Under His Skin
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. I think we're getting under his skin. Just saying. I don't know. Mike Murphy, she may not be wrong. Huh?

Nikki Haley. I don't know what she's getting anywhere, but she's definitely getting under his skin. I think that's the point. It's incredibly fun to watch her get under his skin. He might get mad enough to bury her alive in delegates. Yeah. That's the problem. She's winning the entertainment primary. God bless her for it. We will see how Election Day goes down there. I mean, I think she's going to be the president of Charleston.

It's slightly but different reminiscent of the Marco Rubio stand-up that lasted for about a week in 2016. But you know what? Is she getting under his skin? No one can tell us better than the man who's written not one, not two, but three books. The trifecta. About Donald Trump, including the latest bestseller, Tired of Winning, Jonathan Karl.

Now, we went through this beforehand. All your titles, national correspondent, Washington. Something like that. Yeah, big deal. A really exalted grand eminence. Chief Washington correspondent and co-anchor of This Week at ABC, Jonathan Karl. You know the man. John, how's he doing?

You know, I mean, the, the reason why I wrote tired of winning was that I, as I was tracking his departure from the white house, uh,

And up until, you know, where we are now is I had really gotten the sense that in many ways he had lost it, that he had become more unhinged than he was even in those final weeks inside the White House, more detached from reality. And I think you're seeing that he clearly, Nikki Haley, has got under skin. I mean, look, he's got...

I mean, the temper tantrum, and she's right to describe it that way, that he...

that he did after, after New Hampshire. I mean, he won New Hampshire. He won New Hampshire huge. He won Iowa. And he comes out and he, and the whole bit about how anybody that donates to, to, to Nikki Haley, your money's not good with me. Yeah. Yeah. I'm coming for you. I can't tell you how many donor types have called me and said, at SOB, I just sent her money.

We got to have buttons printed up. I'm waiting for you, Donald. He hit a weird chord with that in all the wrong ways. But you're right. He had a meltdown. That was his idea of a victory part. And then Dave Bossy, one other thing. Then Dave Bossy puts forward, he was one of the 168 members on the Republican National Committee, and obviously former deputy campaign manager from the 2016 campaign. As close to Trump as it comes. Yeah.

He pushed forwards this resolution saying that the primary is over, the Republican primary is over, which is really wonderful. You know, you need, what, roughly 1,200 delegates, and he's got – how many does he have? 32 or something. Yeah, 32. Yeah, so of course he's got it clinched.

And the only reason why that got pulled back and Trump renounced the effort is because it was clear, even among the 168 members of the Republican National Committee, that was a bridge too far to declare it over. So he's acting in a volatile way, a self-destructive way that may lead all the way to the convention and the nomination almost certainly will. It's going to be the first White House that needs padded walls. That's where I think we're heading here.

padded walls that don't get stained when you hurl cheeseburgers against them. Scotchgard is the president's best friend. And it does strike me that Trump has never really tolerated prosperity well in his political career. He always, when he's feeling chippy, he becomes more self-destructive. But you did, you know, the subhead of your second book,

John was the final act of the Trump show. Yeah. So it looks like he has another act here. There's always the opportunity for an encore, right? When you go to one of these things. Look, I mean, the idea that Trump would come back in any significant way, let alone as the clear dominant leader of the Republican Party and its presidential nominee again, the idea that that would happen would

After he left the White House the way he left seemed to me at the time quite absurd. And if you read the arc of my follow-on book, the one that just came out, Tired of Winning, I mean, he announced his presidential campaign, this third campaign, a week after Republicans suffered all those losses in the midterms.

and all of those Trump-endorsed candidates went down in flames. It was kind of a funereal affair, too, with that announcement. It was sort of otherworldly. Well, that was the window when the party was really thinking at least the leadership was something else. And then Biden got so weak, they started to create, holy Christ, even Trump might be able to win, and he reasserted his dominance. They dragged in everybody from the bar scene of Star Wars into a room. Everybody was sort of

stunned and he gave this sort of uh spiritless uh announcement uh and here we are uh you know 14 months later or something um and you know for all of what we just said he's gonna be the nominee of the republican party murphy

I believe he is. You know, I still am holding out hopes for an alien invasion and a rejiggering of the whole process. What if he is the alien invasion? Well, that could be it. It's a welcome home party. Yeah, you know, we're going to have this entertaining Nikki Haley thing for a while, which, you know, on to Massachusetts. On your point, comment on the way out of it. Yeah, let's listen. Let's hear her. She was on the TV on Sunday and she was asked about her plans.

As long as I keep growing per state, I am in this race. I have every intention of going to Super Tuesday.

Through Super Tuesday, we're going to keep on going and see where this gets us. That's what we know we're going to do right now. I take it one state at a time. I don't think too far ahead. Now, in that same interview, Murphy, she said she didn't have to win her home state of South Carolina. She had to do better than New Hampshire. Well, I have every plan to go into the Miss America pageant, but I have a feeling I'm not going to be wearing the tiara. You know what I'm saying? I mean, look, I'm enjoying this. I hope she gets a chance to actually use a heel as a weapon and bounce one off him. But

In the hard math of this, remember, it's about delegates, not coming in a pile of silver medals don't nominate you. And we quickly, our calendar starts to switch because we're social Darwinist Republicans, unlike you tear-jerking Democrats. We go to winner-take-all pretty quickly. Including South Carolina, by the way. Right. So you can be two points behind and say, look what I did and get no delegates. So, you know, do I think she can hang on on a...

you know, thread and win the Massachusetts primary. Ah, she's got a good shot. Vermont could be in play, but that's about it. So, you know, if she can do damage to Trump along the way, I'm, I'm for it. If I were working for Nikki, I'd be planning to go away for a while and be the one who warned us after the next Trump collapse and Jonathan's fifth book, Trump finally, you know, the October of hell, the final chapter. Yeah.

