The Ol' Razzle Dazzle (with John Anzalone)
01:02:25 Share

Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy. You're going to consider pardoning even those who pleaded guilty to crimes, including assaulting police officers. Sometimes they say, here's your choice. You're not ruling it out. Look, I know the system. The system's a very corrupt system. They say to a guy, you're going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years. And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years they've been destroyed. And they're going to go to jail for two years.

But the system is a very nasty system. Okay. Let's move on. Yeah, I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases. Okay. But I'm going to be acting very quickly. Within your first 100 days? First day? First day. There we go, hackaroos. That is...

President-elect Donald Trump talking about the jailbirds of J6. By the way, I think J6 and the jailbirds would have been, and you coined that, Johnny Heilman, would have been a great moniker for an early 60s rock band. I think that is the right ring to it. And if you had Screamin' Jay Hawkins as the lead singer, or John Anzalone, our guest today, as the lead singer, John Anzalone and the Screamin' J6 jailbirds, that's a band I would go see. I like it. Yeah. I like it.

Yeah, maybe wearing three-cornered hats. Move in on Paul Revere and the Raiders a little. Yes, Johnny Anzalone, poster to the stars. A god, a god in our field. Good Democrat. And your single greatest credential, you, like I, are Michiganders from the great Wolverine State. So we've got so much to talk about. I think we've got to start.

With the 60... Excuse me, what am I saying? The Meet the Press interview. Well, that's what we just played. For anybody who didn't realize what that was, he's got a lot of airtime. That was Donald Trump. I mean, I was at that thing, Murphy, in Waco when he really kicked off the campaign. And that was the first time I'd ever seen the J6 choir. And you're at Waco, and Trump is playing a convict choir in the place of the national anthem. And I thought, man...

I, you know, is there anybody outside the base who wants to vote for somebody who's like talking about pardoning people who beat police officers with flagpoles? Apparently, apparently, apparently like, well, it's a thing to get into, but I got to say like of all the things I find inexplicable, that is one of the ones that I most find inexplicable because it used to be that we unelectable, you'd be unelectable in America. If you were like, I'm on the side of people who beat cops with flagpoles, like, you know,

You know, that's the one I can't understand. A lot of Trump's indiscretions and crazinesses and the people tolerate them. I understand why they do. But that's the one that I don't get. Like, hey, let's free the people who beat the cops. It's not as important as the price of eggs. I know that. And I think people think it was done. Yeah, people went to jail. It's over. On to the next thing, fire Biden. But, John, you talked to.

Through Insight Research, your polling company, your partners, you pester tens of thousands of Americans with polling phone calls. You listen to the pulse. What's your take on that? Why didn't that issue have more traction? Listen, first, just in terms of, I mean, if you're, you know, Susie Wiles and, you know, Chris Lasavita and Tony Fabrizio and all the, James Blair, all these talented people who just won an election.

Like you're hoping your boss can get off that, right? I mean, you're hoping that, I mean, this, it's like, it's different than 2016, 17, but it isn't, you know, in some ways there's an America and, and, you know, even some Dems who just hope that he sticks to transactional issues and gets things done. And there's some things that you can do in a bipartisan way. And clearly his staff,

Do the day I roll because they tried to back, you know, backtrack on some of that stuff as well. His spokesman did. You know, they're hoping that he's talking about, you know, cutting the deficit or energy policy or, you know, permitting or crypto regulation, anything. Right. Anything that can, you know, be be kind of, you know, stemming the flow of immigrants, et cetera, et cetera.

And so, you know, they hope he gets off this type of stuff because it doesn't do him any good. But it didn't seem to do him much harm. You know, it resonated with some folks. Yeah, but here's the thing is, they weren't elevating this in paid communication in the campaign. I think that's the case. I think the Democrats had trouble trying to figure out how to engage a PTSD about Donald Trump. That's a different topic.

You know, whether it was January 6th, whether it was the criminal indictments, whether it was his behavior, whether it was whatever, whatever, whatever. That's a difficult thing to do. I'm not being critical. You know, I think they had time to figure it out, but I don't think that in any way.

this kind of, you know, you know, balance, if you will. Hey, his word cloud was fix the economy versus all the bad behavior that he brought to the table and the anxiety that he brought to people when he was actually president. And they, they picked, you know, we lived with it. Well, now let me just ask a question as upon a four, this is like a, the future forward part of the, of the podcast here. So, so I understand all of that. That part I get,

But let's just think about what's about to happen. If Trump actually does what he just said, if he goes and starts letting people who are insurrectionist convicts out of jail on day one –

forget about paid media. It's he, we're now in the world where he's president United States and there's going to be wall to wall, free media, earned media, whatever you want to call it. It's going to be a massive story. First day is in his second term. Donald Trump frees the J six jailbirds and people will be opposed to it. So that's my question. That's my question. My question is what is the, what are the public opinion? I get it.

If we look at an issue like that and say, this is an issue that's not very popular, but they don't amplify it and people have PTSD, so it doesn't have much salience. I get that political dynamic. But it's going to be elevated in an extraordinary way if Trump makes good on that promise. What does that do to him in terms of public opinion dynamics if that is really the centerpiece of what he does on day one? Yeah.

I think that, again, I think there's something like 60 percent of Americans would be against this, pardoning these people. 60 percent were for people who did this type of activity, serving jail time. And again, it just takes away from –

his core economic message, which he should be doing every day. And he should learn from the Biden administration that you got to go and do that right and make sure that the American people see it as a priority every day. Right. And everything else is everything else is just taking you off your game.

The question to me is, will things ever kind of revert to political mean as far as the laws of gravity? Trump has perfected the politics of the primal scream. People were mad, you know, 70% wrong track. They wanted to fire Biden. Price of eggs. You know, all the kind of pain factors. And he just...

threw a bomb every day. It was undisciplined to have the process coverage of the campaign was, oh, his staff are worried he won't get on message. And we've all come up in normal politics where all that stuff's really important. Instead, he just did the yowling and it worked like a charm for him. He got a ton of votes. But can we just unpack that for a second, Mike? I think that he was undisciplined to the opinion elite.

