Labor Day Special: Hacks On Tap

Happy Labor Day! Today, we’re bringing you a special episode from our friends at Hacks on Tap. This one is hosted by David Axelrod and John Heilemann, and they’re joined by Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago and ambassador to Japan. The trio discusses President Trump’s threats to deploy the National Guard to Chicago, the FBI’s investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the collapse of the Ukraine peace talks, the high-stakes redistricting battles in Texas and California, and more. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Happy Labor Day. Today, we're bringing you a special episode from our friends at Hacks on Tap. This episode is hosted by David Axelrod and John Heileman, and they're joined by Rahm Emanuel, the former White House Chief of Staff, Chicago mayor, and ambassador to Japan. I've had Rahm on a couple of times, and he always has great insights. On this episode, he's discussing President Trump's threats to deploy the National Guard in Rahm's hometown of Chicago, the FBI's investigation into former National Security Advisor John Bolton, the collapse of the Ukraine peace talks, and the high-stakes redistricting battles in Texas and California.

• 0:42Kara Swisher?

  It's an insightful conversation with three smart guys, so have a listen. I'll be back in your feed on Thursday with a fresh, new episode of On.

• 0:58Speaker 01

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• 2:40Speaker 03

  Hey, pull up a chair. It's Hacks on Tap with David Axelrod and Mike Murphy.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  As you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now, and they don't acknowledge it. And they say, we don't need him. Freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying, maybe we like a dictator.

• 3:05Speaker 05

  So, John Heilman, I'm on the record right now saying, I really don't want a dictator. I'm not into the dictator thing. And I'm really not into, as a Chicagoan, I am not into this false depiction of our city as a hellscape. I'm looking at the window at the lake and Grant Park and people, you know, enjoying the final ends of summer. And one of the guys who helped make Chicago great is sitting right here, Rahm Emanuel, the

• 3:44Speaker 05

  former mayor, collector of fancy titles, former White House Chief of Staff, former Congressman, former ambassador, chairman of the DCCC, former ambassador to Japan. Okay, thanks for joining us today. That's all we have time for. Rahm's titles. You got a couple. You missed two titles. What's that? Oh, God. Go ahead. Senior advisor to President Clinton.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And father of three.

• 4:10Speaker 05

  Okay, all right, good, great. We got them all now.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Best of last.

• 4:14Speaker 05

  The best is last.

• 4:16Speaker 06

  Somehow Ari didn't get mentioned anywhere in there. You think like Ari should get like brother of Ari should be like in the list somewhere?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  No, don't insult Zeke that way.

• 4:23Speaker 06

  Okay, sorry, brother of Zeke, the third Emmanuel brother. So when you guys look out the window, you're both in Chicago. Do you see scenes of like Nam Penn in like 1974, Sidney Schoenberg kind of killing field style? Or is it a little different what you say?

• 4:37Speaker 05

  So you know what? I mean, I have to say this has been a great summer and these last few weeks have been great. You walk along the Riverwalk that Ram had a lot to do with.

• 4:47Speaker 06

  No mass graves?

• 4:48Speaker 05

  And, uh, no, there's a lot of, a lot of people enjoying the day and drinking beer. I will say that, but, uh, but.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  At 9 a.m. The breakfast of champions.

• 4:59Speaker 05

  This is a great, this is a great and vibrant city and, uh, it's a, it's still a wonderful tourist destination and so on. But Ram, one of the things that, you know, just since we are hacks on tap, one of the things that, uh, you know, I think is a trap that one has to avoid. We do have violence problems. We do have crime problems, just like every city. Some of them are peculiar to ours. Uh, you had to deal with it as mayor. Uh, I mean, there is an element of Trump sort of baiting a trap here, isn't there?

• 5:32Speaker 01

  That's why, I mean, I a hundred percent agree. And rather than have this legal brief prepared, well, you should brief as it relates to the National Guard and go to court, but on the facts, you should say, look, we have, we have made progress. But we have some persistent problems. I like carjacking, like recruitment of officers, somebody that actually worked for President Clinton and put a hundred thousand community police officers on the street. You want to permanently start recruiting officers. That's a permanent problem, not a performative problem, uh, for performative act on the National Guard that will be here for a week. You want to get these license plate readers so you can actually crack down on carjacking. Be a partner. I mean, Democrats is articulate.

• 6:14Speaker 05

  We're for more police on the street and getting kids, guns and gangs off the street, invest in those areas and we will sustain the momentum we have and really build on it. But, you know, I rather than say no, look at the data, say yes, and here's how you can help. But the problem is, like the redistricting, President Trump never misses an opportunity to divide Americans rather than try to figure out how to make progress on solving some real problems we have. And there's public safety issues in the sense of, as you know, it's a mindset, a psychology, and rather than deal with it, he's in a permanent way and being a way to figure it out, he's actually figured a way to divide Americans and not really solve. Well, it works for him, John. It works.

• 6:59Speaker 05

  This crime, the crime and immigration are touchstones for him. They're, they're his go-to play, especially when things aren't going well on other stuff. He happily goes back there and he's got Generalissmo, Generalissmo, Stephen Miller, you know, on point and, and this, this shit has worked for him.

• 7:24Speaker 06

  Well, yes and no. And here's, and here's what I mean.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  Take it one at a time.

• 7:31Speaker 06

  If you look at, if you look at Trump's numbers on these issues, he's basically been on a whole bunch of things. He's been underwater on the economy, on inflation, on the whole, and on crime for months. He was not underwater on immigration until mid-June. What happened in mid-June was he did the LA raid and, and you started seeing people getting plucked out of Home Depot parking lots and the most egregious ICE thing started happening, right? So he now underwater on all those issues. It is true that he's still at a better position on crime and immigration than he is on the economy, but he's underwater on everything now. And, and the extremeness, some of the extremity of what people are seeing seems to be provoking

• 8:16Speaker 06

  some revulsion in the middle of the country. Rahm, I'm sorry, I just want to finish the point, which is I don't think it's, it's not working like, it's not like this is now his, well, everything else is going wrong, but this is, this is really working for him.

• 8:28Speaker 05

  I guess I should have said this is his comfort zone, this is his go-to.

• 8:31Speaker 06

  That's fair.

• 8:32Speaker 05

  You know, this reminds me, replay the tape, in 2018, the Republicans in the House are saying, go to the economy.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  And he went to immigration, he went to all the cultural issues and they end up the midterm.

• 8:42Speaker 05

  The caravans, he closed on the caravans in eighteen, it didn't work for him.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Two points, one is, what he, you know, I saw this thing, I don't know why, but Bloomberg put it out, but it was. Ambergris beef, uh, ground beef today is the most expensive it's ever been in the history of the United States, six bucks and twelve cents a pound. He does not want to talk about this. He, he, because there's a focus on the fact that he, I'll solve inflation in a day, like I'll solve Ukraine in a day. Realizes he's a failure. The second thing to your point on, uh, both on immigration and this issue. The border was a local point of chaos.

