No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen - Trump screws over GOP responding to Hunter Biden laptop saga

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

The Republicans’ long-awaited Twitter/Hunter Biden exposé was released on Twitter, only for Donald Trump to inadvertently screw his own party over in response to it. Brian interviews Republican strategist and adviser to a number of Republicans, including John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Murphy, about whether Trump validating someone like Kanye may actually bring him down, how to pry the GOP out of the hands of the crazies, and why he doesn’t just vote for Democrats in order to exorcise the MAGA wing from the GOP.Donate to the "Don't Be A Mitch" fund: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/dontbeamitchShop merch: https://briantylercohen.com/shopYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/briantylercohenTwitter: https://twitter.com/briantylercohenFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/briantylercohenInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/briantylercohenPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/briantylercohenNewsletter: https://www.briantylercohen.com/sign-upWritten by Brian Tyler CohenProduced by Sam GraberRecorded in Los Angeles, CASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Today we're going to talk about the Republicans' long-awaited Twitter, Hunter Biden, Exposé, and how Donald Trump inadvertently screwed over his own party in response to it. And I interview Republican strategist and advisor to a number of Republicans, including John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mike Murphy, about whether Trump validating someone like Kanye may actually bring him down, how to pry the GOP out of the hands of the crazies, and why he doesn't just vote for Democrats to exercise the magoing of the GOP. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.

So there was a time when politics was about important stuff, and then there's this week. Elon Musk amped up the long-awaited release of information detailing how Twitter is censored in New York Post story about Hunter Biden. The actual, quote-unquote, reporting was done via Twitter thread by a guy named Matt Taibi, basically laying out how both Twitter prevented the dissemination of a story about Hunter Biden's laptop and how the Biden team had a communication line open with Twitter and had requested certain tweets be taken down. Now, on the Hunter Biden laptop, I'm not too familiar with this because, Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and I'm not especially concerned with what's on his laptop as a private citizen.

I also have a brain and recognize that the whole point of this story is to find something to attack Biden with. Republicans do not care about the business dealings of the adult children of presidents. If they did, they'd have said a single word about how Jared and Ivanka made $82 million in one year while Trump was in the White House, including almost $4 million from Ivanka's stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. They'd have said a word about how Ivanka had been granted 23 trademarks from the Chinese government during Trump's term, about Ivanka using the White House to hawk branded products,

including when a press release was issued to journalists promoting her $10,800 gold bracelet. About how Don Jr. and Eric controlled the Trump organization during Trump's term, which they pledged would have no new foreign deals while their dad was in office, only to then sell more than $100 million with real estate while Trump was in office, including a $33 million stake in a federally subsidized housing complex, had to be approved by Trump's own HUD secretary Ben Carson, three and a half million dollars worth of land in the Dominican Republic, and more than a billion dollars worth of luxury residential units in India built by the Trump org. So look, if Hunter did something wrong,

then he should be held accountable, just like if anyone does something wrong, they should be held accountable. But spare me the sanctimony over the rights newfound obsession with investigating the children of presidents because it rings about as hollow and false as it gets. Now, as far as the Biden's team involvement in all of this, which is one of the major issues that this big expose was focusing on, first of all, the right went nuts claiming that they finally had evidence of the government violating First Amendment rights by censoring a story. Elon Musk took to Twitter in a fury of vindication and tweeted, if this isn't a violation of the Constitution's First Amendment, what is? And in response to him asking, what is, I would say, something that actually is a violation of the First Amendment? Because this is quite literally not a violation of the First Amendment. The First Amendment deals with the government suppressing free speech.

