Mike Murphy: The Chinese Own Elon

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Hello and welcome to the Bored Podcast. I'm your host Tim Miller.
We're in carnival season. I'm in my James Carville rugby shirt.
It's Muses Thursday. I'm delighted to be here today with a veteran Republican strategist, an OG never Trumper.
He worked for McCain, Schwarzenegger, Romney, Jeb. You might have heard of them.
He's co-host of Hacks on Tap and co-director of Center for the Political Future at USC. He also runs the EV Policy Project, an effort to end the partisan divide over electric vehicles.
By now you've figured out it's Mike Murphy. What's going on, man? Hey, man.
Good to see you, Tim. Good to see you.
It's been too long. Yeah.
I also have a bonus segment for everybody in segment two, so stick around with Michael Fanone. It was going to be a YouTube only thing, but Fanone was so good.
Yeah. Yesterday, the audio people got to hear it too, so stick around for Fanone.
Because I know show business, I'm going to start with something here that both of us hate to admit and that the audience will hate to hear so it sound like a good way to start the podcast yeah yeah reach for the mute button america but um did you watch any of the um cabinet meeting the four pay-per-view cabinet meeting yesterday did you catch any it? I watched about 20 seconds on video before I started thinking about, I started thinking very bad thoughts. I mean, seeing Elon, that man-child, bouncing around in his Nazi tank commander outfit in the cabinet room of the United States, it just, it snapped me.
So I couldn't take any more. All right.
Well, good. Maybe our listeners will like to hear your opinion because I was about to give a wrong thought, which was the substance was gross.
We'll get into that. But boy, I thought the PR was pretty good yesterday.
And I just think that Trump being in that room, it had kind of a question time British vibe. He was insulting J.D.
Vance over in the cuck chair you know he was he was taking all the questions he seemed like he was kind of in command of the topics he didn't seem lost and obviously he says crazy stuff all the time it's it's trump but you know you have wall-to-wall tv coverage he's announcing things that i think are good again substance aside good marketing like five million bucks if you want to come to the country we'll pay down the debt with five million dollar gold cards again it's huckster stuff right I just I was like right it's hard to imagine Biden doing that it's hard to imagine some of the other folks doing that and like you can even though I find him just like you disgusting I can only handle that 20 seconds like it was a moment where I was like i can see why people at least can be conned by this yeah no look he he is very fluent in the complicated language of moron which many politicians don't speak well they think they're getting trouble for it so he he feels like an authentic brush of fresh air because he gets there and he does his drunk uncle thing you know you know what else i don't like limousines i'm getting rid of all the limousines jd lose the limos we're squaring this place up so it's good performative bullshit and for his world that hates politics hates washington hates the establishment kind of hates reading writing and arithmetic it plays great so yeah they're they're hitting a lot of doubles at that the thing is this is a game. So, you know, and it's pretty hard, as you know, as president, you get a pretty easy first 100 days.
But then stuff starts counting. And if you deconstruct this, the guy was elected to fix the economy because people perceived, and that's all that counts in politics, that the economy was better when he was president for all his flaws than it was under Biden.
it was old and crazy inflation blah blah blah so we'll see how it runs out but in the short term doing his card tricks and hey elon i want you to the toll booths get rid of them who wants to wait at a toll right fellas and they all clap like chimps yeah it's a good show yeah but but the long game is the is the existential live or die in politics and the long game they're doing almost everything in my view wrong yeah it was a good show it's crazy uncle not not confused and i guess i just think that is important right like that he's old but he doesn't look he looked like you know he looked crazy not confused but he's got a plan and he's a barstool know-it-all so we all know all know the Coast Guard. They don't do anything real.
It's the Navy. Get rid of the Coast Guard.
Cut the money. And charge the Canadians.
We're guarding their coast, too. A billion a day.
I like them. Half a million a day.
Anybody writing this down? You know, it's an act. I only brought in guests during Mardi Gras season who I can just put a quarter in the machine and let them go.
Because I know I'm not to be at 100% so that's why we got the Murphy doing the shtick here. I want to get back to the economy stuff but there's one ominous thing from the drunk uncle cabinet session yesterday and I want to play that clip for everybody.
Is it your view of your authority that you have the power to call up any one of all of the people seen at this table and issue orders that they're bound to follow oh yeah they'll follow the orders yes they will no exceptions no except well let's see let me think oh yeah yeah she'll have an exception of course no exceptions you know that i gotta tell you i was watching that live suffering for you and um and when he said oh let me see she'll have an exception like for a half of a second for like a millisecond i was like oh man is he gonna acknowledge that pan bondy doesn't have to do what he says and then he obviously is like no that was a joke actually everyone does exactly what i say because i'm the king and that is uh some pretty pretty ominous stuff well that's always the subtext is you know i'm just playing here because i'm el supremo and of course you know hey in fact you know what i like i like the charleston everybody dance dance for me right now he's always a click away from that so it's who he is god help us yeah for sure. We're going to get into wannabe trillionaire hour here.
A lot of news in the wannabe trillionaire class. Jeff Bezos yesterday at the Washington Post put out a statement about the plans for the Washington Post editorial page.
He's fired the existing editor, David Shipley. I want to read a little bit from the post here.
He said,

we are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars,

personal liberties and free markets. I'm with you there.
We'll cover other topics too,

