This is Gavin Newsom - And, This Is An Insider's Guide To The Midterms with Strategist Mike Murphy

00:00:00.360 One of the worst words now in American politics is corporate. 1.00

00:00:04.260 There's too much stupid money sloshing around. 1.00

00:00:06.360 This data center thing is big, and it's in both parties. 1.00

00:00:10.920 This is Gavin Newsom.

00:00:13.360 And this is Mike Murphy.

00:00:17.460 This is an iHeart Podcast.

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00:02:17.260 races sometimes on the same side of races listen to the big take on the iheart radio app apple

00:02:21.360 podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts all right so the obvious first question a blue wave

00:02:27.800 or blue tsunami uh big and blue uh i think the republicans are going to lose a lot of power in

00:02:35.560 washington you know i i hate to tickle the whiskers of the gods of arrogance by saying tsunami

00:02:43.080 but every piece of and i'm old you know i started this stuff in 82 and i was around for 86

00:02:49.300 which was very bad for the r's and we lost you know the the senate was a wipeout so my instinct

00:02:57.120 is is tsunami though i keep an eye on fetterman flipping uh that that could be the one they have

00:03:04.000 in their pocket for senate control and you got to remember if you if you step back and just do the

00:03:09.540 data. If the Dems lose Kansas by one point, it would be a huge historic number for them in a

00:03:18.220 Senate race. So getting all the way to win, my gut says they're going to do it, but the math says

00:03:24.460 it's close in a couple of them. That said, I would bet more tsunami than wave based on what I have.

00:03:31.460 And you distinguish the two on the basis of the majority in the House versus the majority in the

00:03:37.280 Senate or both end? Or is it more state races, gubernatorial races? How would you describe

00:03:43.740 the distinction between the two? Yeah, well, I think they're going to win the House.

00:03:49.500 And the Senate is my trigger on what a tsunami is. Can they win majority in the Senate by winning

00:03:57.760 rock solid 10 plus point Trump states? You know, that's a real spine breaker. Now,

00:04:04.420 What I think people are missing about this, though, in the punditocracy, which, you know, misses a lot on part of it.

00:04:10.400 I look around. It's like the atomic clock for Washington, D.C. conventional wisdom, even though I live in the great state of California.

00:04:16.320 That's right. What they miss is in the House, as you know, when you're in the minority, you have no power.

00:04:23.080 You're there for the free haircuts. I mean, it's just you're basically spend all your time plotting the comeback to get back in majority in the Senate.

00:04:30.680 the minority does have power. You know, the deeds are four points, excuse me, four seats down now,

00:04:36.580 but they've still had the wheel in advance to break a couple of ties because Rand Paul won't

00:04:40.760 vote for a lot of budget stuff and Murkowski. So even if the Dems were to pick up two,

00:04:46.240 it's a real power shift. I mean, nothing's as good as the majority, but even incremental games in the

00:04:51.520 Senate would be huge. So anyway, that's my trigger, though. The other thing nobody's watching is

00:04:56.300 governor races like they should. And some of these state legislatures, like, for example, in Michigan,

00:05:03.320 which is going to have a big voice in this rumored primary coming up, it's probably going to be an 0.74

00:05:08.580 all-D cast. They're going to hold the state Senate. They're going to win the governor. 0.99

00:05:12.400 And they've got a very dynamic young guy. He's an EV freak, by the way, Ranjit Puri, who I think is

00:05:17.820 going to be the new speaker. So that means they can actually get policy done. You know, they will

00:05:22.440 have a one party control. So I think there are some other state houses that could flip. So it's

00:05:29.760 going to be great for the Dems. The question is how great. And the question is how big the Trump

00:05:34.200 nervous breakdown is. And do we like invade Bermuda and everything? Because he'll be really

00:05:38.940 boxed in and it'll be amusing, but also dangerous. And also dangerous. So you, I mean, I love the

00:05:43.680 historic frame you began with. And what creates the conditions? I mean, what do you think is

00:05:48.840 similar, if you look back, more from an historical lens of the conditions that have presented

00:05:53.440 themselves that make that so likely. I mean, is there a meta conditions? Are there micro issues?

00:06:00.760 Is it personality? Is it obviously in the basis of just the headwinds in a war and the affordability,

00:06:06.440 war on innovation, war on science, truth, trust? What do you sort of connect in terms of dots?

00:06:12.060 You know, I think we're creeping up on a perfect storm here. Now, we all know that the president often has a bad, you know, midterm election. People get to do a little buyer's remorse. I mean, Barack Obama, people forget, he lost 60 seats. I like to remind Axelrod of this on our pod every week.

00:06:32.640 You can't even lose 60 now because we've redistricted everything.

00:06:36.320 You know, 18 is the new 60.

00:06:38.980 But people tend to express disapproval.

00:06:41.580 Then when you add upon that, it's like you're making a club sandwich of trouble here.

00:06:45.720 You have the normal midterm.

00:06:47.640 Then you got the fact that Trump has always had one ace card.

00:06:51.020 You know, he made a deal with the American voters in the second term, which was, okay, 0.99

00:06:56.000 we all know I'm an asshole, but I can run the economy. 0.99

00:06:59.360 and Biden and Kamala can't look at inflation, you're feeling pain. So just hold your nose and 1.00

00:07:05.640 let me run the economy, money in your pocket. And they bought it. But now nobody thinks he can run

00:07:10.900 the economy. Even on his job approval polling, which has always been kind of shaky, he's always

00:07:16.840 been close to 60 or better on when you narrow the question to what's his job rating on running the

00:07:23.100 economy. Now it's like 28. So he's become McDonald's who cannot make a good hamburger.

00:07:28.640 He's got nothing else.

00:07:30.040 It's not his winning personality.

00:07:31.420 It's not his love of law and order.

00:07:33.660 You know, it's just like the legs have been knocked out.

00:07:36.600 So that'll make the normal problem worse.

00:07:39.420 Then the stuff he picked to screw up was the stuff that touches every American every week at the gas pump and the cash register.

00:07:47.600 And in those Midwestern states, where a lot of the, if it's a TUSAMI, you're going to see it on every level, the industrial manufacturing economy has been slapped down.

00:07:58.960 He's cost manufacturing jobs.

00:08:00.620 So it's kind of a triple header.

00:08:02.460 Plus, just the Trump Act is, we're now sitting through Godfather 5.

00:08:08.780 I mean, this has been going on forever.

00:08:11.160 And I think there's just some fatigue.

00:08:13.020 And then finally, what all the Republican hacks will tell you quietly, and the Democratic hacks

00:08:18.980 are chortling about, is this White House has no capacity to play politics in a smart message way.

00:08:25.940 It's all indulgence. Drunk uncle wants to go to Toledo. All right, we're going to Toledo.

00:08:30.620 Drunk uncle wants to compliment the mayor's butt. Okay, that's what he does. People love him. 1.00

00:08:35.700 I mean, today he attacked Norway in Port Huron, Michigan, which is a border community by the

00:08:40.740 Blue Water Bridge. I spent a lot of time up there as a kid that where you see a lot of auto parts

00:08:46.160 going back and forth until recently. So he is literally the kid sticking his finger in the

00:08:51.080 light socket, making a huge problem worse as a Paul, as a communicator, as a candidate. So that's

00:08:57.920 why I think it's a perfect storm. He got about nine things. And then finally, the Dems are a

00:09:02.360 little lucky this year. And, you know, they've been short on luck for a while. So they're take

00:09:06.340 it, they have better than average candidates in places where the Republicans have worse than

00:09:13.140 average candidates. Kansas is a good example. Everybody on the Republican side knew that

00:09:17.740 Marshall is a weak candidate, but they figured Kansas, even he can win. But then they find

00:09:22.740 Hamilton, who is basically a 1990 Bush Republican, God bless him, who's running a great kind of vibe

00:09:30.900 campaign against a guy who sues patients for not paying him 50 bucks. You know, that one is too

00:09:37.420 good to be true. It's kind of on the reverse side, like when in Delaware, we ran some witch

00:09:41.820 who was carrying her broom around on the campaign trail. So sometimes you just get lucky in the

00:09:46.500 candidate matchup. Alaska is another one. Petolta has a lot of chops. She has a native base,

00:09:51.420 big turnout there. It's a big vote in Alaska. Sullivan's not a bad guy. He's not as bad as 1.00

00:09:56.460 Marshall, but he hasn't been back. He's not connected to the state. And he kind of worked

00:10:00.880 on the list. Now, the other two, though, the Dems, there's something in the water in Maine,

00:10:05.840 where they're up against a really formidable Susan Collins, who, you know, seems like the

00:10:12.200 nice grandmother, but her real name ought to be Crusher Mulligan, because she's a very formidable

00:10:17.900 politician up there. And the Dem candidates have been pretty weak. That said, in a wave election, 0.77

00:10:23.820 revert to Maine. It's hard to see Maine sticking with the R, and she's been there a long time. 0.51

00:10:28.660 And then you got El Syed, who's very asymmetrical in Michigan. Got a lot of skills, but also tends 0.93

00:10:34.640 to grab the microphone and do this kind of bro act instead of making it simple, fire Trump.

00:10:40.520 So it's weird. Two of the easier states are a little harder on the candidate side,

00:10:45.980 and the harder states have gotten lucky. And Tallarico is another example. The guy's the

00:10:50.140 natural. I think he's going to win taxes. So all in all, net net, I bet on tsunami.

00:10:58.120 But even if it's not a tsunami, the Dems are going to be in a whole new situation in D.C.

