The Recession Will Be Televised (with Doug Sosnik)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. Are you expecting a recession this year? I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition because what we're doing is very big. We're bringing wealth back to America. That's a big thing. And there are always periods of it takes a little time.

Well, there we are. Well, wealth is moving. I'm not sure it's coming back to America. It might be fleeing the stock market. A buddy of mine in the trading business says you can get a red MAGA hat now on the floor for two cents. Prices are dropping on that commodity quickly in Wall Street.

But to sort out the big macro picture here, Johnny Heilman, we brought in somebody who's not only an astute political strategist with a long history in democratic politics, but a bit of a political historian. Why don't you introduce our guest? That's right. The one and only Doug Sosnick, man, myth, legend. The man who did the impossible back in 1996 when everyone said Bill Clinton was screwed. Yeah.

managed to bring him back to political health and get him reelected in 1996. And Doug, as you listen to Donald Trump, suddenly turned into Confucius there. Like the man who has no patience. The market is everything. All of a sudden it's like, we must take time, Grasshopper. Everything requires a little bit of time, patience. People don't pay too much attention to the markets. What do you think about that?

Well, I think he's doing an office-like campaign, which is he wings it. And there's really no strategy. It's tactics. And he wakes up every day and he decides what he's going to do. And I think that's...

something that's very effective in politics, but it's not the same in governing. And I have quite a bit of experience in both. Most people don't. I spent three years in the Senate as the chief of staff, three years in the House as the chief of staff, six years in the White House. And I can tell you, campaigns are a lot easier than governing. And ultimately on governing, your success is going to be largely dependent not on winning news cycles,

But on having a strategy and plan for the country and having a clear narrative of what you're trying to do and hope six months, 12 months in, people feel a difference. Yeah, I think that is kind of a golden ticket right there. Campaigns are very tactical, which is Trump.

And if you kind of look at his history, when he's outside government and has no hand on the real throttle, he's a good candidate because he just relentlessly attacks whatever, you know, you get a parking ticket, you know, he'll get a news cycle out of attacking that horrible occurrence.

But last term and increasingly now in this term, when he's in government and has to play the big organ and has to plan doing stuff now that may affect your politics in six months or beyond, you know, it's been I'm trying to be polite and balanced here, but it's been a train wreck. So there's a big question I want to kind of frame and we'll go through the news on the march here.

But, Doug, I'd love, after we've talked about some of the things happening right now, we may return to this. There's kind of a debate going on, which is the normal rules of historical politics are if you screw up government and you offend a lot of powerful constituencies, you know, red state farmers who export, the business community, you know, you can kind of rattle Medicaid and Medicare, tough entitlements to screw up politically.

These are icebergs that'll get you politically over time if you don't run government right. The other theory is, no, everything's a reality show now. Trump's colorful. The Democrats are in disaster. He, unlike past normalcy, is insulated for all this because he's Trump. He has super loyal supporters. Now, I'm a fundamentalist. I think the icebergs are real, and I think he's sailing into them at high speed. But after we go through all this, I'd love to kind of return to that question. Is it different or...

Is it, are the fundamental rules of political gravity still in effect? And is he, is he risking big disaster? The shorter Mike Murphy is basically is the, on this is do the old rules of physics, of political physics still apply? Gravity is still here. Gravity. And that's right. And that's, I think it's a very large question. And, and, and it's a, as a way of getting into the news, you know, I woke up this morning and, and, and looked at,

the clips from CNBC and all the market coverage. And man, it is like Armageddon out there. The, you know, Wall Street has woken up to Donald Trump's economic program. And, you know, the things people are saying, the stock market is now back to where it was in September, guys, before the election. You know, the people are talking about sinkholes in the market, sinkhole under the NASDAQ. The thing is just in freefall. And Doug, you know,

The market is obviously an imperfect barometer for the economy to begin with, but it's one that Donald Trump has placed a lot of faith in in the past, and it certainly is a barometer for something. It might be a lagging indicator more than a leading indicator, but when you look at the scale of this meltdown and the direct impact

kind of apparent relationship between what's going on in the market and Trump's tariff policies proposed and ones that he's actually putting into place. The ones that he's, he pulls them back, he puts them on, he pulls them back. But this uncertainty that that creates, plus that clip we played where he's basic, basically asked, is there going to be a recession? And he essentially says, he implicitly says, yeah, uh,

I mean, yes, that could very well be the case. Kind of an extraordinary thing for a president to say, especially one who said that basically on day one, everything would be great with the American economy. How much of a threat do you think the collapse of the market over the last few days is to Trump's political standing? Well, look, I think overall, I would say the law of political physics has completely changed in the last 10 years. And pretty much the law of everything has changed in the last 10 years. I don't think, however...

the person governing this president, I don't think it's changed about the importance of having a plan. I think Trump...

is so fast and loose with the truth. He, you know, he discounts the fact that words when you're president matter. And he just in the passing on Sunday made a passing comment on recession and it drove the market down on Monday. And you've got two or three different people every day right now in this administration talking about the, the economy and the possibilities of recession. And they're all saying something different. And I think the only thing worse is,

than some of his policies right now is the uncertainty that he's putting in the market and in people's lives. So I think that

For the most part, the law of political gravity no longer applies to many things. I think it completely applies to the economy and what you do or don't do in the economy. And I think I'll say is I was struck. I spent a lot of time with my friends in the Obama administration in 2009 and 2010. And one of my takeaways during all that

was how little a president can really change the economy overnight, and that there really aren't that kind of levers. So it's really bigger than a president. President gets credit if things go well, they get blamed if they don't go well. Over time, you can make changes, but it really is hard. However, it is really easy for a president to screw up the economy. Right. And Mike, I guess that, you know,

we'll always kind of be toggling between the current and the, and the, the current questions of the news and the, and the meta question. And Doug just raised it. It's like,