of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader's doorstep every morning, broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.
I am of America and for America and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical, and a big part of America's success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else.
I got a lot of thoughts on that, but what are yours? Yeah, it's not good. I mean, I'm a right-winger.
I'd like to see more classic conservative thinking on a lot more editorial pages the post editorial page though actually over the last 20 years have been pretty good yeah you know it has not been a left-wing wonderland as much as many other broadsheets to the extent there are any left so it's troubling you know i can't figure out bezos i think i'm going to blame wife too because you know I had lunch with him when he bought the post. Long story.
But I'm sitting there having lunch with Bezos. Just the two of you or it was like a group thing? No, it was me, him, and Carney.
Ah, yeah. And so I had spoken at a CEO thing, and he was the host of it here in Los Angeles.
And he walked up to me afterward and said, hey, you want to have lunch? I'm like, sorry, I't have time. I'm seeing the zap guy.
No, of course, of course I want to look Bezos. Tell me about Amazon.
I'm a customer. So, and it was interesting, but he was total technocrat, very curious about what to do with the post.
And I said, have some fun with Trump, put undercover, do the old, uh, uh, Gloria Steinem thing, put two reporters undercover at his hotel for three months, write about it, You know, blah, blah, blah. And he was eating it all up.
He wasn't really ideological. It wasn't anti-Trump.
It wasn't pro-Trump. It was how do I make a great newspaper? That is not the guy giving these dictates.
So I don't know what happened to him, but it's very depressing. I mean, the obvious theory is, oh, he's got business interests and all that.
But these guys are often so rich. Who the president is not that material to the yacht fuel bill.
Something else is going on. And it's sad.
And yet another institution buckles. What I think is going on is the Blue Origin stuff, right? Like you need Trump for Blue Origin for space.
And that's not really money. You do need the government to either fund it, deregulate it right like at some level you need government involvement there and so i guess maybe some worry about trump but also maybe he's been red pilled i don't know like his statement at some level if somebody came to me and said i'm starting a new or i've taken over the post i decided to just get rid of the opinion page together a lot of great people over there i would feel bad for them i'd hope they'd find another job but i would understand that like the argument right like a newspaper doesn't really need an opinion page anymore because of the internet like that part of the argument for me works then the next step though to say well we just need to imitate the economists and the wall the two existing editorial pages we we are going to ban all counter viewpoints in the name of freedom that's the bad one yeah like in the name of freedom also and then it's like radio you know my frequency and nothing else yeah and then it's like i also want to be unapologetically about freedom in the economic realm like says the person who is like mouth is on the teat of the government in like so many different areas i mean like think about all the ways that amazon has like has tried to tilt the market in their favor with various regulations and local i you know what i mean like it's not this is not reason magazine here i like like bezos's hands aren't clean it's just like elon he's the biggest corporate welfare profiteer in the world right you know you had with a new libertarian super state what propped up tesla for years is selling credits to regular car makers to offset their emissions here and in europe billions and billions of pure profit yeah if it wasn't for those regs tesla might not have made it right so it just kind of like feels like you're peeing on me and telling me it's raining you know it's one of those things so if i felt like this was authentic you could at least listen to it right and he had that when he stepped on the endorsement yeah you know that that kind of put him in the okay he's trying to put the fix in now you know there's a long history of guys buy papers and they get to be blowhards on the editorial page but in this moment in time with an institution that's important but also is struggling as opposed to is it's it's really troubling and it's also not going to help the businesses right that's why it's just such an interesting thing like it hurts the business people are unsubscribing by the way if you've unsubscribed from the post the bulwark plus is available so it's not helping the business you know and like it just doesn't like make sense across any and and then also just morally and ethically like the threat of trump you want people challenge like the post record in D.C.
should be challenging the status quo, not like doing like wink, wink, America first stuff. Right.
And everybody there of any renown or weight is looking for a new job. There aren't a lot of new jobs, but it's going to be a talent train.
I mean, I wrote Bezos a big fan letter yesterday because his antics have led my wife Tiff to give up using Amazon, which is the welcome development i'm gonna get killed for saying this she's a listener but uh it is gonna hurt the business yeah just like uh tesla's being murdered by elon right now both in europe and the u.s yeah let's go into that let's go into elon i want to get your your take with your ev hat on a second but just like biggest possible picture thoughts on doge and what what elon's been up to you know in campaigns you're always ranting about government waste because people think 30 of the money is wasted and as you know well perception is reality now there is plenty of waste in government some places more than others but sending interns in and chimps with chainsaws to try to get to the payroll computer and screw everybody over with no plan. If they had announced that Brad Smith, who's part of Doge, who I know, a very smart healthcare entrepreneur, hey, Brad, Elon's going to use his relationship to get behind you guys, come up with a smart plan to fix Medicaid.
The fraud in California Medicaid alone would make Tony Soprano feel guilty and not want to be part of it it's unbelievable but instead they're doing the intern corps going into like usaid one it's no money

two soft power is really important and three it's full of cia people so you know on every level it's

stupid they're they're laughing their asses off in china and russia right now about all this it's so

reckless and dumb but publicly people like the idea of some sharp pencil person coming in and shaking up quote government spending the problem are these guys are incompetent and even the trump appointees who are not the bureaucratic operational hall of fame realize that he's screwing up agencies here and so Doge is a good cause corrupted by arrogance, stupidity, and the lack of any plan at all. And politically, it's going to come back and hurt.
And putting your conservative hat on, I just, I ask everybody with the conservative disposition, this question on here, because I'm just trying to process it myself. Do you see any case for the idea that it's just like, well, just slash 30% across the board, you know, see where the chips fall, we'll fix it on the back end.
And like, that's the only way to break up, you know, these entrenched interests that have gotten sclerotic. I don't know.
I saw one of your old clients, Meg Whitman at an event recently, and Meg was like, Meg hates Trump. And so, like, this was not a pro-Doge comment, but she's like, I've been in government the government the last few years you know having been appointed by the bide administration there's definitely some room to cut some stuff so i don't know is do you see any argument for that at all there is but i would like a modicum of intelligence on what to cut when you go where the money is which is entitlements now they're big and bloated for a reason they have huge political support that's the Trump guys in this house budget, that's what they're going to spend the next 12 months discovering as we head to the midterm elections.
Government is bloated because it form files function. People like bloated government.
But yeah, there's a smart way to do it. And if they think they can use their head of steam to take the political heat for cuts, I'm all for it.
But I want a plan. You know, I kind of want to put the cops where the crime is.
It's like, we're going to attack a crime way by sending the National Guard into Scarsdale, New York. Well, no, you know, there ought to be a little thinking to this.
And there isn't. The only thinking is tactical.
How do we screw the agencies? We get to the payroll department and we freeze the, this was Elon's old trick, just stop paying bills. It takes people eight years to sue you.
They'll just go

away and eat the invoice. That's what he did at Twitter.
Yeah. And that's continuing.
So Sam Stein

has reporting for us in the newsletter this morning that there's a new round of global health

cuts, right? Like, so you got one judge that's putting a freeze on one set of cuts in various

USAID and foreign programs.

And that is now up to the Supreme Court.

Roberts is looking at that.

Meanwhile, they have not done what the judge told them.

Like they've continued to freeze the cuts that are initially froze.

So like, whatever, you know, come and make me, I guess is Elon's point.

And then they've added on top of it another round of cuts, including things they said they weren't going to cut, including PEPFAR, you know, the AIDS program that W is so proud of. You know, American farmers are paid to make food, which they're great at, to ship to starving kids.
There's half a billion of it rotting in ships on docks within a short truck drive of starving people right now. And, you know, it's going to show up next week if it hasn't already, the Chinese food.
the geopolitics of this i mean like honestly that's that's how dark the situation is that's like the best case scenario that the chinese actually yeah fill in you know because like they're like real deaths i i we're trying to track um down for youtube later so people can can look at it but you know jeremy konindik who led the u.s government's response to ebola was posting just today about like how they again this is one of those things where they said that they were going to do a carve out for this but there hasn't been any and these groups in africa the ngos are just shutting down so there's like real human cost to this for like is there even any benefit right like like no real benefit i don't think budget-wise no no it's part of the thing about he's cutting one of the dumbest things to cut and he's not getting any real money for it that you know it's so scattershot it's chimp with the chainsaw stuff and geopolitically soft power is important and if we had had a time where we don't really want to be retreating in that world, because we got powerful bad guys on the march. So you know, this is the thing about Trump, he's got this perceived images, smart business genius, when the truth is, if he took his inheritance, and he put it in an index fund, he'd be a lot richer.