• 9:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Trump's raids, et cetera, in Los Angeles, he became the focal point of disorder. People do not like disorder and that's why the immigration and also, and I think on this National Guard. These issues will not turn out to be the political cash cow that he thinks they are because he's making himself. The focal point of the disorder and people do not like that dissonance and disorder.

• 9:44Speaker 05

  Interestingly, yesterday, he seemed to sort of backtrack and say, well, I'll send them if, yeah, I'll send them. I, I, I don't have the clip, but he said, I'll, you know, I, I want to be asked, I want Pritzker to ask me. Uh, to, uh, send them and, and, uh, and which, which was. Well, here's his answer, here's, here's the answer.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say. Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?

• 10:19Speaker 04

  Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.

• 10:27Speaker 05

  So he had a lengthy response to, uh, uh, to Trump yesterday and Ram, I know. You guys are friends, you're also potential future rivals because you're both, uh. Mentioned as potential candidates for president, but I thought he handled yesterday really well.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 10:47Speaker 05

  I thought he looked good.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I will, if I can, just out of mobile. Friday's. No, I'm glad he took everybody to the Riverwalk.

• 10:54Speaker 05

  I know, I know, I know where you were going. No, and it was great, and he came in by the water taxi too.

• 11:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, the water taxi, I heard that.

• 11:02Speaker 05

  Great town, folks, if you're listening, visit Chicago, especially this time of year, it's just a wonderful place to be.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  I think actually, to, and I compliment JB, but as a craftsman of politics, which is the visual tells, it's not the data, but here's how much homicide's down, etc. Come, if there's a problem, you, you gotta inform the people on the Riverwalk, you gotta inform all the people that are enjoying looking at the architectural tour of the city. The picture is the story, not the numbers.

• 11:30Speaker 05

  He had, he also, he also had the entire leadership of the city, political leadership of the city and state behind him. And he, and I think that he made the points that we, we made earlier about, yes, we have a problem and there are ways that you can help. Uh, but not cutting every single program that has actually been effective in beginning to reduce crime in the city.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Right. I mean, this is somebody that worked hard and as mayor increased our police force by over a thousand votes. Every city is facing a challenge on recruitment.

• 12:08Speaker 01

  Help there, put resources towards recruiting officers, even if you, and I don't think he'll send the national guard to Chicago. They come and go, like in DC, they're gonna just flip in and out. That's not a permanent sustained effort. Invest in license plate readers so you can deal with carjacking. Invest in after-school programs for kids that aren't on the street now that school's back in.

• 12:27Speaker 05

  And violence intervention programs, which actually are very, very effective. But just, you know, there are, there, Arnie Duncan, the former education secretary, John, had a great piece in the Times yesterday about his own program, uh, which he heroically runs, uh, to try and, uh, interdict violence and recruit people who were once gang members to help, uh, to help, uh, you know, before these things erupt. And they've had, uh, they've had a palpable effect and there are other. There are great programs in the city that do that, all of which are being defunded. So there are things that Trump could do that don't have political currency for him as he

• 13:12Speaker 05

  thinks sending troops does. How you, how you guys think the Washington thing is working for him?

• 13:17Speaker 06

  Well, I, I look, like, I believe that, that this, this conversation has been totally devoid and devoid of and disconnected from any substance, any policy discussion that has anything to do with crime. I believe one of the people on this, on this show right here.

• 13:33Speaker 05

  Our discussion or?

• 13:34Speaker 06

  No, the discussion, the public discussion.

• 13:36Speaker 05

  I thought earlier in the show for you to start, you know, critiquing us. Rahm is very sensitive.

• 13:42Speaker 06

  You're citing.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  Rahm is very sensitive.

• 13:45Speaker 06

  You're citing Arnie Duncan and I'm, I'm like, yeah, sure, there's like, there's all kinds of great policy ideas, some, most of them been inadequately funded in a lot of big cities around the country that could help with the issues at the core of the crime issues and the urban disorder issues that do exist in a lot of these places. But I heard Rahm, I think over the weekend saying, this is obviously not a, these are not crime, the policies in, in, in New York, in New York and Washington and, and putatively in Chicago and Baltimore, these are mostly about Trump trying to pursue the immigration agenda to be able to get.

• 14:14Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 14:15Speaker 06

  To be able to get ICE agents on the streets. They can hit their quota number. So they can hit their quota number. So this is really, this is a, an immigration deportation policy masquerading as a crime policy, partly because of what we were talking about before, which is that people are very uncomfortable politically out in the country with the way that Trump's been going after the, trying to make those numbers. Again, we go back to Home Depot, when you got Joe Rogan against you, you got a problem if you're Donald Trump on immigration. So what do you do? You call it a crime policy thing, but you look at what's happening in Washington, David, to your question, that shows this. There are, there's no, the, the, the people are taking into, into federal magistrate court on open container violations. They're walking in front of federal judges with people they've arrested for, for, for an open can of beer on the street.

• 15:00Speaker 05

  With swarms of federal agents arresting people with.

• 15:02Speaker 06

  Fucking bonkers. Here's, here's, look, I mean, it really, you gotta have a strategy.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Of, as I said, putting more cops on the beat and getting kids guns and gangs off the street. They gotta go back to prosecuting gun crimes, prosecuting gang members, give kids these after-school mentoring programs that have worked. We have a great program that Maggie Daly started called After School Matters. We clustered up under my tenure, about a hundred thousand kids a day after the bell goes off at school have athletic, academic, artistic activity. They work. And then police officers, well, train, sustain that reduction. Any one of those, the president can pick and you'd be solving that. He's trying to get the goods through customs here, which is this is an immigration policy,

• 15:49Speaker 01

  a distraction from the price of groceries and gas at the store and all the other domestic issues. And he gets to add a kicker, it's wrapped in a package of division, which he loves.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  Just I want to say once again, because I thought Maureen Dowd had a really good column on Sunday about this. There is, there is crime and there, I was on the L rom a couple of weeks ago and some guy was blasting his music really loud and coming back, I was coming down from

• 16:19Speaker 01

  L being our subway system.

• 16:21Speaker 05

  There was a guy who got off the train on one of the stops before I got off and he said something to the guy on the way out and the guy flew out of his seat and dragged the guy back in the train and they, it starts wailing on him, the guy starts wailing back. That, that, that's, everybody on that train was discomforted by what they saw. And there's that kind of stuff is real, is real. We should, but let's also be real about what it takes to, to deal with it. And the fact that we haven't mentioned yet, like some of the worst cities in the country relative to crime are in red states and no one is saying, let's send the National Guard there.