There's a reason why most politicians would never say something like, on day one, I will begin bringing inflation down. You know, say that over and over again throughout the campaign. Because there's a pretty good chance on day one you're not going to be able to bring inflation down on day one. Trump was promiscuous. He said all those things. And now the price of eggs is through the roof. Trump does his speech to Congress and basically says...

you know, the price of eggs out of control is Joe Biden's fault. And it's like, dude, we're five weeks into your administration. That's long past day one. But does that stick to him or not? Well, I think the it's Biden's fault thing is an old play that new presidents get to run for a certain amount of time, but it's got a real shot clock on it. And I think he's, you know, he can get away with it maybe right now, but increasingly that's going to melt away as a shield.

I think the problem, and I agree with Doug, it's so easy to throw. A lot of what you do when you're an incumbent is try to avoid problems coming at you through the nature of government. You have to be a very adroit operator. So when you go pick the Fox Green Room as your cabinet, what you don't get is a bunch of good politicians who are good at preempting trouble.

that can, that can tangle you up and you catch blame. So again, Trump's a challenger. He's good at blaming. He's not so good at playing the big organ. I think the problem with this economic stuff is this guy really believes the mercantile stuff, the tariffs. He thinks it's really good policy. We have not had a Terry half, excuse me, a tariff happy president in a long time. And

And the problem with tariffs are if you're a populist, you can get applause on tariffs. I'm going to screw those, you know, those lousy Guatemalans who are, you know, doing this or doing that. The problem is, you know, as we're seeing right now of Canada, when you go raise, put a 50% tariff on aluminum, Canada's by far the largest aluminum supplier to the U.S., 40% of our imports, six times as much as anybody else.

There's not like all this massive aluminum capacity in the U.S. to make it up. So all aluminum prices go up. That equals inflation and economic pain. The very thing he was elected to fix because people perceived that Biden couldn't run the economy. And, you know, inflation is always the incumbent politician killer. So here he is. He's like jumping into the whirlpool that got Biden with more energy. But I think he really believes this mercantile stuff. I just mentioned three quick things.

The one prediction I would make, and I swore to no longer make predictions after the 2016 election. Stop the presses. Stop the presses. Doug Sosnick is a man who, after all we've seen in the last 10 years, is still willing to go in public and make a prediction. Be our guest, Doug. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. Enter the shark-infested waters. Trump's new villain on the economy is going to be the Fed, and it's going to be the chairman. And he's going to pivot to that.

and put the blame on them for the economy. I'll just make two other points quickly. One is, people don't really appreciate government until they no longer have the services. And so...

When you say, you know, we haven't even gotten into Musk and all that, but we start seeing the impact of these indiscriminate cuts and people lining up for, you know, hours at national parks this summer that aren't open. And next year when, you know, cribs lead to deaths of kids and there's no longer an agency that, you know, inspects them. And you have right now with the realignment of American politics, you know,

The people who are most dependent on government aid now vote Republican. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. Yeah, that's been a flip, the whole college, non-college schism. And the last thing I'll say on the economy is, I don't know if you guys may have seen, it came out recently in the last four years now, over 50% of all consumer spending is from the top 10%.

Well, these are the people who are hit the most by the decline of the stock market. Right. Well, here, to go back to those – all really important points. To go back to the thing about messaging and this – normal Americans do not listen to Scott Besant. They do not listen to Howard Lutnick. None of those messages are getting through. They hear Trump maybe.

But those mixed messages do get heard by Wall Street for sure. And just, you know, Trump, you know, kind of allowed for the possibility of a recession. Letnick's on TV at the same time saying there will be no recession. Scott Besson, the Treasury Secretary, is like more kind of in Trump's camp, kind of trying to foreshadow the possibility that there could be a reception where you have to detoxify the economy. Trump tried to clean this up a little bit earlier.

That was all the Sunday mess. On Monday, Trump's on Air Force One and he got asked about the impact of his tariffs and about what was going on with the market. And this is what he had to say.

We're going to take in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs, and we're going to become so rich, you're not going to know where to spend all that money, I'm telling you. You just watch. We're going to have jobs, we're going to have open factories, it's going to be great, and the plane is landing, and thank you for a lot of good questions, okay?

Well, there's that mercantile thing again. You know, he's looking at tariff revenue. He's been a protectionist and a mercantilist long before he got into politics. He stumped for these policies back when he was still a businessman. He still doesn't understand how tariffs work.

Like we're going to take in hundreds of billions in tariffs. Like that is not how tariffs were. Tariff is not like a revenue collection. No, it's like, all right, I'm going to, here's how I make you rich. I'm going to cut off your arm. You're going to sell all that blood as you bleed to death. Okay. Exactly right. I'll be rich for 11 minutes and then it's going to get pretty grim. But this is the thing you've been saying for a while. And this is where I want to go with this, which is,

You know, Wall Street, as I said a second ago, lagging indicator. Yes, they are unhappy about the tariff policies and they're unhappy about the uncertainty to Doug's point. But they are also unhappy really about what the signs that are coming out of the real economy. You know, the Atlanta Fed comes out and says, well,

We're going to have a first quarter where the economy is going to be in negative growth, is going to contract in the first quarter. You have economists, not just liberal ones, but eminent ones on both sides who are using a word no one has used in American politics since – I mean, I wasn't even born when this phrase was still used. You two were already in your 50s, but stagflation.

