way. Not with a lunatic with a chainsaw who no one elected number one. And number two, what happened to the focus on the economy? Those are like good blocking and tackling arguments. I will say that, uh,

What will reach way more people than her response, even as it's all chopped up and put into social media, is the thing that Cory Booker orchestrated yesterday before the speech where he got most of the Democrats in the Senate caucus to record an identical selfie video of

That was really pretty cheesy, kind of pre-butting Trump speech where they had Trump talking about doing something about high prices. And they're like, they literally, all of them said, including the older ones, said that shit ain't true. And then they bleeped the word shit. And all of the right wing social media influencers, including Elon Musk, grabbed those videos, a

accused them of being propagandists, and then retweeted them out to their followers, making the same mistake that liberals made for years with Trump videos, where you were outraged at Trump, so you'd retweet the Trump video, thereby amplifying it. And I actually think that if Democrats are going to fight this battle, they're going to have to start thinking a little bit more like that. I commend Senator Booker for doing something that feels like

Hey, vertical video that actually kind of understands how social media works and how reach and presence and ubiquity is part of the game now, not just giving a rhetorically okay speech. Let me get in quickly. On Sotkin, you can see why she won Michigan and Harris lost. And I thought you're right. It is a good blueprint. But she's a center-depth.

will they be allowed to hog the mic like they ought to be because their messaging is better. But you know what? I think that the defining image of the thing was for the Dems,

It was that moment where the one Democrat member of Congress, I apologize, I don't know her name, held up that little handmade sign, this is not normal, and the thug Republican ripped it out of her hands. That little piece of imagery, which is all over social media, that was a powerful moment, I think, of normalcy versus madness. And I think that may go the farthest of anything. We are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Hey.

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I thought, as I said, that Slotkin did a very good job rebutting. I do think that Democrats, there is something very real going on out there. There is a sense, a broad sense that the system has failed large numbers of people who are working their asses off out there and, you know, treading water and worried, you know, a lot of young people who don't see, you know, the future and, you

And the Democrats need to not be on the side. And we sort of hinted at this earlier of kind of maintaining the status quo. If they get maneuvered into that position, that is a loser. And they need to have some big ideas of their own about that is not just kind of stopping Trump.

I mean, the danger for Democrats is that they assume that Trump will blow up and they will then they will regain the upper hand and life will go on. There is a real kind of genuine sense of hope.

estrangement on the part of a lot of Americans from government, from capitalism for that matter, because they just don't think they do think the system's rigged. The thing is that Trump speaks to their alienation, but his plans, to the extent they have them, will only deepen their problems. Democrats have some solutions and

but they don't know really how to speak to these folks in a way that's authentic. They speak with a voice of, with an institutional voice. I mean, Democrats need to think through more deeply what that is and how they're going to approach that.

Well, Democrats see the world as about class, and the Republicans see it through culture. And the Democrats are terrible at culture war. They get sucked in, and they get made fools of. They don't know how to fight it, and they're alienated. And, you know, it is no surprise. There was a great study out of Penn State in 2016. I don't know if they updated it for this election or at least yet, that showed the counties with the most suffering, which were poor, a lot of meth, a lot of family abuse,

a lot of Trump votes. So Trump has a cultural grab on that resentment. And the Democrats come in with the 17 point economic plan that nobody listens to because they think they're a bunch of liberals who can't organize anything. So the Dems need a total redo. And then I look at stuff like the deep trip. New chairman said, don't fix what's not broken. Our biggest problem is we don't have enough, you know, uh, uh,

controls on our vendors based on race and gender and identity. You got the new DNC chairman who says the problem is the bumper sticker glue. It doesn't look to me, a slot can gets it, but the slot can't have any power. I mean, how do you operationalize this? Because I agree with you, David, big shiny objects and ability to fight back in culture, but

I don't see a path. I see Chuck Schumer giving speeches, you know, how do they actually fix it? So here's my question that goes to this. That's just a different angle on the same question, because this, I don't want to overly give too much importance to Joe Rogan, but he's a good symbolic metric for something.

It's like, you know, a guy who manages to get tens of millions of people to listen to three hour long podcasts on a regular basis. Right. And people like Bill Murray go on there and people like Elon Musk go on there. And, and so here's the question, right? Democrats have a problem with dudes, especially with young dudes. This is like a real problem. And it speaks to Mike's point about culture. It also speaks to some things related to class, right?

But to be able to perform well on – to go on Elon Musk for three hours and stand your ground and do a good job, it's a matter both of substance and style. So who in the Democratic Party right now could just go on Elon Musk and you'd be like – would just be like – Even Joe Rogan. I'm sorry. That's what I meant. Sorry. Could we go on Joe Rogan's show and be like – not go toe-to-toe with, but comfortably sit there in the seat and work out having done some good for themselves in the party politically? Who?

