Mike Murphy: Trump's Kryptonite

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Hello, and welcome to the Bullwork Podcast.

I'm your host, Tim Miller.

Delighted to welcome back, veteran political strategist of the McCain-Schwarzenegger, Romney, and Jeb campaigns, and a bunch of others.

He's also the co-host of Haxon Tap, co-director of the Center for Political Future at USC, and he runs the American EV Jobs Alliance, which he is pimping with a placard right over his right shoulder.

It is Mike Murphy.

What's up, man?

There it is.

By the way, China's winning.

I'm good, Tim.

How are you?

Always a hoot to be here, even if it's at God, what time is that out here?

7-something in California.

I appreciate you getting up at 7.45 for me this morning, Murphy.

I really do.

I'm doing pretty good.

I saw the Scissor Sisters last night hanging out with a couple of the sisters.

So we enjoyed ourselves.

And I came home to some some exclusive audio of Donald Trump.

Usually on this podcast, we don't play Donald Trump's voice, but we're going to make an exception in this case because this is our president as

covered, let's say, by Matt and Trey Stone of South Park in the opening episode of the season last night.

Let's listen.

Hi!

Hi!

What the f is this, Better?

Look, this is the painting you asked for, sir.

Why is my dick so small?

But that's the size that is in the photo.

Get this guy out of here.

I'm going to sue you.

I'm going to sue both of you.

Straight from his mouth.

Mike Murphy, it was.

I don't know if you've seen any of the other clips from South Park last time, but it is brutal.

It's important to know the context here.

They're on, you know, it's a Paramount project.

Paramount just re-upped for $1.5 billion with South Park to get the library and a couple more seasons.

And,

you know, they're in this little merger fight.

And Matt and Trey went right at them last night.

It's pretty delicious.

Good for them.

Good for them.

A nice contrast with Columbia University, you know, and all the.

Oh, yeah, I guess they paid some hostage money today.

What is it?

200 million?

Yeah, 220.

Cool 220 million for, I don't know, something.

Yeah, for thinking.

Yeah, for allowing

a lot of crimes of the first order.

Yeah.

For allowing their students to have views counter of some people in the Trump administration.

Not others, by the way, actually.

There's some pretty strong anti-Israel people in the Trump administration.

But yeah, I think I enjoyed it mostly just because it's just, it's refreshing in this moment to see somebody just not only not capitulate, but just poke their finger in his eye and say, come at me.

I think that there's a lot of folks who, I don't know, I think that he has been very bad.

But at some level, I think the fear at elite levels is not commensurate with the actual demonstration of power.

Do you think that's, do you think that's fair?

Yeah, I think this is all, I mean, I'm in the Trump hate bubble and i have been for 25 years so maybe i'm out of my mind and i'm kind of like the crazy guy in the back of the bus saying they're coming they're coming in the beginning of the alien movie and everybody rolls their eyes and you know three minutes uh of script time later the pentagon's blowing up from a regan

but

it feels like it's turning a little yeah i did a a thing last night for an organization that was pretty lefty a zoom you know talk with the great paul maslin the Democratic pollster.

And

there's lots of, oh, he's finally broken from the Epstein scandal.

MAGA's going to, no, no, no, no, no, no.

But it is turning.

You're seeing people from at least the Trump industrial profit conspiracy complex starting to poke back.

You're seeing kind of a weariness to it all.

MAGA starting to feel a little bit like the troops on the eighth year of an endless war.

I mean, there's just, you know, he's becoming a little more of a figure of wackiness.

And of course, the big macro economic stuff, you know, it's going to get him in the midterms, I think.

So, yeah, this is a weird analogy for your other, you know, old listeners like me.

But there's a great old movie, The Dam Busters, and there's this wonderful scene.

They're trying to invent the skipping bomb to break the dam, to flood the

Rur Valley to win the war.

But they're in the impregnable dam, and our heroes are all getting killed doing the skipping bomb.

But one hits, and the Germans are there, and all of a sudden, like the glass of tea starts to wiggle on the top of the dam, and you know, there's a crack, and of course, next thing you know, the dam's going to burst, and we're going to play patriotic music.

Is that a black and white movie?

Dam Busters, I can't remember if it's black and white or not.

Is that a silence?

It's one of the best.

It's like all great

British War movies.

They didn't quite win, but they make a great movie out of it.

But anyway, it's fun to watch because the puddles of water in the coffee cup is a great little technique, and it feels like that to me now.

I feel the Virginia midterms are going to be a bad narrative.

Virginia this year, much like 93 was in the Republican Party, to set up 94.

So yeah, I feel like

the thing is starting to turn.

And these are all symptoms.

I want to get into the Epstein stuff more specifically, but just on that kind of meta narrative turning.

To me, one thing I feel like he's lost in the Epstein thing, which is not...

like you're saying, like mega breaking from him or whatever, but he's lost a little bit this status with certain folks in the culture, particularly in in this manosphere, the Rogan kind of world, of being like the anti-politician.

Yeah, I truly see.

He's such a real politician.

He's like the politician.

You know, those guys all want to poke at the establishment.

And, you know, they have some legit complaints and they have some conspiracies.

They want to be like, these guys aren't looking out for you.

They're out to get you.

But Trump, he's an outsider.

You know, he came from the business world.

It was all bullshit.

We all knew it was bullshit.

But like, it worked on those people.

Like, he felt like an outsider.

Right now, he's feeling like a very typical politician covering up a scandal that he doesn't want people to know about him and his rich friends and what they were doing with young girls.

And he, you know, doesn't want to be made fun of.

And he was going to sue anybody that criticizes him.

I just think that he's making himself extremely vulnerable to backlash among, obviously, these South Park guys and Rogan world and that world.

And those were key.

I mean, you know, those aren't the cultists in the red hat, but they were a key part of his coalition and the kind of above, a key part of the cultural narrative about what's happening.

Yeah, there's no doubt.

I mean, he started out as Mr.

Authenticity.

Wow, he's an asshole and he says asshole things and he's not part of politics.

Tell me more.

He fired Gilbert Godfrey down the apprentice.

He must be a business genius.