And then she could really have a shot at nomination. She's young, but she's got to be a little careful about the Captain Ahab thing here. Yeah. So I want to ask you about this, John. It's hard to understand exactly what Haley's thinking is here, what her path to anything is here, and whether or not she actually emerges stronger here.

If she hangs in there longer, but she is doing damage. I mean, apropos of the conversation we just had, she's like a major. She may be a minor threat, but she's a major irritant to Trump. So in that sense, she is kind of doing Biden a favor, isn't she?

I mean, she's, she's certainly is cause she's, she's drawing out behavior from him. He's, he's going to get more and more vicious and out of control in the way he attacks her. And, and this is, this is not something that it's going to endear him to independent voters. But look, she can stay in this as long as she wants. There's going to be money there. There is Republican money that,

That will willing to be thrown away in the process of trying, if at all, to stop Trump. And she's the last person standing. So Trump is as volatile, self-destructive a political figure as we have ever seen.

By the way, you guys may have heard, I think he's got four indictments and 91 or so counts. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Remember that? I forgot about that. So, I mean, do you really just cede the field to the guy because he's ahead in the polls nationally and in every state? Yeah.

probably including Vermont among Republicans? Or do you say, you know, I'm the last person standing and I'm going to be here and I'm going to take the fight. I'm going to take it both in terms of I'll be able to say I told you so when Trump goes down in flames in the fall. But who the hell knows what happens with this guy? I'll tell you, though, I agree with that. But the flip side, and that's the argument people are making to her. And then the argument that donor types make and whisper says, hey, you never know when it's double meatloaf night. Anything could happen.

So they're like, go to the convention, have some delegates. Who knows? The problem is on the flip side. The media narrative is exemplified by my friend and broadcast partner here is that she's helping Biden. So, oh, Biden's cat paw, huh? That's the narrative that that is crushing in a primary. The other problem is she's not careful. She becomes Jerry Brown against Clinton. I'm hanging in here, me and Jacques. And it it it will start to take the shine off her.

And she still has a little shine. So there's an inflection point where she has to think long-term versus short-term, I think.

Look, she only has a future in this party if the fever breaks. I mean, because that's already there. I mean, she's already been branded as the choice of Democrats. She's already... They've already gone after her. I mean, you have Rand Paul, even before New Hampshire was done, started his Never Nikki movement. You know, I'm not... I'm Never Nikki. If she wins the nomination, I'm not with her. I mean, they've...

They've already branded her as a globalist, as a rhino, as...

you know, as on and on and on. And, and the, the, the, the fever would need to break for her to have a future. Would that need to be a decisive, you know, we lost in November as Republicans because by God, we backed this dude again and look what happened. Um, and we need to have what rights previous might call, um, you know, what, what, what, what, what, what was the, the, uh, autopsy after, after 2012.

You know, Reince had the autopsy and they prescribed a candidate very much like Nikki Haley. Yes. And the... Which they didn't get. It didn't play well with the home folks. And they had a different idea. You know, Mike, the whole thing, when we got together the day after the New Hampshire primary, I think one of my...

miscalculations was that she would have trouble raising the money and that has not been the case. You think these donors...

hoping that Trump will slip on a legal banana peel here or do a full freak out, will stick with her regardless? I think some will. And the small donors, maybe. She'll have a small donor operation, but she'll have some high dollar money. I think she's in New York today or maybe yesterday, you know, raising toward the deadline. But

her campaign will not be a financial juggernaut after she loses South Carolina. She'll have enough to plausibly stay around and keep losing. But after a while, you have to kind of decide what the utility is in that. And, you know, the media will switch from helping Biden, which hurts her, to why is she still in? Is she nuts? It's over, which also hurts her. So, you know, like fish, you don't want to be out in the sun too long.

I just, I think from her point of view, I'm not a big fan. You know, I've always been pretty critical of Nikki because I've dealt with her. But she has to think about her interests. Your criticism has been that she's a shapeshifter. Right. That she's not particularly reliable in her personal commitments to fellow politicians. But this is unusual because

She's sort of sailing into the wind a little bit here. No, this is on Nikki like she's been taking DeSantis pills. When you're dead, you turn into a good candidate. We've seen this before. Now that she has nothing to lose, the fear monster that has held control of her psyche in most of her time in politics, zigging and zagging, is gone because she's got nothing to lose. So she's finally liberated. This is what Nikki would sound like, I am told.

when she was UN ambassador in the cabinet. Like, we have a madman here. How are we going to deal with it? So it's been liberating for her. For the first time, it looks like she's having fun. So, you know, on a human basis, I feel...

well for her about that. I just, you know, we're the delegates. Right. Which is sort of how you nominate candidates. Other than that, she's doing great. What happens, John, if she were to win? No, I can't find a politician in South Carolina, a Republican politician who I talk to who believes that Trump won't win because it's, you know, more of his blue-collar base, more evangelical. This is, you know, more...

