Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network, welcome to Stay Tuned. I’m Preet Bharara.

David Axelrod:

I think that there is a tremendous reaction to Trump and some of the economic trends of our time and the perceived ineffectuality of sitting Democrats to deal with both of those things.

Preet Bharara:

Welcome to Stay Tuned, I’m Preet Bharara. My guest this week is David Axelrod. He’s the co-host of the Hacks On Tap Podcast, a Senior Political Commentator for CNN, and of course, a former Senior Advisor for President Obama. We spend our hour talking about politics, as you might imagine, the midterms and beyond. That’s coming up, stay tuned. David Axelrod, welcome back to the show.

David Axelrod:

Great to see you, Preet. Interesting times we-

Preet Bharara:

Interesting. So are they more interesting than any other year in the last 10, the same, more?

David Axelrod:

… Well, obviously everything’s more interesting in some ways because of the mess that we’re in. And everything sort of pops in the politics or everything feels more crucial and critical. And so yeah, it’s also draining. Don’t you find it draining? Just that sort of-

Preet Bharara:

I’m sorry, I fell asleep while you were asking because I’m so tired and drenched and drained.

David Axelrod:

No, it really is draining.

Preet Bharara:

But that leads to a question. And this is borne out in the metrics of cable news stations, the Sunday morning shows. I think most news periodicals, it’s been a while now with this level of activity in politics, there’s no end. Friday night, sometimes we get the biggest news dumps we get of the week. It’s exhausting, and you look younger, but I’m not getting any younger, David.

David Axelrod:

You look good, man.

Preet Bharara:

The effect of it, I wasn’t fishing, but thank you.

David Axelrod:

Oh, okay. All right. It’s done. I said it.

Preet Bharara:

And make sure we don’t edit that out. What happens when large numbers of voters are also tired and exhausted? What happens in the midterm is what happens in the presidential election? Or is it the case that some subsets of voters, as we get closer to the election become more energized and they awake from their slumber, and they think about the dirty game in a world of politics once again? And is that going to be more Democrats, more Republic? What’s the landscape like?

David Axelrod:

Well, look, I think that there is a natural process by which the party out of power tends to be more motivated in midterm elections than the party in power on the natural. That happens almost every cycle. It’s one of the reasons why the party in power has gained seats in the House only twice since World War II, because the party out of power is more motivated to express themselves to be a check on the person in the White House, and I think that is certainly true in the case of Donald Trump.

So when you look at polling, when you hear focus groups, I think people are going to come out in larger numbers on the Democratic side, but that doesn’t mean that they’re loving politics or that they want. I think part of it is to express their dismay at the things that are exhausting them. So I think there’s a bigger problem, honestly, about people’s sort of disinterest in watching wall-to-wall political coverage. And I hear, look, my own wife says that, and she’s a pretty big consumer of information.

And she’s like, so I’m just going to turn the news on. I don’t want to see that. It’s exhausting. The result of it is that the algorithms get to decide what it is that you’re seeing. And I think it has the effect of further polarizing the country because you only see what the algorithms think you want to see. And it’s generally the stuff that outrages you because that’s what keeps people online. It’s one of the problems we have in our politics.

Preet Bharara:

So we like to blame politics and the politicians and the system, but what about the podcasters and the newscasters and the columnists? Should they be conveying the news or analyzing the news differently or should they be focusing on things differently so that people are not as tired and prepared to turn away? Is it our fault, David?

David Axelrod:

Yeah, I personally blame you, Preet. I came here to lodge my protests.

Preet Bharara:

I would say most of the time.

David Axelrod:

I have my own podcast and I think about that. I think that the other element that we’re dealing with here is that it’s like reasoned analysis does not get clicks. What get clicks are hot takes and hot exchanges. And I’m not saying you, and I hope it’s not me, but I think that there are a lot of people in this business and certainly in the news business and in the influencer business who want clicks.

And so what we have is a perverse set of incentives in our politics and our media that is really deleterious to kind of the reason debate that democracy demands. And it just feeds this sort of trench warfare environment. I talk all the time about the pernicious effect that social media has had on our politics and our politics now mirrors social media.

You want to raise money. You don’t raise money with reason discourse, you raise money with hot takes. So this is one of the problems that we have to face. Now, maybe people ultimately and maybe soon say, “You know what? I want something different. It is exhausting and I want something different.” But so far the incentives remain misaligned and it’s really to the detriment of our politics, I think in our country.

Preet Bharara:

Sticking with that for a moment before we get to how we can fix it, given the state of affairs and the fact that people want clicks, as you say, who’s better at getting clicks? Democrats or the Republicans?

David Axelrod:

I think that they. Well, probably nobody’s better than Donald Trump, right? At least with his tribe-

Preet Bharara:

Yes, that is true.

David Axelrod:

He is the first social media president in many ways in the sense that I think social media helped propel him. He also, by the way, I think is a victim of what we’re talking about because I think he has a very, very manicured worldview because he only sees what he wants to see. He’s only fed what he wants to be fed in his world. He’s being celebrated in his world.

He’s getting all the votes in his world. People applaud his stewardship. And I don’t know whether he believes it, whether it’s just what he wants to believe, whether he uses that to push back against the real world in which he’s not doing as well. But he not only knows how to play that game, but he also consumes it himself.