Twitter isn't the government. It's a private business. In case anyone thought that being a billionaire made you brilliant, Elon is doing everyone a public service by debunking that myth. But hold on, because then the right was like, well, the government still colluded with Twitter to suppress free speech, even if they didn't do it directly because Twitter's a private company. Again, comes Elon Musk, expert on all things constitutional,

tweeting Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech. is not a First Amendment violation, which is good that he conceded that, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech with no judicial review is. Only, small problem, the whole Twitter saga took place in the summer of 2020 when Joe Biden was a candidate and the president was Donald Trump. So Twitter was not acting under orders from the government unless Donald Trump demanded that Twitter removed the Hunter Biden story. And then finally, in terms of what the Biden team actually did ask Twitter to take down,

some of the tweets are archived so you can see for yourself, what they are, they are naked photos of Hunter Biden, which is against Twitter's terms of service anyway. That's the big scandal. Conservatives are pointing to the Biden team making an extremely normal takedown request for nude photos of Hunter and Twitter obliging them because they pose a policy violation. So yeah, to summarize, Twitter was acting under orders of the government, except Biden wasn't the president in 2020, and it's a First Amendment violation, except Twitter can't violate the First Amendment because it's a private business, and the takedown request were evidence of collusion between Twitter and Team Biden, except they were nudes, which were against Twitter's

terms of service anyway. But other than that, total home run. In reality, conservatives are all pretending that this is a scandal in order to create one, to manifest one. And this isn't new, right? Like, we've dealt with this with Hillary's emails, which conservatives pretended was the biggest national security lapse in U.S. history. And then when Ivanka sent government emails from her private server while she worked in the White House, it came and went like a fart in a hurricane. But the right is very, very good at collectively pretending that a nothing burger is a huge deal and then manipulating their audience into believing it and then complaining when the liberal media doesn't report on it until they inevitably do. And we're already up to that point. Some

right winger on Twitter tweeted, there is not one single article about Elon Musk or the Twitter release last night on the New York Times app this morning. And Elon responded, saying that is because the New York Times has become, for all intents and purposes, an unregistered lobbying firm for far left politicians. This is what's normal now. Republicans bullying news outlets into buying into a manufactured scandal, and if and when they do, they use that buy-in as validation of their own bogus story. But this tired Hunter Biden bullshit aside, here's what's most incredible about all of this.

The very next morning, after all this Twitter stuff happened, which brings us to this weekend, Trump took to truth social referencing this Twitter saga and said that the Democrats were working with big tech and then said, quote, do you throw the presidential election results of 2020 out and declare the right for winner, or do you have a new election? A massive fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all the rules,

regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. So Trump calls for a termination of the Constitution, and all those Republicans who had a collective meltdown over some tortured, inaccurate reading of the First Amendment, haven't said a word. Not one Republican who'd spent all night losing their mind over their precious First Amendment could bring themselves to speak up when the entire Constitution, which includes the First Amendment was disregarded. Like, pretty amazing stuff. I guess the Constitution is only worth protecting when they can pretend that a private

company and a political campaign are somehow misconstrued to be the government. And that's obviously to say nothing of the danger of Donald Trump, who is the leader of the Republican Party, fresh off his dinner with Kanye West, who just this week said the words I like Hitler, now coming out against the U.S. Constitution. So I guess the lesson here, which I should have learned years ago, but haven't, is that there is no floor, there will never be a floor, and they will always find a way to surprise us. This is the same party that was repudiated in the midterms for being too extreme, now, yet again, doubling and tripling down on that same extremism.

To say they've learned nothing is the understatement of the century. And as long as they want to do it, I think it's incumbent on all of us to not only acknowledge it, but to call it out. Next up is my interview with Republican strategist Mike Murphy. Today we've got longtime Republican political consultant and advisor to a number of Republicans, including John McCain and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and host of one of my favorite podcast, Hacks on Tap. Mike Murphy, thank you so much for taking the time. Well, thank you, man. I'm a fan here, Brian, so I'm happy to be here. And you can just say

Jurassic consultant. It's always veteran, long time, you know, won't go away. But ancient, ancient GOP consultant, Trump-Patron, all around Bon Vivant. And great to be here. I'll save, I'll save that for the post description. So, um, So let's jump in here. We've watched over the last couple of weeks as people like Trump and Jim Jordan basically handed megaphones to a bunch of really shitty people, including Kanye West and Nick Fuentes, people who then use those megaphones to, you know, express admiration for Hitler, for one. Yeah. We've seen Trump embrace people like this before, or at least refuse to condemn people who've embraced him, people like David Duke. And nothing really changed because it's Trump and we're so calcified in our politics.

