Make America Gulf Again (with Jonathan Martin)
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. We're flying over a thing called the Gulf of America, and I'm signing a proclamation, and perhaps you could define that.

This is a proclamation declaring today, February 9th, 2025, as the first ever Gulf of America Day. This follows the President's executive order, a name change from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And we're flying right over it right now. So we thought this would be appropriate. Even bigger than the Super Bowl. This is a big thing.

Mikey, it's even bigger than the Super Bowl. That's how big, that's the Gulf of America thing is even bigger than the Super Bowl. And it's really appropriate we're doing because we're right over it right now. Yeah, you know, they're like creepy home movies. And now Belinda will play the piano where he's kind of ring mastering it and everything. I've never wanted to be governor of Michigan more. So I could announce today I am naming the polluted, formerly polluted Lake Erie, Lake Asshole.

just to have some symmetry to the madness here. Did you see that J.B. Pritzker video? J.B. Pritzker put out this video. Yeah, it was very funny. I'm just going to call it Lake Illinois from now on. Right. It's just unbelievable. But to sort it out, we needed a super intellect of politics. And of course, those seven people were busy. But

Curled up in a hangover ball in a heap after the Super Bowl, the king of New Orleans, our friend and one of the greatest political reporters that at least will return our call. Ladies and gentlemen, Jonathan Martin from Politico is here. Hey, Murr. Hey, John. Greetings from the Big Easy, which once again demonstrated why every Super Bowl should be here in New Orleans. Because it is the world's greatest city.

Hey, I just, I was thinking like when, uh, you know, we think of J Mart, it's the intellect combined with someone who appreciates the, the, the finer things gastronomically in a way that he like, he makes Johnny apples seem like a guy who would eat like a chick filet, you know, that's, that's, that's what J Mart, that's what J Mart's aiming for. He's chomping lean cuisine compared to J Mart. We had a few cold beverages and yes, there were some bivalves consumed over the weekend. Unbelievable.

Gotta love it. Hey, so did you sense Trump when he was overhead, when he was overhead, when he was, I could feel the power. It was, it was, it was from the standpoint of power, uh, as Trump would say, incredibly powerful. And did you actually go to the game?

You went to the game. Now I know he went to the game. You went to the game. Okay. So yeah. So it was a very Philly response. There were definitely some cheers or definitely some boos too. I call it kind of a mixed reaction. It was interesting on the video before the game,

They showed him, and immediately after they showed him, they showed some West Point cadets. But I think it was intentional so that any booed would be immediately— Yeah, rigged the applause. Oh, and so then they cut to a puppy. Who got a better crowd reaction, Taylor Swift or Trump? Oh, well, Trump did because it was a heavily Eagles crowd. So Taylor got booed.

once they showed her because she's de facto cheese. Yeah, the head cheerleader for the... It was such fun. And the halftime show was...

whatever, you know, I didn't watch it, but the pregame with John Baptiste and Lauren Daigle and Shorty or Trombone Shorty was just fantastic and peak, peak New Orleans stuff. So it was fun. Murphy, I would say if we're, if we're really in the Trump era right now, if the Trump era really has taken hold, Taylor will dump Kelsey relatively quickly because he's a loser now. Yeah, no, though. That's what I thought. I thought when the, the fine ladies of St. Louis lost the game there rather embarrassingly, uh,

uh for the glorious eagles who are second only to the detroit lions of course uh um i i kind of thought that would be the next thing that wham that's that's the end of that so we'll we'll keep an eye tuned if it is the trump era well trump did send i think like an overnight tweet or truth uh uh talking about about taylor swift being booed or something like that because obviously

That's what really matters is who got booed. Could we just have a smaller Super Bowl? We've got him flying around a government plane declaring an ocean that he has no power to declare the name of. It's an international arrangement. And you've got the halftime show with dish wrapping, which I guess is something the kids are into now. It just all seems small and pathetic to me.

But maybe I'm a bitter old... I don't know. It's also like dairy Americana, right? The excesses, the sort of money spent, the booze, the food, the corporate sponsorships. I guess. If it's a story of excess, then we had excess creepiness. Most watched Super Bowl in history. 137 million people watching that at the peak. I think America likes the Super Bowl. There's like... The market is speaking. It's...

It's the last big MASH finale. It's the last big singular moment in American life that everybody watches. Event in linear television, yeah. There's no other moment in American life where everybody's watching the same thing at the same time anymore, except for Super Bowl. So, like, you know, Roger Goodell, like, God love him. He's like the last figure in America that controls a sort of unifying institution across...

racial and class geographic lines, but we're not here to riff about the NFL. I was going to say, listen to Bob Costas going over here. Or is that, are you Brian Gumbel? I'm not sure which. Hey, but can I ask you two political wizards and masters of arcana and trivia?

I was genuinely stunned to learn that the American president had never been in the Super Bowl before Trump. I find that mind-boggling. It surprised me, I have to admit. I had no idea. I had no idea. I can't believe that they left that door open for Trump to be the first ever. Well, speaking of Trump, as we dive into the morass here, which just burns on like a dumpster fire, grande,

I would say the biggest thing, and Johnny, I think you agree, both Johnnies here, it's got to be kind of the pimp slap on J.D. Vance, right? Of all the noise this week? Well, certainly I would say, Mike, in terms of just for all

For inside political entertainment value, I think the looming showdown, which we'll get to, the looming showdown between the executive and the judiciary is probably the most long-term consequential historically. But there's no doubt that it's an amazing thing that J.D. Vance goes –

and makes an absolute ass of himself by a guy from a very good law school, puts out this very Trump-friendly statement, you know, saying, you know, the court's judicial coup, and we're not allowed to... Who needs judges? They're not allowed to constrain our activities in any way. And what he gets for his good efforts on behalf of the cause...

is he gets Trump going on with Brett Baer on doing a Super Bowl interview. And Brett Baer asked him a very straightforward question to the president who selected him to be his running mate.

