Mike Murphy: Rogue Republican

that Elizabeth Coopler Ross talked to us about. At least if you're on the losing side, and many of those folks are still at the denial stage, don't you think, Well, that's clearly true because a lot of them are sending millions of dollars to Green Party Canada Jill Stein Online to pursue recounts in three places where the famous blue

Wall broke for Hillary Clinton, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. And I am probably more likely to grow wings and start to fly than for those recounts to overturn the results of the election. It's just not going to happen. The

margins are too big. Meanwhile, Trump Tower has been the site of very interesting comings and goings with a lot of different candidates and almost feels like the dating game where people are coming and they're courting Donald Trump, They're having conversations with him most recently for Secretary of State. And uh, it's been a fascinating thing to watch because it's been so public, hasn't it. Brian, Yeah, it's it's almost like a reality show, you could say. I mean,

normally this process is very hush hush. Certainly the president elect doesn't communicate publicly about who the candidates are and how excited he is to meet them or to interview them. I know, it's like it's like he's sixty four. He was a general, he was behind the Iraq Sir. He had a bear with his biographer. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome dun dunt dun du. General David Buttres Now is Chuck Woolery, the host of the Dating Go Oh No, that was Jim Lange, Baby Jim Lang. Anyway, let's move

on to our guest. Brian tell us about him. Brian, Well, I think he's a little bit better at breaking down politics than seventies game shows. But we're gonna have to sort of bear with him. Uh. He's really a central figure in Republican politics. He's advised almost every big name GOP candidate, from John McCain to Mitt Romney. He had his own podcast earlier this year, and he offered a very fascinating look into what Trump selection means, how it happened,

and the path forward for the country. Mike Murphy, Welcome to our little podcast. We're so excited you're here. Thank you for having me. I have a lot of time on my hands now I have to ask you, Mike, how's it. What's a nice kid like you doing in a profession like this? How did you get into political consulting? For crying out loud? Well, I may be out of it now because I was ethically wrong this year. I was like the automic that's true, it's a big room.

But I was saying all year mathematically, I did not think Trump could get enough votes to win. It turns out that you can lose by doing half million and still win. So it's been a character building experience. But I got into this. I'm from Detroit. I'm from a political family of Democrats, so I kind of grew up around it, and I kind of got the bug for domestic politics. So I was still a college student. I worked for this congressman nobody thought could win out of

my dorm room making radio commercials. And he won, and so one thing led to another, and now I'm a political consultant. So I called back to Democrat headquarters at our house in Detroit and told my parents I'm gonna drop out of Georgetown and go run off and join the Republican Party. And yeah, only converting to an Episcopalian might have been worse. It was. It was a bumpy conversation. So I took a leave of absence from Georgetown. Uh, and I've never gone back. I do really more corporate

and kind of grown up stuff now. I pretty much retired from doing campaigns, though Jeb did drag me back for one more great effort because I believed in him. I thought he'd be the best president. So I ran the Jeb Bush Superpack, which gives me the unique credential of having blown over nine million dollars and not. And we should we should let people know that Murphy's kind

of the Zelig of American politics. His clients have included Jeff Bush, as he mentioned, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tommy Thompson, Christie Whitman, so many others. Um I'm always very amused on Twitter when people give him suggestions about how political strategy, strategy should be done, and his response as always, well, how many senators and governors have you elected?

Which that I'm My specialty is winning governor races, which I did, you know, worked hard to help Jeff Bush win in Florida or Mitt Romney and Massachusetts. Then later on when they lose the presidential stuff, I always take my share of the blame, but I'm very proud of the governor's I worked for in the senators. Well, and you're more of a hopeless romantic, as you've described yourself

in presidential politics. What does what does that mean? Well? No, and I have a rule that in the presidential field you should not be mercenaries. So I always pick the person I think should be president, regardless of where they are in the pulse, which is not a great career decision, but if you look at my record, I've done very wealth senators and governors have about the best record in the Republican Party. But at the presidential level, I worked

for Lamar Alexander. I thought he'd be the best guy. We started one percent and got to nine. You know, we never quite made it. I worked for John McCain in two thousand because I thought he'd be the best. I took two thousand and eight off because I was close to McCain and Romney, and I thought it was an ethical conflict to work for either one of them. I did work for George H. W. Bush and eighty eight. I also worked earlier in that primary for Bob Dole.