00:11:03.800 And I want to get to that in a minute. And I want to get to the point you keep making. And it's an

00:11:07.900 important point. It's not for love of Dems that we're in this position necessarily. And we'll get

00:11:13.300 to that. But I want to, you know, we sort of pivot back to also up to Alaska, but more of a meta

00:11:17.820 point as it relates to Trump 2.0 versus Trump 1.0. Do you find any of the shift in terms of

00:11:24.520 discipline, the staffing, Susie Wiles versus the cascading number of folks that came in and

00:11:31.740 out of the White House in the chief of staff position, James Blair? You know what happens.

00:11:39.660 He loses. Knives come out. We're already starting to see a lot more breaking in terms of public

00:11:45.200 statements, off the record, shots, camps being formed. It felt like that first year of Trump

00:11:50.960 2.0, there was a lot more discipline. It's starting to fray, or at least it appears to be,

00:11:56.000 if I'm reading it right. What is your sense of what's happened? What the advice,

00:12:02.460 counsel, direction, what the hell went wrong, Trump 2.0?

00:12:07.020 Well, I think almost all roads lead to Trump and his personality and his, you know,

00:12:12.320 egomania and insecurity in trump one there were some grown-ups around and the grown-ups all had

00:12:18.880 like interlocking marvel rings to try to control trump i mean there there's a story which comes on

00:12:26.000 high uh credibility that trump was in the oval for about one hour and he called in some staff

00:12:33.000 and said all right bring in the lawyers i want to drop out of nato today right now sign the papers

00:12:37.460 And immediately the signal operator got the order, get Mathis and, you know, get the pros over here.

00:12:44.320 The child is running toward the chainsaw.

00:12:47.540 And there was a fire squad to try to control that.

00:12:51.380 And Trump drew to resent it a lot, which created palace intrigue.

00:12:55.160 You know, they're all knifing each other.

00:12:57.360 Half of his staff, I don't think, would have voted for him in the reelect.

00:13:00.700 But this time the grownups are gone.

00:13:03.360 It's a bunch of advanced people with clipboards saying, yes, sir, absolutely.

00:13:07.140 giant inflatable statue of you. Great. Viking horns. We got them, sir. And so Trump's running

00:13:16.420 wild. And Susie is a good train conductor. Now, she's going to wake up in five years and think

00:13:26.100 back. I did a pretty good job running the trains, but she never took a 10 feet walk away from the

00:13:31.620 trained to look back and see all the bad german army decals on the train you know so uh as far

00:13:40.320 as heavy policy people they're gone and you can see it in foreign policy where we're really making

00:13:44.780 the epic screw-ups i mean we we literally had to have a guy who couldn't make the day shift at a

00:13:50.820 training gym in hollywood running the department of defense i mean it's unbelievable uh and i know

00:13:57.900 a lot of career repubs who are just horrified and think, you know, we're going to spend a decade

00:14:02.940 digging out of this hole. The Chinese are running the table. I mean, you and I have worked together 1.00

00:14:07.440 on electric vehicles. Trump has declared war in the American auto industry. He's the best president

00:14:11.760 the Chinese automakers have ever had. And there are no grownups in the trade department. There's

00:14:16.760 this ex-con, you know, crazy man. So the difference this time is you're getting pure Trump who's older 0.95

00:14:22.180 and more bitter which is why i worry so much if the dems get a lot of power how he'll take that 0.99

00:14:29.200 remember his brand is strong guy yep well strong guy is about to get his ass kicked and and you 0.93

00:14:35.000 know see his brand get torn up and then you're going to see shiny new objects vans rubio starting 0.90

00:14:41.440 to get love and attention and uh you know yep look out bermuda yeah yeah no i want to get to

00:14:49.200 that intrigue, and I'll throw Ted Cruz in there as well, but what happened over the weekend? We

00:14:55.480 were watching Blanche on all the Sunday shows, and he's defending not all the assaults on

00:15:00.720 California, but defending, which we were litigating literally over the weekend,

00:15:06.480 but the assault, particularly on certification, and the concerns now about a fair-free election

00:15:11.680 after the election is conducted, if it doesn't go Trump's way, and what he suggested, or what

00:15:16.180 Blanche is defending and the DOJ is defending in Alaska in particular. I mean, is that par for the

00:15:22.480 course table stakes from your perspective or five alarm fire? I think it's more noise than muscle

00:15:32.080 because what is kind of happening is Trump is ordering the DOJ, which he's filled with some

00:15:37.940 sycophants. So there's still a lot of good career people there to act as his personal law firm. So

00:15:43.260 now they're in the business of filing what are really nuisance lawsuits you know remember he was

00:15:47.860 going to break open the postal department and inspect every ballot or no way you know it doesn't

00:15:53.700 happen so i learned back in the bush administration on the campaign you know quail used to have a joke

00:16:01.000 where he'd pick up the phone on air force two and it wouldn't work you know so the president can

00:16:05.520 bellow orders right but um what actually happens uh and remember you know this very well governors

00:16:12.860 run elections and state authorities do. But I do think Trump is making a lot of noise

00:16:18.380 to create kind of a squid's ink cloud of camouflage over why he loses.

00:16:25.360 I think he knows it's going south and he has to have a reason. And it can't be him. He's perfect.

00:16:30.600 You know, he was attacking Norway today because they didn't give him the prize,

00:16:33.840 Nobel Peace Prize. Would have been laughable. So I think Trump is creating all this noise about

00:16:40.000 the election is no good, it's all rigged. Now, the danger is, if you go out with that noise out

00:16:45.980 of your ego and insecurity, like Trump's doing, you're sending a message to ours to not show up. 0.60

00:16:52.400 And it's just like Trump's war on mail-in ballots, which were invented in California by the

00:16:56.800 Republicans. And, you know, we need them. So when Trump undermines some of these things,

00:17:03.500 he's actually hurting our team, or I'm now an independent, I'm a right-wing nut, but I couldn't

00:17:08.540 take doing an hour anymore after 40 years as a general in that world. But this does, it's all

00:17:20.400 about him. And so now he's building a permission structure in his brain why the conspiracy beat

00:17:26.780 him. I mean, I'll tell a Mitt Romney story here. We all remember when Mitt was asked to consider

00:17:34.780 Secretary of State. And Mitt, forgive me if I'm talking, I normally try to hold all the

00:17:39.560 conversations private, but I think Mitt's told this story. Everybody in the world called Hillary

00:17:44.440 Clinton, George Bush. You got to get in there. We got to get some grownups around. So he goes

00:17:48.420 to the dinner where Trump invites CNN. And was Trump talking about NATO or Chinese influence

00:17:55.580 in the Pacific or what do we do, India, Pakistan? No. He was talking about being governor of

00:18:00.320 Massachusetts, Mitt, you sure understand how the labor people send up, you know, gorillas from 0.98

00:18:06.660 Boston to cheat and rig the New Hampshire election, which is why I lost. And this is sitting there 0.98

00:18:13.120 thinking, my God, we got a crazy man heading for the Oval. So Trump tends to build these

00:18:18.200 structures in his head that he believes to, you know, explain to himself why his will is not done.

00:18:26.080 It's never his weakness. It's all, well, they stole the election. We all know.

00:18:29.300 I tried to get the DOJ, but those liberal Biden judges wouldn't even let them investigate, you know.

00:18:34.580 And it's so corrosive on public life because we undercut all the institutions.

00:18:38.500 I've worked all over the world.

00:18:40.020 I've worked for people whose first name is Generalissimo.

00:18:42.800 The campaign slogan, you know, law, order, liberty, one out of three, not so bad.

00:18:48.320 And I can tell you, we don't cheat a lot here in our elections.

00:18:51.460 You know, it really isn't that world, but people are so cynical, it's easy to get them to believe it.

00:18:59.980 And it's a real problem because it's one of our strengths that we believe in our system.

00:19:05.220 And it's yet another sin of Trump.

00:19:07.040 I hate to sound like such a crank, but I've been anti-Trump since 1993.

00:19:11.440 So, you know, I've been working up steam for a while.

00:19:13.980 I was working for Christine Todd Whitman, who was my client, the repelling governor of New Jersey, did both her campaigns.

00:19:19.480 and Trump basically wanted the state to build a turnpike exit on the beautiful Garden State

00:19:24.860 turnpike directly to a new casino. And we said no, and he did horrible stuff. And I just learned

00:19:32.040 a lot about who this guy really was down in Atlantic City. And that was enough from that

00:19:38.040 point on. It's just, there is no character there. But you, at the same time, and I'm interested

00:19:43.720 sort of, you know, pulling that thread to your time with Jeb Bush and working on that presidential,

00:19:49.020 at least on the PAC side, consistently underestimated nonetheless. I mean, did you

00:19:54.980 not see his power coming, his personality, his ability, his potency in terms of connecting

00:20:00.840 with quote unquote working folks? Well, it's interesting. He's also lucky. I think that

00:20:06.800 luck is running out, but he's historically always been lucky. So what we thought, and I did the

00:20:11.280 Bush super PAC, but what everybody thought, Jeff Rowe and the Cruz people thought this,

00:20:16.260 the Rubio people thought. Everybody thought he's going to get a lot of attention, but he's got to

00:20:22.280 go through a Republican primary. And the fact that he's pro-gun control, big Chuck Schumer donor,

00:20:28.220 pro-choice, all this stuff, after the first look, it's going to burn off. He won't be that

00:20:33.540 interesting. We were more worried about a movement conservative from the right, because we did know

00:20:38.420 at the beginning, Jeb knew, that we were not selling what the primary voters really wanted to.

00:20:44.200 Jeb's a problem-solving policy wonk with a big heart.

00:20:47.440 And, you know, they wanted somebody to go in there with machetes and all that.

00:20:51.940 So Trump was able to harness the rage against Republican Incorporated, Washington Incorporated, all the muddy boot, you know, we're going there and clean them out and stuff.

00:21:01.660 The other thing, and this is the greatest irony ever, we did a lot of focus groups on Trump.

