The 100th Day Special
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Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. The golden age of America begins right now. From this day forward, our country will flourish and be respected again all over the world. We will be the envy of every nation, and we will not allow ourselves to be taken advantage of any longer. During every single day of the Trump administration,

I will very simply put America first. Well, there you go. I'm feeling pretty golden, but not in a good way. Well, I think that just referred to the gilding in the Oval Office. So, guys...

100 days in, it's report card day. That's right. Hacks Assemble. Great to have you guys back from the flesh pots of Europe or wherever the hell you were. Yes, I was on an asylum tour. Were you in Portugal? What are you thinking?

I don't know. I haven't decided yet, and they have to decide about me. I want to be clear. Neither of the countries you went to, David, both of those countries do have extradition treaties with the United States, so they're not going to be ultimately your place you land. Well, send me a list, will you? Don't just... I've got one. I'll pass it on. No, so do I. The non-extradition countries, it's really hard to find a good one.

You know, they're not, they're not great. Anyway, Murphy and Heilman, good to see you boys. It, that was the president's inauguration speech. It feels like a million years ago. And like also only 30 seconds ago. It seems like, you know, it feels like we did a nickel at San Quentin is what it feels like, like pure pain, nonstop, you know, trading SIGs for your life. It's,

It's not good. But, you know, I'll give us all a little bit of credit. Politics does have gravity. Why not? It's our podcast. But politics has gravity. And when you, you know, what, try to trigger a world recession, betray allies, start a Cold War with Canada, try to shred the Constitution, start throwing people, picking them off the street and sending them to El Salvador and hell holes. There's a cost. Don't forget talking about sending American citizens to the gulag, buddy.

Yeah, yeah. No, exactly. Even having gulags and being excited about it. From where we'll probably be doing the podcast in the future. That's right. I'm curious whether you guys, as Trump went on in that speech, the inaugural, he went on and said the following things. I just want to know, as a fact check thing, whether any of these things have occurred. Our sovereignty will be reclaimed. Our safety will be restored. The scales of justice will be rebalanced. The vicious, violent, unfair weaponization of the Justice Department and our government will end.

our top priority will be to create a nation that is proud, prosperous, and free. 100 days in. Well, some of the verbs are true. The scales of justice got a hammer blow. All the active verbs happen, just not in a good way. Because we are the hacks on tap. And you're right, Murphy, there is gravity. Turns out there's gravity. Gravity still works. Yeah, you jump off a building, you meet the concrete. Tragic. The fact is, he ain't where he wants to be.

Oh, not nearly. In fact, he sent him for a quagmire. You know what? You don't think that he wanted to have the worst polling performance of any president in 70 years? No, he's tried that. He did that already. Why would you want to try it again? He had this moment. You know, they started and there was just this pyrotechnic display of...

muscle and will and moving shit around. And I think that worked for him for a few weeks. They call that muzzle velocity in Steve Dick. Well, it's just like the apprentice. He, he became famous sitting in a fake cardboard set designed to look like a boardroom firing, washed up celebrities who were paid to be there.

So, you know, he had all the action running up and down the hallway, crazy executive orders, you know, action man. But it was a show. And now now the fact is that he can't govern. It was the reality show. And now it's reality. Yeah, right. And reality is crushing him like a grape. But that's the question we got to deal with here. Should we roll this just so we can summarize the situation? Should we roll our buddy Seth Meyers, courtesy of Mike Murphy?

did a great monologue and in it he had a mashup of the current polling, the hundreds. Including Fox, yeah, yeah, let's roll it. The latest AP NORC poll finds that 39% approve of how Trump is doing his job.

while a whopping 59% disapprove. A new Fox News poll shows just 33% approve of his handling of tariffs and inflation, while 38% approve his handling of the economy as a whole. A new Reuters poll found just 37% approve of Trump's job on the economy. On immigration, a majority of Americans, 53%,

disapprove. His approval rating has been double digits underwater in surveys from the Pew Research Center, where he's minus 19, the Economist-YouGov poll, where he's minus 13, the Reuters-Ipsos poll, where he's minus 11, and now Fox News, where he is also minus 11. I mean, these numbers are just horrible. There's no way to sugarcoat it. A new ABC News-Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that President Trump has the lowest 100-day job approval rating of any president in the past decade.

Donald Trump is the most unpopular president since Kevin Spacey. Solid joke from Seth Meyers there. Yeah, but we got to give him credit. He had a big win last night. He won the Canadian election for Mark Carney, whose party was in a spiral till Trump showed up. Did you see the crazy ass speech?

social, what, Truth Social post he did yesterday, urging Canadians to vote for him? Yeah, I'm coming for you, state of Canada. Vote for me because, you know, become the 51st state.

Pierre Pogliev, the conservative candidate who lost his own seat, by the way, yesterday as the conservatives lost the election, had to send out a statement yesterday begging Trump to stay out of the race. The conservatives were ahead. They were 30 points ahead. They were 30 points ahead before Trump got involved. Just while we're on Canada, a Canadian voter summed it up pretty well.

I think who I voted for would be the best to take care of Trump. Because Trump is, I'm sorry to say, an asshole. All right, Canada speaks. There you go, our neighbors to the north. That's a lot from a Canadian. Yeah, yeah, that's the Canadian MF right there. I've always liked our neighbors to the north. They're very sensible people. They're great. They're great. I spent a lot of time up there. Axe and I both worked up there. We didn't destroy the country. It survived us. That tells you how durable they are.

Oh, well, you know what they say, the Canadian political stump joke my friend Tom Long would always say when he ran in a primary was, you know, after all, we've settled the tough half of North America. Not wrong. I like that you started by saying that thing about how, did you read that crazy-ass truth social post of Trump's? I'm like, I mean, which one? Okay, gentlemen, we will be back in a minute, but we have to pay a few bills.