No, I agree with this. But his campaign, listen, I watched these guys. I was a spectator in the 2024 election. My partner, Molly Murphy and Matt Hogan, did some of the Harris point and were proud of that. But I was just a spectator. And their campaign,

meaning transactionally what you do in those seven battleground states in paid media and messaging was incredibly disciplined. Yeah, no, that was the only thing they could control because they couldn't control Trump. So, okay, we're going to hammer her on. I'm not different than Biden. And,

And, you know, we get all excited about him making some, you know, remark about Puerto Ricans or whatever, whatever. And it doesn't mean anything. Well, no, no. But here I'm this was my wind up to a bigger pitch. OK, my point is Trump does Trump. Trump's Trumpiness plays a lot better than the media elite thinks, because there's a big bunch of frustration in America of all the liberal stuff.

culturally and every other thing. So now he's going to come in as president, to Johnny's point. And day one is going to be the J6 jailbirds. But I think there'll be 20 things on day one and day two and day three. It'll be the same blitz he's trying to do with cabinet appointments. Flood the zone. Flood the zone with bullshit, as Steve Bannon famously said. Right, right. So there'll be an avalanche. But

Trump's a guy who was elected in the 70% wrong track to shake up Washington and make things like they were when he was president economically for the average voter, who has fond memories of that time, not thinking about J6, thinking about their car payment or whatever it is.

So his expectations are sky high. So for a while, I think waving the bloody shirt will work because people hate Washington and they love to see Trump punish it. They don't like the lefty stuff that much. But then after 100 days of that dysfunctional cabinet, silly feuds, incompetent people running around. Meanwhile, the world is getting much more complicated at a rapid speed. Syria, Korea. What...

What does Trump say? You know, I think it's going to be the bumpiest hundred days ever. And there'll be a lot of pearl clutching by the media elite. Oh, my God, he wore the wrong kind of shoes to the United Nations. But in a wider way, people have huge expectations that Magic Man is going to come in and fix politics now.

and make cost of living less, and prices will go down. And none of that's going to happen. Instead, we're going to have a war on dreamers. We're going to have him talking about jailing Mary Cheney like he did on Meet the Press.

I don't know. I think, excuse me, Liz Janney, Mary's an old friend of mine. So my larger point is the razzle-dazzle wall of bullshit thing that worked so well to an angry electorate during the campaign, now he's the guy who actually has to be responsible for running stuff and will be held accountable like Biden was. So...

I don't know. I think this thing could have a shorter half-life than people are assuming. Well, I mean, I think that's the $64 million question, right? We know the expectations are high because, again, literally his word cloud as a candidate was he'll fix the economy.

So every day that he's not doing something about that, you know, he again, he's off message and and he has or quite frankly, you know, deportations and immigration, et cetera. But again, he can have small successes. I mean, who the hell knows? I mean, if he just concentrates on.

on what if he you know says that the administration says it on the criminals and felons etc etc and that's his focus and he's not you know uh you know bringing you know sending people back who've been here for 17 years or as small businessmen from you know allentown right and part of the community um then he can have a certain success and a facade on something like the border uh

The economy is a little differently, but what I think we have learned about what people like about him is his strength. So him threatening China and Mexico and Canada with tariffs will absolutely play. And I think the one thing that really could play, again, is cutting the deficit, right? I mean, he's not... His election wasn't about...

reforming politics. That was the first one. Now everyone kind of understand he's just about, you know, he's a political animal. But the thing that he has, which we haven't had in a long time, is authenticity. I mean, you know, that still goes a long way in politics. Oh, yeah. No, no. He's very transparent about everything awful about him, which is both

effective and deeply troubling. But how does he... He's not a fiscal conservative. That's the reason a lot of us old school conservatives don't like him. He's a blank check, whatever you want. I heard John Anzalone just say something about deficit reduction. I mean...

maybe deficit reduction would be popular. Does anybody on this, on this call on this podcast right now, I think there's a chance in hell that Donald Trump's going to preside over a significant or any deficit reduction. No, no, but he's going to talk about it and there's going to be hearings and there's going to be there potentially there potentially could be some residual positive on that. And, you know, quite frankly, listen, I grew up, you want to talk about Michigan. I'm going to go way back. Mike Murphy, Howard will be, do you remember how, what, how Howard will be? Oh yeah. Yeah. I,

Jimmy Margolis, right? Yes, Jimmy Margolis was the chief of staff. And Howard Wolpe got famous because he got a discharge position, a petition or whatever they call it, to kill the super collider in Texas, which was billions of dollars. Right.

Boondoggle. It was the superconducting supercollider. Thank you. I appreciate that. But my point is that it doesn't take much. You're saying symbolically, Elon will say, I found 1,800 limousines for bureaucrats. It's my old sell the state helicopter trick from Michigan. Can I just inject a dose of just level setting on this, right? Trump went through four years as president and never was above 50% in his approval rating ever. He was really actually never above about 46%.

retroactively in the course of this campaign yeah he got he got up he got north of 50 for just barely nosed over it however and again i take nothing away from the victory that he won i mean it was it was uh thorough it's not overwhelming it wasn't a landslide the guy ended up a little south of 50 uh in terms of the popular vote beat harris um by a point and a half or whatever and

I, what kind of John, I mean, what kind of a, we're talking about all these things. These things are very popular and he really resonates. And I'm like, he resonates. He's not a, is there a world where we imagine Donald Trump is a 56 at 56, 54, 53. I mean, even in the high forties, or do you imagine the next four years where Trump is, where he was the first four years bumping along between 43 and 45. And that's fine.

But it's not like Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton at their peaks where they're, you know, that's not none of those guys. I actually think Biden's numbers are instructive because he ended the campaign in 2020 with a 54% favorable rating. I think his highest job rating was in the early honeymoon stages before inflation kicked in was 58. The one thing that I think is important on, again, the expectations level, which I don't think he'll meet, but

The fact is, is that his retrospective job rating was always hovering right there around 51%, which I always believed was, you know, his ceiling. People kept saying, oh, he's hit his ceiling at 47. No, you know, your ceiling is your job rating. But his job rating, John, on the economy was in the mid to high 50s. And so that's kind of potentially...

