End of Year Hack Fest
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. The government knows what is happening. Look, our military knows where they took off from. If it's a garage, they can go right into that garage. They know where it came from and where it went. And for some reason, they don't want to comment.

All right, Mike Murphy, there he is, the president-elect, jumping into the whole drone episode. And Heilman, you're here too. Year-end show, we're all...

Speaking of drones, the three of us together for the, we too haunt New Jersey at night. So it all fits together. I know the reason why they're not telling us who the, the, the, this, the, if, if the, if the government were to, were to tell us the truth that these drones are in fact, you know, UFOs, it would be a big deal.

It would blow the whole lid off the fact that Trump himself is also a space alien. And they're actually protecting Trump by not kind of... Trump is... I totally agree. Trump is the reason I know there are not any aliens at Area 54 or whatever. Because if there would, he'd have a claw on his desk to show people, look at this. We captured this thing in 47. I use it as a paperweight. But you know something? This whole thing, though, I mean...

I don't know what the hell's going on. Okay. I mean, you've have very credible people who are going outside and saying, yeah, there's some shit hovering over my house. I mean, you know, like, uh, people I know people I trust. Uh, I don't know. I don't, I don't know. I have a theory. I've solved this. Uh,

In L.A., I had a house high up in the Hollywood Hills, and every night there'd be a highly orchestrated line of lights in what is clearly an orchestrated manner lined up in what we like to call the approach pattern to Los Angeles International Airport. Most people are not particularly good at night telling aviation away information.

And I know Larry Hogan saw three buzzing his garage, and there's some guy on the radio, Mercury Theater, telling you it's an alien invasion. You know, we'll wait and see. I consider myself more of a believer in mass hysteria than I do on disorganized aliens buzzing around Larry Hogan's garage. You're going to be singing a different story when they suck you up into their capsule. Well, first of all— Oh, I'm their leader, David. We just haven't undone the—we haven't dropped the curtain yet on Operation—

If there are aliens out there, I invite them to come and suck me up into their capsule because that would be a fucking great story to write. But here's the thing. You know what? They'd spit you out in about five minutes. That's probably right. That's probably right. I'm not appealing to vegetarians. You'd go off on one of your flights of...

of fancy and they'd say, I don't want to listen to this guy for the next millennia. Yeah. In all seriousness, listening to people talk about their, about what they're seeing in the sky is the, basically the fact that the functional equivalent of listening to people like try to talk, diagnose their own ailments on the internet. People have no fucking idea what they're looking at. Half the people are looking up there. It's like, Oh, Hey, that's the Aurora Borealis. It's like, it's just, it's not, it's not, it's ridiculous. But, but here's the thing. What strikes me is,

This is a parable about so many things about this moment in history. It is a...

It is a playpen for conspiracy theories. Yes. I mean, and Trump, of course, always eager to leap on those. Fan the flames, baby. I presume he's being briefed at this point on these kinds of matters. So he obviously knows more than he's saying. But he's drafting on the current crisis. But it also... So that's one element of it. The other is...

it is the perfect coda for the end of the Biden years. Okay. It's something where they're trying to, they're acting rationally. They're saying, you know, we're not seeing this as a threat. There's no problem. And so on. This is like Bidenomics, you know, this is like, you know, the economy is good. We see it. Why don't you see it? But it makes, it makes them look,

out of touch. Well, it's the whole, the government doesn't know they're slow. Only Elon understands. And there's some truth to all that. I just know it's pretty easy to go on Amazon, buy a $150 drone and attach a glow stick to it and get your neighbors to call the cops because they think the Venetians are trying to come in through the bedroom window. Have you done that? You sound like you've done that. I mean, I'm going to end the drone thing, which is the great old Dennis Miller joke, which is okay.

You're the aliens. You've mastered time and space. You've been physics like a pipe cleaner. So what's the last question you haven't figured out? What's going on in a redneck's ass? And so you come here to answer that big question. So I don't know. Call me skeptic. That's not the best Dennis Miller joke I've ever heard. It's the best Dennis Miller alien joke.

But David, I would say the other, you could flip your thing around and say it's the perfect code of this era in that Trump is, like, the Biden administration, as you said, is being responsible. And Trump is essentially saying, you guys are liars. They're withholding something from you. Donald Trump, the ultimate...

pathological liar is projecting the notion onto Joe Biden that like it's Joe Biden who's keeping secrets from you. I'm the one who will always tell you the truth, America. Those guys in the Biden administration are keeping a secret for some nefarious reason. It's that's the, to me, that's the coda for the era. But if you're the aliens, don't you invade the French Riviera? You really want to go to orange New Jersey? Really? You know, 40 billion miles for that, you know, get a hoagie. Well, remember the, uh, remember when, uh, uh,

Humphrey Bogart was with the Nazi in Casablanca and the Nazi says, why did you come to Casablanca? And he said, I came for the waters. And, uh, and the Nazi said, you're in a desert. And, and Humphrey Bogart says, I was misinformed. So maybe the aliens were misinformed. We don't know. Right. They meant, they meant to find a redneck's ass. Instead they found orange, New Jersey. So, uh, but look, that cut from Trump was from a,

but an expansive press conference that he had yesterday at Mar-a-Lago, his first, uh, since the election. And, uh, one of the things that came up and one of the things that's really serious, I want to talk about is this whole legal assault on the news media over the weekend. You guys know ABC surrendered, uh, and settled a suit with Trump over a comment, uh, comments that George Stephanopoulos made on his show, uh,

characterizing Trump as having been found liable of a rape. Technically, he was not under New York law. He was found liable of something else. But the judge qualified it in his own remarks. It was a suit that they probably would have won. I think Bob Iger was sitting there in Disney headquarters saying, you know what, I don't need this

headache let's make this uh go away trump's gonna be we got all kinds of regulatory issues we got to worry about oh yeah no the rational business decision but it's absolutely a disaster for abc news

And for Newt Jenner. Yeah, exactly. Now he's going to go sue the Daily Racing Forum. I think he's mad about Seltzer. Yeah, yeah. Let's hear that. Let's hear that bite. I see others. I have a few others that I'm doing.