And it’s like an unhealthy loop with him. But yes, I think that the Republicans, they certainly, starting in 2016, took a leap forward and they reached voters who … They activated voters who were often sitting on the sidelines. And I think that befuddled pollsters who were modeling and it’s something that they perfect. They have a lot of confidence in their ability to motivate people who otherwise would sit elections out.

I think these midterms are interesting though, because I think that group may be disillusioned enough that even if they are by tribal inclination leaning more toward Trump than against, I think there’s a disillusionment, and you see it in the Joe Rogan stuff and some of the podcasters who have walked away from him a little bit on some of the things that he’s done, including the war.

Preet Bharara:

Well, you see it in the numbers. I’ve often thought to myself that Trump has a great political advantage. I think Obama had this particular advantage for a while, but then lost it, and that is the advantage of being underestimated. So Donald Trump has been left for dead politically more than once.

David Axelrod:

More than once.

Preet Bharara:

He comes roaring back whatever you say about the guy. When Democrats say, “What do we need to fight back? And what inspiration should we get because we’re not doing so well, not at this moment, but in the last couple of years.” I always say, “Well, there’s a guy who rose from the ashes to a degree we have not seen in modern times, not in my lifetime at least, and his name is Donald Trump.”

So on the one hand, he’s underestimated. But on the other hand, when we have these conversations about how good he is at social media and how much attention he attracts, you and I are having that discussion while he is at the lowest rating of, I think, any modern president at this point in a second term. It’s barely a third. So are we overestimating him, underestimating him, or is that not the right question?

David Axelrod:

No. Look, remember, he also, I know he probably doesn’t listen to your podcast, but it’d be a good thing for him to hear. He actually lost an election too. So I think he has had troughs. I know. I know.

Preet Bharara:

You will never be a federal district court judge, Sir.

David Axelrod:

No, I know. I know. But I probably have the same qualifications as some who will. And I barely got through my undergraduate degree. But he’s had these peaks and troughs. But one thing that has served him well in all this time is even though he is in some ways the biggest bullshit artist who ever lived, he is also utterly authentic in some ways. Nobody ever says, Preet, “Gee, I wish he’d speak his mind.”

He does that at all times. And now I think he’s being very revealing of his own mind. And he really doesn’t give a shit about the struggles of everyday people and so on. He is basically right now pursuing the money and pursuing what he thinks is the monumentalizing of his legacy through all of these building projects and so on.

I think he got talked into this war in Iran by Bibi because Bibi said, “You can do what no president has done in half a century. You can topple this regime and change the course of history.” And Trump thought, “Yeah, that sounds like a good piece. That would be a nice piece of the legacy.” And you know what this is saying to people out there? It’s saying he’s working on everything but the things that I elected him to work on.

Preet Bharara:

You don’t think that he was elected to work on the reflecting pool?

David Axelrod:

No, I think that probably wasn’t even sixth or seventh on the list of people’s concerns.

Preet Bharara:

It was the ballroom. It was the ballroom. Well, I want to come back to those things because you have tweeted about those things or posted about them recently. But just going back to Iran, I’ve had this conversation with other folks about the rationality of Donald Trump, but I want to ask you the question. And that is, from where he sits, and people have written this about him, he may not prepare as much as some other people, but he has a tactic.

I won’t call it a strategy. He’s a tactic that has worked very well for him. You punch someone in the face, you make it clear that you’re prepared to punch them in the face again, whether it’s an enemy, an ally, somebody who’s neutral, who least expects it, whether it’s Canada or NATO or any other well-positioned friend of the United States, and they cave, and whether it’s a law firm or some other entity-

David Axelrod:

Some do and some don’t, but yes.

Preet Bharara:

Mine did not.

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

One of the fighting for. And is it irrational for him to have thought, okay, we have the finest military in the world. We’re going to unload and unleash hell in shock and awe in Iran. It should turn out the same way as everything else I do turns out. Is that craziness or not?

David Axelrod:

No, I don’t know whether it’s craziness, but it’s sort of woefully ignorant of facts that I think that were shared with him. I think he assumed that it would be like Venezuela that he could just topple and they would. And listen, Bibi Netanyahu has tried to sell this mission to president after president, including my president. And so discussions have always been ongoing about what would that look like?

And in the discussions that I was a party to, it was always, this would be a serious, serious challenge and it would involve boots on the ground. And there are all these second and third level ramifications. The question, Preet, that you learn very quickly when you work in the White House, the most important question that you always ask is, and then what? And then what? We can do the first thing.

Preet Bharara:

Consequences.

David Axelrod:

And then what? And you really count on the people around you to run that down for you. And if you believe the reporting in the New York Times, his intelligence people and his military people told him that. The problem with Donald Trump is he believes he knows better. He thinks his instincts are such that he knows better.

This whole thing about coming back from the dead only accentuated the sense he has that he knows better. Everybody laughed at him back in 10 years ago when he said in a debate or in an interview, “I know better than the generals.” But I think he believes that. He believes that he’s omnipotent, that his instincts are impeccable. And that’s not rational. That’s not rational.

Preet Bharara:

Well, it’s not rational except, and I don’t mean to be here defending Donald Trump’s craziness.

David Axelrod:

I’m so sick of you doing that. You are always defending yourself.

Preet Bharara:

I just want to put myself in his position. I tried to do it for not very long because I get the heebie-jeebies.

David Axelrod:

Yeah.