Well, that's the golden memory that was the rocket fuel for holding their nose and voting for him. So, I mean, did you see the conference board today? For example, the conference, like CEOs are all ecstatic, right? Yes. Hey, they like tax cuts and deregulation. Great. Let's go. Where do we get tariffs? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if CEOs are ecstatic,

you know, looking to the future are more optimistic, you know, that plays into their plans for their companies, et cetera, et cetera. So again, can Trump fuck it all up by putting a 25% tariff and people understand how tariffs work? Yeah. Maybe your answer is this is going to be deficit reduction. But if you think back to the beginning of the first Trump term,

He came in and there was still this moment. When he first came in, there was this moment where he wasn't really a Republican. He wasn't really a Democrat. He was associated with most people as being a name that they thought of as a builder. His name was on buildings and he was a tycoon, right? I always thought that that moment, if he had, and there was some commentary about this at the time, but if Trump had come in and said trillion dollar infrastructure package,

It would have been, he would have could have been a juggernaut. It's like every Democrat would have had to support a giant hue. I'm going to rebuild America, a trillion dollar infrastructure program. Democrats all would have voted for it as a big jobs program. Yeah, no, no, I agree, but it's not the world Trump operates. No, I understand. I understand Mike, but my question to both of you guys is, is if you were now sitting here fully four years later and you had Trump's ear and you said, listen,

I know this isn't your instinct, but if you really want to be a juggernaut, if you want to be, if you really want to prove everybody that you're different and that you could be a colossus because you have on this wave of good feeling, this is what you should do. Here's the popular thing you could do that would really feel like that Democrats would have to vote for that would just shock the shit out of people because no one expects it from you. And it would be a giant winner. What would that be?

Well, it's what I – I'm sure at some point we'll talk about resetting for Democrats. It's the things that the Democrats should be doing, right? Is there a bill? Is there a proposal? No, no, no. Let me outline a few of those things because, again, I think the difficult thing when you're in this –

cost of living is a problem. Now he gets in some ways a pass because I don't think people believe that prices are going to go down. They just don't want them to go up. They're going to, they're going to give him some, you know, acrobatic pass on this, but there's things that you could do, for example,

medical debt. The Democrats did student debt. Well, guess what? Just imagine if they had done medical debt, which we hear about all the time in focus groups, right? People are all about erasing medical debt, you know, things like home health care so seniors can stay in their homes, things like child care, which we've never ever fixed, et cetera, et cetera. I actually think that these little transactional things could be really big things.

And we've forgotten in politics to take a look at those type of things that send signals to people that were on your side. And they're non-traditional things for Republicans. I hope Democrats also do them and start talking about them. And I think that housing is another thing. And he knows housing. But, you know, Democrats are going to have to make a –

a really interesting decision in the house and the Senate is that yes, there's a certain resistance when he does outrageous and stupid things, but you know what? They're also in the triple minority and there's some benefit to finding the things that you can do in a bipartisan way to actually maybe get things done. Yeah. Yeah. But it's all through the looking glass. I mean, I agree. You do a buildup American plan, et cetera. It's not Trump. Trump's going to pick a million grievance fights.

Uh, and it's going to cloud the message and it's going to burn the clock. And the old memories at Trump, which was better economy are going to be supplanted by new members, which is fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting, and who knows what will happen abroad. So I, I agree there's a blueprint, but you know, every time you give Trump a smart blueprint, he rolls it up and tries to stab somebody in the eye. Yeah, I get it. I get it. It,

and we don't know whether we're dealing with the old Trump, which is just going to be the old Trump or the old, there's going to be a new Trump. But the fact is, is that you look, hold on or worse Trump, but you look at someone like Thune and you kind of have to be impressed initially that this guy has a package for the first quarter or in second quarter of 2025. And I think that he's a transactional guy, right? And, and,

I always find that interesting, too, because I think one of the ways that people underestimated the Biden administration was there was Steve Ruscetti and the legislative people doing all this hard work getting important legislative stuff passed while other stuff is going on in the podium of the presidency. And it'll be interesting to see whether Boone can kind of get –

the Trump White House and the House kind of focus that, hey, we got to do these things, right? Yeah, no, I agree. Thune was a vote for normalcy. Thank God it was a secret ballot to pick the Senate leader. God knows it would have been Don Jr. You got to also remember the House is a two vote margin, it looks like. Yeah. And that means no margin. And that means very limited grip there. First place it could fall apart. Did Don Jr. go to the Senate recently? Did I miss that?

No, no. Trump would have just declared Marshall on Twitter. No, I just declared it. Yeah, that's how you MAGA. Come on. You got to start thinking like the new reality. I'm sorry, Mike. I'm sorry. Let's stop for a minute and listen to a word from one of our fine sponsors. Hey, everybody. John Howman here. Newsflash. This podcast, Hacks on Tap, is sponsored by The Washington Post.

If you listen to Hacks on Tap, you almost certainly care about what's going on in the world. If you don't care about what's going on in the world, I have no idea why you'd care about politics. And if you didn't care about politics, I don't know why you'd be listening to Hacks on Tap. Obviously, you care about politics and you care about the world. And listening to us is a great way to understand a certain element of the world from a certain vantage point. But if you want to get even more greater, broader, wider, deeper coverage of our crazy world, you...

really ought to subscribe to The Washington Post. When you go to thewashingtonpost.com slash hacks, H-A-C-K-S, washingtonpost.com slash hacks, our listeners, you can get an exclusive deal to subscribe to The Post for just 50 cents, 50 cents a week for your first year. Last time that I read The Washington Post, that was about 10 minutes ago, getting ready to do an interview with a very important person in the National Democratic Party, one of its leaders. And there's a story about that guy in The Washington Post just now. I read it and man, was it good.

I can't tell you who it was, but, uh, cause I don't want to give away my, my secrets of how I prep for doing interviews. But, uh, I gotta tell you, there's never a time when I'm interviewing a politician or a major public figure, someone in public policy, someone in the campaign game. When I don't go and search the Washington post to see what's been written about that person, uh, because the reporters of the post are fantastic and they, uh, they know things that even I don't know. It's hard to believe. Uh,

So that's, you know, one of the many things about the Post that resonates with me. The other thing is not only are the reporters great on stuff that I'm pretty au fait with, they're also, they got great critics, they got great sports writers, they got all kinds of great stuff going on in the Post. It's a really, really fantastically written paper, and it has the feel of our nation's capital always imprinted on it in a really deep and indelible way. The Washington Post app makes it easy for me to stay up to date with the latest news, especially political news. It makes it easy for me to save and share stories and follow my favorite news.

reporters, and other writers. The Washington Post even offers a cool feature for audio lovers like you. You can actually listen to the articles in addition to reading them or instead of reading them. So you can tackle your to-do list and catch up on the news at the very same time. So now more than ever, it is vital to stay up to date on the world. So go to thewashingtonpost.com slash hacks to subscribe for just $50.

per week. That's four bits per week, shaving a haircut for your first year. That's 80% off the Washington Post typical author. So this is truly a steal and a steal that you will not want to stop. Ha ha ha. Once again, that's thewashingtonpost.com backslash hacks to subscribe for just 50 cents, just 50, 50 cents every week for your first year.