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So listen, so in this polling, and we should just, obviously, the economic numbers are terrible. There's a whole battery of stuff. These are like half a dozen polls. This isn't one poll. And they're high-quality polls. They're the high-quality pollsters. Yeah, and the Fox one is one of the worst. And you know, in the back room, they're like, can we triple-check the weighting? I actually think they're not that bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

But on tariffs, the verdict is very negative. There's broad recognition, like three quarters recognize that tariffs are going to raise their costs, which was the main reason why people voted

uh for trump in the first place uh his numbers on inflation are in the low 30s uh in many of these polls he's got biden numbers on the economy now yes i mean yikes and he's doing the same thing that biden did which is telling people no no no everything's really good yeah yeah read the fine print you're winning

Yeah, I mean, this is Trump. Do you guys read the piece The Atlantic just dropped on their interview with him? I mean, he thinks that he can sell anything because that's what he's been doing all his life. And he thinks that he can sell to people that the economy is great. They also think he runs the country and the world.

Well, he has a, but he's had a pretty big impact. So I just came back, just came back to these numbers. Yeah. The thing that really, really leaps out

is independent voters. Trump basically tied. Yeah, it's screaming. Tied on that in the election with Kamala Harris. I think he lost by three in the exit polls. He's at basically about 30% now approval rating with independents. And if you look at the ballot, in the exits, he did 43, she did 46. So to go from 43 down to low 30s or beyond is a double-digit

in the independent world. So he's in a cul-de-sac now where he's got his MAGA GOP folks, even those...

you know, my guests are melting a tiny bit and he's got nobody else. Well, his approval rating, Mike, among Republicans is now sort of mid to high 80s, which is high, but lower than it was at the beginning. Whit Ayers invented the Republican pollster. I think he invented it. It's the first place I saw it. A great question that we tend to ask on private Republican polls, which is, do you consider yourself more of a Trump Republican or more of a party Republican?

And that that's the number that moves with him. And he's been, you know, after his nadir, after he lost to Biden, he was down to about 35 percent of Republicans saying I'm a Trump Republican. Then when he was cooking again, up to 65. And I'm going to be curious on the next round into the future how that where that is, which side of 50 it is. I was looking at this and I'm thinking, you know, maybe he bounces back from these. But you know what it feels like to me? It feels like Afghanistan.

It feels like, you know, the Biden shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan. That was in August. And his numbers dropped and they never came back. Right. Well, I would say a couple of things, one of which is that, and just to make the really obvious point, Trump has always been really unpopular and really polarizing. Right. I mean, he's historically, you know, had, you know, the election, last election, notwithstanding, his basic story has always been, you

really strong with a base and not that broadly popular. So it's like to see him suffering this way. It's in some sense, not that surprising, except against the standard of like the immediate days before he took office and

And the thing that's always been true is that his economic numbers are always way better than his personal popularity. That's now decoupled. He's actually – Right, right. That's the crutch, and it's gone. The economic numbers are now worse than his personal popularity numbers. And the other thing is the issue on which supposedly he can't lose and that they think he can't lose because then they just keep going further and further is immigration. And his numbers on immigration suck.

They're not as bad as his numbers in the economy, but if you want to measure what trouble he's in right now, it's that the one, you know, the go-to bag club in his bag that he always feels like can get a win on is an issue. Now he's now underwater overall in immigration and these issues that they think are huge winners for them.

the Ambrigo Garcia thing. They're like, bring it on, bring it on. Overwhelmingly, the country thinks sending American citizens to a foreign detention center is wrong, that you shouldn't be able to send legal immigrants from colleges who have spoken out about political issues. People shouldn't be deported. He's losing...

on the issues that he normally can't lose on. He's losing his crush that's propped him up as the one thing you, well, you put up with Trump because you get a better economy. Right. There's also, there's a law of gravity to bad incumbent president numbers, because once people start thinking poorly of you, they start believing all the bad news and disbelieving the good news. So you get in this quicksand that it's hard to flail your way out of. Depending on where you get your news, yeah.

Yeah, but even there, you know, even there, they hear it in their lives. Yeah, no, that's true. And that's the thing that these guys, that's what Biden misunderstood. That's what Trump misunderstood. You can't jawbone people into feeling good.

The cash register is the cash register. Right. The 401k total is the 401k total. You know, like people's retirement savings are a bit hammered. And the anecdotal. My favorite little thing this week. So Subaru has a huge plant in Lafayette, Indiana. The boy, you guys have car stuff for a minute.

That's the big Subaru plant here. I'm going to go to the restroom right now. I'll be back. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You'll be back in a minute. Go get your electric vehicle and drive and take a trip, a little trip here. They just announced that plant built 26% of the Subarus sold in Canada. Northern, snow, a lot of Subarus. They've just turned that off. They're going to because of the counter tariffs. So that's a significant production cut to American workers there. Where are the Subarus for Canada coming from now? Japan. Japan.

So in a red place, that's going to work its way up to layoffs. And yeah, Fox says he's doing great. But my idiot brother-in-law now is applying for a job at McDonald's. He used to be a welder at Subaru. So, you know, it spreads in their real lives. They feel it. That's the thing about the cash register layoffs, economic slowdown. And every person you talk to on on.

in the wall street economic forecasting world right now, they're all like, we're headed for recessions. Well, I do some reporting. I do occasionally speak to some people in that area. Cause I'd like to understand the streets, the Greenwich village and the Hudson Valley. I'd like to try to, I'd like to try to understand the economy better than I do. As if you saw my 401k balance boy, he'd be, you know, Murphy wouldn't recover for a,

I've been in gold bars for a decade. Yes, exactly. You got to be saw it all coming, but you look at those. There's no one who thinks that we're not going to be in recession this summer. I mean, the, the, the forecast on that is really, really grim to, to Mike's point about just, you know, no, I know like, like, and to your point, David, your question, which was, can Trump turn it around?