And, well, let's listen to it. This is what he said. Do you view Vice President J.D. Vance as your successor, the Republican nominee in 2028? No, but he's very capable. I mean, I don't think that it, you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he's doing a fantastic job. It's too early. We're just starting. But by the time you get to the midterms, he's going to be looking for an endorsement. Yeah, a lot of people have said that this has been the greatest opening almost three weeks in the history of the presidency. That's like...

Love the pivot. I mean, good for Brett for following up there, John. And I love how Trump immediately pivots to like step, fell on the bar, right? The best car on this lot. You, you know, you, you're never going to get a car.

It totally dodges the question of like, hey, man, he's your VP. He's going to want to be your noted successor. Trump just not only says no to the initial question. No, let him beg for it. Let him beg. I'm having a begging room. The greatest people are already talking about the begging room I'm going to have. Everybody wants, you know, Elon, everybody. So, yeah, it was fantastic, particularly for Vance, who sold his soul. You know, he showed up. All right, I signed up.

You know, here I am. And he's like, yeah, don't really like you. Yeah. I, you know, can you like, if you're, if, if you're, uh, if you're advising your, your cat, your president, the president who you hope to elect the question of, is your vice president, your successor, are you going to support him for the nomination? I can think of offhand and quickly, at least a dozen answers that wouldn't involve the word. No, no.

Like the emphatic instinctive no. And then he starts backpedaling from it. But his first reaction was no. That's an incredible answer. No, it was so honest. It's like that creep never. You know, yeah. He did everything but a spit take, you know. So anyway, it was fantastic. And karmic justice in my view. I still remember, you know, J.D. calling me to work up a Senate race as an anti-Trump Republican years ago. So maybe it is the full circle as it ought to be.

It's the 973rd example that the Trump shows a one man act, right? Yep. Totally. Elon stay tuned. Yeah. Like,

Success or like that suggests that there's an end to the Trump show, right? Well, well, that was the question. That's part of the question that I think not to parse this too carefully, but Brett's asked him really two questions. One of which was, is he your successor? And the second of which is, is he going to be the nominee in 2028? Now I wonder if Trump, if he had said, is JBN your successor? If Trump would have said, Oh, well, he'll be one of the, they'll carry on the MAGA tradition. But by saying 2028, he's,

There's an implicit thing there that Trump doesn't think he's going to run again, which I think is a mistake in the question. Nobody's told Trump that. Third term, fourth term, people are taught they want it. Be the greatest term ever. Oh, boy. Okay, so Vance got the chop. But I agree. The big story is the slumbering but powerful judiciary. Because if you step back and look at this thing as the carnival trick it is with Trump,

They decide we have a machine gun of, you know, Mr. In Charge. Here we go. Bing, bing, bing. Literally that ridiculous thing where an aide will hand him an EO and he'll sign it and declare it. He hasn't even read any of them. Barely knows what he's doing. But now there is a judicial branch. And I think there are five different stays and stops. And, you know, they're ignoring some of them. So we're heading toward the big crisis here. But...

But, you know, everything has some equilibrium to it. And now after home alone for two weeks, running around, burning down the house, making contraptions, now the parents are kind of showing up. So this will be interesting. Well, I think we may have gotten a sixth this morning. I mean, there's no one who looks at these EOs, in many of them. They're just obviously illegal or obviously unconstitutional.

birthright citizenship is the most obvious one, but there's a lot of them that lawyers would say, not even partisan lawyers would be like, these are going to get slapped down by the lower courts.

And it raises the question, and Jonathan, this is, I think people in some ways, even last week, were skipping past the question of, yes, the courts are going to rule against them in a lot of these cases. Some of them, they're just going to want the political issue, but some of them, they're going to litigate up to the Supreme Court, hoping they get a favorable outcome in a favorable venue. But the real question for everybody is, what happens if they decide to

just say, fuck you to the courts. That's been, which it looks like they're going to do on a few things. I mean, pretty clearly what's in your imagining. And when you talk to people in the Senate, in the house, in the administration, everyone kind of sees this moment coming, you know, okay, you and what are we, John Roberts? And what, what are the scenarios that people are thinking about how that might play out?

I'm hoping to God that they actually don't blow off the court so that they don't have... I mean, so the Republicans in the Congress don't actually have to say the obvious, which is...

Marbury versus Madison exists and you have to defer to the courts and not block federal courts or the arbiter of law. It's clear. And not block federal courts like you're some kind of a, you know, 1950s era Jim Crow said, you know, governor. So much of this is Republican lawmakers hoping to avoid one more round of humiliation. This one probably one of the worst of all, which is like, yeah,

Yes, they have to abide by federal courts. You saw John Thune's answer. So embarrassing for these guys. But this is the bargain they've made with Trump. Their voters don't care. Therefore, they can't come out against him because their voters want them to defer to him on everything. Look, the technical answer to the question is that if you defy a court order,

Eventually the court sends the marshals in and makes you comply with the order. Now the federal marshals are under the control of Pam Bondi at the Justice Department. The likelihood that there's going to be federal marshals sent to the White House to force compliance with any given judicial order is close to zero. So again, I ask this question. This question I keep asking legal scholars and others like, okay, so if that's not going to happen, they're not going to actually have federal marshals in the West Wing.

Like, really, what happens then? Because you can't trivialize this. This is constitutional crisis time and not at a hierabolic level. This is, like, really core to what our system of government is.

Well, yeah. See, the systems, as you guys know, is not designed for this. I mean, we're literally, the analogy I'd use is we're at NASA, and they're like, well, what happens if a meteor, oh, no, we got a subsystem. What happens if the other computer takes, what happens if we put a chimp in the Apollo capsule and starts randomly pushing buttons? And then all the rocket scientists say,

Holy shit, we didn't think of that. So the system is not built for this kind of malevolence and bad faith. Now, that said, I think there are some Democratic governors and senators thinking, you know, maybe it's not senators, excuse me, governors and attorney generals.

thinking, you know, maybe we can put state handcuffs on somebody at the agency. Or, you know, if I were some of these mid-level bureaucrats that are going to be held in contempt and the Marshall thing is in a quagmire, whose order do they believe? I wouldn't take any trips to L.A. if I were any of those bureaucrats and get scooped up by the chips because it's going to be Banana Republic stuff, which is the tragedy here.