Preet Bharara:

But from where he sits, generally speaking, he’s been right. His people tell him all the time, “Don’t say this thing.” And he does it. They say, “Don’t move the embassy in Israel.” And he does it. They say, “You shouldn’t have said that about John McCain, and he does it.” And there are a thousand other examples, and he won, and they didn’t. And I know he probably thinks in his head, to the extent he does any thinking, that, “If I took the advice of all these people around me-

David Axelrod:

Yes, I’m sure he thinks that.

Preet Bharara:

… I would be nowhere. I would be opening up another casino in Atlantic City.” I’m not sure what that-

David Axelrod:

And then closing it, but yes.

Preet Bharara:

… and closing and selling off the parts. And I’m not sure what the goal is of this analysis of his head.

David Axelrod:

No, but what you’re saying is right in that he is thinking about the consequences for him.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

David Axelrod:

But he isn’t thinking about the consequences for the world or the country. He can be successful in imposing, punishing tariffs on countries all over the world. The question is, has that helped Americans? How has that affected alliances? Do we really need alliances? I’d say yes. He’s learned that, or at least he should have learned that during this Iran experience.

Yes, this is, again, part of the problem is that he sees everything through the prism of his own personal benefits. He doesn’t see things through the prism of the country and the world. Now, I will say he’s been all over this Iran thing for decades. He’s had this very hawkish view on Iran for decades.

He didn’t say that much about it in the campaign because I’m sure he was urged not to, but the bad thing that happened, Preet, after the last election, after the experience he had in the last election and the events following that election and his survival and so on, is that he thinks that he was bridled in his first term by all of these establishment folks who told him what he could and couldn’t do.

And he came to office this time with a absolute conviction that I’m going to do it my way because their way screwed me. Except that wasn’t what screwed him. What screwed him was a pandemic that he badly mishandled, that was largely what screwed him. Mishandled other than the thing that he now won’t take credit for, which is Operation Warp Speed, which I’ll give whatever credit he deserved for it, I’m willing to give him because I think that was really important. He can’t talk about it now because he’ll get chastised by the right and by his Secretary of Health and so on.

Preet Bharara:

The quality he also has, and I wonder what you think about fatigue with respect to this quality. It’s the unabashed ability to say black is white, up is down.

David Axelrod:

Amazing.

Preet Bharara:

And it persists. So you look at the economy, he says it’s the best economy ever. You talk about Iran, he talks about how it’s the best operation ever. And once again, rationally in his head, he probably thinks to himself, “Well, that’s how I’ve gotten out of these pickles before.”

Is there a subset of folks who just accept the Orwell in him? Or as I think a lot of your friends in politics and people that you respect are banking on that when he says there’s no inflation and they go to this store, he’s like, “God, that guy is totally full of it and I don’t want to vote for him.” Is that how it is playing out?

David Axelrod:

Yeah, I do think … Look, I think there’s about a third of the country that is devoted to him, that believes his version of things, that doesn’t believe what they’re being told and doesn’t even believe and discounts their own experience. But on inflation, his numbers are not particularly good among Republican.

He has probably a 78, 80% approval rating among Republicans. His numbers on inflation are down around 50. So they’re much, much lower. People do get that. They make excuses for why it is. But he does have that implied. Right now, he has a floor that is impenetrable, but he has a pretty low ceiling as well. And the floor has moved down to some degree, and the ceiling has moved down quite a bit. But one of the most, I think, underrated exchanges of the whole first administration came in the first or second day of it.

When Kellyanne Conway said the thing that turned out to be actually the watchword of the Trump presidency, she said when Chuck Todd asked her about his assertion that he had the largest inaugural crowd ever, he said, “That’s just not a fact.” And she said, “Well, he’s got alternative facts.” And that is how he lives. He thinks he can spin anything, but I think it’s really hurting him now.

It hurt Joe Biden when he went out there and told people that the economy was doing really well, and it’s hurting Trump. And when you put together the things that he’s focused on, his own profiteering, the tariffs and the war and the ballroom and all of that stuff, I think people are like, “He has no clue. He has no clue.” Other than that 31% or something, the rest of the country is saying, “This guy has no clue what’s going on out there and going on in my life.” Which is kind of where Biden was.

Preet Bharara:

But he still has an outsized power and authority to shape who becomes a general election candidate for the Republicans in various important places.

David Axelrod:

Oh, there’s no doubt.

Preet Bharara:

Is that ultimately going to help the Democrats or are we going to get a bunch of crazy people in office?

David Axelrod:

The 31% becomes much larger, obviously, in a Republican primary. I mean, his power is in Republican primaries. His numbers among independents are abysmal. His approval rating is in the 20s with independence. But among Republicans, he still is a commanding figure, and this is why the Massie race was so important to him.

This is why Cassidy was so important to him. He had to show that in his domain, he was still able to destroy his enemies because it would’ve been a jailbreak if those guys had won. People would say, “Oh, you could define, get away with it.”

Preet Bharara:

What about Cornyn?

David Axelrod:

Look, you could not get … Texas, to me, for Democrats has always been fool’s gold. It always looks like maybe, could be. And then at the end, it breaks your heart after you’ve spent way too much money on it.

Preet Bharara:

Right. But didn’t that used to be Virginia and North Carolina and Georgia to some extent?

David Axelrod:

Yes. And yes, states can change. And obviously, people are moving into Texas from California and other places that, although a lot of people move there for tax reasons, not all of them are going to be progressives from somewhere else.