is this time any different like does this does this have any impact on trump in your opinion well i think there's a whole trump kind of tipping point thing going on now um you know yeah we we found out trump has always skated right on the edge of white uh uh what do you call it and not beyond prejudice yeah i i guess that's the word of white supremacy bill and because trump's driven by ego if you like trump then he'll like you so it doesn't matter if you're wearing a swastika hat in a, you know, I love Hitler tattoo, if you say, you're wonderful, Mr. President, you know, they're good people. Yeah.

So we now find out the German-American Bund is apparently working out of Mar-a-Lago. But I think there is a tipping point going on. It's a combination of factors. I mean, this thing with Kanye and that little pipsqueak, whoever that is from the Internet, they're a step too much even for the Trump enablers. And if you add to that, the fact that, you know, on election day, we had the third Trump, Trump-inspired wipeout of the Republican Party, the regulars who were always mixed in their admiration for Trump, some of them were kind of in a hostage situation, least they thought they

were. I would say gutless. They're swinging around now, too. So I think this is all part of a basket of trouble for Donald Trump. He's in a far different position in the party than he might have been six months ago. You're still in the thick of things, Mike. But for the people that you've spoken with behind closed doors. Is there any concession that Trump's baggage now outweighs the upside, or is there still this begrudging acceptance that his energizing power is the GOP's biggest tool? I would say among the political class, the electeds, in both state level, local level, and federally, the private opinion is this guy's an anchor around our necks. He's stone cold crazy. We got to get rid of them. But we like some of the stuff he's four. So if DeSantis turns

out to be Trump light or somebody else like that, that gives you some of the new populism, which is a grumpy old school, Berkey and conservative, I hate, but if they can get some Trumpism, which they think they have, which they believe has popular political appeal, immigration issues like that, without Trump, they're all for it. I would say the opinion runs four to one in that direction, which is different than two to one, which was where it was six months to a year ago. Trump has been sliding. There's some Fabrizio data, and Tony has work for Trump as a pollster that showed pre the election wipeout. But, you know, after 18 and 20, those Trump election wipeouts, 85% of Republican habitual voters give Trump a positive job approval.

Oh, it was great. Good on the economy. Then you ask those same people, should Trump run again as our nominee? It drops down to the 40s. Half of them walk away because there's Trump fatigue. And he smells like a loser. And if you're Trump where you run on this kind of faux tough guy, can-do deal. Loser is your kryptonite, and he's just bathing in it now, and you had the emergence of others, led by DeSantis, but he's not the only one who are plausible alternatives now. Well, let me play devil's advocate for a second. Sure. And say, like, you know, in 2016, he didn't have the support of the political class. He had the support of, you know, his fans out there. And so he would say, he would come and say, look, I won before without the support of the political

class. I didn't need him then. I don't need them now. And what would you say to that? No, I think that's exactly what he'll say, but the whole Trump conventional wisdom law of gravity is he's Rasput and he can't be killed to grassroots loving. But I love to point to that Fabrizio data of 800 Republicans around the country to show 85% like him. Trashing him is not a good thing to do in the Republican tribe, but only 40% or 43 pre the wipeout now want him to run again. And so I think he's got a half life that's not that long and it's increasing. So the presumption that he owns the grassroots, I think is no longer true. They want to give them a gold watch and move them out of the way. At least two thirds of them do. There's a third hanging on. But right now, it may be down to a quarter.