Can I just say, like, we don't know where this is going. I think a lot of the smart Republican members on the Hill do, too. Eventually, they're going to be faced, especially John Thune and Mike Johnson.

Fundamental questions of which side are you on? Which side are you on? The Constitution or deference to the leader of your party. They're a co-equal branch, but they don't act like it. And by the way, Congress has not been acting like a co-equal branch for decades. This is only an acceleration of the branch. It's like the Congress is basically...

he's asking for subjugation. Republicans on the Hill are essentially like, well, forget about the legislative branch. We'll just basically let Trump do what he wants because we're afraid and because it's easier for us, et cetera, et cetera. So the idea that they would suddenly stand up

for the prerogatives of another branch, of the third branch. Well, we won't stand up for ourselves, but we'll stand up for the courts. It just seems implausible to me. I heard Dan Goldman was on TV yesterday, a congressman from New York, and he was like, well, if that happens, it's going to require something we've never seen before, which is some Republicans to go against Trump. And as it came out of his mouth, it was laughable to hear him say it because you're like,

Again, just give me an example. Other than McCain on health care, give me one example where you can cite something like that happening. But it's escalating to the point of its existential eventually. Maybe. Otherwise, we're going to read the history of the Weimar Republic because it gets very depressing very quickly. But I think ultimately they will have no choice. I think their strategy has not been to acquiesce but to avoid –

acquiescing by avoidance, just hold their breath and try to wait it out and hope they're never called to kind of mark the market on this. And that that's common. That's common here. So you've got all these, you've got Trump doing all these things that the executive orders are, are as part of the ban and kind of muzzle velocity, you know, just do stuff as fast as possible. Just keep everybody off balance, et cetera. But Mike, you know, you pointed out, you've got actual tariffs now about to hit, uh,

You've got, you know, Musk is now turning his attention toward the Department of Education. And Trump yesterday was like, as soon as he gets done with the Department of Education, I'm sending him to the Pentagon. You know, he's defiant in the face of people who are, like, worried about Elon Musk getting into the Treasury payment system. Trump's like, he's doing a great job. He's doing exactly what I want. I'm going to have him go agency by agency. We're going to save tens and tens of billions of dollars. There's no crack in his facade. How do you think that that is –

You know, as a basically that you think muzzle velocity is working as a strategy. Well, it's working as a PR strategy because the press is, as usual, covering this like sports and they're just covering the shots taken. But it's going to get all clogged up and there's it's still clear law. You can't undo congressional appropriations. I mean, what Elon is doing with these dateless tech losers, he's sending into the 19 year olds and the thing he's trying to get to the checkbook.

and just refuse to pay people for getting contractual obligations. More of a legal quagmire. In the long term, I think the law will uphold, but short term, it's a...

a paralysis disaster and a huge HR cost, which you wrote about, Jay Martin, we're talking about that. So I think there's more sizzle than steak here ultimately, but there's enough troubling steak to be really, really worried. And it's going to become a big confusing blob with Trump and Elon declaring victory, but stays everywhere and

Uh, you know, some, some states may try to step up and, and cover some stuff. I mean, it's going to be, it's going to be a huge opportunity cost to America is what it's really going to be because we're going to go into this banana Republic slappy. I mean, I, I did an election in Panama once and there was a big feud going on. We were the income. We were the junior coalition government partner, Molarena.

And we went to see the minister of the interior because the minister of treasury had cut off the power to his office building. You know, I mean, this is we're going up these stairs because there's no elevator. It's the craziest thing. And that's what we're aping now because Trump is giving us Trump's essence besides greedy psychopath. He is a reality show TV star.

So now we've got the desperate senators of Washington. They're throwing white wine at each other. I mean, it's all that. He's sitting at 52 right now, roughly, I think. Well, he has them worse, but yes. But he's... Compared to his...

his approval ratings over the life of the Trump era from 2015. And now he's actually doing pretty well. He's not, you know, he's not over the moon. He's not, he's not, he's not, uh, it's not Bush after, uh, Bush after nine 11 or nine 11 or Obama after killing Osama bin Laden, but he's doing pretty well. Um, where do you think, if you think about the muzzle, the various flood, the zone was shit. Some of the stuff is performative. Some of the stuff is actually significant. Um,

Just as you talk to your sources and survey the landscape, where do you think they're on the strongest ground politically and where are they on the slipperiest? Oh, I mean, I think the immigration crackdowns are probably some of the strongest. I mean, we're just in a period of the country's history where the pendulum has swung toward a much more restrictionist posture on immigration. And by the way, don't take my word for it. Look at Democrats trying to catch up on that issue. We're taking a much more hawkish standpoint. Look, I think...

When it comes to the more flamboyant moves, hardening en masse every rioter on January 6th, taking over government agencies willy-nilly, and certainly defying federal court, I think you're talking about much less popular.

Look, the country did not want the incumbent party because they were paying too much money and the incumbent party was led by somebody they believe was too old to run the country. Exactly. They didn't necessarily vote for this. And every time I hear somebody say the country voted for this, I don't.

That's not true. No, exactly. They hit the injector button on Biden. It was a pretty simple election. They held their nose for Trump because they thought he'd run a better economy. And that's where he's screwing up right now. Well, and the fact that Trump said these things, the things that people point to in that situation, Jay Martin, is like people say, well, Trump said he was going to do all this. I'm like, Trump said he was going to do 4.3 million things.