Preet Bharara:

They’re not paying their taxes.

David Axelrod:

It’s difficult terrain rural. It’s big. It’s hard to penetrate. Those rural areas are pretty tough to penetrate politically, but you have this perfect storm. You have the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, who is as big a reprobate as you’ll ever see running for public office in this country, disliked by a sizable number of Republicans as well as Democrats.

And you have James Talarico, who is an unusually gifted speaker and campaigner who also is a seminarian and has very steeped in faith. So the contrast really works for Democrats there. And he’s raised a boatload of money. He’s become a very popular figure among Democrats across the country. And Paxton doesn’t raise money, so they’re going to have to pony up a hundred million dollars for him. I think that if there is a wave, it could be more.

Preet Bharara:

I’ll be right back with David Axelrod after this. How would you compare, if it’s fair, the Beto O’Rourke campaign to the James Talarico campaign pluses and minuses likelihood of success?

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Look, Beto was a good candidate, and he was an energetic candidate who blanketed that state, and he too became sort of a cause celeb and raised a lot of money. And Ted Cruz was vulnerable, but Ted Cruz wasn’t Ken Paxton. And I think that’s the difference. Trump was unpopular in that year. There was a lot of energy among Democrats. The other thing, Preet, that I think is worth considering is Hispanic voters who were important in Texas.

One of the things that happened in 2024 is that many of the Hispanic voters there and elsewhere who had been counted on by Democrats voted Republican. I think Trump carried or came close to carrying Hispanic men. There is a great disillusionment in the Hispanic community, in part because it’s a community that’s very sensitive to economic conditions. And one of the reasons he won was because they were disillusioned with Biden on the economy.

The other is, well, in Texas, I think that they were well satisfied to see the border sealed off. They didn’t bargain for the sort of activities of ICE that we’ve seen, and I think it’s troubled a lot of Hispanic voters. So the combination of those things has softened the Hispanic vote in ways that I think will help Talarico and other Democrats in that state.

Preet Bharara:

Is immigration, which had been seen for a very long time by a lot of people, as Democrats’ Achilles heel and weakest area of substance, has that reversed itself under the policies of Donald Trump?

David Axelrod:

I don’t know if it’s reversed itself, but I know that his policies have become more and more unpopular. I saw one poll yesterday where his ratings on immigration were in the high 30s. Do you know what’s remarkable? If he had just taken tough measures on the border, I think this would be a winning issue for him.

He frittered that issue away out of control. Steven Miller inspired purge that he’s running all over the country. We saw what happened in Minnesota. I saw what happened in Chicago. We still see these incidents in Maine and Texas and elsewhere. And I think what was a winning issue for Trump has certainly been neutralized, certainly neutralized.

Preet Bharara:

So sticking with the Senate, talked about Texas a little bit. What are the other interesting Senate races where the Democrats have the best chance to flip a seat, if any?

David Axelrod:

Well, look, I think North Carolina is certainly their best shot where the former governor is the candidate for the Democrats. Cooper, who’s very, very popular and knows how to win in a swing state. He’s very local.

Preet Bharara:

Because he has.

David Axelrod:

Yes, again and again. And he speaks in a language and a set of values that people there respond to. I think that is if there is a … There’s no such thing as a sure thing in politics, but I think that Republicans and Democrats will tell you he’d flip that seat. Maine should have been, and I think still may be the other one that you can sort of see happening.

Preet Bharara:

Susan Collins has 18 lives, David.

David Axelrod:

No, I always say the same thing, Preet. The world’s going to end and we’ll just be a big pile of rubble and two hands and a head will pop up and it will be Susan Collins. She is the biggest survivor in politics. And she obviously, the Platner thing was a debacle. But in a weird way, I think that Jackson who’s replaced him, Troy Jackson, he’s certainly no one’s going to mistake him for Daniel Webster, he’s not the fiery orator that Platner was and so on, but he is authentically a northern Maine guy.

He is who Platner sort of posited himself to be. And I think there is a plain spokenness and an authenticity to him that may end up really working for him. So I certainly would not say she is out of the woods by any stretch of the imagination. Remember, Kamala Harris carried that state by seven points.

Preet Bharara:

And there could be a wave. Now, going back to North Carolina and Cooper for a moment.

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

I’m going to ask you a question that very deliberately assumes facts not in evidence, as they say.

David Axelrod:

Yes.

Preet Bharara:

When you have had your regular conversations with Mr. Cooper and you have told him to run for president, what does he say?

David Axelrod:

Well, I haven’t had those conversations with people.

Preet Bharara:

I know, I know. Those are the facts not in evidence, sir.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Maybe he’s-

Preet Bharara:

But why doesn’t a guy like that run for president?

David Axelrod:

Well, you know what? There was a time when that was being discussed. And in fact, there was a time. I was one who thought we should have had a primary back in 2024, and I said it in advance of ’24. And in that period of time, he was a name you’d hear pop up quite a bit.

I don’t know the answer to that. And it may be as simple as at this stage in his life, he doesn’t want to be President of the United States. I know that sounds insane that a politician could think that way. I always used to say the people who you’d feel most comfortable with as president are the ones who are sane enough not to want the job.

Preet Bharara:

The reluctant president. Have we had a reluctant president in a while?

David Axelrod:

I can’t think of one.