I'm going to, as an example, we're bringing, I'm doing this not because I want to. I'm doing this because I feel I have an obligation to. I'm going to be bringing one against the people in Iowa, their newspaper, which had a very, very good pollster who got me right all the time. And then just before the election, she said I was going to lose by three or four points. And it became the biggest story all over the world because I was going to win Iowa by three

20 points. The farmers love me and I love the farmers.

He filed that suit this morning against Ann Seltzer and the Des Moines Register. Civic duty. It's not about him, not about grievance, not about still being obsessed over a stupid poll in Iowa. Yeah, but here's, I mean, first of all, it follows a pattern of Trump's life, which is that he has been the most litigious person in history. And his pattern is to file nuisance suits and then force people to spend a lot of money defending them.

and that's what he did with a lot of his subcontractors. He'd stiff them. They'd have to file suit with partners and so on. No, he put them out of business. I saw it in Jersey when I was working for the governor there. But anyway, he's always litigious. He's always the tough guy.

And hopefully the next media organ will say no and fight. Well, what, how likely Heilman do you think that, I mean, he's trying to create a chilling vibe, by the way, he is creating a chilling effect. I mean, look, the,

There's nothing fun. Literally, there's nothing about this entire thing that's funny. George Stephanopoulos, who essentially repeated what a judge said and was basically not, there's no world in which that would ever pass the actual malice standard in a libel suit. This is an imminently defendable suit. It would have been a pain in the neck.

been costly maybe for abc maybe there was something that they were worried about coming out in discovery that's one theory that people have but it is on the merits it's a ridiculous case there's no way you could clues that you could prove that george stephanopoulos uh acted with actual malice meaning uh reckless disregard for truth or knowledge of the falsity of the claim because judge a judge came out and said that although this although technically that's what this is

Although technically speaking, rape is about a penis and a vagina that he had raped her with his finger. And that's how most people understood these things. This is just Trump.

attempting to do one of the most pernicious things he's doing and he's succeeding at. We are watching the press and watching corporate America bend the knee to Trump, either prophylactically or preemptively or as a result of threats like this. This is not just Trump being wantonly litigious. This is Trump being strategically litigious and trying to back everyone off. He made a comment at the time, man of the year thing,

When he got time person of the year where he said that he was happy because the press had sort of tamed down. He didn't say tone down. He didn't say calm down. He said tame down. With Trump, it's always there's a projection or confession element and he is trying to tame the press down.

And he's at so far, it seems to be working. No, this is Hungary. OK, this is how this is. This is what this is, how it starts. Yes, this is how it starts. And let me just say a word about George Stephanopoulos. George is a very, very fine journalist and a guy who cares deeply about fact and truth, which is one of the reasons why Trump offends him.

And so I feel badly for him because he, you know, you know, obviously his company made a decision. He could have resigned. I'm just saying. I think a lot of George too. He might still, I don't know if he could, he's in a contract negotiation. I, I, I don't have no George's a friend.

I agree with you, David. I don't think like the idea that, I mean, Trump says 10 libelous things before 10 more libelous things for breakfast on a given day than George did. I don't know that. Like, I mean, again, I'm not offering advice here and I'm not making predictions, but I don't know that George can stay there. I mean, I don't know if, I don't know if you could, if I were in his shoes, I don't know if I could stay there. I don't know if I could stay there and whether he's resigned today. Well, and he's at a point in his life where he really doesn't have to. Right. Exactly. Right.

So the big question, though, is it's got to be a way on his mind. What is the next media outlet do? I think the pressure to fight will be enormous institutionally. And I think they will because these cases are hard to win. We will see. You've got news organizations like the Des Moines Register that don't have deep pockets.

You have news organizations. You have other news organizations that don't have deep pockets who are going to think about what they write and say, I think, differently, where it won't come to that. And then you've got these big sort of very, very significant legacy media companies that are owned by corporations who have all kinds of regulatory issues. I mean, Trump was talking about not renewing ABC's license.

And I think he's willing to use all the regulatory levers, all the levers of the Justice Department. I'm not sure it'll work, but we'll see. We'll see. We're, you know, let's get to the politics of it. One thing I want to ask you guys, though, is I bet you there are a bunch of Americans that say, great, sue the goddamn pollsters. Of course. Yeah. Of course. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. This is all democracy thing. I'm for republics. I mean, I think the canary has already been in the coal mine. I think that's when Bezos killed the Washington Post editorial. Bezos, who just sent a million dollars to Trump for his inauguration. So did Mehta. Yes. But let me let me just pause for a minute.

to remind everybody that, of course, Trump is the outlier and the worst and et cetera. But corporations always been there needed a new president. Inaugural committees get big fat corporate checks because they're like, well, president's got a lot of power, got to live with them. Here we go. That General Motors, you know,

gave it to him, even though he just walloped EV subs. These GMs now the number two seller of EVs in the United States. So the corporate knee bending is standard procedure.