So I always think the presidential thing is a higher level deal and you should really pick the best person, regardless of Poleon, and you know, have the argument within the party and see which faction wins. And I've been less lucky at that, but I'm I don't regret working for any of those guys. I think they all would

have been excellent presidents. So to take us forward to this year, you you know the criticism, you know, raised this historic amount of money, and Jeb Bush had the name and the connections and the endorsements, and it was

a big flop and therefore all your fault. Um, what's your what's your response to people who sort of questioned your acumen coming out of the Bush Superpack experience, Well, this job being a political consultant or running a big play co operations, like being a Big ten football coach. Everybody with a bar stool in fifty states thinks they

can do your job. I spent a lot of time thinking about things we could have done differently, and I imagine as there's other senior people at right to rise have We had some of the best consultants in the party with Larry McCarthy, Eliza Hickey had had a great run at the NFCC, and we all think about things we could have done differently, but none of us come up with the outcome of we win the primary. We

just weren't what they were looking for. And I would say, in some ways, though, you know, you never want to justify a loss his businesses about winning. Jeb stuck to his principles and never had to apologize for anything you did in that campaign. And I think if he was a nominee, we would have won the general election and the country would be united behind him. Today people didn't take Donald Trump seriously, including you. How were you so wrong? How were so many people so wrong? Might well, we

took him seriously, but not. I mean, here's our view because we you know, we talked to a lot of Republican primary voters, so we had a pretty good landscape of what was going on and we saw there was about a third of the vote that was interested in Trump, and none of those people were interested in Jeff Bush. We were never going to get Trump and Cruise voters to vote for a guy like Jeff Bush. Uh. And so there might have been things we could have done

better on Rubio, better on k Sake. Uh, we might have sold Jeb in better ways, But Jeff was never going to go to the border and start rounding people up. He was never going to take that grievance message. To his credit, I joked that we were we were selling classical music records at the Tractor Poll, and sixty of the primary was wasn't interested in what we were selling.

And so there it is. You know, I'm struck by something you said a little bit earlier that you had the best professionals and the party, these highly regarded consultants. And Hillary Clinton also had the most highly regarded, highly paid Democratic consultants working for her, and she Yeah, she won the popular vote, but she's not gonna be the next president. Do you think that the era of the professional political tactician is coming to a close and being

replaced by something new and different. No, I think that's a conventional. It's a very fashionable opinion. So I know for pretty much a fact that the single most surprised person on election night was Donald Trump when he won and his staff, some of whom were embedding pools, taking

him as a loss among political consultants. So now we're going to have kind of the classic process story of let's throw out everything we know about politics because we had this flukish kind of win and the things that have been true and predicted for forty years no longer count.

And maybe I'm a traditionalist, but I don't believe that we were involved in some senate races helping hold the Senate, and a lot of the same political consultants are the idiots who worked for losing presidential campaigns were running winning senate campaigns. So I I've been around too long and seen too many fads come and go, particularly in the Easy magazine writing to believe a big indictment like that that said we can learn things from the Trump victory

and get better at what we do. Didn't Donald Trump only w the eligible vote. So when you think about like a mandate or an overwhelming victory, isn't that a bit of a misnomer? Well, He won about forty six and a half percent of the people who did vote, which is a lower percentage than Mitt Romney got four years ago. It's a lower percentage than you know, many losing candidates over the years, like Hubert Humphrey and Gerald Ford. So yeah, I think you're right that the mandate question

is is a real one. What do you think, Well, I think it's true. In percentages and raw vote he did pretty well. I mean, this was not a freakishly low turnout election. I think the real story of election Day was the composition of the Republican vote that elected Trump to the Electoral College was different than we've ever seen before, and that's one reason a lot of us

missed it. So for people who are just trying to kind of wrap their brains around what happened, Trump lost a lot of the swing counties, He didn't perform as well as winners normally need to perform, and Hillary hit her marks and a lot of the Democratic counties. But what happened was in Florida and in other places, Trump got big turnout and big margins out of counties where the Republican normally wins by fifteen or twenty. He would