It's the relentless stupidity of Donald Trump that is the real tell. Though, you know, he built a television career on primetime and a cardboard set pretending to be a business tycoon, hiring and firing Gilbert Gottfried.
And in the world of perception is reality pop culture. Wow, he really knows how to straighten things out.
No, he doesn't. So, I mean, that takes us to, like, the budget element of this,

which is not Trump, really, because he's letting the guys on the Hill do this. But he's gonna be the one that ends up arm twisting if they're even able to get it through.
It squeaks by by one vote in Kanderson's, I guess, since you've mentioned your spouse. I didn't think they'd even be able to do the non-binding budget.
My husband was like, I think that they'll squeak it out. He's a lobbyist.
So he's the vote counter in the family. So he got that one right.
Kudos to him. But they squeak it out by one vote.
Now they actually are going to have to go do it again with the weight of law behind it and with like real details. Right.
I mean, this was the hard, but it's the easiest one because it's the least binding. It's the least binding and there's the least details.
Right. It's the it's which you can say you can kind of elide the medicaid thing like i saw mike lawler the supposed moderate that never does anything moderate on tv talking about like well this isn't real medicaid cuts you know it's just like we're cutting under hhs and we're going to find fraud and we'll see what the details are it's directional you know it's an aspirational budget yeah and when do they get to the senate with the old dragons? They're going to be like, hey, wait a minute.
I think in their easiest place, the House, by one vote, they got their easiest thing done by one vote. Still something.
I would have probably bet against it, but not a lot of money too. So I would have lost a bet with your husband.
But it only gets harder from here. I heard a savvy former Ways and Means Republican lobbyist, you know, the tax writing committee in the House saying, well, now they got to kill, they got to decide between slashing Medicaid, which we've never been able to do, because all the Pauls are afraid of it, or slashing the salt tax they want to give back that he's promised, or making him eat his words on tax cuts.
It's going to be fun to watch. They're putting their hands into into two disposals simultaneously or just juicing the debt by four and a half trillion which i can expect to the elon thing like the even the budget that they put through right even with using you know kind of the mega uh heritage foundation money counters who are you know like throwing some stuff under the couch cushions and then optimist yeah optimist yeah the even they say it's i think not 865 billion is is the is the debt increase over 10 years like the real number is three trillion probably maybe more um and just in just extending the tax cuts themselves or four trillion and then you just sort of deal out the cuts and so it's like they don't even have a directional plan towards cutting the deficit or debt.
And so they're doing all these painful cuts in the name of cutting the deficit and then they're not going to do it. And they're doing top lines that are incredibly hard.
Even if you squeezed all the waste out of Medicaid, you probably can't get there. You know, the reality of it.
It's like the old Dennis Miller joke about judges. There ought to be three verdicts now, because crimes are so horrible.
Guilty, innocent, and you're shitting me. And that's what this budget is, or this budget framework, this non-binding aspiration.
So yeah, there's gravity in politics. It takes a while.
And that's the point Carville was making in the New York Times today. And I'm like three quarters where he is, which is, you is you know there's nothing wrong democrats in the short term with retreating into the step and let them over advance and starve over time because i think in the whole price eggs department that could be what happens you ought to loudly peck at them you do think that's right i was i was gonna get into the economy but me and carville i'm in the carville shirt so i can say i know i say it with love i'm i'm like not with them on this one i think that what's the harm and like and just you know being being monkeys with shit and throwing the shit right back in their face right now and seeing which what hits i don't i'm kind of on that side of things well my view is you can kind of do both tactically on an on them every day but don't do it at haughty Democrat NPR language.
Oh, you know what they did today? They laid off 100 baby food inspectors at agriculture. What? You know, bumper stickers that people understand.
And peck away at them. But fundamentally, knowing you don't have any power, letting him run wild for a while, since you really don't have any option.
And, you know, let him dig the hole that he is digging i mean name an american politician that went crazy on medicaid cuts and survive you know name a governor so carville's doing the old general zukov thing retreat into russia and wait for winter and i think that is true and going to happen anyway but i'm i'm for sniping all the way there you know i agree with you that and on the language i was just on with um with john lovett over a pod save america we're doing

this kind of discussion of the different democratic strategies we're going through the videos

of what democrats been saying and there's some aoc videos and like aoc has these two wolves inside

of her one is like bartender aoc yeah and the republicans make fun of her over that but i think that's the right one.

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Yeah. And the Republicans make fun of her over that.

But I think that's the right one, right?

Like, and then like the other one is like Tufts,

like I'm in a Tufts meeting of,

of an intersectional activist group AOC.

Right.

And it's like,

that is the one that like isn't landing.

But I think that like bartender AOC,

Ruben Gallego was on the pod yesterday.

I thought he was really good at this.

Like just speaking plainly about what they're, the harm they're causing, I think is the right path, right? Yeah. In bumper stickers, people understand.
People fired Biden and by extension Kamala because he thought he was a crazy old man who turned out couldn't run the economy. Well, guess what? Over time, Trump is a crazy old man who can't run the economy either.
I mean, today he tried to announce he had another scary tariff.

Tariffs are economic poison.

They hurt his voters more than anybody, which is, of course, the sick irony of it all.

So let Trump screw himself up because you can't really stop his power right now and snipe all the way in people language that they understand.