more than Iowa than, you know, even Iowa and less than New Hampshire for her. So it's not friendly terrain, although she's very popular there. But I did see some polling that had her closer, like private polling that had her closer than the public polling has. What if she does beat, I know this is unlikely, what would happen if she did beat him in South Carolina? Oh, we have a race.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I mean, look, that would be a jolt. That would be that would be a jolt. And, you know, we move very quickly on to on to Super Tuesday. But where you effectively have a national primary and, you know, the national look, the places that Trump had the weakest hold on the Republican Party were Iowa and New Hampshire.

simply the case. South Carolina has consistently been one of the places, like he is nationally, where he's had a total control over the party. So if he manages to lose to Nikki Haley in South Carolina after having, by the way, the support of everybody in that state except for, you know,

one, one, one Republican house. Norman. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and about half of Nikki's relatives, everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but, but, you know, but this is quite hypothetical because there's, there's no indication, but God only knows.

we still have some time for Trump to further meltdown, but that would be something of a bolt of lightning that would, I think, change the campaign. Yeah, she'd get a hell of a bounce. This would be the biggest expectations loss for Trump that you can imagine.

And he's got two wired. He's got the caucuses, Michigan, Nevada, pretty much rigged. But some of those Super Tuesday states could bounce. The New England stuff, even California, huge winner take all, would start to get interesting if she's able to topple him in South Carolina. So it would open up the race a bit, a lot. The key factor is how he reacts.

Oh, totally. I agree completely. I'm sure he would take it with equanimity, you know. He would congratulate her, he would say. Yeah, he's very gracious, man. Now on to Super Tuesday, where we'll compete honorably again. It's all about the right headline, too. Rapist loses in upset. You know, that could get things going. So you know he's a terrible winner, as you said. When things are going well, he's very destructive. But we've seen he tends to be a pretty bad loser as well.

So let's see. Yeah. Well, it's hard to say the race was stolen when the whole entire apparatus of the Republican Party and the state are on your side. Yeah, you've got all the thieves working for you. I was like, Al Capone, I was robbed! Tricked accountants! This also will be amusing. Let's live fantasy land here for a minute because it's fun. We've talked about how technically competent for a change the Trump campaign has been.

And my argument has been true, but they haven't had to deal with crazy Trump yet because he hasn't had a setback. He's been cruising ahead of a big poll lead, you know, Iowa easy win.

So then came New Hampshire day where I'm sure he heard about the early exit polls that showed a, you know, four or five point race. And my theory is it took three people to hold them down and hood them like a Falcon because he was throwing the biggest fit of all time. And that half-life was so long, he was still throwing a fit on his victory night. So we know Trump can, I mean, this is your point, Jonathan, you're so right. Nobody controls them when he's having one of his

panic, meltdown, the country hates me like my dad did, panics. And if she were to win, it would be the epic H-bomb of Trump meltdowns. And he could do himself some real damage. I've always had the theory if you beat him, it starts to unravel. The problem is, it's like the old Steve Martin joke, how to get a $100 million real estate empire in three days. Day one, get $100 million. So all you got to do is beat Trump to unravel him.

beat Trump hard. You can only imagine from the moment he got off that stage in New Hampshire, probably before he got on the stage, how hard his staff is working to try and keep him under control. And they must be doing that now. John, you must be hearing from them. I mean, first of all, back to New Hampshire, when those, like you're right, the exit polls came out and showed it could be a very, very close race. He actually,

You know, put out a statement on Truth Social basically saying that the election was being stolen, an election that he ended up winning by double digits. This is a really, really strange campaign, even by the standards of Trump campaigns.

Until recently, there really wasn't a campaign apparatus. You had a handful of aides. They now at least have some office space down there in South Florida. But not doing anything significant in the way of campaign events. Yes, Chris LaCivita and Suzy Wiles have methodically gone through and worked the state Republican primaries to...

You know, to make sure that the rules were set up in such a way that would benefit Trump. But they largely accomplished a drama-free campaign to this point by keeping Trump out of the campaign. Yeah, there was no Trump involved, right.

He was spending, and he has been, and is spending more time with his lawyers, or actually literally in court, than involved with the campaign team, which is a trend that may continue, by the way. Yeah, well, it may intensify because there's more action coming up. All right, we're going to leave for a minute to pay the power bill, and then we'll be right back. ♪

The paradox of the campaign is that he's got a rational, experienced campaign team doing what rational, experienced campaigns do.

Teams do. And he's more unhinged than ever. And that really does raise the question as to whether this early end, if it is an early end of the primary season, benefits him to the degree that you would think. Because now the spotlight daily, 24-7, is entirely on him. And he may like the spotlight, but the spotlight isn't very flattering right now.

And, you know, he was in the protective cocoon of this Republican race, ignoring his opponents. You know, yeah, the occasional crazy interview or or post on Truth Social. But now, you know, he's getting nominee attention.

I'm not sure 10 months of that is that great for Donald Trump. I totally agree. I think one of the things that he truly benefited from up until this point is actually a lack of attention. And I know that sounds like a crazy thing to say about Trump, but...