And then

you could see it in the polling data after he lost.

Well, he's a bullshitter and kind of a creep, but he's our bullshitter and our creep and he's part of the mission and he's authentic.

Now all of a sudden it's, well, he's kind of a bullshitter, definitely a creep.

And maybe he's been bullshitting us.

Yeah, right.

You know, which is exactly what you say.

That's the kryptonite.

Wait a minute.

He's a politician.

Maybe you can't believe everything he says.

Maybe there's an agenda here besides the movement, the mission.

And, you know, Elon's part of this.

Yeah.

Elon's, and who knows with Elon.

Tomorrow, Elon could show up in a chicken suit and announce that he's going to move to a farm.

But the guy did spend $300 million last time.

Why would he want to move to a farm if he's in the chicken suit?

That'd make him a target.

True, true, true.

Yeah, he'd wind up in a McDonald's drive-thru in a little box.

But

he's kind of trying to invent this crypto-bro libertarian party.

And all this, it's one, to resonate with that group, but two, he's picking spending, which, as you well know, that's been an evergreen issue in the party that we've given away.

And that has power to come back outside of Trump.

And Trump's a total debt criminal.

So, yeah, you just, as I say, the turn.

You see all these little things.

You know, it's like the, you look outside of the window, and all of a sudden, once in eight years, you see a cat chasing a dog down the, I mean, things are getting a little weird.

And that's a sign.

You hate to hand it to Elon, but this ties to the other big story of the day that broke after we taped yesterday, which is the Wall Street Journal story that indicates that Trump was briefed that he was in the Epstein files by Pam Bondi in May.

Right.

So two months ago.

So he knew about this.

That timeline matches pretty closely with Elon and Trump's falling out and Elon tweeting Trump is in the Epstein files.

There's a lot of talk like that.

It's like that just Elon bullshitting being a poster trying to poke at him or whatever.

Sounds like maybe Elon knew the truth, right?

Because it was getting around.

And I'm interested in your take on this because this Wall Street Journal story is important because

back to Trump being a traditional politician, this makes it a traditional cover-up story.

Exactly.

It's fitting a new architecture that people know from politics, but it's uncomfortable for them for their megahero to be in the middle of it.

Yeah.

And now I think it gives opportunity, right?

Like if the Democrats take back the house, if you're right about the midterms, right now it's not just like, oh, well, maybe Trump was lying, maybe he was overselling that, or maybe he was BSing about the Epstein files.

Now it's like, no, we can subpoena Pam Bondi and Cash Patel, and we can subpoena the people that were reviewing the files to come up with information about Trump and do the old Howard Baker stuff.

You know, what'd you know?

When'd you know it?

Right.

And I do, I think that makes the Epstein story meaningfully different from even where it was two weeks ago.

I don't know.

What do you think about that?

No, no.

I think this thing, I mean, first of all, if you step back,

it's all starting to fit together in the narrative that makes obvious sense.

Is Trump a bullshitter?

Yeah.

Is he a pervert?

Well, yeah.

Yeah.

You know, would he want to cover up the files?

if he were in them.

Yeah.

Might he be in them?

Well, they were kind of buddies, and every day a little dribble, a little weird, you know, note or whatever comes out.

So, of course, he's in the files, and of of course he's a politician back to what you were saying before.

So yeah, it's all starting to fit together in a thing that will make sense to the average, let alone the MAGA conspiracy-oriented observer.

And the Dems have little breadcrumbs they can keep nipping at.

And if they get the house, you're right.

Then they can be totally in that business forever.

I mean, where's the autopsy?

It's a, you know, the whole, well, we have the security footage, yeah, of the parking lot in another building.

You know, okay.

You proved that an elite team of commandos did not land in the other building and not go to Epstein's cell.

You know, wow, persuaded.

The real thing is the autopsy, which should be easy to release, yet, you know, cause a death.

Are you on the Epstein might not have killed himself side of things, Murph?

I am on the, I don't know what happens.

I tend to be an establishment of whatever the lamest, greediest human activity explanation is, will always be true.

It's like National Enquirer.

Yeah, they paid somebody, the chauffeur.

It's probably true.

But the fact that they won't release the autopsy thing irks me and a lot of the serious journalists who have obsessively covered this i've obsessively avoided it nothing bores me in the world more than perv cover-up stories of donald trump because i kind of already assumed it's all true and bad the autopsy thing it's weird Release it, Donald.

Release it.

What are you hiding?

The money stuff is also weird.

Yeah.

Wyatt and brought up.

Like, where is this guy's money coming from?

Nobody really knows.

It's very...

Anyway.

Okay.

Well, much more to discover on that.

The couple of the other interesting side side plots here, really in Debstein, some ramifications from hiring the Keystone cops are coming into play here.

Two of my favorite little parts of the Wall Street Journal story were not about the Trump part.

One was that Cash Battell was telling people Trump was in the files.

Usually when you're FBI director, you're looking for somebody that's

going to be a little bit tighter with information, but

he picked Cash Batel.

And then you have Dan Bongino, who apparently was like red faced screaming at Pam Bondi, telling her she's an idiot and she's part of a cover-up, et cetera, et cetera.

You know, meanwhile, the Chinese are walking out the door with the stealth bomber plans because the FBI is running around and we literally have a moron in the number two job and

the number one.

A clown in the number one job.

Yeah.

So while they're checking the clown shoes for microphones, you know, the Chinese espionage, I'm sure, is running wild.

Their new fighter plane, literally, there was a story in the defense paper about it.

The one that Pakistan used to shoot some Western fighters down for the first time literally has like McDonnell Douglas Dallas, Texas stamped on the parts because there's a lot of copied tech in there.

So meanwhile, we're doing this MAGA clown circus.

You know, the one Epstein thing, when I think about it, if he were alive, he'd probably be in the cabinet.

Well, or part end at least.

You know, think about it.

Secretary of Perv.

The FBI thing,

it is funny, I mean, at some level.

And I do like to laugh at like the silliness of the cash patel.

But your point is right.

We had Mike Feinberg on the pod last week.