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That website again is we are there dot us. I've been desperate to talk about what like the economic trajectory is and both of us are political hacks.
So I'm going to have, you know, somebody that actually knows a thing or two that did but i think i got a b minus and microeconomics 101 at gw so you know i will bring in somebody who's an expert but just like using common sense i think that the economic trajectory right now is extremely shaky and i was intrigued to see this clip from steve cohen who's done very well for himself in the economy and is no far left lib finance guy. He's a big supporter of Christie and I think even supported Trump in 16.
It doesn't anymore. But I want to listen, play just a clip of him on a panel the other day that caught my eye.
This is one of those moments where there's really a lot of uncertainty. I mean, tariffs cannot be positive.
It's a tax. Taxes are never positive.
On top of that, we have slowing immigration. And in addition, now you have doge.
Wherever you lay on the doge issue, I mean, that's austerity. It's got to be negative for the economy.
We think growth is going to slow to 1.5% from 2.5% in the second half. The reality is we've got a brew of sticky inflation, slowing growth, and austerity in the government.
And so I'm actually pretty negative for the first time in a while. And it may only last a year or so, but it's definitely a period where I think the best gains have been had.
It wouldn't surprise me to see a significant correction. Sticky inflation, slowing growth, and austerity.
That doesn't seem like a winning package to me. Most of the economists would make exactly that argument.
But it's back to the Trump paradigm. Tariffs are on the street popular because they sound smart.
Well, why we got all that Canadian steel coming in here? Well, here's what actually happens. You put a 25% tariff on Canadian steel.
Let's pretend you didn't go into politics to save America and you're running a Chevy plant, okay, in Oakland County, Michigan. Well, you're buying a lot of steel.
Now it costs 25% more. So you pick up the phone and call up U.S.
Steel in Pittsburgh and said, hey, I need 50,000 tons of rolled steel. The Canadian stuff costs 25% more.
Well, what does U.S. Steel say? Well, our shit costs 25% more.
We just raised prices. That's what steel now costs, smart guy.
And by the way, because Chrysler's on the other line and Volkswagen from Tennessee, we don't have enough steel to fit to the men, so we're going to bump it up another 10%. You want your steel? You want to close your plant, smart guy.
And it cascades. But it's like yeah screw them usa number one one third of republicans indulged me for 20 seconds of car shit one third of republicans think the united states is the world's largest producer of automobiles another third thinks we're number two to japan neither are true china's number one we're number four so you know this usa number one thing trump will say we're going to build beautiful new beautiful steel plants fabulous the best you ever seen takes eight to ten years good luck with the permitting so this whole tariff thing is anthrax for the economy it's just going to be a mess yeah good luck the actuarial tables on that too eight to ten years it is and i i guess my question is are the republicans on the hill the the whatever the john thunes of the world the ones that you might have worked for in a different era are they drinking the kool-aid are they trying are they wish casting are they trying to just just dream into reality like like think positive thoughts get get positive outcomes? Because, I mean, they could do some things that would limit the damage that Cohen laid out there, but it doesn't seem like they're really interested in that.
Yeah, at least publicly they're not. I think privately there's a lot.
I mean, I had no idea after 40 years running campaigns for a lot of senators and congressmen and all the rest that free haircuts in the U.S. Senate were so damn seductive.
Because we're not asking these guys to land on Anzio Beach, for crying out loud. But boy, oh boy, they all line up.
I had a conversation with one of my guys back in the day saying, you know, this guy's a clown and from a red state. And the senator said, oh, yeah, the other day, you know, we had to get the military aid to help him find Pakistan on a map took an hour.
You know, he thought it was next to Mexico. It's really, really pretty bad.
And I said, well, why don't you tell him to go to hell? And he said, I'd love it. My wife would speak to me again.
I like to be on you spouting off on television about Trump all the time. I love it.
But here's the problem. I spout off against Trump.
I get a primary. I'm gone.
A guy in an Uncle Sam suit is now in my job screwing up all the little stuff that I do to help Barneyville get the new whatever. And I said, fair enough.
What if three of you did it? And he said, call me when you get the other two. I'm in.
And, you know, survival is the fundamental rule of politics of politics unfortunately because it's hard to get there so i think the thunes of the world are hoping that they got bands calling them saying don't worry we're talking about the crazy stuff except of course ukraine tariffs you know you know war on greenland but they're just clinging to that hope that that you'll get all his ya-ya's out and they'll be able to work some stuff out. But I don't see it.
And I guess they have gotten the delays in the tariffs. They kicked the can again yesterday to April 3rd or whatever.
So who knows? We'll keep kicking that can till Barron's president. But it's getting to the point where the strongman can't, you know, okay, Superman, you keep saying you're going to lift up a locomotive and you keep delaying it carpal tunnel but you ain't superman huh you know he's putting himself in a corner and by the way if the canadians got really pissed the entire u.s midwest runs in canadian oil they could knock oil to eight bucks a gallon in ohio in a week you know just saying trade wars suck i'm encouraging the canadians the Canadians to buck up.
But I guess the rationale for that, for their pause on this makes sense, right? I was watching one of these funny spoof videos where it's a Canadian pretending to be on the other line with Trump, and he's like, what do you want there? You just want a czar? He's like, oh yeah, we got Teddy over here. We just made him the czar.
All right. Good deal, Mr.
President. No problem there.
Right. Like, well, you want a couple of barrels of maple syrup? Yeah, done.
Ten more fighter planes and declare victory. But you know what the number one applause line if you're Canadian on the stump running for prime minister is? The old joke, how do you get 25 drunk Canadians out of a swimming pool? Hey, guys, please get out of the pool.
I've worked up there and I love Canada. But the great stump joke is, you know, after all, we settled the tough half of North America and the crowd goes wild.
They're pretty tough bastards under all the smiles and politeness. So, uh, I hope it doesn't escalate and they don't want it to, it's not in their interest, but you know, I think Trump, like everything, sees a stereotype of Canada.
first to experience the new lineup featuring gabriella diaz and ayane cozaza joining continuing members david harrington and paul vienko the festival's insightful compositions and dynamic guest artists bring the quartet to an entirely new sonic dimension tickets and details at chronoscartet.org we got waylighted during the elon section i did want to get back to the ev side of things since you're uh since you do some work on that i mean we were trying are trying to figure what is happening with Bezos and I, and who knows, is it blue origin? Is it red pill? Is it, I want to be the first trillion, next trillionaire. I want to, it's the second wife is a combination of all those things.
Maybe Elon though is on the one hand, I mean, he's getting richer and, and there's a story out today that I guess the FAA is potentially canceling a contract with Verizon and giving it to Starlink and to the tune of billions and billions of dollars. So definitely some corruption opportunities here.
So he might get personally richer. He might personally have more power.
But it is harming Tesla, one of his babies, right? Yeah, yeah. We did.
If you go to evpolitics.org, we do all this polling. And we showed among people who say they're seriously interested in buying an EV in the next year, it's about 20% of the largest definition of the new car market.
Toyota, Ford, and Volkswagen, we tested one German, one American, one Asian, are all far more popular than Tesla.

