The Bulwark Podcast - Mike Murphy: The Psychopath vs The Cynic

Episode Date: August 30, 2023

Does cynical Nikki Haley have the guts to run an edgier campaign? Plus, Vivek's Hermain Cain moment, Iowa's unpredictable caucus voters, and the denialism about Grandpa Joe. Mike Murphy joins Charlie Sykes today. 

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Are they suggesting you can just put a bucket under a leak in your ceiling? That's not good enough. Your Toronto apartment should be safe and well-maintained. If it isn't and your landlord isn't responding to maintenance requests, RentSafeTO can help. Learn more at toronto.ca slash RentSafeTO. Welcome to the Bulletwork Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. It is August 30th, 2023. And we are joined by Mike Murphy, an apostate GOP strategist, consultant, campaigns advisor, including John McCain's Arnold Schwarzenegger's and Mitt Romney's all really Republicans in good standing these days.

You've been running the table there, Mike. Yeah, I'm so old. How old are you? I am so old, I remember the St. Burkean Republican Party. I started in the early 80s, and so I've seen the transformation from the best parts of the Constitution to the worst parts of the Walmart parking lot. Yeah, I mean, we're already at the stage now where we're sitting around the fire saying to the young people, let me tell you what it used to be like. We were for the balanced budget. Four people were completely crazy. Of course, you all have your own podcast, Hacks on Tap.

You're an analyst for NBC News. Okay, I want to start off with, I suppose this is a palate cleanser because I know that everybody who listens to this podcast, can't get themselves enough. Donald Trump, you know, Trump is now saying that he's going to be recording these videos on truth social on a regular basis, which I mean, really, what could go wrong? Yeah, thank God. Perfect. Yeah, these lawyers are going, Oh, no. Yeah, exactly. You're a Trump lawyer. This way you signed up for you have the client from hell. Not a surprise. Yeah, that's the book I'm waiting for. One of the Trump lawyers does a tell-all at the end because the worst job in America.

It is the worst job. Well, I have to think about that. I think there are probably some worse jobs in America. I think the guy that's Trump's body man, that might be the worst job in America. Yeah, that's true. Take these documents outside. Yeah, if you end up going to prison for it. So here is the former president of the United States commenting on the mental acuity of the current president of the United States. And I want to get your thoughts on the other side. Crooked Joe Biden is not only dumb and incompetent. a stock-raving lunatic with his horrible and country-threatening environmental open borders

and DOJ-FBI weaponization policies. He is a mental catastrophe that is leading our country to hell. Oh, jeez. Okay, leaving aside the eloquence of this famous wordsmith, I mean, projection much? Oh, I know. You look at it, and it's like struggling through the prompter. So I want to meet the punch-up guy who wrote it after a frothing rant. But all I could think was mirror, mirror on the wall because he's clearly talking to himself. I mean, it's incredibly revealing, not that we didn't know. And we're all in this Kafka-esque nightmare fever dream about all this. And I mean, 20 years ago, you couldn't have written this. It's just so obvious, yet so,

for some reason, resilient and threatening. You know, I don't think you have to go back 20 years that you couldn't have written this. I'm not even sure you could have written this a couple of years ago. I mean, there were people in the DeSantis Brain Trust who were sitting around just a few months ago saying, you know, just wait until that Georgia indictment comes down. That's when the fever will break. There's no way that Donald Trump is still going to be leading in the polls after he's indicted down in Georgia. Well, you know, so much for that magical thinking. Yeah, I'm still out there in contrarianville. We fight over this on Hacks on Tap with my radio DNC pals, Axelrod and Gibbs. But I still think there's this obsession with national polling, which is, you know, right

now, President Hillary Clinton would have been ahead in the primary against Barack Obama. On and on it goes, because national polling is a noise meter for what's in the media. What I'm watching like a hawk is Iowa and New Hampshire, which are much more mature markets because the dogs there have other dog food they're learning about. Now, they still like Trump chow, but they like it at a bit more than a third. It's not the 55% market leader. The dogs who've tasted it are curious about something else. So if one person can beat them in Iowa and New Hampshire, which is incredibly hard to do, so don't go bet your house, but I think he would crumble then. And I do think the load on him is increasing. That said, MAGA madness has a strong plurality grip on the primary