I don't know if you followed that story, story, but this was a guy that got fired from the FBI for like being friends with Pete Strzok,

essentially.

And his job was

China expertise, and he speaks Mandarin.

It was like assessing domestic threats

related to China.

The idea that we're running those people out while these guys have thousands of man hours being worked on looking at the Epstein files, and then they have to cover it up because it ends up Donald Trump's in there.

It's pretty alarming.

And it is end of Rome type stuff.

Yeah, we're literally conducting an amazing science experiment, which is if you replace the

top of the government of the world's big hyperpower with a gang of chimpanzees from a local circus, how bad could it go?

And you know, out of 20 things, maybe the chimps hit a home run by mistake on something.

They invent nuclear fusion.

You know, we haven't had one of those yet, but yes.

And so eventually it'll pass.

But the price we're going to pay, the job I would never want to have is the next Secretary of State after Trump and just have to sit there in Brussels and eat shit from the Europeans digging out of a hole for four years and with having very little to say because it'll all be true.

So yeah, yeah, huge opportunity cost.

You know, it's heartbreaking, but I've decided to avoid winding up in a clock tower.

I kind of do like Trump-free days once in a while where I just block it all.

How's that going?

How's that going?

Yeah, it helps.

It helps.

What do you do on the Trump-free days?

You got going for walks or doing bird watching?

I have a life.

I'm an obsessive weirdo on millions of little things.

I'm a history nut.

Of course, I love doing the EV car stuff.

By the way, Trump, best president the Chinese car industry ever had.

We're going to get to that.

Don't worry.

Yeah.

It's coming.

Okay.

Yeah.

It's like Murphy's, oh,

it's coming.

Niagara Falls.

Slowly I turn.

You get the cane out.

But yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, you know,

I have a life.

And I just don't want to be the old Timothy Leary line, an extra in his low-budget movie.

But, you know, and a little Trump goes a long way.

Oh, look, I'm off.

Now it's a back-to-work day.

Let me guess.

I'll bet he did something incredibly stupid.

Yes, he did.

Oh, and his minions are all fighting over who has the shiny hat.

Great.

You know, so it's just such a diet of drool.

I literally have the countdown clock on my desk, you know, until the last day of the day.

Yeah.

How many days are there?

You know, i i'm in the little studio now so i'd have to go look you know it's whatever six months and 12 days minus 365 is that's a lot uh but it's too many it's like 1100 it's four numbers i don't know i can't do quick math in my head

too often because it's not so it'll be more fun to look at after the midterms yeah yeah yeah so i am looking forward to the post-spamberger meltdown and all that in november this year yeah well the virginia thing's he'll take that badly this is the most optimism we've had on the bulwark pod in a while murphy talking about a post-trump era you know imagining that we'll have a Secretary of State after Trump.

That's that's that's a bullish.

Well, it's like the great Joan Lyline that he actually didn't say, but it's so funny people repeat it, which is they asked him what he thought about the French Revolution being such a seminal thing in Western history.

And he said, too early to tell.

Long term, big picture.

Long term.

Yeah.

I'm talking at the long term when we're all dead.

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on the politics of this just I want to do a little bit hill and then and then politics politics you know the Congress has left Mike Johnson is just like fuck it I don't know hopefully Trump does something else crazy in August and by the time we come back people will be talking about something else I think is the bet he's trying to make but they come back into this shutdown fight and we revisit talking about, I support your taking days off, by the way.

And I tell the listeners, I'm not going to, I'm not mad.

You want to take off a Thursday pod?

Don't skip the Murphy pod.

But you want to take off a pod?

It's fine with me.

It's okay.

Everybody needs to serve themselves first.

But

these guys come back and we have the same thing that happened in...

whatever, the winter, right?

Which is

they need Democrats to keep the government open.

And Democrats, are the Democrats going to be able to get a message together and get unity?

They were going to have the big fight last time.

It didn't happen.

Chuck Schumer folded.

But now Mike Johnson comes back to Epstein crisis and shutdown crisis.

Where are you at on how the Dems treat all that?

Well,

one, last time I said, I know it's terrible to shut down the government.

I'm against shut down the government.

They might think we have a government of clowns and secret might get out.

I'm for the point, if I were the Dems, I'd shut it down because I think all disorder and chaos bubbles to the top.

And that's Trump and his gang of accomplices.

So I think the Dems, you know, this thing last night and about a thousand people,

mostly D.

And all the questions were, you know, how is he going to have the Army dress up as postman and steal the election?

How is he going to use mind control from Steve Bannon?

And I just don't go in front.

Would you guys quit clutching your pearls, sharpen some sticks, and fight?

In the Republican Party, we are trained.

No matter what happens, grab the sharpest thing you can grab and attack.

You know, think later, attack now.

Now, it may not be the virtuous way to live a thoughtful life of civic engagement, but it's pretty handy in a campaign.

So I think it's time for them to get rougher.

And so I would be very tempted by the repubs there in charge, line everybody, you know, and link it to some things.

I think you're fighting a caveman of Trump.

So you have to kind of get out the stick and not win the approval of the New York Times editorial board for your thoughtful, you approach to dealing with the...

We sent a stiff letter to Trump protesting at his brutish tactics.

They have an easy midterm if they can just bolt down to middle-class economics, get out of identity, get out of the halo stuff about democracy, just pound on he's strewing your life if you work for a living.

And they can win the House.

Now the budget will be a log jam, which is better than the rubber stamp.

Congress has given up all its institutional power under the arts.

And they have, as you said, investigatory power so they can make headlines.

Pretty good deal.

Is the Epstein stuff tied to the midterms and off of you?

Can they talk about it as Trump's protecting the rich?

Or is that a stretch?

A little bit, but they're piling onto the big thing.

Remember, Trump now is only a couple of points away from Joe Biden numbers on the economy.

That killed Biden.

Biden's troubles killed Connella.

Now, Trump, who was elected, not because they loved him, but because we got to fire the old guy and his sidekick lady.

And Trump may be an asshole, but he can run the economy.

That was his best number in the election.

That's gone now.

So Trump will try to start culture war fights to like, hey, look over here, forget about it.