This is true, but as John points out, they didn't do it in 2017. And Trump keeps pointing that out. He said yesterday, my personality must have changed. Now they all want to see me. They all want to give me money. I think, Mike, this is qualitatively different because no other president has been so willing to use these levers. And you look at his appointees and he's appointing all kinds of people who

uh, as regulators and as law enforcement officials will have much wider parameters. So all of these organizations, you know, you're looking at Comcast, uh, uh, Heilman's parent company over there at MSNBC, you know, they're looking to, uh,

MSNBC because it's just too hot for them and they've got regulatory issues. Yes. And there's, and all of these places are, you know, I mean, Bezos is the, is the paradigmatic paradigmatic example of someone who has all these other business interests where the post is a small pimple on the ass of his, of his, of his bottom line. And,

It is qualitatively different in this respect, I think, Mike. One is not just the difference between 2017 and now, but the other is it's one thing to give money to a Republican or a Democratic incoming president who's not threatening you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Trump's the outlier. I agree. What's happened now, if we step back a little bit, because we're going to wind up doing the doom casting hour, and I can doom cast with the best of them with Trump, but I think where the country is right now...

Now, kind of unfortunately, is Trump one fair and square? So that's normalized him.

There's kind of this hazy dream going on. Well, he won and they're covering him like a legitimately elected guy. And oh, it's interesting. He's got ideas for the Coast Guard. Now, the essential nature of Trump is going to catch up with that, which is why I think we're in for a hell of a first 200 days. I think it'll end in a lot of political disaster for Trump. But right now, there are no shortage of Americans who kind of yawn at all the crimes and sins and want the guy to succeed.

And I think corporate America, there's a new Deloitte study that just came out of CEOs. And they're massively more optimistic about the future of the country and their businesses than they were a year ago because they see the regulatory cuts and blah, blah, blah. I think it's rose-colored glasses myself.

But that's where the gestalt is right now. It's like, oh, we hope this guy succeeds. They're going to get a massive tax cut in the first quarter. That's likely that's going to be a priority for him, extending his tax cuts, perhaps expanding his tax cuts. Those CEOs are looking at that. They're looking at radical deregulation.

Uh, and they're, you know, now what they're not, uh, what they're not calculating is all of the sort of chaos and downstream implications of some of the things that he's going, uh, to try, uh, to do. But one thing on your point, one thing on your point, I want to just get to one, uh, uh, uh,

There's this thing that hasn't gotten covered very much that I am obsessed about. Bobby Kennedy Jr. has said this, and on the other side of it, I want to talk about the kind of smart bomb down the chimney of legacy broadcast media. And, you know, one of the things I'm going to advise Donald Trump to do in order to correct the chronic disease epidemic is

Is to ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV. That was at a rally before the election, but he's talked about it, I think, since. There is a legitimate argument. Oh, completely. I think it, yeah. I mean, one of the things that has inflated pharmaceutical costs in this country dramatically has been pharmaceutical ads and people seeing, you know, you know,

people dancing around and talking about weight loss drugs. No, no. It's a big cost driver for a lot of reasons, but his reasons are not the good ones. Well, his may be. Trump may like the idea because

You look at, like, I think the number is 25% of revenues on cable TV news and on the evening news. Because of the ancient demographic. Yeah, yeah. Like, I see all these ads, okay? So let me...

It's the red scooters and pharmaceuticals. It's shit pills and catheter ads is what it is. Yeah. It's your audience guys. Okay. Okay. I'm with the hipsters. You're with the replaced hipsters. Yeah. I'm with the kids. But the point is, can you imagine John as a, as a student of media, what this would do to the bottom line for these news or,

or, uh, broadcast news organizations. Well, it would be, it would be the final nail in the coffin of the linear cable, uh, news business for sure. Because like, I mean, no, no joke. I mean, if you looked at the, especially on day side, whether it's Fox news, CNN, MSNBC, if you look to the proportion of ads that are driven by a pharma, um, it's, it's a, it's a vast, it's a vast percentage, a vast percentage. It would be, it would be crushing to them if that were to happen. Um,

But I will say one thing for Bobby Kennedy in this case, and this goes back to the prior topic, and it's actually a question that I would like to ask the two of you about the politics of this, to Mike's point, just to be really straight on it here. Here's Donald Trump basically swanning around in this mutual embrace of supplication and favor trading, and there's going to be all this corruption, but with all of these billionaires. There's Mark Zuckerberg putting his hand over his heart while the J6 choir sings the national anthem. I mean, these appalling sights, right?

American corporations are not popular. They're not. People don't like... There was a large populist view in America that corporate tax cuts are not popular. These companies, all big establishment institutions are not, and that includes the Fortune 500. And Bobby Kennedy, at least, is anti-establishment in taking on the pharma industry. Everything else about Trump right now really has a big kind of swamp reek to it. And my question politically is, is this not... Well, is it an opening or is there...

potentially a dangerous distraction, whatever your view is about the lane of economic populism and outsider politics, Democrats became associated with the establishment in the last four to eight years, and that has not helped their cause. So is this not like painting a giant target on...

Trump and his fat cat friends going forward that Democrats should be able to exploit in the next two to four years? The key thing is that the Democrats try something new. And there's a great Washington Post op-ed today by Rahm Emanuel, a guy who knows something about winning elections from the Democratic side.

I I'm going to make it hacks homework to read. Yeah, it really is. It's, uh, he, uh, I think he takes on a bunch of the stuff that we've been talking about here. I am doing a podcast with him on, uh, uh, this week on the ax files. And I'm going to ask him about that. And, uh,

A bunch of other stuff, but well worth reading. Yeah, just quickly, time to go back to the pharma thing. The real fight is pharma's power in the Senate. Good luck doing it. It's not the ads that fund CNN and MSNBC and Fox. It's your cable bill. That's where they're relative. Everybody listening to this is paying money to Rupert Murdoch, whether you watch Fox News or not. And they get the most money of any network, any news network.