Some of those things really registered with people, like bring down prices and deportations. Some of those things people will never remember because he said hundreds of things. And they discount Trump because they know he's a clown. It's just – it's a total misread of how voters think that there's somehow a mandate to do, you know –

The number of things that he's doing, people mostly care about themselves and their lives. You know, Bill Clinton got this right famously when he was trying to fend off the attacks from the right in the 92 campaign about draft dodging and infidelity. He said Republicans care more about my past than your future.

which is a brilliant line because obviously he was pushing back against the attacks on his character, but also put the focus back on voters. They are self-obsessed because they should be. They want to know what the government's doing for them. And if the government isn't bringing down costs, that's why they vote for them in the first place. That's going to be Trump's Achilles heel.

That's the mandate he did get, fix the economy. That was the mandate. Now, a little bit of shake up Washington, if it takes that to fix the economy, great. We kind of enjoy that. Shake up the elites. All that is true, stylistically. But they want results. So let's look at the economic policy. One, he hasn't paid much attention to it. He's too busy renaming, you know, Gulf City, can't rename. But he did drop a big steel tariff.

which is not as bad as the everything tariff, but it's still bad. It's going to knock up steel prices because domestic producers raise prices to match the imported price to make the bucks. And there will be shortages of supply. So anyway, that is an inflationary bad economic move and more could be coming.

the gap between what he's actually interested in when it comes to the economy, which is overwhelmingly, overwhelmingly tear offs and like willy nilly revenge, porn politics, like, like, um, uh, tax surcharges for sports team owners, which like gets you about $7 and 40 cents in revenue. Um,

But it's all about Trump's like vengeance for either the USFL or Bob Kraft not being nice to him or the Eagles or who the hell knows what. But that's what Trump cares about. And you've got members of Congress, guys, who are definitely trying to figure out a way to get him a bill to sign Trump.

on the tax cuts and you won't give them guidance on process. No, it's complete mayhem and they're scared. Any real substance and they can't fashion a bill on process or substance until they have his buy-in because he controls the legislative branch for all intents and purposes. So they can't get an answer on what he wants. So they can't

move anything. I think you guys are both being really unfair in terms of not acknowledging the extraordinary success of Trump's savvy negotiating stance when in the threatening the trade war with Mexico and Canada. I mean, guys, we got a fentanyl czar in Canada now out of that. I mean, the concession, the concession that the Canadians, they found a J Martz

drunk Canadian Uncle Fred, and he's now monitoring the suitcase of fentanyl that comes across the border from Canada. Don't laugh. That Winnipeg cartel is dangerous. That's the number one national security now. Who's this are? Is Alan Thicker? Is John Candy still running for that job? No, no. I think John Biner got it. Yeah, that's exactly right. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors. Let's go.

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If he's missing the ball in the economy and maybe even creating more problems, the next big show, I want to echo what you said, J. Mart, is going to be a very complicated congressional negotiation that he is unequipped to lead and doesn't have any interest in leading. So you hear, I'm sure you're hearing it, both of you guys, the panic kind of spreading out from the leadership of, you know, we're trying to do a very hard thing here. We're getting no help. We have a meeting with the guy and he just rants and raves about the Gulf of Mexico. Yeah.

And are we not going to get relatively soon? We're going to get to this. I think Democrats all of a sudden, and we're going to get to the democratic resistance in a minute, but people have looked up and gone, Hey, you know what? There's a whole bunch of votes where you need 50. And then there's a whole bunch of votes where you need 60. And once we need 60, you guys are out and you can't rubber stamp a lot of your domestic agenda through this Congress and the way that you have your cabinet appointments because Democrats will, you know,

That's 60s tough and under the best of circumstances. And Democrats are, although had they been pathetic in the first few weeks of this, they're finally starting to kind of go, oh, yeah, I guess we have to wake up a little bit here and starting to think about the way the math can work in their favor. But before we talk about that, I want to talk about Elon for a second. And, you know, Trump's confidence in him and continued, like I said a second ago, he's not giving any quarter. He's like, Elon's, you know, on a mission from God.

And I just asked the two of you, I guess, you know, Jay Moore, just start with this. Elon Musk, like you, you look at the data, you look at where he's at. Not what he's not the popular, the popularity of some of the things he's doing, which have not become wildly unpopular yet. But personally speaking, that guy just looks like on the basis of the softness of the way that the public perceives him. He's the richest man in the world. He's got all kinds of problems. That is a guy who looks to me like,

a little like Icarus. He looks like someone who's going to implode at some point fairly soon. That's not an obviously sympathetic figure. Well, he's not known for his savvy self-restraint. It's interesting. My EV obsession, we have EVpolitics.org, and we did a poll after the election. Here it comes. We tested Elon, and we released it all. You can get the whole slide deck at EVpolitics.org. It's fascinating. If you're a Trump voter...

even though you're more hostile toward electric vehicles,

You love Elon. He's like 76 over 10, fave unfavorable. If you're a Harris voter, he's 5% favorable, 76 unfavorable. Massively polarizing, which is a huge nightmare for the Tesla brand marketers. I'm sure they're sitting there at headquarters with a bottle of whiskey and a revolver, just wondering what the hell do we do about Elon? Tesla sales have been collapsing all over the world. So, and including in the U.S. market, they're still number one, but nothing like it used to be. So,

Elon is a totally polarizing figure now, which in national politics, particularly if you're scissor hands, you're going to go cut, you know, funding of popular programs that the Dems are good at demagoguing. If they ever wake up is going to be trouble. And the minute there's trouble around Trump, what does he do? It's like the great old line in my favorite year with the mobster. I'm in the removal business. You know, you're out the window. So Mike, to your point, like that, you know, Elon was, uh,

He was polarizing, but actually for a long time, surprisingly popular with Democrats. But all of that is obviously facts on the ground are changing fast. And Elon Musk is getting way more attention. He's on the cover of Time magazine. People in the country know who he is in a way they never did before. He's now associated with Trump. He's behind the oval. Yeah. And the cover, he's president. Right. And he's associated now with politics as opposed to innovation and business increasingly in people's minds. He's Trump's guy, right? Co-president, whatever. Right.