voters right now. And this legal stuff is the ultimate test of, is it tribalism over everything else or are there quiet doubts? Because they're not loud. You know, you have to get an electron microscope to find them, but you do see them in the polling. And of course, the leadership class of the Republican Party, you know, all Vichy Republicans, you know, have a secret room ready for the liberation showing I was against them from the beginning, but very few, very few are out in front. Okay. So I have a mixed reaction to that. You know, the first thing is I really want to smoke what you are smoking. Well, I'll send you some. But I also want to hear more about this. You're arguing that Trump fatigue is growing. Okay. I'm just not seeing that. I mean, you would think in a rational universe,

the universe we don't live in, that people would be sick and tired of this. But I mean, you would think in a rational universe, the universe we don't live in, that people would be sick and tired of this. But I mean, you know, we've seen this. So, okay, why do you think that Trump could lose Iowa? Well, I've done a lot of campaigns there, and I keep in touch with the hacks on the ground. And remember, he lost last time. Yeah, to President Ted Cruz. Right, right, exactly. In the great tradition of President Rick Santorum, President Mike Huckabee, and potentially President Tim Scott. What I would say is there's the Trump question and the who's going to vote question. What the hacks there say is, and this is true of tribal psychology, it's like Red Sox versus Yankees. If you're a Red Sox fan and your pitcher goes on a killing spree and starts losing games, even though he got to the World Series a few years ago, you don't publicly go out and say, you know, boy, I'm going to wear a Yankees hat.

They're right. No, no. But you quietly say, what the hell are we going to do about our pitcher? And that's some of the talk there. He's pulling a reliable 35 to 40%. In fact, Fabrizio just put out a great, hilarious expectations monitor. Oh, Nikki Haley is surging. But I think if they can find a way to trade Trump in and give him a gold watch but not hurt him because nobody wants to admit they're wrong to the outside of the tribe, I think it's very possible.

The other big question, which I think a lot of the analysis is missing because it's done from armchairs in Washington, D.C., is the Iowa caucus could be very different this year. It's a huge cultural thing in Iowa. I've worked a bunch of them. And what's different this time is there are 160,000 Democrats and Democratic-leading independents who voted in the caucus last time and have to sit at home now. They don't get to go tell the country what to do, which is something I want to take this thing seriously. I had two regular people stop me on the street when I was walking around Des Moines a few months ago saying, you know, I'm a Democrat, but I'm voting in the caucus. I think it's important that something be done about Trump. I don't really like these, but at least they're not Trump. So there will be some giggling college Democrats who go in there to vote for Trump to help Joe Biden in three-dimensional Vulcan chess.

Be careful what you wish for. You would think the Democrats would have figured this out by now. I think 20,000 or 30,000 of them could vote. It's easy. You show up. You say, yeah, I'm a Republican. You vote. And you sign a registration card at the door that you can undo online a week later.

So I don't know. I think the caucus could be a little different electorate by 20%, 25%. And I don't know. I think the caucus could be a little different electorate by 20, 25%. And I don't know. I think the Trump thing could hit a crescendo. But the problem is you win Iowa, you're President Santorum. You got to go win New Hampshire. And the best slogan in New Hampshire is screw Iowa. So you can't run the totally Christian, social conservative Pat Robertson campaign there and not get killed the next week. And nobody right now is threading the needle for that hat trick. Although I think Haley did get a debate bounce and we'll see if she can put her cynicism aside, which will be difficult

for her and not be wishy-washy and run the table a little. She's in the race now. What she does with it is the open question. I'm going to come back to her in a moment. And, you know, this is what I was waiting for, is for Republicans to say, hey, let's give Donald Trump the gold watch and have him go away. But, of course, you know, the flaw with that is that Donald Trump's not going to accept the gold watch and go away. I mean, this is the problem. He loses in Iowa. He will claim that it was rigged. It was fake. He will move on. He will never concede. He will never drop out. And right now, he will claim that it was rigged, it was fake, he will move on, he will never concede, he will never drop out. And right now, he's faced with a binary choice, winning the presidency or going to jail. So there's no exit strategy for the Republican Party from Donald Trump that is not

incredibly messy. You know, I agree with a lot of that. I think there is a third strategy, which is the Nixon strategy, which is make an invisible plea deal. But he's too crazy for that. And I don't think you can make a handshake deal with Trump because he's Trump. My biggest worry is if he loses the Iowa caucus and wins New Hampshire, he then has a comeback. Mr. Loser becomes Mr. Winner. And then he does run the table. I don't believe any of this stuff.