But a big percentage of the evening network news budgets are... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, of linear television, period. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back. Mike, there are two things I love the most. One is wine, and the other is being naked. How about you? I drink a lot of wine just thinking about the idea of you running around naked. I'm trying to purge that horrible image from my mind. So...

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Just one postscript to this. I'm not sure, you know, I said that people would cheer suing pollsters. I don't know that they cheer not being allowed to see pharmaceutical ads. I think that they want to know what's available. No, people like to self-diagnose. They probably cheer not seeing ads in general. Look, look, a lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of people are about it.

But to your larger point, you're fundamentally right. The Democratic Party has become, in the minds of a lot of voters, the elite institutional party when people are enraged at elites and institutions. The problem for Donald Trump is he talks like a populist and governs like a royalist, and he is surrounded by

by plutocrats and billionaires who are going to be looking for ways to advantage themselves. And by the way, like Soros. Well, one of the interesting things about Trump in the post-election period is he did this interview with Time magazine and they asked him about whether he, you know, how he said, you know, well, first they asked him about this. OK, let's play a montage of clips from Trump.

the election about prices and particularly food prices. We will end inflation and make America affordable again. We're going to get the prices down. We have to get them down. It's too much groceries, cars, everything. We're going to get the prices down. But prices will come down. You just watch. They'll come down and they'll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything. Tomorrow I will end inflation. We will cut your taxes.

End inflation. Slash your prices. No, I will end inflation. End inflation. Slash your prices. To rapidly reduce inflation, I will end... I will end inflation very quickly. Just end inflation.

Slash your prices. We will cut your taxes. End inflation. You know, David, I'm seeing a theme here. I think he's going to end inflation and slash prices. Look, he's Juan Peron. He's an authoritarian strongman with left-wing economic populist rhetoric. Right. That's his recipe.

But now he says, well, you know, it's not easy to bring those prices down. I'm not sure. You know, I don't know. Yeah. Disaster. They left me a disaster. It'll take a genius to fix. And a lot of the things that he is talking about, he's still completely in his rhetoric.

at least committed to tariffs. He said it again yesterday. They're big. They're the most beautiful word in the English language. They're going to make us great again and so on. Between tariffs, those tax cuts, and a couple of other things that he's proposing, prices aren't going to come down. The prices are going to go up. No, it's all going to end in a massive Hindenburg thing.

But the question is, if he's doing all this stuff to advantage his plutocrat friends, and meanwhile prices are going up, does that, Heilman, does that not create a political problem for him?

Well, yeah, obviously. I mean, the question to me is how much of the tariffs is just talk and how much is he really going to try to do? And I think the reality right now is if you judge by what Wall Street thinks and you judge by the business community's reception to him so far, they don't take it seriously. They think he's going to do some targeted tariffs, but he's not going to have these giant ones. We'll see.

But right now, if Wall Street and the business financial community thought that Trump was going to do the kinds of tariffs on the scale that he has suggested, there would not be – the Dow would not be where it is right now because people would recognize there would be economic calamity. So there's a disjuncture between what he's saying and what he's going to do, and that's always been the case with Trump. We'll see what actually happens if – look, if –

You know, there's now talk that the Fed may stop, may slow down its path on cutting interest rates, right? If that happens and the housing market gets frozen up again, you could very quickly find yourself in a very politically perilous situation for Trump if the normal –

metrics of politics matter anymore. I mean, you got Steve Bannon out there, you know, saying again just yesterday, you know, let's get Trump reelected in 2028. So, I mean, I don't know how Trump thinks about this right now. Is he worried about short-term politics or is he worried in the short term mostly about paying off his rich friends? Or in the alternative, Murphy, is he thinking, I'm going to have 50 blockbuster movies

executive orders on day one one of them is going to unleash this deportation thing and i'm going to do a lot of signifying for the base that will touch their emotional funny bone and that will give me a lot of running room i think you mean i think you mean erogenous zone not funny bone or maybe that's the same thing i think it's all a lot simpler than this i think we're overthinking it

Well, one thing I want to say is Heilman, he's talking about doing things prophylactically. He's talking about erogenous funny bones. He's, I don't know, man, you need a date. You

You know, David, it's funny that the guy who hears the word prophylactic and immediately thinks something dirty is the one who's accusing me of having my mind in the gutter. But go right ahead. All right. All right. You guys get a room. Get a room, you two. Let me explain all this stuff to you guys. First of all, I got a little advice to the Democrats.

knock off the doom casting right now because you know this hapless democratic party it now wants to whine about trump before he screws everything up if i were them i would be like everybody we hope he succeeds good for people a booming economy good for america sure maybe the ceos are right maybe pulling regulation back because by the way when corporations do well everybody does well so let him

root him on gently, let him fail, because he will fail, because he's Donald Trump and he's crazy. And then there'll be nothing but broken hearts and economic trouble and unmet expectations wall to wall, plus criminality, banality, God knows what. But it's going to take a while. So let Trump do what Trump does, bring

disaster, then you play the politics. I'm not, I'm not, but I'm asking, but I asked him, I'm not equivalent of that. In fact, I was deeply offended when Rush Limbaugh said on inauguration day or thereabouts in 2009 that he was rooting for Obama to fail. I mean, if Donald Trump brings peace and prosperity and can reverse four decades in which the economic standing of working people has

kind of eroded, then all power to him. I have no problem with that. But I want Murphy to answer my question, which is, will the big push on deportation, will that keep the fire going for Trump for a while?

I think there are two Trump roads. One is economic success, which I think he's going to have in the short term. He's having it right now. Can he sustain it with policies that probably undercut it? I'm dubious, but we'll see. And the other road is how much of his culture war stuff he wants to pour gasoline on.