Hey, let's pivot to the Democrats. Wait, wait, wait. Let me get one last question in before we do that. I want to do one last Trump question. Mike, I want to ask you in particular here. Okay? Because we've been spending, you know, everybody's been spending a lot of time on these crazy cabinet picks. And rather than, like, getting in the weeds on each one, I just want to ask you this question, right? You know, the Pete Hegseth drama rolls on.

We've got Kash Patel in the shoot. Here's the next big controversy to come down the pike. You've got Bobby Kennedy Jr. In fact, let's just play one more piece of sound here. I want to play this. Here's Trump on Meet the Press talking about...

About Bobby Kennedy, his nominee for – Robert F. Kennedy Jr., about his nominee for Health and Human Services Secretary, where Kristen Welker asks him about the vaccine, but the fact that Kennedy's anti-vax, and what does Trump think about that? Listen to what he has to say.

Let me ask you about RFK Jr. He has obviously talked about his skepticism of vaccines. He's expressed opposition to childhood vaccines. Do you want to see childhood vaccines eliminated? If they're dangerous for the children, look. So possibly? When you look at some of the problems, when you look at what's going on with disease and sickness in our country,

Something's wrong. Are you talking about autism? Well, if you take a look at autism, go back 25 years. Autism was almost non-existent. It was, you know, one out of 100,000. And now it's close to one out of 100,000.

Well, I mean, what's happening? I mean, okay, so beyond the lies and factual inaccuracies in that whole thing, it's just an illustration, right? RFK Jr.'s Health and Human Services Secretary is a ludicrous and dangerous proposition. Can you imagine anybody worse if there was another pandemic that you'd want at the head of HHS? No. But, Mike, my question for you is,

It's more Trump chaos. Every one of these guys and gals who's been nominated is a lot of them are creating huge controversy and other administrations. They would be, you know, they would consume, they would, they'd be scandal scandalous to the point that they would be inflict huge damage on the, on the president elect and,

Does any of that stick to Trump or is this just like reality TV at this point? Everyone's like, well, here comes the Trump crazy, you know? Well, I think over time it does because in the smart version of the Trump verse, you're sitting around the room saying, all right, nice con job. We convinced everybody happy days are here again with me.

We need some killers in these agencies to deliver things or over time we're going to boil in the same wrong track that killed Biden. But what he's doing instead is a seat of the pants, pick buddies and Fox green room regular. So I've gone into disaster triage mode as a card carrying deep state elitist here. Remember the old Republican Party where we like smart people in charge.

Hegseth is having a little comeback. I don't know what will happen. He's obviously a terrible nominee, but he'll do limited damage. The uniformed military in the Pentagon, I've worked there as a consultant. They will eat him for lunch. They will give him a plane and tell him to fly around and inspect aircraft carriers. And he'll be very busy, and he'll let the building run wild. Not good for Trump, not great for America, but his damage ability is limited, and he won't last long.

Tulsi Gabbard is terrifying. But on the other hand, DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, was layered over CIA years ago. It wasn't popular. So the Mandarins of the CIA will do what they love to do, which is never share any information. They barely give out anything now. This will be an excuse to hold it on. They're probably happy. So damage, but somewhat controllable. RFK, on the other hand,

Can get into the real machinery. And this is one, one place where there's actually a huge, powerful political lobbying group with great grip on the Republican Senate. That's horrified, which is the pharma industry. Cause this guy, he'll have some power in there to really screw up. Now, maybe some people argue, well, if he paralyzes it and the bureaucrats and the professional science people are their own revolt, you know, it'll sleep a little and that we can survive that. But I, I,

I mean, he has crank ideas and he's infecting Trump with them. The other two that are really scary is you guys know Kash Patel, who's high on the score for bananas. And also the FBI is a place that is powerful and important. And you'd hate to corrupt that culture because it'll take decades to clean it up. That's terrifying. And then this guy voted OMB. You know, nobody knows what OMB is. Well, OMB stands for Really Damn Powerful Agency that reaches everywhere.

And that really could be the Trump shock collar to do a lot of

disruptive things in the administration. And he is not dumb, this vote guy, and he knows how to play that piano. So, you know, you wonder, I think a lot of them are going to get through. So I see it as a, now a damage control scenario. John, what do you think about this? I mean, so much of the political of political physics has been turned on its head in the last, you know, 20 years of our careers, you know, listen, I think that the

the congressional hearings are going to be, you know, with these nominees are going to be fascinating, right? And they're going to lead the news and it's not going to be, it's not going to be a good look. I think that when you take a look overall, you know, Bobby Kennedy has the potential to impact negatively more real people in America than

than any of these nominees, including kind of just the misinformation, right? Because they do put doubt in people's minds about, oh my God, should I get my kindergartner vaccines? And that's a really big thing, not to mention all the other agencies that he touches.

Come for the measles, stay for the smallpox. Yeah, exactly. Welcome to the Middle Ages. Yeah, yeah. But do I think that real Americans worry about, you know, the defense secretary or NDI and all that type of stuff? Probably not. They probably think that there's other people who are going to be checks and balances on them. But I just think what's going to be exposed here in the congressional hearings is going to be, you know, just really bad TV for them if they're, again, at the same time, they're not doing stuff.

on economics to kind of step over it.

Let's pivot. Let's pivot to these Democrats. Yeah, let's do that. Let's go, Mikey. Get in there. Well, let's get into the future. Now, first of all, I'll do my little quick rant. We've had two post-election things, and I feel sorry for the Biden people. They worked really hard. 70%—excuse me, the Biden slash Harris people. The Harris people, yeah. 70% wrong track means the country can hardly wait to hit the ejector seat. So, shocker, they lost. I thought it was a good, not great campaign. There were mistakes. I thought they bungled Michigan.