Among Harris voters, Elon's unfavorable is 76 and rise favorable is five yeah room to grow there yeah a little room to improve that was a while ago that was after the election now it's worse i'm sure i don't know how much worse it can go among trump voters he's 70 over 10 he's right up there with the other president so it's hurting him but you know again tesla's people say why is trump going after all the ev subsidies it'll hurt tesla and it will a little bit in the short term but tesla's most lucrative business is selling credits to other car companies that make gas cars and need to buy offsets so he's in the tes Tesla business, not the category of EV businesses. And I think Elon thinks the future is not making cars.
Well, it's making self-driving cars and robots. And if you have a car that after you drive to work, you push a button and drives away to go be a taxi all day and make money and come back and picks you up, instead of running for one hour every 24, it'll run for 10.
If we utilize cars like that in this future, people imagine, we need a hell of a lot less cars. The problem is all that self-driving stuff that Elon has convinced Wall Street, and that's why he's valued like a tech company, not like a car company, that's coming.
BYD, the big Chinese world-killing car company, just announced, yeah, we're going to give it away for a buck in every car. So there goes that five grand a car pure profit thing Wall Street was betting on for Elon.
I'm in this because I'm from Detroit and the American auto industry, the American manufacturing auto industry, which is Volkswagen in Tennessee, Ford in Detroit, et cetera, et cetera, Mercedes, could go away in a decade. People don't understand how big this is.
Really? Tell me more. Well, the Chinese can, if we let them, they can import a great $30,000 electric or gas car in that is essentially equal or better to anything you can buy in the market now.
The president of Ford is one of those visionary guys in this, Jim Farley, about eight months ago went over to China and drove a Xiaomi SU7, catchy name. Very popular new car.
And he loved it so much, he had it stuffed in a shipping container and shipped it to Detroit and drove it around Ford and let his executives drive it for six months. He doesn't want to give it up.
It's the only one in the country on a temporary plate. The feds are probably going to seize it.
And he said, if we can't make one of these in a few years, there's going to be no more ford motor company what does he like so much about it like what is well the software is really good the cost of production they design their cars to be cheaper to make kind of like tesla does yeah the battery tech is more advanced than what we have right now though we're catching up then they pay their auto workers 10 bucks an hour right so they're very competitive vehicles the mex Mexican car market has been the canary in the coal mine. Four years ago, China sold 40,000 cars in Mexico, gas and electric combined.
This year, they're probably at half a million. They're eating the market there.
They've already eaten it in Israel. They're in Europe.
They're everywhere but here. And Trump thinks, well, we're just at the American market.
American market is only 10% of the world market. GM sells as many cars in Asia as they do in the United States.
So if our guys can't compete worldwide, where the trend is unstoppably and undoubtedly electric, you know, we're going to be British Leyland. The government will be propping up a couple of companies that will be minor players in the world.
So this is a huge issue. I didn't mean to go deep on this, but you've intrigued me.
I don't have a ton of hope that this administration is going to do some smart domestic industrial policy, but what would be the best thing to do to help us compete? The Biden stuff had typical bureaucratic ham-handedness in it, particularly the charging subsidies, but the loans to build new, extremely competitive, high-tech factories, like Ford's thing. And by the way, these guys don't pay me.
I do this for free. I'm the donor here because I care a lot about it.
The new Rivian plant, 9,000 manufacturing jobs in Georgia, those loans to build those plants to compete are vital and Trump should leave them alone. The other thing is the consumer subsidies.
You want a great car, you can go get an electric car, basically 200 bucks off a month in lease, because Uncle Sam gives you 7,500 bucks. Now, I'm a Republican.
I don't like subsidies, but there are 99 car companies in China, and only a couple of them make money, because the government has said, we don't care about making money. Build factories and take over the world market.
That's your job. So our guys and our allies in Germany or South Korea or Japan are competing against guys who don't have to make money.
So we need subsidies now to muscle up and catch up our domestic stuff to make them world competitive. And to support our ally company, BMW makes more cars in their biggest plant in their entire systems in South Carolina.
So this is a US, NATO, South Korea, Japan axis. And everybody's getting their lunch eaten, including Elon, by the way, his biggest plants in China.
And BYD is eating Tesla's lunch there. This whole fact pattern, though, leads me back to like, Elon really has lost his mind you can argue right because he's corrupt a corrupt elon which would not be good in there would be doing things necessary to like go after china be aggressively to go after china and to work with the japanese south koreans etc like our axis right uh on international relations we're doing the opposite, kind of.
And we've put these tariffs on China, so I guess that's true. But Elon is alienating the markets that would be potentially open to his product.
He is and he isn't. He's alienating the Germans.
He's had an 80% sales drop there in Europe. But the Chinese own Elon.
That's the other little his largest plant is in china and that government can decide tomorrow it's now people's plant number five elon they let him build it on a waiver he did not have to do the joint venture stuff they own the paper on him so here we are again the democrats i this is why the democrats have to go in on china hawking i just people don't get it like Like the fact that Elon is on the take from China and pretends to be a free speech warrior on the same time. And I was just talking about this this morning that there's this Chinese crypto guy I've talked about here, Justin Sun.
And Justin Sun put in tens of millions into Trump's, one of Trump's crypto grips. And he's a fraudster.
He's a Chinese crypto fraudster being investigated by the SEC. Excuse he was being investigated by the sec until this morning there's a new press release out that shock the guy that put all this money into trump's crypto grift they're they're trying to come to a deal so we'll see we'll see how that shakes out yeah he's innocent we found out we we it turned out we were wrong the amount of of china corruption in this administration i just don't i don't think it's sunk in with people all right i have a couple other things really quick we'll do a little round the horn of the clownery i guess we'll go saddest to funniest saddest we had unvaccinated school-aged child die of the measles yesterday in texas rfk our new hhs secretary who spread measles vaccine disinformation not too long ago yesterday during that during that cabinet meeting said basically, yeah, there's measles outbreak all the time.
Like, we're on it. No, it's heartbreaking.
A lot of the Trump stuff hurts places that vote for Trump more than anything else. And we have a measles hotspot now, and it'll grow.
And we got a guy who would rather try voodoo running HHS. It's disgusting.
Our new FBI director, Cash Patel. Oh, God.
How about his deputy, too? They got a radio blowhard who used to guard the president's dog. Are you concerned about that? I have a funny news item I want to share, but what's your level of concern about? We have the only plainclothes national secret police of any superpower that are good guys.

You know, generally when you have the federal government has a plainclothes national secret police, you know, it's the trouble instrument.

And we've gone to great pains.

So Hoover era had some trouble.

But that culture has been cleaned up.

It's highly professional.

It's really important.