00:21:05.540 We were the first campaign to spend millions of dollars attacking Trump.

00:21:08.640 The rest of the state in a fear crouch.

00:21:10.680 what we learned in the focus groups was regular republicans like trump because they thought he

00:21:18.280 could go to washington as a deal maker and make every get deals done and make dc work again

00:21:24.380 that was the hilarious thing because they had seen him for eight years yeah in a cardboard set

00:21:31.240 designed to look like a boardroom firing gary busey for not selling enough ice cream cones

00:21:35.860 they thought somehow he could straighten out washington it was unbelievable because he wasn't

00:21:41.520 he was authentic then with the insults but he wasn't as coarse and crazy right uh so anyway and

00:21:47.480 then then it took off and then we're all fighting each other for the other lane um because he he got

00:21:53.840 to his solid 30 percent really quick and being the only non-politician he was pretty bulletproof from

00:22:00.420 attacks on politicians even all the ideological stuff that would normally it would be like

00:22:05.100 some celebrity running in the Democratic primaries early for president. And everybody's saying,

00:22:11.820 yeah, but they've been pro-life their whole life. You know, one wave of advertising on that.

00:22:16.180 No, the bullets turned to rubber and they bounced off. So it was quite the experience,

00:22:24.200 I'll tell you. And now we got this. And now we got this. And so you're of the opinion,

00:22:31.300 if I'm reading between the lines or I listen to you closely and I'm absorbing what you said,

00:22:37.300 that it's more fire and fury signifying little to nothing as it relates to the election interference

00:22:42.420 at the end of the day, that you're not concerned about some worst case scenario where Johnson's

00:22:50.600 not swearing folks in and then we have a constitutional crisis. You're not worried

00:22:54.820 about the sort of National Guard tanks rolling in

00:22:57.700 and just madness, Asui.

00:23:00.160 Yeah, here are my reasons why.

00:23:03.160 And I might be, you know, a French general in 1940. 0.83

00:23:05.860 Oh, the Germans will never go through the forest. 0.92

00:23:08.060 You know, maybe I'm missing it all. 0.98

00:23:10.000 But one, you know, American officers

00:23:12.480 don't take an oath to the President of the United States.

00:23:14.580 They take an oath to the Constitution.

00:23:16.400 And I've had, I was a civilian consultant

00:23:19.080 in the Pentagon for Bill Cohen years ago

00:23:20.960 in the Clinton administration.

00:23:22.400 Got to hang out with a lot of generals,

00:23:23.720 learn about that building.

00:23:24.820 And they all go out of their way to mention that.

00:23:29.240 Anybody over three stars is a senator anyway.

00:23:31.980 They're Pauls by that point.

00:23:33.640 So they got their eye on this.

00:23:36.460 Second, it is one thing to turn out ice and roll around L.A. and hassle people.

00:23:44.020 It's another to try to seize polling places during, at a minimum, a big wave election.

00:23:50.860 You know, you're going right up against it, and people are going to go berserk.

00:23:54.060 The best anecdote for all this, or antidote, would be a big turnout and a very clear result.

00:24:01.800 Now, it would help in some of our California places, particularly St.

00:24:05.520 in Los Angeles, if we could learn to count the votes in under 20, you know.

00:24:11.260 Anyway, I know.

00:24:12.520 You don't control that, so I'm not going to put you on the spot.

00:24:15.520 We did get legislation finally done to mandate to get done in two weeks.

00:24:20.520 But nonetheless, your point is valid.

00:24:23.220 You know, we did like a hard ass Republican state. We'd be running an 18 hour shift. And anyway, so the ability to federalize this stuff and even the order, you know, it is unconstitutional. So everybody from a captain to a general can say no.

00:24:40.420 um a large percentage of the people who carry rifles in u.s guard and army are of color

00:24:48.580 so that's another thing as a constituent it's going to be voting 70 percent democrats so tell

00:24:54.100 them they i go rough up their parents for voting in america uh you know i think trump in his career

00:25:01.280 if he tries to stick around is going to see more angry marines than voters will so i i don't see

00:25:08.020 it. And the ours, you know, politics, to thine own career be true, often is an organizing principle

00:25:14.460 of many. So they're going to say, all right, Trump just got his spine broken. I got to survive.

00:25:19.120 You're seeing it now. You got candidates on the air saying, hey, when Trump's wrong,

00:25:22.880 I'll be the first one to tell him, don't screw up New Hampshire. So, you know, I think the world's

00:25:29.020 going to change pretty quick in a week. And I think the smart Pauls are going to be in the

00:25:34.040 tall grass thinking about what's next is i use the sopranos analogy the minute everybody's getting

00:25:40.340 arrested and tony is not making anybody any money they start talking about okay time for a new boss

00:25:47.000 you know get get the shiv out so i think you'll be amazed to see you know we're probably gonna

00:25:52.940 party half of them are hostages right now so it i think it won't be a sorkin movie where they all

00:25:59.600 switch over right but for survival they're going to move on those that are left so you talk about

00:26:07.060 what's next so you implied democrats take back one or both houses um what's your over under on

00:26:14.700 the democratic party with all 100 plus new members of congress holding back and not moving forward

00:26:22.480 impeachment do you think there's inevitability that they move you know i i think there's a huge

00:26:28.100 chance. A lot of politics is about emotional satisfaction for people who are already going

00:26:32.680 to vote for you or even vote for a block of cement with a D on it because the incentives are

00:26:37.600 internal, which is a great way. So keep in mind that after Obama got wiped out in the midterms,

00:26:44.080 two years later, he won re-election. So people assume that this is an unstoppable multi-year

00:26:49.560 wave or making a mistake. I think what the Republican, the smart people in the strategy

00:26:55.200 world there will help is let them get power. Let them have a civil war. Let them victimize Trump

00:27:01.660 and let them own all the problems in the world. And then we run a fresh face for president against

00:27:07.520 the D.C. Democrats. You know, that's a pretty workable scenario because nobody will be in

00:27:14.040 charge of the Democratic Party. You're going to have 14 people running for president competing

00:27:18.940 for noise and a microphone. You know, people forget the presidential race in the primaries

00:27:23.900 is all in Q1 of next year.

00:27:26.260 It's really all in January and February.

00:27:28.080 So the campaign is 27.

00:27:29.960 It's coming up fast.

00:27:31.540 And so you have a lot of voices there,

00:27:34.060 people trying to get edges on each other.

00:27:36.160 You have congressional leaders.

00:27:38.400 One will be in the House and a majority

00:27:40.360 trying to control new chairmen and factions

00:27:44.300 and all the stuff that the Repubs have had to deal with

00:27:47.180 for Freedom Caucus.

00:27:48.140 You have some of that.

00:27:49.500 And then your other leader might be Schumer,

00:27:52.000 who's not a good communicator.

00:27:53.900 So, you know, noise and disorder and fighting is the natural state.

00:28:01.880 And some might think, well, we'll glue ourselves together to do impeachment.

00:28:05.140 That's a mistake.

00:28:05.840 The next election is about the future.

00:28:07.620 That's the thing to grab.

00:28:10.000 And everybody's going to come out of the election claiming victory.

00:28:13.080 You know, the old blue dogs, well, it was the centrist who won.

00:28:16.560 And then the AOC crowd, that's it, the revolution.

00:28:19.560 You know, look at El Syed, who, by the way, in the primary could not get arrested in any

00:28:25.040 of the real blue collar working class counties in Michigan.

00:28:28.100 His vote was all faculty lounge and wealthy one in chiefs Democrats.

00:28:32.340 They nearly won the primary.

00:28:33.920 Whether he wins or loses now is a lot.

00:28:36.480 Can he get the Flints and the Saginaws, the manufacturing counties where he lost by 10

00:28:41.240 points in the primary or worse to accept him?

00:28:44.240 I think he will get enough of them, but it'll be tight.

00:28:46.520 So anyway, yeah, you know, will the Democrats be organized with Republican obsession on party discipline?

00:28:53.120 It would be a first, but the goal is big enough, you know, but no, I wouldn't impeach.

00:28:59.580 I would go, I'd do corruption.

00:29:02.200 It's new, it's fresh, it's true.

00:29:04.960 And you get to go do your investigating stuff there, you know, haul up the sons.

00:29:09.940 Because it makes Harding look like, you know, Mother Goose.

00:29:13.360 i would not you don't want to replay trump you the most powerful word in advertising is new

00:29:19.760 you want to be okay that's in the rearview mirror he's crazy uh he can live on a golf course and

00:29:25.520 wear a wizard hat we're going to solve the problems of the middle class here that's what

00:29:29.040 we democrats do and bing bang bing so new new is not something trump's going to allow to be sold

00:29:36.520 meaning he's not to your i mean he's president next two years unless you know impeachment actually

00:29:42.060 has the force and effect of a Senate that aligns, it means little. It's just performative in many

00:29:49.020 respects, to your point, though it may be organizing, but that's subject to, I think,

00:29:53.980 a very sound debate. So how does Trump, what is your sense of how the hell Trump reacts to all

00:29:59.820 this? Obviously, he's the victim, and there was all this malfeasance. There was all this

00:30:03.920 interference. It was an unfair election. He can't live with any other consideration. All that is

00:30:08.840 table stakes. But what do you expect him to do in terms of his approach to his final two years as a

00:30:16.200 lame duck? I think he'll just try to govern performatively with executive orders. He'll

00:30:21.880 try to pick big fights. He'll declare the French fry is now illegal, you know, just crazy executive

00:30:29.260 orders that are like press releases. Right. And that stuff is pretty harmless. I think if the

00:30:34.680 Ds are smart. They're going to say, look, we all know he's gone crazy. So we're working on plan

00:30:39.120 next year to make your life better. Nothing we can do about him. And, you know, there he'll play

00:30:46.560 into that because he'll just bid up the crazy to try to get attention. You have to treat him like

00:30:51.740 a five year old, you know, quiet corner now where he can do damage because the president has more

00:30:57.160 unilateral power is in the foreign affairs sphere. And that is troubling because he's going to be

00:31:04.820 craving for attention, craving to prove how tough he is. And so it'll be a mix of nutty rhetoric,

00:31:11.080 nutty executive orders. There'll be a huge, a bunch of people will leave, you know, staff-wise

00:31:16.280 because they want to cash in before they become beltway pariahs who can never get hired again.