win by thirty or more. He had huge spikes in a relatively small number of places, though he got a closer and many people thought to begin with. So you had two things going on. Lack of enthusiasm for Hillary, who was a pretty bad candidate. I don't know what her messages to this day. Stronger Together sounds like a

glue slugan to me, um. But the point is, if you were swinging a hammer bendon metal in Macomb County, another county in north of Detroit, industrial county where Obama won last time, and he won big this time, you weren't that interested in the gender rules about bathrooms for LGBT. You were wondering what people are gonna do about jobs for blue collar people like you. Trump spoke to those people, many of whom historically have been Democrats, many whom are

industrial union members. She did not, And I think that's pretty big malepractice on the Democratic side, and you know there will be some repercussions in their party. But she rolled over when it came to blue blue collar workers. I mean, it seems she just abdicated that whole voting block to Donald Trump. If I was reading a piece in the New York Times that Bo Copley, who we had on Yahoo News the night of the election, a

coal miner. You know, people were saying in West Virginia that all Donald Trump had to do was mentioned coal miners, and they basically, you know, they flocked to him because they have felt so marginalized and so out of the mainstream for so long. Just a mere acknowledgement of their existence was enough to win their vote. Well, there's no doubt that the modern Democratic Party, and they've had some

success with this. But if you look at kind of the intellectual elites that drive them, their thinkers, and you look at the donor class that has huge influence, it's heavily dominated by people kind of from the social issues on the more libertarian i'll call it side uh more equal rights for people regardless of sexual preference, things like that,

and the strong environmental groups. So if you're you know, if you're working in a plant with a smokestack uh running on coal powered electric city, it doesn't look like your party anymore. And I think they paid a political price for that. But I have no doubt this was a real lockpicking of the electoral college. That's why the Trump guys were surprised as the rest of us because it was a very weird coalition he got and normally, if you lose by two and a half million votes,

you lose. Um, So this thing, you know, the media has to be careful about calling it a big mandate. It's really still a divided country. But we saw a pain scream, kind of a political riot of sorts from about fifty counties where people have not had a raise in real wages for a long time. They work in the old economy, which doesn't seem hip and doesn't seem cool. She didn't talk to them, and Trump did. Trump talked

to him pretty base language. I think there's some stains on his campaign from the way he conducted himself, but it worked. It was enough to get him close overall and to trip those counties. Uh. And now he's the president elect. Well, when we come back, let's talk about how he's doing as president elect and about some of the moves he's made us are both in terms of personnel and on Twitter. But first we're going to take a break to hear from our sponsors and from you.

We'll be back with Mike Murphy right after this. During our last episode, we asked to hear from some of our conservative listeners and here's what you all had to say. Hi, Bryan and Katie, this is Margie from Mississippi. I am a conservative voter, and in regard to the future of the Republican Party, a couple of things. First comment is that you're correcting your last podcast in saying that callen uneducated white voters. Feels like it is an inferior vote

compared to others, and that characterization is seen negatively. The second thing is in regard to the Republican Party, that that continue to be based on economic progress. I have post for a Donald Trump administration in those respects and further the Republican Party on those bases. You know, it's interesting. She says that she was offended by some pundon's talking about uneducated voters or non college voters. Donald Trump himself said I love the poorly educated, and nobody in that

camp seemed to take much offense. So I guess it depends on the messenger as well as the message. Well, I think we talked about it, and it does seem sort of smug and patronizing, So I appreciate that Margie feels that way too, because I've always felt slightly uncomfortable with the overuse of that characterization personally. Hey, Brian and Katie is Greg Gordon in Texas and I normally vote for the Republicans for president. This time I couldn't do it. Um.

