Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, and Mike Murphy. Mr. President, thanks for joining us. Thank you. Why aren't you at the Fox News debate tonight in Milwaukee? Well, you know, a lot of people have been asking me that, and many people said you shouldn't do them, but you see the polls have come out, and I'm leading by 50 and 60 points, and some of them are at 1 and 0 and 2 points,
And I'm saying, do I sit there for an hour or two hours, whatever it's going to be, and get harassed by people that
I shouldn't even be running for president. Should I be doing that? And a network that isn't particularly friendly to me. There you have it, Mike Murphy, the winner of last night's Republican debate, in my view. Donald J. Trump sitting with his designated interviewer, Tucker Carlson, while eight other candidates appeared in Milwaukee.
Trying to punch their way into a race that Trump is leading, not by 50 and 60. By the way, by the end of that answer, he was leading by 70. Ba-da-boom. No, he was. No, I'm serious. Oh, really? There's an Insto poll? I didn't see it. Later in the answer, he said 70, just like he said during the interview that the crowd. Oh, I see. Yeah. The crowd on January 6th was the biggest crowd ever, bigger than a million people. Well, anyway, Trump is Trump.
Yeah, no. He's leading by 118, I hear. Yes, because if you let him keep going, he'll be up by 120 by the time we get to lunch. Trump is Trump and Gibbs is Gibbs. Gibbs, good to see you, brother. Good morning, Axe. I'm bleary-eyed, guys, but eager to hear what you guys thought. Well, I'll be contrarian as usual because this conventional view is, oh, Trump had a great night. You were contrarian when you said Trump would show up, but go ahead. Yeah, well, no, I didn't say that. I said I think there's a shot he will.
Um, but anyway, I don't think Trump won last night. I thought it was kind of weird that.
Nobody talked about him for an hour. Now, you can say that was all fear and everything. And then when they finally did talk about him, it was the coward Olympics. I mean, you have to look at this thing. Yeah, the moderators were terrible. I mean, let me pound on the fox for a minute. Just a sec. Buckle up, Axe. Murphy's got a few things on his chest today. I know. I'm here to help. I'm here to help, Mike. Lean back and tell us all about it. Okay. Well, let me just say...
We all know, we're seeing who are admitted, that if somehow Biden was there at a podium, he would have had a terrible night, too. He would have looked like a doddering old guy. All right. You punched your card. Now go on with your commentary. All right. All right. I can tell I'm going to get heckled here by the radio DNC for the entire. First of all, shame on Fox and shame on all of them for doing these gladiator debates with the big audience of Yahoo screaming all the time.
I mean, our informed listeners ought to go back and Google the old Jack Kennedy, Dick Nixon debates or something where it was two guys in the studio, which is how it ought to be. A lot more pressure on them to perform in this carnival. Although you should go on YouTube and watch the Lincoln-Douglas debates. They had crowds. Yeah. No, no. That's true. But the crowds were more polite then. Yeah.
Anyway, I've seen the tape. So, but, but anyway, we're all a little punchy here. My point was Nikki Haley got in the race last night and it's plenty, there's plenty of time. She broke through a little and there's going to be an, I'm not her biggest fan, but I thought she had the best performance and
And it gave her an opening to be somebody. So she's going to have money flowing from people who, you know, were with DeSantis. And I think also might've been with Scott who had a terrible night, did nothing to take advantage of the opportunity. I also got to give Pence some credit. He made the best and strongest case and forced the rest of them to fall in behind him on explaining what he did on January 6th. Now he's in such a hole in the primary.
I don't know if it could dig out, but if I were managing Pence, I couldn't have asked for anything more from my candidate than Pence gave last night. And finally, just to wrap up on the Fox thing beyond the howling crowd, no follow-ups, you know, kitten paws around Trump, just shameful that the whole thing was barely journalism from their side. All right. Now take a rest.
Gibbs, what did you think? Oh, I'm fine. We're going to go back to giving him his oxygen. Passion, you guys. To pick up on your last point, I mean, it was, I chuckled about an hour in as Fox like tiptoes into, we're going to take the next 30 seconds to talk a little bit about indictments before returning to our regularly scheduled debate. They clearly wanted zero to do with Donald Trump. I'm not surprised that many of the candidates didn't
want to or that he wasn't a big subject of... They certainly got into it. I don't know that you get a lot... Well, they know their audience, Gibbs. I was going to say, if you look at the polling, they're not going to attack a guy who's
got a high fave in a Republican primary. They're eventually going to have to get to it. On the audience thing, I'll get back to you in a second. But, you know, everybody went nuts once. And I understand all the controversy when CNN had its town hall meeting with Trump about the audience. OK, but last night you saw it again. You draw a representative Republican audience. Right. And that's what you get. You get half a room full of Trump.
people going nuts. Of course, there were actually Trumps in the audience going nuts as well. But the Fox obviously knew what the candidates did. And I'm not excusing it at all. I'll talk more about this in a second. But they, you know, it's Trump's world and they're living in it. You know, but under that formula, we could do a New Hampshire debate now with Democrats and independents, with Joe Biden and nutcase Robert Kennedy Jr.,
And 35% of them would be very lukewarm on Biden. There'd be some yelling and howling on vaccine stuff too. So I just, you know, do we need to run these things like the price is right? That's my point. Come on down, Murphy. You're the next contestant. I think, no, I thought, I agree with you that I think Haley had a good night. I think she was animated. I think she was engaged. I think Ramaswamy found himself. I think a lot of people. Game show hosts. Yeah. Yeah.
