Hackzpah (with Jonathan Alter)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. The state of the vote for the President of the United States as delivered to the President of the Senate is as follows. The whole number of the electors appointed to vote for President of the United States is 538. Within that whole number, the majority is 270.

The votes for president of the United States are as follows. Donald J. Trump of the state of Florida has received 312 votes. Kamala D. Harris. Kamala D. Harris of the state of California has received 226 votes. Well, there you have it. It's official. Another calm day.

certification of an election in Washington. Yeah, no cops have been beaten into the hospital. It's a refreshing change. But good on Kamala for handling herself the way she did. We should talk about that in a second, but first

I want to introduce our guest today. Couldn't have a better guy to be with us this particular week. Jonathan Alter, one of the great political journalists for decades and decades and decades, a peer in this country and a great historian and author. And relevant to this, Mike, is his book,

biography of Jimmy Carter who will be laid to rest this week. His very best

recommend it to everyone. Uh, and he, uh, but he can give us a lot of wisdom on a lot of subjects. And we're going to spend a bunch of time on Carter as well. Absolutely. Jonathan. Good to see you old friend. Welcome back. Great to see you, Mike. We, we go back to the straight talk express. We do. We do. I'll never forget that tiki bar. Well, we won't get into any of the hijinks, but, uh, it's good to see you, pal. And I'm excited to talk about, uh,

Carter with you, particularly the Carter campaign, but we'll get to that. But we have some news. Well, first of all, Happy New Year, everybody. Here we are after our holiday hiatus. We're back. We're hacks, and we're going to have a lot to talk about. Yeah, for quite a while here. Yeah, I mean, look, we just have to note the contrast. It turns out when

Trump wins, it's a lot calmer than when Trump doesn't win and doesn't want to accept the outcome. And, you know, I don't want to belabor this point, but we should, history has to, history is history. And he told a malignant lie four years ago, and that set in motion events that ended in a riot at the Capitol.

And so the contrast between yesterday's calm proceeding and what happened four years ago underscores how remarkable it is that he should now be certified and on his way to a second term as president.

Yeah, more people voted for him. I don't know if it tells you about him or about America, but it's where we are. He won fair and square. And it was nice to have a little normalcy there. I think we're kind of in a fog of normalcy right now. You know, there's been this kind of feeling that, well, he won, he's been elected and, you know, things will be OK. And maybe they will. I hope they will. I like presidents of any stripe to succeed. But

You know, I think it's calm before what could be a real storm. My favorite alter was Trump complaining to Hugh Hewitt yesterday that Biden was making the transition very difficult. That gives new meaning to the word chutzpah. Yeah, he does that all the time. And obviously it works for him. I mean, I found yesterday excruciating.

because of the double standard, you know, and they only want to peacefully transfer power when they win. And the question is whether moving forward, you know, after Trump leaves the scene, which unlike a lot of people, I actually think the 22nd Amendment will hold and he will on January 20th, 2029, if he's alive. And, you know, whether if

I don't know, you know, Josh Shapiro beats J.D. Vance. You know, I'm making it up here. Whether the Republicans will will let, you know, that election move forward because they didn't in 2020. And so, you know, when I was when I was watching Harris yesterday, I was thinking about the two times in recent history where a vice president has had to do that.

So on January 6th, 1961, Richard Nixon, who just lost to Kennedy, announced that Kennedy had won. And on January 6th, 2001, Al Gore, who just lost to Bush by 537 votes, announced that Bush had won. And as Nixon described it, he said, this moment, you know, announcing your rival's victory is

testifies to the majesty of our system. What I was thinking yesterday was that these events on January 6th testify to the fragility of our system, that for the first time that majesty was interrupted four years ago, and they want to flush it down the memory hole. They got a bunch of

MAGA people who claim to be in favor of strong law enforcement, but they... Yeah, whitewashed the assault on 140 police officers. They back the blue unless it's a coup. Oh, that's good. Yeah, I haven't heard that one, Reverend Jackson. That's pretty good. I feel like we've got the Muhammad Ali of journalists here. Yeah, there you go. But the danger, you say Republicans will resist.

That they are the anti-institutional party. Trump has made them more so. But, you know, my concern is that all these democratic norms rely on the good faith of people in the system. And if you begin to shed them, they're very hard to reassemble. So, yes, it was reassuring. But, you know, I mean, I'm worried about that on a whole scale.

on a whole range of things. But let's talk about, you guys, where we think things go from here. First of all, Trump has a couple of hurdles this week that he wants to get over. One is to try and block the release of those reports from the special prosecutor, the special counsel, Jack Smith.

You remember the Justice Department has a policy of releasing or made a policy of releasing, released the special counsel report on Joe Biden, which injured him. We should note that.

And and now Trump is trying in court to stop the release of those seconds on the second front. He's trying to keep from getting sentenced on Friday. Does this does this shit matter? I mean, does it? It should, but it doesn't. The question is whether it just goes into the same kind of funnel that all those indictments did. Look, when you win, there's a reset, whether you deserve it or not.