If I were him, as long as he's having economic success, I'd put the other on the back burner and his people will still love him because they love success, winner, the Trump gospel. If he does the culture war stuff to the point where real people get hurt and we're throwing kids in camps, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is literally building camps, it's going to get away in the other mess. It's going to hurt them a lot.

But it's all going to take time. I want to basically go into a coma for 200 days and then see where we are. And I think it won't be good for Trump. It'll be good for the Democrats who, despite themselves, we'll talk about that later, have an excellent chance to regain power in 22 months. Heilman probably has some. He can put you in a coma for 200 days if you want to. Oh, yes. I have medically induced coma. Medically and medically. I'm going for dental surgery in an hour. So go for it.

Yeah, that's nothing. That's nothing compared to what I can give you. Here's my, here's my, this is my question to the two of you. Okay. Mike, I take your point. Chicken little hair on fire, anticipatory dread, not a good political strategy. But what would you guys suggest that

the Democrat, that Democrats and, and, and Republicans of conscience, what should they do or say when Donald Trump says he wants to put the, all the members of the January 6th committee in jail. When Donald Trump says, says right now, as he is currently doing, says he wants to pardon, uh,

most or all of the January 6th convicted insurrectionists. Should they, again, just to be clear, tactically, should they keep their mouth shut and wait for it to happen? Should they speak out about it? Mike's saying something different. He's talking about a blanket sort of everything Donald Trump does. I understand. But they absolutely have to stand up on those kind of things. Absolutely. I would have thought so, but I just want to be clear. But you don't, that's not the big debate now because it,

Trump will tangle himself up. Fetterman's doing it the right way, which is, yeah, I'll talk to anybody. I want to move the country forward, blah, blah, blah. Give Trump the rope to tie himself up into a disaster. And it won't take long. So, you know, the one thing about these cabinet nominees, yeah, they're horrible. I'm against them all, et cetera, et cetera. I'm grabbing my pearls now. I know it's radio. You can't see us. The big mistake Trump's making with them isn't that they horrify the New York Times editorial board.

It's that when you put incompetent people into the cabinet agencies, they cannot protect you from the problem factory all those agencies are. And then they're your fault as president. They're really firemen. You know all this, David. You've been inside. You want to keep them from doing crazy stuff that'll hurt you. Not only the people, just the bureaucracy there. So he is weakening his ability to be protected from the trouble government automatically gets in. And so all this stuff is going to catch up with him.

Just not next week. Okay, then let's take a break right here, and we'll be right back. The holiday season is really about friends and family. And what most people really want for the holidays, frankly, is to see their favorite people more often. That's why this year, the best gift you can give, besides plane tickets, is the Aura Digital Picture Frame. It's named the number one digital frame by Wirecutter, and they're tough.

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The Democratic Party, first of all, should acknowledge the reality, which is that not over just years, but over decades, there has been this radical shift in our economy and that, you know, we do have.

We there is this and I've spoken about it here before, this kind of unspoken disdain among, you know, college educated white, often Democratic voters who say they want to, you know, they're for working people, but they approach them like missionaries and anthropologists and say, we're here to help you become more like us. And the message is what you do isn't all that important. Well, what they do only makes the country go. OK, we found that out in a pandemic. Show some respect.

advocate for people and acknowledge that institutions have failed people and that we ought to be challenging institutions. The question is, do you challenge them in a constructive way or do you challenge them in a kind of nihilistic way? And I think that that is the fundamental difference.

Democrats should not be caught on the side of being the defenders of the status quo, defenders of institutions. I worked in Washington. I think there are a lot of hardworking and good people in all of these agencies. But bureaucracy has—there's a tremendous amount of inertia around these bureaucracies.

They ought to be challenged. Some of them may be outmoded. Some of them may have fundamental problems that ought to be addressed. The question is, how do you address them? And it's more than just rhetoric, because a narrow majority, by the way, Trump didn't win by that much, but a narrow majority of Americans want to punish government or reject government. And Democrats equal government.

to most voters. They like it. They want it bigger. They want to boss you around. They got plans for what bathroom you can use. They got a lot of ideas. So that paradigm, based on a lot of Democratic policy and the obsession on identity, is going to be a hard thing to change. But even in their current screwed-up state, again, they're set up to do really well

in the midterm congressional race. But I hope they don't read that as a false positive as they did in 2022. Yeah, that's what worries me too. Well, this is what the party, this is what the party is doing right now is, is everyone looks at the, as the, as the, as the Trump margin has shrunken, you know, when all the votes finally got tallied, you hear so many people now after a couple of weeks of like panic and, you know, we must do soul searching the democratic party. You now hear people going, well, when you look at it,

you know it's really he you know trump only won by less than a percent in in wisconsin and by one percent michigan at one and a half in pennsylvania yeah we just needed more bumper stickers that's kind of how biden did in 2020 like why do we need root and branch reform and and david to your point it's that the fact that there's been this erosion with working class voters of all kinds first white working class voters and the hispanic now now increasingly african-american asian-american and and the truth is that it's still the case 60 of americans only have a high school degree so if you if you

It's a math problem, guys. You can't be a governing national majority if you don't have a decent chunk of non-college voters. And that's where the Democrats have a huge problem. How about beyond the tactical meaning of it? It's like, if you want to be the party of working... Of working Americans. I agree, but...

I thought you were. Treat them with respect, you know, treat the understanding. I know I make it a lot. No, I'm saying you made that point. I did. I wanted to not disagree with you. And I will say the point that you made, I want to go back to back. Yeah, you got some shit for this at the time.