I think a lot of people read their polling and realized that he has been on the move upwards. And so he caught all the arrows. And I think, look, I think if you add in particularly his very weird interview around January 6th and 9-11, it's pretty clear that, and Axe, you know this, you can perform a bit off-Broadway in these presidential races and catch some grassroots fire.
But then people start asking you hard questions. And actually, you have to take those little cute 18 to 30 second sound bites and people get to follow up a little bit, press you as Nicky did. You know my favorite story from an old ward committeeman in Chicago. Here we go. I love this. I was interviewing him about a colleague who was going to run for higher office. And he shook his head and said, big mistake.
And I said, why is it a big mistake? He said, because the higher you climb on a pole, the more they can see your ass. And I thought that was a bit of homespun wisdom. And that's the way...
And presidential races are like that more than any other, which is the better you do, the better you have to do. The better you do, the tougher the questions. The better you do, the greater the scrutiny. And he's going to discover that. But I'll tell you something. I think that we underestimate. I mean, he was obnoxious and he was rude.
But I don't know if you guys have noticed this, but obnoxious and rude has been trading pretty high in elements of the Republican Party. No, there's a niche for him, but he did himself no good. There was curiosity about him before.
And by being the most irritating pipsqueak in the Republican Party, he became a useful foil for Pence, Christie at moments, and particularly Haley. So I think he was more Cadillac. But he'll come out of this with a little interest. I just don't think he has a long half-life. I mean, it reminds me of a similar story to yours. There was a rich self-funder in a Midwestern state who was going to run. And a wise Paul said, well, the problem is if he runs, the voters will meet him.
And so I think there's a little of that going on with Vivek or Vivek or, you know, the pipsqueak guy who irritated everybody. Did Gibbs, you have any Alabama homespun Alabama stories to share? I'm sure we can. You were running out of there at a young age. I thought Pence was animated. To your point, Murphy, I don't know. He was animated, quite frankly, on stuff. I don't think, as you said, I don't think he's going to kind of put
the genie back in the bottle in terms of how this Republican electorate views him largely because of the way his boss has asked the Republican electorate to view him. I thought it's pretty clear that there were a number of people on the stage who don't both understand the format of quick, punchy answers and don't really understand how to use their larger message inside of those answers to create a
some sort of platform for themselves. Burgum was a pretty great example of that. It just seemed to miss every moment. And so, you know, I think it, you know, actually you've done this too. We've all done this. I mean, you have eight people up there who are probably going to give largely the same answer to every question on education,
education, on tax cuts, on all of these different things. You've got to find that moment. I think a few people did find those moments and a lot of people kind of shrank to the background. I will say, you know, Ron DeSantis wasn't the front and center candidate that we thought he might be. I think
I think that may have to do with what people perceive as his ongoing political health. I don't think he had a great night, but I also don't think he had a bad night. He got his talking points out. He got to make his point. But you said the right thing.
He got his talking points out and they felt like talking points. He delivered set pieces. But when it got into the ebb and flow and he had to react to circumstances on the stage, you saw the DeSantis that we've seen in past debates where he just kind of freezes up and clutches the platform and searches for the right people.
thing to say. It happened on the 6th. Yeah, he has no natural skill for this. I mean, I'm kind of with Gibbs. I don't think he did well. I don't think he did badly. I think he's going to watch more of his donors run to Haley now. But it was like, okay, let's go to the angry accountant who's been patiently waiting to complain about something. Then we go to DeSantis. Heads on, spikes on the border. And then he does his bit and on we go. So
It was not the performance he needed to be the interesting thing out of the race. Well, that's the issue. I think he did fine. He had an okay night. He needed a great night. He needed a commanding night to show that he deserved and warranted this opportunity.
designation that he's had since the fall of the presumptive chief Trump opponent. And he did not do what he needed to do. But my point on this other thing is, I think that people measure candidates
in these moments, not, not whether they can deliver these set pieces. And if they do deliver set pieces, uh, pieces that don't feel like set pieces, but they, they want to, they want to see how you react in the given take. And, uh, so I agree with you guys that Haley, um, really surprised. And, and, and I have to say this, uh,
Though the highlight of Doug Burgum's campaign were the two weeks in which Mike Murphy was shining a great big light on him as a potential dark horse, Murphy also said in the last show that he thought that Haley had an opportunity to...
to surprise on the high side, and she did. Just like I planned it. Of course, I don't like Nikki Haley, but I'm being honest. She did fine, and I sure prefer her to Trump. I thought it was striking, to your point on the sort of not having that natural ability. Notice on those hand-raising questions, he wasn't looking at the moderator and deciding whether to raise his hand. He was looking at the other people to say, like, oh, wait a minute. Oh, wait a minute. You raised your hand? Well, I better raise my hand, too. And it was, to your point, I mean, it just...
It feels like and we've seen this, you know, candidates that get in this but don't really know why they're in it, don't really know what they have to say. And it was it was it was kind of painful to watch, particularly the one of, you know, Trump's convicted. We support him as a nominee. His hand didn't go up immediately. He went and looked and said, oh, gosh, everybody's so you're for that. Well, I'm.