• 17:05Speaker 06

  Right. In fact, the opposite, David. In fact, what's happening in Washington is that those red states are sending their National Guard to the Capitol to be part of Trump's force. I just, before we talk, I want to actually, I want to ask you guys about the politics of this relative to Newsom, Pritzker, and now Wes Moore, who's been, who's now kind of emerging on this front. But before we do that, just going back to the very first clip that we played, which is Trump saying, some people, they might want a dictator. He goes on to say in that clip, well, I'm not a dictator. I don't think I'm a dictator. I think I'm a guy with common sense. I think I would like to hear both of you ask to answer the question of what you think this is all really about because I think all these discussions about what crime policies

• 17:47Speaker 06

  would be best in these cities and states are totally beside the point of what

• 17:52Speaker 05

  No, they are. You know, you're right. You're right.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  So the question is, it goes to dictator. And again, without being hyperbolic about it, in the Capitol now has 2,000 armed federal agents on the street in the Capitol of Washington, D.C. Carrying rifles and other arms. Okay, they're being brought in from state from red states around the country. I am, if you saw this in another country, you know exactly what you were, what, at the same time, he's firing a lot of people who lead federal law enforcement and de-professionalizing federal law enforcement. So what is this really about?

• 18:30Speaker 05

  He also signed a executive order yesterday directing the Secretary of Defense to develop a standing sort of SWAT team of National Guardsmen to deal with what he called civil disorder in the country. Look, you, you, you have to be sort of willfully ignorant to look at that and not say that the, these are elements of fascism. These are elements of autocracy. And, you know, you slide into these things. You don't just arrive there. And Rob, we've gone, I've said this to you, we talk from time to time. I've said this,

• 19:09Speaker 05

  I said, I said, I said, we have, we have gone from zero to Hungary faster than I ever imagined.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Faster than Hungary went to Hungary.

• 19:18Speaker 05

  Yes, exactly.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Can I make two points, though? Is one, we're talking about obviously the National Guard on the heels of the, what just happened in Texas and redistricting. The theme between both of those events is division in America. They're putting, pitting one American against another. Rather than figure out how to solve our problems, we'll have a debate about them. You say that, I actually think you're wrong on this, John, if I can. I actually think American people are hungry for a debate about how do you actually solve public safety? That, put that aside.

• 19:50Speaker 06

  I don't disagree with you about that, Rob. I think they're hungry for that debate.

• 19:53Speaker 05

  Straw man, straw man alert.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Okay, common theme is division and divisiveness, just like what he's doing on, uh, the Federal Reserve. Number two, I actually think of, there's a thread here. His big military parade for his birthday was a bust. And he wants, he's going back to that first term when he saw Bastille Day in France, etc. He loves kind of the imagery and the performative of the military. It is in service of what David said. And I think this National Guard again is both, is not serving one thing. It's both the divisiveness of America keeps us distracted from dealing with that real issues.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  And then second, it allows him to have the performative around, uh, kind of the military and him as the kind of, uh, the groom on the wedding cake of that military embellishment.

• 20:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, I thought, all, all of that is true, Rob. But when you put it together with everything else, when you put it together with everything else, when you put it together with FBI agents showing up at John Bolton's house, when you put it together with him, uh, you know, as you point out, uh, sort of completely fire, you know, firing career military people, firing professional law enforcement people and substituting political hacks, uh, for them. When you see what happened at the Federal Reserve where Trump had, uh, you know, uh, a hack who he, who he appointed to a key position in the Federal Housing, uh, Administration,

• 21:36Speaker 05

  rifling through the files of his political enemies and, uh...

• 21:41Speaker 05

  Making allegations that then get shipped to his uh Justice Department that is completely politicized now and at his He said yesterday, I'm the chief law enforcement officer of the country. He's telling the Justice Department what to do. These are not benign ceremonial things.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 21:59Speaker 06

  Right.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  I'm not disagree, I just.

• 22:00Speaker 06

  And just and just and just to go back, Rob, I'll say just I David sent strong man alert.

• 22:05Speaker 05

  Hit him again.

• 22:05Speaker 06

  The country, I think the country is hungry for a debate on crime. I don't think they're that they're get out of that's what Trump is giving them, is doing them. Okay.

• 22:13Speaker 05

  Now he what he's setting up is a faux debate on crime.

• 22:16Speaker 01

  I said, no, in fact, they do want a debate.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  They do want a debate. They do want a debate, a real debate.

• 22:21Speaker 01

  They know we're not focused on we got real challenges, real problems, and we're doing everything but dealing with them.

• 22:28Speaker 05

  Okay, let's take a break right here for a word from our sponsor and we'll be right back.

• 22:37Speaker 02

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• 25:52Speaker 06

  David, let me, let me come back to, let me add just three things to your list very quickly. Redistricting, um, the, the Trump's drive to, to, to, to, to, to get, to get extra seats added on the basis of nothing other than his political desire to keep control of House of Representatives. His, now his, his increasingly loud campaign against mail-in ballots, and the other day him coming out and saying that 2020 census is invalid, right? Those are also things that add up to stop the, stop the steal, stop the steal 2026 with all of this armed militarized stuff going on in the cities. It's very, very dark.

• 26:34Speaker 05

  We've said it a million times here, he does not believe in rules and laws and norms and institutions. He thinks there's for suckers, the strong take what they want, however they can get it, and he will do anything that he can do to try and keep the House of Representatives from becoming a Democratic House, because then he'll have a source of accountability and a source of oversight, and he knows what happened the last time, and he's worried about, uh, all of that, but just the basic oversight and accountability that the Republican Congress has surrendered, he will do anything, uh, to stop that from happening, but, um,

• 27:15Speaker 05

  uh, you know, I, a lot of this you can't do, a lot of things he's talking, John, about doing by executive order, but what he is doing is sending a signal, uh, to all of these Republican governors about what he wants done. I'll be interested to see, Ram, how they handle, you know, mail-in voting, how they handle, uh, how they handle voting machines. I mean, look, I, I said this today, he's a prominent businessman, I said, I don't understand you guys, I don't understand the Republicans in the House of Senate, I don't understand the Republican governors. Literally, we got screamed at and yelled at for, I mean, called socialist, God forbid,

• 27:59Speaker 05

  to give people healthcare security, and you have a guy wa- firing the-

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Dealing with the independence of the Federal Reserve, calling the National Guards into cities that you can't, don't have the authority to, ta- talking about whether it's the census or other type of areas in the mail-in voting. Everything lit- literally that direct and, as you said, kind of like a mosaic come together and he said it out loud, "I'm not a dictator," which is what he wants you to think he is because, but the fact is, I ca- I am shocked at the silence and complicitness of a bunch of voices in not only the business community, Republican Party, who are literally make the three monkeys look like an active group. I mean, they see no evil, hear no evil, speak of-

• 28:47Speaker 05

  You, you left out what, what, what is a more, most recent and a, a, a egregious thing that you would think would have them howling and that is the, that, that, you know, he basically coerced intel into giving the government 10%

• 29:04Speaker 06

  Partial nationalization.