jay martin i want you like i said i want you to talk about elon as a political figure but in this context i just think you know that if as you just lay out scenarios and i'm not making predictions but it doesn't seem at all implausible to me that elon gets increasingly unpopular over the next couple years and and republicans who will never turn on trump will happily turn on elon if it means of course well and congressional republicans that's how i'm saying good

the rational Republicans will have a good reason to, which is he makes their office phones blow up. He, he, he blows up their email and people showing up at their offices because Elon's got a huge platform. And so he's an irritant and they can also turn on him in a way that you're right. It's hard to turn on Trump. So yes, they're,

A, they're annoyed at him. B, they're annoyed at Trump. And all they're annoyed at Trump, they will project on him. Here's where the rubber meets the road. Once Elon starts targeting more popular programs, because he doesn't give a shit what program he's targeting, the members of Congress who will like some of these programs on both sides of the aisle

will start going to Trump privately and say, you got to rein the guy in. Right, exactly. Because this actually is not pork. It's not waste. It's important for my district. Yes, and a lot of your voters, as it turns out, in a lot of cases. Your voters like this stuff, too. I read this a couple weeks ago.

Trump does not care about small government. He's not a fiscal conservative, never was. He doesn't give a shit about spending restraint. So the objective that Elon has, it is not where Trump's head is or ever has been. Nor where a bunch of the caucuses, you know, remember, these guys are all looking at the crack and showing up in the midterms. Right.

And the House majority probably going down the drain, at least of any historical norm hold. So, you know, mucking around with stupid fights over cutting things that blow up their constituents is not... This thing is like an airplane with a lot of cracks in the structure here. And, you know, it keeps accelerating, but it...

There's going to be more reality show drama, but it'll be internal. That's the next chapter, I think. Among the many things that are dead in the age of Trump 2.0, kind of irony and self-awareness is dead. I thought it would be embarrassing for any politician in 2025 to say waste, fraud, and abuse as much as Trump does. Like, if you had any familiarity with our politics, you'd realize it's like the biggest hackathon.

cliche in the world. We were going to get waste fraud, abuse, waste fraud. He says it all the time now. Like he's a Republican congressman in like 1978. It's so ridiculous. But here is the thing. By the way, taking a 747 for a vanity spin around the Gulf of Mexico. That is my, it's ridiculous. My reward nominee of the week for waste, fraud and abuse, burning up gas at 50 grand an hour. A hundred percent. So here's the thing. And I want to get to Jay Marti, your reporting, because

Of course, you know, if you listen to right media, USAID and Trump himself, it's like USAID, which, you know, we would all on this podcast, we would all say easy target, foreign aid not popular. Most Americans have no idea what this place is or what it does. So like the fact that they went after that first isn't totally surprising. But, you know, the way they did it was obviously was disturbing in various ways. And it became, it got more traction because

And kind of woke the left or Democrats, whatever you want to say, the non-Trump part of the world. It woke them up in a little bit more because it gave a sense of how, you know, over the weekend that Elon could kind of shut the agency down on his own. It kind of slapped people in the face. You wrote a great column. You wrote a great column on the ground reporting. Tremendous piece.

With an anonymized USAID person out in some country you don't name. I just want to talk about that reporting in case anybody hasn't read it, but also just talk about the broader, what the kind of echo effect, the kind of shock waves that come out of what for a lot of people, USAID, what they don't really know, but it's a big deal. Yeah, what life is like for these Americans go serving in places, as your piece said, that most Americans don't want to go.

Yeah, well, first of all, just a tribute to the bravery of the person that I talked to who is speaking truth to power in ways that take real guts. Look, this is a Washington fight, and it sort of has been a classic Washington deal with a lot of posturing, but it has real-world impact. And what I was trying to do with that Q&A, and folks can read it at Politico still, is

I put people in the shoes of a U.S. official who has, as the person told me, become totally abandoned by their own country and has no guidance. There's no review. There's no audit. The person told me the only question they've been asked.

from superiors and how many dependents do you have? And they ask the question because they're trying to figure out the plain home. There's no review of the actual material, the actual programs, the actual work.

And here's why it matters. As this person told me, this is not DEI or feeding babies. We're making friends and trying to sustain friendship at a time the Russians and Chinese are looking to poach our friends and make allies of their own. And this is vital work. It's not just me and me, me and me. Yeah, it's water pumps. You go to places where kids are starving or there's no clean water and they're dying in the street and Made in America equipment shows up with an American who's here to help.

It's just so gross, the idea. And it's vital in soft power, as you said, in geopolitics. If you want to address the programs, of course, every federal program can be assessed. But this, you know, to borrow kind of Murphy-esque phrase is like, you know, there's some weeding that has to be done in the lawn. So you hand a, you know, a sort of RPG to a gorilla at the

to weed the front lawn, it doesn't make any sense, right? There's just no logic behind it. It's the world's richest guy up all night looking at U.S. –

you know foiling united foiling just like doing keyword searches on federal spending and then screenshotting the image of putting it on twitter like that's literally the extent of this and then blowing up people's lives and blowing up more importantly for the country the interest of america at a time when china's on the march in every corner of the world it's just logic defined

I totally agree with the basic thrust of this. I don't think it's as logic defying as you do, Jonathan, I think because they are,

want to tear the government down to the studs. It makes perfect sense if you think what I'm trying to do is I'm trying, I want to go agency by agency and tear everything down. This is a good place to start. It's a, we'll learn a lot. It'll be our test case. It's not that popular and we'll move on to the next one. I think the logic is, is, is crazy in our rational world of like geo strategy, humanity, all the rest of it. But if you're, if you are Elon Musk and,

with Donald Trump and what you see and Steve Bannon and Russ Bode. And your attitude is we want to, you know, we're the Joker in the second Batman movie. We want to see the world burn. They want to take these agencies apart. It makes perfect sense if that's your objective. That's all I'm saying. Elon, any engineers work for Elon would tell you, here's his method. Keep pulling parts out of something to cut costs till it crashes or explodes. And then say, okay, that last part we might need.