Well, you know, the court thing will be in March. No, you never have comebacks in the table. I don't believe any of this stuff. Well, you know, the court thing will be in March. No, you never have comebacks in the primary. It's a bunch of dominoes. You either timber somebody early or it's over. And the gold watch question, I think the catalyst is, and you're seeing some of that in the audio track of that video you just played. The problem is we're at the family dinner. First of all, you have Uncle Christy, the loudmouth. He's like, you know, he's crapping his pants now. He's crazy. Got to put him in the home. And all the daughters kind of look like, oh, the jerk uncle.

But then quietly, the Henry Fonda uncle says, you know, yesterday he bit the mailman. And there's a long, silent beat. And then all of a sudden, they're creeping in the other direction. So he's biting the mailman right now. The biggest problem the Republicans have is Joe Biden, because of the economy, because of age, because of all this stuff, is perceived as being so easy to beat. They're relaxing about Trump. If Biden was a superstar or Biden had said, you know, I've had one great term, it's time for the young blood. And there was a scary rising Democrat that would help uncog those wheels. But instead, Biden is plowing ahead. Now,

if Biden really wants to screw Trump, all he's got to do is throw Hunter in jail, because then the precedent is set. But right now, due to the moral equivalence law that rules the Republican Party, I think most of this legal stuff is not having that big of an effect on most voters. The question is, will Trump's craziness bubble over? Will he start to look like a loser? And will one of these candidates learn how to take advantage of the opportunity they have? Because they've been just horrible so far. I don't think it would be enough for Joe Biden to throw Hunter in jail. I think that immediately they would move the goalposts and say that, you know, unless he's willing to execute him, it doesn't count. I mean,

they would just move that. So I just, before we started this podcast, I finished taping the Guardian's weekly political podcast. And the question that they wanted to know is, is Vivek Ramaswamy for real? I want to get your take before I tell you what my take was. Yeah, sure. And just a parenthetical, The Guardian has won my award for the nastiest thing written about a Republican presidential contender back when Cruz ran. Some Guardian writer, I can't recall the name, referred to him as a sitcom vampire, which I thought was a particularly brilliant, brilliant insult to old Ted. You know, he's in the oddity lane. I'm not from politics politics and you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to require every mailman to jump up to the earth three times, move the planet,

and I've solved global warming. Then I'm going to fire them all. He reminds me of Maury Taylor, the Grizz going way back. And on a little more serious note, the Herman Cain's and the Ben Carson's and there's room, they get a little run. So he's doing MAGA unfiltered. Ultimately, you know, he'll wind up as a MAGA profiteer somewhere down the line. But I, you know, he's real as a curiosity. And my view is he peaked at the debate and will start a slow decline because he's an irritating pipsqueak. Yeah, that's my take. I mean, I do think we need to take him seriously in the respect that he's an indication of what's happened to the Trumpian Republican Party, how in fact it is, you know, been completely subsumed by the entertainment wing. I think it was David French on the podcast yesterday who said the insight that

he has is realizing that these days, if you want to emulate Trump, you need to bring the show. It's not about the policy. It's not about the policy. It's not about the ideas. It's not about looking like you're serious or have gravitas. Bring the show. And he's very good at that. The problem is that he's so shallow and so shameless and so transparently pandering, he's going to burn bright and hot like these other guys,

and he's going to burn out because he has no long base of support. And Nikki Haley showed what a lightweight he is but on the other hand the contrast between him and DeSantis is interesting DeSantis thought I'm going to be the new Trump by being really earnest and angry and punching liberals in the face which sounded plausible and Vivek says forget any of that I'm just going to rap I'm going to say. I'm going to go down each of the hot button issues, my 10 principles, and I'm just going to punch every one of those. Yeah, no, that's totally right. DeSantis, another cynic, just give me the Trump script. That's what they're buying this year. Okay. Step one. Well, this guy just said, hey, I'm an authentic lunatic. Let me just say it. So he feels very authentic and that has a resonance. And I think

there's also some crazy town vote that's falling off Trump because Vivek is a little more fun. He's younger. Remember in high school and we'd smuggle beer in from Canada because Michigan had a 19 year old drinking age. We're all 16. You know, you're from Wisconsin. It would be like, hey, look at this. There's more alcohol in the Molson. Woo-hoo. You know, and there's a little of that to Vivek. He'll give you the crazy unfiltered, and you can smell the calculation on DeSantis. To a certain extent, though, Vivek's strategy worked, right?