Preet Bharara:

I feel like-

David Axelrod:

Jerry Ford. Jerry Ford back in the … By the way, can I mention something to you? I’m sure you’re a student of Watergate. The anniversary of Nixon’s resignation is coming up this week. I think all the time about whether Nixon would have resigned if he had the tools that Donald Trump has today. If he had social media, if he had Fox News, would he have been in a position where he had to resign? Would Republicans have.

We saw during Watergate an earnest attempt by Republicans and Democrats to get to the truth of what happened. Barry Goldwater, the most conservative member of the Senate, walked up to the White House and sat down with the president and said, “If there’s a vote on the floor of the Senate, you will have five votes and mine will not be one of them.”

Preet Bharara:

Yeah.

David Axelrod:

Can you imagine anybody having that conversation with Donald Trump today?

Preet Bharara:

No. And a second ago when you said hypothetically, “I wonder what it would’ve happened if Nixon had those same tools.” I thought you were making a pejorative comment on Republican senators and both meanings of the word tool, right?

David Axelrod:

Yeah, exactly. No, you’re exactly right. You’re exactly right. But the one that one facilitates the other.

Preet Bharara:

That’s the whole thing. But we’ve seen in limited ways, we’re recording this on Tuesday afternoon, just to timestamp because it’s going to be relevant when we talk about Michigan. But there was a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I know a lot of Democrats are saying Cornyn and Tillis didn’t get much with respect to the-

David Axelrod:

Yeah, I’m interested in what you think.

Preet Bharara:

Yeah. Look, I’m of two minds about it. They’re holding out on a vote for Todd Blanche for Attorney General. They got something in return. I think a lot of the analysis about did they get something that was really enforceable in return on this sweetheart tax deal by putting it in writing, it is overstated. And there is not an ability to prevent Donald Trump from resurfacing that idea in the future when those two senators are out of office.

David Axelrod:

What about the immunity piece? It’s like a $100 million gift to Trump.

Preet Bharara:

Totally. But what I see in it is a couple of data points that show, and again, not a huge accomplishment here, but a couple of data points that show if Republicans stand up, even on a small issue, they do have power. And if one or two of them consort with Democrats, they can push Trump back. And that happened with the DNI and it’s happened with some other things.

And that’s by the way, you’re talking about one or two lame duck senators who are on their way out who can have some gravitational effect on the decisions of Trump. And I think it confirms your point. If you had a bunch of them who had some integrity, you could do a lot more.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. No, I appreciate the point you’re making. And I hadn’t really thought of about it in that context because to me, it felt a little too much like a fig leaf for two guys who wanted to make a stand, but didn’t want to make too much of a stand.

Preet Bharara:

No, totally true. Like Susan Collins.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Well, she’s a master at that. My guess is that they will find a way to allow her to vote against Blanche without upsetting his confirmation, which is what she does. I think Susan Collins is a serious person. We worked with her when we were in the White House and so on. But someone said in a focus group, she’s bipartisan when it doesn’t count. And I thought that was a pretty good description. She’s walked this line for a very long time, and I think we may see it again on this vote.

Preet Bharara:

Do you agree with the following conjecture? So it’s August 4th. The election is in about three months. That if you quantify the amount of political power Donald Trump has on the right within the Republican Party, that it is about at its apex now and over the next three months, and probably will start dwindling as you get to the actual election.

And that in the second half of his term, when he presumably will never be on a ballot again, and people don’t have to worry about his power as president, or they have to worry about his power as someone who has a bully pulpit, that gradually you’ll have more defections, you’ll have more defiance on things that Republican senators care about, or is that wishful thinking?

David Axelrod:

The most powerful instinct of a politician is survival. And so the question is right now, the reason that it’s not love that binds them to Donald Trump, it’s fear. And the question is whether they come to a position where they say, “If I follow him any further, I am endangering myself more than if I don’t.” And that’s the point at which it will tip.

It is a natural thing for presidents to lose power in the last two years of their presidency. My concern is honestly how he will process that and handle that because the one thing that Donald Trump cannot countenance is irrelevancy. There’s an interesting parable about this. In the last month of his first term, the Congress was dealing with the impact of COVID, and they passed the $600 stipend for Americans to help get them through.

Trump was outraged that they did this deal without him. And they said, if they had involved me, I would’ve said 2,000. Why don’t we do 2000? So Democrats picked this up and said, “Well, yeah, the president is right about this. Why are you guys just doing 600?” And they actually ran against those Georgia senators in their special election and beat them by saying they wouldn’t do the 2,000.

So we’d do the 2,000, which is kind of how we got to 2,000, which was a number that I don’t know that anybody could justify by evidence, but it was Trump. He doesn’t like to be irrelevant. He’s not going to handle it well. So how that expresses itself, I don’t know. And whether it expresses itself in ways that causes Republicans to flee from him or cower it fearfully, we’ll have to wait and see. But one thing I want to say about the midterm elections, on the natural, Democrats would win the House, and I think there’s a 50/50 shot at taking the Senate.

You asked me about other districts, other states, and we could talk about that in a second. But this isn’t going to be on the natural already because he had this intervention of redistricting. So now what would’ve cost three votes? Democrats probably need to get 10 or more to take over the House. So the degree of difficulty has become a little greater. I still think Democrats will take the House, but it doesn’t account for two other things.