I don't want to be the lone person that has to defend not being for it. Well, Murphy, you know, one of the reasons that your candidate in 2000, John McCain, did well
was, and you guys did this brilliantly, authenticity. He looked like a guy who was, you know, you brought the media on your bus and they sat with him and he held forth between events and then he did his events and then he held forth again. And there was a sense that he was utterly transparent about what he was thinking and who he was. I think we did well in 2008 because there was something of the same feeling about Obama
I think authenticity is the coin of the realm in presidential campaigns. And that is the big, when you get to the core of it, I think that's DeSantis' problem. He looks like a politician searching for the clever people.
political answer in every instance. And I think that will do him in. Yeah, to various groups, they all kind of didn't know, but he was the quote bot, like this and his question five, three by five card six. But let me go back to Burgum for a minute, because you're right. I was enthusiastic about his potential at the beginning. And I feel for him. You know, one of his peers called me up, another governor.
about a month ago and said, you know, I saw Bergham. I really liked him. I talked to him and I said, are you ready for this debate? Cause it's going to be unlike anything you've ever been through. And Bergham was kind of disarmingly honest in some way. He said, well, I figure I'll just go in there and talk. You know, there was no plan, no, no, no, nothing other than, you know, some staff guy, poor bastard said, Hey, you got to loosen up. Let's play a little basketball.
I will say, if you were to bring in like an impartial robot, Burgum in some ways has the most impressive life story of any of the people on the stage last night. He's highly accomplished in a lot of different ways. But he was nervous, never been to something like that, and he was essentially running for governor of North Dakota again. But there were flashes where he was the one that seemed to have
some regular authenticity. Yeah, I agree. There's great raw material there. I wish somebody who knew how this process worked got a hold of him two years ago. Because I think what Bergen could become could beat Joe Biden easily in a general election. The problem is
He's got no grip in the primary and he's not equipped to survive the process in a way that he'll get that shot, at least now. It's kind of a tragedy. He came to kick ass and then he blew out his Achilles the day before the debate. Gibbs, you remember we talked about this, the pickup game we played in Philly before that debate basketball game? Just so everyone knows, the basketball
Barack Obama almost didn't become president because Axe was pissed off that he made a cut and basically was about to get around him in a pickup game. So, you know, the day of the debate, here's Axe, the chief strategist of the Obama campaign, basically throwing an elbow and a hand into the face of the candidate. It's like,
Hey, Axe, I really know defense is important to you and you want to win this pickup game, but we got to have the boss in one piece for the debate. The stakes here are not that high. It was a karate chop across the nose. He went down in a heap. The Secret Service came running and I saw my whole career flash before my eyes because I thought I had broken the nose.
of the candidate, but I agree with you, Murphy on, on Burgum. I actually thought he had some affecting moments and I think his reference to small, to small town values and so on. I thought, yeah, I thought, I thought that, but he's just, you know, what he needed was a Mike Murphy. Well, I don't know about that. I'm an apostate, but it was like watching Babe Ruth that nobody ever handed him a bat until he was 45, kind of playing with one for five minutes thinking, God, what this guy could have been.
Anyway, it is what it is. It was Haley's night, and that is going to be, that's going to have an effect in the primary, I believe. This is what I said at the beginning about just sort of not understanding the format and not being able to drive a larger message. He had those moments of authenticity in the first 15 seconds of the answer, and then you could see his eyes searching for, okay, how do I connect this to something else?
How do I expand what I've just talked about to sort of go through? What are my three things on China? What, you know, great thing on small town. Why? What's important about that? Bring them. He just, you know, I, again, I think this was the case with Tim Scott. You know, there were, I don't think he did talking points. I think he just did bullet points, right? Well, he was pulling chunks of his stump speech as if the big idea is to say God's green earth three times and you'll be the nominee. I was, I,
I know the potential Scott has too. I also know he has no backbone. I wrote a whole sub stack about missing the alpha part of the equation and he totally blew the opportunity, nor did he look well prepared. He didn't come there to make a point. Yeah, this was, and I'll tell you what the tragedy of that is for him.
is that this was what this, I disagree with you guys. I actually think Trump, anything that sort of muddles the field, is a win for Trump. And nobody, he didn't get damaged at all. And rather than clarity about who the
principal challenger to him will be. I think there's just more of a muddle. His principal challenger or the guy who entered the race just to be on the debate stage with Donald Trump, Chris Christie, who came in with great expectations as a debater, fizzled in this debate. I agree with that. I think for Trump, it was a good night. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors.
Murphy, you know this. You know, all of them were auditioning for the rest of the Republican Party to try and be the the alpha person, as you say, Mike. Tim Scott failed. Ron DeSantis, who entered the race with great expectations, once again, failed to live up to those expectations, even though he did better than he has. But he he's still not.
And now Nikki Haley did do well. I thought the thing that she did at first, and I don't know if we have this, there are a couple of clips that stuck out to me on Nikki Haley. One was she went after Republicans and Democrats on the debt issue. And I thought that was really smart, including Trump by name. She was the first one to name Trump. And I thought that that showed, you know...
And it was a clever sideways way to go at Trump as opposed to the Christie dynamite vest, which does nothing for Christie. Do we have the clip of her spending? Our crack producer, Hannah McDonald, just signaled to our crack engineer. Secret Haley voter. That clip number three is the one we're talking about.