I mean, this is a dynamic thing, politics. And it evolves. And Trump is like that head of lettuce that was in the internet race with Liz Truss to see if she resigned as prime minister or the lettuce rotted and the Trump lettuce is turning brown among, I think, close to 80% of the party. And especially, look, if these elections are being won on the margins, I mean, there's just a few tens of thousands of voters who are actually deciding these elections. And if he's shedding the support of that much of his own party, then I think, you know, the elites in that party, the decision makers in that party are going to recognize that if we want any chance of winning in the future and we've got, you know, 60% of Republicans within our own party who don't support

him, then that's going to paint a really different picture. if the goal, which I'd assume it was, is to win moving forward. Yeah, the elites are already there. The question is, do they think the grassroots is there, too? Are they moving in that direction? I think they are, but we're going to need time and data. I mean, this thing that came out, the Marquette University Law School does a poll, and there are a whole lot of bad polls out there.

But the Marquette one has a pretty good history of being impartial and done with rigor. And, you know, it shows Biden just clobbering Trump in Wisconsin, which is a 50-50 state. Yeah. That kind of stuff, you know, so there's a lot of intrigue right now. And if I were a political reporter, I would say for the next hundred days, the real beat in presidential politics is not the candidates as much as the RNC and the DNC because they're going to take a look at the calendar for the next presidential election in 2024.

And that has implications on the Democratic side or news reports, you know, Michigan moving up potentially, Georgia. Same thing on the Republican side. And the very fact it's in play, and being somebody Trump likes doesn't guarantee reelect. It's just yet another sign that his grip is loosening. So with that said, how do you take on Trump without alienating his cult following if you're someone who wants to be the next GOP leader? And I ask that because we all know that Trump is going to go scorched earth.

I mean, you wouldn't know this better than I would, but I don't believe that he actually gives a shit about the Republican Party. So I wouldn't imagine that he would, he's not going to graciously, he's not going to going to graciously seed his supporters to the next guy if he loses. Well, one, again, I think the premise that he has his army of loyal atomic supermen, like in a horror movie way, no, I think they're, I think it's melting like a big ice cube. That said, you don't run against Trump sounding like a real never-trumper like me. You run against Trump saying you did a great job, time to move on. Generational, hard to

run against Joe Biden, if Biden opts to run as the old guy, if you've got the even crazier old guy. Yeah. So you do fresh new and you outshine him. You kind of ignore him. That'll jump crazy. Sure, he'll he'll go on true social or maybe thanks to Elon eventually on Twitter and call you names. You don't engage. You treat him like a toddler and you kind of move forward and you take up his issue space. You know, taste great, less filling. No, you know, I know that on hacks on tap you'd predicted kind of a reversion to the mean in this last election. Oh, totally. I was on team, you know, normal, which would have been Democrats losing 15 seats and narrowly lose the Senate. So that obviously, you know, didn't shake out. It was wrong. I, you know, and I will say

Exorod and Gibbs are always telling me Trump's invincible. So I think that that is more Democrat wishful thinking than reality. But we, that's what the next two years will be about. But yeah, I'll give you my midterm deal. Since World War II, the average loss is 26 seats in the Congress and a couple in the Senate for a president in their first midterm. We've only had a handful, I think, three occurrences since the war where that didn't happen, where the election somehow was pried away from being a referendum on the president to a referendum on somebody else. The last person to pull that off was Osama bin Laden. And because in 2002, George W. Bush's first midterm, he gained a few seats.

But he had high favorable. It was post-9-11. Osama, you know, that was a huge traumatic deal. Now, Trump's managed to do it. And we've never seen an election before in modern era where high inflation and the normal curse together wasn't bad for the Democrats. And, you know, they did lose the House, which means they lose the checkbook. Repubbs have the power of investigation now, which they will overuse and blunder with. But I wouldn't call it a huge win in the House.

But they lost it. And it's going to be very hard for McCarthy, who doesn't have the votes right now. So maybe not McCarthy to run a house with, you know, for see where it lands, four seat margin. Because you always have a couple of these birds who were out sick or getting indicted or just died in a car wreck and we're waiting on the, you know, the special election. So it was much less than it should have been for the Republicans by historical norm. And in the Senate, same deal. But bad candidates and Trump taking over the election saved Joe Biden. And to those of us who followed this for a long time, flew in the face of all normalcy and data, but that can happen.