Other interventions to impact on the voting system, whether it’s early voting, whether it’s the seizure of ballots after the fact, whether it’s stationing ICE or military at the polling places to intimidate voters. There are a lot of levers that he’s obviously interested in pulling. And then there is a huge amount of money that Republicans are sitting on.

He’s got $400 million in his super PAC, some of which, by the way, he raised in contributions from people whose loved ones he then pardoned weeks later, which is an interesting way to raise money. But he’s sitting on a pot of money. The Republican Party is sitting on a pot of money. They’re going to pummel Democrats in terms of money this year, which is different than in the past several cycles. So any Democrat who thinks this thing is in the bag hasn’t been paying attention. I think this is going to be a struggle.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about the Democrats then, which we haven’t done yet. My questions are, people love the metaphor of the big tent. How big a tent do we have? It’s not infinite. And address your remarks in particular to the socialists, the self-avowed socialists of the party.

David Axelrod:

Yeah. Look, I think that there is a big tent that. Remember, if think back to the 1930s and the Roosevelt Coalition, and it included Southern segregationists, Northern liberals and trade unionists, those were the three pillars of the New Deal forces. There were things on which they disagreed violently. And then there was the big thing, which was economics and sort of public consternation about the impact of the gilded age and the oligarchs and all of that. And that unified people.

I think that there is a lot about the economics of this moment that unify Democrats from left to right. So for example, when people are talking about universal healthcare, I think there are a lot of Americans that say, “Yeah, we should have that.” And there are other issues like that. Certainly a housing issue is something that unifies people, and I think there is a shared concern about. We talk about billionaires, and I want to say this carefully because I know you are a billionaire, but-

Preet Bharara:

Not even in pennies.

David Axelrod:

But to me, it’s a powerful and important issue that we have so much concentration of wealth and more ability to spend money in campaigns than ever before. And I think that intuitively, when people say the system is rigged against them, I think that’s part of what they’re thinking. They know that the decisions are not being made on their behalf, that oftentimes they’re being impacted unduly by these folks who have so much money and power.

And that’s something I think that broadly Democrats accept. So I think there are issues that unify Democrats, and then there are things that frankly divide them. I heard the gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin on CNN with Kaitlan Collins saying she would abolish Thanksgiving because she thought it was a politically incorrect holiday. Well, I don’t think you’re going to get a whole lot of Americans excited.

Preet Bharara:

It’s my favorite holiday. I would vote against on that basis alone.

David Axelrod:

Yes. Well, I think there are actually people who will vote against her on that basis and some of the other stuff. I mean, I look at the Democratic Socialists of America platform, and some of it just seems completely ludicrous to me. And I think it would seem-

Preet Bharara:

To you, and also to me, but we are of a certain position on the political spectrum, but they’re expanding. They’re not contracting, correct?

David Axelrod:

Preet, they are expanding. Look, I think that there is a tremendous sort of reactionary movement because of Trump or tremendous reaction to Trump and some of the economic trends of our time and the perceived ineffectuality of sitting Democrats to deal with both of those things. And that has, particularly among young people who you remember, have grown up through a period of complete turmoil and look at the system without the reverence that perhaps some older voters would.

In Michigan today, if the polls are right, Abdul El-Sayed will win voters under 45 by 40 to 50 points. There is a real sense of disaffection and outrage among younger voters about a system that they feel is corrupt, that is rigged against them, that is rigged against values that they believe in. And so I think when in some ways saying I’m a socialist is an expression of discontent with a system that has, in their views, run into the rocks and taken them with them.

But I don’t know that if you ask even them whether every element of that Democratic socialist platform. I think most people believe that we need a border. We probably need some sort of border enforcement, if not the thuggery of ICE, that we need policing. Even if we need police reform, there probably should be jails for some people who commit terribly violent crimes and other kinds of crimes that warrant it.

I think that there is a ton of stuff in there that just doesn’t make sense that would make sense to a majority of Democrats and certainly won’t to a majority of voters nationally. But I think to completely ignore what is a kind of outcry, not just from young people, but people across this country about the failures of our system and the need to address them, I think would be a big mistake too. And I think if Republicans want to defend that system, they’re going to have to own everything that comes with it.

Preet Bharara:

But the tent is big enough?

David Axelrod:

The tent is big enough to win elections. I believe Democrats will win the presidency in 2028.

Preet Bharara:

But you have a tent big enough for Roy Cooper and the person in Wisconsin.

David Axelrod:

Well, we’ll see what happens with the person in Wisconsin. I do think that Roy Cooper could sit down with people across the Democratic spectrum and find common cause on some things and some major things. Listen, the art of politics is to emphasize those things that are most important to people and to the largest number of people. Right now on economics, that is an issue that unifies a large number of people.

I think the corrupting influence of money and politics unifies a large number of people, and there are other issues as well, and there are others that divide them. And so the question is, will candidates emerge nationally who can speak to those larger issues and unify people? I believe that we’re in a unique position now, and there’s no election nationally that was more like this than the one in 1976 when people just were so outraged and so discouraged by what they saw with Watergate that they just wanted a cleansing.

And that’s how Jimmy Carter emerged. I’m not holding him up as necessarily the example, but I think we’re at that point where I think people want change and they want real significant structural change and they want real economic change. And I don’t think different shades of what they’ve had is going to satisfy that urge. They want a really aggressive answer to it. It doesn’t mean that they want Democratic socialists, but I don’t think they want a bunch of warmed over bullshit either.