I mean, the tariff thing has been, if you talk about Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan is shambolic, think about Liberation Day and everything that's flowed from that. And you still have Scott Bessette on television, you know, trying to paper that tape, trying to put a pretty face on it, put a lipstick on that tape. He doesn't want another market crash between now and the 1st. What is it that you can foresee happening?

in the macro world in terms of exogenous events, real things happening in the world, that's going to like suddenly allow Donald Trump to turn the corner. The problem is that the world is moving on. The world doesn't trust him. The world doesn't trust us. So people are beginning to make other arrangements.

last night the election in Canada that we talked about. You know, well, let's listen to Mark Carney, the new prime minister, as he addressed his supporters last night. As I've been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. Never. But these are not idle threats. President Trump

is trying to break us so that America can own us. That will never, that will never, ever happen. Was somebody yelling shame from the audience just now? Like you're in Game of Thrones. Think of it, a Cold War with our closest ally and neighbor. I mean, it takes work to start that. It's unbelievable. The point I was driving to is that Carney is now

actively exploring. He's a finance guy. He's actively exploring other arrangements with Europe and others. Used to run the Bank of England. Yeah, and they will. They're dumping...

We had a multi-billion dollar fighter plane contract with them. Hello, France. That'll be gone. And same in Portugal. I mean, anyway, the costs of this are going to... But to your point about the economy, you know, this is the different thing about Trump. Normally in a White House like this, you have all the terrible poll numbers. You get together. President's bouncing off the walls. Get me some egghead economists in here. We need a comeback. What the hell's going on? You knuckleheads. This guy, they have that meeting. He's like...

Let's do more to screw up the economy because the world is wrong and I'm right. Tariffs. I mean, the one thing a guy who believes in nothing but himself believes in is the worst economic idea of the 1800s and the early 1900s.

1900. But his people like Brooke Rollins was his agriculture secretary, formerly his domestic policy advisor, was on television a week ago saying that the, you know, the greatest years in American history were 1870 to 1905 until, you know,

The progressives came in and ruined everything. With penicillin, yeah. So we want to go back to robber barons to, you know. Well, he's a moron. Trump has an animal feral cunning intelligence, but he has no knowledge. He hasn't read a book till Guide to Bone Spurs to Avoid the Draft. That's the last book he ever read.

I mean, his book should have been The Art of the Spiel because he is the best pitchman. The Art of the Con. 14 years or whatever it was on The Apprentice, he had this patina of economic competence. And what John's talking about really— That's gone now. I mean, that has been shattered. Gone. Yeah. And that's the franchise. That's McDonald's now can't sell a hamburger. What else do you have here, Donald Trump, and you're no longer a tycoon who, like, understands the way that business in the world works? Just good looks and a big heart. Ha ha ha ha ha.

We need to take a quick break right now. We'll be right back with more of Hacks on Tap. Every Mother's Day, Heilman, I, you know, I've been married a long, long time. And so I've run out of ideas. And my wife honestly doesn't want a lot of stuff now because it just accumulates. But if you really want to win Mother's Day, here's a suggestion for folks out there. Get an Aura digital picture frame for mom loaded up with decades of family memories and

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Support the show by mentioning us, the hacks at checkout terms and conditions apply. I want to return to the immigration issue because John, you know, you're his numbers are, are, are, as you point out that he's underwater. Now it was a strength of his, uh, and they've clearly gone too far, but you know, uh, if they had just emphasized shutting the border down, uh,

I think those numbers would be much higher. Yes, of course. Yes. If they had just as I said in the border down or just actually deported criminal illegal immigrants that were proven to be so using due process in the courts, they have an 80% approval rating on that issue. They've done that. Trump wanted the numbers, right? And he's pressuring them to get

And by the way, you know, when Obama was president, he did actually deport criminals and in fairly large numbers and seemed to be able to do it in a competent manner.

The way it got took a lot of shit for it. But I don't think that's what Trump. Well, I don't think Trump just wants the numbers. I think Trump wants the power to be able to disappear people. I don't think there's any other explanation for the way that they've done. The El Salvador thing is that that is the thing that Trump what that Trump finds useful. Everything for Trump is a reality show. So who's the lead man? Tom Homan, who looks like.

Just like the police lieutenants I used to cover in Chicago in the 1970s, you know, who would stand outside the interrogation room smoking a cigarette while the boys sweated a confession out of the guy in the room that, you know, the the the.

the guy is, is from central casting, but the, the movie, the script is bad because people are reacting really, really negatively to some of the excesses. Yeah, no, no. He has the issue, but he's blown it with the, the, the snarling and the, I agree. The, the rubber hose cop stuff. I remember you saying before he came into office, uh,

that if they tried to deport people on the scale they were talking to, if you started having, um, you know, the military being deployed to deport people that you would end up having these scenes, some, some terrible thing would happen and then the tide would turn. And that's what happened with, with, with family separation in the first term where he was popular on immigration. And then you suddenly started seeing the images of what was going on with the family separation policy and people turned against him on that. This is the same thing. It's the, it's,

The human costs, when they're actually put in front of people, people like all these ideas in the abstract. But when they start to see what it really looks like, people go, well, wait a minute. Hold on. I don't want that. Literally a week ago, they snatched up a five-year-old kid and I think his sister. The kid had stage four cancer. And they threw him in a car and, you know, deported him somewhere without meds. I mean, it's un-American. It's an assault on our values. I do think these numbers are being driven principally by...

principally by economics, economy. But it's interesting to me when you look at this poll, it turns out that people actually do kind of... Which poll is that? When you look at the polls, the polls collectively, it turns out that people actually value the rule of law. You know, they don't want this system where you can be disappeared and they don't like students being deported

Because of their, you know, there is... The New York Times Siena poll says 73% of voters, including 56% of Republicans, said that the president should not be able to send American citizens to prison in El Salvador, as Mr. Trump has threatened to do. 63%, including 40% of Republicans, said a president should not be able to deport legal immigrants who have protested Israel. These are just...