And again, another reason why I wrote Tired of Winning is for a good two years after the guy leaves the White House, nobody really pays attention to him. I mean, there's even like a blackout on Fox of Trump news. People do pay attention to the impeachment trial in the Senate, later the January 6th hearings, later the criminal cases and all that. But actually what Trump was doing, Trump was

almost as a madman in exile in Mar-a-Lago, getting deeply enmeshed in these conspiracy theories, thinking that there was a way that he could be reinstated as president before the next election. And

I mean, obviously some of this got attention when he dines with, uh, yeah, you know, um, uh, white supremacists and, and, and, and an anti-Semite at Mar-a-Lago a week after he announces he's running for president. It generates some attention when he declares that he, we should consider suspending the constitution. It's like a story for a day or two as Republicans, uh, you know, try to find a way to, to, to ignore it. Uh, but now you can't ignore it. Now you can't ignore what he's doing. Uh,

And he's – as the presumptive Republican nominee, there will be a spotlight on him, not just on the swirl around him, but on him, what he is saying, what he would actually say.

what he's actually talking about doing, if he actually gets back in the White House again. None of this is particularly flattering. It may still play well among Republicans, but is deeply problematic in a general election. Yeah, the battlefield switches to a whole different kind of electorate in the general election. The other thing is he might just be covered as the frontrunner if the polls keep showing him beating Biden, which brings me to the brontosaurus in the room. My big worry as a Trump-hating Republican is that

Are we going to break the model in this election that has historically been mostly true that the first decision is keep or fire the incumbent? And then you move on to how acceptable the nominee is. Now, you can argue when the Obama reelect, they did a pretty good job making the election about Romney.

And this election, a lot of gravity will want to make it about Trump. But Biden is still in the center and he's got incredibly weak numbers and he has not shown yet any ability to change him. Now, maybe the economy comes roaring back. You can start to paint scenarios that are kind of passive where Biden rides along in some third force. But if Biden doesn't get his numbers up, I think even a pretty beat, you know, people forget this because I'm old and David, you'll remember.

in 1980 Carter was in trouble, but the kind of party line, well, they're never going to elect a kooky old washed up actor, right wing kook. He used to do monkey movies, Ronald Reagan. And they, they did that because they didn't want Carter anymore. So I just wonder about the Biden part of this equation for all Trump's weaknesses. I do remember that. And I think Carter, you're right about that. And the Carter folks were relying on that. Uh, I think Carter, uh,

Carter was weaker than Biden is now if just in pure polling. But

There also, you know, one other interesting thing about that race, Murphy, was there was a third party candidate, John Anderson. A wine and cheese party candidate, kind of like the third way stuff we're hearing about now. And he took votes from, I suspect, from people who couldn't vote for Reagan. You know, he took that default vote away, which could be the scenario there with these third party things. Listen, Haley is running this ad in South Carolina. She just put up an ad.

We ought to listen to it. I voted for President Trump twice, but chaos follows him. We can't have a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos. We won't survive it. Trump and Biden, it's going to be another nail biter of an election. It should send a chill up everybody's spine at the thought of a President Kamala Harris.

The first party to retire its 80-year-old candidate is going to be the party that wins this election. So it's a combo. It seems like a sort of greatest hits of all her arguments there. But she does throw Biden in there to try to leaven the anti-Trump references for Trump.

I guess, voters in South Carolina who like them both. I wish she'd been doing this a year ago because she's starting to make the right argument. And she's half stealing my line. And I'm happy about it that Trump Biden gives you a nail biter. I give you a Republican landslide, which I keep slipping them on a piece of paper.

Makes more sense when she says it. I don't think you would have given them a Republican landslide. Yeah, and I don't know how to use heels as a weapon either. I've practiced a little. So, yeah, but it's just in the nick of too late. Yeah. I mean, I got to say, I don't understand it. I feel like nobody noticed what happened in 2016 when...

I mean, I was running around covering the early maneuvers in that race as early as 2014 and, you know, throughout the primary.

And, you know, your friend Jeb Bush wouldn't utter the guy's name. I mean, I remember ABC had an interview with, I wrote about this in Front Row, ABC had an interview with Jeb Bush that was, you know, we had been, you know, because he was doing so few interviews and it was, you know, it was all carefully managed.

And it was the day or it was I forget now is the day or the day after Trump had announced that Trump Tower that he was running. And and like one of the aides came over to our people and said when the Bush aides came over to look.

don't talk about Trump. If you guys start asking about Donald Trump, this interview is not going to go well, which was the message he got over and over and over again, not just Jeb Bush, all of them until it's too late until again, they get their inner, you know, Marco Rubio does this one week of, of, of standup, as you said, where, where, where he really takes them on. And, and, and with Nikki Haley, it's the, it's the same thing. I mean, she's been running for months and months and months unwilling to, yeah. And even this stuff in that ad,

And I asked her about it when I interviewed her in New Hampshire in December. This chaos follows him. Yeah.

What do you mean by that? She also prefaces it by saying rightly or wrongly. By the way, what does that mean? Can you please help me? I mean, she says it over and over again, rightly or wrongly. Yeah, what it means is it may not be his fault. I mean, I think that's what she's implying. So the rightly is it would be his fault. The wrongly would be it's because all the way people react to him. Okay, okay, thank you. Thank you. I think that's what it is.

it means. But listen, I think the difference between now and 2016 was nobody really, when you, at the time your book was published, nobody really believed Trump was going to come back. Haley was interviewed in 2021 and she said he can't run. He's not going to be the candidate. And I think that a lot of these candidates were operating, particularly her and DeSantis, under the theory that these legal cases and all the

burdens that Trump has would catch up with him and that he wasn't going to be there at the end. The miscalculation was the degree to which these indictments actually would strengthen him

among the Republican base. And that's indisputable that they did. In fact, I wonder, you guys, what, I mean, maybe he'd be the nominee anyway. But I do wonder if there hadn't been indictments. I'm not suggesting that he shouldn't have been indicted. But what if he hadn't been? I think it would have been the same. I mean, I agree with your analysis. I think it did help him. In this election, the problem with the Republicans now is they

confuse the general election with the primary. They're just going to run a big primary and that's how they can lose. Done it before. But I would say, you know, because I was hearing it as a big never Trumper, the fear of Biden went away.