But they had to then do the walk of shame. First, it was our friends over at Pod Save America podcast talking about what happened. Then they had to go up for the Harvard thing. And I'm glad Harvard does that. I'm a former IOP fellow. Yeah, I was there. It's a really important event. It really is. On the other hand, it's kind of a bit of a rigged deal. Because I know for a fact that some of the people in the last week said,

who are now saying we knew all along, we're like, God, if they'd only listened to me, we'd be screwed up. So it's an opportunity for the winners to get more credit than they deserve and the losers to get beat up a little more than they deserve. But there's been a bit of a grassroots Democratic howl

on both events that there wasn't enough contrition and the leadership of the campaign didn't do what I have to say I think would have been proper, which is we clearly screwed some stuff up. We should have done Rogan. We should have pushed the candidate to do it. You know, ooh, we missed an event in Newcastle, Pennsylvania. No, no. There are places where I think they could admit mistakes and it would let some of the air out.

And, you know, so anyway, that's my take on it. I'd say move on to where the party goes. But some of the knuckle wrapping, I think, for not fessing up to the fact that when you lose, there got to be mistakes. You got to fess them up. I can go on for, you know, an hour about some of the mistakes I've made on campaigns that didn't make it. But what do you guys think? John, you're the hard-edged journalist. And Anzo, you've been in the hot seat. No, listen, I think I don't think there's anything to add to what you just said. It's like when you lose a campaign.

you know, there's going to be things that you would have done different when you're sitting in that hot seat as in a, you know, very public place like Harvard. I was in the audience. I was watching it. It's just hard. Like you feel bad for them and, you know, but have your list of things that you probably would have done differently in retrospect. I think that's important. And if you're on the winning side, don't try to gloat too much. And I thought that, you know,

For me, he tried to control himself. Tony was fantastic. He's a good friend. We co-founded the Wall Street Journal poll together. We do all the AARP. Chris Lasavita was like the Marine. Tony would occasionally say, hold down. I thought all in all, they took pot shots. Chris Lasavita's first pot shot was at DeSantis, who did not send anyone.

So, I mean, it wasn't just all beaten up on. But look here, the reality is that way more people are going to be exposed to the Pfeiffer positive America thing, the IOP, which I also love. I'm a Kennedy School graduate myself. I'm a fan of that. The first one I ever went to was the 88 one, which was kind of an incredible thing because Susan Estris almost killed Roger Ellison in that event. I was like about 22. I was about 22 and I was like, holy shit. But

so I love that event, but really it impacts almost no one because it's not broadcast anywhere and et cetera. But the, but the pod safe thing was heard by a lot of people and a lot of Democrats listen to that podcast. And, and Anzo, here's my question is just, we can then talk about like really how, like what do we make of the whole election for the whole democratic party? But in this one specific area, um,

You know, Plouffe and Jen and others made the point accurately and repeatedly that the degree of drag on the Harris campaign, they had very little time and they had a lot of environmental drag. You know, as Mike talked about before, the wrong track number, the questions around the economy, all that kind of stuff. Totally fair, right? Yeah.

The question at the end, this is a tricky question to ask you given some of your history, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Just as a pure tactician, the thing where I thought they did not have an answer that was – and maybe they didn't have an answer because they didn't want to take a – they didn't want to say anything negative about Harris here was where Dan tried to get them to say –

if Joe Biden's approval rating and the wrong track number was such a huge fucking problem, did you not need to create more distance between yourself and Joe Biden, meaning Harris, create more distance between herself and Joe Biden. And I thought their answers on that were, were they, they kind of danced or, well, she didn't really want to say these things. And, and it's, you know, the,

there was a lot of hemming and hawing around the question of, and if, well, if we'd done that, there would have been a lot of relitigation in the press over whether she really had a different position. I listened to that and thought, you're basically telling me the core strategic problem with the campaign. The challenge you had to overcome was a 70% on track, wrong track number at a, at a, you're the vice president to a sitting president with an approval rating in the high thirties. And your answer to that, okay, well, what did you do about that? Well,

there wasn't really much we could do is not just an adequate answer. You could say our candidate was just unalterably opposed, but nobody really was, nobody took it on. So I guess I'm asking you whether you think they needed to do more. And if they did, could they have, yeah, they needed to, could they have, yes. But here's the thing for whatever,

At the end of the day, we've all been involved, Mike and I, in a lot of campaigns. And we're loyal people. You know, I met Joe Biden and did my first Biden for president when I was 22 years old. I'm going to be loyal to the guy to the very end. And the fact is that they're coming off a campaign and they're two weeks out of it. I'm talking about the

But hold on. There's not going to grow Kamala Harris under the bus, and I respect that, right? The fact is that it was her decision on The View to say that there was not – right? She created that herself, and there could have been a million different ways that you answer that question. And so I don't think it was incumbent upon the staffers or the advisers –

Um, to, you know, I mean, it's, it's incumbent upon, uh, the candidate and it didn't work out that way. Um, but I, I don't fault David Fluff or generally Dylan or Stephanie cutter from like, you know, throwing Kamala Harris under the bus two weeks after. Okay. Wait, John, don't misunderstand my question. I'm not attacking those guys for, for being, I'm saying, I'm saying it was not a satisfying answer to the, what I actually want to know, which is not,

I don't care how they perform on these postmortems. What I would like to understand better is what the dynamics were. If that was the central thing, what were the dynamics actually going on in the campaign that prevented her from doing it? Was it purely prevented her from doing what she needed to do? And my question to you is more kind of like not how did they perform? How did they perform? In the campaign itself,

How would you have solved for that riddle? It's hard. You're the vice president to the sitting president. In addition to your loyalty, it's hard to create distance in that situation. What would you do? I think they had a really good August and September, right? And part of the success there is

And what her word clouds were when people were getting to know her, interestingly, were things like she was a prosecutor, right? She was attorney general. She was taking on big fights. And I think that that's how you do the distance, right? I mean, she had a very short period to become her own attorney.

And I think the Trump campaign did a brilliant job of bringing her back in. If you saw the Bidenomics ad and the, you know, hidden her on the inflation and things like that, hidden her on the border czar stuff, et cetera. So I think one of the things that Molly Murphy had said, who is my brilliant partner, who was part of the polling team, was.

Again, saying what you might have done a little differently is probably elevated her biography. Because, you know, 107 days to get her known, to get her agenda out there, make a contrast, and protect herself in responses is a really hard thing to do. Well, she was still wearing lead overshoes, though. I mean, let me ask you guys one more backward question.