And I think the culture is so embedded there. It'll survive this, but we're going to pressure test it now.
And it's a horrible insult to the rank and file professionals in that agency. So it's heartbreaking.
Luckily, some of these guys are stupid and incompetent, which gets in the way of their venality, but it's terrible. Now, do I think I'll get hauled away in the middle of the night? No, no, no.
But the FBI is going to go into an internal turmoil there now, which is bad for them and bad for the country. Yeah.
Speaking of the venality, I enjoyed this story this morning from Evan Perez at CNN. Here's the nut graph.
FBI Director Cash Battelle walked into his new office on the seventh floor HQ and made an immediate order. So that's kind of ominous i was nervous when i read that sentence i was like oh is he coming after you know is he coming after comey what's the immediate order he wanted new carpeting and window coverings he called the office dingy so there you go doge in action that's right yeah no you can't run a police state with a shitty office you know.
The enemy's list board alone takes up eight square feet on the wall. It's like the thing where Trump ordered.
I can't forget which lickspittle got it, but he wants $200 million ad campaign thanking him for the border. I'm like, where's Doge? $200 million bonfire to have Trump doing political ads on the government payroll.
Yeah, we can't give rice to starving people in Africa, but we can do a great job, Mr. Trump ad campaign.
All right, my last topic, moving on to the Democrats. To your governor, we have a new competitor.
Hacks on Tap and the Borg podcast. We have a new competitor in the podcast space, and I want to play the sizzle reel from this upcoming competitor.
We need to change the conversation. And that's why I'm launching a new podcast.
And this is going to be anything but the Ordinary Politician podcast. I'm going to be talking to people directly that I disagree with, as well as people I look up to.
But more important than anything else, I'll be talking directly with you, the listener. Real conversations.
What's going on with the cost of eggs? What are the impacts, real impacts to you around tariffs? What power does an executive order really have? And what's really going on inside of Doge? Look, there's an onslaught of information that we take in. So let's take it to the sources without the typical political mumbo jumbo.
In the first few weeks, we're going to be sitting down with some of the biggest leaders and architects in the MAGA movement. This is Gavin Newsom.
All right. So the ad there is corny, but I'm going to give you an opinion that's going to shock you, Murphy.
I'm going to give you an opinion that's really going to shake you. I think this is a great idea, actually.
I've got a lot of gavin and like we could do it he's slick the ad that's ads too slick but like actually talking to maga people and having him use his slick skills to put baby in a corner to put bannon or whoever the hell wants to take him on in a corner i think it's probably smart right no i don't know what do you think well i i'm glad to know that he's breaking all the rules. You know, I'm looking forward to the backwards cap, you know, he's taking it to the streets.
He's not the man. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, you know, it's just the problem.
He is so transparent that that's where he gets in trouble. Yeah.
So, you know, I'm going to save America. I'm going to argue with MAGA guys to impress democratic primary voters so I can run for president, But it's really about America.
It's not about me. So, you know, it's like when he went down to Alabama and put up a billboard.
I hate you rednecks, you know, Newsom. I mean, it's just so that's the problem.
I think it doesn't pass the oh, it's like the gimmick where my campaign is not about politics. You know what our bumper sticker is? No bumper sticker, man.
And bumper sticker man you know i mean it reeks of that that said who knows i think this was inspired by buddha judge because like hey that pete guy's a talker and he goes on fox and does well yeah i'll recreate that and i'll argue with mega people on a podcast that i don't know you knowing. Hope it does well.
Yeah. Welcome to the frame.
Murphy, who knew that we had the prime job? The governor of California, senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, Matt Gaetz is a podcaster now. Cori Bush and Jamal Bowman have a podcast.
We're just, I'm key. I just keep looking at the charts to see when one of them will pass us.
Not yet, but a lot of politicians. I'm willing to trade, by the way.
He can have tax and I'll take governor of California. I got some ideas.
I'm in on that trade. God bless him.
I'm with you. Obviously, it's very transparent.
I just think engaging the MAGA people, like the period of time in history where it's do not platform these people, pretend they don't exist, other them. I like othering them.
I i don't think they should be invited to parties i think that you should neg them and not give them the the acknowledgement they deserve i'm for all that but the just pretending they don't exist didn't work and engaging and arguing with them i think makes sense in some level depending on how the execution we'll see yeah yeah we'll see how it goes uh but try it you know pull them out ridicule again while all the noise is going on all the fundamentals that make or break presidents the trump guys are screwing up yeah so time compounds and if the dems can have a good off year despite their stupidity you see what the d trip leader put out that thing in national journal i miss a bunch of democratic consultants sent it to me frothing with rage the new head of the DTRIP leader put out that thing in National Journal? I miss it. A bunch of Democratic consultants sent it to me, frothing with rage.
The new head of the DTRIP, and I apologize, I don't remember her name. She's a member from somewhere, a member of Congress.
The lead of the story is, if it isn't broke, don't fix it. I'm very proud that 49% of our vendor money was minority-owned.
It was all identity. And we're going to double it this year.
That's the way to win. And I was like, Christ, they never learn.
Susan DelBene. She's welcome on the pod.
She's Washington, First District. I hear you.
Last thing. Okay, we've been mean.
We picked on Gavin. I'm open to the Gavin thing.
It wasn't mean, actually. I'm open to it.
I want to see how it goes. We've picked on them a little bit.
I've been disappointed. With his tools, he could have done more here, and been very cautious yeah you know you can say jerry brown's crazy he was a very dynamic governor here that's true did a lot of stuff gavin's been kind of like i better check the focus groups and when is the next flight to concord new hampshire i don't think we can have jerry brown in 2028 so i'm not asking to the 2028 uh hot stove but are there any democrats out there that are just saying like, oh, I like what they've been doing?

Is there somebody that jumps out at you?

Gavin's got skills.

And if you're from California,

you're from the future.

Maybe they're looking for that,

but you got the Harris problem,

which is the last California experiment,

at least in the party,

conventional wisdom didn't work.

Buttigieg is always a superstar.

Gretchen Whitmer is an election winner.

I mean, there are some new gen Dems out there. You know, you can get into Shapiro.
I mean, there's a long list and a big, bloody, don't rig the calendar Democratic primary would be great for the Dems. But, you know, don't rig the calendar.
Mike Murphy, thanks for coming on the pod. His pod is Hacks on Tap.
He's an EV man.

He's won some elections.

He's out there in California trying to

hold it down. There it is.
I'm sending you a hat,

man. Send me your address.

Do you have a flat brim? I'm a flat brim

man. We'll have one made up.
Our people in

China make good hats when they're not making

cars.

We'll see you, Mike Murphy. Up next.
Good to be on, Timmy.