So all this stuff is MSNBC food, and it'll be a bunch of lawyers will be able to talk about this indictment and that. And the 45% of the country that hates Trump will feast on it. But as far as what's really going on, Trump's future, in my view, politically, will be driven by can he succeed at all?

on the things that people expect him to do, which are very high because he created crazy expectations. I wrote about this Sunday Times London this weekend because you know me, I'm reaching out for the global stage now. And I think it's full of shark-filled waters. Going overseas to find someone to publish you, that could be the other thing. Well, Daily Racing Forum and Grit don't pay. So I was down to my Limey friends who are wonderful. I like writing for those guys. Sunday Times or online. But

The original times, not the new young upstart in the colonies. But my point is the fundamentals are going to make or break them just like they made or broke Biden broke, actually. And as much as that legal stuff works with me, I think people have let go of it, sadly.

Look, there's not another election for almost two years. So, you know, how they react is to me, not front and center. What's front and center is history. OK, so it's very important that the that Jack Smith's report be released so that we have as good accounting as we're going to get since the case is dead.

what he did to overturn the election. And if some judge in the next few days buys his ridiculous argument that as a president-elect, he's arguing this in both of these cases, that he has some standing. If some Eileen Cannon-type judge prevents the release of this report, that would be really bad for history and setting aside the politics of it. And on the other case, on the sentencing, so this is the thing that I...

I really have been following, you know, I wrote a book about it that came out this, you know, I was in the courtroom every day. I scammed a permanent seat in the courtroom of this trial. And I just wrote about this in a few days ago in the Times, because I think that people are obviously really disappointed that.

In this case as well, because Trump's not going to go to jail, he's not even going to get probation. But Mershon, unless the sentence is stayed, which I don't think it will be, is set giving him a life sentence as a convicted felon.

So if Mershon prevailed, Judge Mershon in New York, if he prevails with this, you know, on the one hand, it's not even a slap on the wrist. He's letting him go scot-free under a punishment, you know, called, you know, unconditional discharge. So in terms of punishment, as we think of it, he's going scot-free. But he is being punished in that this label convicted felon

will be with him. Yeah. And that's why he's fighting so hard, but you know what? Let's, let's, let's, but let, but let's be, let's be to, to Mike's point. Let's be real honest about this. Uh, I'm not sure that one of the best things that ever happened to him was this indictment in New York. Uh, because I think there was a sense that, uh, he was being singled out, uh, uh, and that, uh, it,

It was, you know, a novel legal theory that was applied to him. And he made himself a victim. And he'll make himself a victim again if he is sentenced on Friday. So as a political matter, I just think it fans the flames of— I mean, I think he should be sentenced because he was convicted. But stepping back, it's—you know, I think I agree with—

Murphy that from a political standpoint it's it's a it's a minor embarrassment but it also is rocket fuel for those who think the system is corrupt and so on and that's the danger in all of this this goes back to the first discussion is that just the amount of cynicism that he has provoked so you know we we will see but meanwhile Mike's right the the question is what does he do and

I remember Rush Limbaugh saying on the day that Obama took office, I'm rooting for him to fail. I'm actually if if if Donald Trump can make Americans more prosperous, bring down their costs, reform the immigration system in a way that allows for robust legal immigration and regularizes these dreamers. And so, I mean, if he does these kinds of things,

All power to him. I'm for that. Yeah, take the win. I don't want to learn Chinese. You know, I'm rooting for him, but I'm betting against him because I'm a realist and I know who we're dealing with here. But I hope I'm wrong. I was just going to say, I completely agree. And if Doge, you know, gets some common sense cuts in the size of government, that would be great. But I'm not holding my breath because the only consistent thing about Trump is every time you think he's touched bottom, he crashes through the floor.

So he never disappoints when it comes to disappointing. Yeah. He's the atomic clock of being what he is. Yeah, no, he is who he is. And there's no, and there's no doubt about it. I was just watching the beginning of a, um, of his press conference, which, which is going on as we speak down in Mar-a-Lago. And he introduced a, uh, middle Eastern real estate mogul who was going to invest in, uh,

AI computation centers in the U.S. But Trump was, you know, lavishing him with praise because he's a big real estate guy. And, you know, the first thing your mind goes to is, yeah, I wonder what deals the Trump organization is going to

make with that guy over overseas. Yeah, there'd be a condo building in it somewhere for Trump. Actually, you reported a lot about when you were a reporter, pay to play in Illinois, right? Yeah. You just get, so I could be wrong about this, but I think the big pay to play in this

administration is going to be exemptions from tariffs. So they did it a little bit in the first term. But, you know, he has to keep his promise on these tariffs. He can do some of them unilaterally under fast track authority. But then, you know, his friends aren't going to like these tariffs or some of his friends. And they'll say, OK, I want an exemption for bullshit reasons, A, B, C and D.

They'll be granted the exemption, and then reporters will have to figure out how much they paid for the exemption, who they paid. And you know that some Trump relatives or various Republicans are going to get paid. Well, it's actually the reverse of that. The tariffs are the bullshit. To escape the persecution of stupid tariffs, do they buy their way out?