But to your point about the establishmentarianism and institutional representation of the Democratic Party, everyone in America, they hate Washington. They hate the Fortune 500. They hate Wall Street. They don't like any big established institution in the country. They just don't. And when you pointed out that when Kamala Harris was going to go and give her closing argument speech on the mall –

That it was a bad idea because being framed by the White House in Washington, D.C. is not where the zeitgeist... I think that was me. I was saying go to... I remember what David said. I'd rather hear her at a suburban mall than the Washington mall. Yeah, yeah. I don't know what he was doing there.

That is what Democrats just have got to stop. I mean, it's the most crazy inversion of our time is that the party that in that 40 years ago was, you know, stick it to the man, middle finger to government, like the, you know, the spirit of the sixties, that liberal that sixties liberalism embodied that now the, the,

the anti-establishmentarians are all on the other side. And as long as that's the case, and as long as these institutions are as unpopular as they are, Republicans are going to have a certain kind of cultural advantage. Joe Biden Murphy, he got elected as Joe from Scranton, and he governed as Joe from Washington. As Joe from the Russell Senate office building. But here's the Democratic problem. I mean, yeah, you can sloganeer and it'll sound better, but

the the democrats have to be in my view anyway capable of saying you know what we're going to build 30 nuclear power plants because it's the cleanest energy we're going to create a lot of jobs and then somebody that means going to say no our environmentalists who are all wealthy and and college educated and all these are going to like it screw them we're in the hard hat business we're going to start building stuff here i understand your point but they can't do that that's my point the the

the squishy side will win. They've made, no, I don't think that's true. I don't think the squishy side will win. What I'm saying is the problem is deeper than that. Yes. The problem is deeper than that. And they, and there has to be a real rethinking of, I thought the question with the question people should be asking is why is it that so many people feel so alienated from institutions, so alienated from government. And I'm not sure that your point, Mike is the, is it totally answers that, but I want to,

but I want to raise one other thing and then I have one other bit of sound I want to play that goes to the nominees. Cause we're going to, uh, but, um, you know, Tom Holman was in Chicago a couple of weeks. I haven't been here for a couple of weeks, so I'm catching up. I got a lot on my mind, you guys. So, uh, Tom, Tom Holman, who's the border czar of the Trump administration, the former ice guy was in Chicago speaking at a Republican fundraiser, by the way. And he basically, uh,

menaced the very unpopular mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and challenged him to challenge them when they come in and try and enforce their deportation, uh, uh, orders, uh, and JB Pritzker as well. And, uh,

It occurs to me that one of the things that they are hoping for and are going to try and provoke are confrontations with Democratic politicians in big cities over this deportation issue. And if they are trying to deport unpopular, I'm sorry, not unpopular, if they're trying to deport unpopular,

people who have been convicted of crimes, I'm not sure the public is going to be, I think the public's going to fall on their side. And the question is, how do Democratic politicians play this? The mayor of Denver said, you know, originally, you know, he kind of said, we're going to draw a line at the board, we're going to stand up to, and then he backed off on it right away. But what is the proper posture for Democratic politicians in dealing with that issue, Mike?

Well, they're going to reflexively doomcast and say, how dare you? And they're going to go on MSNBC and say there'll be gunfire on the streets, Trump revolution. You know, I mean, it's going to be all the same noise we have about this stuff. Brandon is the worst mayor in the country, in my view. But it's a thug secretary, this guy. He's the wrong guy for the job. I mean, it's terrible. But right now, it's like two drunks yelling at each other.

We'll see what actually happens. And if it happens, it's horrible and I'll condemn it louder than anybody. And Democrats should condemn it if it happens. Well, yes. Let's just say this. Family separation in the first Trump administration had some pretty terrible human consequences. And so...

For Democratic politicians to remember that and when they hear Trump talking about doing something that's similar to that and on a larger scale for them to express concern, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me, Mike. And I think that you don't have to be, you don't have to have hair on fire, doom casting. I think to say, to be worried about it

both substantively and is substantively fair and politically not terrible, not disadvantageous. I do think the question is what actually happens. And I agree, David, to your point, if Trump ends up doing kind of a fake deportation thing, which is to say nothing like on the scale, which I think is what's going to happen.

Not to say that there's not going to be really people deported, but you're going to go to a bunch of jails. You're going to get a bunch of undocumented immigrants who are already convicted criminals and send them back to their home countries. If that is the scale of it, Democrats should be fine with that and should make a big deal out of it. And Democrats have to be tougher on immigration if they're going to be effective politically. But if you end up in a place, to Mike's point, we'll see whether – I just don't think Trump –

for a lot of reasons, not just because the television images, but because most of the business community has no tolerance for what it would do to the labor market for him to go around and start rooting, grabbing, uh, like grabbing undocumented immigrants who've been working as law abiding citizens for some number of years and trying to root them out and throw them back. The chamber of commerce would hate that more than anyone. What I'm saying is that if he goes the sort of deportation, uh,

light route. I mean, it's going to be real, but because, you know, remember the Obama administration deported a lot of people and they were criminals. I mean, they prioritized. Yes. I mean, that is the non-controversial thing to do. The question is, does he start sweeping community? You know, all the horror show stuff.

but I don't think he will. If he does, it'll hurt him politically. No, I'm making a different point, though. I agree with you. If he does all those things, that should be resisted. The question is, do Democratic politicians in these cities see it in their interest to

to have the fight regardless of what. And I think Trump is gaming this out to try and create those confrontations. No, he wants the fight. We're going to see it here in California. We're sanctuary USA here. And it's like Gavin Newsom's trying to pick all kinds of fights with Trump because in his interest,

And voters here, being a blue state, are happy with it. You know, fighting Trump is good politics. And from Trump's point of view, fighting California is good politics. So yeah, it's pro-wrestling. They're going to have dinner afterward and talk about best places to campaign in New Hampshire.