I mean, you know, the fact that we're still talking about him a week after is an indication that it succeeded. And it's also interesting that we're still talking about him, even though, you know, all the knives are out for him. And Nikki Haley, I think, demolished him. And you said, you know, the debate anti-Nikki Haley. And so let's talk about that, because the day after, I thought this was the Vivek and Nikki show that, you know, he clearly showed he was talented, but he was dangerous as a demagogue. Nikki stepped up, and it was not the unbearable lightness of Nikki that I've been writing about for two years. She actually came to run for president, didn't she?

So talk to me about where Nikki Haley is right now. Well, you know, she was in a situation where she was heading for Scott Walkerville because she didn't have the finance committee to sustain failure. So I always keep an eye on cash on hand in all the reports. Who's going to be able to afford a real campaign in the fourth quarter when it starts to count in the early states? This progress is very logarithmatic. It surges at the end. So she got what she needed there because there's this movable feast of terrified regular donors who can produce significant money who started with this answer. It's not, oh, we got a dud. Then they went to Tim Scott, somebody I was hoping would do a lot of the

debate because I see an opportunity for him, but instead he barely showed up. It was horrible, not prepared, not ready, no message other than God's green earth. And so now it's going to land on Haley, which is going to supercharge her. So on the resource battle, which is very important right now in kind of the middle of the pre-campaign, she had a good night. She also showed she was interesting, unique, and tough. And Vivek was a great foil for her. And we can't forget that there is still a big chunk of regular primary vote out there. The problem is that Trump votes a plurality.

But the conservative, not hardcore MAGA vote is still well over a third, even in the Iowa caucus. So she kind of lit up the store window for them. Now the question is, she's going to get, in the car business, she's going to get floor traffic. People are going to go check out the new Haley mobile. And she's got to run with it. And I thought they made a mistake because right afterward, we had the tape on Hacks. She was there spinning around. Well, I love Trump so much that I, how about a, how about a kind of, you know, running

instead of how about a Kamala Harris? And it was back to old weather vane Nikki. So does she have the guts to commit to an edgier campaign? I thought her attack on Trump on spending was smart and it has to be sustained, but I have a feeling she'll wilt because, you know, I'm not a big Nikki fan. I've been public about that because I know her to be the most cynical person, one of them that I've ever encountered in Republican politics. But I prefer to Trump. I'll take cynic over madman if I'm forced to in the Stalingrad of our party. But can she take

advantage of this window and run with it? And that's an open question. But she's got a shot. And is she willing to take a little pounding to get that independent identity? It's one thing to beat up Vivek. It's another to stand down Trump. No, you described it as now it's the sort of the psychopath versus the most cynical politician in Republican politics. And I've been critical of her as well. But I did sit up during the debate when her first answer, which was kind of this softball generic question about spending and fiscal conservatism. She went after other Republicans and went after Donald Trump. And I thought, oh, my goodness. OK, I had been assuming that she had been running to get higher speaking fees or something like that. And clearly she showed up at that debate here in Milwaukee running for president. She took some strong shots at him, but she is deeply cynical.

Oh, it's incredible. Even Stalin would say, wow, you know, she's, she's not into killing 50 million people. Let me be clear. I'm exaggerating for comedic effect, but yeah, she is something else. And, you know, one day I'll write my book. But what I'm curious about, did she understand why she had a great night, why she got the boost, why her finance people are now returning her calls? And does she have the discipline to focus and run with it? Or is she going to try to be all things to all people? And that Fox interview or CNN interview, I can't remember the network, after the bait was a bad sign that maybe she didn't learn the lesson of success, in which case she will wind up in Scott Walkerville out of money, out of campaign, and gone, you know, by January. I think Scott Walkerville is going to be kind of

crowded. In fact, Scott Walker actually looks kind of better in retrospect because he recognized it and burned through a lot of money and everything. So speaking of, you know, the new mayor of Scott-Walkerville, Ron DeSantis. I mean, this was not the debate that Ron DeSantis wanted or that he needed. Talk to me about Ron DeSantis. I mean, this is just an extraordinary story of the year. On paper, you kind of get it. But I know a strong political peer of DeSantis who knew him for a while and went to see him when he was governor early. And this person's a good conservative and called me and said, hey, I spent some time with the new governor of Florida.

Oh, what was it like? And this person said, well, very smart, really smart, really focused. And I don't think he believes in anything. So, so I think he's doing a little better on the ground in the caucuses than the puntocracy gives him credit for. But there's a thing in the consultant world where you're at the consultant bar with the different candidates in a big, you know, primary and the kind of the whisper thing is, you know, boy, what a dog candidate, you know, some people have it and can learn to be great at it. Others just don't.