And they sure will try because any interest group is purely transactional to save its own interest. That's an interesting idea because, you know, they've already started backing off the tariffs. They leaked out some stuff yesterday. Well, we don't mean everywhere. So the more selective they are, the more political they could be. Well, I think this is what you're going to see. Listen, whatever Trump does, he will proclaim it the most far-reaching and historic thing

And so he's just going to he'll he'll fashion the tariffs however he thinks he needs to fashion them. And he will call them the most extensive and far reaching ever. He will deport a bunch of people and he'll do it noisily and try and provoke confrontations with big city mayors who, if they're smart, will be real, real cagey about how they deal with that. But again,

and not become his foils, but he will probably focus on people who have committed crimes. That's where Obama's deportations mostly focused, and they were more numerous than Trump did in his first term. But he'll say it's the most extensive in history. The thing on the corruption issue is, I think it's going to be

uh there's gonna be you know when you talk about regulatory issues when you talk about the politicization of the justice department antitrust look look at uh and we'll talk about this a little later but look at how bezos and zuckerberg uh have caved to trump in the last few weeks abc news abc news i mean he is going to use every bit of leverage and because uh

These business people are in the

business of making money. They are going to play the game as he wants it played. So you talk about the old days in Illinois, you know, I think it's going to be, it's going to be, or the wild, wild West. But again, the question is, do people care? Do, is that, is that going to impact on people? If, if, if, if he succeeds in delivering on improving the economy,

lowering prices, stopping the incursions on the border. You know, if he does those things, how much latitude does he have? Well, he gets latitude from the Supreme Court because he can break the law with impunity since under that

immunity decision, he can't be prosecuted. And something involving selling tariffs exemptions is an official act. So basically he can't eat this. This is what I'm asking a different question. I get your point. And I, you know, I share your concern about that, but I'm saying,

As a political matter, that's how I was going to be judged. I think he's lowered the bar so much. Everybody does this kind of thing. Yeah, totally. But I still think there's an even bigger point, which is Trump has won two presidential elections running against lackluster Democratic candidates as a challenger attacking everything.

Everything's wrong. The institutions are lying. It's all fake news. You know, blah, blah, blah. All the Trump stuff works like a charm. The one time he ran on defense as an incumbent, he lost.

His world's going to change because he's going to go from the guy throwing bombs to the guy who owns the status quo. Now, short term, he'll throw bombs from there. He'll pick the fight with the mayors and he'll threaten to arrest Gavin Newsom for protecting horrible illegal immigrants flooding in all the Trump shtick. But can that sustain when you are the person people hold accountable, as they did Biden, for their economic life?

when you start trade wars that will hurt people economically, will throw people out of work.

You know, Trump's economic plan. And second, look at his personnel choices. Are they savvy to run those cabinet agencies so he doesn't have political problems? Because smart cabinet secretaries are there to prevent trouble from, you know, happening and hurting the president politically? No. He's got the Fox Green Room there who are good at the sound bites but have no idea how to run FDA or the transportation department. So I think he's living on borrowed time.

I don't think he can run as a challenger. Let me just put an asterisk in here because Mike Murphy has been predicting Donald Trump's demise since the advent of Hacks on Tap. So in the fullness of time, I will be correct. I play the long game here, Axe. A stopped clock is right once a day, and you may be at some point. All right, we're going to leave for a minute to pay the power bill, and then we'll be right back.

You know, it was great seeing a bunch of my friends over Christmas, but it reminded me as I kept leaning forward to hear that they and I are starting to get older. Millions of adults over the age of 65, and I'm not there yet, started to lose their hearing. I am.

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For a lot of for a few reasons, and the main one was they were unhappy with the state of the economy and particularly inflation. And some of his promises are in conflict with.

with that, Alter. I mean, yeah. Also, I mean, certainly the tariffs, you know, are hugely inflationary because the cost of the tariff just gets reflected in prices. Totally, it's a tax. But just on the basic political point, you know, people understand he's a lame duck, but I'm not sure everybody understands the history of second terms. So you know who had a terrible second term? Franklin Roosevelt.

Dwight Eisenhower. Another guy you... Obviously, basically, there have not been... I can't think of a single example. And Grover Cleveland. I mean, so he... You know, Trump just pulled a Grover Cleveland, who...

lost when he ran for reelection and then he made a comeback. And in his first year, 1893, after his comeback, there was the panic of 1893. It was a depression, basically. The roof caved in on him. But every second-term president since then, without exception, has had a less productive second term than first term, and only partly because they're lame ducks and are more politically vulnerable. It's also they have a lot of mileage on them.

And this chaos agent thing gets old after a while. We saw this during COVID, you know, in the early days of COVID when he's attacking, you know, Gretchen Whitmer and then he's attacking Fauci. Whatever he's doing wasn't working for him in 2020. And I think we're going to fairly quickly, I'll have some early wins. He might have a good first hundred days. He'll put some points on the board. But I don't think it's going to be very long before he's...

if not in the bunker, at least, you know, rocked. Yeah, that's how I see it too for all my stop clock. I'm going to hang back and see. I think there's a lot of there, you know, there's a wonderful sort of news site in which you guys may be familiar with in your home state, Murphy, called Bridge, Michigan. And they printed a list yesterday of the hundred promises Trump made to the people of Michigan and

you know, including prices will go down right away, you know, very quickly, you know, about manufacturing jobs, a ton of stuff. So there are yardsticks by which he'll be, he'll be measured. He, we know that he's going to come with a flurry of executive orders on day one. And some of them will touch on social issues. Some of them, a lot will be on immigration issues.

But the question is, he's got this idea of a big mega bill.

to go through Congress early in his, in the first few months of his administration, that includes his extension of the Trump tax cuts, 4.6 trillion over 10 years, maybe with some other stuff in there, uh, relative to taxes, uh, the board, some board, the border stuff and energy and sort of radical energy, uh, deregulation, uh, and, uh,

That is one big test because...