Stagflation, right? What's going to freak out Wall Street more than the prospect of something we haven't seen since the Carter years, which is a recessionary economy in terms of GDP growth combined with inflation? It's the real economy that Wall Street's reacting to. And the real economy, I think, to go back to your meta question, Mike,

That's, I think, one rule of political physics. Stagflation will have political consequences for Donald Trump and for Republicans in Congress. I can't see how that's been repealed. Oh, yeah. Look, economic pain on people's what they pay for interest rates when they borrow mortgage, truck payment, you know, inflation at the grocery store. We saw what happened to Biden. So that's the irony of all this. He is spinning into the same ruckus.

political rocky stuff that I think hurt Biden. On the other hand, he has this kind of nuclear energy behind him, which is, and I want to let Doug kind of talk about this. He's realigned politics a bit that is a combination of culture and class and

which is all, back in my Republican days, we did great with college educated people. Now American politics is a two lane highway with that vote rushing toward the Democrats. And that vote has the wealth. They've done much better over the last couple of decades in real wages. And then you've got the old blue collar vote, the non-college vote, rushing over to Trump on this cultural populism. And that is a powerful force. He is playing hit music to his folks

even though economically it's increasingly on a path to hurt them. So, you know, I think that's a stormy recipe for success down the road. But it might buy him some time because he's fighting the good fight they believe in against the elites, the establishment and everything. But, Doug, you've done so much work on this. I'd be curious what you think. By the way, there's a bit of irony. You had a Biden administration in which there was no one, starting with the president and the vice president,

including the cabinet secretaries and the staff, there was no one out there driving a message. No one for four years. On economics, yeah. Well, pretty much on anything, but certainly on economics. I mean, he's not old. He was doing handstands yesterday. We just forgot to record it. But this is an administration where...

As we talked earlier, there's a lack of, you know, there's not really a kind of a command and control here. This is more kind of like a jazz band with Trump at the lead. But one of the things that's consistent, I think, about all the people in this administration is none of them are going to, for a second, get anywhere off the first base bag of where Trump is on an issue. And watching like little Marco sitting in these meetings, it looks like he's being tortured.

But no one in his administration is going to step out and consciously try to rein him in or relitigate it. I think I will oversimplify to answer your question. Thank you. We need it really simple around here. Really simple. I think there are three groups of people. Two of them don't matter. There are a group of people who

Around 40, 42%, whatever it is. It doesn't matter what Trump says or does, they will hate him forever. And they're the 40%, 35, 42, say 42% that are going to hate Trump no matter what. It is that remaining 16% or so, roughly, I call them civilians, right?

who probably disproportionately like a lot of Trump's policies in the past, are uncomfortable with him personally. These are the people that have been deciding who wins and loses elections in America. And these are the people who are not emotionally involved to love or hate Trump,

They're going to vote based on how they feel their life is going. And those are the people to watch. And those are the people, if I were in the Trump White House, who I'd be most worried about. But here, Doug, this is a challenge to that point of view, which is this one challenge to the core MAGA faithful, right? Who, for the last 10 years, have basically said,

Trump's Trump's ostensibly a billionaire. He's a rich guy. He flies around in a private jet. He has a resort down in Florida. He's got a golden toilet, whatever, but he fights for us. He's, you know, the blue collar billionaire to use the cliche, right? But he's on our side. The challenge to the, to that group, and it's a question as to whether that group is,

Some of that loyalty can be cracked if they start to think that Trump isn't on their side. And I can't think of a thing that puts that to the test more than Trump's friendship with Elon Musk and the partnership with Musk, right? So, you know, Musk has been at his side. He's the richest man in the world. He is not an on-your-side guy. He's an oligarch by any definition, right? There's, you know...

And Trump is now surrounded by people like that, but represented most vividly by Elon Musk. And, you know, Musk is now the target of an extraordinary amount of ire, right? You know, I was talking about the markets before. They're calling what's happened on Wall Street the last few days the Tesla chainsaw massacre. The company has lost $800 billion.

I believe the company has lost $800 billion. Maybe it's Musk himself. But the shares of the company are down, or it's brutal. They're getting crushed in Europe. Over half. No, no. He's soon to be not the richest guy in the world because his wealth is basically piled up on Tesla, which trades at 100 times earnings. It's a puff stock.

But anyway, we can stay out of that. And you see it, Mike. No, no, I want to ask you about this, right? You see, I mean, I'm not for anybody shooting up Tesla dealerships or lighting Tesla. We're both EV fans. I don't know if Doug is, but I'm not for anybody burning up the Tesla charging stations. But that's a sign of something. And certainly investors in the company look at that and go, whoa, like, you know, this is bad for our company's future. Like, to your point, Mike, like, what does that do to...

Does it pose a challenge to the support of Trump's base that Trump is so closely aligned with this plutocrat? Is it getting to the point where

uh, Musk plutocratic status and the cuts that he's responsible for seen as being responsible for, does that ever start to sink in with the MAGA base where they go, Hey, maybe Trump's not on our side after all, if he's on the side of this guy, I, I don't think so. I mean, you know, there's the MAGA civil war where Bannon's after Musk is an interloper billionaire trying all that stuff. We did a survey after the election of my EV politics.org life. Um,

And among people who voted for Trump, Elon's numbers were like 73 over 10, favorable, unfavorable. And among people who voted for Harris, he was five favorable, 74 unfavorable, which is why the Tesla brand is having so much trouble. Democrats, you know, it's improving, but they've been buying EVs at a rate five times that of Republicans. So I think Elon is killing Tesla.

And Tesla, shareholder lawsuits, they might have to bite back. This is a big material thing. Half the company's market value has evaporated. But as far as rank-and-file Trump people turning on Elon, I don't think they will until Trump does. And I think over time, Trump might. That day will come. What's the over-under on that? And it might be in Trump's interest to do that because he's going to need a fall guy. Right.