And then we can talk about future of the party for the rest of our time. Mike, what's your answer to that question? If you had been advising Kamala Harris and you said, hey, we have a big Joe Biden incumbency problem. We got to do something here. It's got to be dramatic. But obviously, we don't want to shit on our boss, the guy who made us vice president, put us in this position. What would you have advised her to do? Oh, I would have done the break. I mean, my main advice. Look, I went to a secret meeting I can't really talk about right after the disastrous debate. General Malley Dillon was there.

a lot of the anti-Trump Republicans were there at their invitation. And I made a run there. Look, the Biden was down to 50% favorable or 52% in LA County before this debate. Biden's dead. He can't win. You're going to have to do a switch sooner, the better, and it can't be Harris because that's just Biden all over again. And at that point I said, I think she's a terrible candidate. Now she was better candidate and I expected not better enough to do the insurmountable thing. And,

You know, Jen, to her credit, good, loyal staffer, smart person, came back strong at me. It would have to be Harris, though. You know, at that point, they were arguing a little bit that Biden is stronger, but not really. I mean, they weren't saying anything bad about the vice president. But the idea of doing a big switch with a mini primary that would have, yeah, there would have been less than 107 days, but somebody would have won and been a winner, which is a defining cue that Harris never had.

But as far as what I would have done in their situation or then drink heavily, I would have done the break. I would have said as vice president, I'm the loyal supporter. I'm proud of this president. We have the best domestic policy achievements. Here they are, bing, bang, bing, chipsack, blah, blah, blah. But as a candidate, it has to be my own vision. And so I'm going to build on this foundation. But yeah, of course, there'll be differences and bing, bang, bing.

I would have done it because I think they were doomed otherwise. It's just this often happens in campaign. John Anzo knows this. Yeah, I know. The thing you have to do is so tactically painful. You're like, well, not today. And then eventually it's never because you got to cut off your hand to win. And you're like, well, there's got to be another way. So you you struggle with little things to try to survive squaring an impossible circle.

And, you know, I get it. It's so hard to do. And I get it that it's much easier to talk about than do. But tactically trying to do improve Biden. I mean, look, I fell for the sauce near the end. I saw the vibe difference. And I thought, you know what? In a changed election, she's so different than Trump. Maybe that'll work for her. But the fundamentals of this thing were doomed from day one with her. Okay, gentlemen, we will be back in a minute, but we have to pay a few bills.

Hey, everybody. John Heilman here with some words from the sponsor of this episode, BetterHelp.

it's christmas time the holiday season whatever you celebrate hanukkah kwanzaa whatever it's the that time of year and uh i don't know about you but i love the holidays holidays are like there's a lot of scrooges out there who say they don't like the holidays i say to them bah humbug the holidays are awesome uh so many things to love chestnuts roasting on open fire jack frost nipping at your nose yuletide carols being sung by choirs and uh

even some really adorable people dressed up like Eskimos. Also my dog. You put the Roaring Fire, the chestnuts, and a really nice, big, excellent, well-aged bourbon in my hand. You get all that together. You know, that is Christmas for me. And...

it's awesome. It couldn't be better. And then it's over. Suddenly, as soon as it arrives, it's out the door and now you're in January and it's just cold and brutal and vicious and all the magic is gone. Here's the thing about therapy. Therapy, unlike Christmas, is always there. It's a way to bring yourself some comfort that

That never goes away. Even when the season changes, holidays go away, therapy sticks around. And along with therapy, all the great things that therapy brings, including that kind of comfort, that coziness, that warmth, that security, that sense of self-knowledge, that sense of inner peace, all the stuff that little Jack Frost nipping at your nose stuff from the holiday season. And so honestly, if you're thinking about starting a therapy, you really ought to give better help

try because it's entirely online. It's designed to be convenient and flexible and suited to your schedule. All you got to do is fill out a brief questionnaire. You'll get matched with a licensed therapist. And if you don't like the first one, you'll try a second. And if you don't like the second, you'll try a third. You can switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. So find comfort, find coziness, find warmth, find serenity this December with BetterHelp. This

Visit BetterHelp.com slash hacks today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash hacks. This is still backward looking, but kind of getting towards more towards forward looking. We have the election. On election night, you know, it looks like, you know, they've got all those red arrows pointing across in all the counties and there's all these kind of scare signs.

uh, statistics about Trump's gains and the demographic and the certain demographic groups and in the counties and all that stuff. Right. And everybody's like, wow, man, Trump really walled the Democrats. And then all the votes come in, you know, over time. And it turns out that, you know, Democrats picked up a seat in the house and, and they lost, they, the Senate candidates in the battleground States, other than, than Casey, you know, overperformed by overperformed Harris. They held on to, they won most of those seats. Um,

You know, there's this counter-argument, John, that has kind of come up now, which is, at first it was, man, we are fucked. We lost again to Donald Trump. We really need to do a root-and-branch reform of this party. We're out of touch with working-class voters. We're out of touch with black men. We're out of touch with Hispanics. We have these existential problems. And now there's another point of view in the party, which is sort of like,

hey, this wasn't a good election for us, but party-wise, we didn't do that bad. I mean, it's not a disaster. It's not like what we saw in the Democratic Party in 80, 84, and 88, where they lost three consecutive presidential elections by crushing blows, where the presidential candidates were in the 400 electoral vote region. And there's a lot of Democrats who are now like, you know what?

We had inflation. We got caught. The president got caught in a worldwide anti-inflation, any incumbent whirlwind. He got out too late. Harris never had time to catch up. We'll retake the house in 2026 and be off to the races. I'm not advocating that point of view. I'm saying that is, there's an ascendant view among some of the party that, that this other view of root and branch reform was hyperbolic. So where do you come down on how, how, what ails the Democrats and how bad is. So I come somewhere in the middle. Uh,

Because I think it's prudent to, you know, go and figure out why we're losing so many young people, right? Young males, young African-Americans, clearly Hispanics. And when everyone but seniors kind of recede, then you better go and do an autopsy and figure out whether, okay, was it just the short time span with this candidate versus what we have of

available to us in the future. So I think that's really important. At the same time, just a little bit on your, I don't know if it's your side of it, to put things in kind of a reality. You know, again, this pains me to say it because I'm a Biden guy, but if we had not had Harris, let's think this through.

And she hadn't brought the base back right to where a level setting again, when when President Biden was in the race, he was losing nationally to Trump by four or five points. And at the end of the day, you know, even the polls were dead even or whatever. If President Biden was the nominee, we very likely lose Alyssa Slotkin, Tammy Baldwin. Yeah.