There was fear that Trump, who Biden beat, would get beat again and we can't get beat. Why the hell do we have to get Biden? Yeah, why don't we get somebody else and not take the Trump risk? And then as Biden got in more trouble, the Trump risk evaporated in the party. Well, that was actually Haley's message when she began. Her message was in the first debate, she said, Trump's a loser. We lose every time he runs, every time he's involved. They don't believe it.

And she basically said he'll lose to Biden. And she stopped saying that because they didn't believe it. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors.

I want to ask both you guys about the legal elements of this, because this is a campaign on two tracks, right? It's the campaign we're covering and it's the campaign, uh, that, that he's conducting from the courthouse steps and that he only partially, uh, controls, but he does control part of it. And that is, uh, the timing of things. And it seems to me now you look at this polling and, uh,

You know, the thing that could really change the dynamic here for Trump would be if he were convicted in one of these big federal cases, particularly the January 6th case. But, you know, I've been talking to like Ellie Honig at CNN, who's a pal who's their legal guy.

And the opportunity for Trump to delay here is pretty significant. You know, the appellate court rules on his claim, ridiculous claim of absolute immunity. He gets then 45 days to ask the entire appellate court to rule on it. And then he has time to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court.

And then they set a hearing schedule. And I mean, it just goes on and on. And it's very clear that he'll do anything to try and keep. And you do get to a point where it's going to be hard for a court to say, yeah, we're going to do this, you know, in the two weeks before the Republican convention. Yeah. What's the jury going to be deliberating while the Republicans are nominating Trump? Well, they're not deliberating. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I would just say that I think two things are going to smash together here. On one hand, general election voters who already dislike Trump

are going to have more reasons to dislike him at an epic scale. On the other hand, Trump can now say, and a lot of the Republican herd will believe him, that this is all tribal. This is being set up by the Democrats. They don't want to have an election. They want to rig it with a phony lawsuit. How come Clinton's not in jail? How come Hillary's not in jail? How come Hunter Biden's not in jail? It's all rigged. And that'll work in his world. In the base. Right. And even beyond a little, I think. So...

It'll be interesting. And then we all know about the judiciary system. They hate more than anything else being accused of interfering with democracy and elections. And that is a dampening effect that will, I think, lean on judges to slow down, not want to be in the hot spotlight there. So it is a mixed bag. In general election voter world, it hurts them. In the dynamic and narrative and timing of the campaign, eh, no.

Mixed. Yeah. There's something, not just a matter of conviction here that's at issue. It's will the trials actually, or would the January 6th trial, really either of them, but the January 6th trial, will it start? Because it's not just a matter of conviction. It's a matter of what happens in the course of the trial. With our investigative team at ABC, we have done a series of stories, very well-reported,

well-sourced about what people like Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino, the White House lawyers, what they have said to Jack Smith.

uh, and what they would say if they were to testify. And it's, it's a, it's a devastating portrait of Donald Trump. It's the people closest to him. In the case of Dan Scavino, it's still somebody who is with him. God knows where Mark Meadows is right now, but, but, but it is, it is when these guys are forced to speak under oath and they talk about Trump's behavior after the election in November of 2020 and in the

days leading up to january 6th and on january 6th itself as the capital was under attack this is not liz cheney talking about it these are the people right there absolutely the trial could be devastating and it is devastating so even even apart from whatever if you get to a verdict but i think it's a matter of whether there is a trial i don't think i agree with you a trial

I think would be very corrosive for him outside of the base because it's going to be the people closest to, I mean, I, I heard your Scavino piece and, you know, in it was, uh, so I think that the,

The last resort for the Trump people, but I don't think it's a legal defense, was, well, he actually believed it. You know, this is what Nikki Haley was saying in the in the fall of 2020. She was saying, well, isn't he telling a lie? And she would say, well, you know, it's not a lie if you believe it.

But that's not a legal defense. And there's plenty of evidence that a lot of people told them that it was wrong. Right. And there's absolutely no doubt, as I've meticulously written about almost like minute by minute, the January 6th committee had its take. And now you're going to see a much more

you know, first person account of what Trump was doing while the Capitol was under attack. And when one of his personal aides comes in and says that the vice president, Mike Pence, has been evacuated from the Senate chamber and he says, who cares?

Yeah. In real time. This is, again, this is an aide under oath talking. This is a devastating portrayal. You know, I think you can get wrapped into... Doesn't make that VP nomination that attractive, does it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And by the way, it wasn't the indictments, I don't believe, that brought him back. If you look at where the polling shifted, it was actually pre-indictments. It was...