00:31:21.760 And so this is where the Joint Chiefs may have to stand up a little. And he will be weaker

00:31:26.900 in two weeks than he is now. You know, they, there are institutions to protect and he'll never

00:31:32.800 be weaker and he'll never be louder and crazier. So hopefully that'll be a boiling point for some

00:31:39.560 people who think, all right, we got to manage the decline here. You know, a good book I recommend

00:31:44.020 and all your Democrat listeners are immediately going to click over to the cooking channel here.

00:31:49.100 So I apologize for that. But history tells us a lot. Don Rumsfeld wrote a really good book about the end of Nixon and the transition to Ford because he and Cheney ran the Ford thing and they managed a president in decline and was looking at criminal charges.

00:32:07.980 and it's really good uh it's like when the center held it's something like that it's about him and

00:32:15.140 cheney who were in their 30s they were young moderate republicans holding the thing together

00:32:20.920 you know vietnam was winding down it was not a quiet time in the world the soviets were still

00:32:24.940 around and and kind of landing the nixon plan and getting you know ford who had not been elected

00:32:31.580 president after this rare thing of a president resigning managing all that and i think there

00:32:37.320 our lessons for today. I highly recommend people who are interested in presidential history read

00:32:42.040 it. It was very well done. It came out a couple years ago. The thought of him planning a proposal

00:32:46.800 to me. He's going to need help. And like, what if he gets a ring that I don't like?

00:32:51.400 That's the worst. Wondering how Gen Z is falling in love? Curious about what marriage means today? 0.65

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00:34:21.980 Blockers. In Washington, it became the worst thing you could be.

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00:36:19.660 Good recommendation.

00:36:20.860 And it's interesting, you know, just speaking of foreign policy,

00:36:23.320 it's a sort of fascinating moment.

00:36:24.800 The Bolsonaro, I think that was a huge surprise.

00:36:27.320 Yeah. 0.87

00:36:27.840 A loss that's the first time in Brazilian history where someone that,

00:36:34.020 you know, that, well, Lulu was able to come from behind after that runoff.

00:36:39.380 They usually, that only presupposes that it's going to be changed. 1.00

00:36:42.220 So Lulu winning. We saw Machado back in Venezuela. Don't know what that means, could mean, in terms of an election being called. You've got Serbia leader, the student now youth movement now in Serbia. And you've got the big one, big one coming up in Israel and what happens with Bibi.

00:37:01.020 What do you make of, and I bring all those up because obviously this weekend so much was resolved.

00:37:06.880 Even, by the way, just student-led movements in Belgium.

00:37:09.400 I was looking in front of the Coliseum in Rome and the photos of the youth in Italy.

00:37:13.880 It's not just in France what's going on.

00:37:16.180 Does any of that, is that a preview of things to come?

00:37:19.480 What do you make of that from the global perspective, Trumpism and what he does in the next two years?

00:37:25.460 What's happening globally?

00:37:27.000 What do the signs suggest, if anything?

00:37:29.800 Yeah, no, it looks like the populism might be running its course in some of these places.

00:37:36.720 And, of course, the younger voters are the most screwed, you know, because of debt, because of stagnation economically.

00:37:44.760 You know, even here, people think the American dream is over.

00:37:47.520 So there's energy in that hopelessness.

00:37:51.020 Now, France and Germany are a little different.

00:37:53.340 the french have a perennial problem and i'm familiar with french politics uh from some

00:37:59.440 experience it it they cannot afford their welfare state and it's a great welfare state by the way 0.97

00:38:06.260 life in france is pretty good when i have to deal with a hundredth like tech idiot in my life i'm 0.51

00:38:11.840 like christ i'm gonna move to france it's not too bad um but you know the math doesn't work too well

00:38:18.260 no and and so they do a lot of budgetary tricks and everything and things like school infrastructure

00:38:24.820 fall apart on the other hand i will say this might right wingism coming out it's easier and cheaper

00:38:31.220 to build infrastructure in paris than it is in the u.s in most places um you know it's

00:38:38.340 we can learn something so anyway it boils over and here we are and you know afd the right wing

00:38:46.180 wackos are rising in germany yeah there may very well be outside metro paris and a few of the other

00:38:54.420 cities marseille lily i can never pronounce that right uh there might be a backlash in the

00:39:01.220 countryside in france so you could see and currently they're doing very well in the polls

00:39:06.580 the le pen and the front people do well because you know the french state is a little bit

00:39:12.340 authoritarian at heart. Look at their military parades, even Trump's jealous. So I'm not sure

00:39:20.840 that kind of nightstick parties are out of the game yet in Europe, that Europe may be a lagging

00:39:26.820 indicator. Other places, Eastern Europe, they've been experimenting with it longer. I think the

00:39:33.200 thing here is we're in for what will be scary and bumpy, but critical and exciting, really.

00:39:41.860 We're going to have a rare beast. Both parties are wide open in the nomination. You know,

00:39:47.080 you can't argue Vance, but I bet the field against him, frankly. And so both parties are

00:39:52.800 going to figure out in our unique system where millions of primary voters get to vote. Most of

00:39:58.440 the European parties is 30 guys in a room. We're going to take it to the marketplace of politics

00:40:05.400 in both parties, and both parties are going to figure out what they are. And that's going to be

00:40:10.760 a pivotal time, and the Republican Party is going to be part of that, too. I think, will Trumpism

00:40:15.960 stay? Will Trumpism light? And my view is Trump populism will still be a big factor. That's really

00:40:21.480 the new thing with him. He's more Juan Perón than Ronald Reagan. But there's going to be some

00:40:27.340 reformation too and the calendar which everybody ignores in you know which is so important of the

00:40:34.360 primary although in the democratic side you know we we start in south carolina which i think has

00:40:39.840 lost power by going first not being the decider you've got the nevada caucus new mexico michigan

00:40:46.720 all but nevada are open primaries by the way independents can vote that was our old trick in

00:40:52.280 McCain campaign. We'd go lose the Republicans by three and win the independents by 12.

00:40:58.920 So that marketplace is going to be very interesting. Ethanol is out. I think American

00:41:04.360 manufacturing and particularly automaking will be in. There are about a million primary voters

00:41:09.160 in the beginning of the democratic process, and there are 600,000 auto workers across those states.

00:41:14.040 So it's going to be a new calendar with new incentives for a party looking for a new

00:41:20.680 definition. That's exciting in politics. And in Republicans, are we going to do weekend at

00:41:26.820 Bernie's and reanimate Trump and drive the corpse around? Or are we going to evolve forward,

00:41:31.520 which would be my bet. But it'll be a fight and worth being part of, I think. It's exciting.

00:41:39.160 It's exciting. I ain't running, so it's easy for me. Well, I'm tempted to run in New Hampshire

00:41:46.240 and make a documentary about it called Eliminate the Middleman. Just get on the ballot there and 0.91

00:41:50.120 have a little fun. Well, I'm not going to take the bait on that. By the way, just on the Le Pen,

00:41:59.060 it's so interesting, and for folks that may not be familiar, you talk about debt to GDP,

00:42:03.700 you talk about the welfare state. Le Pen herself is arguing to lower, not raise,

00:42:09.100 the retirement age, only exacerbate some of those same conditions. So it's an interesting

00:42:13.400 populism in Europe that, I mean, I have D aside, that marks, I think, this sort of interesting

00:42:19.160 dialectic that continues around the globe no you're totally right it's archie bunker meets the

00:42:24.260 dsa yeah it's crazy and it's fiscally hugely irresponsible that's why i call trump perone

00:42:29.340 we used to all bitch about obama spending like a drunken sailor setting the record

00:42:33.500 trump has blown him away it's unbelievable and it uh you know and we'll see once again if that

00:42:41.660 matters debt and entitlement this the tsunami and demographic tsunami across the country i mean just

00:42:46.760 Back to the responsible adults in the room.

00:42:50.640 Let me ask you just a broader question about the parties, because you referenced the party.

00:42:55.520 I get it all the time.

00:42:56.500 Who is the Democratic?

00:42:57.520 People are like, why isn't the Democratic Party doing X, Y, and Z?

00:43:01.160 Why isn't the Republican Party doing X, Y, and Z?

00:43:04.180 You're the pro.

00:43:05.180 You're the expert.

00:43:05.960 You've got wisdom.

00:43:07.440 What's the response to the why?

00:43:09.760 You know, people, their prism for politics is often pop culture.

00:43:15.340 And when they think there's a room full of guys with suspenders and cigars wearing straw boaters, and it's all Mr. Smith and somebody, you know, Boss Corrigan says, knock it off. We're getting behind O'Rourke. There is none. We democratized the parties. In the old days, we had smoke-filled rooms.

00:43:33.960 And I will say, other than stealing a lot of road contracts, they did a pretty good job because they were rational decision makers.

00:43:41.700 But then, as you know, the history and the Democrats reacting to Nixon and the Vietnam War, Mayor Daley screaming at people in Chicago, tear gas on the streets.

00:43:52.320 That's what I was alluding to earlier.

00:43:53.940 Our process is much more grassroots driven than machines.

00:43:58.700 The only machines we really have left are sort of affinity groups.