So, you know, you could see it in the big slappy fight they had in the cabinet with Secretary Duffy and Marco Rubio. What a tragic story Marco is, by the way. I've known him since the beginning when he had such promise. I was an early donor to his Senate campaign. I'll never forget. He called me late one night wanting to drop out of the Senate campaign.

you know, after he picked a fight with Charlie Crist, I'm like, you know, you're going to either win or be dead. So why are you like, keep trying, but, but he's never been captain backbone and what he has fallen to, it must be mental torture for him because he knows better on all this stuff, but he's just done the Faustian deal and,

So this was the first crack where the media coverage, in my view, made it look like Musk is no longer a political asset to Trump. So he might wind up doing the final service here. You know, we'll see. We'll see. But I don't think there'll be a MAGA backlash on a mass scale against Elon. He's seen as a disruptor, and I think that's attractive to them. I agree with Mike. I would just say a few things on that. First of all, if you break down the MAGA...

support for Trump. I think there's probably 30% of Trump's vote is hardcore MAGA. It doesn't matter what happens. They're never going to. And then I think from 30% to 40% of his support is, it's not really MAGA adjacent. It is MAGA and is largely MAGA. But eventually, those are the kinds that could peel off. But the people who are first to peel off

aren't going to be that 30 to 40%. It's going to be those people that voted for Trump, but are uncomfortable with him personally and could have voted for someone else. But they're the get up that third group I talked about. The other thing I'll say is, and there's been some conversation, I don't know if you guys want to get into it today, about what the Democrats should do or not do. Oh, we do. We'll get there later. But the single most important thing for the Democrats is to have a negative narrative that is about Trump.

Now, you can talk about Musk all you want, but if it's just talking about Musk and doesn't put it back to the major meta Trump narrative, then it's no good. Yeah, no, I totally, totally, just quickly, I totally agree with that because Musk is ultimately disposable.

So, you know, you don't want to kill Ed McMahon because that, you know, and Musk already has terrible numbers. I just saw a California statewide survey. Now, California is not the country, but it's a big chunk of it. And statewide, including Republicans here, Musk is unfavorable in the mid 60s. You know, I mean, and his favorable is 30. We need to take a quick break right now. We'll be right back with more of Hacks on Tap.

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Musk was on with, did an interview with Larry Kudlow, I believe, on Monday. And I want to hear, we're going to play this, but he's talking here about, you know, what he's doing. But to me, the most about what he's doing, justifying, you know, waste, fraud, and abuse and all that. But he then, at the end of the clip, gets to the thing that I really want to focus on. So let's play that. So the goal here is let's not have America go bankrupt with waste and fraud. So...

That's what I'm here for. And we're making good progress. Yes, you are. You're going to go another year? Yeah, I think so. Going to go another year. So, Mike, I would say here's a guy who right now, last night Jimmy Kimmel said that he looked like the first guy to drop out of the World Series of poker. That's how he dresses. I heard Colin Jost over the weekend call him the white Kanye, which I think is so good. I mean, he is the white Kanye. That guy...

Forget about his wealth and even Tesla. The stuff Doge is doing, to go back to a point that Doug made earlier, veterans...

These constituents that you were mentioning before, going after the VA, going after air traffic control, going after nuclear safety people, going after at one point Ebola funding, going after USAID, which has pissed off Marco Rubio. The man has just taken a lot of arrows from a lot – not from Democrats. Democrats are trying to make him into a villain.

But there are a lot of Republican constituencies and Republican politicians increasingly and people in Trump's cabinet who are turning against him. Does that guy have a chance of still being Donald Trump's side a year from now? Well, no. I said at the beginning two Tomcats inside one pillow sack. I don't think it'll go well, and it hasn't been particularly competent. I mean, look, on the Republican Party, we've been in the try-to-cut-government business for a long time. And we all say, well, government is big, bloated, and wasteful. And that's true. Right.

The problem is government is big, bloated, and wasteful not because it's a badly run corporation. It's because it is designed to serve political constituencies who like it big, bloated, and wasteful. Because one constituency's waste is another constituency's vital program.

So it's very, very hard to do this. I wish they'd focus just on Medicaid or something. I mean, there are some smart people working. There's a guy named Brad Smith, a healthcare entrepreneur who I know from Bill Frist days, who's very good. Um,

Uh, but Elon, cause Elon is a one man band is running around with the chainsaw sending interns into trying to screw up payroll computers to randomly, you know, there's no, there's no guidance system on this missile. So it is, it's hard enough to do this in a smart way and not have a political firestorm. They're doing it in a very sloppy way. And they're building a coalition, even among the Trump cabinet secretaries, uh,

which are, you know, stay out of the clockwork of my department here. You're killing me. Meanwhile, if I were the Democrats, I would open Dem Doge. When Trump tells, uh, you'd welcome what? I'd open Dem Doge. Another Doge. Yeah. And I go after all the Trump spending, the Mar-a-Lago secret service, $800 rooms, the $200 million TV campaign. They want Homeland Security to do thanking Trump for the border.

I mean, these guys are drunken sailors with vanity money in the government. And I because you don't you don't want to fight against the idea of government's wasteful. People think it's more wasteful than it is. But you don't you don't want to be the defender of the spending status quo. It's the the incompetence of it. And as you say, oh, they're firing all the baby food inspectors. Great.

That kind of stuff will come back with teeth. Doug, this leads right into the questions of the later in this week, right? You've got the government shutdown looming, and there's the hill politics of all that, the very narrow majority that Republicans have in the House. They're supposedly going to pass this bill on a party-line vote.