Well, I don't care about polls. What I care about the fact is that no one is telling the American people the truth. The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us. Our Republicans did this to us too. When they passed that $2.2 trillion COVID stimulus bill.
they left us with ninety million people on Medicaid 42 million people on food stamps no one has told you how to fix it I'll tell you how to fix it they need to stop the spending they need to stop the borrowing they need to eliminate the earmarks that Republicans brought back in and they need to make sure they understand these are taxpayer dollars it's not their dollars and while they're all saying this you have Ron DeSantis you've got Tim Scott you've got Mike Pence they all voted to raise the debt and Donald Trump
added $8 trillion to our debt. That was her first intervention, big intervention, and it was very, very striking because she was separating herself out from the incumbent politics of Washington.
which I thought was really good. And she mentioned the T word, which was other than Pence doing the Trump-Pence administration. Yes. That would have really driven Trump crazy not to hear his name for an hour. She also took another poke at Trump through a good prism, which is he's the most unpopular, you know, politician in America, which resonates with the party regulars who know the guy's almost certainly a stone cold loser. Though again, Biden's in such trouble, who the hell knows.
So I thought it was an adroit way to line her up as the winning alternative to Trump while hitting the conservative gong. And again, I'm not a fan. I think she's deeply cynical. She did the Faustian deal with Trump, but she played the most adroit Trump messaging last night.
She understood the moment. She understood the format. She understood how to get all of that into that 30 seconds. She started with a great line, which, I mean, she used the T word to hit Trump before she said Trump, and that was truth, right? When she said,
People aren't telling you the truth. That was Democrats, Joe Biden and others, and Republicans and Donald Trump. And then she went to hit everybody. It was a smart move. It was a droid. She started with a phrase before that, which is always a winner, which is, I don't care about the polls. Yep. And then she said something that actually made her sound like she didn't.
Now, her pollster is running her campaign, I'll just add, for cosmic reality interjection. But it was, again, it was a well-done performance. Though she needs a little less coffee. Slow her down a little. She understood the format. She understood how to make, how to point herself out as being different, how to not just look at one person. I think that, you know, and she did this later on, on Ukraine in her answer.
and foreign policy where she focused on one person, but I think smartly focused on, you know, three or four of them. And it created among many moments of separation in that debate. I think that was interesting. And I don't know if this is getting ahead of ourselves, but Murphy, how does she take, what does she do today?
to build off of that performance so that it isn't just this fleeting moment? Because I didn't think anybody was going to win the nomination last night. I didn't think anybody was going to lose it. Her problem is right now the most popular candidate in the Republican Party in Iowa, New Hampshire, is Tim Scott in terms of favorable, unfavorable. And he's done that with good appearances, positive personality, and a hell of a lot of television advertising.
She has not been as competitive there. I don't think her ad here in New Hampshire is very good. She doesn't have as much money, cash on hand. But now there are a bunch of high dollar people who thought DeSantis can beat Trump. I'm with DeSantis. Then Tim Scott.
are looking at her and just in the nick of time, because she has two days ago, didn't have the cash muscle or the money machine to give her a strong fourth quarter in Iowa and New Hampshire. My guess is she will now have that and really be able to get in the race. So that to me is the material thing that happened last night. I agree with all that, but I think there's also, I think apropos to what I said earlier,
The whole leaning into the kind of outsider, even though she touts her experience, but her experiences as a governor, as the UN ambassador, but...
And the idea that she's running against sort of the incumbent politics that everybody hates, I think was appealing. And I would continue to lean into that. Here's my question about her. I want to play the exchange she had with Vivek Ramaswamy on Ukraine. Yeah. And on foreign policy. Yeah.
A win for Russia is a win for China. We have to know that. Ukraine is the first line of defense for us. And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia. He wants to let China eat Taiwan. He wants to go and stop funding Israel. You don't do that to friends. What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends. Ukraine is the front line of defense. Putin has said if...
Once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next. That's a world war. We're trying to prevent war. Look at what Putin did today. He killed Pergozin. When I was at the UN, the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.
I think she was incredibly strong in that clip. You know, I agree with her on the issue of Ukraine. Here's the thing. I think increasingly Republicans don't. We talked about how, you know, the pole vaulting nature of politics and when the bar gets raised, the bar gets raised.
When you clear a bar, the bar gets raised. I think there is a chance that this thing at the end of the day becomes a vulnerability that, you know, the increasingly isolationist mood of the party, the sense that we're spending way too much money over there and we should be spending it here at home. I hear from my neighbors in rural Michigan,
I think that ultimately it could be threatening to Biden. But right now in a Republican primary, I think it could be a vulnerability for her. I think you're both very right and wrong at the same time, which is no small accomplishment. It's better than being all wrong. So you're right. There's always this nativism and this isolationism strain in the party. But from her point of view, once she actually seems to have a compass on this, which is new for her, but I'll applaud it.
Two, it gives her a distinction because if you want to be a clownish isolationist, you've already got Trump. And what she's got to do is get the, I mean, I keep going back to the two-way ballot I just saw in New Hampshire. I know it's not a two-way race, but 47 Trump, 42 Tim Scott. And that's less about Scott than not Trump, which he's filled in the best so far in the TV-driven data. So she wants that contrast. I agree. It's not the slam dunk it was back in the good old days.
But it's strong enough, and it's a contrast line. It also says adult versus amateur in the world, understanding geopolitics. That is a good card for her to play, even though it's not the Grand Slam, but I do think it is a majority position. And so tactically and strategically, I think it works for her.