If it's just criminals, convicted criminals, and it's the deportation light model, David, Democrats, I think Democrats would be well advised to not take that bait. The last thing the Democratic Party needs on any level is to be associated with lax immigration policies going forward.

But they'll fall for the trap, won't they? I think they will. I mean, there are nuances that are going to be, you know, like, you know, do you do their talk that they're going to go into churches? And I mean, I think they've intimated that in places where they haven't gone before. I mean, I think that they are going to look for that confrontation. And this is something that Democratic politicians have to think about, because, yes, I think you have to stand up on principle if if.

uh this turns into something that you know the worst case scenario of course so you know i will i'm sure we'll get a lot of shit for uh having said that here but um i mean the other part what i'm saying which is be thoughtful about how you react to this don't play trump's game yes yeah but but do you think the mayor of chicago will be thoughtful in this fight

Well, I mean, even how about a little grace, a little mercy here, a little kindness in the holiday season. Let's not condemn him. If we're not going to condemn Trump anticipatorily, we should not condemn the mayor of Chicago anticipatorily. Let's wait to see what he does. Well, I mean, he's being he's sort of he's sort of being condemned by voters in Chicago. Not not anticipatorily. I mean, you know, the guy sitting there with like a 15 percent approval rating. He's earning it.

Yeah, fair enough. I voted for him five times and I'm disappointed. He may end up suing pollsters for the numbers that he's getting. It could be class action. I know about 100 polls who'd like to sue a pollster. OK, then let's take a break right here and we'll be right back. So, Murphy, as you know, as we've talked about, I've been laid up for a couple of weeks with a bum wheel that got repaired.

And so I've had to spend a lot of time lying down with my foot in the air. And one of the things that made it tolerable was that I've been lying on my Helix mattress, which I've been bragging about for several years. I got one because they were a sponsor of ours and they offered me a mattress. And it was one that was sort of tailor-made for me. They have their

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We haven't talked at all about the nominations, really. Let's not do that. Let's talk about your foot, David. My foot is healing. I had surgery on my foot, a little reconstruction on my foot about two weeks ago. It's healing well. We're down to five toes now. We've all been waiting for this. One month. One month. It took a while. Until I'm on my feet again, and I will be able to kick some ass, man. There you go.

I'm very happy. And my thanks to Dr. Mitchell, the fine surgeon down here in Phoenix, who who did a yeoman job on this. And so I'm good. So so my question is, and we're all glad to know you're doing better. Yeah.

So on the knee wheelie thing you're imprisoned in for a while because you can't put weight on a foot that's been surgically helped. Do you have one of those orange pennants on the stick? Or no, you're going with the original. What I need to get is a bell on my, because I zip around my house on this knee thing and I whip around the corner and I almost sideswipe my wife.

So what I need is a bell on the thing, but getting back to the nomination. This is a good preview of a good preview of the, of the, of the David Axelrod on a rascal era to come. What the retirement's going to be like around the Axelrod. Honk if you hate Trump bumper sticker, I can, I can visualize. I'm going to get one of those Mr. Magoo horns on the thing. So anyway, you know, one of the things that occurred to me when I was laid up was, and I was watching all the coverage of the,

horrible shooting in New York, of the capture of this young guy, Luigi Mangione, of this fall of Syria and so on. These things could not have come at a better time for Trump and his nominees because Wexeth's problems were all the news, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, all of that, you know, Kash Patel. They got pushed down to the third or fourth story. And in the void,

The MAGA boys were able to take Republican politicians out and talk some sense to them, if you know what I mean. You know, and the Heritage Foundation planned a media buy that they announced in nine states. There are nine senators they were targeting who show support.

some modicum of moderation and independence. And Lisa Murkowski, the Senator from Alaska who has shown more than a modicum of independence was questioned the other day at a, I think it was a no labels event in Washington. And here's what she had to say about where we are. But I think it's going to be hard, quite honestly. I think it's going to be hard in these next four years. I,

Because you have an administration coming in that has had an opportunity to kind of see how things work, what didn't work, and now we've had four years to think about it. And the approach is going to be everybody toe the line. Everybody line up. We got you here. And if you want to survive...

You better be good. Don't get on Santa's naughty list here because we will primary you.

It's about it, isn't it? Yeah, it's totally it. And Elon will throw a lot of money into the primary until he and Trump have the great high school breakup, which is coming. Yeah. I mean, look, it's they're not I think one or two may get clipped, but not enough will. And as I said before, net net is bad for Trump because you'll have people who can't deliver in the bureaucracy like like Hegseth. He is an insult.

that nomination to the career people in the U.S. military. But if he gets the job, the military, the uniformed military will eat him alive. Those generals are smart. I've worked there once. They will give him a plane and a funny hat and a badge and let him fly around and inspect bowling alleys for four years, and they're going to do what they got to do. Same thing with Tulsi at

And the CIA will just stop sharing information, which is what they want to do anyway. It's really bad, but Trump is the loser in all these things over time. Well, David, let me ask you this question. As you sat there in your recuperative bed and took a measure of the dynamics unfolding,

um, where Hegseth, who was basically close to being done at one point, mounted a bit of a rebound, um, in terms of his prospects for, for, for getting, um, for getting, getting confirmed. Cash Patel basically has people like John Cornyn saying, you know, and Tom, Tom Tillis and others saying he's going to, he's on a glide path. Um, yes, it's cash and carry. Yes. RF

I think they all could get confirmed. Yeah.