00:44:03.820 On the Democratic side, it's the public labor unions who prefer to negotiate their deals with people they elect, which is a pretty elegant business model.

00:44:12.420 On the Republican, it's ideological.

00:44:14.400 It's Christian conservatives, NRA, Chamber of Commerce, so they don't have the SWAT they used to.

00:44:21.040 So the bosses are you, primary voters.

00:44:24.860 and the RNC and the DNC are both quite weak. They put on the convention. They're a bank account.

00:44:33.820 The real money is in the Congressional Committee and the Senate Committee, which exist organized

00:44:38.600 by the senators and congressmen of each party to spend a gazillion bucks, you know, doing stuff to

00:44:44.560 help Republican senators or Democratic senators. And then meanwhile, the rise of independent

00:44:49.680 expenditures where you and I can go tell Elon, we got to do something about putting his face on

00:44:57.120 the $20 bill, give us a hundred million bucks. We set up committee and we can go run our own ads

00:45:01.760 like this idiot, um, sank Ugar, who has just put the dumbest ad after the, uh, Rameshwami ad, 1.00

00:45:11.260 which is the atomic clock for stupid in the Ohio governor's race. This thing on in Michigan, 1.00

00:45:15.700 in uh which is vote for abdul abdul had nothing to do with it and it's gonna hurt him so you have 0.88

00:45:23.080 i i can't tell you this is what old consultants bitch about you know um these these rich guys 0.68

00:45:28.780 their psychic nutritionist yoga coach turns into the political advisor and they go hire some third 0.96

00:45:34.860 rate consultants and they go blow 30 million bucks interfering in a race and you with the 1.00

00:45:39.880 candidate on the ballot or the other we're held accountable for their stupid spending yep now in 0.99

00:45:45.420 old days we would wink and a pro on each side would take over the ie i mean you know how it 1.00

00:45:51.000 works and they would run a supportive campaign that took their cues from the candidate control 0.99

00:45:56.120 campaign now you have these ego campaigns with rich idiots on both sides running ads to make 0.99

00:46:02.200 them happy doing all this collateral damage um anyway so there is there is no eugene pallet with 1.00

00:46:10.120 a big cigar picking up the old school telephone and saying all right here's something you know

00:46:13.960 this is how it's going to be that maybe maybe i remember schwarzenegger when i when i worked for

00:46:20.380 the governor here we would do the you know the big five budget negotiations which you're very

00:46:25.080 familiar with where after all the bickering is done and you're still five billion apart

00:46:29.600 you'll haul in the leader of all the legislators the republicans read comic books they don't have

00:46:34.700 any votes but you're jostling with the budget director the governor and everybody and we would

00:46:39.640 do it and one of the speakers at the time kept running out into the hallway to call the head

00:46:43.860 of the teachers union. And Arnold Hollywood guy was like, well, bring her in, get him out.

00:46:48.560 I got to talk to somebody who doesn't know. So there are still in a Republican state is the NRA

00:46:54.260 guy lurking in the hallway. So it used to be there. They've weakened a lot. But, you know,

00:46:59.220 there are powerful influence groups, but there's no party boss. The party bosses take orders now

00:47:06.700 from the Senate and House committees.

00:47:11.920 What a money, I mean, we've always been awash in money.

00:47:16.480 Even pre-Citizens United, we were awash in money.

00:47:19.720 This is called independent expenditures.

00:47:21.580 Obviously, it's on steroids now.

00:47:23.120 But what, I mean, this is getting,

00:47:25.820 even you have to acknowledge,

00:47:27.920 this is just, this is now truly obscene.

00:47:31.260 And the ability, I can't even conceive

00:47:33.460 of what we'll see next year in terms of the super PACs

00:47:36.260 and what happens in 2028.

00:47:38.080 But what the hell do we do about that?

00:47:41.180 You know, it's hard.

00:47:41.900 It's good business for guys like me.

00:47:43.400 Of course.

00:47:43.980 But, you know, what most of the one,

00:47:47.920 it's like any other business.

00:47:49.820 There are people who have had success

00:47:53.220 and hard work that can be choosy.

00:47:55.800 And there are people who just put out a shingle

00:47:58.240 and try to find dough.

00:48:00.800 Those of us who've really done this, 0.99

00:48:02.800 and I'm going to sound like an elitist jerk, 0.99

00:48:04.660 time for you to retire. 0.99

00:48:05.620 you've had your long run which is probably true i don't really do candidates anymore um i can't

00:48:12.180 you know i'm a right-wing nut who can't work for democrats and i'm a trump hater who can't work for

00:48:15.940 republicans anymore so i i i howl but the we are irritated by reckless ies i love having a smart

00:48:24.980 colleague running ie knowing they're going to watch what i'm doing and just add 20

00:48:29.540 percent. That works great. But these wild feral hogs running around, running eagle campaigns are

00:48:38.540 incredibly disruptive. And it's hard because I do believe that the argument is pretty strong that

00:48:44.440 money is free speech, but it is corrupting now. I haven't worked for a lot of Pauls where somebody

00:48:52.340 comes in and says, all right, we're going to raise you a million dollars and you're going to do this

00:48:55.780 for us. I don't see that kind of corruption. It just corrupts the system because there's so much

00:49:00.980 bad information and stupidity and grossness. I mean, people like Axelrod and I have this argument 1.00

00:49:07.180 about, oh, the Republicans have all this money, it might save them. And I keep saying, what hurts

00:49:11.240 more? Having one grand piano dropped on your head from a 10-story building or two. You know,

00:49:17.020 if you can get to one, you can make your argument. So it's just gross. I don't quite know. I hate

00:49:22.800 controlling speech, maybe we tax it or something. I mean, there's already a de facto tax on

00:49:29.520 independent expenditure campaigns, which is the television stations charge more. Significant.

00:49:35.720 I'm working on one now. I'm trying to help John McKinney, who's kind of the long shot

00:49:39.960 candidate for city attorney, good Democrat, career prosecutor, not a DSA communist, 0.82

00:49:45.520 actually believes in putting people in jail when they commit crimes, run against a real DSAer who's

00:49:50.640 got all the public employee unions and more money. So the other day I said, well, let's buy a little

00:49:55.800 linear TV. What does a jeopardy spot cost? We're doing well. We need to do better with 60 plus

00:50:00.540 viewers. Well, the normal price is $6,000 in LA. It's $25,000 for a super PAC. We didn't buy it.

00:50:07.980 We couldn't. So, you know, there might be more price punishment. There's a lot of disclosure

00:50:16.060 now. I don't think that's a problem. The disclosure for an IE in California has destroyed the radio

00:50:21.660 industry because in a 60 second ad, you spend 25 seconds reading the disclaimer. Classic.

00:50:27.580 I've had to read those. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Yeah. So the goodbye radio.

00:50:32.580 So I don't know. It's a mess, but systemically, I agree there's too much stupid money sloshing 1.00

00:50:36.940 around. You bring up the DSA. What do you make of the DSA? What do you make of just the energy 1.00

00:50:44.580 there, uh, the ascendancy, the branding, uh, the, are we coloring this in? Is it bigger than it

00:50:51.320 appears or is it, you know, is it just tactical that, you know, socialism, communism, we're just,

00:50:57.240 you know, we're, you know, we're just trying to magnify, uh, I think a lot of people, it's hard.

00:51:03.600 What is the DSA? You know, a lot of people know it and kind of pin their own definition to it

00:51:08.540 For a lot of people, it's kind of a left populist scream against corporate power and incumbency, because one of the worst words now in American politics is corporate, which is unfortunate in my view, but it's true.

00:51:25.700 So we're going to fight the power, fight the man.

00:51:28.620 And, you know, I used to make an argument on the speech circuit that Bernie and Trump have a little more in common.

00:51:34.620 Like, I think Bernie is a bigger patriot than Trump.

00:51:37.320 You know, I don't want to say something about him personally, but he will tell you that your problems in life are caused by profits and corporations that have a big room in New York where some guy in a Monopoly outfit with a top hat is shoveling gold coins.

00:51:53.760 You want to get that PhD in aroma, you know, candle therapy making, but that's expensive.

00:51:59.300 So we need to take the profits and give it to you. 0.99

00:52:01.760 Trump says, well, your problems are some Mexican rapist snuck in the country and stole your job. 1.00

00:52:07.320 and I'm going to go hammer them. But it's kind of the horseshoe theory. It's like Pat Cadell, 1.00

00:52:13.160 the famous Democratic pollster, has now passed away, was the boy genius of the McGovern campaign

00:52:18.680 based on some work he'd done as a grad student showing the similarity between Wallace voters

00:52:24.460 and McGovern voters, because they were both massively anti-establishment. It was like a

00:52:29.940 horseshoe. If you hiccup loud enough, you can pop over. Buchanan and Bernie. So the DSA has a lot

00:52:36.920 of that. Then you have a leading cadre in the DSA, excuse me, who will say, well, we got this

00:52:44.880 movement, so comrades, we've got to take control of it, and we've got to put a policy agenda on it.

00:52:53.200 And that's where you get some pretty leftist stuff. So you've got Nithya Raman, who's running

00:52:57.600 for mayor here, and essentially a tie right now with Karen Bass. She was way ahead, not anymore,

00:53:02.600 saying, I'm not DSA, but she's enthused actually endorsed by the DSA.

00:53:08.360 And he'll try to pin her down on, well, what DSA policy are?

00:53:10.560 The good ones.

00:53:12.040 So the DSA is half boogeyman with some legitimate popular support.

00:53:18.040 And then there's a cadre inside, and this is all leftist stuff,

00:53:21.500 that let's take the people's revolution,

00:53:23.680 and us eight will figure out what the people want

00:53:25.660 and use that to take power.

00:53:27.540 Sometimes the people don't know what they're signing up for.