Donald Trump scares me. He scares me because he's not presidential. As a kid, I mean even now as an adult, I look up to the president not so much that they're smarter than me or better than things, but they just need to be presidential. George Washington, Franklin Roosevelt like, and even Teddy Roosevelt, all those folks, Lendon Johnson, They're just this big, humanous figure and I just don't see it with him in his Twitter account. So anyway, thanks,

and I love y'all's podcast. Well, thank you Greg Gordon in Texas for liking our podcast. You know, I wonder if anybody can be larger than life and completely presidential given the ubiquity of social media and how much access the public has to these individuals. It's so accessible. What do you think of that, Brian, I think there's something to that. I think a lot of our greatest presidents wouldn't pass through the filter of modern media. They wouldn't

get away with not being able to walk. Hiding their physical infirmity is like Franklin Roosevelt did, or being as as unfaithful to their spouse as John Kennedy was. But um, there's something else there too, which is that if you didn't like Donald Trump as a candidate, I don't think you're liking Donald Trump as president elect. Right now He's not operating in a dramatically different way than he did

before November eight. Meanwhile, for our next episode, we'll be speaking with Valerie Jarrett, President Obama's longtime senior advisor and very close and longtime friend. What questions do you have for her about her eight years working closely with President Obama in the White House. Please call us and leave us a message at nine to nine, two to four, four, six,

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the gift guaranteed to be a hit. Yeah, I'm hungry. Cook out at Katie's. So we're back with the GOP Svengali, Mike Murphy and you go back a long way with Mitt Romney. You actually were the consultant for the only political race he's ever won for governor of Massachusetts in two thousand two. When we first met, you were plotting the early moves of that campaign. And you know one I like to tease Mitt that I'm the only political

consultant has handed him a victory speech. Um, he reminds me there were some primaries that he won in a nomination that I did not help him with. So he's a good guy, he's a patriot, and I think, um, you know, Elect Trump would be well advised to bring some people into actually know the world. Well, President elect Trump is putting met Romney through the ringer right now by encouraging or at least allowing some of his top

aids to throw mud on Mitt Romney. To mix my metaphor, And do you think Romney, if he's offered the job of Secretary of State, should take it. Do you think he'd be positioned to succeed in that job or what's going on? Well, if you watch the Trump campaign, there's a juvenile culture of silly in funding among his staff. You know that we had about five purges. It was a banana Republic of a campaign. So now we have somebody Kelly and Conway who comes from the bottom tier

Republican posters. So I think kind of one a lucky lottery here, Uh is out trashing Governor Romney in the press. Well, the President elect is trying to put his cabinet together having a fairly thoughtful process. I think of meeting with people and sounding them out. So I'm going to try to set an example for Kelly and of how staff operate. And I'm not going to comment or speculate at all

on what Governor Romney may or may not do. Uh, just to say that, um, he's eminently qualified, and I respect the president elexibility to make this decision not be buffaloed by the public antics of staffers. But do you think he's walking into a situation in which he's going to be second guest and criticized and anytime he makes a move as Secretary of State, Well, we know what the Trump campaign culture was, we don't know what the Trump white House culture is. It's either evolving toward a

better thing or it will be the same. So I think it's an open question, and there's one person on the planet who can drive that, which is the president elect. He's got to choose and uh, I think a lot of people are surprised that it's not been kind of tightened up, but that it's his operation, his culture. He's the one. So we're waiting to see. Well, reading the Tea leaves. What do you what do you anticipating? Mike, Well, I you know, I've learned not to handicap the and

predict the activity of Donald Trump. I thought he was very gracious on election night, and I think he's had days where he's succeeding. He's had days where he's been tweeting silly things and shaking the confidence and some of us who know what the job is. Uh So, I think it's still an open question and these this silly staff trashing nominees that the president elect is interested in. I mean I saw even Axel Rod tweeted something about this.

None of us who have worked in serious presidential level staff work have ever seen anything like it. So I, um, you know, I'm not going to fuel that fire by speculating about what Mitt might or might not do. I'll just say he's a grown up who knows the world. Uh. He was proven, right. I think some of his criticism President Obama on foreign policy, so his wisdom is proven.