Right. Nevada. I'm blanking, Jackie Rosen. Yeah. And probably Gallego considering the margin. So let's let's give Harrison credit for, again, the level setting of literally bringing back to levels that we needed to kind of reset the race, even though we lost at the very end.

But the fact is, is that we receded vote that we have to figure out. And is that because they made her unacceptable on a bunch of economic, border, and social issues? And can our future, which we have a great bench,

I mean, we've all been in this business a long time. But when I look at what's happening in the states and we're having such success with governors and a lot of senators, that's important. But when I take a look at who might run for president in 2028, you have Whitmer and Cooper

and Shapiro and Westmore and Warnock and Pritzker and Phil Murphy and Booker and Warner and Newsom and Buttigieg and Landrieu. We have a hell of a bench. And most of those are moderate Democrats who will not, you know, be able to

Be branded like Harris was branded. And I think and again, that's not being critical of her. She didn't have a choice. Like she was going to be the nominee. Right. And so, you know, the fact is, is that she ran for president in 19, you know, to the left of a lot of people in that race. And so she was exposed. A lot of the people that I just mentioned are exposed. Right.

No, no, the bench is a good point. The bench is a good one. And what's happening in states, whether it's Wisconsin with Evers, you know, or in Michigan with Whitmer and Cooper, and now Stein's going to be taken over in North Carolina. Warnock, I'm sorry, you know, Warnock and Georgia is a superstar. Westmore and Maryland is a superstar. You can go on and on. Let me be the contrarian, though. I'm going to push back a little on this. By all means. Yeah.

It's Michigan. Do it, Mikey. I want you to make the case for why MTG, Gates, Vance, Donald Trump Jr., and Tucker Carlson is a stronger bench to the Republicans than the bench that adds. I know. I'm being sarcastic. I'm being sarcastic. Oh, I won't make that case. No, no, no, no. That's the problem. No, no. Here's my thing, though. And I get it could have been worse than how Harris did, the Slotkin race. And so Slotkin ran a better Michigan race than Harris did by a mile. I...

The bigger point I'd make is just the internal psychology of the politics that, well, it could have been worse, not so bad. No, no, no. You don't build a winning party with participation trophy thinking.

They lost. They've lost their national appeal. They can't get arrested with working class white guys. The Latinos move so much that we've never seen a shift like this in modern American politics. There used to be a 30-point lead party with Latinos. They went in with an identity argument, and they got killed by an economic argument, and they seem to have some doubt about that.

that. I'm listening to progressive wing of the Democratic Party say, well, this is great. We lost working class people. Seize the means of production. We know how to get them go farther to the left. I mean, the Dems really need to understand that that's not the real these problems. Let me finish up and then you can you can riddle it with volts.

They need to understand they're losing, and the internal incentives of the Democratic Party to define the whole thing on identity strangles them out of the box and gives demagogues like Trump an easy route out. And what worries me the most, and I'll finish with this, is the midterm should be good for the Democrats.

And if they do a lot of dumb things and win for free, which they could, it'll reinforce all the wrong thinking. Instead, it's time for people in the party who know the center path where they can get back in business with white dudes and Latino working people validated.

by a midterm win is the way to set the frame for the primary with all those talented candidates that Anzo's talking about. Listen, again, I agree with you, and I started answering John's question by saying we receded with every subgroup. And so we have to figure out how to do it. Yeah, and there's a message there.

Yeah. To Trump, by the way, we, we ran, you know, and we, and your, your theory here or how you would move forward is what we did in 18, like, right. 18. We showed again, um, we took back the house with moderates all across the country and meat and potato and economic issues, not identity. Nancy Pelosi has been elected in six and 18. Um,

By having a really strong group of moderate Democrats in her caucus. And we took back states like, you know, Whitmer, who ran as a moderate, Sisolet ran as a moderate, et cetera, et cetera. I can go all the way down the line. And, you know, we have that equation. We have to figure out in the Democratic Party how to be able to have conversations about

about really tricky issues like transgender, you know, college sports without, you know, the person who sticks their head out of the foxhole like Seth Moulton getting his ass kicked. Like we should be able to have this reasonable conversation. This is a problem with our party, right? That you that Republicans don't often have.

is that we have a big tent and we get scared. We literally get scared of having conversations about really tricky issues because we're going to get our asses kicked by a super minority part of it. Right. And it gridlocks your campaign. We got to do 20 focus groups and get 80 people in the discussion. We can't respond to a trans ad. We're going to argue. No, no, you need less democracy inside the democratic party and an agreement to move forward on this stuff and fight.

Yeah, I spent the last 30 years living in Montgomery, Alabama when I started my firm in 1994.

You know, from then until when, you know, we took back the house, I was electing helping elect people's like Bobby Bright and Charlie Milan's right. I, you know, right. Sure. And your children's in Mississippi. And, you know, all of these guys at the time were pro-life pro-gun anti-gay marriage. Do you think that Nancy Pelosi gave two shits? She wanted to become speaker.

And I think we have to get back to the part where, listen, I don't want my candidates to be pro-life and pro, you know, anti-gay marriage. Don't get me wrong. That was a different time. My point is, is that we got to give people space to understand their own electorate.

And, you know, that they may take issues that gives part of our party agita. But if you ever want to be in the fucking majority again, you better deal with it. Time to pay the meter, but we will be right back. Now, let's hear from our sponsor.

Hey, Hacker Rouge, you know what? Isn't it funny how the people we love most are often the hardest to shop for? People always tell me, "Murphy, you're impossible to shop for. We're just gonna give you a tie." Well, I never wear ties, so I give them a hint. I'm a gadget nut, and let me tell you, on behalf of just about anybody in your life, but particularly people who like cool stuff, even if they're not that technical, there's one gift that everyone on your list is sure to enjoy.

an Aura digital picture frame. Now, this thing has been named number one by Wirecutter, and they're tough reviewers. What are they? Well, Aura frames are a lot of fun. What they do is they make it incredibly easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to one of these cool picture frame things. So it's kind of like having a picture frame on your shelf

But the photos can change because you can upload them from your phone. And again, as I said, even videos are possible. So when you give somebody an Aura Frame as a gift, you can personalize it and preload it with a thoughtful message and photos using the Aura app, making it the ideal present for long-distance loved ones.