Trump's messaging related to his legal troubles. So the raid on Mar-a-Lago, which of course happens in the summer of 2022 before he announced he's running for president, is

You have the midterms, which go so poorly. And the analysis out of the midterms from Republicans as well as from all of us here was that one of the things that really hurt Republicans was the obsession with the 2020 election. And so Trump goes and makes his announcement. It's teleprompter Trump. It's a very lifeless speech. Some of his aides come back to whisper. I was at Mar-a-Lago for it. They come back. Look, you

He's going to be really good. No talk about 2020. He didn't mention 2020.

And it was lifeless and talked about draining the swamp and it was awful. And then he starts listening to the likes of Steve Bannon, who says, don't listen to those guys anymore. You've got to, you know, this is a war and they're out to get you and they're out to get all of us. And he gives the speech at CPAC, which Bannon to me described as his come retribution speech. It's entirely different. And he,

You know, come retribution, which Bannon had borrowed from it, the Confederate code word to describe the plot to kidnap and assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Okay, this is, this is, this is.

vengeance, retribution. We're going to go out and utterly annihilate our enemies. And he makes the first campaign rally weeks later in Waco, Texas, where you have people explicitly out there making the connection between the raid in Mar-a-Lago

the FBI exercising a search warrant to get back the classified documents with what the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms did to the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. And he's back. No, there was a build. There's no doubt. There was a build. Hey, before we get to the mailbag, because we have to get to the mailbag this week, Murphy, I just want to ask you a little bit about

Biden and about this battle. This immigration issue is a terribly difficult issue for him. And we've been saying here for months, Mike, that, you know, he ought to use these negotiations with the Republicans as a pivot to a much tougher policy, which he has done,

They negotiated a bill that would be a lot tougher than anything we've seen in decades out of the Congress. It's infuriated some in the Democratic base, but it's it's tough. And Trump senses this and.

He now explicitly is saying, kill that thing. We don't want Biden. We don't want to give Biden this win. No, don't give him a win. This is I mean, it is not new in politics to want the issue more than the solve.

for partisan reasons. But this is a steroid. Yeah, but to be so conspicuous about it on such a conspicuous issue, it seems to me it's an opportunity for Biden if he does it right. Yeah, it's just hard to fork him because the counterattack is you're being unreasonable and it's the cannibal king joke. You know, every time you send an ambassador, they eat some.

He, first of all, says we're willing to do and eager to do what was necessary. We wanted the authority from Congress. We were about to get it. We negotiated in good faith and painstakingly with Republicans in the Senate for months to get to this point.

And, uh, and then Trump comes along because he'd rather have the issue than solve the problem, as you say. And I think two elements of that are actually a strength of Biden's in this campaign. One is I think people do believe that he can work with the Republicans, uh, to get stuff done. And secondly, uh, uh, they, I think they think that he's serious about like actually governing, uh, and, uh,

It just exposes Trump for who Trump is. I mean, that's in the ideal, if you play it right. The problem is that's based on reasonableness as a lever in politics today. And what the Trump guys will say is, listen, crooked Joe, and the Trump, you know, boogerman in the House and Senate, we...

We have a crisis on the border because you're president. So the answer is to get rid of you. Here's our list of demands. They're even higher than before. This is all lip service. You ran against the wall. You don't get it. You got to go and hold that fight. Then you have guys, poor James Lankford, who was the lead negotiator in the Senate. Yeah, I know. They cut him out totally.

Or undercut him. So why give him this in an election year, the cover of this deal that, you know, critics say is still going to let a lot of people in, but he gets to take a victory lap that he's gotten something done. Yeah.

Yeah, well, it's definitely not going to let a bunch of people in. It's focused on actually turning people around on it. It is interesting. Republicans four months ago would not give funding for Ukraine, for Israel and for our southern border because we demanded changes in policy. So we actually locked arms together and said, we're not going to give you money for this. We want to change in law. And now it's interesting. A few months later, when we're finally getting to the end, they're like, oh, just kidding. I actually don't want to change in law because the presidential election year, we all have an

oath to the Constitution. And we have a commitment to say we're going to do whatever we can to be able to secure the border. Well, God bless him. And the same for Romney and others who've stood up. But this is like the old thing when Stalin got a letter from the pope saying, can you quit all the purges and all the murdering? And he crumpled it up and said, how many tanks does the pope have?

Trump's just going to be a brutalist on this, and his lemmings are going to follow him. It's tragic, but I think the politics of it are kind of set. Arguing your side of it, the one, I'm talking general election here, but you

You'd want to take the temperature of the Republican Party. The Oklahoma Republican Committee, state committee censured Blankford on Saturday for engaging in these negotiations. But I think if you're Biden, you've got to go. You have to you have to use these things and his people. You have to use these things.

uh, as a foil. Now what the Republicans are going to do, uh, and I heard JD Vance sort of hinting at this yesterday, they're going to go to every Republican in the Senate now and say, listen, the house is never going to take this bill up. You don't want to walk the plank on this and buy yourself the kind of trouble that Langford did just don't totally. Yeah.

Their thing is, look, this is our issue to beat Biden. You want to fix the border? Get rid of the cause. Joe Biden, he gave you inflation, open borders and corruption. Bingo, bingo, boom. The election starts tomorrow. That's how they think. Lankford has effectively been making this case. I mean, this is this is the strongest policy that they are going to get at the border.