And I think a lot of them, when you hear the stories and you see the video, the video of that woman, I still think it's one of the most indelible images of the administration. The woman at Tufts, who turns out she wrote a critical op-ed in the student newspaper being picked up on the street with plainclothes guys with ski masks over their face on video. That, I think, inspires revulsion among a broad swath of people.

of the American public. Now, they didn't all see that video, but that kind of thing, the idea of it, it looks like Sicario. Yeah, it's not us. Not like the United States. You know what discussion they're having on campuses about this issue? Student newspapers and student editors are now debating whether to remove op-ed pieces. And photographs. And photographs. This is happening at Northwestern where there's like, are the administration going to look through or the...

federal authority is going to start looking through our databases of photographs to try to identify students who were at protests and stuff. And they're talking about like trashing those, this debate is a foot about what to do to try to protect what would normally be considered a public asset. You know, the, um, uh, the interesting things, Washington posted a battery of some of these initiatives of Trump's and the two, you know, the, the,

the federal government sort of telling private universities, you know, how to operate was I think the second lowest and the lowest was cutting research funding for medical or funding for medical research, because that's a lot of what they're cutting from these college campus. So there, you know, but again, it is the economy and the guys are,

The guys and gals, Mike, who I think, you know, Trump's he says he's going to run again. You know, we'll see if he's going to try to do that. I think that there's a long time between now and then. And he nobody may be asking by the. No, that's my vibe. I think unless he they replace him with a robot.

and get sane economic policy back, he's going to keep doubling down until the pain just breaks. And there are hints it's already breaking. The Hill on the Republican side are in a near panic because, you know, we're going to get wiped out in the House next year.

And, you know, he's hinting now, at least not him, one of his henchmen, the Treasury Secretary, well, we're going to lighten up on the auto tariffs. You know, we're giving you an extra six months to go bankrupt. What the auto people all say is, you know, we plan in eight to ten year cycles. You know, this guy's a short timer. So my point being—

It's going to keep compounding. The Virginia governor's race, we keep having these milestones of weakness and failure, and there are more coming. So how does he get out of it? Right. This is the question I was going to ask you guys. This is a real hack question, but it goes to something else. That's right. You got the right guys. Yeah. I'm always trying to find the hackiest questions I can. Yeah.

All right. How to get paid up front. The Hacks favorite topic. We've written a book on that. That's what campaign life will do to you. So, you know, the most predictable, cliched, shopworn thing that a president does when he runs into this kind of political trouble is to have a big course correction and move to the center. Right. That's what you kind of like, you know, Obama did this. Everybody's done that. Triangulate. Yeah. And throw a body overboard. Right. And instead...

you know, at this moment of, of now suddenly kind of cascading and a kind of cascading consensus of, of political vulnerability for Trump and that everything's kind of falling apart for him just purely politically. Um,

Their response right now is like, well, let's do an executive order asking whether what the uses of the military could be on domestic dissent. It's like there's no sign from them right now that like, well, we have to recalibrate. Do you guys imagine that that Trump will or could try to execute some kind of what we would think of as a kind of conventional midcourse correction? Or will he just get more extreme? What do you kind of see? How do you see them reacting to these political circumstances?

Well, look, he could execute conventional midterm correctors. You know, I don't know that he's interested in that. You know, I I talked to a guy yesterday who was had been a supporter of Trump, big donor and.

Still supportive, but exasperated because he says he really does. And this is something that was touched on in that Atlantic piece. Trump feels like he is infallible. He thinks that he's beaten the system.

He thinks everybody has underestimated him and he's triumphed overall over, you know, indictments over assassins that he is imbued in some way by a Holy Spirit, although he's not much of a practitioner apparently, but violated, as I said here before, 11 of the 10 commandments.

But he and I think that the problem is like Besant is doing, you know, he's an expert in finance. He should go back and get a degree in psychology because he's doing full time therapy, just trying to keep Trump from blowing himself up. Yeah. And the markets, I mean, they are desperately. Trump is the last guy on the planet who's going to do the normal thing, which is get the smart guys in here. We need a new plan because Trump thinks he's the only smart guy. Trump also thinks that.

that he'll be proven right by the terror thing, because we're going to have 100 new steel mills by July 4th. All wrong, all not connected to reality.

You know, it's just going to be more and more pain and he's going to get more and more isolated. But I think he will try channel changing that damn fat. He already tried that. And then the bond market scared him back or those hope these now maybe maybe we're going to go find me a war to win.

You know, it's going to be very cynical. Or a war to sell, which he's failed at, too. We'll get to that. You see what happened to the Navy, by the way? It's tragically funny. So the Hothys fling a few missiles at one of our carriers. Carriers are vulnerable, but they've drills for this. So they took a hard turn on something as big as like Times Square and a $60 million fighter went sliding off the deck into the deep blue sea.

They've escalated there. I'm sure that Hegseth will get right on this. Yeah, no, no, no. I'm sure he'll be like, fire the captain for not losing the carry. It seems like he may be sliding off the deck. No, I think he is, because under pressure...