But if they keep grinding him on the economy, he'll get Bidenized in the midterms.

And, you know, that's good.

It feels like he's losing his fastball in the look over here.

And what do you make of that Obama going to jail?

Are you quaking in your boots if you're Michelle right now?

Are you a little nervous?

I think Michelle's like, give me three minutes in a room with that guy.

You know, then Vance would be taking the oath of office.

No, you know, that's a Trump smoke bomb, as you say, it's like, hey, guess what?

Obama's got big ears.

Ha!

You know, and now all of a sudden changed the subject.

That's what he does.

Because he's basically, Trump wakes up every day thinking, what should the New York Post headline be?

What can I do to

create a thing in the 24 media cycle?

Problem is, that's a pretty good short-term tactical thing.

But, you know, as the quicksand moves around you, if the economic stuff keeps turning the wrong way, then you can't day-to-day splash your way out of it.

Yeah.

The Obama going to jail thing and Tulsi press conference.

I don't think that one's really landing.

Here's who I would, and I don't really care about this, but you know, who should be maybe a little worried right now is Bill Clinton.

Yeah.

And Prince Andrew.

Because if I'm them, like, you got to lean into the Epstein wave a little bit.

And, you know, you start going through these files.

And, okay, well, if we can't move on from it, which is what they wanted, let's talk about something else.

And let's start leaking whatever pictures we have of Bill Clinton with young girls on the island or whatever.

I agree.

Big smoke bomb.

If I'm Clinton, I do the final sacrifice, which is there's a file and I'm in it.

And I remember Trump was wearing the snake hat at the party where we cut the girl in half.

You know, grab him with the dynamite vest and take him out, Bill.

One last

one, though, because that might be

mean that some of some of Cash's guys are going to chap the clock.

No, no, that's legit.

Look, if we all took evil pills.

I mean, I don't care if he did something wrong, like whatever.

Fuck him.

But I think something that is legit.

But that, look, if we were in the evil business for Trump, we totally do that.

It's like, let's make this about Clinton.

The Dems will back off like they did the last time Clinton perved out.

And, you know, now it's 50-50.

It's now both sides is them.

So, Clinton, do your thing.

I don't think the Dems will fold on that one.

I think the Dems are pretty ready to kick the Clintons,

click the Clintons off the curb.

And I think you'd see a lot of Democrats behind that.

And that's what the Trump guys will think, but I agree.

Not now.

A lot of Dems will be like, all right.

So if you're billed, put the rainbows on.

don't be dragged behind it.

You know, yeah, talk about Banana Republic.

We got, you know, three presidents ago going to jail for child, for whatever, for sex stuff.

That would be, that would be something.

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All right, I want to do some California politics and big picture politics first.

Just one other thing in the news, though.

You mentioned the economic stuff.

By the time this is out,

Donald Trump will have been at the Fed today.

I guess he's going over to the Fed.

He's reviewing the renovations.

He's using his expertise as a real estate agent.

Or gold guilt.

He's not gold enough.

He's like, oh, we did a reno like this on Trump Doha, and it cost half as much.

And that's why we've got to get rid of Jerome Paul.

What's with all the smoke detectors?

They're expensive.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

What's your state of concern about the Fed stuff?

Well, Trump, of course, thinking of the one sun in his universe that illuminates all things, him, will be like, I need to blame somebody for this shit economy.

And I've been blaming Biden and Kamala Harris, but getting a little long in the tooth, I need a new villain who's keeping me from all the great stuff that I've done, being infallible and a godlike figure.

Enter J.

Powell.

We got this lunatic of the Fed.

He's ruining everything.

I got to get rid of him.

So Trump up something that, you know.

all the stuff you've read about what they think they could do to drive Powell out, which would be hard, by the way.

It would also shake the markets in a bad, bad way, which is the last thing Trump needs.

But yeah, thinking, trying to think is Trump, which is impossible.

You know, you lose it.

Powell is his economic foil.

He needs to attack him.

He might want the fight more than the victory.

But yeah, so I think at least optically, he's going to be all over Powell.

And it's now Powell's fault, not his, any economic trouble.

Is the economy that bad?

Well, it is.

Can I answer that question?

Inflation was going like

surprisingly stable.

It stopped.

The stock market is shown to be very resilient.

Serious people who follow the economy are worried because one of the debt bomb, you know, it's always like, well, one day we're going to hit the limit and everything goes to shit, but today looks okay.

Well, you know, that's a great way to kind of be in a zombie-like haze till it happens.

And

we're actually seeing real consequences on the debt stuff, which we really weren't.

Like, look, you and me were always debt hawks, but when we were talking about it back in 2008 or whatever when Obama's first stimulus is concerned, it didn't really have any real-life impact on anybody in any meaningful way that they felt.

That's like not true now.

Like the debt issue is affecting people's interest rates,

which is affecting people's ability to change houses and

ties into the housing crisis and a bunch of other stuff.

And that's a voter thing.

The other thing is kind of a Jenga game and it's a very high tower now.

You look at the deficit compared to GDP,

the ratio.

And we're up.

What's the most expensive thing the U.S.

government has had to deal with for 100 years?

World War II wasn't cheap.

know, and

we gave away supplies, basically supported three-quarters of the Russian army, very big, and of course our army and Brits and Canadians too.

So we're spending World War II money now.

And, you know, there's a point

where it gets very bad.

Now, it could be next Thursday, could be in five more years, but most economists think we're on a long leash here of trouble and it's going to happen.

So there's that.

There's the inflationary pressure because inflation went down.

Now it's been creeping back up.

And, you know,

I advise a couple of auto companies and all my EV stuff.

The tariffs, even though Trump does the, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to kill you.

I'm only going to cut off a finger now.

We have a deal.

It's still trouble.

If you look at the this quarter between Stellanis, which is the global conglomerate that in the U.S.

has, you know, the Chrysler brands and Jeep, Ford and GM, multi-billion dollar losses.

There are auto suppliers going out of business in Michigan, starting the chapter.

GM's profits were down.

I saw some article about this.

GM's profits were down massive last quarter.

Yeah, Still.