• 29:06Speaker 05

  When we, when we, Ram, you remember when we stepped in, when we were working for Obama, he stepped in and in order to save the American auto industry and to save Chrysler and GM, he took a temporary stake in those companies-

• 29:22Speaker 01

  And made money, made a profit.

• 29:24Speaker 06

  He's taking a, he's partially nationalizing the American microprocessor industry and telling Coca-Cola what kind of sugar to put in its g- its, its formula. It's nuts.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  They, they had pictures of Obama with Hitler's mustache and being called also on the other side of the political spectrum, a socialist for healthcare for Americans. This guy's, it's, I've never seen anything like it and they're all silent.

• 29:47Speaker 05

  Here's what Mitch McConnell said, I don't have the, the, I could find the, the, the audio, but this is what he said about the auto bailout. A government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take everything we have. And the Republicans were at one in branding it as socialism. They stopped branding it that way when those companies were saved and started flourishing and we got out of it, but, but it, because it was a very- Successful intervention, but this now Trump's talking about taking over pieces of defense industry. Right. Uh, I mean, this is really profound and you don't hear crickets.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  That that's my point is like literally all these voices that um whether it was also on the housing stuff we did or the stabilization or as you said, the auto industry. People were screaming about socialism, etc. From Nippon Steel to taking a fee for Nvidia to give China leverage over the United States to taking 10% of intel. These are, this is mimicking Xi sitting there smiling, saying, I never knew I had a compatriot in the kind of this economic model that I built up here in China. And we've replaced, at least I believe in Adam Smith's invisible hand. Who knew we were going to replace it with Donald Trump's judgment?

• 31:09Speaker 05

  No, we're, we're, we're, we're replacing it with, we're replacing with Donald Trump's visible hand right in their pockets.

• 31:16Speaker 06

  His visible, very swollen, puffy hand. Um, we'll get to that, we'll get to that later. Um, yes, can we, I want to come back to the politics here because we are wanted, let's be hackish here. Okay. Because we haven't done that yet. JB Pritzker yesterday said to the press, you guys don't cover this as a horse race thing. Don't talk about who's up, who's down. Don't talk about politics. Just focus on the substance of this. And I say, thank you for your, for your, for your concerns, cover Pritzker, but we're going to focus on the politics right now.

• 31:39Speaker 05

  Especially here, yeah.

• 31:40Speaker 06

  Right, exactly. So I mentioned Wes Moore before, right? So so far, we've seen Gavin Newsom move from the, hey, let's have Steve Bennett on my podcast mode to, you know, trolling Trump on Twitter, being full on in the fight, fight, fight, you know, fire with fire camp. JB has been in that camp all along when he was, I think, the earliest major player in the party to compare the Trump second term administration to the Nazis back in like February in New Hampshire. Now, as Trump considers going into Maryland, into Baltimore, we have another 2028 contender,

• 32:22Speaker 06

  uh, Wes Moore, who's had a slightly different approach to this. We have a little sound, let's play that.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  As someone who actually deployed overseas and served my country in combat, to ask these men and women to do a job that they're not trained for is just deeply disrespectful.

• 32:36Speaker 06

  So that that was part of what he said. The other thing he did was he invited Trump to do a ride along with them to sort of say, hey, you think there's bad crime in Baltimore? Things are better here than you think they that you are President Trump. Why don't you go up here and and take a safety tour with me? Uh, I wonder, Ram, what you think about that as a tactic? And what you think about how all of this, the ways in which the governors in particular are being put in a position to respond to Trump and how that plays.

• 33:05Speaker 05

  Newsom, Newsom under redistricting.

• 33:06Speaker 06

  I said, I said Gavin at the very top, I said, he's, you know, after Los Angeles, then he's now in the redistricting thing, full in. There's a question about whether that thing fails, that ballot initiative fails in November, whether that capsizes them. But what do you think about all that?

• 33:19Speaker 05

  I think for each of them, given as an observation and also discuss this, my my view is rather than say, we don't have a crime problem, say, come and partner with us in building on the momentum we have. And Baltimore, but that's the tactically, I think. Just put your hack hat on, will you? I am. I think Governor Westmore went to his, each of them are going to their strengths and what they think. And so my hack hat says that each of them are in their lane and where their comfort zone is. I happen to think, uh, Westmore, uh, operated where he has the strongest suit that nobody else could go. I think confronting, as Governor Newsom has done on the redistricting

• 34:01Speaker 05

  in Texas, works to his kind of advantage. So I think each is playing to their A game, uh, and correctly playing to their A game, which builds their kind of profile. So I have been critical of Pritzker, not critical, I've suggested, I thought it was a bad idea for him to run for a third term in 2026 because, um, uh, you know, you have to deal with all the burdens of the governorship. He'd be free to travel the country. He has lots of money to do it. Uh, but this underscores something. The reason that this plays well with. Large segments of Democratic voters, I suspect, is because right now they feel helpless.

• 34:42Speaker 05

  And they look at their leaders and they think they're feckless and unable to do anything. And these guys have each been handed an opportunity. I mean, Newsom is doing something, you know. Pritzker is confronting him directly and, you know, Westmore suggesting the same. And so it does give you a chance to play off Trump. And that in a way that the people in Congress can't because they have no control.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  As much as I think this is an attempt to, A, what's going on is an attempt to try to really get the goods through custom on immigration. It allows Trump to avoid dealing with the inflation out of control, economic anxiety. All these governors also have bad choices in their own budget. And so fighting Trump also allows them to kind of push some of the other issues into the background for themselves. So it also, you know, here in Illinois, we have a big transportation budget shortfall. It allows that kind of recede as part of the news and this become more dominant. So there's also an added benefit for, you know, they have all three bad choices in their budgets and other things that they have to confront. Those go kind of and recede to the background. This becomes part of the foreground.

• 35:59Speaker 05

  It raises the question about, you know, we jumped ahead here, but why the business community is quiet, why the Republicans are quiet. And the answer is fear. The answer is fear. And that's where the Bolton raid, I mean, I don't know what's going to happen with John Bolton. This was looked at once, they stopped, you know, and, but listen to what Trump said about the Bolton raid.

• 36:37Speaker 04

  More raids? I don't know. You'd have to ask the Department of Justice. They raided my house, I can tell you that. They did a big raid on my house. They took away everything that wasn't pinned down, and they took away some of that, too. No, they raided Mar-a-Lago. They started that. These were bad people that we had in our government before. They raided Mar-a-Lago. They went into my wife's area. They went into my son's area, my young son. And what they did was a disgrace.

