Mike Murphy: We’re Living in a Nightmare

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It looked like a war crimes recon case when I saw who he's lined up for that damn thing, but yeah, I'm moving quick here. I got an ambulance. Are the blinds drawn there? You're not mental. I am so far off the grid, there's no grid. But anyway, it's great to be on a fantastic podcast. I'm good to see you, pal. Man, good to have you back. I just noticed this is back. So we do this every five months. I went to look at our old Murphy interviews. I was like, five months ago, 10 months ago. So we have a little, every, you know, almost half year. We have a little date. I guess I was going to want to hear you cook in general on Trump's Davos performance. The whole thing, I mean, we menaced Greenland and then back down and got nothing. He's I think creating an alternate UN of only countries that are in the Russian sphere of influence. It's unbelievable. It just, it's, we're right in, it's strange, lovey and, you know, no fighting in the war room. Now the board of peace. All right. You guys wash the blood off your hands and report to the photo app. I was doing some research on some of the countries. I didn't know a whole lot. I was like, what's happening in Uzbekistan? Backie, backie stan lately. And it seems like human rights violations is what's happening there. And most of the countries that are on the board of peace. This is a very old poll for your senior citizen, uh, Tunis. But there used to be a fantastic political cartoonist named Jeff McNally for the Chicago trip. And in the Carter era, he did all these great UN cartoons. And he was kind of a conservative. And he'd draw the UN as his rogues gallery of guys with a frying pan on their head. And, you know, I mean, it was, and I, that's what came to mind when I saw these jokers, you know, I thought, a whole thing. But did you see the Turkish minister that kind of looked like Hitler? That was behind that. Oh, I think he shops at Bogeyno menswear, which is a hot new Trumpian outlet for that kind of Hugo Boss. We're, you know, take over the Polish ghetto outfit. So the old record for astonished cynical foreign leader watching a semi idiot American president at international gathering was George Cleman. So the tiger were France. Who said he wanted to be buried standing up facing Germany. Anyway, he sat there with a million casualties after World War I listening to Woodward Rosen, 14 points of, you know, blah, blah. And he turned over to Lloyd George from Britain and said, you know, Jesus Christ only had 10. Well, that has now been surpassed by what I think all the foreign leaders were saying in a wonderful orchestra of different language, which is what the fuck? Because we now have the superpower that they rely on, the metronome beat of Western democracy run by a crackpot, egomaniac child. I'm sure they all had to go like take a double whiskey and get a dentist or a parallel bit lip when they're just listening to this lunatic. But it's dangerous. I was over there right after Trump first got elected in Europe and a couple of, you know, big rich guys at higher-dorsken bulls and I did a little presentation on what's what. And they say, don't you guys understand you're the orchestra conductor? And when you like take the baton and like, you know, stick it in your head, screws up the whole damn thing for all of us and the bad guys went. So yeah, we're living in nightmare right now. It's got a shot clock on it, but it's a nightmare. It's the tiniest silver lining of the board of peace for me is that shot clock. It does seem like he is positioning himself to be, you know, kind of head of the new world order after he leaves, which is nice. Like I wanted to have an exit plan. I don't think this is great for the world, you know, because the charter of this thing has him having veto power over everything. But the fact that he seems to be eyeing, you know, some kind of position for himself in his 80s, you know, kind of an honorarium. That's nice. It'll be a bond movie. They're having island with guys with burp guns and orange jumpsuits driving around on golf carts underground and you'll have a master plan. You know, the other thing is staying. I don't know anything. I said, let's steal in the old Al Franken seniors in space, but let's tell him we build a death star for him and just put him into space one way and figure it out later. The whole thing is just so sick. I do think if you look beyond the cartoon optics of the board of peace, I mean, the big idea other than flatter trumps, ego, and he can wear metals is now they own Gaza. Yeah. Who wants to own Gaza? What are we going to do? Put American boots on the ground in Gaza. Or make Vietnam look like a Sunday school picnic. So on every level, it's not only this evil and egotistical and corrupt, it's relentlessly stupid. And that often is kind of the real log line on this Trump stuff. It's either greed or stupid greed. What do you make of the carny kind of speech about the rupture? And I think that's related to this kind of, that there's a shot clock on it. But by the time the shot clock expires, I guess our things are going to be too far gone. Do you think that there's a permanent reorientation or anything that's a little bit of bluster or we model through and see what happens? Yeah, it's a great question. I think there's going to be permanent damage. And the next president who might have read a book is going to have a lot to dig out of. But the Europeans are going to want them to dig out of it. We're key to their jam, so to speak. The problem is in the short term, if you're the German, you got two choices. Get close to the Chinese or the Russians, which is even worse. And meanwhile, quietly develop the capacity to have an atomic bomb, because that's the insurance policy in the world goes crazy. And that's true of about 20 countries now. So there's going to be a lot of damage. But ultimately, the Atlantic alliance is such a naturally beautiful and smart thing. I think it'll come back together. It's going to have dense and dings. It's going to cost us. I mean, we'll be cleaning up Trump horse shit all over geopolitics, the economy everywhere else that, you know, some of the appointees all works for a while. That was an avoidable tragedy. But here we are. And of course, we have a gutless parliament of my beloved former party, the Republicans. You know, we don't ask these guys to land on Anacio Beach, just defend the Constitution. That appears to be way too much for them. I hate this question of task you because I get it every time I go anywhere. And it's like, you know, what more is there to say about these guys? But it is pretty