And he's going to pile everything in it. And, of course, Congress is designed to work the opposite because they hate to be shoehorned into one vote because it takes all their leverage away and all the parochial stuff they care about or the ideological stuff. He has a tenuous hold on the House. Yeah, I think that's a big thing. And so it just needs three people who care about the milk bill not being in the omnibus to derail this whole thing. You've got the Senate that doesn't want to give up that kind of power.

to basically say, all right, give us a list of everything you want. We say yes and go home for two years. Then you also have the congressional leadership knowing the odds are they're going to lose control of the House. In the House, as you guys know, when you're in the minority, you're nothing. You have zero power. So they're like, are we going to have a suicide note here? Actually, the minority actually has...

has power now because the margin for Republicans are so low. Well, that's true. That's true, because we basically don't have a majority. Shark-filled waters here. Very hard to do what he wants with a wrong-track electorate and huge expectations. They're already talking about breaking this bill into two things. Soon it'll be four. So we'll see. But it's harder...

than it looks institutionally, much harder. Alter, the guy who wants the one bill is the Speaker of the House because the traditional way you get something done is to have a bill big enough to give everybody something they absolutely want to have. I'm not sure that works with some of the folks in that recalcitrant Freedom Caucus. It sure doesn't because they want to cut government spend. Well, they almost derailed it in December, you know, and so...

It is herding cats, even in the Trump era. And there's only so much that Trump can do in terms of personal lobbying, since, you know, a lot of them are not worried about primary fights. Not all of them are. And so I'm I'm less worried about, you know, that bill kind of

bogging down. I think it will bog down. They'll get something through, but it's not going to be that radical by the end of the day. I'm more worried about these executive orders because I do think he's a lawless president at heart. And like J.D. Vance said, they won't even necessarily abide by Supreme Court decisions. And the Supreme Court carries a lot of water for Trump. But if you look at the first term, they didn't go his way

On many issues, and they wouldn't even review any of those 60 cases challenging the 2020 election so that the Supreme Court's not going to go with them on everything. And what worries me is that when they say, for instance, oh, your executive order ending birthright citizenship is unconstitutional.

whether Trump will abide by that, because Vance is basically said, let's face it, Vance and this guy, Russell Vogt, you know, and Susie Wiles, they're going to be running the government while Trump watches TV and plays golf. I mean, if you're getting into the actual details here, it's going to be done by those three people. And I'm not I'm not.

You know, sure, I'm scared of Vance basically echoing Andrew Jackson when he said Chief Justice Taney has made his decision. Now let him enforce it. And basically Vance endorsed that. And if we get into defying court orders, which it's quite possible we will.

Then we're in a full on constitution. Yeah. OK. But and I don't I don't I don't question this. And I look, I share your concerns about the extra constitutionality of Trump and and and his impulses, which are basically, you know, the world's a jungle and you do and you take what you want, however you can get it. And that's how he's operated in the

But on this narrow issue, I just want to point out that there is all kinds of it is going to be a monstrously difficult thing to meld the.

concerns of the speaker of the house to try and get the votes he needs to pass something. And he'll be under pressure to try and do it, do it only with democratic votes. They're going to do it under the reason they want to do one bill is because there is a provision, a budget provision that says you can, in budget related matters, you can pass a bill on, you know, once or twice in a, in a, in a term, uh,

by a majority vote. So it gets you past the filibuster in the Senate because that's

That's their concern. Yeah. So and they don't have the ability to break a filibuster in the Senate. So they want to use this provision and jam everything into it. By the way, it's not clear everything will qualify under the rules. Yeah, this is a big deal. There's going to be a lot about are they going to fire the Senate parliamentarian? Because what they what the Senate parliamentarian does on these reconciliation bills is he or now it's a she.

They make a ruling on whether what's in the bill is related to taxing and spending. And if it's not, if you like want to kill the Department of Education. Exactly. It doesn't fit. You need you need six. You need 60 votes. And they're pretty strict about these things. And so that will limit some of the really radical stuff that they might want to do. Unless unless the Senate overrides, which they can.

They have the ability to override the Senate parliamentarian. But we're getting way into the weeds. The point is, you can see the complexity of this. The other thing that he has to deal with is you mentioned, you know, Mike, you talked about the nature of the cabinet that he's appointed. They have to get through the Senate.

And the question is, and I'll ask you, Murphy, this because you used to be part of this tribe. You still have some friends over there. Is there are there if if four senators say no, then these nominees go down.

Do you see that happening in any of these cases? Hegseth? I see it on paper. Hegseth. The problem is Voight, who's dangerous, and Battelle, I think, are going to make it. And you're right. Voight's going to be running the government. Susie Wiles, the chief of staff, will have conventional instincts because she'll be sensitive to conventional pain. As far as who gets clipped, when you do the—he's got two problem senators, Collins of Maine—

and Murkowski, the independent, lean Republican of Alaska. Then he's got McConnell kind of on his last ride, showing a certain prickliness now that he's not leader anymore, now that it's Thune. So he's got three very shaky votes on, I think, many of these people. Mitch will probably pick one or two. Question is, who's the fourth vote? And there are some maybes there. National Security World doesn't like

Hegseth, who actually I think is the most harmless of the weak nominees because he's simply incompetent. The generals will roll him and the Pentagon bureaucracy will keep running things the way they are. Tulsi Gabbard, who the national security people hate. But remember, from their point of view, CIA would love to never share information with DNI. They don't like to do it now. So, you know, maybe they accept her as an excuse to keep doing what they're doing. You can start to see ways that they start slipping through.