I would advise the Democrats, though, not to say, wow, Biden has. lousy numbers and we won we're special without trump it would have been normal and normal would have been jill biden in political trouble you've been pretty outspoken about the crazies in your party um but even though those people were reputed at the ballot box this past election it's still them who are basically dictating the agenda right now you know we have we have them charging forward with announcements about investigations into hunter biden all that stuff so does this signal more trouble for for Republicans in the future that the message they took away from an election where the extremists were repudiated was to emboldened the remaining extremists. Well, yeah, look, the extremists in either

party. I mean, AOC will say the election was a vindication of the progressive left in the Democratic party and that, you know, the most easily defeated Republican senator in terms of home state unpopularity. Ron Johnson won because Mandela Barnes didn't get enough support from, you know, the stinking business moderates and the big problem the Democratic Party has is the secretary Raimundo you know the crazy always doubles down because crazy and either side believes kind of a unified field theory of the only answer is more volume for our madness and the republics a big chunk of the house caucus will keep singing that song and they're going to go investigation crazy which is a political mistake because if they were shrewd about investigations and they did one

January 6 focused, well- choreographed investigation of the misspending of money during the COVID and, you know, the original Biden plan. There's a ton there. It always happens when the government is given World War II level money to spend. But instead, they're going to dilute the power that by investigating Biden's socks and what his dog had yesterday and Hunter Biden's traffic tickets, which is kind of a gift of the Democrats. So yeah, I think they will overplay their hand. But even the House caucus is not totally unified. And the crazies are a bit on the defensive internally. The problem is the most responsible senior House Republicans are now mostly gone.

And so the new caucus is a step in the crazier direction. But the whole Republican apperate from fundraisers to state officials to governors to senators to staff, understand that we are selling shit burgers out there on Election Day and people don't want it. And that is not, over time, that is not a small pushback these folks are going to face. Well, then, you know, with that said, how does your wing of the Republican Party wrestle back control from the extremists when a moderate really has very little likelihood of getting through a Republican primary? And I asked that, having just watched Liz Cheney lose and Adam Kinsinger retire because he would have lost. Right. Well, first, because I can eat with a knife and fork and read books, people always think I'm a squishy moderate. you know i can't pump a thing of gas out here and not have some nice democrat you're my kind

of republican you know you may be in the german army but you're not one of those nazis the truth is tell me right now that that you that you damn well are one of those republicans i am a right wing nut but i'm a traditional reagan style right wing nut i'm in politics to make the american dream work for everybody and shrink the size of government i am not a grievance politician like Donald Trump or for that matter Bernie Sanders um so you know my breed is rare but i'm not the losing washington generals faction of the party the super squishy moderates i'm i'm i'm a pragmatic conservative like the old tommy thompson's and john anglers and jeb bushes and ragan blah blah blah so just because i always i always hate getting the nice moderate

pat on the head um if i were dictator people would say god he's pretty damn conservative. That said, I think the moderate, and they're gone, basically. You know, that stuff went away of Rockefeller and Sil Conti and some of the northeastern liberals. So now the battle is between kind of pragmatic governing conservatives, the John Sununu's. I mean, Larry Hogan's the most moderate. He'd be a great candidate. A little to the left of me, but not bad. But you're right. Those candidates now are at a disadvantage in the primary, not so much based on Trump loyalty. but on this new populism that is taken over the party because the composition of the electorate, and contrary to the kind of myth that Trump landed from another planet and brought 50 million voters

we'd never seen before, he brought it in some blue-collar, non-college-educated white folks who traditionally were not loyal Republicans. But a lot of his vote in the primaries were regular Republicans who voted for Bush, but have been around a long time. And most of those people have been happy with pragmatic conservatives before. But what Trump has done is kind of radicalized the party to this populism, where we don't care about spending anymore. We just care about grievance and immigration and some of these cultural issues.