And he is just not a great candidate. His spouse is a lot better. Casey, they'll let him run the campaign and let her go out because she has it. He doesn't, but it's the opposite. She's the controlling campaign wizard there to the extent they have a wizardly campaign, which I can argue they don't. And he's the guy who's supposed to have the magic spark. Some of those sledgehammer issues he talks about do have power, but his lack of charisma and everything is in the way. So, you know, again, it's Nikki's moment to run the table in the

preseason a little and surge into Iowa. There's some polling evidence she's starting to get more grip. But even the state polls, you're not really going to know what's going on in Iowa until December. It is a late surge thing. And if DeSantis can't show something there, it's the end. He's also got this crazy deal where they went the super PAC route, which is— Yeah, this is what I was going to ask you about. How long can he hang in there? And he does have the super PAC that has a ton of money, right? Yeah. And they're trying to do

everything with the super PAC. And the super PAC is like feuding with the campaign, which is crazy. A super PAC is limited in what it can do. First of all, it can't coordinate with you. So there's this whole kabuki theater of tweets. And you saw the 498-page debate memo, always stand on your left foot. That helped. Yeah, that just was so clumsy because they're trying to back-channel communicate. And so the super PAC often has a lot of muscle but very little brain because it can't really coordinate. It can't debate prep.

It can't tell the candidate what to do. Instead, the theory is you watch the campaign and you try to amplify what they're doing. You also pay a lot more. So Nikki Haley for president, the hard money campaign buys a, an ad on wheel of fortune in Des Moines and pays $800 for it. The super PAC will pay 3000 bucks or more for the same ad. So even though you have more money, it burns faster and there are limits to what you can do, what they're trying to do, which is a new thing. I mean, some people tried it in 2016 is they're trying to run the whole field overhead through the super pack. So after DeSantis rally in a hall, they paid for it. DeSantis walks out and then they sign everybody up. It's cumbersome though. I think they're going

to find the limits of that model. And if they get too cute and coordinate too much, the law on that coordination is murky. It hasn't really been truly tested legally. And the danger is incredible. I used to joke in the Jeb days that I'm too good looking to go to jail. So no, we're not going to do that. I had pretty conservative lawyers. But you can find lawyers to say, yeah, why not try it? We'll go to court. Well, that's risky.

So I think that'll end a little badly. And I don't think it solves the DeSantis problem, which could be all mechanics and no campaign and no authenticity, no candidate charm. And Haley has some of those candidate charm skills. So she can lap them as she gets her move beyond Trump, who was great the first year, but then I was there, I saw it go bad, bad on the Ukraine, bad on spending, you know, became the tragedy of our party. A great man after losing the election forgot who he was. So now we should thank him and move forward. She needs to find that path and hammer it. And then I think she could lap him. And I think she could play better in New Hampshire than DeSantis ever would. So do Republican primary voters care about

these issues? Do they care about spending? Do they care about debts and deficit? Do they care about health care? Do they care about policy on Ukraine? I think it does. The problem right now is it can't just be do you love Trump or hate Trump. It can be we love Trump enough to know it's time to move on. And that's the needle they got to thread. And Nikki started that at the debate. But, you know, can she sustain it? That's the billion-dollar question. Because if she beats him twice, if she beats him in Iowa and New Hampshire. Right.

Even if she's second and he's third in Iowa, if you kill him twice, he crumbles. Well, then it's a totally different game. And she's the best position to do it now. I thought Scott had a chance if he would run not the one-note Christian campaign in Iowa, the wider opportunity guy campaign, which is his magic power that he's not using enough. But they're going the President Santorum, President Huckabee route, which ends in one good night. What about all of the wishcasting unicorn thinking that maybe we can talk Glenn Youngkin into coming in to be the,

the alternative. There was a lot of buzz before the debate. Does Haley's good performance kind of slow the roll on that? I think so. We've got this new phenomenon now in the old days, big donors would bundle a lot of hard money. Then we had super PACs. So the donor who has 1,000 or 500 friends they know they can build a little pyramid

and get 1,000 bucks out of has been devalued to the donor who can write you 3 million. And most of them are great and work hard and are part of the team. But we have a new class of donor that hires press secretaries and loves to chat endlessly of Maggie or somebody on the phone. You know, well, as I look at the vast canvas as a real power player, the name is spelled, you know, three of these guys can call up and say, well, I'm going to go to a secret meeting with somebody who knows Glenn Youngkin and we're going to urge him into the race. I'm a real player. But the third trophy wife listening in, that can start one of these boomers. Two of those guys can.