• 37:09Speaker 05

  I love it when he says, "Well, that's up to the Department of Justice." And in like in the same period of time, he's talking about, "I'm the chief law enforcement officer." So he thinks the Department of Justice is running errands for him. You know, the other guy he targeted, and just to, and then I'll turn it over to you guys, but was Chris Christie, who you, Ram, are very friendly with. I'm friendly with him as well. You were on ABC with him for a period of time before you went off to serve in Japan. Or was it after? It was before? No, before. It was before. Now he's, now Trump, now they're, well, listen to what Trump has

• 37:53Speaker 05

  to say about Chris Christie and Bridgegate. Remember Bridgegate?

• 37:56Speaker 01

  Do you plan to investigate Chris Christie?

• 37:58Speaker 04

  Say what?

• 37:59Speaker 01

  Do you plan to investigate Chris Christie?

• 38:01Speaker 04

  Uh, look, Chris is a slob. Everybody knows it. I know Chris better than anybody in the room. I always felt he was guilty. But what he did is he took the George Washington Bridge, which he very serious. He closed down the George Washington Bridge. And you have medical people, you had ambulances caught up. You know, this thing was closed down. And obviously, he knew about it. But he blamed the young lady that worked for him and another person, and they got into a lot of trouble. She ultimately was, I don't know, exonerated, but she got out of it a little bit. But she went through hell. She was a young mother, nice person. I knew her a little bit. And another man went to jail.

• 38:42Speaker 04

  And Chris got off. And so when I listened to Chris speak his hate, I say, oh, what about the George Washington Bridge? You know, tell me about the George Washington Bridge?

• 38:53Speaker 05

  Basically, there was an intimation that he's going to reopen that case. And the fundamental, John Bolton was with you a week ago criticizing him on the Putin stuff. The message is clear. The message is clear. We're going to use the Justice Department and anything. Yeah, all the tools.

• 39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. I do want to, I don't know, I'm about to say something I'm not sure about, but you had John Bolton write a book, how to get through clearances, the whole security apparatus, etc. That's years ago. Them going into his house and his office, not, you know, even paranoid people have enemies. Something tells me they've been tracking him in some way. Because this, there's actually, I mean, not that the other stuff isn't nerve wracking and nervous about the Federal Reserve person or, you know, the National Guard in Chicago. But how they decide, they went to a judge with information to get the capacity to do what they just did.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  Ratcliffe.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  Means that they were tracking something. And I say this because the ability to write a book that has national security implications has to go through a level, you're not just dealing with an editor. They are over that. All the supporting material, what did you have, etc. So that was cleared. So how they got to this, I, one day I want to find the answer.

• 40:24Speaker 06

  Rob, I believe Jean Ratcliffe has said that, I believe it's public, that, that, not in detail, but that the CIA provided some intelligence to the Justice Department.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Tracking him.

• 40:35Speaker 06

  I know. I'm reinforcing your point with a little, with a little bit of detail.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  Which is a very.

• 40:41Speaker 06

  Troubling?

• 40:41Speaker 01

  Ominous?

• 40:42Speaker 06

  Scary?

• 40:43Speaker 01

  This is, it's not just what they say on CNN and being critical. It's the other app before they, what they, how they gathered the material to go to the judge. Tells you that this gives Nixon's enemy this a kind of a vanilla or a whitewash painting. This is an incredible breach of not just norms, but American legal system.

• 41:05Speaker 06

  David, let me, just, just given that that's the case, what Ram said is correct. Let me just again, return to the hack point that we departed from for a second because of course, these things all begin fitting in the mosaic. Your, both of your former colleague, Dan Pfeiffer, said to me the other day that he thinks that the key division or dividing line in the party heading into 2026 and 2028 is Democrats who understand the existential threat and, and are then willing to do things at scale to combating the existential threat that Trump and MAGA posed to American democracy. And those who are in denial about it, who are kind of basically, maybe they pay lip

• 41:47Speaker 06

  service to it, but essentially they are still operating as if we are in ordinary times under regular order. Do you think that's true is my question to both of you?

• 41:57Speaker 05

  I, I think that there has to be, there has to be a real awareness of the stakes. But an awareness of the stakes means, yes, fighting off these incursions in the courts and wherever you can, but ultimately it means winning elections. You can't ultimately stop this without winning and to win, you still need to be able to focus on those things that are going to move the people you need to move to win.

• 42:28Speaker 06

  Right.

• 42:29Speaker 05

  And so, you know, this is, I, I don't, I, I think that this is a deadly serious situation. I think Trump is, is a runaway freight train. But no, I, I, I think that it's still true that people are living their lives.

• 42:46Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 42:47Speaker 05

  And the, his failure on the fundamentals of their, the things that they had hoped he would do, particularly as it relates to the economy.

• 42:57Speaker 06

  Right.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  Is still probably more influential with people than some of this.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  I agree with David on this one point, I would say, and I think the point is, what is going to matter? Going forward is whether you think the cost of ground beef being the most expensive I've ever been, or the state of democracy. And I happen to think if you want to win elections and you want to talk about where people live their lives, it's what's affecting their life. I'm not saying that democracy is not important. I'm just saying you have to win elections and the cost of living and the cost of housing is a more uh salient issue.

• 43:32Speaker 06

  I want to be clear about what I don't think Dan was saying. This is people are going to foreground the democracy argument. I'll give you a tangible example of this. Is Newsom, right, a mid decade gerrymander that's going to be a ballot initiative, a single ballot issue on the ballot in November when nothing else is on the ballot, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars are going to get spent on it, is an extraordinary measure. That's like something Democrats normally wouldn't do. They have, you know, they're the California. California has had, has had two separate votes on nonpartisan redistricting commissions. My question is, that's, that's a thing where it doesn't, it's not democracy on the ballot.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  Of course. Well, I don't hear, I mean, I think it's bullshit to say, uh, it's bullshit for anyone to say, well, you know, we really, it's, it's out of order and we shouldn't do that. I, I, I think what Newsom is doing is the right thing to do.

• 44:25Speaker 06

  Right.

• 44:25Speaker 05

  And so I don't think that should even be up for debate. I, I, you know, I, uh, I, there are people who are living in a different decade in a different country. And, you know, obviously if you play by one set of rules and Trump plays by another, uh, that gives him an enormous advantage.

• 44:45Speaker 06

  Totally.

• 44:45Speaker 05

  So I, I, I mean, I agree. If that's the point Dan was making, I totally agree with him.

• 44:49Speaker 06

  The point is that, is that Newsom is willing to do something that would, that is, that is, again, take an extraordinary risk. And, and this is again, part of my question to both of you is, do you think that that risk is basically whether he's a viable candidate in 2028 for president or not? Because a loss on this thing would be a pretty big deal. He's put a lot of chips on the table here pretty early, at least in my view. So do you guys think that if he, if he loses in November, he's toast?