I was fascinated, Ron DeSantis' answer, and I think we've talked about this before. He comes across as just looking like a politician in an electorate that I think is looking for somebody who's not a politician. That's what Donald Trump became in 2016, using his sort of charisma to not be a politician. But his answer wasn't, yes, we should do it. No, we shouldn't do it. It was
to talk about the Europeans giving more money. And Haley kind of smacked him down to say, when you look at GDP and other things, Europe's quite frankly doing more than we are. Yeah, she said 11 countries are doing more than we are. It's one of those things where I think if you're watching this, you see somebody taking a side of like, let's not give any more money. We should use that in the Southern border. You look at Nikki Haley, who's at a different side. And then this is where I think you have to have
and i'm sure the big money people are looking at this murphy and watching and thinking
Ron's not the guy because he's trying to figure out a middle way to have this answered much like in the Mike Pence thing. They had to ask him the question three times before he said, oh, of course I've answered this. Yeah. Mike did the right thing. It's clear. He doesn't really want to answer many of these questions. He wants to, he wants to go into his note. Right? No, no, that was exactly. No, he was the most lawyerly candidate, which is not a magic rabbit in the GOP these days. No. But this point that you may get
Gibbs is related to the point that I made earlier, which is when he said what he said, she saw the opportunity and she went after a specific point in his answer and corrected him. And that is, I think, part of the test of candidates when they're running for president is under the pressure of a debate.
When situations arise, how adroit are they at reacting to events and taking advantage of them? She looked good doing it. Yes. Prepared, smart, talented, understood the moment. You know, and even beyond that, I totally agree. But she also looked like a winner.
Thinking about posting up with Biden. Generationally, she's different. She's the only female running. She looked like a winner, which is, again, why I get the tactically not a lot changed for Trump last night. But in the non-Trump path, the things are lining up now. And if she can run the table, big if.
But if she can run the table from here, she could, could. There are going to be more debates. It's early. Breakthrough. And then the money will consolidate fast. Well, one of the questions, Murphy, is this quality that, and we've talked about it before here. I felt this way when she did her town hall with CNN. The reason, except on the abortion issue, which I think she was more equivocal, she seemed resolute on her positions.
If she, under the pressure of being elevated here, defaults to the sort of too cute by half answers. Right. Which historically she's always run to. Right. That I think will be, that's the next test for her. Can she resist that? Totally right. And also, she learned a lesson last night, though. She's sitting around today thinking, I've been out on the undercard starving to half-empty gyms.
And it's not been working. But last night I had the best night of my campaign. And I threw a little Trump distance. And I'm still here. So it's okay to do that. So she might actually learn from this and lock down a little, which would help her. Or she'll revert to Nikki the weathervane. And this little boom that hers is not going to last. I think you've identified the big question. All right. Hold that thought. We're going to take a short break. And now a word from our sponsors. You know, Murphy.
So Pence, I agree with you guys as well. You know, I had a feeling that Pence would do better in this debate than people anticipated because, first of all, he's spent four years mostly lowering expectations in his day-to-day performance. And the vice presidency generally diminishes you and under Trump even more so. But
Pence did well in these vice presidential debates, you guys remember. He's a decent communicator. It's just a lot of the product scares the hell out of the suburbs because he's a social conservative and that's not a growth market outside the primary. Well, he was all about Iowa last night. I mean, and- So was Scott. Yeah, he's trying to energize on his own behalf the evangelicals who once were his base and
Trump brought him in in 2016 as his kind of beard with the evangelical community. And now Trump has stolen his base and he's trying to get it back. I don't know if that's possible, but at a minimum, what Pence achieved last night was he began to reclaim his own identity again.
You know, he did not seem like a Trump acolyte on the stage last night. He did not seem like a guy, you know, obviously at the beginning when he did the Trump-Pence administration stuff.
I thought that didn't go over particularly. I may be wrong. Murphy, you translate into Republican for me, but that was too reminiscent, frankly. Yeah, it was a push. You know, the old, I was Trump's sideman kind of routine. But when he got into it, he looked like his own person. Yeah, no, look, I thought he had a little presidential gravitas. He is a credentialed conservative.
And the best movie made was he, with a little help from Brett Baer and Martha McCallum, he pushed them all to say he did the right thing. So he's not alone. And, you know, they all took his allegedly from a strong mega point of view, traitorous position, which was good.
Yeah. And he looked clear. He looked like an honest man. Yeah. You know what drives me nuts? I know it's probably necessary in Republican politics. You know, Tim Scott did this. Yes. You know, Pence did the right thing and then immediately wheeled around and
you know, orated on, we have to end the weaponization of... Yeah, he did it by weaponizing the issue. You know, it's like, one thing I don't want is a tilted Justice Department, so I plan to tilt it. Yeah, which is basically, this becomes safe harbor for all the Republicans who don't want to defend... Yeah, then it's the escape plan. And that's the problem with Tim Scott. He is not ready for prime time.
doesn't have a message strategy other than his bio, which he couldn't really get to because he needs a room to himself. Yeah, he's all bio, no message. It's tragic because again, he like Burgum, I think there's opportunity there, but his campaign peaked the day before that debate. I was thinking, Gibbs, I was thinking all day yesterday about if I were Tim Scott, how would I use this debate to convert bio into message? And the reason that
I mean, he's a likable person, but the reason that Republicans have embraced him to the extent they have
is that he also is a living symbol for a party that has been denounced as racist. Totally. In his own telling, he's a symbol that, you know, the U.S. is not the systemically racist country that, you know, and all of that. It's like he's sitting on rocket fuel, but instead he's screwing around with propellers and stuff. He doesn't understand that the optimism, this is a great country, my story, all that stuff is so powerful.