This is far greater than what will happen if Trump is elected president in terms of policy changes at the border. Trump's going to need 60 votes in the Senate unless they find a way to do away with the filibuster. He's going to need 60 votes in the Senate. There's no way that any Democrats are going to go along, even with a carbon copy of this, with Donald Trump as the president of the United States. But Trump wants enemies, not accomplishments. Right, of course. So,

I mean, it's tragic, but it will. We'll see how this plays out. But I do think you may be right that it plays out this way from the Biden. And I'm just saying that a deft campaign and a deft president will score some points if they reject the toughest border bill. And it's the first time he's had any cards to play, you know, and maybe he will do some things by executive order.

order now and by administrative order. That's the move, I think, is to toughen himself up because he's trying to play chess with an irate chimpanzee. And under the old rules of politics, your strategy is exactly right where you can shame him into the corner. And in the beltway media, which is sophisticated, it'll work. Out there in regular land, in voter land, what's a Lankford? You know, it's going to be the Biden guys want open borders. We don't. Let's have an election.

By the way, when did this whole thing of state parties censoring elected officials start happening? It's been around for a while. Yeah. I mean, it happened. Arizona censured McCain, didn't they? Right. I was banned for life by the Iowa State Committee back in the 90s from ever attending the straw poll.

It's a whole other story. I thought that was warranted, by the way. Yeah, no, no. It was unanimous. You know what? And the straw poll hasn't been the same since. I took it down. I took it down. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back. We'll be right back.

We had this attack over the weekend in Jordan in which three Americans were killed. Republicans assailed the president right away and said, if you don't hit Iran, you know, Tom Cotton said, you know, he doesn't have we'll see if he has the courage to respond and and so on.

You know, I having been around the White House and so on, I know how complicated these things are because a full out war is not is not what Biden wants or needs or the country wants or needs. And yet you do have to how we may have an answer before anybody hears this. But how do you guys.

assess his situation and what does he need to do here? You know, just politically, because that's, we're hacks, not geopolitical strategists, but I would clobber the Houthis and I would sink a few Iranian gunboats that are harassing ships in the Straits, because that way you're not violating their territory, but you're sinking a few gunboats. Believe me, the Navy would love to do it.

And that way there's an Iranian flag floating in the water, too. It's an escalation. But in the end, the Iranians have to back down. You don't bomb Iran. And what's interesting is politically, you know, you do have the Republicans that basically want to nuke Tehran and were calling for attacks on Iran before the first proxy attack in this episode.

But, you know, that's not really where the populist heart of the new Republican Party is. Right. Yeah, that's true. These guys aren't looking for a war, another war in the Middle East. That's largely why they are alienated from the old Republican Party. That's right. And, you know, the weird thing about Trump is he talks tough and isolationist at the same time. I mean, he wants he preaches this non-engagement and calls people warmongers.

who want to take a more active position. Well, those are his bone spurs acting up. Then he'll attack Biden for being weak. When the pressure's up, the bone spurs start to trigger again. He's limping around. It's just a whole idea of war. Okay, let's hear from the incredible Axe on Tap singers. Listener mail.

If you have a question for us, the hacks, all you got to do is email it to us at hacks on tap at gmail.com hacks on tap at gmail.com. You can send general comments there too. You can rate us on iTunes or you can call the impossible to remember phone line in the back of one of the Chicago machines, many voter enrollment centers and leave us a message at

And we're playing on the air. Just keep it under 25 seconds because we do the bloviating around here. Check us out. And thanks for listening. Oh, I'll do one more plug. Hey, and you want to track EV politics, check out my new thing, evpolitics.org. Why do Republicans hate electric vehicles when they're great and better? And why is China betting on more Republican silliness? Check it out, evpolitics.org. Cool polling data.

So, Murphy, Andrew has a question of you as a native Michigander, and here it is. Hey, Hacks on Tap. It's Andrew Kiesel from Minneapolis. Could you comment on the significance and impact of the recent UAW endorsement of President Biden? What

What impacts could this have on the general election, particularly in a battleground state like Michigan? Thanks. Andrew, that is a great question. And thank you for calling in from the great, great state of Minneapolis, where local political activist Doug Daniel, my father-in-law, is tuned in right now. I married a Minnesota girl.

OK, so what does this all mean? If you will remember when we talked about the strike during the strike here on Hacks, there was a moment when Joe Biden joined the UAW picket line and people were saying, oh, political masterstroke. They had not endorsed him at that point because they don't like his electric vehicle policies because it's possible to build an electric vehicle with fewer people. So, of course, UAW doesn't like that.

called Progress. But putting that aside, I said at the time, Michigan politics is pretty complex about the UAW. It's not a big layup. Oh, they love him in Michigan. He hit a UAW picket line. UAW is a polarizing force there too. Remember, a lot of the supply chain that felt pain during the long strike

are not UAW members. Those guys were laid off too. They resent the UAW wages, which are very high. The UAW generally negotiates that senior members get a lot of the new money. The younger guys get squeezed. There's trouble there. And Biden's polling numbers went down after the strike in Michigan, not up. They remain one of his weakest swing states. So UAW finally wheeled around and predictably, there was speculation about Trump, never going to happen, endorsed Biden.

later than historical norm, by the way, because of this electric car thing. But it's a net plus for him. But labor, the UAW is a shadow of what it used to be in Michigan politics. So there'll be a lot of other factors that are more important, but it's helpful. If he hadn't gotten that endorsement, it would have been an abject disaster.

uh, for him, uh, from a public relations standpoint. So, and it dovetails with his message, which is fighting for an economy that works for, uh, working people and strengthening labor is a part of that. You got one for me. I do. I have, we have another voice question on our, on our machine here. This is from Blake or David.