Stellantis, $2 billion.

Ford, about $650 million.

They won't even do a forecast anymore.

They're like, you know, I don't know.

I don't know what the monkey's going to do with the machine gun, so I'm not going to try to predict it.

So real trouble there.

A lot of the price hits from the tariffs have not hit yet because there's about 100 days of inventory that's been burned off.

But stay tuned for that Labor Day sale when you walk in to buy a pickup and it's $7,000 more than it was three months ago.

So I think all this stuff is slowly compounding.

The U.S.

economy has shown a lot of resiliency because it's a powerful engine.

But like the strongest packed mule going up the hill, we keep putting anvils on it and the blood's starting to seep out from under the saddle now.

So Q1,

end of year.

Not so great.

And of course, you know, for all Trump's love of new manufacturing jobs, most of them are EV factories that he's tried everything he can to destroy.

This ties to the big bill that they passed, you know, and I saw you were very critical of that because it ties to the debt stuff, but also

just a totally slashing, you know, any effort to support domestic industry, you know, on EVs and related other green issues.

So I just, I kind of almost want to put a quarter in the machine and

here you do your riff on the on the bill.

It's now 35 cents with inflation.

I got a dime now.

We'll dump that in too.

In fact, just a quick showbiz thing.

A friend of mine was doing a sitcom pilot, and I was over there to help punch up jokes.

And the great Brian Denny, he played the Grumpy Dad, who was a bit of a winger, by the way, in a good way.

And he recognized me from cable, so we went out and dinner.

Anyway, Denny, he had the best Hollywood stories.

But he adlipped a great line.

The little cute kid runs up to him, Grandpa, can I have some money for candy?

And the line in the script was, no, you got to learn the value of a dollar.

And

so Denny does the line, and then he lives, but I'll tell you what, you want to learn the value of a dollar?

Here's a quarter.

Which off the top of his head got a laugh.

So

here, I'll do the shortest possible version of the EV thing.

Okay.

World markets go to EVs, growing like a weed.

We're either going to be in it or we're going to be a little island with inefficient car companies that are a lot smaller than they are now.

I have a few shockers.

Shocker number one: How many cars and light trucks do you think China has the ability to manufacture a year?

Like a gazillion.

50 million.

They made 31 million we made 10 million okay they're they are eating the entire world auto industry now they're not making any money which makes it hard for our guys to compete with them but for every american auto worker there are five chinese auto workers and we're heading to a point where half of our auto workers could easily be gone if we can't compete worldwide and the companies are trying there's some good tech trump put a dagger in all that stuff It's literally the best thing to happen to the Chinese auto industry, which is important for production.

Because I'll give you one more number because I find my crusty Republican pals love military analogies.

In the year before the Second World War started, 1938, the Brits made 500,000 cars and light trucks.

The French made, I think, about 380,000.

The Germans, about 440,000.

Year before Pearl Harbor, we made 4.7 million vehicles, which is why when we went to war, almost everything had made in the USA stamped on it that moved, shot, or was a locomotive.

Right now, we're the, you know, the Brits and the Germans in that scenario, and the Chinese are becoming the Americans in pure manufactured power.

And the great thing about car plants is they build complicated machines at a high rate of production.

What's a complicated machine?

A big drone.

You know, so it's nice to have factories that can make a thousand large super killer drones of the future a day.

So a U.S.

manufacturing base is really important.

And as the president of Ford, who's very frank, Jim Farley, said, I think three or four weeks ago at the Aspen, if we don't get EVs right, we don't have a future at the Ford Motor Company.

We may not be here in a decade.

Get that?

And they're the largest industrial employer.

80% of Ford vehicles are made in the U.S.

They're number two only to Tesla in terms of number of vehicles, in terms of percentage of their stuff they make here.

Honda is like third or fourth.

And GM, which moved a lot of its stuff to Mexico, is kind of scrambling.

Trump does not understand any of this.

So everything he's doing is trying to kill kill these guys.

And what a cargs, I'll finish with this.

What a CAR exec would say is, look,

we're competing against 100 Chinese brands that are bigger than we are, and only two of them make money.

And government subsidizes everything and gives them a mission.

Go overseas, steal the market, strangle the Americans, Japanese, and Germans.

And it's working.

Now, Ford has bet the whole company on a lab out here in California.

I've got an op-ed in the L.A.

Times already this week about it.

If anybody's interested or go to that website, and it's posted.

The best EV tech labs are here.

So I think our state ought to leave the thing.

We're in the fight.

The battery that propelled the Chinese EV industry to such power was invented at the University of Texas.

So we're in the hunt and we're good at the tech and we're pretty good at manufacturing, but we're up against a massive opponent.

with massive government support.

Well, the Trump guys are trying to strangle this because, you know, they don't understand that for most people, an EV is a better car.

And 80% of the people who buy them say they're sticking with them for life.

It's a better experience.

So I'm not giving up yet, but boy, Trump is not on the side of everything he says he is.

American industrial power, national security, and

manufacturing jobs.

He is the anthrax of all that.

I was walking down the street in Amsterdam a couple of weeks ago, and there's this just huge car.

like, you know, showroom right in the middle of the tourist area.

And I was like, what is that?

Those things look cool.

It's like, oh, it's the Chinese.

Yeah.

Go to Mexico City.

It's like, well, wouldn't I, you know, turn into Shanghai overnight.

What specifically is in the bill that is so harmful?

Well, the solar guys will say everything I'm saying about cars.

You know, we finally started catching up manufacturing.

Now it's all there.

We talked about that a little bit with David Wallace Wells.

So the bill had a push-pull strategy.

And there was some stupidity in it, waste and can be improved.

It was not perfect, but fundamentally, on the consumer side, and this is still true until the end of September, you walk into your friendly Cadillac, Kia, BMW, you know, Ford dealer, and you lease an EV, always better to lease an EV, you get $7,500.

And that helps make EVs cost as much, or right now, look at the lease deals, probably less than an ICE car, gas car.

So that was the consumer subsidy.

There's also subsidies if you buy one, though it's always better to lease in an EV, depreciation, stuff like that.