Good to see you, pal. Up next, Michael Finnell.
Hey, guys. Tim Miller from The Bulwark.
I'm delighted to be here with a glowing Michael Fanon. I mean, the dude like went through some shit and I'm just, I'm over here just monitoring his skincare.
What's going on, Fanon? You know, just living the dream, man. Yeah, well, not exactly.
You know, Fanon was with me. I was with him, I guess, better.
I was hiding behind him at the principal's first conference over the weekend when Enrique Tarrio and some of these fuckers who led the attack on the Capitol, you know, came and tried to menace people, tried to pretend to be tough. He brought his little five-foot-two friend, the MAGA Marauder.
And then the next day, obviously, there was a bomb threat. We don't we don't really know the origin of.
I mean, man, like, how do you process all this like that these guys are running around like creating trouble after you know, you live through what they did a couple years ago? Well, first of all, I mean, I think it's important to kind of understand who they are. I mean, specifically the Proud Boys.
This was an organization that we saw pop up during Donald Trump's first presidential campaign. And really where they kind of came into their own was they would violently attack anyone who was opposed to their viewpoints and they are very much so embedded in the MAGA movement.
Enrique Tarrio kind of emerged as the leader of the group or self-proclaimed leader of the group. He was the one that showed up at the Principal's First Summit.
But he, it seems to me, has kind of different motivations. He's not somebody that likes to get his hands dirty.
What he likes to do is create these viral moments, put them out on social media to build his brand, build his profile, and then try to sell people shit. Sell the Proud Boys swag, sell the hats and the T-shirts and ammunition magazines that are embroidered with the, you know, Proud Boys logo.
So for me, it seems as though his motivations are monetary. And he brought along, like you said, his little, the midget, Menace, Ivan Rankin.
They show up, they look like cartoon characters. He wears his little uniform, the Proud Boys uniform.
He's got his sunglasses on that he wears indoors. But everybody's wearing a body-worn camera.
They're flanked by their little right-wing media guys with their cameras out recording the entire thing. Like I said, they're looking for a viral moment.
And they're also looking for somebody, you know, bait somebody into an interaction in which they could sue them, whether it's threats or whether it's some physical confrontation. I mean, that's really what, at least in my mind, what that event was all about.
And it's interesting because, you know, as a group that places masculinity in very high regard, you know, where I'm from, the least masculine thing you can do to settle a dispute is sue somebody. I don't know.
Actually, it might be even less masculine to try to settle a dispute by having a flunky videotape you for TikTok while you yell at somebody. An influencer beef.
I don't know. That's not exactly tough guy material either, really.
i guess it would have been cool if we had like a dance off yeah zoolander how do you though process that i mean like i'm trying to put myself it's hard for me to put myself in your shoes because like on the one hand like what you're saying now is very even keel and correct don't give these guys what they want right which is some like little clip that he can use to get attention to sell things to the incels that like think that he's tough and sit in their basement etc don't do that on the other hand fuck these guys like they they instigated the violent attack on all of you who are just doing your job and so you, maybe they need to be get a taste of their own medicine, right? Like, I understand the second impulse. It has to be a little tough to, you know, restrain.
Yeah, no, I mean, listen, like, I was a cop for 20 years. So it's not the first time that somebody's called me, you know, a mean name.
Yeah, or tried to bait you. Right.
Yeah, exactly. That being said, I mean, you're right.
I'm of the mindset that the appropriate emotions to be feeling right now are anger and outrage. And so I met that moment with anger and outrage.
And I told Enrique Tarrio exactly what I think about him. And quite frankly, I told him who he is.
And he is a convicted, seditious conspirator and a traitor to this country. And that was it.
And I also called Ivan Rankin a baldheaded bitch, which is also what he is. True.
Accurate. It's important to be accurate um when you're leveling criticisms particularly on

the bulwark so i played a clip of you from when you're on stage so folks who don't have the backstory so this was an event with a bunch of different panel discussions you and harry dunn were on stage kind of discussing january 6th uh that was before you know these guys showed up When you were up there, you talked about how the pardons were in part motivated by Trump wanting to have, you know, some muscle, wanting to have some people out there that he thinks will, you know, create trouble on his behalf, and, you know, have his own militia or whatever. How do you kind of balance like that impulse with like the performative side of it? Like, you know, how much of it do you think is like real nefarious people should be scared? And how much do you think is performative? I guess is my question.
First of all, I think people should be extremely concerned. I mean, you just can't let that fear paralyze you.
But, you know, make no mistake about it. These are violent, extremist groups, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters.
They use the tactics, the same tactics of the brown shirts in 1930s and 40s Germany. They harass, they intimidate, and they use violence to suppress anyone that may have opposing viewpoints to their own.
And, you know, going back to the pardons, you know, Donald Trump, in pardoning hundreds of violent insurrectionists, many of whom were members of these right wing extremist groups, created his own civilian militia, you know, an organization or organizations that can go out and commit acts of violence on his behalf, who now feel emboldened to do so because they feel that if they do that, Donald Trump will simply pardon them. They will face no criminal accountability.
And so I think Americans most certainly should be concerned. They should be angry.
They should be outraged. They should be raising this at every town hall meeting, calling their members of Congress, calling every elected official, you know, in their district and letting them know that this is absolutely unacceptable.
You know, talking to Ryan Goodman about the legal side of this yesterday, but like there was another one on these pardons. There was another situation where one of the guys that got pardoned when the police went to his home he had grenades he just sawed off shotgun he had some other illegal weapons he had some classified documents i guess he took from the army and the doj issued a statement yesterday that said no all that stuff is also included in the pardon and that speaks more about how, you know, like he wants these guys out here menacing people, right? Like the idea that, you know, if the notion was just, oh, I want people to have a clean bill of health for what happened on January 6th, because I thought it was BS.
Obviously, I disagree with that. But like, if that was the only intention, then you wouldn't have your Department of Justice saying, oh, I also want to cover this guy who had grenades at his house.
Right. It also speaks to the seriousness of some of these individuals intentions.
I mean, this is someone who has grenades in their house. You got any grenades over there? I don't have grenades.
I wouldn't tell you if I did. Weapons charges for people that are prohibited from possessing firearms.
I mean, all of that stuff should be deeply concerning to average everyday Americans. I mean, you have an active extremist groups who have found an ally in the president of the United States.
I mean, that's absolutely insane. Not to get too personal, but I do have to ask because the reports are out there.
But like guys are also coming from your mother is that is that true yeah i mean unfortunately uh pretty much every member of my family my immediate family has uh has suffered these threats and harassment my mother seemed to have um bear the brunt of it you know she's been swatted in recent months she had a confrontation with an individual individual that confronted her while she was raking leaves in her front yard, screamed at her that her son was a traitor and threw shit on her.