I'm a real fan of Mitt Romney's I mean, I like him very much, but when I think of foreign policy, the name that Romney does not come to mind immediately. What really does qualify him to be Secretary of State. Mike, Well, the job as Secretary of State is to both represent the US abroad as the president's top surrogate in international relations, and definitely looks the part. Yeah, that's the sexist remark. I think that he is a good negotiator and he

has relationships around the world. He is diplomatic and temperate. He also made a principal criticism of some of the weaknesses of the Obama foreign policy, uh, both about Russia and about the Middle East, that I think have born more true than not. So he is uh. I think he's as well briefed and by temperament as well equipped to be Secretary of State as anybody. But again what I think doesn't matter. It's down to the decision of

the president elect. And I would encourage people to not watch the juvenile antics of of figurehead campaign managers on Sunday shows and wait to hear from the president elect. Conway online too, for you, Mike, she was a figurehead. We all know Bannon ran the thing along with Trump, but really ran and he's a one man show. So I'm just not going to join the media heard of canonizing, particularly this kind of behavior, which I think undermines our

own candidate. But from the Romney perspective, this is especially striking because he gave a devastating speech in March attacking Trump. Um, so, how can you turn around and work for someone you've called a fraud and a phony, someone who would make the world more dangerous and whose trademark is dishonesty? How can you represent that person as you know, the chief

implement er of their foreign policy. Well, my guests, and I'm speculating here is the argument that people who would urge mint Ronny you have offered to take such a job as that the national interest is the highest thing, and the more competent people who join a campaign team that may be a team of rivals, to use a familiar phrase, would be serving the country wealth. The president asks you, it's hard to say no. Now, it's up to the President elect to do the asking, and he

may never do that. But if you're asked and the president elect things that the campaign is over and it's time to unite and he could use your skills to further national interests, it's a hard thing to say no to. You know. There's been controversy around another Trump appointment Jeff Sessions for attorney general. I think this is correct, right. You worked for Sessions when he ran for the Senate. Ironically, in Jeff's first campaign, his consultants from myself and John Weaver,

who worked for Ca Sick. Yeah, exactly, both Trump critics. This is a guy who was denied, as you know, a federal judge ship about thirty years ago because of allegedly racist comments he made. Do you think he'd be a good attorney general? Do you think his credentials on race or are strong enough to unite the country? Brian, how did I become a surrogate for the Trump transition team here? I'm asking your opinion as a political expert and as somebody who worked for the attorney general designate.

I do not believe he has a racist bone in his body. I worked for him in one campaign. I did not do the reelection. Um. I think it will be up to his Senate colleagues to look at his full record, and my guess is he will be confirmed. Um. You know, I have my own views about who ought to be attorney general. I have my own views about

who ought to be in the Trump White House. I have my own views about Trump's hairstyle a lot of be but you know, I have no standing here, so um, but they ever reach out to you, Mike, and I think you'd be doing a podcast with noted meteorologist on the phenomenon of hell freezing over before I think they'd ever reach out to me. And I think, well, you know who, who who would have thought that they'd reach out to Mitt Romney after he gave that, as Brian said,

devastating speech during the campaign. I mean, stranger things have happened. Well, I think if the idea of Mitt Romney is Secretary of State, a widely respected guys enough to drive Poort, Kelly and Conway to distraction, that my name would probably put her into intensive care. So in the interest of her health, let's hope there's none of that speculation. But no,

I don't think so. I have. You know, I'm friendly with I care a lot about the domestic agenda we're going to have, which I think could be really good for America with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, both people have a lot of respect for So I'm I'm pretty focused on whatever I can do to help the Republican team, you know, create economic growth, lift up wages for everybody, and not have a trade war, which is the scariest

part of Trump's campaign promises. Though I've learned that Donald Trump is flexible and I'm not sure people should take his campaign rhetoric at face value, which I think would be a good thing. Well, speaking of that, I have to ask you about about some of these blue collar folks who supported him. There have been a number of articles since the election saying basically, he's not going to be able to deliver on these campaign promises. He is not going to be the messiah that many of these

folks hoped he would be. Um, what's going to happen when he's not going to be able to deliver? Well, that's a big question. I think if we get enough economic growth and wages lift up, he'll get a lot of credit for that. But you have to be careful. Um, you know, it's kind of like steroids. Uh yeah, you made grown muscles quickly, but all of a sudden you've got hard problems. So you've got to be careful with