And you buy a used one.

Keep in mind, the used car market is twice as big as the new car market.

It's important.

A lot of EVs coming off lease, a lot of good deals there.

So there were subsidies for consumers to give EVs a try.

On the other hand, if you want to build a big plant to make batteries here so the Chinese don't have a chokehold and support catching up on the tech, there was government money for assembly plants and battery plants, you know, subsidies and loan to speed up our places to be able to compete, just like the Chinese are doing.

You and I five years ago could have showed up at Beijing with a couple of Chinese partners, said, can we have $3 billion to build an EV plant?

Sure, here you go.

Enjoy it.

So

they killed the consumer subsidies.

They kept some of the battery subsidies.

But the problem is, let's build an $8 billion battery plant to build incredible American, competitive, high-tech batteries that are going in cars nobody's going to buy for a couple of years.

And the subsidies were meant to bridge that price problem.

And the prices are coming down quickly.

They run about two to three grand more.

And so the subsidies, what I'm pitching in California is a $3,500 at least subsidy.

So a lot of the subsidies to buy were gone.

The charging money they're trying to claw back, and the charging program has been kind of a mess, and private industry is taking over.

I think that's the least of the problem, but there was some clawback there.

And in the other, quote, renewable category, nukes, solar, geothermal, there was money for all that, and that's all getting chopped.

So there are people who invested money on 10-year business plans based on these subsidies who are now like, well, shit, all the math is wrong, and we're going to get massively burned here.

So they're stopping construction on plants all over the country.

You know, quarter million jobs.

Just what the Forgotten Man was calling for,

stopping the construction.

Yeah, just go down to Tennessee.

You know, I mean, they're all, most of them are in red states.

And like, well, it was too bad we're not going to have those 4,000 jobs here.

Too bad about that.

You can all get jobs trading MAGA crypto now.

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Let's do a little California politics,

your home state, which is why you've gone so woke.

It just seeps India in the air.

I'm a right-wing nut.

The truth is I'm still a right-wing nut.

This guy's a populist Yahoo, not a conservative.

But I'm not a Republican now.

I finally left.

I'm going to ask you about that.

Oh, okay.

All right.

Sorry.

We're ending on that.

We're ending on that.

You wrote

a very interesting newsletter, which we'll be talking about at the end, about your status, your registration status.

But just the California stuff real quick.

Do you put

analyst hat on?

Yeah.

Lurie, the mayor of San Francisco, who I'm trying to get on here, poll came out the other day.

It has him at 73% approval in San Francisco.

Yeah.

Why is he so popular?

What's happening?

Well, Lurie ran up the middle as a, why don't we have results instead of dogma?

And, you know, the fight about whether or not the chopsticks in Chinatown are allied to proper principles of, you know, DEI and all the San Francisco crazy stuff.

He said, wouldn't it be great if we picked up the garbage on time and the cops actually answered the phone?

You know, and it worked.

And he went right up the middle.

And so they've got a change mayor there, which they're, and change mayors are selling everywhere.

If there was an election in Chicago, they'd get one.

We just saw what happened with Comrade Mondami in New York, and he's going to win.

So, and, you know, L.A.

is bulky.

Different models for change.

Yeah, very different there.

But still, like, enough of this crap is kind of the universal thing.

And in the cities, it's kind of worse than anywhere.

So Lori is like the hero of those with hope.

for a rational San Francisco

resident-ordered government.

Now, it's a big thing to lift.

He's making all all the right moves, but it's not, it's a hard super tanker to turn on a dime.

But I'm hoping for him.

And, you know, we'll see the disclosure.

I've got a long-term friend and on-and-off client named Rick Caruso, who ran for mayor last time in L.A.

I didn't do that race, but I'm helping Rick right now.

And he's looking at governor or mayor of L.A.

as a Tory Democrat, which is something we haven't seen in California or in the Democratic Party for a while, other than Cooper, maybe down in North Carolina, which is another good news for the the Dems that he's going to run in the Senate race.

But,

you know, we will, the Lurie mania has started.

You think there's appetite for that, sir?

And Caruso's a little righter than Lurie, though, right?

And is that fair?

He's a little more.

Yeah, the former Republican, but it's the same thing.

It's like, you know, make it work again.

Rick Caruso is very involved in the Palisades fire rebuild, where, you know, we're trying to apply common sense, which is in rare supply in California's city and state government.

Are we rebuilding anything yet in California?

Are we still just talking about

what the rules are on the construction and whether we're using the right wolves?

There's problem about rules, but things are starting to happen, but it's much slower than it should be.

We still don't have a fire chief.

Mayor's still thinking about thinking about it.

We had a czar who was, I think, incompetent and left quickly, and they haven't been able to figure out how to replace the rebuilt czar.

So the private sector, in many ways led by Rick, is stepping up, you know, to kind of cut through red tape and try to help things get going.

So Rick is seen as a can-do, successful guy, huge philanthropist, started the largest and most successful charter school in Los Angeles.

And, you know, he's under, I go to the meetings, it's an amazing galaxy of people urging him to run for both offices.

So

he's got some thinking and exploring to do, but it's a very lurry-like thing because people are fed up here with dogma, not results.

The current governor?

My advice always, whenever Gavin came up about, you know, whether he should run for president or not, what to do, what the strategy is, is like he would probably just benefit most from governing well and doing things to fix California would probably be his best bet.

But maybe I'm wrong about that.

I don't know.

I feel like just grading as a figure skating judge, his like performance.

And you're not East German, so you're going to give it to me straight.

His performance has been pretty good lately.

I mean, just he's been very aggressive in going after Trump.

This kind of move on the redistricting feels right to me.

It might not hold up in courts, but at least positioning-wise, it feels like it's the right thing to do to try to put some pressure on texas his social media upgrade is notable i don't know what do you what do you make of what's happening with your current governor well a funny story a couple weeks ago he reached out to me and said hey come talk to me about evs and you know i don't really know the guy and i thought sucker so you know i went up there and he you know pulled me in the office and

you know the poor bastard i had him cornered like i brought i brought a little slideshow governor here are some charts and graphs that show our nozzle penetration rate is fourth worst than another another.