And that's kind of what's happened with Youngkin. I have learned that candidates are like serial killers. If you have to talk them into killing, then nope, nope, they're not real serial killers. Can we get Manson to do something terrible? I don't know. He's thinking about it. No. It's like Colin Powell.

Oh, he's going to run. He's going to. No. The ones who run want to run. The work is keeping them from starting too early. So if Youngkin wanted to be in this, he'd be in this. And the big window is closing. And I think Haley is now the flavor of the moment. Now, if she bungles it, which she seems to be very capable of doing in the last few days, we'll see. Then that vacuum will open up again. and you'll read more because three-mouthy voters talked to some reporters on background that there's this boom that for Youngkin. But if Youngkin wanted to be running for president, in my view, he'd be

running for president. So as plausible as the case is that, okay, you know, Donald Trump had a good run. We need to move on from Donald Trump. I mean, he's too old and we just, we need to have somebody who's not going to be a lame duck president, a one-term president. The problem seems to be that Republican voters right now are stuck on, we can't move on from him. We have to defend him because he's under attack from the deep state. So each indictment seems to lock in stronger support. So give me your sense of how this plays out. We have a court date, at least a tentative court date above March 4th, which is the day before Super Tuesday. The convention here in Milwaukee is not until July. The election, of course, is in November.

Which of these trials will change the course of this election, if any? You know, I don't see the magic lightning bolt. By the way, I said election, not just primary. Yeah, well, that's the question. It's much more about the general election. I mean, this is terrible for the whole Republican brand and the general election. It's the one life preserver that might save Joe Biden, who, in my view, is in terrible political trouble. When you're the president of the United States and they think a crazy guy like Trump would be better to run the economy, I mean, that's not noise.

That's a signal. So in the primary, no. If he can get through Iowa and New Hampshire, I think he's going to run the table. I think you're going to see our candidates in tough seats in the general election start to try to figure out how to distance from him. I think the conventional wisdom will be Republicans nominate corpse. The convention will be a spectacle of craziness like we've never seen before. Keynote, Carrie Lake. I mean, it's going to be the most depressing thing in the world. The people selling the third party with, in my view, very good intentions, but very dangerous impact, because

all that is is an escrow account for people who know Trump's crazy and know he can never step into the oval, but also can't abide Biden. It gives them a place to kind of buy a halo and waste their vote, votes Biden needs. Biden needs a lot of people who have to hold their nose to vote for him to stop Trump. And if you give them a third option, in the national polls, which again, totally run the psychology of our politics now. And there'll be this huge, huge panic about God, Trump could actually win. And then in the end, I think Biden will narrowly prevail, but there's so much risk there. I mean, I wrote a thing on Substack about why he has to have some friend who can come to him and say, no, don't do it. Because this is not just losing election. This is losing the country if it's up against Trump and you managed to lose to him.

If it goes this way, we'll be caught in this hellscape of every day being the yo-yo on the Trump madness string, which is weakening our country and just exhausting anybody who can read above the eighth grade level. It's just so grim. But it could happen. It could happen. And I think we need a national conversation, not just about, hey, Trump sucks, but to step back. What has happened in 20 years to our popular culture that has allowed our politics to become the worst version of the professional wrestling business? And you're right.

I mean, this is the popular culture. I mean, you know, Trump could drop dead tomorrow and, you know, we're not healed. This doesn't go away. This environment doesn't just snap back to what we used to think of as normal. That's just not going to happen. No, I agree. And I think we'd have to look at pop culture. I always irritate friends by saying, you know, I want to bring Andy Cohen up on charges

just because, you know, adults throwing wine glasses at each other. Really? You know, and there are a million versions of it. The economists will come in and talk about real wages and how if you're on the borderline between being poor and working poor, it's a devastating life. Hillbilly algae stuff, despite the proprietor of that going quickly to the dark side. There's so much truth in that. So we have to have that larger conversation because the culture is outputting these politics. And I don't know about you, I don't really want to have to learn Chinese and work in an American restaurant in New Beijing, formerly known as