And that is the core. Just keep subtracting until you have failure and then find a fix. So here we are. I think you're accurate with the Elon Musk, Russell Vaughn, Stephen Miller agenda. You're right. But they're misreading what their boss cares about. Trump was the one elected president. And Trump cares about good coverage of Trump and big, beautiful wins. He's a populist. He wants cheap applause. That's it.

He doesn't want any controversy or pain or trouble. I totally agree with that. I completely agree with that. I think that it's always been the case, though, that all of these people, starting with Bannon,

Then with the Project 2025 people-in-rush vote, and then getting on to Elon, they all just see Trump as a vehicle for advancing their own objectives. All three of them, those three people I just named, all have the same objective, which is to tear the government down to the studs. They have it for different reasons. Elon comes at it from the kind of libertarian right, ban it from the populist right, vote from I don't know where. But they're...

They're they have he's they see Trump as a vehicle. They think he's basically an idiot, a very popular idiot that they can use to advance their agenda. And in the end, that works in a short term way, but not the long term way. Often with Trump, they are ecstatic because like all revolutionary zealots, they have found what they dream of a useful idiot with power.

And so they think they can manipulate Trump into their agenda. But the minute Trump sees a polling number he believes with an under 50 favorable rating, bodies are going to start flying out of it like candy from a Pez dispenser. It's going to spit out.

Trump has never hesitated to cast people off. If you've paid attention, you'll realize that Trump does not hesitate to cut people off at the knees the moment the politics turn against him. Okay, gentlemen, we will be back in a minute, but we have to pay a few bills.

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The great psychological test would have been last Monday if Scheinbaum and Trudeau had just waited 24 hours before picking up the phone and doing... Right, let the economy cook and the market go crazy. Yeah, exactly. Those Canada-Mexico tear-offs.

And Ferdinand Samuel had just held off for a day. Can you imagine the Trump reaction that night after the market collapsed by 20%, you know? Oh, hey, if the Canadians had turned off the oil for three days, Midwestern oil prices would have been 15 bucks a gallon gas lines. I mean, the problem is Trump would have launched an attack.

But I had some experience with Trump in Atlantic City in New Jersey when Christy Whitman was governor in the early 90s because he was just an absolute pond scum then, too. And if you push back hard, he will fold.

But, you know, he tends to escalate things where the pushback is very expensive to like innocent bystanders. And that's hard for responsible leaders to do. Well, let's pivot to the great and powerful Democratic Party. Yeah, seriously. They've elected Mr. Rogers, second cousin, party chairman, seems like a nice guy from Minnesota, you know, real warrior.

I say mockingly. Exactly. And the parties aren't what they used to be. But if we were to put them in the famous hacks on tap hot seat here and say, OK, chief Democrat, I don't even know who that is. Schumer now or, you know, Jeffries or this guy from Minnesota. What's the plan? Because other than a rally with hilarious video footage of one old guy shaking a cane and Schumer screaming something into the microphone while his readers fogged up.

I can't figure out what it is. What are they doing rather than bring back DEI rallies? Well, they're still on the mat, is the short answer. They haven't gotten off the mat since the election because they lived off of Trump for almost a decade. He was the best force for mobilization, organization, fundraising, and unity. He was the cohesive force that linked the party from Bernie Sanders to the Cheney family. And then suddenly the drug stopped working. Yeah.

election night and they can't live off Trump anymore, but they have nothing else to say because that's all they've had, really. So now they're trying to figure out how do we oppose Trump without living off of being against Trump? And that's a difficult Rubik's Cube to fix. And so they don't quite know. Look, there's two schools of thought. One is we just have to answer every question by saying, you

Yes, but eggs cost 20 bucks a dozen. The other school of thought is this guy is actually trying to end America, a democracy as we know it, we have to step in and save democracy. Even if the auto mechanic in Henderson, Nevada cares more about eggs than USAID and, and, and, and norms of our, of our federal courts. And I think that that's the tension, Mike, is that the, the,

the panic is so intense now on, on democracy that they're not sure what to do. Do we stay on the economy on Trump, not, not responding to the, you know, you know, inflation or making it worse, or do we have to pivot now democracy? I feel like he got, I think they're the smartest people in the party. I think the ones that are not going to be the, any of the leaders that we've, that would have been named here. You know, we see people like someone like Brian shots, uh,

I think Hakeem is pretty smart. I think some other people in the Senate are, they're not Chuck Schumer, they're not the leadership, who are kind of trying to balance all that out, Jay Martin. I do think that the answer is they've got to do both. They've got to somehow manage to both do things procedurally and otherwise to try to gum up the work so that Trump, to realize there's some kind of a political price to pay if he's going to try to abrogate Article I of the Constitution.

The bigger challenge to me, though, and we can move, I know we've got to end here, but the question I keep asking people is, so do you think the problem with the Democratic Party is a strategy tactics messaging problem, or is it an identity ideological problem? Well, they're interconnected, I think. They are connected, but if you think that...

Like in 1990, in the new Democrat period after three consecutive presidential losses, what Bill Clinton said, Democrats need to be a different party. They're too far to the left. They're too much of the capital of unions. They're not pro-market enough. They need to be more globalist. He made a substantive change and remade the Democratic Party. As far as I can tell right now,

There's points of emphasis where people say, well, you should do more of this or less of that. But I don't see the kind of fight that the DLC had with the old Union, Mulder, Mondale Democrats that really created the modern Democratic Party. No, the college-educated, postmodern DEI crowd runs that party and they don't want to change. I'm not even sure that that's true, but what I do think is that

I think that there's at least a case to be made that Democrats need to, if they want to get back to being the party of the working class again, that they need to think about substantive and ideological fights. And what they're still doing is kumbaya right now. You mentioned the new DNC chair. It's all, hey, we're all on the same page. We don't have any major disagreements. I'm like, guys, not having major disagreements is the problem. You could use a few. It would bring energy and you'd have some winners and some new voices.