some of that rhetoric. And I think one of the things that Trump administration is going to have to do is manage expectations that he's clearly raised in these places that he can wave a wand and make makes some

of the problems of manufacturing jobs go away. Vanish that said, a growth agenda um with cheap energy, cheap electric power which we haven't grasped in America now because of our abundant energy resources, and things the government can do can make manufacturing more competitive in the US, and I think we can stem that tide. So there could be some good news with the right policy, but those expectations are

now pretty high in those places. I saw a chart in the Washington Post Mike that said manufacturing output is actually up, its employment at those manufacturing establishments that is down. In other words, automation is really responsible for these jobs being reduced. So you know what's he going to do

about that. Well, that's a challenge across the economy because we have increasing productivity, which means fewer people are producing more, which is good for the economy, creates more wealth, lifts up the country. But take self driving cars. If they do become a huge thing in ten or fifteen years, we're gonna put a lot of truck drivers out of work.

So we're going to have to get a lot better than the government has been traditionally at retraining people for better skills, and I think we have to take a new look at our our educational system. The German model is pretty good about training people and kind of vocational skills are the jobs of the future, because the hardest thing to do is get any kind of toothpaste back in the tube. And having the old approach, which is, hey,

you were a master machinist, you're fifty four. Uh, now you're gonna learn how to uh teach children's theater because we're gonna have a ridiculous night course here. Um that we know that doesn't work, so doing more of the same doesn't do it. But you said you're optimistic that Trump's agenda could spark economic growth and be good for the country. The core of his agenda seems to be

a big regressive tax cut. I mean, there's no evidence that the that the George W. Bush tax cut, or even the Reagan tax cut was responsible for big economic growth. There's no evidence that eliminating the estate tax and the gift tax would be good for economic growth. So you're smiling because you think I'm giving you democratic talking points

where you are but keep going well. And the other big part of his agenda is attacks credit to support for profit infrastructure developers, which is also deeply problematic because most of our most highly needed sort of infrastructure projects are not the kinds of things that would be attractive to these for profit developers. So what what gives you hope in his agenda? The fact is that the best thing for wages is economic growth because it creates more

demand in the labor market and raises wages. That's our big problem. Um, if you're in the working poor, we have a great social welfare system. If you fall a little bit into poverty, we're not so great at the institutions of upwards social mobility for people in the working poor or in the middle class. So we need more labor demand and we need to be better at retraining. The bigger question for me an economic policy is not our text cuts good. It's Will Trump, who's a populist.

And when I think about the stick policy, by the way, I'm listening to McConnell and Ryan a little more than i'm listening to prisioner like Trump right now, because I my guess is they're going to be leading on it and he'll be okay with that. But Will Trump is a populacet to have the guts to take on the entitlement problem, which is a huge suck on the candidate. He wouldn't do right well, there's appetite to take some political pain in the House and the Senate on the

Republican side to do it. And I think that in trade could be the too big domestic fracture points. I think people should also never forget that despite all the focus on personalities, the Congress really has the power in domestic policy. The presidents no push over. He has ability for executive orders and to appoint people, but the budget, the big things come out of the Congress. Institutionally, there's

always pressure. So will Trump fight that or he kind of outsourced domestic policy to the Republicans there and focus on foreign policy. That to me is one of the big decisions you'll have to make, because if he starts fighting with the congressional guys and nothing will happen, which is, you know, something we proved for a decade now, it seems unlikely that his base is going to be content with the kind of Marco Rubio style domestic policy agenda of free trade, and big tax. I don't know. It's

kind of an open question. I mean, I agree he's made some promises on trade, where see if he believes him. I hope he doesn't because the trade war would be devastating for the economy and it would really hurt the people that he ran to help. But you know, his face is built more. His appeal on the party is base more in personality that he's a can do guy who's going to come to Washington shake things up. He was a way to punish a political system that Americans

have lost faith in. So ideologically, one lesson we learned in the primaries that all the campaigns assumed early that yet Trump's gonna He's famous from television, he's interesting. The media is in business with him, you know, because he's rating. So he'll have a spike. But then the ideological stuff will catch him. Because in the last thousand Republican primaries, ideology was a huge deal. This year it took a break. People gave Trump a huge ass on ideology. We've never