Chicago. We've got a real problem here beyond just one bad actor. Okay, so let's take a deep breath and dive into this, the Joe Biden problem, because I do sense there's a certain amount of denialism or a certain amount of fatalism about all of this. We get a lot of pushback saying, stop talking about Joe Biden's age, which my response is, it's not going to go away. Denial is really not a sound strategy. And the reality is that if you talk to any voters in the real world, I mean, any voter, every conversation, and I mean, every, every conversation will eventually get to the question of Joe Biden's age. Now you went out there and you said that Joe Biden should step

aside, not run. That's obviously not going to happen right now. So let's just talk about this. I mean, my real fear here is that everything's hanging by a thread and you only need a couple of Grandpa Joe moments. If something happens to Joe Biden next September or October, like what happened to Mitch McConnell, I mean, all bets are off. I mean, it is a terrifying thing. I guess my question is, do the Democrats have a plan B and are you sure that that would actually be a better idea for them? So make your case. Yeah, those are the questions. Joe Biden has what I call a two plus two is five problem. When you're an incumbent running for reelection, historically, the election is a referendum on you, keep them or fire them. Now, Joe Biden is right now, perception is reality. The perception he's

doing a lousy job in the economy, and that is death for a president running for re-election politically. Now, they have time to change that perception, but it's hard to do. People believe what they believe. Why do they believe that? Because the numbers are, the Democrats will say, well, look, the unemployment rate is at historic lows. Yes, it's true.

Inflation is coming down. You know, what is with these people? The numbers are good, but that's not the prism. People look at real wages. What can I buy for what I earn? And they're only starting to creep up now. They've been stagnant. They feel inflation. They feel it in the car payment, the mortgage, the grandkids can't afford a house because the mortgages in the last two years have gone way up for the same house. It's the everyday cashflow of life stuff where remember a huge number of Americans have essentially no savings, $5,000 crisis, and they're really in trouble.

So that's what they feel. Not some guy with a bow tie saying that, you know, seasonally adjusted unemployment has dropped again. So he's got the perception problem there. Then one thing Trump beats them on in surveys is running the economy, which is a very scary number. The other thing is the age deal. You know, the age problem, if you're president, it's like having all of a sudden you wake up one day, you've got antlers and you go down to announce the great news that we found a cure for cancer. And all anybody wants to say about what are those antlers? It won't go away. So when they say, hey, old grandpa is not the guy to fix the economy, which is screwing me. That's two plus two is five.

That is the lock they're in. Now, what the Democrats are all doing is finding a confirmation bubble. Yeah, I know, but we can make the election about Trump and abortion. They're right. The abortion thing is a huge club for them. Well done, GOP. But they're forgetting the fundamentals. You look at the quotes, and they remind me, if you go back, being Jurassic, I do stuff like this. And you look at what Democrats used to say in the process press about Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Well, everybody hates him, but they've nominated a crackpot old actor who used to be in movies with monkeys. Ha! No way that nut will win. They forget it's fundamentally a referendum on the guy in the chair. So they got to fix Biden's perception on the economy. Now, they're trying to, they opened a campaign for big 60 second television ad, which was what incumbents in trouble always tell the consultants to run. Well, why don't we do an ad about all my great accomplishments? I wrote a script and it's, you know, 40 minutes long. Uh, and the ad is basically, Hey idiot, don't you know, while you're screwing around, I've been getting up early and I passed the equity and manufacturing bill and blah, blah, blah, listen up. And, you

know, voters don't work that way. They're like, what are you doing for me right now that I can feel and where are we going? So the Biden spot, which is everything's going great, is the wrong spot. It should be, we've done the hard work. We took the punches. We had a plan and now it's starting to turn around. So the question is, as we come back, who's going to win? And then you do your Republican litany of class hatred warfare and all that, or working folks like you need cheaper prescription drugs. You need to be able to spend more times with your family by getting a better wage for your late, blah, blah, blah. So they're trying to force feed the good news, which people tend to, like all force feedings, gag upon. So anyway, they don't fix that because

they can't fix age. I dread the day it's so bad they put out the press release of Biden taking a karate lesson or something. I can see how bad that could go. All the Biden's fine. No, people don't think he's fine. Results can turn age vulnerability into age wisdom. But, you know, you got to convince them you're on a path that Biden, the great captain of age and experience, has steered us where we're starting to see a reaction. They think we're just beat the hell out of Trump. And Trump is so bad campaigning from the Yankton minimum of security federal prison or wherever. That would help.