but he hasn't distilled it to the next step. But it was such great position at the beginning. And then they made the dumb, I mean, it's not dumb. It's the rear view mirror theory of strategy, which is we've got to be president Huckabee or president Cruz or president Santorum and win the Iowa caucus. He
He tells donors, well, I'm going to win Iowa. Somebody else is going to win New Hampshire and then I'll win South Carolina. Well, who's the magic hobo is going to win New Hampshire. Cause you give Trump a comeback there after beating him in Iowa, it's all over. And if you run the Christian campaign in Iowa, uh, you're, you're, you kill yourself in New Hampshire. Ask, ask president Santorum about that. So, you know, it's, um, it's frustrating cause he like Burgum has powerful raw ingredients that are not being applied to the
current problem. And unless you can beat Trump in Iowa and New Hampshire, race is going to be over. Trump will be nominated. So many dreams shattered, Murphy. I'm feeling you, man. I've seen the opportunity and I am trying to save the conservative movement, but that's hard work. None of these cats are rising up to it, except maybe Nikki, which knowing what a cynic Nikki is, is a hard one for me, but I'll take it.
No, that's big of you because after everything you've said here about her, you're going to be right where you are right now with us. Murphy's been up yelling at kids that aren't even on his lawn for three hours, Zach. He's having a rolling therapy session.
Oh, you, you would be too. If there was a once great conservative party, you spent 30 years working for that's turned into the clown show we saw last night. Yeah. That would make anybody grumpy. Totally. Grand Tim Scott. I mean, I, I'd, it'd be interesting. And we're fed, we should, we should duck into Iowa and see some of these guys. Cause I, and, and to see, because I wonder, I wonder if he's doing any of what you just, you guys just talked about.
out on the stump in these meetings because he kills in the meetings. I believe me. I know all about this because he gets the room to himself. He gets the mic to himself. He's very good on his feet. Here are the two places that Tim Scott will kill that nobody has ever seen outside of Iowa, New Hampshire.
You put him in a room full of big, moderate Republican donors, he kills them. I have a very experienced political friend who reported back on a San Francisco event, and he crushed a fairly hostile room, won them all over. And he's very good. He is very good on the events because that way he controls the timing. He can do the whole thing. There's a reason he's 65 over like 15, fave, unfavorable in both states. Better than anybody, much better than Trump.
But he's not going to close the deal if he can't be an alpha and take charge of a debate like this and do a little of what Nicky did, which is to line up his own identity. No, totally agree. That's the thing. He gets to his bio and then there's nothing there. I want to talk about, though, I thought was the most interesting. And the bio makes them want to hear the pitch. That's the tragedy. Right. Beyond the bio pitch. I was fascinated. And I thought the first time I noticed Haley in this debate was the discussion on the Dobbs decision. And.
whether there would be a national 15-week ban or a national six-week ban, because many of the people, Iowa has now a six-week ban, Florida has a six-week ban, North Dakota has a six-week ban. But I thought in terms of interesting discussion points
that could live on, right, beyond sort of the next couple of days on YouTube was a fascinating discussion to watch. You know, the dog caught the car in the Dobbs decision and the dog has no idea what to do with the car now, right? For
for 50 years chasing the car, caught the car and no clue what to do with it, right? Well, the problem is the car is backing up over the dog. Repeatedly. Sorry for those who like their dogs and listen to this show. Send your angry letters to David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, dog haters. I love my dog. I would say the octopus caught the car and some of the arms want to catch it and some are grabbing a tree trying not to catch it. And that's tearing the octopus apart because politically it's a nightmare.
I'm trying to get my eight arms around that answer. But anyway. An episode of SpongeBob. But I thought that was fascinating because it looked like Nikki Haley was really calling out to suburban women. Like, look, don't criminalize women. Don't do this. I don't think she ever really landed on a 15 week or six week or even a national or leave it to the states. No, she just landed on practicality. We don't have the votes. Yeah. I think that's a bad answer. Yeah.
Yeah, well, it's process. Pence actually had a good moment there when he turned on her and he said consensus isn't leadership. This is a moral issue and so on. Well, Pence is very fluid in the language of the pro-life movement because he's been professionally involved in that for 20 years. So it's hard to, you know, challenge him on his turf there.
In her position, like everything about her, is very calculated, politically smart. But you're right. It didn't have to a pro-life activist. Pence was singing the real tune. It's a moral civil rights movement. Yeah, I thought that was the only off-key moment, I thought, for her. The art of doing well, and she largely pulled it off, is you may be making political calculations, but don't let people see the wheels turning. Right.
Right. And in that, on that answer, you could kind of see, uh, the wheels turning. So can we just return to DeSantis for a second? Well, I am only because he's sitting there in second place, Mike. Is he in second place? I don't think he really is. I think he's on his way to not second place. I mean, is he done? You, you, you know, he's, you, you mentioned, uh, you mentioned, uh,
Scott's favorable, but DeSantis has the best favorable in Iowa, according to that poll. I mean, he's better than Scott, better than I believe, but they're certainly comparable. He has a higher fave, but also a higher unfave. Yeah, and the ratio's bad and it's moving the wrong way, but go ahead. It's not bad. It's like three to one. It's not bad. The point is, is he done? No, I think he's catalytic because I think if Scott's
when Iowa with the Christian strategy is really what they stick with, he's got a big problem called DeSantis who's going to give him a run. And I think Pence might be back in business. So you might have three contenders over a vote that I think may be smaller than it was before in Iowa. Well, don't forget Trump has half that vote in his pocket. Yeah, well, yeah, Trump I think is most vulnerable there. But yeah, no, no, DeSantis is a factor, but is he the main alternative? If Nikki can keep doing what she's doing...