striking that even, you know, the Dan Crenshaw's, the Marco Rubio's, the people that seem to have a genuine view about the value of American strength in the world and the value of, you know, democracy, promotion and all that. Everybody is fully on board with this program. And like, it's hard to like understand why I maybe they just kind of, they diluted themselves into thinking that like there aren't any real consequences of Trump's words. And I don't know. How do you explain it? You know, I call it the no better caucus and they deserve a special hot seat when we have the home improvement commission hearings afterward. I mean, it is unbelievable. I mean, take Marco Rubio. I've known Marco a long time. I was one of his first donors when he ran in the primary for US Senate. And can Marco watch this ice stuff and not remember that his dad ran away from thugs like that with nothing to America to be free and broke his back as a bartender? And his whole life, Marco used to tell that story when he needed your vote. I wonder about the quiet moments of Marco even has anymore when he remembers some of that. He used to be on the right side of it. So yeah, huge puzzle to me too. I guess those cheap air cuts in the house barbershop are really excellent. I think there is going to be a little forward bump. And I will say my expectations now creep along the floor. But as we pass filing deadlines, I think there's going to be a little, I won't call it bravery potion, but you're going to see some of them when they're outside of a primary threat, kind of scuttle off to the high grass a little and try to get a little distance from Trump, particularly in the house where they're looking at a massacre. But that's self preservation, just of another flavor, just like they're sucking up to Trump most of them. Now, privately, they're all, you know, everybody is a patriot, but we're going to wait to the Americans come and we're going to hit the streets and get those Germans out of Paris. The Vichy Republican Party, unfortunately. One more just thing on the, on his performance over there. And some of this right is speculative, right? It's like, feels like there's going to be some damage when it comes to us, you know, alienating our allies. There is also substantive things happening in which he has deviated from more traditional orthodoxy, Ukraine for starters, right? Where they're now going to this freezing winter, it's in real, real damage, Trump's back away in New Zelensky. And then in Iran, like for a minute, he was getting Lindsey Graham pilled a little bit and he was saber rattling on Iran and saying he was going to go help the protesters. But then basically, it seems to me like the regime ended up telling Trump that they weren't going to execute anybody, executed people anyway. And Trump moved on to green, which was some remodeling. Yeah, Trump chases headlines, you know, he thinks like whoever writes the word for the New York Post. So, oh, the, the, a rant thing is hot. I'll get into that story. And then somebody sends them a cable saying, you know, we're going to need some casinos and hotels. And he says, okay, just don't kill anybody on the news when we have a deal, my friend. There's never any real lasting strategy. More than tariffs, the one thing he believes in, which of course is stupid and crazy. Everything is transactional with him. And it's all based on either ego or gain, you know, my financial gain. So it's a constantly moving deal. It seems like the only big theme in foreign policy. And you did see some of this in Davos is take cheap shots that are allies in Europe and suck up to our enemies in Russia. That seems to be the operating sense of gravity here, which really makes you wonder. Do you notice his hand? No, not healthy. He is not a healthy guy. I mean, that job ages the left hand this time. That was very bruised. I you don't shake with your left hand. I he's never a big hand shaker. Anyway, that story didn't really really mesh with me. But everyone's having a mysterious bruise. This happens as you get older, but that's a pretty big one on the hand. I don't know. Yeah, there's stuff going on in all these medical reports. It's some hack. It wants to be a congressman. Oh, God, he's super man. He ought to be in the Olympics. I just, you know, I never be leveled. It's so juvenile and transparent. Yet somehow this wonderful country at least temporarily bought into it, or at least enough hated Biden and Harris to decide, well, he's a clown and a bozo and fright rig or rang a tank, but he can run the economy. And of course, the big thing is, you know, as a political hack is he's lost that franchise now. I think it was prop it up. So that's why I think he's. He's going to try more foreign policy stuff to wag the dog though, because otherwise we're talking about what the grocery bill looks like every week. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify, especially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there. Integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups, online, in person and on the go. And then the entire enterprise made for entrepreneurs like you sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. That takes us to the New York Times, the end of pull I think was pretty telling on that from earlier this week. And basically the short of it is he snapped back to his original coalition, right? Like that his numbers now according to that this poll in every demographic group are basically indistinguishable from where they were right before he lost a Biden. Yeah. All these new folks that came on board young voters who are unhappy about their economic prospects, black and Hispanic men for the most part, they have now snapped back. And to me, I look at that and think, well, for one, this is largely economy, maybe a little bit of the integration stuff. But for two, we spend a lot of time analyzing what happened in the 2024 election when it's like basically what happened is that there was a group of people that thought Biden was a mummy and that they didn't like the grocery store bill. And like that was basically like all of the other stuff is just kind of window dressing. And now that's like diamonds out of the picture and now that the economy isn't getting any better, those new people who came to Trump have basically snapped back. I totally agree. You know, the media tends to, whoever wins the presidency, it's like, oh, an affirmation. No, no, they just wanted to fire Kamala because they're trying to get it Biden. So it's not like it was a big love in for Donald Trump. And now the other problem I think Trump has is if you look at Trump as a totally performance reality show president, which you know, I always get in trouble with my wife Tiffany, but I'm like, you know, Andy Cohen has some explaining to do because he invented this category. We wound up with a crack by president. You know, cheap. Wow. You know, I'm going to catch in some strays now. Yeah, I'm going to get some angry email. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But no, the whole cheap conflict world of reality TV, that's what he came from. But now it's old. We're doing hangover for now. We have seen the movie and we're seeing the second Trump economic failure like when we fired him last time for Joe Biden. And of course, Trump is like haunted by the ghost of Biden. This is the funny thing. Biden really got in trouble by telling everybody you're wrong. The economy is great. Turkey is hurt. The 28th lowest price since the Civil War. You know, and people said, you're out of your mind. I was at Walmart yesterday. I tried to get a new truck. They want $890 a month. I'm paying $399 now. What the hell? So Trump's doing the same thing. He's jaw boning that you're all idiots. The economy is great. And I just invaded Venezuela to grab some oil. And you know, we've never made more money with terrorists. Are those layoffs in Ohio going to GM? He's telling them what they know is wrong. And in politics, that is the grease pig way to go over the cliff. And exactly what Biden did. And the same iceberg, I think, is going to really hurt him. There's a different point of view, kind of from the Vice President. He gave a speech at Toledo yesterday talking about how things are going on the economy. Let's listen. This is something I want you to hear. The Democrats talk a lot about the affordability crisis in the United States of America. And yes, there isn't affordability crisis. One created by Joe Biden's policies. You don't turn the Titanic around overnight. It takes time to fix what was broken. Used to be a speech. What was that metaphor? You don't turn it around or you don't raise it from the bottom of the top. You don't turn the Titanic around overnight. That's a brain teaser that metaphor. I think his speech writers hate him. Or he's maybe not hiring from the cream of the crop in that department. Yeah, I have a feeling he's going with a volunteer team, which is trouble. He ought to hire some pros. You know, I can't hear him in out of my head explode because the first time I heard that voice was when our pal Crystal gave him my cell phone number. And he called me in 2016 about running for Senate in Ohio as an anti-Trump Republican. And then I told him it would be tough, but he ought to try. You know, it's primary. Be uphill, but it's a worthy cause. And I think after that conversation, he took a right turn at Fausville and made his deal. And here he is. And you know how I think it'll end? I think Trump's going to screw it because they're going to have rough midterms. He's going to lose the house. Send his going to get closer in a bad way for the Trump guys. And then the great punditry machine, which we know well, we'll start to say even the Mago world, the Joe Rogan, which is now a little astraying another problem for Trump, will be like, well, we got vans. He's the next guy. Trump screwed it up. What about this vans? Well, he could be the real future. It's going to drive him nuts. It's like the old Russian Army joke that during World War II, two Russian generals are walking down the hall and Igor says the Dmitry Dmitry. You look terrified. What's wrong? Well, Igor, I got a big battle tomorrow. And if I lose, Donald is going to shoot me. And Dmitry says, well, looking to this way, if you win the battle, he'll shoot your family and you know, whether he rose in the Soviet Union. So good luck vans. I predict he will not be the Republican nominee. So it's Bill Crystal and Andy Cohen's fault when we're at. I'm open to all theories. Well, I don't blame, I don't blame Crystal on that. I blame him for many other things. I suffered through people can listen to this and bullwork takes, because I want a deeper dive. He went to Minnesota after that Toledo speech with the nonsense school, Titanic Matterforest. He went to Minnesota and had a press conference where he played the role of like a stern school vice principal or vice dean. Right. And there's like a student group that is trying to kind of organize, you know, something nice on campus. And he's lecturing them about how they're going to go on your program. They've got to follow the rules, young lady. And she's just like, I just wanted to do a, you know, have a gardening class here at school. Well, it's foot loose and he's the town elder. You don't know how much that's going to cost. Right. Anyway, he was lecturing the people of Minnesota, you know, with a series of lies. He talked about how racial profiling isn't happening. They are getting warrants going to people's houses. And they good did ran the officer with her car. And they had no choice but to seize the five year old child and send her to San Antonio because there are other optionists that leave them out in the cold. And that was JD's pitch. Right. So they sent them to the detention paradise there. Yeah. I was just pitching Minnesota and I just, it's just so unappealing. I do think probably some megaphoes like the fact that he's so unappealing to us. Right. Like that's maybe the appeal. Like they don't actually like him, but it's like he's really pesting off Murphy. Yeah. He really grinds their gears and so he must be one of us. I just do think that only gets you so far. Yeah. He's got that angry shoe salesman thing, you know, I've been screwed my whole life. And now that we have a right, I'm going to get him, you know, who they are. Right now, there were primary. He'd be the Republican nominee. And then there's going to be a big drive in the party for something new and fresh. And I'm not sure he'll be that by then. Now, it won't be a rejection to Trumpism. There'd be flavors of what's next. It all have some populist stink to it. Most people say you're nuts, Murphy, if the election held him around, I go, yeah, it's not held him around, but and I think the midterms are going to be a huge shaky event for the party. And then you wonder about 27. How old Donald Trump aging bruised up, you know, take failure. Superman can't fly anymore. He just got his ass kicked by the country. Now what in 27? He can't dictate the budget. He's got 40 investigations. The key is the Democrats not get stupid and keep trying to impeach him. And, you know, they, they got to be clever with their new power. But 27 is going to be a long year for the Donald. And how he behaves, which is also a little scary, you know, next thing, you know, we got a C's Manitoba. It's going to be part of the equation that drives the discussion for who the Republican nominee is and the first quarter of 2028. Yeah, you can't tell me he likes listening to JD. Oh, God, he's got to hate him. Yeah, he hates a scold, you know. And I guess in this case, JD is scolding other people and sucking up to him. And that's kind of his survival mechanism. But, you know, there's no room for any departure. Right. JD has no choice but to go on board with everything because as soon as he uses his tone to be like, well, well, Donald was, you know, thinking about this. Right. And Trump has to lay off the failure on somebody. It can't be him in the midterm. So, yeah, JD really screwed things up. I may forgive him. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify, especially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time, from startups to scale ups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. There was another country view on the economy from one other guy at Navos that got my blood boiling. So we'll get you going here. Hopefully this doesn't cost you any clients. But Ken Griffin of Citadel is important because he was, he's a big, the kiely supporter. He's a conservative guy, a huge donor, but not really a Trump guy. Come in and out of Trump. Right. He's a regular, but willing to, you know, have a reasonable discussion with the bad guys. Yeah, sure. And he was at this kind of panel to work on economic forum and he gave his rationale for why he thinks Trump is good, actually. So let's listen. You cannot imagine how painful it was each and every day under the Biden administration to look at what new crazy proposal was being put into place to solve a problem that didn't even exist. I mean, our, our constant friction at Citadel with the government across, um, teen different aspects of our business was exhausting. And to have that literally end on one day, election day, just gives you so much energy as I'm sure to go back and build your damn business. So the, the biggest sea change I've seen across American executives has been just like the, the giant sigh of relief, I can now go and focus on building my business. You talked to more rich guys than I do. Like, is that real? I heard that and I was like, I have to play this because it's like, I would think the opposite, but maybe I'm wrong. Because I don't know. I'm open to, you know, getting government off the back of industry. You know, that's, that's my instinct. Okay. But Trump is doing that. I, what about what the new crazy policy every day? It sounds like he's describing Trump. Well, you know, I do hear that not from everybody, but I, I do hear it. And what it comes from is the Biden administration did over regulate a lot of problems. You hear it from our, you know, repub friends. They start there. Well, here's how bad it was over Biden. So that makes it okay. And then they take the huge leap. And it's all short-termism. Well, the regulations are pulled. We're minting money. Yeah, but we don't have NATO anymore. Putin's, and the Chinese are running the table. And all this long-term stuff that's going to be really bad and really expensive. They're like, yeah, but this quarter I'm minting money. You know, it's a very short-termism thing to Trump to snap the leash off and let the dogs run. And we like running. But the, the categorical cost of Trump, you know, little stuff like democracy is like, well, that's, you know, that's not my quarterly earnings. I'll get to that later. Look at the stock market. Look at the national debt. Yeah. You know, look at this AI bubble. We'll see how that turns out for people who want to pay 200 times earnings for a stock. The price of gold. Yeah. Yeah, gold's doing better than the market actually over the past year. I'm for the dogs running on a long leash, not no leash at all, but the dogs like no leash at all. Yeah. And, you know, in the short term, yeah, they're going to make a lot more money, which is good for the country. I believe in growth. But they don't understand that a lot of this stuff can have a catastrophic cost. And they're doing short term steroid accounting here. I just think that there is such an, you know, kind of imbalance in the double standard on some of this stuff too. And I don't really understand how to get out of it. But like, Trump is taking a stake in 11 businesses, I think. The government now is taking 11 businesses. All the, all the, all the, the government didn't pitch that. Nobody has. You know, this guy is one per room. He's got fascist tendencies, but he's kind of a socialist that hard economically. He can't defecise spend enough, you know, if it buys in popularity. And he likes grabbing assets, you know, he's shaking down companies. And he likes bullying people with the tariffs. And I was just an example of like the Tim Cook, like this idea that, oh, you know, business owners, entrepreneurs now didn't have to worry about the government. And they can, they're unleashed and they can just run. It's like, well, maybe in some industries, but like in others, you know, imagine if, if President Harris had forced Tim Cook to come to the Oval Office and I'm going to give you, yeah, I'm going to squeeze you. You're going to get a bonus tax on you from the government. Unless you like, give me a trophy. Yeah. That was made by, you know, an indigenous supporter of mine who thinks that I'm the greatest person ever. And then you tell me how great I am. And then I might give you a reprieve from this extra tax on your business. The Ken Grypens of the world would be, you know, moving to Uruguay. Yeah. I'm like, this is con. In his heart, Trump is a lefty UK labor party guy in the 70s. I'm going to nationalize it. I'm going to tariff it. And I'm going to control everything. He is a government control guy. I remember, you know, when I was at the Georgetown College Republicans and, you know, during the Hoover administration, during the 1980s, early 80s, we would go get arrested in front of the Soviet embassy, you know, because of Afghanistan and what they were doing. We were against huge government control. So that's why the corruption of the party just stuns me. But yeah, he's not a conservative. He's a populist yo-yo and a thug and a power nut and a crazy person. So other than that, we're doing great. The psychology of Trump I got, it's the psychology of the business guys that is harder to get, you know, because I'm like, okay, it's one thing to say, okay, you know, like Biden did some bad stuff. You know, we're not doing the antitrust on spirit airlines or whatever. I get it. I find it some stupid stuff. But the jump to, we have to talk about how great things are now and ignoring all