I think they all could get confirmed. I mean, look, here there are questions like, what is Mitch McConnell going to do? He's been very outspoken about RFK Jr. and vaccines, and I think powerfully so because he had childhood polio. And the fact that RFK Jr.'s main advisor wants to end the polio vaccine is really playing right into the old McConnell constituency of one. Yeah, no, no. How to charm him. How to charm him.

So that is, you know, I mean, there is apparently real concern on the Intelligence Committee. I mean, Tom Cotton is going to be chair of the Intelligence Committee, apparently killed Bobby Kennedy Jr.'s daughter-in-law for CIA deputy director. The idea being that she he won. Bobby wanted her to go in there and investigate the assassination of his daughter.

uh, of his uncle, uh, JFK. But you think all four, you think all four could get through. I'm concerned about that. I'm concerned. I don't think that Collins and Murkowski will go along with all four. I think I may, maybe that Murkowski will go along with none. Maybe Collins, uh, won't, but we've seen this movie before. We've seen it on Supreme court nominations and so on. I think this, this period in which, uh,

you know, the brass knuckle crowd has come out and made clear what their intentions are. And Mike makes a really important point. Never before has a president had someone with unlimited resources saying, I will spend untold fortune to beat you in a primary if you don't toe the line. And we know, you know, survival is the fundamental first priority of people, people in, in a public office. And so,

You know, yeah, I worry about it. And as you know, David, a lot of Republicans capitulated even before Elon Musk was just the mere whiff of a primary threat caused them to capitulate in the first Trump term. But Murphy, you said that you thought that three would get through. Who's the one you're thinking of that you think is the one that is most likely not to get through? You know, it's close. I think RFK may implode. I think the vaccine thing can steamroll. And don't underestimate big pharma in the Senate.

But also, I mean, I think the most dangerous is Patel and Vote, who's going to get OMB, which is an agency nobody knows what it is, but has massive power. And he knows what he's doing. And if I had two magic beans, I would stop Patel and Vote, followed by Kennedy. Tulsi and Hegseth will be isolated by the pros.

but it's still a disaster. I mean, we're literally in triage here. Oh, well, okay. I guess we have to cut off the leg and one eyeball and we can save the patient here. That's the world we're in. Patel is in the position where he is someone who has no...

As far as we know to this point, it's no, there's nothing about, there's no personal scandal. It's, it's purely ideological and purely on substance and no one. And the corruption of an agency that should be non-political. Yes. I listen, I think he's the most dangerous one, but I also think that in the history of the United States Senate under Trump and anyone else that like substantive ideological things, never sink nominees. The things that sink nominees are scandals of some kind, right? It's not, you know, it's, it's some kind of personal defect that,

I think Patel is the most dangerous and the most likely to get confirmed. And when people ask me why I'm worried about it, I don't, you just say, have you heard of J. Edgar Hoover? Have you heard of J. Edgar Hoover? It's like we have a, we have a recent analogy to what a FBI director run amok can do. This is not speculative. Anyway, listen to him. Yeah. On that point, by the way, February is the anniversary, 50th anniversary of the appointment by President Ford.

of Edward Levy, who was then the president of the University of Chicago as attorney general. And the mission that he gave Edward Levy was restore public confidence in the Justice Department and the FBI. And Edward Levy and this was after Hoover and this was after Watergate. Edward Levy and two attorney generals going down or around Watergate. Edward Levy

who built a series of norms and rules and laws to insulate the Justice Department from political interference. When I was in the White House, I was not allowed to call the Attorney General. I was certainly not allowed. I only saw the FBI director when he came in to brief the president on something. I was not allowed to contact the FBI director. The only person who could was the White House counsel.

And there were that those rules were there for a reason. And now what you know, what Patel represents is a tearing out of all of those protections, root and branch. And and he sees himself as a as a functionary, a political functionary for the president. And by the way, the first time there's a terrorist attack on domestic violence,

which the FBI has done a great job of trying to prevent, or some other catastrophe, and I don't wish this, and I hope it doesn't happen, I think the question's going to be, how the hell do we have this guy running this operation? Well, completed. That's back to my point about putting competence in charge of a very complicated Lucy and the assembly line factory, and things are going to get worse, and ultimately it'll be the president's fault. That's why, again, I think this whole thing

is going to crescendo in a bad way, but it's going to take time. And the sad thing is the country is going to pay the price. So we only have a little bit of time left. I want to, so I want to say a few things because it is, we're not going to, we're going to come back at the end. Are they going to be cheerful? Is anything going to be cheerful? A few things. We're, we're, we're almost out of time. We're just reporting the news here, man. But the, uh,

I just want to say how grateful I am for you guys and for all of those who participated here. This is a joy to come here once a week and bullshit with you guys. And and I ultimately do have faith that we will navigate through this period as a country. I don't wish for Trump's failures, but I do. But I'm resolute that when he appoints.

fundamental basic principles of democracy. We're going to deal with that. We have to stand up to that. But there are a whole lot of good people in this country. And there's so much good about this country. And we've gone through difficult periods before. And we'll navigate this as well. But one of the ways we're going to do it is with good humor and good cheer, here at least, is

And so I just want to say thank you guys for that opportunity. Well, thank you. I had no idea during your convalescence you've been in online rabbinical school here. That was inspiring and gracious. I feel the same way. I love you, Muggs. He's still here. He's still hiring us to pay medications. I'm sober. I'm sober. I said this. I was sober. Sure, sure. Exactly. Save some for us.

Well, happy holidays and Merry Christmas. Peace on earth, everybody. To all our listeners. Yes, to all of you. We appreciate all you hackaroos out there. It's not the $114 we make for the ads. It's you people because we love doing this. And onward to a year. Don't give up on America. Play the long game. Happy New Year. All right. See you guys.

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