Howdy, this is Blake from Austin, Texas. I'm a little concerned about the deepfake Biden phone call that popped up in the closing days of New Hampshire. The specter of AI has been floating around politics for a few cycles now. Do you think this is the year where deepfakes really become a big problem? Thanks. Love the show. Well, first of all, let's leave Arlen Specter out of this. He's deceased. I don't think that there's any question that this is a huge problem.

I don't think that story got enough attention, actually, in New Hampshire, because I think this is going to be a situation that's going to be replicated again and again. This was this was Biden discouraging people, allegedly discouraging people. And it clearly sounded like him discouraging people on a robocall from participating in the in the Democratic. I'm sorry, in the Republican primary Democratic leading independence campaign.

And that was the message, right? Yeah, I think it was voter suppression. And this is going to be a thing. It is. It's coming. In fact, I'd like to challenge our inventive listeners. If somebody can come up with a deep fake audio recording of either me or Axelrod or Gibbs,

send it to us at hacks on tap at gmail and if it's not completely offensive and filthy we probably wouldn't play that one but we're playing on the air let's see what we can come up with and if it makes sense we may actually use a sign to them as a substitute host for murphy right right we're all i think that would be good here yeah and and by the way i mean i think the the impact of ai goes far beyond deep fakes i mean the way the ai as a tool can be used to manipulate uh

and so divisions, I think, are a whole new frontier here, and deepfake is just one element of it. And I think you're going to see a lot of it. You know, it's not going to be obvious to everyone, but in social media, I think you're going to see it overrun by deepfakes. You know,

fakes of Biden speaking or misspeaking, all kinds of things. And from all kinds of sources, American and from malign actors overseas. So I think this is a real, real problem. And the problem with technology is it turns so rapidly, it's really hard to get your arms around it in real time. Well, it can hack biology.

I mean, we see an image of a tiger jumping at us. We run and think about it later. By the way, if you go to the USC, University of Southern California Center for the Political Future's website,

We're literally doing our Warshaw conference later today. It's going to be videoed and you can see it there and there are links to it. We have a panel on disinformation and AI and all that with some experts, including our friend Sasha Eisenberg. So you can watch that online in a day or two if you're interested in this area. It's going to be huge and troubling.

I have a question for you, Jonathan Karl from Sam. Why isn't there more effort by anti-Trump groups to encourage strategic voting by Dems and Indies in open primary states? I can't think of a single reason why anyone who hates Trump would waste their vote in a non-competitive Democratic primary when they could vote for Haley on the Republican side.

I actually asked Gavin Newsom about this. He was down in South Carolina campaigning for Biden in the South Carolina primary. And my question was basically, why are you here? Why are you doing this? If you really believe that Donald Trump is an existential threat to American democracy, if you really believe that this goes far beyond policy agreements, that the man is a threat to the country,

The way to stop him right now, the immediate way, there's only one person standing between him and the Republican nomination, and that's Nikki Haley in the South Carolina primary, which set apart two different dates. If you there's no no registration by party in South Carolina, as you know.

If you vote in the South Carolina primary, Democratic primary, which is first, you cannot vote in the Republican primary. But if you hold your vote, you can vote in the Republican primary. So if you really wanted to stop Trump, you would have a movement to vote in the Republican primary. Of course, this is all kind of a fantasy. It would never. There has been an organized effort. It kept a low profile, but they're coming out in the open now. State Department guy named Robert Schwartz, a good, sane Republican. It's called Primary Pivot.

They spent about 500K in New Hampshire, and they're now kind of coming out in the sunlight because they're working hard in South Carolina. So if listeners want to know, go to primarypivot.org. You can learn all about it and help them out. Yeah, the staggered date of those primaries in South Carolina is a complicating factor for sure. Because you vote in the Democrat primary, you're basically done.

I'm not talking about an effort by Nikki Haley, but if you were Gavin Newsom, what did Gavin say? He said, well, we can't game the system. You know, that kind of stuff doesn't work, et cetera, et cetera. We play by the existing rules, but these are actually the existing rules. So, you know, you would get up on the stage, you would Joe Biden, get up on the stage, say, vote for Nikki Haley. Of course, you know, it's not going to happen. But if you take

them at their word. This guy's a threat. He's got to be stopped. This is the next battle in trying to stop him. And Joe Biden doesn't, he's not going to lose the South Carolina primary. You know, he doesn't need to be campaigning down there for himself. This is his big, his big debut primary here. This is the one that he set up. So I'm sure they want to, they want to show some strength in that primary. I don't think it's going to make a huge difference.

That's not where the attention is going to be in South Carolina. Jonathan Karl. First of all, we should say, Murphy, I don't know if we're still doing book club. We are intermittently and no better addition to the book club than any of the Jonathan Karl trilogy. And the latest is Tired of Winning Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party. It'll help you understand the madness that you're watching in the coming months. Great to have you, my friend. Thank you for being with us today.

Great. Thank you for having me and really enjoyed, always enjoy talking to you guys. Thank you for having me. Come back often. Yeah. Murphy, I'll see you next week. All right. Take care, David. On to South Carolina. Maybe we go down to a barbecue joint and do a little shoe leather reporting down there. I never turned down barbecue. Let's look into that.