of the business risks. I don't, I don't, just to me, it feels so short-sighted. Yeah, you know, I hear it in the auto industry because I'm, you know, front of Detroit and I care a lot about whether or not we still have an auto industry because Chinese are coming fast. And, you know, they say, well, in 10 years, the Chinese are going to wipe us out. But in the next three years and then I'm going to retire, Trump took away the car standards. He's pulling us on EVs. He's handing the world market to China. That's bad. But, you know, in the short term, I'm going to hit my bonus because, you know, without the car standards, we can sell more profitable trucks. So it's this short term sugar calorie, you know, mentality because a lot of the American business incentives are very short term. And okay, but long term, I think it would be nice to have an auto industry in 15 to 20 years. Ready to launch your business? Get started with the commerce platform made for entrepreneurs. Shopify, especially designed to help you start, run and grow your business with easy customizable themes that let you build your brand, marketing tools that get your products out there, integrated shipping solutions that actually save you time from startups to scale ups, online, in person and on the go. Shopify is made for entrepreneurs like you. Find out for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Trump was at the auto show. They had reviews. He went to the Detroit Economic Club and then he said, you know, I'm going to let the Chinese come here and, you know, build some plants and about 17 auto vice presidents immediately at heart attacks and strokes. And of course, the Canadians have responded to his bullying by letting Chinese made EVs in Canada. So yeah, he's no friend of American manufacturing and the tariffs are not that good. The most beautiful thing in production is the North American integrated auto chain Canada US Mexico and he's done everything and can to screw that up. So what is even the case for him in the auto place? I guess that they he's taken all these some of the mandates on, you know, electric. Yeah, it's the carb stuff. The government now can't tell you what your average miles have to be, which forces you to make smaller lighter vehicles. Of course, Americans don't want to buy. Is everybody wants their fantastic large pickup truck. But you know, if you have any kind of mileage standard, the idea was one air pollution to dependence on oil. List of a problem now we were fracking. We got a lot more oil. And three, it'll move people to electric vehicles, which is where the world is going and our company needs to need scale. The US is only 10% of the world auto markets. So it was the stick and the incentives where the carrot Trump's ripped all that away. So short term, it's a bit of a boost. Well, the tariffs have cost billions. So on one hand, he's given them steroids and other hand, he saw in their arm off. You know, again, this is toddler with the chainsaw economics. But if we don't compete in EVs, which were 25% of world auto sales last year, we're British lately. And it might be too late already. And the Chinese EVs are just way better. I don't know about way better, but they're very good. The Germans got destroyed in the Chinese markets. So some of their new stuff coming out next year is really good. And this new $4,000, $30,000 small issue being pickup truck is going to be tremendous. That we're catching up pretty quick. But we need our home market to support as well. The Chinese don't care about making any money. They've got 100 brands of car. They make gas cars too, as many as they do EVs. More actually. None of them make money. So the Chinese thing is political. By exporting a lot of cheap cars, we take over foreign markets and we de-industrialize our competitors. Right before World War II started, the Brits made 500,000 light vehicles. The French made about 360,000 Germans, about 420,000. The year before Pearl Harbor, we made 4.7 million vehicles, which is why every locomotive, most trucks, tanks, aircraft, aircraft engines, World War II from the Russians for British Empire had made an USA on them. Today, if we have a drone manufacturing contest, we're not going to win. So industrial power is important politically. And the Chinese know that. So if you're not an auto-exec, you've got to go compete in the Mexican market. We're in five years of the Chinese have gone from importing 500 cars to 400,000. And you've got to lose 10 grand of cars competing with the Chinese government, subsidizing their guys to wipe you out. We need a little government help in the short term. I hate subsidies. I don't like any protection as many of this. But short term, it's a political fight. You can imagine a good Trump doing this. You can imagine a good right-wing nationalist do this. So this is the other thing. It's like, he's offering us the stupidest, imaginal version of right-wing nationalism. Right? A smart person with kind of a Trumpian world view. It can maybe a Boris Johnson type in America, right? Like would go to Canada, Mexico, Europe, Australia and be like, let's team up here. Right? Let's keep the Chinese vehicles out of the market. Let's industrialize ourselves. We'll subsidize that. We'll trade with each other. We'll do some of the production in Mexico or it's cheaper or whatever, right? Like in order to compete against China on this. And we're doing the opposite. Yeah. I got to send those to move people in our lucrative home market to EVs. Until a couple of years ago, GM sold more cars outside of America than the US and Ford sales of big concocts side. And so you got to be a world competitor to have the scale, which is a key to the out of business. So anyway, Trump is no friend of many of the people he says he's friends of like the average auto worker, union or non-unity. Before I move on, I just wanted to circle back on the equity stakes just to make sure I had this right. US government does have equity stake in now 11 companies since mid 2025. Prior to Trump, the US hadn't taken a non-crisis investment in a private company since the 1950s. Now we have 11. Yep. US steel, semi-conductors, minerals. Yeah, very cheap. And I think one of those companies, Trump's blog has a share of now. It's kind of like a blog slash cryptocurrency, slash nuclear fusion kind of. It's interesting. Trump went public once in his casino empire and pumped the stock to the 90s and then it crashed I think a dollar or maybe 75 cents. White does investors totally out. So he's not the wizard. I want to charge at this and of course the principal is horrible. So are there that? I want to go back to the Minnesota stuff really quick. The House