What about Kash Patel? You know, he's, I think, along with Voight, the most dangerous. But I don't know. I think it might be three. I don't know if there would be a four. It's not a profile and courage operation there. And then finally, you know, you wonder how much...

What Trump will accept warpath wise, you know, the gates went down. Trump didn't say a word. Maybe he'll accept. Well, now we know why. But yeah, exactly. But it and then, of course, you got RFK, too, who wants to go back to voodoo medicine.

And I think there's real concern in the caucus about him. So I think one or two may get clipped, but a lot are going to get through. And I think the greater problem may just be, and this is why it's not in Trump's interest to nominate people like this, he's going to have incompetent cabinet secretaries, which over time equal political trouble. I defer to you, Mike, on this. But one thing that I heard recently is they don't want Republicans taking tough floor votes anymore.

on some nominees. So the ones that where there's a chance to kill them, they want to kill it in committee. Maybe, you know, say somebody like a top young who who didn't even vote for Trump, the senator from Indiana, get him to cast the deciding vote in a committee or, you know, a Joni Ernst. He's on the Armed Services Committee. He will be they will be hearing that nomination of Hegseth. You know, it's interesting what you say, because Thune was on John Thune, the new McGregor.

majority leader was on Face the Nation yesterday. And Thune is like, you know, he's of a different ilk, you know, he's very much more conventional. Oh, yeah. He's a regular. He's a McConnell regular. And he said, he said, well, I trust the committee chair, which goes to what you're saying, that I trust the committee chairs. They will get they will ask for the information they need.

And then these, they'll have to go through this, uh, committee process on RFK Jr. Look, the problem with him is that some of the things he says are eminently reasonable and others are just batshit crazy. And the batshit crazy stuff is really concerning because they go to vaccines, for example, which, uh, are pretty essential to public health. Uh,

And he's a purveyor of vaccine skepticism. Yeah. There's been some private polling done on some of his wacko positions, kind of like a poll in a Senate race, if you attack. And the numbers are very bad. And those are being slipped around a little bit. I don't think any... Look, the Republicans are cocky about the Senate because they've got a pretty good map for the re-election. But nobody wants this guy's positions to get famous two years from now if Trump's hitting the midterm rocks.

And there's more inflation. There's been an economic slowdown. The political wing of the Senate folks have concern about all this. Walter's right. Thune is not going to want... If he thinks a nominee is going to go down...

In a Senate vote? Yeah, snuff them early. He's not going to want that to come up for a Senate vote. Right. He doesn't want to put his guys... We saw it. We appointed Tom Daschle when I was in the Obama administration to be director of HHS, and he had a tax issue that was surfaced.

early and he withdrew because, you know, we didn't want to take the loss and we didn't want others to have to vote. You want confirmation votes to be easy. It was so minor with Tashel compared to these compared to today. Yeah. Think of when you think about it now, it'd be pretty boy Floyd and it would be maybe one thing that's bad for nominees. It's usually a problem for Supreme court nominees is a bad paper trail and

In this case, the paper trail are these books, these batshit crazy books. Patel, including a children's book, but also adult books. Patel, R.F. Kennedy. I actually read his book. It is nuts. He doesn't just attack Fauci. He attacks Gates, Bill Gates, with all of these lies that he can be easily caught out on.

And then, you know, Hegseth has written batshit crazy stuff in his book. So the Democratic senators are going to rake these guys with their own words and they're going to be very colorful hearings. OK, then let's take a break right here and we'll be right back. I'm not exactly the handiest guy around the house. No. And fixing stuff is no fixing stuff.

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Here's a bulletin from our crack producer, Hannah McDonald. Judge Cannon.

so assails to his advantage by running out the clock. And of course, Judge Cannon

is a Trump appointee who's paid off like a slot machine. Tanya Chutkin is the judge on the overthrowing. No, no, understood. But what she is saying is because the special counsel was illegitimately appointed, I guess, I mean, I'm guessing I'm just looking at a bulletin, but her argument has been that he's not, he wasn't, uh,

He was illegitimate. And so he was a private citizen, and therefore he should not have the authority to issue such a report. And I'm sure they will take that to Chuck, and she'll probably turn down the appeal. It's the Al Pacino defense. You're out of order. This whole court's out of order, and it'll get litigated. Hey, can we pivot to the biggest surrender of the day, this Facebook thing? Yes. Yes.

Let's have a little clip. This is Mark Zuckerberg bowing and scraping this morning on his announcement of changed policies at Meta. The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech. So we're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms. More specifically, here's what we're going to do.

First, we're going to get rid of fact-checkers and replace them with community notes similar to X starting in the US. After Trump first got elected in 2016, the legacy media wrote non-stop about how misinformation was a threat to democracy. We tried in good faith to address those concerns without becoming the arbiters of truth. But the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they've created, especially in the US.

There you go. That was part of a four or five minute statement. You can find it online, I'm sure. It's amazing because he taped it walking backwards, too. And it was really kind of a triumph. No, he taped it on bended knee, actually. Yeah, no, no. You couldn't see Trump holding the cue card there. This follows the capitulation by Bezos and pulling the endorsement of the Washington Post, which is...

led to an exodus of some of their most talented reporters in the last few weeks at the end of the year. But, you know, we are—this is really an inflection point in modern—in communications, but also in politics. I mean, when Trump—

I've talked about this before when he lost. I mean, when he won and he was on a Leslie Stahl in a sidebar before he did 60 Minutes. And she said, why are you always picking on the media? Why are you going after the media? Because I don't want people to believe you when you say bad things about me. The degree to which he has succeeded in that is really extraordinary.