00:53:29.760 In L.A., you take a poll in L.A. of city voters, which is about 60% Democrats, you know, 20% Indies, 20 Repubs at best, maybe 15 Repubs.

00:53:43.100 They will say DSA is like 53% favorable, 45% unfavorable.

00:53:48.480 And among Democrats, it's like 59 favorable, 40 unfavorable.

00:53:52.220 So, you know, there's energy there, but I don't think a lot of people know what it really is.

00:54:00.000 And even among Democrats, it's polarizing.

00:54:02.980 So we're seeing.

00:54:03.440 Now, we get a DSA mayor in four years.

00:54:06.080 The DSA brand will be defined by that, at least in L.A.

00:54:09.660 Right.

00:54:10.760 And Mondami's DSA, but he's very shrewd.

00:54:13.860 He's created Mondami as a brand.

00:54:15.700 As a brand, independent of that.

00:54:17.120 Yeah.

00:54:17.540 Yeah, which is smart.

00:54:18.800 the thought of him planning a proposal to me he's gonna need help and like what if he gets a ring

00:54:24.940 that i don't like that's the word wondering how gen z is falling in love curious about what

00:54:30.880 marriage means today tune in to ring on it presented by charm diamond centers hosted by

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00:54:47.560 wherever you get your podcasts.

00:54:51.680 There are thousands of podcasts

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00:54:56.340 Get Worse With Kyle Pru is not one of those podcasts.

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00:55:17.400 Take a listen to some of the incredible advice we've given so far.

00:55:20.640 Fake a back injury.

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00:55:30.900 I'm all about lying if it's something that really happened.

00:55:34.620 The next time a bear is running at you, you just calmly stop what you're doing.

00:55:38.680 You look the bear in the eye and you say, this isn't you.

00:55:41.160 do not preserve relationships. You don't need them. You only need one thing, and that's the

00:55:47.700 Get Worse podcast. Listen to Get Worse with Kyle Pruitt on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

00:55:53.120 or wherever you get your podcasts. Blockers. In Washington, it became the worst thing you could

00:56:00.160 be. And I found six of them. People who devoted their lives to public service, who believed their

00:56:06.180 work mattered, until they were told they no longer belonged. I'm Michael Lewis, and my new

00:56:12.400 audiobook, Blockers, Rebels in the Deep State, tells the story of these blockers, people who

00:56:18.160 kept our most sensitive data secure, helped prevent wildfires, made huge scientific discoveries,

00:56:25.320 but got in the way of the Trump administration's agenda. What fascinated me wasn't politics.

00:56:31.900 It was what happens when a society decides it no longer values the people doing the work it depends on.

00:56:38.980 Get Blockers now, only at blockers.fm.

00:57:01.900 music, entertainment, business, and tech to break down what they're building, get the

00:57:06.360 blueprints of how they got there, all while trying to figure out what's coming next.

00:57:10.320 They'll share their stories, including not just the wins that we all see, but the moments

00:57:14.440 they had to persevere through when everyone counted them out.

00:57:17.720 People like the co-founder of Buddy's Coffee, Rachel, who quickly went from being a New

00:57:21.720 York Times success story to facing eviction.

00:57:25.340 Being, you know, deemed a successful business by like, you know, I mean, it's the New York 0.93

00:57:30.400 times like as like a puerto rican girl from new york who didn't finish college he was like i was 0.98

00:57:34.960 like holy like i'm finally doing something like maybe this is all working out and then that day

00:57:41.420 when the landlord comes in it's like he like it all over that idea and he stepped on me listen

00:57:46.440 to global flow as a part of the michael tura podcast network available on the iheart radio

00:57:51.100 app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts what do you when you you think about

00:57:57.500 smart policies. You know, I often quote, just because they talk about turning on the cooking

00:58:06.820 show, you know, Plutarch, who warned the Athenians 2,000 years ago about the imbalance between the

00:58:11.920 rich and the poor being the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics. I mean, this

00:58:16.040 idea that, you know, you had historians 2,000 years ago warning about concentrated wealth,

00:58:22.080 income and wealth inequality generally. Fast forward. I mean, this you as a good Republican

00:58:28.720 or as you describe yourself as what, pink zebra and independent that that's still

00:58:34.000 independent conservative. But I mean, a world, you know, regardless of your position on minimum

00:58:42.500 wage, you know, we're 20 states are still 725 an hour minimum wage. We're going to I just saw the

00:58:47.900 new anthropic, you know, the expectation there's another seven folks coming out of that. It'll be

00:58:53.980 worth over 13 billion each. I mean, it just, this is, and I'm still working on, I literally am

00:58:58.840 signing back up my pension in January. Thank God I have healthcare. And, you know, I'm even,

00:59:03.500 I've been doing this forever. I'm like, the hell is going on? Trillionaires being, all this money

00:59:09.020 flowing in. The animus is real. It's raw. The data center's being a proxy for it in many respects.

00:59:15.280 It's not just about the water and the socialized utility costs.

00:59:20.300 I mean, people are pissed.

00:59:22.020 And there is a villain.

00:59:23.420 And the villain seems to be, you know, some it's success, some it's concentration.

00:59:28.200 What do you, how do we unpack all of that?

00:59:30.820 I bring up DSA, MAGA, what it represents, Trump in that respect even.

00:59:35.140 What the hell do you make of our politics in this stew that I'm bloviating around?

00:59:40.580 Great American middle class is unhappy, feels oppressed, don't believe in the American dream for their kids anymore.

00:59:49.800 And so I think the next campaign will be selling hope, not grievance.

00:59:54.980 That was Trump's franchise.

00:59:56.460 And I think it's something that's, again, new.

00:59:59.100 The problem is the equation of practical politics, actually getting elected, is Robin Hood.

01:00:04.460 You take from the rich and you hoodwink the poor with the advertising.

01:00:08.120 that, you know, that's the problem because presidential politics, people see it as a

01:00:12.820 game of low stakes. It's not like 40 years ago when they remember losing their youngest son

01:00:17.240 at D-Day, you know, where your vote means something. Now it's part of the postmodern

01:00:21.980 game. It's a reality show. And that's the problem. And we'll probably have a hard lesson

01:00:27.040 where people will learn, maybe they have at least partially from Trump, that votes matter. It's not

01:00:32.280 gameplay. As far as what to do about income inequality, it's really tricky because you

01:00:37.680 want the economic engine that is massive wealth is being created in uh in california particularly

01:00:46.000 because we have the strongest innovation economy even though we have a lot of uh i would say from

01:00:51.380 my free market point of view challenges the most communist idea i have if i had your job and i had

01:00:58.120 a legislature which i'm sure as you do that shows up every day yes governor what can we do for you

01:01:02.840 particularly if it's difficult politically. I mean, I dealt with that, let's say,

01:01:07.120 Mr. Schwarzenegger, and it's a day at the office. I think, as you also know, the California budget

01:01:17.040 is very capital gains driven because we, and I personally hate this, but we taxes earned income,

01:01:25.100 we have a high income tax. There's an argument that if you make $500 million in stock,

01:01:31.700 that engine is the best thing happening for California. But you should have to turn 40%

01:01:37.040 of it into cash. And then there's public revenue. And then you get to go reinvest it somewhere else.

01:01:42.880 But the idea you can roll over trillions and never pay any tax on it, because you never do

01:01:48.440 the gain, there's something to be said there. I'm against this insane billionaire tax,

01:01:53.140 it's going to lose, you know that I know that we pulled it in January. But some sort of toll gate

01:02:00.020 along the way I think is an interesting idea otherwise and I tell this to these I've got a

01:02:07.280 couple of billionaire clients and a bunch of them get it I would say I think Caruso gets it yeah but

01:02:12.240 the as the people who've done best in our system it is extra incumbent on them to protect the

01:02:21.500 reputation of our system which means be a big part of the community spend a lot maybe be for

01:02:28.420 equitable tax stuff. And, you know, what a lot of them tell me, and it might be a smokescreen,

01:02:33.380 is, boy, if I thought, I had one billionaire call me up, not Rick, and said, here's my problem with

01:02:39.680 this 40 thing. A Democrat, this person. I'm a working billionaire. I have an asset people tell

01:02:45.680 me is worth $3 billion. I can't sell it. It's very unique. So I got to go to the bank and borrow a

01:02:52.580 couple hundred million to pay my goddamn tax bill. I would like to write a $50 million check to the 0.98

01:02:57.580 state and not move to Puerto Rico or whatever. But I'd like to have some faith that the money

01:03:04.340 wouldn't all be shredded, like in homelessness, you know, they go into the litany. You can say

01:03:09.880 the same in Illinois. You know, the investors have lost faith, so to speak. And that's an equally

01:03:17.720 hard problem to fix. But yeah, if people don't believe that the system works, the Bernie's of

01:03:25.460 the world are going to get political power and they're going to come take it so what i say to

01:03:30.080 these folks is you know it's our church so show up with the paintbrush and let's do some of the work

01:03:36.000 or the there are going to be people doing the demagogia campaign and they're going to come

01:03:42.980 get you because even when this thing loses this year there will be people in the legislature

01:03:46.480 saying let's find a smarter way to get the damn money so you know i uh it's going to be a huge

01:03:54.240 The other thing is tech, you know, tech and billionaires are now welded together. So you have this data center war. And my view of data centers is they're not a normal NIMBY thing where, no, I don't want the rendering plant two miles from my house. It's all the fear they have about tech. I'm a paralegal. AI is going to wipe out my job in five years. My kid's on a screen too much. I didn't know when they were six. Now I know I don't have a time machine. I'm a bad parent. I hate tech. 0.97

01:04:21.700 billionaires on jet skis and palaces. What's the one thing they can take a baseball bat and pound 0.52