They can't afford to lose anybody. They've already lost one, I think, in Tom Massey. They might lose more. Will Democrats hold the line? There's obviously a lot of Maryland and Virginia Democrats who are worried about the government shutting down. If that thing gets through the House, then it has to go to the Senate. There's the question of whether they get some Democratic Senate votes to keep the government open. And then there's the larger question of the budget, which, to Mike's point a second ago,

you know, the cuts they're contemplating to Medicaid alone, which is, as both of you guys mentioned, is now largely a program that benefits Republican voters because of the fact that there's been this big class shift in the party coalitions. How do you see all that unfolding? The shutdown politics, you've been through a bunch of these and we're through them probably from before Clinton, but certainly at a very pitch level in the Clinton administration and then subsequently, how do you imagine all this is going to play out? History's shown that

Shutdowns are usually bad for the party that shuts the government down. That's been pretty consistent. I think that Trump has a real hold on the Republican Party in general, particularly in the House. There are only 13 Republican incumbents in districts won by Biden. And so I think he's got a real lock on these guys. And, you know, you kind of have the same, they have a very narrow margin between

But you kind of have the same dance in the house, which is, you know, they're eight votes short. And Birchett, the guy from Tennessee, is out there saying, I need attention. And Sparks from Indiana is out there saying, you know, I'm going to do whatever. It's the same ketchup Roy gives an angry speech. It's the same cast of characters. But at least up until now, they...

They tend to fold in the 11th hour with pressure from Trump. And you saw, by the way, in the Senate with Ernst during the confirmation process for defense, and you saw Tom Tillis. That was pathetic how he folded up under pressure. So I think, though—so I feel like the Republicans can—

can probably get through the House on a party-line vote. And then when you move to the Senate, I think there are enough Democrats that aren't going to want to shut the government down

that they might be able to thread the needle here. But what about on the budget, you guys? I mean, then the larger budget battle looms with those big cuts. Oh, that's going to be the quagmire. Because the fear is spreading through the GOP conference in the House, even as Trumpian terrified of primaries as they are. And by the way, that is one of the, we didn't really mention it,

But in Trump's mental list of upside to Elon, number one is his people are threatening that anybody who steps out of line, Elon will spend $10 million to wipe you out in a primary. Well, and Trump's got a half a billion dollars, a half a billion dollars of his own money. Right, exactly. Doug, can you imagine it back in the day if Bill Clinton could have charged a million dollars for a fundraiser, to come to a fundraiser? We would have put an addition in the residence. Oh!

So I think this budget thing is going to be a lot harder because the house guys, I mean, literally there's an edict out. Whatever you do, don't hold a town hall meeting. They, you know, panic is non-ideological. So Trump political people are as capable of panicking over a free fall as anybody else. You know, Vance will give speeches about hold the line, but internally they're,

They can feel it, and the house people feel it the most. Even people in safe districts, in my experience, tend to be twitchy. You know, the mail's not going good. They're getting protests. So when we get to the budget stuff, and there's a lot of pain in their budget designs and aspirations,

That one is going to be tricky. I agree on the extension. They're going to be, well, we got to do it or the government shutdown will hurt us even more. The fear that will help Trump whip them to that as narrow as it is on the big budget fight is going to be a whole nother ballgame. We are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.

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M a R L E Y spoon.com backslash offer backslash hacks for up to 27 free meals and make sure to use our promo code hacks. So they know we sent you before we turn to Democrats. I just wanted to get in one last thing here about Trump and his, and his psychology and what, and the pressure is on him from within his coalition. So this morning, Tuesday morning,

After the markets had begun their slide, their plunge, whatever you want to call it, they had the press briefing in the briefing room at the White House. And a reporter got a little chippy with the press sector, with Carolyn Leavitt. And what was interesting about it was not just the chippiness itself, but was who the reporter was who got chippy.

So let's play that. Thank you, Caroline. So you said that the Dow dropping and dropping and dropping is a period of transition. You're sure nobody here at the White House shorted the Dow? No, I don't think so. Okay. That, for those of you who don't know, is Peter Doocy from Fox News. Now, I raise it only because, you know, a chippy reporter, more than chippy, spicy reporter in the White House briefing room is nothing new.

One from Fox News. That's a little bit new. And, Doug, we saw the other day Jesse Waters getting on TV and talking about his sympathy for one of his friends who got doged.

kind of pleading with the White House to be more careful about who it's firing. And I think the theme here is, and there's reporting, I think John Lemire at The Atlantic reported about this, that Trump likes, that people call attention. The Ducey thing made it, sorry, the Waters thing made it into Trump's consciousness. It's part of the thing. He pays attention to friendly media. And when friendly media starts to turn against him, I guarantee you,

That Ducey question is one that Trump will have seen before he has dinner tonight. Do you think that if Fox News and other friendly media start to register complaints about what they're doing, either on cuts or with Elon or whatever, how much do you think that factors into Trump's calculus about how he proceeds? I'm sure, Mike, you've worked for candidates over the years, some of which...

are very elastic in their own beliefs. Nah, Mike's only clients are always people at Princeton. I've had a few who see the value in all sides. Yeah, so have I. Exactly. On the other hand, I think I was a little inebriated at the time, but I'm pretty sure at a party I saw Marco Rubio manage to slide under a closed door once. Yeah. You know, so that's probably the award winner. But it's just from a purely...

from a political tactical standpoint, if you're trying to win an election and you have a candidate who doesn't really believe in anything, it's extremely liberating. So whereas you're really not, you know, constricted or having to fall within the lines. So I think, you know, I think Trump is like a day trader. And I think he, you know, he doesn't do traditional focus groups. He gives speeches and he tests out lines that work and lines that don't work. And that's his focus group. And I think if he gets negative feedback,

particularly for people he cares about, he'll adjust. Yeah, I totally agree. He doesn't believe in anything other than Trump. And I think you nailed it earlier. He'll pivot the whole, you know, he might dump Elon and go attack the Fed and have a whole new battle to fight. And those are the guys who cause all your payments to be high. They're killing the housing market.