Preet Bharara:

David, we could talk for hours and hours and hours. Thanks for joining. We need you to come back a few more times between now-

David Axelrod:

I’d like to.

Preet Bharara:

… in the midterms.

David Axelrod:

No, no, I would like to.

Preet Bharara:

My conversation with David Axelrod continues for members of the insider community.

David Axelrod:

I don’t have the requisite degrees to describe why Donald Trump is the way he is, but clearly he is a very different kind of human being.

Preet Bharara:

To try out the membership, head to staytuned.substack.com, again, that’s staytuned.substack.com. After the break, I’ll answer your questions about Dr. Anthony Fauci, US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, and Todd Blanche. Now let’s get to your questions. So this week, unsurprisingly, we got a lot of questions and comments about Dr. Anthony Fauci’s testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, like this email from Paul.

“I’m curious to know why Fauci took the Fifth on even an innocuous question like what is the color of your tie?” So I thought I’d speak a little bit about what happened last week. Let me start by saying just how much so many people from across the political spectrum respect Dr. Fauci. And I want to join them in thanking him for the work he’s done for public health in this country for over 50 years, especially during the AIDS epidemic and more recently during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Is Dr. Fauci perfect and infallible? No, he is not, but almost no one was during COVID-19. For years now, Dr. Fauci has faced intense personal attacks online, in public, and from some members of Congress. That made for an understandably tense hearing during which Dr. Fauci repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment and declined to answer over a hundred questions. Now, what’s important to understand is the backdrop for that decision.

The chairman of the committee, Senator Rand Paul, has made it clear again and again and again that he believes without any doubt in his mind before there’s been a proceeding, before there’s been an investigation, before there’s been a prosecution, before there’s been a conviction, that Dr. Fauci belongs in prison. Here’s what Dr. Fauci said about Rand Paul during his opening statement at the hearing, “The sole reason he is calling me here before this committee is to get me to say something that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words behind bars.”

Fauci even pointed to what he called Senator Rand Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for his prosecution as justification for taking the Fifth. And so the doctor did so at the advice of his lawyer whose job is to protect his client from criminal exposure, including the risk the prosecutors could seize on either the substance of his testimony or some alleged inconsistency to pursue a perjury case.

Now, I will also say against the backdrop of this Justice Department’s pursuit of various people for various things, including the very ill-advised and short-lived false statement prosecution against Jim Comey before a different committee of Congress. I don’t blame the lawyer and I don’t blame Dr. Fauci. Now you may be thinking, “Didn’t President Biden pardon Dr. Fauci? If so, why would he need to take the Fifth?” That’s a good question. But a pardon is not a get out of jail free card for everything.

It did not eliminate every possible source of criminal exposure, including some allegation, whether outlandish or farfetched, that he lied at testimony subsequent to the receipt of the pardon, which is what this would be. Also, you may remember, presidential pardon doesn’t apply to state crimes. And several Republican-led states have publicly discussed investigating Dr. Fauci. And it’s worthwhile to point out something else that’s very rich.

Perhaps we should remember what some of Dr. Fauci’s critics have said about the Fifth Amendment and what they have done with the Fifth Amendment. President Trump himself has repeatedly said over the years that innocent people don’t invoke the Fifth. In 2016, he said, “The mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth?” But surprise of surprises. When Trump himself was under legal scrutiny not too long ago, he invoked the Fifth hundreds of times during his deposition in the New York Attorney General’s civil fraud investigation.

My criticism is not that he took the Fifth. My criticism is that he criticized others for exercising a constitutional right that he exercised himself abundantly. One last note about Dr. Fauci’s lawyer, David Schertler, who was removed from the hearing at the request of Senator Rand Paul. Congressional hearings are not criminal trials. And Paul, as chairman of the committee, can set the rules for the hearing.

Now, Paul, I understand the spirit of your question about the color of your tie and why can’t you answer that? And when I’m on the other side and have been on the other side and I’m trying to establish some facts, I myself, like a lot of lawyers and questioners, get irritated when there’s a blanket invocation of the Fifth Amendment, even as to simple questions of fact that are obvious to everyone with eyes.

But from the defense’s perspective, as a matter of consistency and not having to worry as the line gets grayer and grayer about whether or not the question would incriminate or may incriminate or does incriminate, it is just an easier practice, even with a very smart and educated and articulate witness like Dr. Fauci to say to every question, no matter what the type, no matter what the phrasing, you invoke the Fifth Amendment and you right against self-incrimination.

For more on the legal issues surrounding Fauci’s testimony, check out Elie Honig’s recent article on the matter. Head to staytuned.substack.com or click the link in the show notes. This question comes from Beth in the Stay Tuned Substack chat. “What do you make of Jeanine Pirro’s reversal in the case against the bicyclist accused of intentionally damaging the reflecting pool?” That’s a great question. And we’ve gotten a few about it. And I do have some thoughts about it.

Let me just say at the outset, and it’s not a thing you typically say, and I respect the job of US Attorney. I was the US Attorney in New York for almost eight years. But it’s not really the case that Jeanine Pirro is lining up a lot of Ws here. And there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with abandoning a case when the evidence is not there or if new exculpatory evidence comes to light, that’s what you should do. My office did it.

Every respectable honorable office does it. But the way in which it has happened and the way in which the allegations have been made publicly only to be a short time later embarrassingly withdrawn is I think something to criticize. Not to mention cases that never should have been started in the first place, but let’s start at the beginning.