01:04:28.460 on? It's that big building they want to build down the street. This data center thing is big

01:04:32.440 and it's in both parties. Corporation is not a good word in the grassroots of the Republican Party

01:04:38.680 either. And, you know, if we get politically so screwed up on this, then the Chinese get to have 1.00

01:04:46.220 all the data centers. And that is a really bad outcome. I'll quote Andreessen, who makes one 1.00

01:04:52.000 really strong point, which is we want AI to grow up with Western democratic values,

01:04:58.000 not Chinese authoritarian values. So we got to find a way to build data centers people can live

01:05:03.960 with, even if they cost more to build that way, quiet, you know, their own power sources,

01:05:09.980 put in remote places, and we do the infrastructure to get the power there, not dump it in the

01:05:14.100 suburbs. And if the government has to step up and pay for some of that, even though I'm a right-wing

01:05:18.560 fiscal conservative, I love capital spending other than trains. I want to build the electrified

01:05:26.700 highway where electric trucks can take the power from the lane because 65% of our diesel emissions

01:05:35.220 from truck traffic is only 2,500 miles of our 400,000 miles of roads. So I love spending money

01:05:41.560 on smart infrastructure, including data centers, to make them better because it's transfer payments

01:05:47.800 that I'm not crazy about. Anyway, that's another podcast. No, we could go down that rabbit hole,

01:05:54.600 but I would be remiss if I let you go without just picking up a little bit on what you just

01:05:58.960 said about Chinese authoritarian values in the context of a tech stack in AI. You and I, as you

01:06:06.500 alluded earlier, talked a lot about electric vehicles and the concern around that tech stack

01:06:12.280 and supply chains and the statecraft. That's also part of Chinese supply chain dominance

01:06:18.460 in this transition. Talk to me a little bit, because I think it's interesting. And for a lot

01:06:23.940 of folks that know you from the sort of red lens of politics, the fact that you've embraced

01:06:29.980 the electric vehicle transition, or at least a commitment to that transition. I'm curious just

01:06:36.680 a little bit about the origin story on that, and then why you think the U.S. automobile industry 0.88

01:06:42.560 is in peril if we don't wake up to the fierceness of the competition in China. 0.95

01:06:48.180 No, absolutely. I'll try not to whinge on for hours. I grew up in Detroit, Michigan. 0.99

01:06:53.580 My father and my grandfather, both before becoming night school labor lawyers,

01:06:58.720 spent a fair amount of time in auto plants.

01:07:01.140 My grandparents, everybody was in the UAW.

01:07:03.680 My dad was actually a Teamster for a while,

01:07:05.720 and Jimmy Hoffa's home local.

01:07:07.700 And when I tell him,

01:07:08.480 hey, Dad, I'm in the Writer's Guild of America,

01:07:10.360 that's a union, he'll be like,

01:07:11.480 yeah, you might get a paper cut if there's trouble.

01:07:13.920 You know, if you can't make a firebomb in any union,

01:07:16.240 I'm doing him a disservice.

01:07:17.840 He's not that bad.

01:07:20.040 So I care about the American auto industry,

01:07:22.000 and I'm a car nut.

01:07:22.860 So I come out here to California and run Schwarzenegger,

01:07:24.800 And I scoffed at electric cars as environmental dogma mobiles, but the elegance of a powertrain with six moving parts is undeniable.

01:07:34.700 For most people's use case, they are better.

01:07:37.880 So I got one, not a Tesla, and I loved it.

01:07:42.060 And I became a fanatic because I'm a motorhead.

01:07:44.180 My lifetime average is five miles per gallon.

01:07:46.600 You know, the culture I grew up in, if you couldn't change an oil filter and plugs on a V8 Crico 440 in under, you know, seven minutes, the uncles would take you out behind the garage and straighten you out. 1.00

01:07:58.780 So I'm a nut for cars, but the Chinese are coming. 1.00

01:08:02.680 It's I lived as a kid through the Japanese invasion, which was very tough, but it helped our companies get better. 1.00

01:08:10.060 But here's the difference.

01:08:10.980 Japan is a political ally. 0.83

01:08:12.800 The Chinese are not.

01:08:13.900 Why do they have 99 car brands, 97 of which are losing money and surviving on government subsidies in China? 1.00

01:08:22.480 Because they want to de-industrialize the Western world by wiping out our auto industries.

01:08:28.080 And this is not hysteria.

01:08:29.460 Jim Farley runs the Ford Motor Company and gets it.

01:08:32.840 Ford is the largest auto employer in the U.S., by the way.

01:08:35.340 GM is actually second because of a lot of Mexican production.

01:08:38.900 Anyway, Farley said two years ago at Aspen, if we cannot compete globally in EVs, they're winning the future.

01:08:47.180 In the next 10 years, there's no future for the Ford Motor Company.

01:08:50.260 Imagine a public company CEO saying that.

01:08:52.560 And he's right. 1.00

01:08:54.060 So the Chinese are not playing fair. 1.00

01:08:56.420 They're making great cars. 1.00

01:08:57.620 We taught them how to do it.

01:08:58.680 They let the Western Europeans and the Americans come in and make billions, teaching them how to make cars.

01:09:04.920 Today, the Chinese have the ability, the capacity, with all those loans, to make 50 million light vehicles a year.

01:09:12.420 They're making 30 million.

01:09:13.900 We make 10 million, maybe 11 in a good year.

01:09:16.760 So they're already the global superpower.

01:09:19.500 This year, they're on track to export 12 million vehicles, both gas and electric.

01:09:25.000 They make a lot of gas cars, too, all over the world.

01:09:28.380 Japan, at its peak, exported 6 million cars.

01:09:32.080 Five years ago, the Chinese exported 1 million cars.

01:09:35.740 So if we don't handle this, the U.S. auto industry is going to go the way of British

01:09:40.360 Leyland.

01:09:41.560 And, you know, one of the auto CEOs told me, so when the Pentagon wants 50,000 large drones,

01:09:46.680 I'm going to tell them to call Shanghai.

01:09:48.720 So it is so important.

01:09:50.740 We're never going to world dominate, but we can be competitive.

01:09:53.500 But we need our home market to be on Team USA. 1.00

01:09:56.520 I hate tariffs, but in the short term, I'm for keeping the Chinese EVs out. 0.96

01:10:01.780 You know, there's a reason that China won't let American-made cars near its Air Force bases. 0.98

01:10:06.700 The computer technology can also snip for radio signals.

01:10:11.220 Remember that balloon they sent over? 1.00

01:10:12.900 So eventually, I want Chinese cars here that we can compete with.

01:10:16.140 I'm not even against some joint ventures under American law and American ownership and control.

01:10:22.000 But Trump has declared war on EVs.

01:10:23.820 So we are now falling behind.

01:10:25.820 Our companies are becoming less competitive around the world where EVs are now.

01:10:30.120 Now, today, one out of four cars sold worldwide as an EV.

01:10:33.880 And I will take a, I'll give you a little ad here

01:10:36.500 because I'm a fanatic for this,

01:10:38.680 so I'm not talking to governors.

01:10:40.960 California, one out of three EVs sold in America

01:10:44.160 is sold here.

01:10:45.760 And here the government supports it.

01:10:47.740 The new $3,500 credit, it's been a big success.

01:10:52.240 We, if California last year was a country,

01:10:56.760 we would be the fifth largest EV market in the world.

01:11:00.120 right up there with France.

01:11:02.000 So we get it. 0.84

01:11:03.020 We just got to move the rest of the country this way.

01:11:04.900 The other thing, well, why is it good for California, Mike, liberal?

01:11:07.600 It's not an environmental thing.

01:11:08.740 It's a better car.

01:11:09.640 Try one, A.

01:11:10.520 And B, Detroit is not the only auto state now.

01:11:15.440 California is an auto state.

01:11:18.220 Engineers in California, best in the world,

01:11:21.280 sold Volkswagen, the world's second biggest automaker,

01:11:24.560 a USB stick full of software for $5 billion, Rivian.

01:11:28.240 uh lucid best powered train ever ford bet the entire company on the long beach lab for a new

01:11:35.180 ev coming out next year 32 000 profitable can compete in china so this is michigan and indiana

01:11:44.080 and south carolina and nevada manufacturing and georgia plus california tech that is how we beat

01:11:51.520 the Chinese. So this is not just a Detroit thing. This is a future of the U.S. thing. And, you know,

01:11:58.880 we probably find a lot to disagree on. I'm a little more right wing than you are, Governor,

01:12:02.400 but I will give you a salute. You have been, you and Mike DeWine in Ohio, the retiring Republican

01:12:07.940 who did the best job of setting up charging, go on the Ohio Turnpike in an EV, it's a dream,

01:12:13.800 did the best job. Other states are now going to follow us, I think, on this reasonable $3,500

01:12:20.220 or dark credit only for first-time EV buyers.

01:12:22.820 You can't pay me, a rich guy, to buy my fifth EV.

01:12:26.640 No, no.

01:12:27.300 One to convert.

01:12:28.460 And 85% of people who buy an EV stick with it

01:12:31.500 because they figure out it's a better car,

01:12:33.120 particularly of gas prices through the moon.

01:12:35.240 I'll quote my old buddy Dennis Miller.

01:12:36.780 We're paying minibar prices for gas here, let alone diesel.

01:12:41.040 So go down to your local dealership.

01:12:43.260 Give a try, test drive one.

01:12:46.020 Take it for the weekend.

01:12:47.080 I'll let you become a buyer.

01:12:48.020 I mean, what is it about Trump? Is it just the indulgence on short-termism with the oil companies? I mean, what the hell is it? He's out there. He's out at one point, as we all recall, he was out there marketing Teslas in front of the White House with Elon.

01:13:04.580 Obviously, Elon's curried favor at next level favor with the White House.