The only hitch in the plan is it does appear the one thing he does believe in is this mercantile stuff leading to all these terrible tariffs. You know, he's picked one thing other than himself to be quote-unquote principled on and actually believe, and it's anthrax for the economy. So fundamentally, though, I think...

totally he's a he's a minute to minute i mean look this guy was a schumer donor i mean he's been he's had every position you can have in politics there's a harris donor i believe but it's just a schumer donor and a pelosi donor clinton donor all kinds of donors i have to say though i i i have been surprised that he

has continued to lean in and double down and triple down on these tariffs. But what I've assumed, and I think will still be the case, is he's going to feel he's from such a position of strength that he is going to declare victory with a straight face. You know, just another thing about candidates that I've found, Mike, is the candidates who have a no-shame gene are the most successful. Yeah, yeah, Trump being the alpha of that.

Yeah, it's true. Doug, I want to be clear about something. You've just said two things. One, which is candidates who have a no-shame gene is a real advantage, and candidates who have no real beliefs is a real advantage. I want to get it on the record. You're not just talking about Bill Clinton here, are you? I mean, just yes or no. Are you referring primarily to the big dog, or are there other candidates you have in mind? I would just say it's a general matter. Every day since Bill Clinton's left office, when compared to what's followed him, he looks better.

Yeah, I can say that about Nixon. Yeah, right. Hey, so let's just talk about Democrats for a second. And Doug, you know, one of the things, you know, again, feeds into Mike's meta question here about which of the rules of gravity no longer apply, which of the rules have been repealed, which of the ones are still in play.

As you look at the – and you've written a lot about the new era that we are in, like that this – that the post-World War II era of American politics has changed in some fundamental ways in terms of coalitions, in terms of partisan alignments, in terms of all kinds of things.

And that goes, again, as I said to the meta question, who do you look at? You see Democrats right now. Is there a Democrat out there who's who in the context that we're talking about? Is there a Democrat or are there Democrats who are doing it right right now who you're impressed by in terms of how they're dealing with Trump 2.0? So I think first of all, we need to get a grip.

Mike, if you go back to following the 2008 election where the Democrats took the White House and Congress, if you recall, the Republicans walked around in a daze until June. And they had a meeting in June of 2009. And they basically said –

Well, I'm not sure we can agree on what we're for, but I think we can all agree on who we're against. And so they got their legs, they began to get their legs six months into 2009. We're now 50 days in to the Trump presidency. So I don't think we should expect Democrats to figure all this stuff out, first of all. Secondly, I think you have to look at what is doable or not doable for the Democrats right now.

What is not doable is for a leaderless party to be able to come together and be able to say this is who we are as Democrats. What the Democrats can do now is try to come up with a consensus narrative about the argument and case against Trump and try to have discipline in that with the same language I think all should accrue back to.

Not to the shiny object of must this, whatever out. But what are the policies that this administration has put in place and how it's affected your life? And every day that you can give an example of a negative. So and so the future of the Democratic Party, I think, is to try to create the right narrative against Trump and Republicans this two years.

The leadership of the future of the Democratic Party is not the DNC. It's not the congressional wing of the party. So the best thing to happen, and I'll make another prediction, which is I think the Democrats will have a very successful governor's race in Virginia this year based on Doge and everything else. And the press always overinterprets the meaning of these elections. But run with it.

So the best thing for Democrats is sequentially have a narrative against Trump, do well in the midterms. I think we'll take the House bet. And then beginning in 2027, we're going to have a bunch of people running for president. And through that process, if the person wins and is elected—

They will now define what it means to be a Democrat. Professor, professor, let me just ask you. Hold on, I just want to say, if they run and lose in 2028, then Joe Biden will continue to define what it means to be a Democrat. Joe Biden could run in 32. Listen, Doug, Professor Sosnick, that was a very good contextual answer to explain all the things we have to keep in mind. But you still didn't really answer my question. Is there any Democrat out there right now?

who's impressing you in terms of how he's, in terms of how they're formulating the message. I'm not saying that they, now the leader of the party or the Democrats should expect to have a singular leader. Is there anybody out there? A lot of people out there testing test marketing messages and narratives right now. Is anybody doing it in a way that you look at and think that's impressive? Well, implicit in my answer was it's too early. And, uh,

And by the way, remember Clinton and Obama, who turned out to be pretty good candidates? They had it took them a long time after they announced before they got their voice. So, of course, there's nobody right now that's demonstrating that it's all catnip. But I do think I do think that the long term solution to the Democratic Party is going to be in the states and is not going to be in Washington. Yeah, governors are generally the great people.

growing ground for reset candidates for a party because the federal stuff just has such an anchor on it. We need to sneak in one more quick break right now, but we'll be back with more of Hacks on Tap after these words.

It's painful to admit, but I'll admit it anyway. I am not exactly a wizard when it comes to building and fixing stuff around the house. I have a pronounced tendency to leave that to the professionals, such as yourself, for instance. Yeah, no, I'm shocked. I'm shocked. Word around the Carpenters Union is don't let you near any power tools. Disaster for all of us. But look, Johnny, it's 2025. You're off the hook.