J-Mart, real quick, and then I got a book club plug and we're out of here for the mailbag, which we owe America. I think it was easier in some ways for the DLC crowd because they were talking about defense policy. They were talking about welfare policy, education policy. And yes, the role of labor in their coalition. I think it's more difficult now because I think for a lot of Democrats,

The issue is more identity related and it's not as easy as shifting on a B and C issue. It's more how you project your, you know, your view on identity. And that's just not as sort of substantive, if that makes sense. And so I think it's a tougher issue.

from a policy front, and just real fast, well, I think they can win back the House, even win back the presidency by simply being the opposition. Here's where I think they do have to do actual real substantive transformation. They're never going to win back the Senate if they're seen as the coastal left, the identity-obsessed party.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. They don't want to give it up. I mean, they can't admit the mass failure. Okay, real quick, the book club. I've got a plug. Hold your groans, but this is an incredible book. It reads like a thriller. The stakes couldn't be higher.

It's from a great reporter named Mike Collius. I'm mispronouncing his name probably. Mike's a great guy. It's called Inevitable Inside the Messy, Unstoppable Transition to Electric Vehicles. It's one of the best business books for the year. Opens with the president of Ford in a warehouse, tearing apart a Tesla and tearing apart a Ford product and looking at his engineers and say, you know, you're going to lose the company, you idiots.

It's incredible. Check it out on the book club, just hacksontap.com slash book club. Is our book club the Hacks on Tap book club or is it the Hacks on Tap EV Politics book club? Every book I ever hear you talk about is an electric vehicle book club.

I'm trying to move it over. Well, you know, now that you bring it up, Jay Heil, I will also plug the EVs for Everybody podcast with Elena Ciccatelli, where I went through all our polling on Elon. If you're a political junkie, you will enjoy it. Now let's hear from our sponsors.

Yet again, we come in to do this show and I'm confronted with an ugly reality, which is that after a night with drinks and such a point of a podcast to do with you the next day, I do not bounce back to the state of readiness anymore.

that I once was able to achieve with no help. I have to make a choice, it feels like. I can either have a great night out or I can have a great next day talking with you here on Hacks on Tap. That was the choice I faced until I discovered pre-alcohol, the Z-Biotics pre-alcohol probiotic drink, which is the world's

first genetically engineered probiotic. You know what? Listen to Professor Murphy here, Johnny, because this thing is incredible. It was invented by PhD scientists to tackle those rough mornings after a night of drinking.

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Every single time, even after a night when I'm really out, I can confidently plan on getting up in the morning, feeling pretty good and being able to deal with the rigors. I'll put it mildly. The rigors of dealing with you, Murphy, when recording an episode of this podcast. Yeah, that's when you need a drink right then. Seriously, without any worry whatsoever. So everybody, hey, go to zbiotics.com slash hacks.

to learn more and get 15% off your first order when you use Hacks at checkout. ZBiotics is backed with 100% money-back guarantee, so if you're unsatisfied for any reason, they will refund your money with no questions asked. Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash hacks and use the code HACKS at checkout for 15% off. Listener Mail!

If you have a question for the HACS or on EV small engine repair, just send it to our email address, which is HACS on tap at gmail.com. HACS on tap at gmail.com. You can record a question if you keep it short. We're the windbags. Keep it short. Use your name and voice memo on your phone and email it to us. Or you can call our special number and leave a message with an audio question.

773-389-4471. I'll repeat it because who can remember that? 773-389-4471. So, Mike, we got one compliant hack fan.

Hacks on Tap fan who decided to actually do the voicemail. We've got some other questions we'll get to in email, but we have one voicemail. I want to play that one. I'm going to throw it to you because it's right down the strike zone for you. I'm putting aside a Gina Raimondo question. This is a bigger question. This is from Andrew. This is from Andrew. Let's listen to him on voicemail. Hey,

Hey, this is Andrew Bennett from the red, red state of Tennessee, where it sucks to be a Democrat. Anyway, what are the chances of Musk and Trump melting the economy down, like worse than 2009? I think there's too many landmines out there economically. I don't think they can avoid it, but I want to see your guys' opinion. That is an excellent question, Andrew, patriot from the volunteer state. Meltdown is a strong term. We have a fundamentally pretty strong economy right now. However, terrorism...

Tariff wars are proven anthrax for economies. We have a very bubbly stock market right now. There's all kinds of things that could be enough of an economic reset and maybe a return to inflation. We just had the jobs report out. It wasn't fantastic.

We're not winning, winning, winning. So I think they could do enough economic damage to meet the same monster that Joe Biden got to meet called inflation two years from now, particularly for the Republican Party. If it's kind of a three year cycle with bad midterms in two years, political defeat, losing Trump crazier, it could compound into quite a mess. And middle class economic pain, of course, is the number one accelerant of that.

Also, I hate to do this. These guys are going to boom me off the air. But take away those EV credits. You're going to hit 200,000 new manufacturing jobs. So I see stormy weather ahead, but I think meltdown is a strong phrase. But I'm not an economic forecaster. Well, you're the closest thing to an economist of the three of us. And that's a sad statement about J. Martin. Yeah, I was saying that's like very sad.

And I will say that as someone who loves his EV and just loves, loved by Rivian, I'll go to the mat for the Rivian, whatever. I love it. But man, even for me, a big EV booster, you were just, you were out of control. J-Mart, I got a question for you from Ann. And this is a question I wanted to come back. I always like asking this question to you. I think I know what your answer is, but we should probably, we got to do a refresh on it now that it looks like Tulsi Gabbard is

soaring through the Senate and, and, and, uh, RFK jr. Soaring, you know, sliding through the Senate, shooting like a, like a, a stuck pig greased up down the slip and slide. Here's, and she says, uh,

Quote, it's pretty obvious that senators being bullied into voting for cabinet nominees of whom they disapprove for good reason, exclamation point, she writes. Do you think any senator is going to stand up to Trump and actually vote for the country instead of kissing the ring? And do you think any of them is going to disclose the threats they're getting in those, quote, intense conversations?

maybe in a future memoir or a future book by a journalist, one which they bare their souls, but not anytime soon. It's self-preservation. They want to survive a primary, and you have to salute Trump to survive a primary in today's party. It's that simple. Hegseth lost three votes. If he had lost a fourth and Tom Tillis from North Carolina was almost there, Hegseth would not have been confirmed. So I think that was close.