I mean, and this is another blow. Basically, if you if you go on X now, it is a cesspool of disinformation and a lot of it is being shared by Musk himself. Now, you know, Facebook says we want to be more like that. And it's an offering.

to Donald Trump? Yeah, there's a little history in this because I was a consultant to Facebook in the past, so I have some knowledge of the internal machinations. There's always been a tension inside the company. Are we a publisher with a duty to curate or are we basically a bulletin board where in undemocratic places we're very helpful? And in the old days they decided we don't want to admit we're a publisher, but we have some culpability. So a lot of time and effort and smart people and good intent was spent

on how do we figure out how to curate this thing. And they were really trying. It's very, very hard to do, by the way, because one person's curator is another. It's very difficult and it's expensive. But now they've thrown all that, those good efforts out the window here. They've snapped the leash off the platform. And we know from human nature and the way some of these algos work that the creepier stuff goes faster for free.

So it's a complete surrender of their responsibility. And look at the board appointments. He takes John Elkins, who's a great investor, goes on the board. Great. Good for the stockholders. You know, the cage fighting king. Yeah, I want to hear his in-depth look at the economics of a digital business. It's another sop to Trump. It is so shameless and transparent. It's turned into a comedy script.

It's so over the top and it's shameless. This is really super depressing. Like if you give to the inaugural committee, which a lot of people are talking about, that's been done in every administration. Right, right, right. You know, this is a different order of danger. It's totally terrifying. Basically, they're saying X is in the sewer. We're going in the sewer with them and we're going to let all of these lies out.

Like just a lava of lies, not just in the United States, all over the world. Well, yeah, Musk, we, we, we, we don't have time for this today, but we're going to deal with, with Musk's sort of global expansionism now becoming the cheerleader for, I mean, he's hosting a, an online session with the far right leader in Germany tomorrow. So he's, he's playing all over, you know, Britain everywhere. Well,

One thing I want to point out to you guys right before the holidays, uh, the house killed a bill that passed the Senate, I think 96 to three to, to create some protections for, uh, adolescents and young people online that would, uh, restrict the algorithms from doing certain things and, uh, to basically addict young people and, uh,

expose them to things that they, you know, that are dangerous. We've seen a tremendous increase in suicides and anxiety among young people since the

2010, when, you know, a lot of this stuff became activated and it was passed bipartisan bill, Marsha Blackburn and Republican of Tennessee and the Blumenthal, the Democratic senator from Tennessee.

Connecticut, where the sponsors goes to the House, it was going to pass in the House. And then the Speaker of the House killed it at the last minute, said there were free expression concerns. And they're putting, by the way, Meta is moving a computation center, a center down to Louisiana, apparently. But and Zuckerberg announced in this that he's they're going to move their AI.

moderation facility down to Texas. So, I mean... I guess they couldn't find space in Alabama. Let's be clear. This is a huge business, and they're making business decisions, but those business decisions have an impact on our country. Right, which is back to the responsibility of curation, if you have that power to publish. And the anxiety of our children, which, by the way, I think is a really good

political issue for the Democrats. Now, it sounds like a mouthful, but I think people, everybody knows what an algorithm is now. They didn't 20 years ago. Five years ago, they didn't. Now everybody knows what an algorithm is. And I think algorithm reform to protect our children

To protect our children is a good issue. It's the digital fentanyl. I agree with you guys, too. And by the way, they're going to lighten up on TikTok, too. They're friends in Beijing, the mind twisters. Also a tragedy. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor. We'll be right back.

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We've got to talk about Jimmy Carter. And, John, let me just kick this off. You know more about the man than anybody, having written this splendid biography. One thing that struck me so interesting—

Jimmy Carter and Donald Trump both came to Washington as outsiders. They both came talking about draining the swamp. But they had that's where the similarities sort of ended. They had a wholly different view. Carter came bringing, you know, strong ethics reforms. He said, I'd never lie. And to my knowledge, he never did.

to the American people, sometimes to his own detriment. But talk about that. Talk about who Jimmy Carter was and the irony of him being laid to rest and honored in Washington, where he spent just four years of his hundred. And wasn't a particularly good fit. He had a lot of trouble there. In the same week that Donald Trump is being elevated again. Well, Carter is the un-Trump. You know, when Trump came down the escalator, I was in the Carter Library doing research and

And MSNBC said, you know, get over to studio and he texts Mexican rapists. And I go back to the library afterward. And for the next five years, I would turn these pages about Jimmy Carter and these documents and it would brush away the toxins. It was it was so not like I Trump did not live rent free life.

in my brain because Carter, the untrumped, you know, occupied the premises, right? So I had this whole time, and this is what was so refreshing and what I hope is refreshing for readers of, of this guy who he's the mirror image of Trump on everything except that outsider status that you're talking about everything else. So like Trump is a, a big man who acts small and,

And Carter was a physically small man who acted big. And, you know, Trump appealed to our our hate and our fears. And Carter appealed to our idealism and our hope that we could promote human rights and democracy and the other things that he did, not just in the post presidency, but when he was president.

president. So what I, you know, hope people take away from this is that people like Mike, you know, been Republicans, they grew up hating Jimmy Carter. And he did make a lot of mistakes when he was president. And in part because he didn't schmooze and, you know, and unlike Obama, who didn't like to schmooze, Carter wasn't cool. And he could be

And self-righteous.