And to his credit, his ability to suffer fools, which is essential for running for president, in this case, me.

And another thing, if you look at the tire diameters, I had him in there for 90 minutes.

Finally, the troopers had to rescue him.

They brought in a SWAT team to get him out of there.

But one, he's an EV guy.

He's an early adopter.

Two, he gets it.

And three, it was a very productive discussion.

Half me was thinking, if you run for president, you can't let a blowhard like me in there for 90 minutes.

You've got a state to run.

And we were in the middle of the budget fight.

But he was very gracious.

But of course, the talk turned to that.

And my advice to him was less of the PR gimmicks.

If you're the gimmicky flim flam guy from California with the perfect teeth, you know,

you're not going to have a winning narrative in presidential.

He is no fool.

And I think he is lining up right against Trump.

He is a bit of a policy won, which is why he tolerated the, you know, I had a lot of opinions about existing California programs that are working and not working.

And I said, this is a side of you that people don't jump to because they see the good-looking, you know, communicator candidate.

Why not?

And so I, you know, he was impressive in the meeting, but I think he has a tendency or his campaign does to go for the easy.

And we're going to go put up a billboard in Alabama and call this, you know, when in fact is, I think if you're the California guy,

you can be the future guy.

the generational guy.

On the other hand, being him, people think California is all screwed up.

So he's got to have a story about how I learned from our failures and admit that it's not the golden state now or he'll get tied up in that.

So anyway,

he was fairly impressive in the meeting about all this stuff.

But I think

the sharp, smart policy guy has been hidden.

And the kind of gimmicky soundbite guy has been probably running at 150%

when 100% would do it.

And you can fill the void with the other stuff.

But I think he's a contender.

I think he's a shortlist guy for the Democrats.

I do too.

I've updated my priors on it over the last six months.

Last year, I would have been like, come on.

It's just, you can't, the Democrats can't pick a governor of California.

But I don't know.

I just, I've been frankly, and I think, I just think that a couple of the other Democratic governors are making the wrong call right now.

And I would rather Josh Shapiro be the governor of my state than Gavin Newsome.

Like, that's closer to my politics.

I think he's a great governor of Pennsylvania.

But the Shapiro, Whitmer, you know, kind of, et cetera, I could list basically every other governor.

Like play of like, well, I'm going going to pick my, I'm going to pull my punches.

I'm going to pick my fights with Trump.

I'm going to pick my spots.

I just don't think this is the right moment for that if you have national ambitions.

Maybe it's right for your state concerns in the micro, but I don't, I think that people want somebody that's fighting,

you know, with a little bit more verve.

Yeah.

I don't know.

What do you make of that?

I think somebody who does change the channel elegantly, but here's the exciting new stuff you get.

Enough with this guy.

We all get to say, bye-bye, Donald Trump.

Everybody join me.

Bye-bye.

You're gone, old man, crazy.

And then pivot to the new interesting stuff.

You know, I'm a believer of the opposites theory of the presidential campaign psychology, in that people like to vote for what they think, perceive they did not get the last time.

So, you know, George H.W.

Bush, classiest guy in the world, master of foreign affairs, cannot work a supermarket checkout scanner, doesn't understand us.

So we go to the trailer park and we find Bill Clinton, who understands us all too well.

In fact, he understood us so well, it got a little creepy and he, you know, enough already.

It's the oval friggin' office.

So what do we do?

We went back to the classy Bush family and got the likable son who you want to watch a football game with.

Loved him.

Went to church.

Yeah, got clean, straight and narrow, enough of the Playboy mansion.

Then in the White House, and then we find out, boy, he doesn't make English talk so good, and he might have stupidly gotten us in a war.

Maybe he's not that smart.

We need a genius.

So we found the erudite African-American poet who wrote the stirring memoir of his own story and gave the best speech in the world.

And we thought, let's get the genius.

So we get the genius to replace the guy, again, perception, not reality, that, you know, we thought was stupid.

So now what happens with the genius?

Well, he's a little soft.

He keeps drawing red lines, people cross.

The Brazilian Minister of Sport rolled him at the Olympics.

You know, eh, we need a tough negotiator to shake up this failure in Washington.

Get the blowhard from TV who fired Gary Busey for not selling enough snow coats or whatever.

All right, he's going to, and you know, I remember the data back in the late, great, you know, campaign we both remember.

A lot of the reason regulars, not just nutty populists, started going to Trump in the primary was they thought, well, he'll make deals and get stuff done.

They thought he'd be Mr.

Washington results because he's a master deal maker.

He's actually a master inheritance squanderer, but the perception was because he was in that cardboard set in the apprentice.

Wow, he's a big wheeler dealer.

He'll make it all all work.

Well, of course, then we got complete chaos.

You got to give him a little more credit, Murph.

Turns out he's a master scam artist because he is going to end up doing pretty good on his on his inheritance now with the crypto money.

Best grifter to ever, you know, I mean, Madoff is looking up from hell thinking, I should have studied him more.

So now, what replaces the blowhard, incompetent guy who picks fights of everybody?

The cool, smart, I am the future, younger technocrat type.

I don't think it'll be J.B.

Pritzker.

He's another brawler like Trump.

He'll be the entertainment.

I don't think he'll be the president.

So the question is, who is

the

anti-Trump to give us what we think we didn't get with him, which I would think would be finesse, a little bit of elegance, I am the future, grown up, can handle the French minister without throwing a Big Mac at him.

You know, and Gavin, if he manages this right, could fall into this slot, and a few others could as well.

Now, remember, the problem is Dems have to pick their calendar because Biden tried to say, well, let's move a lot of African-American voters up.

And, you know, so you got to watch the English on the ball, which can affect the market of what people really want versus what they might get,

which could be a big factor.

We got three years to do 2028 hot stove, so I won't go too deep on this.

You and me, you could do two hours of it.

I'll just say one, I guess my one thing I would add to what you're saying, I think you're right in the macro, but

the thing I remember from 2016, looking at the data in Jeb, is that what the people, is that phrase about Trump?

Well, I don't like this, but he fights.