I'm not saying there's no one. I'm literally asking who. Oh, I think a bunch could. But internally, they're all thinking, I can't really answer that because the XYZ caucus will get pissed and it'll hurt my primary. Their governors are on. Well, that's a big part of the problem. I think this will be one of the tests for 2028. But I think you have to combine. First of all, it has to be someone who's willing to say something beyond the same old, same old, who's willing to

blow up some things, who's willing to really say, yeah, we got to really restructure some of these things. And probably in some ways that would make Murphy uncomfortable because, you know, he is disdainful of class, what he would call class warfare, but there's been war being waged

against working class people just by not even always intentionally, but because of the way the system is evolving. And there needs to be a government Leviathan with road to serfdom. There needs to be some thought about what we're going to do about it. We can't just, you know, we can't chant

80s libertarian slogans, while the reality is that working class people are really pissed and doing badly. You know what the libertarian slogan is, which is what I love about the libertarians? They used to have t-shirts with this. TANSTOFFEL, T-S-A-N, which stands for there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. Now that's a battle cry I can get behind. But your point is right. But this democratic cultural thing, I mean, I remember at the beginning of the Trump deal,

The Trump campaign was taken off the old playback. Harris is too liberal, too liberal, too liberal. And there's a lot of scoffing. Oh, that's old. That's throwback. It won't work. The truth is it worked like a charm because there is this disconnect between particularly the Democratic elites and the average voter. They think they're out there and their performative stuff is all left-wing constituency stuff. And it's the indelible ink that's holding them back. And I look at the people running the party now and I wonder why.

Who's brave enough to say no to some of those groups and get a new identity? I think there's going to be plenty of that because what's going to happen is people are going to look back at the last election and they're going to say, we can't do that again. And yeah, I mean, there is this mythology that the Democrats nominate the most liberal candidate. That is, they don't, it is not true. They don't, it is not true. No, it is not true, but they have the most liberal brand and that gets in the way.

But to go to the point, Mike, about culture versus class, like it is not, it is not, it should not be overlooked that Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2016. Right. Well, that's the populism. It's like McGovern and Wallace. It's the weird horseshoe. Yes. But my point is just that like,

I don't mean like who could go on Joe Rogan and survive. I mean, who would thrive politically in that environment? And, and, and part of the reason I raised it is to say, Bernie is not a culture warrior. And part of the reason why Bernie was powerful. And it's interesting that fast Shakur, who ran his campaign in 2020 and got nowhere in the DNC chair race was the one non,

non-identity politician running for the DNC chair. He came out and said, Hey, we got to stop being obsessed with identity politics. And he came in fifth in the race to make your point, Mike, but well, that's a different universe. It is. That's not representative of the broader. Yeah, it is a special, it's the model train collectors club. It's got its own. It is just, all I'm saying is that, is that part of the thing about how to your point, David, is that

The the the kind of candidate who's going to be able to break through and and and and reclaim a bunch of these working voters and a bunch of these dude voters, young men who are white, black and Hispanic. A Democrat is going to be able to do that is going to be someone who's going to be able to go on and mix it up with Joe Rogan and break some and break some China and piss off a bunch of Democrats.

And I think there will be people like that. I'm not saying I don't see that there's no possibility. I'm saying that's what we should be looking. There's a huge opportunity for somebody. That's what we should be looking for is what I'm saying. I agree. We got to wrap this up, but the ability to go on Rogan and other kinds of media like Rogan is related to the ability to say shit that is real and true. And even if it offends people and that is

the coin of the realm. And so these finely manicured kind of policy issues

You know, nibbling at the margins kind of things. That's not going to fly in 2020. Yeah, Washington speak. I agree. You know, we're going to invest in X, Y, Z. It's somebody who can go get in front of the DNC and have half of them not clap or hiss a little will be the next Democratic superstar. I agree. And it won't be hard to get them to do that either. Yeah.

So, uh, I mean the DNC people, Rom, Rom, we're calling you. He's good at getting hits. Don't kid yourself. That is growing. And I, I'm not, I'm not, I'm hip to the, I'm hip to the caper here. And I like for another day. That's for another day. All right. This has been such a blab fest about a speech that probably in the end means nothing, but might be a symptom of what I believe is the, uh, a slow but powerful decline of the whole Trump caper. But,

But that's it. No mailbag this week because we're all on the run here from the new FBI. But thank you, boys. No mailbag, just gas bags this week. Can you guys give me, what should I say to Cash Patelli's at my door right now? What am I supposed to say to make him go away? You say your name names, but give us 10 minutes to get over the border. 10 a.m. ours. Yeah, yeah. Give us a head start. Joe Paluski, that's me. All right. Okay, guys. We'll see you next time. Later, kids. All right. Thank you.

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