She's had bricks thrown at the house. And, you know, again, after Enrique Tarrio and his merry bunch of men showed up to to the's first summit.
Obviously, the principal's summit was targeted with a bomb threat the following day. And my mother's house was also targeted with a bomb threat in that same bomb threat.
And then since then, in the past 24 hours, all of my immediate family has received harassing phone calls, threats, and other forms of harassment. So it's become a family affair.
Man, how do you keep even keel on this stuff? Like I'm like the rage is building up inside me right now. Like the idea that somebody would come for your mother.
I just, I don't understand, honestly, like how you control it. I mean, I, you know, when I'm engaged, I'm engaged.
When I disengage, I completely disengage. You know, I try to keep my world very small when I'm not out attending these summits and interacting with people.
But also, I mean, I'll be honest with you, Tim, like having opportunities like the bulwark to come out and talk about these things is incredibly cathartic for me. And it makes me feel like I have the ability to affect some change or at least let people know what the hell is going on in this country, because so many Americans are indifferent or oblivious.
You know, only now are we starting to kind of see what's in store for all of us, regardless of who you supported in the last election. Donald Trump doesn't give a shit.
He's going to do what he's going to do, and that's it. And so maybe now people will start to see that this behavior is unacceptable.
Well, man, you can have a platform with us anytime to vent. Door's always open for venting because I just, man, I got a lot to get off my chest.
I didn't go through any of the shit that you went through, but these fucking pussies, man, I just, I can't fucking take it. They're so loathsome and so cowardly, but we can vent about them more another day.
I want to pick your brain on one other thing while I got you though, because if we're going to do politics and affect change, one group that the Democrats have really struggled with in convincing about the negative side of the MAGA movement is guys like you, like to be for lack of a better like description, right? Like it looks like you got a little American flag back there. You worked in law enforcement.
A lot of law enforcement people went for Trump. You got tats.
I assume you know your way around Zinn or some dip. You might know some MMA fighters, right? These are the guys that have been moving more and more towards Trump and MAGA.
And so I just wonder, why do you think that is? And do you think that there's some kind of message or some kind of way, manner of speaking that might like break through about the kind of nefarious shit that they're supporting? Cause like, I'm not talking about the dudes with the red hats and like, there's some people that are unreachable. I'm talking about the more of like the non-political, you know, kind of guys, working class guys that have been drawn in by Trump.

Yeah, I mean, and this really does apply, I think, to all politicians prior to Donald Trump's arrival on the scene.

But there is always this very kind of overeducated, elitist, condescending speak that was used when, you know, when addressing the American people. And it seemed that there was more and more and more of a disconnect between politicians, whether at the local level or the national level, and the people that they were there to represent.
I mean, for me, where Democrats, you know, completely lost me and I was always very apolitical. I voted for both political parties.
But I think when I started to to pay attention was to defund the police movement. You know, I was a cop for 20 years.
I understood policing and our relationship with the communities. And I knew that there was work to be done.
I certainly thought that it was worth having a conversation. And then I saw, you know, the Democrats really just, instead of having the conversation in a productive way, they used it to bash cops to try to get votes.
And so for me, that was it. And unfortunately, you know, when it comes to, you know, applying that to today that to today, the Democrats really, they've kind of taken this, we're just going to sit back and see what happens or let Donald Trump destroy himself, so to speak, as if we haven't learned the lesson over and over and over again, that's never going to happen.
For me, it's disheartening because I'm somebody like yourself who's so avidly against what's happening in this country at this moment.

And to watch, I guess, the only political party that still is concerned about democracy sit back and wait and watch, it's pathetic.

Obviously, I agree with that. I've been banging the drum on that.
Back to the defunding the police thing because then thinking about okay let's be constructive right like how do you how do you break through and i don't know if like fbi agents are not as whatever sympathetic as regular cops right like it's a little bit it's a little different it's obviously different than somebody it's like a neighborhood cop right but still like it's the republicans right now that are fucking over cops at least federal law enforcement right and i do feel like at some level there's got to be a way to break through with folks by talking about just like the damage that they're doing to federal law enforcement to vets like who are losing their jobs, to regular, you know, people say like, oh, federal government employees, bureaucrats, and like they picture some like guy in a suit on K Street. But like there are a lot of people who work for the federal government that are working class people, you know.
I'm wondering if you think there's kind of an opportunity there. I mean, unfortunately, you know, I've been out here for four years and I really think that what's going to have to happen is it has to impact individual Americans lives.
It's got to impact a friend or a family member or yourself or your spouse. I mean, I've, I've been on the phone, you know, for the past week with dozens of friends who have either been laid off from their federal jobs or fired from their federal jobs or, you know, whatever the hell Doge is calling it, dismissed.
And, you know, that obviously is resonating with people when they can't put food on the table and they can't support their families. And then, you know, to add insult to injury, they're being villainized for being a part of some, you know, government agency.
Scheme, fraud. it's all fraud.
They're stealing. USAID workers that have dedicated their lives to doing things that are super fun, like going to third world countries to deliver bags of rice to starving people.
They're lunatic leftists that are destroying the fabric of our country and they have to be purged. It's insane.
Insane. All right.
We're going to bring you back. I want to pick your brain on this as in a feat, you know, GW grad that lived in the Denver suburbs growing up.
You know, I like sometimes I do my best, but like I feel I've got a cultural gap sometimes with some of these folks that uh some of these voters that

we're struggling with to convince so i want to bring you back chat about that and unfortunately

i think there's gonna be fucking more news on the law enforcement front and the pardon front

and the proud boy front so we'll have plenty of plenty of things to talk about all right bro

all right man look forward to it all right thanks so much to michael fanon i i love that dude that

is just a great american great father i'm so happy to have him and uh give you a little bonus

Thank you. All right.
Thanks so much to Michael Fanone. I love that dude.
That is just a great American. Great father.
I'm so happy to have him and give you a little bonus segment on the pod today.

Appreciate also my man, Mike Murphy. As I mentioned at the top, I'm going to be at the

Muses Parade tonight. So we'll see you out there.
Neutral ground side. If I'm not at 100% tomorrow,

I've got great news. We got the best podcast guest around

to carry me. So we'll see you all then.

Peace.

Peace. And hold life, we will never see the truth around Another promise, another scene, another

A package like to keep us trapped in greed A green belt wrapped around our minds An endless red tape to keep the truth confined They will not force us They will stop degrading us They will not control us We will be victorious Interchanging mind control

Commit the revolution, I'll take it to all If you could, I think I'll switch and open your third eye It's either, we should never be afraid to die Rise up and take the power back It's time of, our fat cats Had a heart attack You know that Their time's coming to an end We have to unify And watch our flag ascend They will not force us They will stop degrading us They will not control us And we will be victorious.

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