It can work, but it's risky. It is very risky. And I'm concerned that because they have created this confirmation bubble, they're telling themselves it's just a messaging problem. There's nothing wrong with the economy. We don't even have to consider the age issue. And voters who do not understand all of these accomplishments, they're just stupid. If this becomes the culture, you know, why are people so stupid that they still are complaining about inflation? Why are voters so stupid that they're complaining about high interest rate? Wait, that is not going to be the environment in which you create the message that you think that you need to create about all of this. And I, you know, the Joe Biden problem, I think cognitively he can still do the job. There's no indication he can't. However, every time he talks and walks, the way he moves around, it is sometimes, as you point out,

the antler problem. He'll walk in and he'll have this litany of great accomplishments. And I'm thinking, oh my God, the guy looks like he's 150 years old right now. And we can pretend that's not a problem, but it is a problem. Yeah. So, you know, you revamp your comms. He's now the chairman of the board of the turnaround. So you surround him with smart guys. He doesn't walk in and talk alone. You recast the movie in how you visually communicate things from scratch. They're thinking, put a blue curtain behind him.

He's presidential. Trump's a frothing idiot. That's enough. No, no. There are ways to do this. I mean, back in the good old pre-internet days, the old Helms machine in North Carolina elected a senator. Nobody knew he was in a wheelchair for six years. There still are those kind of tricks that can be done or controls on

presentation rather than throw them out there and say, that wasn't so bad because then he's the great Walenda. The whole thing is, well, can Biden get across the rope without falling 50 stories? And that adds attention to it that amplifies every hiccup and everything else. I mean, God forbid the poor guy has to go to Walter Reed for a weekend because he's had a TMI or something, a minor bubble. The news media is going to treat it like the Hindenburg explosion because all those expectations are set. Will Biden make it till tomorrow, our panel of doctors? And then you have TV doctors who want to be a little outrageous because they want to be back on TV and meet girls. You know, the whole thing is set up to go bad for them. And they really need to have the meeting. If I were running that thing,

I'd say, all right, we're not going to have the easy meeting, which is, boy, what did Trump do today? How are we going to hammer him? We're going to do the meeting that tomorrow Trump dies. And all of a sudden Nikki Haley is the nominee. How do we fix Biden and beat her? I want seven smart ideas by the end of the day, or I'm going to have new people around here. I mean, they've got to really understand the peril of their situation and rethink it instead of call up people and yell at them for being critical of Joe Biden. Like nobody talks about it. It doesn't appear to be 118. The stakes are too high to screw around. I agree. Okay. Will there be a Trump-Biden debate? You know, we were talking about this on Hacks this week, and, you know, there's one argument that Trump refusing debates gives Biden a predicate to say, well, you know, the madman

won't debate, so I don't have to. he's crazy. My view is one, if December in Iowa and New Hampshire is looking a lot grimmer than it is now, which again, I'm the lonely fool on the island that thinks that could happen, then Trump will debate. The guy wants to debate or the woman wants to debate is whoever's losing. One of them will be losing in October and will want a debate. The Biden argument will be, well, Trump's still crazier than Joe and we can get him through three paragraphs and he can do it. And Biden will want a debate at that point. He's not going to lose the election by not taking a final swipe at Trump. On the other side, if Trump is losing, it's in his interest to debate and hope Biden starts talking about talkies and

black and white TV, though Trump is crazy enough that it'll be harder for his managers to convince him it's in his interest. So my guess is there will be a debate. Can he do Zoom from the federal pen? It's interesting because you know somewhere in the federal prison service, there's a secret room with an old secret service veteran and a trusted bureaucrat who knows that we're saying, where the hell do we put them? So option one is house arrest at Mar-a-Lago, but I think the political kickback to that will be tremendous. Look, if he did it, he's got to do time for real, not in a mansion. Number two is all right. In North Dakota, there's a sack base with a colonel's two-room bungalow, and it's secure. Put them there. Or three, I filmed a

spot once at the nicest prison in America, which used to be a college. It has no fence. It's an honor system federal prison in Yankton, South Dakota, which is quite nice. Every time I'm- That seems like a contradiction in terms, by the way. Honor system federal prison, right? So, you know, you're supposed to stay there. But it's on the banks of the river.

It's a beautiful old college. I don't know if it's still open, but I made a note 20 years ago filming there because the senator I was working for had saved it or whatever the story was. I thought, boy, if I ever get jammed up, I got to make a deal for Yankton. But anyway, they're working on it. You know, I'd love to be a fly in that room. Mike Murphy, thank you so much for joining me. Mike Murphy is co-director of the USC Center for the Political Future, co-host of the podcast Hacks on Tap, and an analyst for NBC News.

Mike, it is always great to have you on the podcast. Charlie, you do good work here. I'm a listener. I'm going to leave with one last shameless plug. I like the great bulwark. I'm also now fooling around on Substack with crazy rants and raves. So thank you for having me on.

I look forward to talking to you again. Outstanding. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will be back tomorrow. We will do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.