And she can use the media spotlight she'll get now and the 20 million bucks I think she'll get
In 60 days, I'm not sure he'll be where he is now. And he can't take any more decline. So I think it's a jump ball. He's got the money to keep going. He didn't have to. To your point, Murphy, Nikki Haley needed a big night in order to replenish the campaign coffers to be able to have a decent campaign. He certainly has the money. I don't know. We haven't seen yet that he has the team. But I agree. But the money is on the super PAC that hates him.
You know, right. They've got Stalingrad at the campaign headquarters. They're living on horse meat. You know, it's terrible. Keep posting the, the strategy memos, uh, 400 pages of research, which man, that was going to go down as one of them. I was hoping Christie would have the memo. Two things. I wanted Christie to be the prop clown with a rubber chicken. I'm surprised he didn't take the direct mano mano thing on Trump. He would have been booed. Maybe he was afraid, but it would have been good TV.
And second, oh, page 42, Ron. Yeah. Well, you know who picked it up was Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy picked up the MSNBC line. Yeah, he did. Lumped poor Christie in with you two liberal commentators for MSNBC. It was interesting to me in the thing, in the commentary afterwards, Jeff Zeleny said he spoke with the DeSantis people and they said they're going to hunker down and return
And it sounded like they also knew that they hadn't achieved what they hoped to achieve. To Murphy's point, this stuff moves all the time. And I think there's a real worry. I think you could make the case that he was in second, slipping to third right before last night started. I think...
And Ramaswamy got a lot of airtime. I think Nikki Haley had a good night. And, you know, this in many ways was like the undercard, right? This was the semifinal to begin to see who at some point is going to get one-on-one with Donald Trump. And if you looked at that debate stage last night, you wouldn't
and you didn't know who those people were or where their status was prior to last night, if you just watched last night, you wouldn't look at Ron DeSantis and say, okay, that's the guy.
who's going to go, he's going to be the winner of the semifinal and be in the final against Salman Fahmy. You just didn't, you didn't think that and you wouldn't see that. And I think, and to some degree too, I think what the outline that you just had, Axe, a stronger Haley, a kind of surging Ramaswamy, whatever you want to say, if you have three or four strong
candidates, plus you have Trump taking 40%. Trump did end up winning well last night because nobody, you're basically taking 60%, dividing it up among three or four bigger candidates. It took 48 minutes. I finally got you, Gibbs, where I needed you. Yeah, but the election isn't tomorrow. You know, it's not like, oh, it's a plurality in the...
Let's just see if one of these plants can really grow. That's the question. I think the Nicky plant did well. I don't buy this Vivek Surge thing. I think he peaked and will be a niche player. He's the new Ben Carson. He's the new Alan Keyes. He's the new Herman Cain. Don't talk bad about Alan Keyes. I love that guy. Yeah, we love Alan Keyes. No, no. The up is the down and the down is the up. Look, Vivek.
Ramaswamy is not going to be the nominee of the Republican Party. And I don't think... Let me write that down. Anybody believes that. The question is, can he grab a share? And in grabbing a share, listen, he... Take it away from somebody who had consolidated against Trump. Basically, he called Trump the greatest president of the 21st century on the stage last night. He's not doing any harm to Trump. He's a Trump wannabe. So if he grabs 15%, he's doing Trump
a favor. And I think among younger voters and some of the cultural warrior crowd, he's going to grab some votes. I think he might grab some votes. So I think he could have grabbed more, but who does RC Cola hurt more Coke or seven up? See, I think he will pull some Trump. Some kooks who think the Trump kook show is a little bit worn out. We'll find new fresh kook.
So I don't buy that he takes non-Trump votes. I think he'll get as many formerly Trump votes looking for something new. But let's find out. We got to throw it in the oven and cook it. Does RC Cola still exist? Yeah, ask Coke. They have a meeting every day. How do we screw those bastards? Nobody at Coke is worried about RC Cola, man. Oh, no, no. Nobody at Coke is worried about RC Cola. If you've ever dealt with a Coca-Cola company, they worry about everybody. It's like Walmart. I did a gig for Walmart. You go into their executive offices and
And they have this huge thing with the logos. They are all trying to destroy us. You know, Axelrod's Corner Store, Costco. You know, they put them. When you walk to your office, you have to look at it and shiver for a minute. Murphy opens up a cool RC Cola every night when he watches the Milton Berle Show. An RC Cola and a Moon Pie sounds like a pretty damn good afternoon. Actually, Ax, you should know better. I'm a Faygo man from Detroit, Michigan. Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor. We'll be right back.
Here's my question for you guys. At 7 o'clock tonight, Donald Trump is going to stride into the Fulton County Jail. He is going to be arrested again. He is going to have a mugshot. And I have to tell you that the mugshots we've seen are
Pretty high quality. They must have brought in a special photographer for the conspirators who were accused in this Trump caper. And I bet you his mugshot will probably be on t-shirts by tomorrow morning. They'll be the Che t-shirts of the MAGA movement. What happens with him now? Does he continue to gain strength? Does it continue to be
politically incorrect on the Republican side to attack him on any of that. And if there's no trial and no conviction before this primary process runs, can he be stopped? What are the odds of there being stopped? Well, you know, come on, you know, my answer at one Trump fatigue is growing too. I don't give a damn about national primary voter polls until after the first two contests and three, the, the, uh, the,
The Trump situation is, in my view, becoming weaker, not stronger. The question is the slope of the decline. And can somebody make that into a reality here in New Hampshire or before this in Iowa? I do know your answer because we've been hearing it for about a year.