So he was in this kind of mushy, undefined liberal left of center position that anticipated Clinton and Obama. He was the first new Democrat. Well, he was the last real Tory Democrat ever.

You can make an argument for Clinton, but it was ultimately true. And he was a great deregulator. I mean, I think it was a very mixed presidency. I'm not a super fan. But there are things that have been glossed over that were pretty outstanding. So I'm not a one-note Carter critic. And on foreign policies, it was really interesting for me talking to you.

Republicans about how much Carter did to win the Cold War, as people like Václav Havel talked about, the soft power, you know, standing up for human rights. He wrote Sakharov on his first day of his presidency, and he put a lot of pressure on the Soviet Union with that. And he also, the weapons that Reagan used were all built in the Carter Pentagon.

You know, technology that all started with Harold Brown as defense secretary was this brilliant guy from California Institute of Technology. You know, so they there were so many things beyond deregulation. Trucking deregulation created the just in time delivery system that Amazon loves to use. And, you know, the normalization of relations with China, which would not have happened otherwise.

without carter is the foundation of a global economy i mean dung xiaoping leaves washington after meeting with carter and he legalizes private property the next week and they have the greatest expansion economic expansion in human history so you have this terrible economy which as much as iraq iran is what led to his defeat um but

The solution to the terrible economy slaying inflation was Paul Volcker. Who appointed Volcker? Carter. Carter, yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. All I wanted to say was this discussion is more important than the discussion of his post-presidency, which is well-known and well-hashed over and he gets lots of credit for. But I'm sure wherever he is today—

it still irks him that the presidency is sort of a footnote, and he doesn't get—I mean, there were issues and problems, and we touched on some of them. Yeah, it was mixed. It was totally mixed. You guys can do another hour on the Carter greatness. I'm not arguing that he belongs on Mount Rushmore, Mike. No, no, no. But he ought to have a rest stop on the road to it, I think. But I want to, in our limited time, I want to give him one salute.

Just let's get back to being hacks on tap where the historians on tap podcast can fight this out. And Jonathan, you ought to be on it on all topics, Carter and Trump for that matter. But the campaign those guys ran in 76 and, you know, Georgia was not the mega state. It kind of is now in the Sunbelt at that time. It was, uh,

Atlanta was still the big key southern city, but it was nothing like it is now. They came out of nowhere. They put up a sale in a time of a public perception of disillusionment and populism that was brilliant. They politically organized. Carter called every candidate who ran for Congress in 74 and lost.

Personally, you know, building that network. And they took it from the big guys. So I just want to salute Hamilton Jordan and Powell and Carter himself and all of them as a political hack for one of the most brilliant presidential primary and later general. I still remember, and I was a kid, the peanuts going through the hand in that Roshun documentary about him.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, just a well-earned salute to the hacks of the Carter era. So Jerry, just for people who remember Jerry. Jerry Raph Shun, his media consultant. So he's become a very, very good friend of mine, and he's hilarious. He told me hilarious war stories, many of which have never been published before, that I put in that book because that campaign was one for the ages for political hacks. Yeah.

Yeah, man. So you said I just was watching that documentary the other night, Jimmy Carter, the rock and roll president. And everybody should watch that because, you know, you could say it wasn't cool, but that was pretty cool stuff. He was very cool. I mean, I put a Warhol of him on the cover. He's very cool. Seventy six. It was later that he became on what he was. He became like a.

A Velcro president where Reagan was Teflon and but earlier he not only was cool, but he was doing things you mentioned, you know how much he was disliked by the Washington establishment and the irony of him.

His remains being in Washington now. Yeah. And they didn't like him in Georgetown and he didn't like Georgetown and, you know, was kind of dumb on his part to not kiss up more to people like Catherine Graham. But but he wanted to do things for the city of Washington. So he sent Amy to public school, which, you know, neither Obama nor Clinton did.

And this part, just to get to rock and roll. So at one point, he's very good friends with Greg Allman. And Greg Allman was married to Cher at the time, who Carter tells his staff, call her Mrs. Allman. It was before Ms., you know. Call her Mrs. Allman. So he asks his secretary, get me Cher Allman on the phone.

And so he calls her up and he says, Cher, you know, you're the, like, top star in America. She was. It was the 70s. I'm asking you to say something nice about the District of Columbia. Just say that it's a good place to live and they deserve our support. And she did. Yeah.

You know, like, because he wanted to do something for his community. She said, I will do that if you stop calling me Mrs. Allman. And he might be able to squeeze her into his White House tennis schedule that he was directly involved in. And by the way, he was in the Rick over nuclear Navy. I got it. Mike, untrue. Just so you know. I know. I'm setting you up to knock it down. That's our button here. He didn't personally supervise the tennis court. Not true. There are many myths like that. Check out the book. Let me plug the title. The book.

his very best, Jimmy Carter in Life by Jonathan Alter. The other book that we mentioned here, American Reckoning, Inside Trump's Trial and My Own. Okay, mailbag time. Let's hit the music. Listener mail.