passed through the DHS budget. Looks like we're not going to have a spending fight over this because there are seven Democrats voted on this. I've been a Marie Glews and Campress fan girls on this podcast. She's great. So I do love her. Bad vote. She was one of a seven that went with DHS. My opinion, bad vote. I'm curious what you think. They decided to not agree. It goes to the Senate. You know, who knows what kind of wrangling they could do. Maybe you know, you could have individual senators try to gum up the works. What do you think the Democratic kind of angle should be on dealing with, you know, ice broadly and what we're seeing in Minneapolis? They ought to keep shouting. You know, it's interesting. There's a guy running for governor New Mexico. I think it's Berglund in the Democratic primary. And I did a scene and hit with my pal, Alex Michael send the other night and he was on two. And he's kind of a meat and potatoes prosecutor, kind of regular Democrat type. And he and I was on the area and said, look, they scoop up any American citizens in my jurisdiction. I want to have local cops put handcuffs on them. You know, we're going to lock them up. It's illegal. So come on down and try it in New Mexico. I asked Mayor Fry about this on the podcast two weeks ago, a week ago. He basically said, I kind of, I'm leaving the door open that we want to do it. But it's such a crisis situation there. That there's so many guys with guns. It's like, I don't know if we want to escalate in this moment. I'm for pulling guns. I'm for settling this. Really? I mean, you know, it's a pretty extreme. But they're scooping up American citizens like the Gestapo. So yeah, we have a Minnesota state. You're for Wild West. New Mexico would be a good place for that. You're not for a gun fight. But I'm for maxing out municipal and state of Minnesota power to stop this. Yeah. You know, I'm just not shy about American Gestapo's out of control. The degree to which they all lie about it. I mean, politicians always lie. And there's, you know, various ways that you disembowl or you kind of paint a picture a little bit better than it actually is. But, you know, my colleague, Yandra Eger wrote about this story this morning. I don't know if you saw that the kind of elderly, among man, they stormed his hat. They pull him out in his underwear. Yeah. Yeah, they frog marching mountain is underwear. Guns drawn. He has his five year old grandson is like what got woken up from the nap by, you know, guys and mass with guns. He's a citizen. He's a naturalized citizen. They take him out and the cold is underwear, you know, rough him up and then send him back to the house a couple hours later. That comes out and says, well, there were two other criminals like sex, petos in the house, you know, and so, and we got the wrong guy. The like these two criminals are still at large. They published their picture. Okay. Well, my colleague, Yandra Eger looked into this. One of those guys has been in jail since 2024. And so that we asked the HS about this and the HS is like, well, if the Minnesota local officials would have worked with us, we had a known that. And it's like, we called the corrections department in Minnesota. They're like, no, we're working with them all the time. You know, all those guys that they're saying they're getting the worst of the lives. And mostly people we transferred to them from prisons. It's not the people random people they're harassing on the streets. And so it's just like lie after lie after lie after they met a citizen. Yeah, because when it's lie with the badges and the seal, people want to believe it. So in the future, they won't undercut law enforcement. You know, it's funny. Just one ice thing here in Los Angeles, my wife's car got boosted last weekend and went through all the drama Saturday morning. Anyway, it was dump stripped and chopped in the South Central. So we get a call from the cops who finally got to come down here and see if you can get it to move. So we go down there and she's chatting up with two, you know, LAPD kind of grizzled veteran cops in a panda car. She just says, you guys worry about ice. And all of a sudden, oh, they don't have the guts to come down here. It was great kind of defiant. These were kind of authentic South L.A. guys who were cops. And they just like let them try. So yeah, I've become pretty militant about this. We got a crackpot president is trying to build a petroleum guard, federal thugs, and it's time for the states to step up in local authorities. Let's have a couple of state police bear cats. It's in line with, I think, our past Murphy. I always was in the spirit of the gants and flag resonated with me. I was a don't tread on me person. It wasn't like a flag waiver. But you know, I sort of found myself as kind of aligned with the spirit of the cause. And it's like, it's amazing how many of the don't tread on me flag waivers have like, you can kind of crossed out the don't and replaced it with like tread on me, Kamadadi, in this situation. And I don't really, I don't get it. I get it is against the spirit of a member of what we used to call the cause. We didn't like big government. National ID card hell no. You know, the government was the problem, you know, the Leviathan, the road to surf dumb. We had ideas. It was a reason I spent 30 years of my life in shitty hotels like this one in the middle of nowhere to elect some meat puppet to the Congress for you, send it to stand up for those principles. So yeah, yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. I thought we actually believed in something. Speaking of meat puppets, no, he's better than that. You're governor Gavin. Last time you were on, you talked about you had a meeting with him. Yeah. When you last time he was first kind of road testing the dark woke Gavin strategy of trolling Trump, that has continued. You know, when it started, I was going to be a week long thing or a little thing, but I just kept the pedal to the metal on this. Obviously huge success in the redistricting effort. He's in Davos this week. I played it for Plough earlier in the week. He's talking about how these world leaders need to get some knee pads out for the way that they're treating Trump. So he's continuing the strategy. I'm wondering what you make of it. Well, I believe that strategy in the short term, the pre-season has helped him win the pre-pre-season, but there's no award for that. It just puts you on deck for the real show. So you know, my opinion, I've said this a lot with the Axelrod on Taap. The governor I met about electric vehicles. He's his forum because he understands that half the labs that are going to slow China down are in