You know, he's an insecure guy who needs the love of the world, and he's becoming more and more isolated. So I think he's going to try big, noisy moves desperately, flailing a little. No, I'm not talking about Trump. I'm talking about Hegseth. Well, Hegseth, you know, half the staff quit. They're all throwing water balloons at each other. You know, when did the Pentagon become the Keystone Cops? From my own experience in the White House, there's no bureaucracy more adroit than

I'd kill in a guy. Oh yeah. I was a consultant there for a year. It is unbelievable. Yeah. Then the, then the Pentagon, they are so sophisticated. And then you fire the closest guys to you who know everything. Guys, it's the most, it's the most, it's the largest, most complex and most politically, uh, Byzantine and lethal, uh, job in Washington, DC. And, and who, and who would have, and who would have predicted, who would have predicted that an alcoholic, uh,

womanizing, strip club going, Fox News weekend host would not be able to manage the Pentagon. Who would have ever made that prediction? No, no. The uniformed military in particular is going to eat them alive. The Pentagon is also the world's fifth largest operator of golf courses. That's how good they are. They get that in the budget. Yeah. So, you know, it is... Yeah, except it's...

what it is, obviously. I mean, because in one of these polls, uh, people, he was underwater in people's confidence in his ability to appoint, uh, good people. Uh, and this Hegseth thing, the question is, is he the guy that Trump is he, will he Trump ultimately throw him overboard? Because it was such a glaring mistake and they made it a test, you know, uh,

of loyalty because everybody in the Senate knew he shouldn't have been secretary of defense. So how long will he stick with them in this, in this Atlantic piece? He said, ominously, I think he's going to get it together. Well, it was weird because after the second teenage girl texting war plan scandal, like it was a Taylor concert or something. Yeah. At eight o'clock, look to the right. Those things are ours. And,

There were leaks from the administration that that's the end of him. And then Trump get on there because Trump thinks if I fire one of my guys, I'm weak and propped him up. But you wonder how many bullets they have for that, you know, metaphorically to keep saving him because he's going to be a trouble machine. And that building leaks like crazy, too. And the pros there more than happy to keep the media well informed as to the latest follies.

you know, up in the DOD SECDEF office. So the problem is just to say, the problem is that I know you guys don't spend all that much time monitoring MAGA media, but the MAGA people are really pro-Hag, they're not abandoning HagSeth. And Trump doesn't, does not like

He doesn't like to be embarrassed in the mainstream press, but he also really doesn't like doing things that piss off media. He does not. He does not want to cross the base. He thinks the base is the is the core of everything that he is part of his invulnerability. Part of his resilience is that he always has their loyalty and he does not like to go against those people. He doesn't. I'm just curious of how much failure, embarrassment and.

billions of dollars in value being wiped out that Rupert Murdoch can take before he starts putting... Well, obviously not that much because you read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and they're killing him.

It's like the nation. You know, the prime station, the center of the nervous system. But getting back to Hacktham, he's not running, but members of Congress are. They're going to be running in the midterms. I'm thinking about Hegseth. I'm thinking about Tom Tillis in North Carolina, Senator Tillis, who has to run for re-election, who until hours before Senator Ernst in Iowa, they were viewed as

likely no votes on Hegseth. And then the White House turned on the political machine. Well, nobody wants a primary, but it's starting to be pick your death. Right. It's death by fire or death by hanging, I would think. Right, right, right. I mean, the Senate guys are cocky, you know, because they got a good map. But I'm telling you, we've all seen it. Nothing takes a cocky incumbent into raw panic like a shaky poll.

you know, what do you mean I'm only five points ahead of a nobody in a state I'm supposed to have? Well, there's just a poll in Maine that showed Susan Collins in terrible shape. Right. And that's a state that's ripe. And so walking the plank again and again, and this is, you know, for Tillis, every scandal with Hegseth is another potential nail in his... And look, and the other thing that's telling on this is that

you know, the, the, the tariff vote's going to happen, I think in the next day or two where the Senate's going to vote on taking back the, the, the tariff prerogative. And it, you know, there've been some Republicans like Rand Paul and others who have really been very vocal about this. And Trump is in the white house or issuing veto threats to the bill. Now the bill's never, there's never going to be, the bill's never going to get through the house, but there, they seem, Trump seems to understand that these, even though on the, on the merits, this bill is, has no positive threat to him whatsoever. Um,

The fact that there are senators for the first time since he's been president who are willing to publicly cross him on anything, that that's like an early warning sign of what could happen. Well, sure. And Thune is a tell. They elected him to have somebody looking out for them. And, you know, the leadership ought to let them all vote for it. Trump can veto it, whatever. Then they start to have cover for the election. But I just put one parenthetical line. You know who else is drifting off the stage? Elon.

You know, the genius of Doge. All of a sudden he's... Yes. Oh, yeah. I'm told that there's, you know, that there was a falling out, details of which aren't clear. It happened in Wisconsin. That's when the falling out happened.

Yeah. No, but there's a new one. And Elon's got his own problems because he's wiped out Tesla's market value and he's destroyed the brand. Other than that, he's doing great. I want you to listen to this one little clip of Mike Johnson yesterday who looked like a little boy who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar when he got asked about all this.

Take a listen to this. I'm not worried at all. I just had a great meeting with the president at the White House, and he's in good spirits. We talked about the upcoming races, the midterm elections, and we're very bullish on it. Why is the American public salaried on his policies? Listen, you know, these are presidential terms or rollercoasters sometimes. There's been a little tumult in the markets with the tariff policy and all of that, but I think all this is settling out.

A little tumult. What did Ken Griffin say the other day? 20% of the bear market's net worth? Yeah, it's a lot of tumult. Yeah, that's like a three or four mult.