All right. If you have a question for the Hacks, all you got to do is email us at hacksontap at gmail.com, gmail.com. And you can do it. We have this new thing. We're in year two of it, where you can call us up and leave a voice message, but don't go on forever. That's our job. Keep it short. Tell us your name. Give us your cool question. Just leave it or record it on your voice memo on your smartphone and email it to it at that hacksontap at gmail.com address. The number to

You can also place a bet or register to vote in Chicago. The number is 773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471.

Mike Murphy, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announcing his resignation, declining popularity and internal party pressures, what implications does that have for progressive politics globally and how might it influence political strategies in the U.S.? And let me append another question that's related. Considering the rise of right-wing populist movements in Europe, such as the Alternative for Germany Party's growing influence, what

What parallels do you see in the U.S. political landscape and how should mainstream parties respond? I think that's a big question. How should mainstream mainstream parties respond? Yeah, it's a tricky one because you see it everywhere. You know, Trudeau has been in there a long time and he hit the rocks a while back. So they finally squeezed him out of office. Now the Tories are way ahead.

You've got AFD, as we talked about in Germany. Keir Starmer's hit the rocks in the UK. You're seeing everywhere populist conservatism, or I don't even know if it's conservatism. We'll just call it rightish populism growing. And it tends to, just like here, have two fuel sources.

Cultural conservatism often fired off by immigration and economic dissatisfaction. Volkswagen has never laid off anybody. Now they're laying off 30,000 people in Germany. Inflation is still on the march, although it's gone down, the perception of it in Canada.

So people are hitting the ejector button everywhere, just like they did here with Biden. And, you know, it's hard because a lot of these governing technocratic parties have been the government and that's what people want to punish. So as they go into the wilderness, um, it's time to reconnect the meat and potato issues. And I think it's time to get out of some of the super lefty cultural stuff that can define them as parties of the elites, not as the parties that care about the, the, the price of, uh,

I'm trying to think of a good Canadian staple other than potatoes, eh? So I'll have to call my friend Tom Long in Ontario to learn that. But the price of life for the working class and to get connected to that again, or they just seed the field to the right. And you're seeing it all across Europe and Canada as well.

Yeah, let me just add to that. I mean, I think you see the same dynamic. These are movements, they're working class movements. They tend to begin in rural areas and small towns among non-college voters. And it's partly a reaction to the fact that progressive parties have become smarty pants voters.

metropolitan uh parties that uh aspire to be the parties of the working class but don't much relate to them uh or respect them and i think that uh there needs to be a period of introspection among uh progressive parties uh rethinking of of approach and not just on issues but attitude those young street elites in toronto we got to send them a message your old clients

the Democrat party, which faces, you know, these challenges. So the good news is in midterms elites vote and, uh, you know, low propensity voters stay home. So that gives Democrats some advantage in the midterms, but longer term, it's not enough. They have to move away from identity politics. Yeah. They have to move. No more checklists. Like,

If you're running for office and some interest group, even if it's the ACLU, maybe especially if it's the ACLU, since that's the one that harmed Harris so badly on the sex change operations for a non-document prison, just say no. Just say, look, these issues are complicated. I don't do questionnaires. I'll tell you what my position is.

And, you know, don't try to pin me down on HR 2792, whether I'm for it or not. And and and just to push back on that and then also to really speak English and not.

bureaucraties, which Democrats still do. They just don't communicate as well. And you were good at getting your clients to do this, David, with your, you know, man on the street interviews. So you'd have people who spoke English communicating with voters, but a lot of the politicians still can't do it. And, and I think that applies all over the world. You see some of these elite politicians in various countries in Europe. I just heard Starmer talking about a

Elon Musk going after him, and he wasn't really responding in a very human, effective way. He was responding with abstractions. So I think there's a lot of work to do on message, not just to deal with the fragmentation of media, but just

To get out of Brooklyn, out of Berkeley. But let me just say, and we'll probably have to actually end it there because we, for reasons that should be apparent, there was a lot to talk about.

uh, today, but there is an attitudinal thing, you know, the back in the, uh, in the fifties, uh, you know, and I think it was mostly aimed at Adlai Stevenson, who someone, your folks probably knew and worked for. Yeah. John, cause you're from Chicago and they were politically active, but, um, you know, there was this, uh, jive, which was the, the definition of a liberal is someone who loves humanity, but hates people.

You know, you can't approach you. I mean, there's a lack of respect. It's you know, I've said it before here and elsewhere. We come as missionaries and as anthropologists and we say to working people, we are here to help you become more like us.

And there is an unspoken disdain there that really needs to. These are people who make the country go. OK, they make things. They ship things. They care for people. They grow things. They make this this country go and they deserve respect. And it was they don't. And that's not the way Democrats have been approaching. Can I just use an Adlai Stevenson quote that that makes your point?

So a woman came up to him in 1952. I remember that. I know where you're going. Governor Stevenson, you have the vote of every thinking American. And he said, that's nice, but I need a majority. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, that sums it up. And we've got to sum up here. But Jonathan Alter, thank you for being here. Thanks for all your great work. People can see you on MSNBC. And I suspect they'll see a lot of you on NBC and MSNBC over the next...

week as we or next few days as we remember President Carter Murphy good to see you in the new year happy new year everybody looking nothing worse for wear I'm glad you didn't over celebrate and we will and we'll be back next week you know those dreams you just don't want to wake up from but you got to roll out of bed to make them happen because you don't want to save your dreams for your sleep

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