I think over time that pendulum will swing back. But we need a big open presidential primary to start to litigate it. And I think we're heading that way with the melting of Trump. So the schism will be Trump as the crazy cult leader, kind of Trump lights as a lot of what you like about Trump without the insanity. That's a dissentist. That could be Holly, we'll see where he lands. And then you're going to have kind of the opportunity conservatives.

We're not really mad at anybody, but want spending control, want pragmatic governing from the right, more freedom, more free enterprise. That could be Tim Scott. You know, there are a couple people maneuvering to be there. and so let's have the fight and let's put this stuff on the menu and see if some of the stuff that was not only right for the country but work for a long time can sell again i think it can once we get trump out of the way and if not i think you're see trump light kind of a hybrid which is like a disanus because asanus can steer back away from the culture war stuff at the

right time for him he's in his heart he's pragmatic that's one reason he's been a trump imitator at times he smells votes there. He's more cynical than Trump is. Trump's crazy. And I'll take a cynic over a crazy guy because in the end, the cynic will be rational. If you're watching a guy like Trump maintain his control over the party

and you're watching the party, like the chances of winning kind of slip away, and I'm going to ask this question, knowing full well that this is my Democratic fever dream that I'm going to impose onto you. But if you're a never-Trump Republican, and your party's been hijacked by the crazies, Marjorie Tell Greens and Lauren Boberts

and the Donald Trump's out there, why not support Democrats and hasten the demise of the GOP so that there is as bigger repudiation of the MAGA crazies as possible so that there can be a clear reckoning and a reset. Like, if you have a cancer and you don't exercise the whole thing, then the cancer is going to come back. So why not just hasten the demise of what is kind of pulling the party

down no it's a very good question i mean i voted for joe biden and i was public about it um i sent money to people like uh senator kelly in arizona uh and adam frisch who ran against crazy uh bullbert in colorado i've been openly supporting of many i'm i run the gina raymondo fan club right but the problem is most of us have got into this actually have policy views and so i'm a conservative And so I don't like some of the Democratic policy. I think it's terrible for the people they're trying to help. So it's hard for me just to say, all right, team Democrat, we're going to pass a lot of terrible policy,

and therefore I'm indirectly hurting Trump. I mean, I generally will not personally vote or support any big whack-a-doodle. But that doesn't mean I'm like switching over. I'm staying in the party to try to bring down the bad guys and then move forward and be in the fight. for more opportunity-based policies. I can't go full-dem. I hold my nose and vote for a bunch

because I get the present danger, but you're just not going to get a bunch of conservatives to 100% jump on the Biden train. Now, if Biden had not done his FDR 2.0 deal when he first got elected, because he ran as kind of the comfortable old shoe, moderate. He wasn't for the loony stuff in the primary. He wasn't for the single-payer health care system.

Then he got in to some staffer. had a PowerPoint, you can be FDR. And he went lurching over, not enough for the crazy progressives on his side, but old center Joe got evaporated with some of these incredibly expensive and ambitious plans. I mean, hell, the infrastructure bill and the chips deal, those are two huge, legit accomplishments. Nobody knows about them because instead it was that massive spending bill, as you've probably heard on hacks, I like to say, because it's true that his original architecture was in real dollars, the same as the cost of the Second World War. Hard to get conservatives on board that, because we think it's a disaster. But if Biden was more like Gina Romundo

on the business wing of the Democratic Party, they get me. Well, let me push back. And let me ask like, if you're looking at, if you're looking, and this is, this is coming from me as a progressive who very much enjoys all of, you know, the spending and the accomplishments that we're seeing right now. But if you're seeing a lot of, a lot of these accomplishments bear themselves out, But if you're seeing, you know, over 10 and a half million jobs that have been added, unemployment, staying at record low numbers, we have the Chips Act, which like you mentioned, has brought, you know, hundreds of thousands of jobs, billions of dollars of investments, infrastructure getting upgraded. We have the government that's allowed to negotiate lower drug prices for the first time in forever. We have this gun safety bill that keeps guns out of the hands of domestic abusers and expands background checks for young people, funds state red flag laws. Like, you have a bunch of good legislation that brings down costs for middle.