Yeah. So I think Johnson's one who's molting and that caucus is going to eat them alive. Yeah. I mean, but you know how now they're going into this budget in which they're going to have to trade cuts in Medicaid, which is death and, you know, for them versus, you know, to pay for tax cuts under the rules of the, of, of, of that they're operating under in the, in the house and Senate. Um,

Um, what do you do now? What do you do if you're a, if you are a swing state Republican on the one hand, uh, they wanted to, it was suggested to Trump that they raise taxes, uh,

on, you know, that they restore the upper tax rate that they cut in 2000 on their wealthy. Yeah. Don't don't let the tax cut expire because all the clock on people that, and you can argue 800 K up a million up or whatever to capture a bunch of revenue and try to blunt the issue. I think there's some smart, this is like Lindsey Graham's abortion thing, you know, very clever, but hard to,

move through the culture. Trump said no. And if he said yes, then all of those right-wing folks in the House Freedom Caucus would vote for a lot of them. The budget hardliners would say, no, we're not going to raise taxes.

And so this got rejected. No, no. They're in a vice. There's another one. I had a member talk to me the other day saying, I guarantee you we got three of us who are ready to take the plunge and blow up the budget over Ukraine aid. He gave me three names, too.

One of them I don't trust. You know, that's the problem we've talked about before. When it's this tight and you start losing your numbers and people start thinking survival, you've got these little caucuses that break out. There are 28, I'll be very quick, 28 Republican districts with 200,000 auto manufacturing jobs on the U.S. side. Oh, here we go again. No, no. But, you know, when it's only three votes and your numbers are collapsing and you think you're on a suicide path,

People start thinking like Jesse James. I got to hold this thing up to get my little thing to survive. It's just a different psychology when King Kong suddenly is limping and his hair is on fire and it's not quite the same King Kong of six months ago. And King Kong is saying to you, we must have this big, beautiful bill and we must cut taxes. I need you to die. We must cut taxes on the rich.

but also we really don't want you to cut Medicaid because the white house political shop understands how bad that is. So the white house political shops like say, don't cut Medicaid. If you're in the house, you're like, what do I, I'm not supposed to cut. I can't, I can't raise taxes and you guys don't want us to cut Medicaid. Where do you expect the money to come from? The excruciating impossible nature of this is going to become clearer and clearer. So this is another kind of complicating factor in an already complicated and

And one of the reasons, David, to go back to your earlier question, one of the reasons why it's so hard to imagine how he gets out of the tailspin, because this is another giant thing that's going to consume the entire legislative agenda is this bill. There is nothing else in terms of what he's trying to pass through Congress. And this could go on for months and it's not going to, it's going to be really ugly. You know what it's, and you know what we're going to see because he thinks these are palliatives. We're going to see crazier and crazier bills.

executive orders completely and smoke bombs change the channel you know he's just gonna keep feeding chum to the yeah eating chum and and and hoping that both the media and the opposition will chase these rabbits down a hole and take attention away from uh the economy and some of these what do we think troops in greenland by july 4th

Did I hear David use the word the opposition? No, no. I do want to get to that, but we should just say a word on Ukraine. One of the things that Trump promised again and again and again is that he'd solve the war in 24 hours. Putin has played him like a Stradivarius.

And, you know, he also said he'd stop the war in Gaza, which is raging. We're actually now in, as you point out, Mike, we're fighting the Houthis. So we're actually more engaged now than we were before he came along. I mean, it just it's it's pretty remarkable. But what happens here? What you know, it really feels like.

Like Putin, I mean, Zelensky and Trump conferred at the Pope's funeral, where, by the way, ironically, Zelensky was appropriately dressed in a black suit, and Trump, who was complaining about how Zelensky dresses, was not. Trump's in a blue suit. Trump's the only world leader in a blue suit. Also, by the way, big applause for Zelensky among the world leaders, and dead silence for Trump. Yeah, that's a key point. Yeah, they snubbed Trump totally.

Total snub. Crickets for Trump. Putin is just like the alien in Independence Day. You know, we can become friends. We can help you. What do you want? Want you to die? Putin is real simple. I want total victory. What do you want, Putin? How'd you enjoy the lunch?

I want total victory. And he's just going to keep going. The deal they're trying to get is reward Putin by letting him keep everything he's taken. But if the Ukrainians don't have a security guarantee, I mean, it's just, you know, and Trump will never do that because he hates Ukraine and he's on Team Putin. Yes, his deal includes no NATO.

And even when they give it and even when they reward Putin, Putin comes back and says, I'd like some more, please. It's like I also need international recognition of the crowd, the fact that we've taken over Crimea and it's our it's ours. Do you guys think this has political any political import back here? Yes, some because it's more failure for Superman. Superman can no longer lift locomotives. So the failures will start to stack up. And that kills his other narrative of the tough action man who gets stuff done.

Everything's worse. A doge under Elon and Trump is going to cost more than it saved. You know, we're in this bizarro thing, and it all chips away at Trump. And now who's the tougher guy? Putin, obviously. Trump's the stooge. He's the sucker. He got played. Not good for Trump's narrative. Okay, then let's take a break right here, and we'll be right back.

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No paw deal. Turning to the opposition. There is one. Hey, guess who's got even worse poll numbers than Donald Trump? The Democratic Party. But there's a reason for that, which is that Democrats have soured on Democrats because I think there's a big view in the Democratic Party that democracy is crumbling and that

The response has been inadequate. And I'm like on the side of this guy is self-immolating. The economy is the thing. So, you know, but there are people who have a different point of view, including the governor of my own state, a friend of mine, a guy I like and respect, but he's obviously running for president and he was in New Hampshire the other day. And, you know, so feeding chum to the base is not just...