It's a gift so special, they use it every day. Now, you know, the perfect gift is hard to find because it has to be personal, but not over the top. When you give an aura picture frame, it's a way of sharing memories. Maybe your families have been on vacation together, or it's a favorite grandson or granddaughter.

doing something interesting or a collection of photos like that. It's a great connecting device. It's a family-oriented gift, and it's technically really easy. You don't have to work at the Jet Propulsion Lab to figure out how to do this. You just use your phone, the Aura app, bingo, bango. It's all automatic to the actual picture frame. It's designed to do a lot of the work for you and then give that joy to people who will see those pictures every day and treasure the Aura

picture frame. So how do you get one? That's what I want to know. Enough of this talk, talk, talk, Murphy. Get to the call to action. You can save on this perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com. A-U-R-A frames, one word, dot com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carver mat frames by using the magic promo code HAT.

That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code HACKS. This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. You've got to get going. Terms and conditions do apply. Check out the Orr Frame. I've seen them. They're very cool. ♪

I'll never forget as a young consultant, I got a call, hauled in to see Bob Dole, the late, great, fantastic Bob Dole. And he said, you know, I'm going to send you out to do this Senate race nobody wants because we got to drag this guy back. And I said, well, you know, the guy's not that sharp. And he's like, Mark, don't need the guy, need the vote.

That's exactly right. And that's exactly right. And when I went out and we got him reelected and doled out his damn vote, you know, that's the way politics work. I don't need the guy. I need the vote. Do you think in 1988, when we were doing Frank Lautenberg's reelect, any of us were in love with Frank Lautenberg? He was a curmudgeon. No, we were all working for James Carmel. That was the win. We wanted the Democratic vote, you know? Totally. All right, go ahead, Johnny. To your point, John, is like...

You know, one of the challenges with the Democratic Party about this is not quite – I just frame it a little bit differently just in this sense. And 2018 is a great example. The three of us know that what you just said is true, that the way the Democrats performed in the 2018 midterms, the way they did was on the back of moderates and the Mikey Sherrills of the world and the Alyssa Slotkins of the world. But here's what the public saw was the squad.

And I'm not even trashing the squad. That's just not a shot at the squad. It is, but it was, that was the election of that where the, the, the headlines were, uh, were around AOC and around Ilhan Omar and around Rashida Tlaib. They were the, they were the ones who drew the media attention. They were the ones who actually, and a lot of people's minds defined the party as having been become way more progressive. And in fact, their ascendance, uh,

set the stage for all of the fucking mistakes that Harris made in the 2019 phase. The perception that the party had become way more liberal or more progressive than it actually is, is what totally fucked up

a lot of people's campaigns, frankly, in the 2020 nomination contest. And so the thing I'm pointing to is not actually to critique anyone in this, but just to say that one of the challenges of a big tent party is that when the Democratic coalition is working, there is room, in fact, and there should be room in the Democratic party for pro-life Democrats. There has to be. If you're going to be a national majority, you've got to have room for that. But the reality of how we now consume politics is that

People don't pay attention to, I get it, I great respect her. I respect Mikey Sherrill to death, but for a long period of time, Rashida Tlaib gets a lot more ink and becomes the symbol of the Democratic Party and contending with that

How do you align what the party really is in, in Toto with the image, with the image that it gives off is one of the challenges. And it's weird because Republicans have that same challenge. You know, the Republican party actually isn't Marjorie Taylor green, but somehow it doesn't fuck them up in quite the same way as it does. You just made the greatest argument for every political consultant, staffer and elected official to get off social media.

Because it's a trap. No, no, it's true. You get your own brand, it's bad for the collective. It's absolutely a trap. I mean, we have elected officials now who just obsess over, you know, again, we've got to get to the point where we're not afraid of our own shadows. Right now, we're not only afraid of our own shadows, but the other is like, you know, we're walking on eggshells because we don't want to piss off this part of the party or that part of the party or that part of the party. And the fact is, is that you need to get elected. And if you look at the really...

talented politicians who are authentic and do their own thing. People like Gretchen Whitmer, you got to tell, you got to say like she connects with working class people and she connects with suburbanites in Oakland County, but she can go up to, you know, Traverse City or Upper Peninsula and also have a beer. And so you just got to be your own, your, your, your own person. Well, you know, the great old saying authenticity, if you can fake that, you got it made. Yeah.

All right. On that note, we're going to skip the mailbag because we have a hard out today for a variety of reasons. Mike, you were talking earlier about how you could go on at great length about some of your failures in campaigns. And I think that's why we have to get to the hard out now. Aren't you doing one of your My Failure seminars? They're like in L.A. They're like a cult following. People show up to listen to Mike self-flagellate. It's true. I drive there in my Bentley that I bought with win bonuses. All right. On that note.

On that, I will. I don't own a Bentley. I drive an EV. And hey, here's a quick plug. Max Patton does a great podcast called EV Politics on Apple. Check it out. Go to evpolitics.org. We got some fighting to do in Q1. Save American auto jobs in places like Michigan and Georgia. We will be back after this.

Axe is on sick leave. He's doing fine. Had a little orthopedic repair done. So look out. Senior American dance contest coming up. But we'll get him back soon. And you all, I think we have one more before the holidays, right? I think so. We got to get the authorities in here to tell us. And I'm going to finish. It's only December 10th, for God's sake. So the holidays are still, it seems like a million years away. But maybe they'll be here before we know it. Who knows?

I want to send one sobering message as the world gets better. Somebody I care about. We have a friend of the show, a longtime listener, a smart, bright, just wonderful kid named Rafi.

who a year ago was listening to Hacks on Tap and sending ideas. He's now wearing a uniform, carrying a rifle in the IDF in Lebanon, and hopefully he's coming home soon. So take care, Rafi. Be safe. With that, I call for peace on earth and an end to this blab fest here. Johnny Anzalone, thank you so much for being our guest.

Thanks, brother. Always good. You guys are both great Americans. That's just the truth. We're great Michiganders. We're working on being great Americans. Go fix your parties, you guys. Just go take care of it. My part? I don't have a wrench big enough, but we're trying. Anyway, thank you, everybody. Have a great holiday season. Bye-bye.

Verizon knows what really matters at these parties. Bread with chicken, beans and... Family, let's toast for health! Health! Money! Money! Travel to El Salvador! Travel to El Salvador! And a new Verizon phone! Ha ha!

Ah!

We'll be right back.