class Americans that finally, you know, brings money into, allocates money toward climate change, like all of this stuff that is necessary and that's popular with two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans. I'm just curious how you look at that and kind of recoil at those things. Well, no, no, but the thing is I can't, I can't eat the steak and not also think about the dead cow. So I love the, I love the chip spill. I like the, and that was bipartisan. I like some of the bipartisan stuff. I don't, I mean, you're doing the smart campaign thing, which you tick off all the gumdrops that sound fantastic. On the other hand, massive spending, now we have massive inflation. Inflation's extremely painful to people. I mean, I think it's, I mean, we're not going to agree

on economics. Of course, of course. I would push back and say every country around the world has inflation, and a lot of those countries, especially if you look into Europe, have higher inflation than the U.S. So if we're able to maintain parity with those places in Europe, for example, but we've got an infrastructure bill, we've got climate spending, we've got a raft of a raft of that stuff to show for it, then didn't we benefit? Yes, but, you know, inflation isn't something that comes like a hurricane. It's created by monetary and fiscal policy. And the Republicans have lost their way on this, too, by the way.

I'm not trickly happy with the Republican appropriators who are mad dogs. Trump spent more than Obama. Obama was the world champ of breaking the budget. Now Biden's breaking the Trump record. So, you know, macro fiscal policy counts to me, and it drives inflation. So the fact that Europeans have failed doesn't excuse our failure in fiscal policy because everybody's opened up. We're in a whole new era of, you know, artificially low interest rates.

Well, now, guess what? It's caught up. And so that's why we're getting crunch. Now, I get your point, though. But then what I'd say is, why can the French, God love them, build a mile of highway at roughly 25% our cost. I'm with you there. You know, I mean, and there's very hard to build highway in the U.S.

because of Davis Bacon, which requires literally union caterers, you know. We can argue this stuff all day. Bottom line is, I'm a conservative. I applaud some of what Biden's done. I voted for him. If the election is Trump and Biden, I'll vote for him again. But the Democrats in a tribal world are not going to poll, and even, I'll say, more centerous Republicans without a more fiscally conservative agenda.

And the only way they may get some is if Trump is the nominee again, which could happen. But otherwise, you're going to see a snapback. And, you know, you had said it can happen. And this is what I had spoken to Elex about last week, who I know you know well. And that is that, you know, until we see some reason that Trump wouldn't be the nominee, the next go-around, Because everybody loves to grant DeSantis the Arab Parenthood, but until someone kills Trump, he ain't going to die. And so I think Trump is killing himself. Where do you see if it's fatal or not?

That's the question of the next election. You can argue with it. I'll just say from doing this 30 years, the conventional wisdom machine always has inertia for what happened last time. Trump won and 16, so Trump will win again. Politics is very dynamic. It's always changing. And I tell my Democratic friends, don't fall into a warm, happy bubble that, oh, it's going to be Trump and then we win for free. Because, you know, life is seldom that nice.

Well, we'll leave it there. Mike, I don't have that many Republicans who say yes to coming on the show, so I appreciate it. Oh, I'm, I'll come back. I enjoy this, Brian. It's great. Let me plug my Twitter account. So all your lefty Twitter followers can retweet me with angry rage. It's at Murphy, Mike.

and more importantly, I'm now, and I encourage others. I'm on post.com, also at Murphy, Mike. And, of course, thank you for the kind words about hacks on tap. We have a lot of fun. And bring me back in a while. We'll talk some more. Thanks again to Mike. That's it for this episode.

Talk to you next week. You've been listening to No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen. Produced by Sam Graber, music by Wellesie, interviews captured and edited for YouTube and Facebook by Nicholas Nicotera, and recorded in Los Angeles, California. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on your preferred podcast app. Feel free to leave a five-star rating and a review, and check out briantylercoen.com for links to all of my other channels.