• 45:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:19Speaker 06

  For 28?

• 45:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 45:21Speaker 06

  Why not?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  I don't think that. I don't think people are going to vote in a primary based on whether he got redistricting done or not. We live and eat and breathe this. That's not where the America we belong.

• 45:29Speaker 05

  And I think, Ram, I, I, I think that the, the, the effort, I mean, I think there's a price and failure. I think the effort is worth something for him in terms of the platform that he's got. Well, what do you think, John? You're, you're, you're, you're an Angeleno.

• 45:48Speaker 06

  I think that the amount of focus on this in the fall is going to be huge. And he has, he's not, it's not like a redistricting effort. This is like, uh, he's made this into a national issue. And as I said, it's going to be, it's going to be an incredibly, uh, hard fought, expensive race. I think it would be a big blow. I don't know if it would kill him, David. I don't know if it'll kill his 2828 prospects, but it will be a major, uh, hole in the, uh, hull of the ship of 2028.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  John?

• 46:16Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  Imagine if he didn't do it. That would be the blow. So I, I did not, to me, look, I think it's, I think he's doing exactly right thing. I think Democrats should, uh, do, deal stuff with ranked voting because I think it's going to, um, redistricting is going to get us basically at best to, uh, a status quo. We got to keep pushing this because they're going to do stuff in 2028. They're going to do stuff in 2020, 30, 2030, rather. We have to be ready. Uh, that said, it's not whether he, this on its own is good or bad. If it did nothing, he'd get killed. So these are the choices you have to make.

• 46:50Speaker 05

  Plus, we still, we're still haven't heard from Indiana, from Missouri, from Florida.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  The National Guard.

• 46:58Speaker 06

  We need to take a quick break right now. We'll be right back with more of Hacks on Tap.

• 47:07Kara Swisher?

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• 49:31Speaker 06

  We have Florida, there's a bunch of states, Florida is definitely going to do gerrymandering. There's Indiana, there's some other Republican states, there's been discussion of Michigan, Maryland, Illinois, where it'd be hard to gerrymander.

• 49:41Speaker 05

  Well, that's not gonna happen.

• 49:44Speaker 06

  So what do you guys think, how do you think it nets out in the end, once all the gerrymandering wars are done by the end of this year, who, where do we net out, do you have a sense of that, Ram, former DCCC, Major Domo?

• 49:55Speaker 01

  I will, I've talked to, I've talked to a number of leaders in the House in the last 48 hours, and I said, you got a short term and a long term, short term at best, if we take the states that we could do redistricting, there's something interesting in Utah that just came from.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, right.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Okay, but, right.

• 50:16Speaker 05

  That could be a seat pickup.

• 50:18Speaker 01

  Right, but the fact is, the Supreme Court is a horrible place on American politics, and John Roberts will go down in infamy for what he's done to our political system. That said, you have to start preparing for 2026, 2028, and 2030, and etc., because they are going to keep doing stuff, and to me, at best on redistricting, we get to kind of even or minus three, from a kind of, but I think this is going to be a big national election that's going to be the verdict on Donald Trump and the Republicans. That said, the best way to deal with opening up more seats and making more competitive, get rid of prime agents, go towards ranked voting, that gives you a lot of other seats,

• 51:03Speaker 01

  because there's, because when I was DCCC Chair now, a little over 20 years ago, around 20 years ago, we had like 40 plus seats, you're down to less than 20 from a competitive standpoint, we have to change this map and stop playing on their field and make them play on our field, that's what I would do.

• 51:19Speaker 05

  Just, here's a shorter answer, I think that if they do all those states, that they probably have, they'll pick, they'll make gains, and Democrats are going to have to win more seats than certainly the three that it looked like they'd. Have to win at the beginning of this process and I'm not sure. The one thing I'm not sure about you guys is just how whether the Republican gerrymanders will net all the seats that they think and I think I talked about this last week when we had Brownstein on like these Hispanic voters in South Texas. Yes. Are very sensitive to the economic issues. That's a lot of what led them. There were some cultural things, but that and the border and so there but the border

• 52:03Speaker 05

  was the issue and now Hispanics generally are being targeted by by you know. Nice, yeah. So I, I think that it's not going to be the slam dunk that they thought it was going to be.

• 52:15Speaker 06

  So for whatever it's worth, Dave Wasserman did a Q and A with Puck that where he says he thinks that if California succeeds and if Newsom succeeds, Republicans probably net five or six. And if California fails, Republicans at 10 or 12. And he still thinks that's possible Democrats win the House because of the overall national trends, but that's, that's the kind of range that Dave Wasserman's laying out.

• 52:36Speaker 05

  Yes, yeah. Well, I agree with him.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  If you look at midterms, when one party controlled both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, you have to have an energized opposition that is existing. We can see it in all the specials and in the primaries. You have to have independents break two to one for the opposition. You're seeing that happening in the specials and you have to have a depressed turnout among Republicans and you can see in the polling, Republicans are not engaged like the level of Democrats. So this has the makings 18 months out of a wave election. And I believe in a wave election, even if they're trying to rig the, the jury, it will overwhelm the wall that they're building up. It will not handle the wave that's about the tsunami that's about to come and it has a potential to be a tsunami.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Before we go to the mailbag, John, you had one thing you wanted to talk about with Ram.

• 53:24Speaker 06

  I do, I do. I don't want Ram to leave without getting a chance to talk about Donald Trump's, well, the state of Donald Trump's apparent physical decline and if you, if you say it's that this is a partisan comment, I'm, I'm not being partisan at all. It's like we've noted, we've noticed the hands, we've noticed the feet and so with Alex Jones. Alex Jones, not a, not a liberal last time I checked. Here's Alex Jones had to say about Trump's impending health collapse. I've seen a lot of signs of Trump declining. The fear.

• 53:52Speaker 03

  That he's getting sick, that who knows what's going on. His ankles are giant. That usually means serious heart decline. I mean, liver failure too. But his eyes aren't yellow. So, he's saying, I don't know if I'm doing a good job. I don't know if I'm gonna get into heaven.

• 54:12Speaker 03

  I hear I'm not doing a good job. This is the President of the United States calling into Fox News in the morning, saying this.

• 54:20Speaker 06

  The inner monologue tells a lot.