01:13:08.920 You'd think that would have moved the needle, but it hasn't been the exact opposite.

01:13:12.580 He's been crushing the tailpipe emission standards, the efficiency standards.

01:13:16.260 GM and Ford themselves were working behind the scenes with him to gut California's leadership in this space,

01:13:22.620 which only guts their prospects in the future, to your point.

01:13:26.420 Yeah, a couple of reasons.

01:13:28.360 Trump is transactional.

01:13:29.620 Elon likes me.

01:13:30.300 All right, put his cars on the lawn.

01:13:32.200 Trump thinks it's 1962.

01:13:33.840 You know, he doesn't even understand how auto manufacturing works anymore.

01:13:37.480 The integrated Canadian-American-Mexican supply system.

01:13:41.500 You know, it's just Trump doesn't read books.

01:13:43.560 He doesn't know much.

01:13:44.420 He just has instincts.

01:13:46.260 On the big three, they're in a tough, and also, I call them the free world automakers

01:13:50.360 because the largest BMW plant in the world is in South Carolina.

01:13:55.300 The German chancellor, their president, you know, his car is locked in a garage somewhere

01:13:59.340 because he has a security now.

01:14:01.220 That's an American-made BMW.

01:14:02.620 So, you know, it is a global industry and manufacturing here, they're under some pressure because Biden pushed them toward EVs a bit clumsily, I think.

01:14:15.920 They invested billions. Trump cut their feet out from under them. And, you know, they're losing between the tariffs and what they lose selling EVs in the short term.

01:14:25.640 it's billions of dollars. They could become Rivian tomorrow and be bankrupt in six months.

01:14:31.840 If it wasn't for Volkswagen buying that great California design software,

01:14:36.120 Rivian wouldn't make it to next year. So it's a painful transition. And if you run a big auto

01:14:41.320 company, you've got vice presidents who are effective tigers running the truck businesses,

01:14:46.320 and they carry the business. And they're saying, Jesus, if you would knock off this EV shit, 0.99

01:14:51.200 The stock price would double and we'd all retire millionaires in five years and let the next four bastard, you know, deal with the Chinese. 1.00

01:14:58.540 So it's hard for short termism. 1.00

01:15:01.540 And you're right.

01:15:02.500 They're like, well, we have four billion company, a sunk in EV stuff.

01:15:08.560 He's pulling the subsidies.

01:15:09.940 So we're going to take a 70 percent sales hit, at least get them to lighten up on cafes so we can cash up on trucks for three years and breathe.

01:15:18.040 I mean, the way the government does these zigzags, it's killing these guys.

01:15:22.800 And, you know, they will tell you.

01:15:23.960 I spoke at the Automotive Congress three weeks ago in Detroit with a bunch of CEOs and they're like, just please somebody get a seven or ten year policy and turn us loose to go compete with the world.

01:15:35.760 Instead, it's our own team who's killing us. 0.98

01:15:37.720 Well, Trump has been fantastic for the Chinese.

01:15:40.300 Now, here's the other problem, Janet. 0.98

01:15:42.560 You're a Chinese automaker. 1.00

01:15:43.720 You're making ten bucks an hour. 0.96

01:15:44.940 You say the word union.

01:15:46.160 You're making license plates.

01:15:47.200 the next day. So, you know, that's the other thing. And the UAW has been a problem because

01:15:54.220 the leadership is disconnected with the membership. The membership, the younger guys, they want to be

01:15:58.520 making cars for 20 years. They know EVs are coming. The older folks are not unlike some

01:16:04.960 of the corporate vice presidents. Give me four lucrative years, not a year. I want a bump right

01:16:08.760 now. I want better stuff. The other problem is the auto plan of the future will have 800 employees

01:16:13.300 in it not 3 000 because the they snap together with parts they will be higher skilled more

01:16:20.580 technician less muscle higher paid and the uiw say well hell no well it's either that or they're all

01:16:28.260 in china there's no the future the cars are different the ford has built a plant in louisville

01:16:34.260 they've modernized one two billion dollar investment to build this new small pickup truck kind of like

01:16:38.740 a Maverick, and there'd be a small SUV. Revolutionary way to build it. A lot of those

01:16:43.060 parts, the UAW is participating there. The Louisville local knows they're going to lose

01:16:47.200 that plant. So let's keep it with 1,000 people. And that's how we compete. We can't be the

01:16:53.960 buggy whip industry here. So anyway, I'm sorry, I can bore your audience to death about this.

01:16:59.160 Nothing about that. This is so foundational, so meaty and substantive. You can't overstate

01:17:05.760 any of this. And just, you know, I'm mindful of our time. And I'm curious, you know, you talk

01:17:11.760 about time in seven to 10-year increments. We talk about China and the fierceness of focus 0.98

01:17:16.840 and their five-year pans, their consistency in terms of their industrial policies. And then you

01:17:23.660 talk about this whipsaw in the United States, the system that's been designed, you know, for this.

01:17:28.480 I mean, it's a feature of the system that we have this capacity to go back and forth.

01:17:35.940 What the hell do we do to reconcile that?

01:17:38.300 How do we buffer those extremes?

01:17:41.060 Is that just, you know, is that federalism, the states holding up the, you know, like

01:17:45.380 California trying to be the tentpole of constancy?

01:17:50.260 Yeah, I think that's the hack.

01:17:52.140 In the EV world, 80% of EVs are sold in just 15 states.

01:17:55.880 and you know more than half of them are blue get it right there first it is a you know and the 1.00

01:18:01.760 chinese will tell you they're like we don't know how you deal with all your you fight it out in dc 0.99

01:18:06.940 with congress and senate and then you do it again at the state level you have like 42 levels of 1.00

01:18:11.960 government how do you have any plan and they laugh at us they're like you know we may be a dictatorship

01:18:17.500 but we're based on meritocracy for the most part uh if you're a smart local planner you move up

01:18:23.980 So my favorite system, having worked there, is the Canadian system.

01:18:28.920 So in Canada, the federal government has very little power, which isn't really a model for us, but it works for them.

01:18:35.220 Because you don't really, you know, Canada threatens Australia with, they don't have the national security issues.

01:18:42.000 The premiers have all the power.

01:18:43.360 I used to work for the premier of Ontario, which is like the governor of Ontario.

01:18:46.700 And you have about half the economy there.

01:18:48.540 You're big, Vancouver's big, and then the mineral provinces are smaller.

01:18:52.680 So you run in a parliamentary system where you have a seat, and if your party wins a majority instead of being speaker, you're premier.

01:19:01.360 You're the executive, and you appoint a cabinet, and they all have seats, and you have a control over a one-body legislature.

01:19:08.060 So you can change the whole tax code in five weeks, and they do, which means the voters pay attention.

01:19:14.300 They read the party platform because they know these folks can do what they're talking about.

01:19:20.000 it's also a three-way system you got socialists kind of center dems and kind of bush republicans

01:19:25.960 and so you win 43 of the vote you run on your manifesto and then you do it and then four to 0.97

01:19:32.200 five years later they fire your ass if you haven't gotten it done it's more discipline than our 0.91

01:19:37.780 system but the voters are more connected because they know the stuff will happen you want to turn 0.99

01:19:43.840 hard left there's a party that'll do it here's the manifesto you want to do the opposite here's the

01:19:48.660 right-wing party you want a little of both here's the center party it it's pretty good and uh you

01:19:55.880 know we we've incentivized super democracy and fighting and that's creating an industry and the

01:20:04.260 industry is always going to tell you to pander for the vote next week then try to do something

01:20:08.200 you know it's um a lot of our incentives are non-strategic and then under the trump pop

01:20:14.080 culture era. We've thrown away any strategy. We've just tried to endure an egotistical man-child in

01:20:20.640 the White House. And my party showed no guts in standing up to him. I worry if the Democrats had

01:20:26.800 a horrible person, it might be the same. Human nature is human nature. So we got to wake up,

01:20:32.540 you know, or we're going to be the British Empire. We're going to have a nice, slow

01:20:37.380 decline. I'll do my last book club thing. My mentor, mine in foreign policy, a guy named

01:20:42.340 Graham Allison wrote Essence of Decision, the Definitive History of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

01:20:47.460 He's at the JFK School at the Belfer Center, where I got to be a fellow.

01:20:51.160 Three years ago, he came out with a book that everybody from the top down in China has read

01:20:55.640 called, here's a catchy title, Billion Seller, Thucydides Trap, the Potential War with China.

01:21:02.420 And it's an applied history study of dominant powers, in this case, us, dealing with rising

01:21:09.160 powers. Normally, there's a war, but not always. And a lot of lessons from history about that.

01:21:15.980 It's a lot of fun. It's case studies. Thucydides, Trapp, Graham Allison,

01:21:20.780 widely read in the Pentagon, required reading if you're running China. And I guarantee you,

01:21:27.420 Trump has no idea what it is. But I recommend your smart audience here, read it. There are also

01:21:32.400 TED Talks, Graham's done about it. You can watch online if you don't have time to read the book.

01:21:36.660 I love it. Well, I hope people had time to tune in to this conversation. I'm grateful, Mike, for the update and look forward to see what the outcome is next week. And maybe we can have you back and when the dust settles and talk about what comes next.

01:21:52.440 I would love to. And I'm going to send you a little Styrofoam EVsforallamerica.org car for your back shelf there. So stay tuned. Governor, appreciate it. Good to see you.

01:22:02.380 I can replace those knee pads, which hopefully won't be as necessary after the midterms.

01:22:08.820 Yeah, exactly.

01:22:09.840 You can send them to the president.

01:22:12.320 Thanks, Mike.

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This is Gavin Newsom - November 02, 2026

And, This Is An Insider's Guide To The Midterms with Strategist Mike Murphy

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