And I do think that

was his other view.

I do think the Democratic primary voters, maybe not the swing general voters, the Democratic primary voters are going to want somebody that fights.

So

fights and finesse is tough.

It's doable.

Well, but you can always...

you know, do an improved version of Adelaide Stevenson.

Well, if my opponent keeps lying about me, I might start telling the truth about him, you know, with a little al-an rather than the brutal insulting.

Because keep in mind, you'll have a whole field full of insulters.

J.D.

Pritzker will be, hey, pencil neck.

You know, he'll be doing pro wrestling promos on Trump all the time.

Standing out as the clever scalpel thing, you might be able to surf on the goons a little.

Anyway, we'll find out.

It kind of depends what the whole field looks like.

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Last topic.

In November of 2020, during the Stop the Steal,

a young man, somebody who had less wrinkles than he does right now on this podcast, wrote a article that said goodbye to all that about how I could not go along with a party that was going to go along with his Stop the Steel effort.

You, Mike Murphy, four years later, four and a half years, May 2025, Memorial Day, wrote an article with the subhead, goodbye to all that, saying that you were also, you were officially leaving.

So only four and a half years behind me, not too bad.

What was the final straw?

Well, I was fighting from the inside.

You know, I'm a lifer.

I've been a general in this thing for a long time, and I'm happy to be up in the hills, you know, starving on coconuts with my rifle ready for the comeback and taking the odd pot shot.

But I just was so depressed with the way the House and many of most of the Senate just folded their chair on everything.

I thought, you know what?

I just don't want to be registered to this anymore.

I've been voting for a fair amount of Democrats, not particularly enjoying it.

I'm still pretty right-wing conservative.

But I don't think the Republican Party is a a conservative party anymore.

It's a stupid populist party.

And if I wanted that, I'd have a Juan Perrone for president sticker on my car.

So I just did what we here in California call decline to state, which is independent or no party preference.

So yeah, yeah, I have not joined the Democratic Party, but I have left the Republican one.

Do you think Decline to State is how you will be registered when you reach our eternal coil?

Or do you expect there'll be be a pivot back to...

I don't know.

You know, Tom Campbell, former congressman, former budget director in the Schwarzenegger administration, is an old friend of mine.

He's a little to the left of me on many things, but

he founded something called the Common Sense Party here, I think, which I tried to register, but doesn't have official status.

So I just said, I'll be declining to state.

I would like to be a Republican again.

But do you see it?

I'm not asking about your feelings.

I'm asking of your analysis.

Yeah, I hear you.

I think it's possible.

It's It's going to evolve.

Parties are not permanent.

The question is, the battle is going to be between conservatism in a classic sense and populism.

Knuckle-dragging or not.

And I'm not a knuckle-dragger.

Tell me what you think about this.

This is how I answer this question anytime somebody asks, and I'm interested in your assessment of my analysis.

I think that if you look at the world, basically besides the Anglo world, besides us, England, the Aussies, and Canada.

There's some angry New Zealand knights calling us too.

We're not Australia, damn it.

The Kiwis.

Yeah, yeah, that's not.

The right-wing party in all these countries is basically a nativist blood and soil party.

Like, you know, like, that's just what the right-wing party is in every country in the world.

And I just think that that's what the right-wing party in this country is going to be for the foreseeable future.

I don't know.

Well, it's quickly, but you can argue it's already there.

Yeah.

So.

Things change over the future, but I can't guarantee they're changing the right way.

As long as I'm in the fight, I want to push for the right change.

We need a real Berkeley and and Conservative Party in this country.

But right now, the populist, you know, Yahoos,

they're in the ascendancy.

But we have a cult too, and cults go away with the cult leader.

So we're seeing.

I don't know.

This guy's never going to die, Mike.

I mean, come on.

Like, he's just, he's going to, he's like that old lady you see in the interviews that it's like, I'm 110, you know, and the Today show goes down.

They're like, what's your secret?

And she's like, a pack of cigarettes, whiskey.

No, no, totally.

I feel like I'm not.

All All I know is they thought Richputin couldn't be killed until he was.

So everybody dies, but I take your point.

And I'm not advocating any harm or violence against the president of the United States, just metaphorically.

Obviously, obviously.

We would never.

That is Mike Murphy, a very busy man because he's taking at least one day a week to not think about Donald Trump.

I tried to book him when he wrote that damn newsletter about leaving the Republican Party on Memorial Day.

I was like, I need Murphy.

We're coming out of Memorial Day.

I can't remember where I was, but it bummed me out.

I wanted to chirp about it.

Yeah, you're like, I'll get to you in July.

I can fit you in on my schedule in 12 weeks from now.

It's like giving a hearing with the Pope, Mike Murphy.

So we'll see you back here around Thanksgiving, I guess.

How's that?

All right, we're going to drag you on Hacks on Tap.

You're on our must-get guest list.

Can't wait.

Look forward to it.

Alcoholic staff.

All right.

All right.

Thanks so much to Mike Murphy for coming on the podcast.

Tomorrow,

we're going to get a little bit more serious.

We'll do a deep dive with our favorite legal expert on what's happening inside the DOJ and apparently the negotiations going on today between Ghelene Maxwell and Trump's personal lawyer, turned deputy attorney general.

It is going to be a good one.

We'll see you all then.

Look forward to it.

Peace.

I'm not a gangster tonight.

Don't wanna be a bad guy.

I'm just a loner, baby.

And now you've gotten into my way.

I can't decide whether you should live or die.

Or you'll probably go to heaven.

Please don't hang your head and cry.

No wonder why.

My heart feels dead inside.

It's cold and hard and petrified.

Lock the doors and close the blinds.

We're going for a ride.

Oh, I could throw you in the lake, I'd feed you poison birthday game.

Now won't deny I'm gonna miss you when you're gone.

Oh, I could bury you alive, but you might crawl up with the knife and kill me when I'm sleeping.

That's why I can't decide whether you should live or die.

Oh, you'll probably go to heaven.

Please don't hang your head and cry.

No wonder why my heart feels dead inside.

It's cold and far

The Bullard Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.

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