Look, to me, Tulsi was the one who was in danger. But I think there had to have been a lot more and a lot more bad coverage. And here's why. Because that would have gotten Trump's attention and Trump would have bailed on her. And that would have given a permission structure for the Republicans who didn't want her confirmed to have come out against her. This is all dependent upon Trump's whims. All right.

Hegstaff was wavering for a while. Trump almost gained him for DeSantis. He survived. But look, they don't, they being the congressional Republicans, don't want to defy Trump. So it has to be Trump turning on these folks, and he just hasn't done with any of them.

I got to say it's the saddest thing is that it, you know, the, the implicate the, the, the, the assumption, the embedded assumption of that question is that threats are necessary. Unfortunately, the only threats that are necessary is that there's the primary of these people, which has become more explicit with all of Elon's money. And I will, I will tell you guys that,

You know, to the day I die, I will never understand if the worst thing that could happen to you is losing a primary and not being in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. House anymore. It's like, what is wrong with you? It's not like he's trying to kill your children or something. You lose a primary. Big deal. You go join a corporate board, become a lobbyist. You know, I couldn't agree more. It's not like we're asking these guys to grab a rifle and land on Anzio Beach. Seriously, not loud, though. I'll tell you the clown cabinet it.

It's to the big, you know, vortex that's coming argument. When you appoint a cabinet secretary, you want somebody who can keep trouble from happening because stuff can go wrong. When you put the Fox Green Room and various MAGA celebrities in charge of big agencies, they're not politically skilled enough to keep bad stuff from coming that can hurt you politically as presidents.

So, you know, stay tuned. Yet another exhilarant end to the mess. Here's a question for John from Ellie. Great question. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's recent bid to lead the House Oversight Committee was unsuccessful. Does this indicate a rift within the Democratic Party between the progressive squad types, I'm adding that, and establishment figures? What do you think, John?

Um, I'd like to, I'd like to give you, I'd like to give you a number, Mike, and ask you whether you know what that number signifies. The number is 39. 39 is the number. That would be Tulsa Gabbard's IQ. Uh, well that's true, but it's also 39 is the number of years that separate AOC from the man who won the oversight committee ranking committee spot. The seniority system, they call it. Jerry Connolly is 74. AOC is 35.

I think that tells you what you need to know. I think this is not an ideological problem. There are splits within the House that are ideological. The problem that the House members have and the problem the Democratic Party has had for a while, witness Joe Biden, is it has a generational problem.

problem, which is the party that used to be the party of, in addition to being the party of working people in America, used to be the party of the young in America. And then you looked up one day and you had Jim Clyburn and Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and they were all SEPTA or octogenarians. Yeah, no, you need to carbon-dick them. It's unbelievable. Dear God. And so, you know, what happened to AOC, who is...

if you put aside her politics, which are, by squad standards, more moderate than some of the real whack jobs in the squad. Squad standards. But her politics are definitely on the progressive side. But she's also one of the few genuinely fluent modern communicators in the party who can reach voters who are not already in the pocket of the Democratic Party, who understands how to use social media. Yeah, I get all that. I get all that. But Mike, I'm not making a case for her. I'm just trying to say, I think

the Democratic Party in these instances is riven more by a generational thing. And if you were looking for, hey, the Democratic Party needs to change, Jerry Connolly is not the answer to that. And that's not an endorsement of AOC's politics. That's just, you're not getting what has to happen in the Democratic Party if you're going to modernize it.

Right. She has star power. But the other problem is these things are high school elections and she's not popular among the leadership. Pelosi hated her because she's seen as a glory hound who's quick to tweet and not a real workhorse. But your political point is true. We need a little rebranding. It can't be driving Stanley Steamers around and say, we're the party to take you to tomorrow. I mean, that guy waving the cane in that video, you can Google it, was

Incredible. I enjoyed your concession there, Mike. But you're pulling from Texas, Mike. Come on. Yeah. Yeah. Respect on Houston. Get some angry mail from Houston. I, I, I love Houston. I love Houston. A great town. Spent a lot of time there. Okay. Where I first met James Carville at the end. I got from you, Mike. I,

What pleased me was the very end of that, which was, but the political point is right. I'm like, well, this is Pax on Tap. Yeah, I know, I know, I know. You know me, I keep it on the vast canvas of foreign policy. I wish we'd do this in French, the language of diplomacy. But guys, we got to wrap it up. And I think I found the perfect, perfect sound to go out on. The president of the United States holding the world's most powerful nuclear arsenal, the high lantern of freedom, has found the issue.

to focus the presidency on. And it really is something that affects ordinary Americans in their everyday lives. We're going back to plastic straws. These things don't work. I've had them many times. And on occasion, they break, they explode. If something's hot, they don't last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It's a ridiculous situation. So we're going back to plastic straws. I think it's

Okay? I'm with him on this. Paper straws. I'm with him on this. Paper straws. Ocean pollution, plastics, trouble in straws. Paper straws suck. Paper straws suck. They do suck. We ought to have thin aluminum straws, recyclable. What's going on? Come on, Alcoa. I'm fine with that. Get on it. American ingenuity. J. Mark, you have a thought on paper versus plastic straws? I'm with you, Isleman.

Plastic all the way. All right. All right, you guys. All right. I'm going to put you in a whale tank in the Pacific and see how they feel about those plastic straws piling up, continent-sized plastic piles. But enough of that propaganda from the environmentalists. Let's thank J-Mart. You're the best. Thank you for doing the pod. Johnny, always great to see you. J-Mart, that piece was great of yours. Everybody who hasn't read it should go and read it. Thanks, Murph. Thanks, John. Great to see you guys. Eat the bivalves. See you guys.

Later. Adios. Bye, Val. That's our everything. Bye, Mike. See you next week. All right. See you later, pal. Bye.