seen that before. That's one reason we were all wrong. So I don't know if the ideological schism will work in the future. It didn't work in the primary now normally over the fullness of time, it does work, and I would agree with you, But then again, that's why I thought Trump would probably not be nominated, and I

was You're wrong. One story that I wanted to get your view on, UM that's gotten a lot of attention the last few days is this recount effort in the three states you mentioned Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania being helmed by the Green Party Candida jill Stein for what she's

been able to raise millions of dollars online. Some people are saying that that might be a scam, but I'm curious whether you think there's any chance that could that could make a difference in one state, let alone three, and kind of what the purpose of all of this is. You know, I think she's already done enough to help Donald Trump. UM, if you're looking at some of the votes and places where she had little spikes, uh and

heard Hillary Clinton. Look, I don't get it. It is a very close result in Michigan, it is a very close result in Wisconsin. But even if those were more actiously overturned by recount, which none of the kind of political grown ups in those states that I know think the Pennsylvania is still there. In Pennsylvania, sixty thousand votes

is a good number. It's close, But the Pennsylvania recount system is very cumbersome too, and I doubt that Jill Stein people have the organizational acumen to even be able to prosecute that. So I think it is not a good thing for the country to argue over the legitimacy

of an election. If you don't like this, then argue for a new electoral college system, the Compact, which is saying, you know, which would allocate electors by popular vote and ratio, not winner take all in each state that doesn't need the constitutional change. What do you think that should happen? You know, I'm torn about it. I'm a Republican, so I like the fact we have a little English on

the ball in electoral college. Um, but I think it is let's put this way, We've had enough of these outcomes. We've had two in sixteen years where the electoral college decided and the the other domular vote that I think we're roting confidence in the popular vote. We're roting confidence in the system. So the Compact is more attractive to me now that used to be. I'm a market guy. That's what I like about the Republican Party, and in

the markets of votes. You know, we've created a party where we've lost six of the last seven contests, so we've we've succeeded under the rules because of the electoral college. But I'm not sure building a system where you're not trying to get the most votes is a good thing. So I'm kind of warming to the What do you think of this tweet by Donald Trump, uh this week where he said I won the popular vote if you

deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. Where I mean, don't we always heard that from Republicans and there's no basis for that assertion. Well, you had me to you went into the Republican thing at the end, and I like the quack noise. I haven't heard that from Trump. Look,

I thought it was beneath the office of president. I was deeply disappointed with it, and it was absolutely factually wrong, and reacquainting the president elect with the truth will be a big part of hopefully what a competent staff I will be able to do. I mean, both parties have played the legitimacy game against each other, but look, it was wrong and he should be called out for Well, I think you just did that. I have to ask you before you go, because I know you have to

scoot about the role of the press. What did the press do wrong? And how does the press make it right? Um? And and under the circumstances, given that Donald Trump is proving to be as unconventional president elect as he was a candidate, how can these two entities get along or should they not be getting along at all? It feels like a big mess to me, Mike, and I don't know what to make of it. Yeah, it is a mess.

I mean, I worked there, and so I see a lot of journalists work really hard to try to get the story right. The problem is, we've had this crossover of pop culture. And I've seen it before. I work for Arnold Schwarzenegger when you ran for governor of California here, so it's not new to have kind of famous people from the world of entertainment move into politics. But this

was at a whole new level. And I think on one hand, you have the economics of news where the more seasoned, older experience reporters have been pushed out and young, hardworking, ambitious reporters who tend to though traveling a herd linked by their Twitter accounts um have have emerged, and so the coverage is fast, but not necessarily smart and ring wise. The other weakness I think the media has is to cover politics like sports, and it's all scorekeeping, it's all coaches,

poll um, it's all these damn poles. You know. The polls are a weird thing where the media creates the story and then covers it. And now we find out a lot of the state polls were wrong. So I think the media is obsession with process and the celebritization of consultants, all that stuff they could step back from. I mean, the last thing I'd say, and I've I've said this publicly and again. I you know, I worked there,