As we've heard yours, which is bad on Trump. I mean, you keep saying that Trump is declining, and there's no – I know you're going to point to New Hampshire polls. We're going to just disagree. Let's say I'm using telepathy. Well, and look, it could happen. A stop clock is right twice –
in a day, right? So you could be right about this, but I'm just waiting to see the evidence. Right. Well, that's why we have primaries. I think, Axe, this is why you're partly right about Trump last night, but not completely right, right? Now we can both gang up on Gibbs, Axe. Yeah, exactly. You're going to unite it against me. Screw you. You're doing the DeSantis thing. You're halfway there and halfway not. Wonder twin powers activated. No, I think if you look at what Trump's going to ultimately be stronger out of today...
Because one, the images are going to squelch anything that we are talking about and see in the debate once he gets arraigned and mugshot. And then it'll be rally around him again. Yeah. And everybody on that stage talks about firing the FBI director appointed by Trump, by the way, the worried about weaponizing the Department of Justice and ends going to stride the embodiment of exactly those two things. And they get farther and farther away from displacing him. So I think
The reason that Trump's going to end up today stronger than he was because he's going to use, as he has for the past six months, the legal process to strengthen his political standing that, by the way, coming out of 2022 is perilous and weak. That's why Ron DeSantis thought people would make the case for him and that the law would make the case for him that Donald Trump was a loser.
And because he was too afraid to say that Donald Trump was a loser. And that is gone out the window. You see the Iowa poll. People are more worried about the candidate, not worried about somebody that they can pick that can beat Joe Biden, because everybody thinks they can all beat Joe Biden. Donald Trump's in a really strong position. I agree with the sense of that. I don't it may be at some point, Mike, that what you've been saying happens, but I don't feel like there's any real evidence that.
that he's on some level of decline. My view, I know, we don't need to rehash the argument. You guys, I've heard it a thousand times that I'm contrarian and Trump can definitely win
But there might have been a star born last night, which over time could grow and do something real. We'll see. There's no doubt that that's true. It'll be fascinating to watch how the next four weeks goes, because I think the real the good candidates. This is true on election night in primaries. You see when somebody wins like Wisconsin and they get up on stage, they have their their two minutes on national TV and they spend their time thanking a bunch of people nobody knows or they use it to give like they're certified some speech about why they won. I want to see.
Who takes last night?
and puts it into play. What does Nikki Haley do in addition to raising the money? How does she get out there? How does she keep doing this on the stump? Well, she's got the most aggressive road schedule of any of them in terms of that. She's been here like 60 times in New Hampshire. Nobody's seen her because I can tell you, you can't find anybody here talking about this. You're finding more people talking about the Senate primary here between Chuck Morris and Kelly Hayotte and others potentially. But she's run for governor, right?
Well, yeah, yeah. It's the, you know, Sununa is retiring. So, but, but believe me, I've been up to my neck and hacks and regular people here for a month and I'm stunned at how they're just fatigued with it. And this is the professional voter world. And the Democrats are all cranky because the DNC put a stake in the state business, which is also both in Iowa and New Hampshire. I've said it before. I'll be super quick. There are a lot of board Democrats who might play Republican here. It's quite easier to do and in Iowa.
They have nothing to do now. She probably helped herself with them. Yes. Last night. I don't think anybody drops out, but is... End of the year if you do. Yeah. Okay. Particularly Asa Hutchinson, who was on that stage, barely made it into the debate. Right. The date stage will be smaller in a month when they do this again because the polling requirements are going to go up.
Yeah, as they should. And then I think some people may disappear. I will leave you with this thought. Someday, I'm hoping that it's a very long time from now, when Mike Murphy goes to his eternal rewards, his tombstone will read,
It's still early. That's what I believe. No, the crowd will stand in adoring silence while former two-term president Nikki Haley said, you know, we had our differences. But Mike got one thing really, really right. And then the jets will fly over and you guys will wipe tears from your eyes. I can see it all. All right, I have to take a non-Tesla ride.
American-made EV across this great country from New Hampshire to Los Angeles. People say it's impossible. Check me out on Substack to find out. Are we doing questions? Because I got to go. No, we got to go.
All right. We'll do it next week. All right. On the way out, Axe, I'm going to leave you with the most important job of the podcast, which is our book club. Go to hacksontap.com slash book club, and you can find some of the books that we recommend and many of our guests have, and we know we have one today. So let's hear about it. So a buddy of ours from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, Joel Ebert, has co-authored a book,
called Welcome to Capitol Hill, 50 Years of Scandal in Tennessee Politics. So for all your scandal buffs and political junkies, pick it up. It's out now. And I think you'll enjoy it. It's a...
It's a real rollicking account. As I said on the book cover, squalid tales of larceny and high places that will make you howl. So goodbye, everybody. I'll see you on the highway gang. This was a fun one. Look forward to arguing about the same old crap again and again and again. Love you guys.
We'll see you all later. All right. Let me just say, if you're driving across the country and see a presumed madman in an electric vehicle, wave to Mike Murphy. And please don't cut him off because he's tense. All right, brother. Talk to you soon.