• 54:21Speaker 05

  Dr. Jones weighs in.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  I would not say that he's that Alex has he has the medical capacity beyond the Obama exchange. That said, or be my cardiologist. But the fact, the most revealing thing isn't the hands or the ankles and they can't tie the shoes. That comment about I'm, you know, I want to go to heaven and I don't think I'm good standing to get there. If I were Donald Trump, not that he's gonna listen to my political advice, I'd be worried about Dante's Inferno at this point. I think it's a very revealing point, kind of introspective, and he's not known for being introspective, where his mind is about his own mortality and his place. It's also part of his desire for the Nobel Peace Prize, etc. But this thing that I'm want to

• 55:07Speaker 01

  go to heaven, I think really was the one time you've seen a mirror as, I wouldn't say self-awareness, but a reflection into his psyche and his mindset, and it's not healthy, both physically and psychologically.

• 55:19Speaker 05

  Alex Jones raised it. You raised it. And I don't want in any way for people to say, oh, this is what they're fomenting these. But you look at the guy, he just doesn't look well. And he's, and he's, you know, people think he's somehow immune to the same laws of nature that govern Joe Biden. He's a, he's an almost 80-year-old guy, and this is the hardest job on the planet. And, you know, the way he does it, you know, work by day, post on Truth Social all night, you can, the pressures of it are, and no one who has

• 56:02Speaker 05

  never worked there can't fully appreciate what it is. So, Ram, you know, yeah, I mean.

• 56:10Speaker 05

  I think it's a non-trivial question.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  I used to refer to, we've all seen presidents from the first photo to the last photo they walk out. It ages you. Every year in the White House is a dog year. It's like seven years. He's an old man to start with, who doesn't take care of himself. And you're seeing the physical manifestations of that age and wear and tear. I think we've now seen the psychological manifestation of that physical state of being.

• 56:41Speaker 06

  I genuinely hate it when we hear, I know we all hear this. Occasionally, over the last 10 years, you've heard liberals say, God, I hope Trump dies. And I hate, I hate it when I hear people say that. I hate it. I hate it. But it is the case that if you live a life where you don't exercise, you don't eat green vegetables, and you eat Burger King and Big Macs for 70 years, it's gonna take a toll at some point, and I think that might be.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  I think he's past the Mediterranean diet.

• 57:07Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  To have any impact, okay?

• 57:09Speaker 05

  I must say, I do envy the ability to eat Big Macs every day. I gave them up decades ago, and.

• 57:16Speaker 06

  You're a better man for it.

• 57:18Speaker 05

  Well, I'm a lesser man for it. Yes, I'm a lesser man for it. Before you go, Ram, we want to give you a question from the mailbag. It's listener mailbag. So if you have questions for the hacks, you could send them to [email protected], or you can, and we prefer this, call them in yourself so we can hear your voices at this number. 773-389-4471. I'll repeat it, because who can remember that? 773-389-4471.

• 57:53Speaker 06

  Hey, David, I think, it looks like Ram has to run, so he's gonna have to skip the mailbag.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  You offended him, he's running. I can't believe it. What a mess. But see you, Ram.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Okay, see ya.

• 58:04Speaker 06

  See you later, Ram.

• 58:05Speaker 01

  Bye-bye, man.

• 58:06Speaker 06

  So David, we got two voicemails. You know, I like the voicemails.

• 58:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, man.

• 58:10Speaker 06

  We take the incoming however it comes, and if you don't want to call, that's fine. But you're gonna have a better chance of getting into the show if you call, so we can hear your voice. And we have perfectly, given that there's two of us, Ram having decamped, we have two voicemails this week. Let's play the first one for you from our friend Ryan.

• 58:27Speaker 03

  Hi, guys. My name is Ryan from St. Louis. I've had a theory for a while that. Democrats put too much thought into the electorate having common sense and not fighting back on the crazy stuff early enough. Um, I was wondering about your thoughts on that. Thank you. Bye.

• 58:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, Ryan, this is, this is akin to the discussion we were, uh, just having. First of all, thanks for calling in and thanks for listening and hey to everybody in St. Louis. Um, I think that, uh, I think what Democrats need to do is stay close to, uh, people and, um, as Ram was saying, uh, yes, I think there's all kinds of what you call crazy, I call dangerous stuff going on and you have to fight those fights. But ultimately, you know, people also, um, are living their lives and they're struggling with higher costs and they're struggling with,

• 59:26Speaker 05

  uh, a slowing economy and job situation and, uh, fundamentally, uh, they need to know someone's fighting on their side, uh, in, in the midst of all of this. Uh, and so I, I would not, you know, I, I still think that needs to be a major focus of what Democrats are doing, even as they push back on these sort of, um, autocratic, uh, incursions, uh, of Trump because we've got to, we've got to, you know, you, you want to save American democracy, but you also, uh, want to, uh, save the American family that is suffering in this economy and

• 1:00:09Speaker 05

  give them a sense of confidence that you have a vision to make this country work better, uh, for them. So I think you have to do two things at once.

• 1:00:19Speaker 06

  I couldn't agree more, David. I, I, the only, the challenge is, you know, crazy, you know, Trump says, the, the, I think one of the things that, that, that our friend could be, that Ryan could be thinking about here is, you know, things like Trump, you know, talking about the, the crazy stuff includes things like, you know, changing the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. And, you know, Trump does throw a lot of chum in the water. I don't, I think, you know,

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, you don't want to chase every bit of chum.

• 1:00:41Speaker 06

  The key element is Democrats. Having to make some better distinctions between what is crazy stuff that that no one really cares about and stuff that's crazy that actually in a weird way kind of somehow gets in under the skin and it's a mattering more than you think.

• 1:00:53Speaker 05

  I'll tell you the the stuff that that should be chased is the stuff that actually raises people's costs.

• 1:01:01Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:01:02Speaker 05

  Uh, and makes it harder and not easier for people and creates more turmoil and more peril for people, be it, you know, waging a war on vaccines that we know work to, you know, the tariffs and so, you know, I think you're right, John, you got to center the the stuff that someone said the main thing should be the main thing.

• 1:01:31Speaker 06

  That's your friend Haley Barber. The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing.

• 1:01:35Speaker 05

  Now, Aaron has a voicemail question.

• 1:01:39Speaker 06

  That's Aaron with an A, two with a double A.

• 1:01:40Speaker 05

  Aaron, A double A.

• 1:01:43Speaker 04

  Hey, hacks. This is Aaron from Bellingham, Washington. And my question today is if the Republicans could be overplaying their hand and with redistricting, cut their margins and in a way of election, couldn't they end up losing a lot of seats that they'd have otherwise kept safe?

• 1:02:00Speaker 06

  Aaron raises a good point. It's so good that we actually started to touch on it. David, you did earlier in the show today and and I think, you know, that that it is, you know, I go back to Dave Wasserman, who who says, you know, it's it's not that often.

• 1:02:13Speaker 05

  The wizard of.