so maybe I'm part of it. But whenever I was on television at NBC, I tried to tamp down this instinct that every day is the Hindenburg explosion. Everything that happens is a most important thing in the campaign, because you know, the more heat, the more eyeballs, the commerce of it. I get it, we get paid. They have to sell you know, cable rights and ads to do it. But every day is not the most important day in the campaign, and so that that velocity craze, that that

flashing lights and exclamation points. Um, it makes the really important stuff get lost. Because if everything is important, then nothing. So it's hard to search for truth, isn't it when everybody has their own version of it? No? Absolutely well, And even if the mainstream media gets better at bringing real reporting and perspective to these stories, the voters that matter in a lot of these elections aren't. Aren't watching

that right? And the interesting fact we had this year, that power of digital media to be ubiquitous has been around for a while, but now we had organized efforts to put fake, lying news through the unfiltered world of social media, some of it a lot of it coming

from our good friends over in Russia. I mean I read half of these emails in the original Russian and uh, it is troubling because it was we now know from our own intelligence services there was a real effort to screw with the dialogue of our election, particularly through social media, by countries that are geopolitical rivals. And uh, that's the

problem with the Internet. Everything can go everywhere for free, and you can get all kinds of information, but there's no filter, there're no editor Why don't people find this more upsetting? You know, the role that Russia might have played in in the election process. It's doesn't seem like people are taking it that seriously. Yeah, I don't know.

It troubles me a lot. The only thing I can say is, when we make our politics a reality show with reality show candidates, trivia being screamed seven um, instant snappoles and kind of a postmodern eye roll to the whole thing, we take the stakes down. And when the stakes are down, why do you care? And that is

the real danger. I think of this new style of kind of politics light and uh, it could we could pay a price, or it could be a phase and there'll be a reaction against it, and the next campaign will be the opposite of this one because people will decide they didn't like what they got that that's the

open question to me. Or it could just be that the Clinton supporters were very troubled by the Putin bromance, the Trump supporters either didn't believe it or bought Trump's excuses for it, and and we all kind of move forward from there. It's it's, you know, one side believes x the other side believes negative X. Yeah, it could be, but I just think when you when you add clowns shoes to a campaign, you take the reason to take things seriously away. What do you predict for the mid terms? Micers,

It just too early to tell. Well, you know, in two thousand eighteen there are a lot of Republican state selecting senators. So the traditional analysis would be Republicans should have a really great two thousand eighteen and building on their center majority. I would say one, in the modern era, beware traditional analysis. Although the bography, oh it does favor the Republicans. And two, there's no doubt that in the Blue States the sleeping giant has been awoken of angry Democrats.

Uh So I have a feeling two thousand eighteen to be a real epic battle. And why I would handicap the Republicans is having the advantage. We got to see what President elect Trump does for two years and how he manages his new stewardship of the Republican brand. And that's a big question. Mike Murphy, We've been looking forward to this for many many weeks. Were so thrilled to have you on our podcast and so excited that you

have your own, cleverly called radio Free gop um. Are you enjoying doing a podcast, Mike, You know, I've had a lot of fun with it. I put it on a hiatus for a while because I didn't think it was right to be complaining about the president elector we give him a chance to succeed. But as I tell people, I have buried the resistance transmitter in the secret location, and it can always be dug up and reignited, so maybe it'll come back. But yeah, I enjoyed a lot,

and I enjoy listening to this podcast. Thank you for having me, Thanks Mike, Thanks as always to Gianna Palmer for producing the show and Jared O'Connell for engineering and mixing it. Thanks to Mark Phillips for our theme music. Remember you can also email us at comments at Currik podcast dot com. You can find me on social media at goldsmith Be on Twitter. You can follow Katie at at Katie Currik on Twitter and Instagram, and Katie dot Kurk on Snapchat. She's ubiquitous. Best of all, you can

rate and review us on iTunes. Don't forget to subscribe to the show as well. It really helps other listeners to find it, so we'll talk to you next time, and please let us know your questions for Valerie. Jared, thanks so much, Thanks for listening everyone. I always wanted to be a contestant on the dating game well, helping us to make sense of politics instead of while helming. That was such a fake laugh