California. But on this performative stuff he's doing, that's going to work great for him as the number one Trump slapper among base Democrat voters through the midterms. And then it'll get very old, very fast. When everybody will do it, JD Pritzfer will be doing pro wrestling interviews. I want to get Trump in the steel cage right here in Chicago. And it'll be very generic and it'll be very tired. So I'm not tired of it yet. That sounds good right now. And the pre-pre-season, he should invite him to steal. He's showing that Donald Trump, you know, and they got a Twitter like a Twitter Trump like Muscober. And Zuckerberg, we're talking about doing an MMA fight together. I kind of want that. Right. No, it's all that kind of stuff. But you know, Pritzker ultimately would eat a best at, you know, an air condition cobalt hall. I'm going to get that bum in here. He's no good for, you know, the old Dicta bruiser routine for the Detroit. But the problem is that makes you interesting for now. Good. But leverage that into the future. Yeah. The 27 will really be about, which in 27 drives the early primaries. People think it's 28. It's really 27. So you got to be the forward ideas guy. You got to have a vision for the middle class in America. The Trump is going to wither a lot. So it's not a bad opening actor Gavin. My advice to him would be a little of that goes a long way. Having a 24 hour, you know, snappy arch Twitter feed is fun for a while. But again, it's kind of like, you know, being a, a fire baton juggler. Yeah, you can be an opening act with, it's not going to go farther. You need the real thing and he's got to do that. And he doesn't want to refer into my California. Yeah. The fire baton juggler doesn't become Harry Styles, you know, he don't become the man. Right. Right. It just gets you into the variety show. But then you got to take it there. Yeah. Yeah. That's just because there's an Atlantic piece about this this week. Jonathan Shate was on it. And he talked about how his record is a problem. Part of me is like, does that even matter now? You know, did Trump's record matter? Not really? We're in a different world. On the other hand, I was reading some of the things that he listed. And I just want to share a couple of them with you. California spent billions offering Medicaid to undocumented immigrants, millions more on providing transgender surgeries for prisoners. Some of them on death row. Death row transgender surgeries is an interesting one. The state got a very cut rate deal on bad doctors for that though. It's like he'll Dennis. No joke. Be a pathologist, surgery on dead people. What can go wrong? Also, the highest state ex-times tax in the country on gas. And then there's this one. In 2021, he signed a bill mandating an ethnic studies course about power identity and social justice for all high school students. The model curriculum in its first draft taught cis hetero-patriarchy and heart-story, HXR-story, and likened capitalism to white supremacy, newsom quietly defunded that program last year. Does that stuff matter? Yeah. California is a little different. It's a brand. People outside California, they're either say, oh, it's left-wing, crazy, governor moon beam. And this has been around forever. And all that stuff feeds that narrative. On the other hand, people think California is often the future where the future is invented. It used to be the golden state people wanted to go to. So the trick for Gavin will be, can he make the debate about some of the great stuff that happens in California? It's the biggest wealth-creating machine as a state than anything in America. I mean, it's a lot of what happens first. That's good happens there too. Can he make it? He's the future guy with the vision, or is he going to be in a bad-incaged, defending all this crazy left-wing stuff? If he's that guy, he loses. So that's why he's eventually got a pivot from NANNANANANAT at Trump into, you know, I've said publicly, his line ought to be, everything happens first in California for good or bad. And we make all the big mistakes there first, but we learn from them so we don't repeat them. And try to turn it into, it lessen learned experience. Not everything's great. I dare you to deny that. And then we're going to be talking about some of this stuff and that'll be bad for him. I just think it's a general thing. Anytime you're kind of writing down a new word and creating a new word, if it begins with five consonants, it better be Polish. Yeah, you're going to be Polish. It's otherwise. It's a good joke. It's a extra-hark story. Yeah. So you can't say it. I don't think it's going to stay. Michael Stein, the light great poster, had a wonderful joke. Most people think an Afghan is a cat. If they went to college, they'll say it's a blanket. So yeah, you don't really need 20 at consonants, not the language of the election. Give us your tight five and a wealth tax debate. There's a breakaway SEIU union of healthcare workers in San Francisco. So this is not the whole SEIU talking. Run by kind of a charismatic rogue guy who's like, damn it, I'm putting this on the ballot. Every billionaire has to give 5% one time of all their assets. So let's say you own the New York Yankee. So on paper, you're now worth 14 billion, but it's not liquid. But here's the good news. UOS 70 billion cash next Thursday. So we just did a poll on it. 70 million. I'm not a math teacher. Yeah, whatever it was. It's early here. We just did a poll and we were the first poll to test the actual ballot language, which came out the day after Christmas. We're getting signatures and may not be on the ballot. New sum opposes it. A lot of the polls oppose it. The teacher's union opposes it. But this guy is like double the budget for, wait for it, healthcare workers by union, or I'm going to put this on. So a couple of billionaires called up and said, you know, what do you think? I said, let me poll the title in summary. And then they said, well, that's a lot of money for a poll. And I said, you can afford it. So we did and we released the data and you can find it just Google and a bunch of stories. It showed that yes voted 48. And we asked people, do you like billionaires? Not really. Should billionaires pay more taxes? Absolutely. Well, what do you think about this tax? I hate it because we're never collected dime. They're going to move. And we asked people, if you had a billion dollars, would you stay and pay 50 million or would you leave? I'd leave. So they think they're going to leave. They think they're going to tie it up in court forever, maybe going to the Trump Supreme Court. And the state will never see a dime. But when they leave, it'll cost jobs