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It's the nature of the media, Johnny, to want to have, well, we have a wrestling match here. We have Trump and somebody else and who scored the toehold. And the truth is, and Carville's been writing about this, and I agree with him, when in doubt, go to the general Zhukov theory, which is Trump has all the power now, so retreat into the vast Russian steppe and wait for winter.

Let Trump, who's doing a pretty good job of screwing up, continue to screw up and then wait to these moments where you can change the narrative. Well, America just said no to Trump and his economic disaster with a new governor of Virginia.

Democrats amazingly win control of the House. So, you know, you kind of pick your ambushes along the way. And right now, Trump is diving for, as I said before, the vortex that really killed on economic policy. Biden, the very thing he was elected in perception to fix.

So, even though it looks like things are going terrible for the Democrats, they're going pretty good now. Now, whether or not when they are in the spotlight down the road and the moments arrive, they can engineer an identity that's different than what they have before is an uphill battle, the DNC and all that stuff.

dim, but the primaries do define it. That's where stars are made, and that's when it'll happen. I half agree with that. First of all, John, I mean, you know, having like, I know you're probably thinking about this when you ask the question. I mean, it's fine for Newsom to go on the podcast with Shapiro. That's fine, but that's just like small ball

It's primary politics. He's positioning himself. I agree with that. But look, we could spend a long time talking about whether what it does to the Democratic debate around trans issues and how the party should deal with those or not deal with those, how it should frame up...

frame of response when Newsom comes out and says what he said about how it was fundamentally unfair for male trans athletes to compete in women's sports. A lot of people saw that as cynical posturing on Newsom's part for the 2028 primary, but it also provokes a debate that the party needs to have. But Doug, all I mean is

Chris Murphy from a state that you're very familiar with, having worked for Chris Dodd for a period of time, you know, Chris Murphy's out there road testing a way of addressing what Trump is doing. You know, ROM is out there road testing a way of addressing what Trump is doing. Well,

I think we can evaluate those and say, that's promising. That's not promising because your point about developing a narrative for the party is, is, is right. I mean, and again, I'm not saying that either one of these guys should be anointed the next leader of the democratic party. I'm just more asking the question of, as those guys aggressively go on media and try to like

frame an argument is anybody who's out there want any of those people either of those two people or anybody else kind of doing it in a way that you think that's promising that seems to point in a direction that could be helpful to the party well look at two issues here democrats can't ever take back the white house without the republicans screwing up but if the republicans screw up

Well, that's going to happen. That's the atomic clock of American politics, as Mike Murphy would say. But there's no guarantee that just because they screw up, the Democrats are going to win the White House. Right, exactly. In fact, Democrats are very good at screwing up even more. So there are two issues on the table. One is how do you define Trump?

which is all we're talking about. And I think the party should come to a consensus on that, but that's not the same as defining your vision for the future. Totally. Where to lead the country. You know, if I were in the Dem business, I would say, you know what our job is for the next six months, let all these guys run for president, go out there and impress primary voters.

Let's push the wrong track to 60, the 61. It's in the mid-50s now. That's the real number that is the X-ray of how Trump's going to do. So broken promises and competence, stuff costs more, you know, and just pound away and move that wrong track up and get it to the low 60s and better. It's mid-50s now. It's inching up. That'll...

That does more to help the Democrats create an environment where they can prosper than anything else. Hey, Mike, let me ask you a Republican question just as long as I'm going to see. It's a cheap question, but I got to ask it anyway. There was a story in the last week about that in some publication somewhere, which I believe is probably true, but unreliably unreliably sourced.

That said, Donald Trump Jr. Plays planning a 2028 presidential run. Now, my reaction to that was, wait, he's going to run against his dad? That's weird. He's going to primary his dad? No, no, they think it's the family business. Of course he will. You know, it's all performative to them. Keep the crypto scam alive. J.D. Vance is clearly lining himself up with, you know, in a variety of ways, lining himself up to be the successor to Donald Trump whenever that date happens to come. So you look at Donald Trump Jr.,

J.D. Vance, and let's just say Tucker Carlson. Which of those candidates do you think has a greater upside as a potential leader of the Republican Party and the MAGA movement? You know, it's really hard to handicap that because politics is dynamic and always changing. I think Trump is going to be out of a congressional loss. Trump is going to be in the fall guy business.

And I don't know if Elon will last long enough. So I'm not sure Vance will be the shiny object now. I mean, you can fairly say he is the intellectual driving force of a lot of the Trump policy. So, you know, he's it's the cartoon where there's a saw going in a circle around his feet if things work badly because everybody's expendable to Donald Trump.

So right now I'd say the kid, because he's got the name, more than one of these, you know, lick spittles who may be discarded down the road. But, you know, John, if you go back to 91, 92, George H.W. Bush looked unbeatable for two and a half years from where we're sitting today. And he lost. So we're 50 days into this thing. How can we be thinking and looking about any of this crap four years from now?

It's just fun, Doug. Doug, it's just fun. Yeah, we're desperate for clicks. Here we are. We're in the internet business, Doug. We're doing dirty jokes next week. How about just have a little fun once in a while? For God's sakes, man. But the other thing I'd say is it'll never go back to what it was, but it can evolve. Trump has taught us that. So the Trump thing gets old after a while, particularly if it's more political failure.

So there could be new hybrid stuff. There could be a hardcore Trump candidate. The Christians may come back. The social media faction, excuse me, social issue faction of the party who made kind of a devil's deal with Trump. You know, they're just, there are a lot of tectonic forces in the GOP that could reassert themselves in a post-Trump era because politics is, Axelrod and I both in different words pound on the same concept. I always say,

people like to vote for what they think they did not get the last time. And his version of it is they, you know, they, they want the, uh, the remedy, um, and not the replay.