• 1:02:14Speaker 06

  The wizard, the guy who's who's Twitter handle is at redistrict. He knows something about this. And he was, he said, you know, it's not that often that these that parties get the maps wrong, you know, and that and that suddenly they they miscalculate or whatever. But it is the case that they can misread some of the macro political trends. Uh, and one of the the key one that you just mentioned earlier in the show, I think is is super important. And there are Texas Republicans who are really worried about this is that they've redrawn these maps in Texas, very much in accord with Trump's performance in the 2024 election. And he overperformed so. dramatically with Latinos in Texas that the combination of the fact that in midterms,

• 1:02:58Speaker 06

  the party tends to underperform their presidential candidate in the previous two years earlier and the fact that the bottom is not quite cratering, but there is significant erosion happening in the Hispanic community with Trump because of the harshness and the capriciousness of the deportation agenda. Trump totally had their support on the border, doesn't so much have their support on the Home Depot issue that you could see this thing coming back and if not hurting Republicans in Texas on net, they don't get all five of the seats they think they're going to get. They may end up getting, you know, picking up those five seats, but then losing a couple, having turned a couple of other seats into competitive seats and end up only netting one or two. So it could, there could be some kind of backbite there.

• 1:03:43Speaker 05

  Aaron's point, that is what we were discussing. I believe that Aaron's point goes further, which is when you redistrict, when you gerrymander, you're taking, you're moving voters around and in this case, you're taking Democratic voters out of Republican districts and putting them somewhere else. And so you're making some districts less Republican and other districts more Republican and you hope that the margins all work out for you. But if it is a wave election, there are some of those districts where you're moving Democratic voters that could become more problematical for you. So we shall see. I'm sure we're going

• 1:04:25Speaker 05

  to be talking a lot about this over the course of the next year.

• 1:04:30Speaker 06

  I gotta say, man, of all the things, this is such a small thing, but you know, the idea that this now, this kind of, of tactical nonsense driven redistricting could become like a regular feature in our politics. I find it just, I mean, it seems like it's such a dorky thing to talk about compared to some of the things we're facing, David, but I do find it really depressing. The idea that this is just going to be a partisan tool that both sides are going to use all the time.

• 1:04:54Speaker 05

  Well, listen, you know, here's what I believe. I agree with you that it, you know, it is, it seems small in light of large things, but.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  This is really about accountability. This is really about oversight. This is really about whether or not there'll be guardrails. You know, I've been plenty critical of my own party and I'm not, I'm not, I'm not a particularly partisan figure despite what anybody thinks, but anybody who's followed me knows that. And so, you know, I don't wake up every morning thinking, man, I would just, you know, God, I wish Democrats controlled everything. But I do know that if the Congress continues down this road, that Trump after a midterm election,

• 1:05:42Speaker 05

  feeling, you know, fortified and I think that what we're going to look back at these two years is the good old days when it comes to outreach by a president and we're going to be more down the road that we're on right now. So to me, it's more than a partisan issue. It's really an issue about whether there'll be an accountable Congress, a Congress that will hold everyone accountable, including the president or not.

• 1:06:14Speaker 06

  We started out this, this podcast with you talking about some of my favorite things, you know, people in Chicago, the city of big shoulders and windy city and all that. Drinking beer at nine o'clock in the morning, as I remember them from my college days. That was such a cheerful image and now you're like, we might look back on these two years as the good old days. I'm like, Jesus Christ.

• 1:06:38Speaker 05

  No, no.

• 1:06:38Speaker 06

  Don't bring me down, dude.

• 1:06:41Speaker 05

  I know. Well, you're just so gleeful all the time. I just wanted to.

• 1:06:45Speaker 06

  Inject a small dose of reality into the situation? Okay, fine.

• 1:06:49Speaker 05

  So there's one more question that we got. They're all really excellent and maybe some of them can be salvaged for future shows.

• 1:06:57Speaker 06

  Jen, who said, what's the best piece of political advice you've ever gotten? I would say, you know, given that Rob is not here, you know, what's the best piece of political advice you've ever given, David?

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  Well, I'd like to talk about the best advice I've ever gotten, and there were two pieces of advice. One was from Gary Hart, Senator Gary Hart. In 1987, we met in Chicago. He was planning to run for president. And we were talking about the American political landscape. And he paused at one point, and he said, just remember one thing. Washington's always the last to get the news. And that is a piece of advice that has served me so well over the years, and it served me well when I worked in Washington, because I realized that I was looking at the country through a periscope, and that I was stuck in this echo chamber, and that often the

• 1:07:50Speaker 05

  conversation in Washington was not the conversation people were having around their kitchen tables. And oftentimes, when people make mistakes politically at the national level, it's because they're paying more attention to the echo chamber than they are to the voices of people. And that is still true today. The other is a more, a closer home piece of advice that I got from a Chicago alderman, an old Chicago alderman, Dick Mel, years ago. And he was talking to me about a colleague who was thinking of running, in the city council who was thinking of running for higher office. And he said, and I said, well, what do you think?

• 1:08:34Speaker 05

  And he said, he'll never make it. And I said, why not? He says, because the higher a monkey climbs on a pole, the more you can see his ass. Meaning that the higher the office you seek, the more scrutiny you get. That is also true.

• 1:08:51Speaker 06

  You know what turns out? It turns out if you look, if you get, if you see more of the monkey's ass, what, what becomes clear is that it's an MRI of the soul. Like, that's the thing. The monkey's ass is kind of like the way that you see into the soul.

• 1:09:07Speaker 05

  Yes, it is. That is, that is a piece of advice.

• 1:09:09Speaker 06

  It's a related piece.

• 1:09:11Speaker 05

  It is, it is. It helped inform my view that presidential races are MRIs for the soul.

• 1:09:18Speaker 05

  And whoever you are, ultimately, people get to know that, especially the better you do. So.

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  Best piece of advice I've ever gotten was an advice given to me by my late, great mother, who, when I went off to college, gave me a piece of advice that has served me well throughout afterwards, which is, she was like, I really don't care what you do, but don't get arrested and don't get dead. That was like, that's, that's kept me afloat ever since. That's a good advice for a candidate, too. Don't get arrested and don't get dead.

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  Well, this don't get arrested thing may cause you to want to revise some of your comments on this podcast before we send it out. I don't know the way things are going. You could end up in Boltonland.

• 1:09:54Speaker 06

  I said the advice was good. I didn't say that I followed it. I got arrested three times in college alone. What are you talking about?

• 1:09:59Speaker 05

  I'm sure, I'm sure that that's in a file somewhere and we'll, we'll, we may learn about it someday.

• 1:10:06Speaker 06

  So I'm gonna try to keep following that advice. We head to Labor Day weekend, David. I hope you have, you're, you're like in the, you're like in Michigan, Chicago for Labor Day. Have fun.

• 1:10:16Speaker 05

  All right, brother, you too. And everybody out there, and we'll see you on the other side.

• 1:10:20Speaker 06

  See ya.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

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