A habit of Trump's. Let's listen to this bite. Time to stop apologizing when we were not wrong. Time to stop surrendering when we need to fight. Our small businesses don't deserve to be bankrupted by unsustainable tariffs.

Our retirees don't deserve to be left destitute by a Social Security Administration decimated by Elon Musk. Our citizens don't deserve to lose health care coverage because Republicans want to hand a tax cut to billionaires. Our federal workers don't deserve to have, well, a 19-year-old doge bro called Big Balls destroy their careers.

Autistic kids and adults who are loving contributors to our society don't deserve to be stigmatized by a weird nepo baby who once stashed the dead bear in the backseat of his car. You know, I like JB. I voted for him seven times last cycle. Yes, yes. It's been a while. He's fast on his feet and there's a big vacuum for somebody like that. But I'm with you. The Democrats...

They're like the Russian generals complaining about all the retreating until Zhukov told them, you know, winter's coming in 60 days. So, you know, we got a plan here. But in internal democratic politics, they want a fighter. And I think there's an opening for him. And he's not Whitmer. He's doing the anti-Whitmer. In that speech, I think he attacked Putin.

Democrats for taking the advice of political consultants, which is a line that political consultants always insert into these speeches because... Right. The bumper sticker is no bumper sticker. You're going to run against politics.

I think ultimately it may be a good 28 strategy, or at least it appears that way now. I'm not sure it will be by then. That's not necessarily going to be the thing then. And the points he's making are all legitimate and valid points. The question is whether the strategy that he is attacking Democrats for pursuing is

is the wrong strategy. I think it's probably the right strategy. You do have to fight everything he's talking about in the forums where you can fight them. But this is a communications question.

And don't you want the focus on the thing that is most driving voters? This is how Democrats lost the election, you know, because they emphasize democracy, an issue I feel, you know, desperately concerned about. And I did during the election. But that's not what was driving voters. Right. Totally. But remember, Pritzker, you know, I agree totally with you, but.

Pritzker is not really doing this to, like, guide the Democratic Party to victory. He's trying to get out of 2 percent and become somebody. And then so this is about him breaking through. I like that feisty guy just to get into the hunt. Later, what the Democrats run on and what Pritzker said to be somebody they've heard of in the early primary states are really different things.

This is visible, invisible primary stuff. I had a slightly different reaction to Pritzker, which is not very different, but it's slightly different, which is, you know, like, Democratic Party has a long run, a long, now long-term, pre-presidential election cycles set of problems about how they have lost the working class, how they've lost men, how they've lost their connection to key parts of their coalition, and

In addition to whatever communications you're going to do to keep the spotlight on Trump and his failures, um,

It would, I think history suggests that like some deeper, more far reaching discussions of like what the democratic party is for should be going on. And I don't see any sign of that. The, the, you know, the Pat Healy had the, like the four, the four founders of the democratic leadership council on it, did an interview with them in the times, which was really instructive because all those, because those people, Elaine K market out from, and, and will Marshall and, and, uh, uh, who was, who was the fourth one? Bill Galston. Yeah. You know, basically we're saying number one,

the party has to actually reexamine what it believes in and not be afraid of internal disagreements and say things that are unpopular to some portions of the democratic community.

professional class and the base. And what I hear JB Pritzker there doing is just saying exactly what, what, what the most online Democrats want to hear. And there's, and that's fine. I mean, you're right, Mike, he's trying to, nobody knows who he is. He's trying to find a place. He's trying to get in the show. Sure. I get that. I get that. But in the long run, just,

saying stuff that, you know, trying to be a much richer Bernie Sanders AOC right now in the Democratic Party is not. He's not doing that, John, because he's AOC and Bernie Sanders are at least out there

focused on economics and focused on what people have been disillusioned with Democrats about. The fact is the Democrat Party we've talked about a million times here is the party of working people who came to be seen by many working people as a party of the elites and institutions. Right. That has to be examined. The reasons for that. And then the question is, after this teardown that Trump is doing, what are you going to build?

Are you going to just go back to what you had or are you going to build something new?

that's more responsive to people's needs, that's more resilient to big money and to bureaucratic capture. That's what Democrats need to be talking about. David, are you saying that you think, just to be clear, do you think AOC and Bernie are doing that and J.B. Pritzker is not? I think AOC and Bernie are closer to doing it. Their link to the sort of identity politics of the left is a problem.

Although Bernie's not as linked to the identity politics of the left as AOC is. Right. She is. She is. I think notionally they're in the right direction. And I have to say, you know, I get shit for this all the time. And Murphy, you can jump on if you want to. Mike, get your shovel ready. Get your shovel ready. One of the most interesting stories in American politics is the evolution of AOC. She has really matured as a politician. She's become a lot more...

I think she's strategically very, very smart. I saw her. I think I said this to you. I think I played it on the show some weeks ago in one of these rallies when she said, you know, she she hit Trump for victimizing vulnerable people. But she said then she said, but if you have a problem about, you know, trans women in sports, go talk to the NCAA.

Go talk to your local athletic association. That is not what we should be discussing on the floor of the U.S. Senate. We should be talking about how we get people health care they can rely on. And that was such a smart thing to say. Oh, she's crafty. You know, I look at her like Pelosi, but I take your point of message. I would look at it like this.

One, it's good that they're all out there with different things. The Democratic Party needs a vigorous debate, not just sit around pearl-clutching. I look at it as a four-quadrant— We do that, though, you know. Oh, that's—literally, the donkey ought to go, and it ought to be somebody, you know, pearl-clutching, shaking, and watching MSNBC. So, all right, let me do the quadrants, because I think this is what's emerging. One quadrant is the get-it-done Gretchen Whitmer thing.