He's right now yelling at the thing because I've blown it a little bit on his phrasing. But fundamentally, something new and interesting could come, particularly if Trump is an electoral disaster. And there's a good chance of that, depending, as Doug said, on how the Democrats do it. We're back into the defund the police identity Democratic Party, which does seem to have deep roots here.

The Republicans can do it again. Well, God knows if we want, if remedy, not a replay, which isn't quite right, but if remedy, not a replay is the model, one good thing for Democrats, that means there's a pretty good chance we won't end up with Stephen A. Smith. The Democrats won't end up with Stephen A. Smith as its nominee. Cat in the canary, keep an eye on the Democratic primary for governor in California in 26.

It's a top two thing all in one party, but there are going to be a hundred. Katie Porter got in today. Harris is looking at it. There are a whole bunch of other people. It's I think pretty wide open. And that could be a early definitional sign in a, in a strong blue state with a hell of a lot of voters. We got to go, but I want to ask Doug the frame to go back to Mike's question at the very top. We've touched on it throughout the podcast, but I want to give you a chance to take a big swing at this Doug, which is,

Okay, we all would say that a lot of the fundamental rules of politics and gravity have not applied to Trump. He's defied a lot of them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And we all have at various times in this podcast said that we think that certain rules of politics, certain rules of the physics of politics still apply, like actual economic pain is going to create a political cost for the party that inflicts it.

When you think about what's different and, you know, at the now that we're in this new era, now that the old era of post-poor politics is over, what are the rules that you think have been repealed? And what are the rules that you think still obtain? Well, I think the new rules starting the beginning of the century was the candidate who's the candidate of change tends to win the elections.

So and that's not a Democrat or Republican thing. So I think right now and I think it's going to continue, the change candidate is going to win. I think the new rule of where sweet spots are in American politics, I think, is economic populism and social conservatism. That's that's where the country is. And that's not where the country was before.

And I think while on that, you know, a whole host of things like the media and how people get information and all that stuff is all those things have changed. I think in a lot of ways, bottom line, politics haven't really changed that much, which ultimately it's about particularly president, which is a very personal vote for people like any other vote they cast.

I think they're looking at people who, first and foremost, are authentic. And I think that's one of the things that Trump had going for him was basically he would basically talk like a sleazebag, act like a sleazebag, and say he was a sleazebag. But at least he was honest about it. So I think authenticity is going to be increasingly important.

And I think at the end of the day, though, in this context, if you're trying to lead the country, people got to believe that you have a vision for the future, that it's authentic and that you can improve their lives. And I don't think that's ever going to change. Mikey, what's your big high order bit on your on your big high order bit question? Icebergs still exist and they sink ships. Don't screw up the price of eggs and don't ruin the economy. And whatever you do, avoid inflation or you will be an ex-president because change becomes about that.

The change, I agree on change, but the change is enough of the pain. Try something new. People have a very low threshold for buying a lottery ticket to make things better when they're in economic pain. But the thing that's changed the most is the shift.

based on college and income. So the Democrats have become more of an elite party of economic power, weirdly enough, and the Republicans are more populist. And the populist stuff, the cultural fights, which the new Repubs are very good at dragging the Democrats into, are very powerful.

So the Democrats have to learn to play in a world where they don't take culture war bait the way they do now, or that's a trap. And it's been very effective against them so far. And that's a change. The big beta change that's coming.

but will not be coming probably in four years. It may not be in eight years. But the big change that's coming is going to be the demographic change when the Gen Zs and millennials are running this country. And that's going to be probably the next decade, and everything is going to be different then.

Well, thank God that all of us will be dead by then because there have been no – because the millennial generation is the period, worst period, generation, period of all. And I'm not sure the Gen Z generation is any better. This will cause any younger listeners to the show, all 11 of them, to get really angry at me for saying that. But I was also going to say that whenever we start addressing the question of like the working class, working – average working people, I look at the array of hosts here and I think to myself –

It's a weird thing when like among the three people that I'm the representative of the closest to the working class because the two other people on the podcast are such like abject plutocrats. Oh, wait a minute, Mr. Media Elite.

I happen to be the card-carrying member of two labor unions, my friend. Yes, yes. That's right. I'm with the working folks. Don't tell us which labor unions those are, Mike. They're both, I'm sure, rooted in Hollywood. Well, my former Teamster dad is not impressed that the Writers Guild of America is one of them. Because he's like, oh, he might get a paper cut. Things get rough. But, yeah, we're Mr. Manhattanite. We'll continue that argument on another episode.

episode. We are out of time and I've been instructed by the authorities here to make an urgent plea for some more mailbag questions. Now, we've been bad. We've skipped the mailbag because of our blow-hearted approach to this thing. But all you got to do is

email us a question at hacksontap at gmail.com, or you can record it on your phone. Just keep it short. We're the windbags here. I'm talking for all three of us, by the way, and send it to us on voicemail. Just give us your name, the question. How do you do that? How do you do that, Mike? How do you send it? You get voice memo on your smartphone, and you use that same hacksontap at gmail.com address, or you

If you're glutton for punishment, you can call the Axelrod Voter Registration Center, Cook County, Illinois, and either place a bet or leave us a question on the voice line, which is 773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471.

There you go. Easy as pie. If you do that, you also register automatically for the Democratic Party if you do that. So just be aware. Yeah, you get to vote three times in the next mayor's race. In Cook County, that's right. Doug Sosnick, you're awesome for doing this. Thank you for coming on the show. Thank you, Doug. It was excellent. Thank you, guys. Nice seeing you.