and it'll screw up the income taxes where the 1% pays half of all state income taxes in California. We have a high state income tax rate at the top, 10% plus. So that will be big budget cuts. So this thing is badly written. And I think if it makes it to the ballot, which is an if, I think it's eminently beatable. And I hope to be part of beating it, frankly. I think it's horrible policy. One of the things that during my immigration, away from their Republican party, one of the things that I've changed my views on is taxation of the top 1%. And it's not anything to do with Trump. It's because I spent an inordinate amount of time in 2016 meeting rich people asking them for the anti-Trump effort. And I was like, wait a minute. Not all of you are up by your bootstraps after all. And so my populist California proposal is, I want to come after the RSUs. I want the guy that was the fourth employee at the AI company. I did a nice job. Fine is doing quite well. But then he gets to sell as RSUs and makes 80 million off of it. I don't know if we need the capital gains rate on that. I think that we could take a little bit more from those folks. So I think that there's ways to do populist stuff. This just feels like kind of a dumb way to do it. Yeah. No, no. And there is a way to get more revenue. But what's amazing is a couple of billionaires have said to me, you know, I'll pay more. I wish I had a government where I'd get more for it in the state. But yeah, you know, but if you assets, you're going to force me out of the state and I'm going to close my thing, et cetera, et cetera. Now as far as you and this left wing communism, you're preaching here at ITAC. See, I'm the story of the public in and me. We're going to hook you up with Joe Rogan's agent. We're going to so crystal to give you a bigger piece of this huge podcast on Run Your Hit. I'll see you at the Bentley dealership next year. I'm happy to pay income on if we get the Barry Weiss deal on the bull work. Yeah, I know exactly. And pay taxes at ordinary income. I don't need the capital gains right for the sales fair and outs. But I hear you about, you know, my life's good. All right. It's why I'm never going to be a billionaire. You know, somebody that has my point of view is never going to be a better. Well, let me tell you my out of the way. All right. I've got a great life. I don't need a plane. We have the new Trump Liberty coins here on crypto. So we're talked to him. Can't lose money. You spend it all. Hey, you've earned your success, pal. I've known you a long time and I'm proud of you. Thank you, man. I really appreciate that final topic. Yeah. Somebody who hasn't earned their success. I just had to read this one to you because it's too funny to not get the Murphy take on it. Right. Very serious story in the New York Times for a bunch of people got kicked out of cash but tell FBI talking about the ways that our country's less safe and the silliness of it and how he's pushing out experts in favor of hacks, et cetera. There's one anecdote that really caught my eye and this is from a top official of the FBI that has since been pushed out. Every May there's a five eyes conference with the head of every intelligent agency. This year it was going to be in the UK. Cash Patel was going to go. In the lead up to that, his detail starts making requests. He's got special requirements for everything and the Brits are getting pissed. Before the conference as staff says he's unhappy because he doesn't like meetings and office settings. He wants social events. He wants to do it at the premier soccer games. He wants to go jet skiing. He'd like a helicopter tour. Everyone who heard about it this was like hold on. He wants the MI5 director to meet on a jet ski. The schedule is set. He can come or not. His staff only cared about three things. What his meals were when his workouts would be and what his entertainment would be. That's the head of the FBI. Yeah. Yeah. No, the Beverly Hill Billies. I'm in the UK next week and I'll see a Tory or two and they're all just stunned. Who are these credons? What they scream at you is don't you understand you cannot have bloody idiots running the USA. You're the metronome beat. Right now you got a chimpanzee banging it against the head. It screws up the world. Yeah. The legacy of the Trump thing will be the worst staff people in the history of the American government. It is just incredible. That's all this guy. There have been other stories about it. He hid in his plane for an hour because he couldn't find the right tough guy jacket to wear to some photo. And he's got agents who ought to be like gang busting, chasing around to make sure his girlfriend gets a good seat at the, you know, the, in this case, Windsor Castle. Yeah. That's the other sentence that I rated the biggest plan. He wanted to make sure this girlfriend got a chance to go to the Windsor Castle while there it is. Yeah. She'd really like to hang out with the Queen. She wants to sing. She's going to be a pop. She's like some bad country star, right? So she'd really like to make the Queen sit through five bad renditions of Joleen or say, you know, it is a, it is a nightmare, but it will end. The Queen is dead. So it'd be the king. I know I know it's older. I grandish. Kate Mendeltson. Yeah. Or like the kids. I keep saying her hands did look a lot like Donald Trump's hands. Adavans. It's all the same. Yeah. I'm saying I just, I just, I'm not taking from here. You're just asking questions. You should do the Trump thing. You know, people are saying, I mean, I hear it all the time. They think it's blood cancer brain worms. That's what they're saying. That's what people are talking about the hands, the hands or thing. I don't know. They're pretty bad serious hands. That's like Murphy. Every time we get it, it's just kind of like we're at the Kingpin. He's at the corner. He said he said two pops, you know, or the corner part of the bar. And it's just drunk on this, giving us the material. So we appreciate it. He's our resident norm. That's right. Murphy checking out on hacks on tap. And we'll see you guys soon. All right. Take care, Tim. Thanks so much to Murf. Always appreciate him coming on. Hopefully he gave you a little bit of a laugh. We'll be back Monday. We do have some serious material to discuss next week. So we'll see you all then. Bill Crystal on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend. Peace. What a positive end. I want to miss you. What a future. You'll be a future. God, take a break. What made it mad? We love our dreams. God's side. The board podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with Audio Engineering and Editing by Jason Bra.