I think she probably has to be at Selfridge Air Force Base in Macomb County when Trump makes some phony promise to keep it open. So she's like chained to Trump on the get it done thing. That's going to be tricky. But down the road, who knows? Second quadrant, the lefties.

AOC is better than Bernie at it, and she's glib and interesting, and there's still plenty of DEI built into that. Third quadrant, which is Pritzker, which is I'm a tough guy, and I'm going to kick him in the ass Chicago style. Just wants a personal fight with the guy. I'm a real billionaire, and that's been his shtick all along. Fourth quadrant that could be really powerful, and you're going to chuckle at this, but keep an eye on Newsom because Newsom, for all the stumbling with the podcast, is

Newsom can sell the future. I swear, I thought you were going to say Gina Raimondo. I'm seeing her today. She's doing an event with me at the University of Chicago. I'll send her your love, Mike. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, my valentine. The future quadrant, nobody's grabbed yet, but Newsom from California where everything happens first.

Looks future, new, not from D.C. I don't know if he can execute it, but that quadrant moving to a general with an agenda of what we're going to do for you rather than ruin the country and democracy. There is power there, I think, undeveloped. He definitely represents the future of hair care products. There's no doubt about that. That's the typical East Coast snark that California. I'm from California. I'm from California. I like. Oh, no, we revoked your permit years ago. Look at that hair for Christ's sake.

This is just envy speaking, pure envy. Yeah, that's exactly right. That's a day. I'll cop to that. So let the fight go on. Let's let's see. I think he's a talented performer, but I think that he is a performer and in a business where authenticity is the coin of the realm. And more so than ever, the authenticity thing is the coin of the realm.

More so than ever. But they've all got an authenticity problem. I mean, Pritzker's a multi-billionaire. No, I know, but so is Roosevelt. I don't know that that makes—I don't know that that excludes him. You know, he's doing this ham sandwich routine. I honestly don't know who the answer is. I think it's unlikely, and JB has some advantage here because he comes from the middle of the country. I don't think a coastal elite candidate or someone who's viewed that way is going to be—

The answer for the Democratic. Well, that's up to Newsom to decide if he's coastal elite or he's tomorrow. Allow me just allow me just to float one thing to you guys. Let me ask you guys whether this makes any sense to you. I kind of like the fact that that some quite promising candidates like Westmore and and and Josh Shapiro have kind of been laying low.

Like they're not out there kind of, they don't seem to be kind of trying to rush. Other than getting his house, having to deal with his house being fired by. Well, yes, but it wasn't like you'd seen Josh Shapiro doing a lot of the kind of like being trying to be a really public. I kind of feel like,

They're they're biding their time. And I'm not sure that's the wrong thing to do and try to think about how to present how to be the future candidate, which is not running to the television cameras right now. Well, they also have those guys. Don't they have to run for reelection first, too? So that's another issue, which brings up a question about Pritzker.

He's a two-term governor and apparently is planning to run again for governor. Mistake. I think it's a big mistake. Dear God. Terrible. By the way, if you're governor of Illinois with the wackadoodle state finance, do you want to own a recession with crushing inflation?

tax revenue drops and everything and a massive pension design. No, no, no. Time to declare victory. Yeah. Pass your chips in, man. Sub sandwich routine. I agree with this. Again, I like him. I just think he's getting some bad advice on this one. But well, given the way voting works in Illinois, David, he probably is just hoping he can become the first governor ever to have more than 100 percent of the vote.

All right. Now everybody's jumping on the bandwagon here. I'm just playing from Mike's affection. I look forward to voting for him on five ballots in one year. President, senator, governor. By the way, you know, Dick Durbin announced his retirement as a senator. Who wins the primary? Who's the next Democrat? Pritzker and Tammy Duckworth jumped in and endorsed the lieutenant governor, Juliana Stratton, who's an African-American woman from Chicago, very progressive woman.

Rajak Krishnamoorthy, who's a congressman from the western suburbs, has $20 million in his treasury, which is a good place to start. And he's more of a center-left Democrat.

And the question is who else will get in there? There's, I have a candidate. Yes. Axelrod eliminate the middleman. Yeah. I pay high candidate prices. This is the new generation candidate Illinois needs right here. Yeah, exactly. Change to more of the same. Yeah. Integrity we can afford, but that'll be interesting. The composition of the primary is there are a couple of African-American women, members of Congress who are considering the race.

Obviously, that would complicate the primary for the lieutenant governor. And there's a lot of effort on the part of Pritzker and others to clarify

clear the field for her. So we'll see, but it's something to watch because winning that primary will almost certainly be election to the Senate. So, okay. Lots to talk about this. We're all wearing tuxedos by the way, because this is our a hundred day special. I've never seen a tuxedo with Evie jobs on it before, but we're very natty. You want one of these? You want one? I'll send you one of our cool fleeces here. If anybody was going to have Evie jobs in the tuxedo, you know who would be Mike.

Yeah, yeah. Is the only union member on this podcast. Oh, God. Come on. Come on. The SAG membership. Come on. This is what the union movement has come to. I'm in SAG, Writers Guild, all the tough guy unions. Okay. All right.

We've had a tremendous 100-day show, but guess what? We gab so much, no time for the mailbag. Oh, boo. But we'll all be back. Yeah. We'll recycle some of the questions we got this week, and we'll invite others, and we'll have a super mailbag. We could do a whole...

Do a whole episode just about the mailbag. We should do an all-mailbag episode sometime. This week, you've got the gas bags. Next week, the mailbag. All right. With that, thanks for tuning in. See you, guys. See you. Bye. Bye.