In preparation for America’s 250th anniversary, as you may recall, the Trump administration spent nearly $15 million renovating the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. This became very important to the president. It included, by the way, the application of a new blue coating to the bottom of the pool. But soon after the pool reopened, the new coating began to peel. Yes, this is an actual criminal case about which the President of the United States is personally invested, but I digress.

Algae appeared, the pool began leaking and other defects became visible. Administration officials, and as I said, that includes President Trump, got really kind of angry about it and attributed some of the damage to vandals. Then on June 19th, a 67-year-old man named David Hearn stopped at the pool during a bicycle ride to inspect the loose section of the coating.

Hearn has acknowledged that he was there, that he reached into the water, and that he touched or bent a section that was already partially detached, but he maintained vigilantly that he did not, not remove or otherwise damage it. A National Park Service employee told Hearn to stop. Hearn complied, returned to his bicycle, and then the US Park Police arrested him.

On July 2nd, a DC Superior Court grand jury indicted Hearn on one count of felony destruction of property. One thing that made it a felony was that the value of the property in question was over a thousand dollars. US Attorney Pirro did a press conference announcing the indictment with some amount of fanfare. And she sounded very confident that the case was open and shut, and she looked directly into the camera and said-

Audio:

Jeanine Pirro: The evidence shows, and we will prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hearn willfully destroyed property at the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool.

Preet Bharara:

Now again, there is nothing wrong with sounding confident at the start of a case if you’ve done your work, if you’ve done your investigation. But in this case, after obtaining the indictment, Pirro’s office then received hundreds of megabytes of additional records from the Department of the Interior concerning the renovation. According to a court filing signed by Pirro, those records documented a “rushed and flawed installation process.”

Also, repeated failures during the application of the coating and extensive peeling throughout the pool. Once again, I just want to point out, this is a case in which the President of the United States has personal interest, peeling paint in the reflecting pool. Anyway, the government ultimately concluded that the damage attributed to David Hearn was actually the result of flawed installation by the contractor. And so Jeanine Pierre’s office filed a motion to dismiss the case, which was the right thing to do.

But the criticism here is the premature going to the grand jury to obtain an indictment when obviously the US Attorney’s Office did not have full information from the Department of the Interior. Now, Pierre’s office released a pretty extraordinary press release. Joyce Vance and I talked about it a little earlier this week on the Insider Podcast. It’s one thing to say new information came into your possession.

It’s quite another thing to do what Pirro did, which was to vociferously attack and criticize her client agency, the Department of the Interior, for not providing information earlier. Now, I don’t know the details. I don’t know if information was asked for and it was withheld for a bad reason or people just got their signals crossed, but the buck stops with the prosecutor and you don’t proceed unless you know you have what you need to have. It’s a simple proposition.

You don’t proceed unless the evidence supports the charge before accusing someone in the grand jury and publicly of a serious felony, particularly when your track record in recent months has been kind of bad. Now, what was President Trump’s reaction to all of this? He was upset. He wasn’t upset because there was almost a miscarriage of justice and an innocent man was almost prosecuted and put to trial for a crime he did not commit. No.

He was upset about the opposite. He was upset the case was dismissed. Trump posted on social media, “I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro on the reflecting pool. I don’t know what she was thinking. To me, it was a pure case of vandalism. This from a man who’s not a lawyer, who’s not a prosecutor. More importantly, he’s not a lawyer or a prosecutor in the office that was doing the investigation, nor is he someone I would bet $1.8 billion has reviewed the documents or even read the indictment.

But as we’ve seen before with Pam Bondi, Trump wants one thing. Never to be the object of blame, never to be contradicted, and wanting a scapegoat when something goes wrong, even if it’s something as relatively unimportant as peeling paint in a reflecting pool. And at the end of the day, if Jeanine Pirro follows Pam Bondi out the door, it won’t be because her office rushed to bring a deeply flawed prosecution.

It’ll be, and think how perverse this is. It’ll be because once confronted with evidence that contradicted the administration’s initial story, her office declined to keep going. And so I don’t know what the prediction markets say, but it’s reasonable to foresee that Jeanine Pirro may be the next person to be fired for at some point, eventually a little bit doing the right thing.

Finally, folks, I’m recording this on a Tuesday. The vote for Todd Blanche as Attorney General has just taken place successfully for him in the Senate Judiciary Committee. And in all likelihood, by the time you hear this podcast on Thursday or after, Todd Blanche will no longer be the acting attorney general. He will be the attorney general confirmed by the Senate in a permanent position.

There is a lot to say that has been said already about the Ghislaine Maxwell interview, about the Slush Fund, about his proximity as the personal lawyer to Donald Trump. But I think the big question is, given the track record of Attorneys General who have served for Donald Trump is where is their line and when will they have to go? Either because they can’t stand it any longer or because Donald Trump can’t stand them.

It’s a hazardous job. Jeff Sessions was thrown under the bus. Bill Barr fled before being thrown under the bus. Pam Bondi was thrown under the bus. Let’s see what happens with Todd Blanche. Well, that’s it for this episode of Stay Tuned. Thanks again to my guest, David Axelrod. If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics, and justice. You can reach me on Twitter or Bluesky @PreetBharara with the #AskPreet. You can also call and leave me a message at 833-997-7338, that’s 833-99-PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is now on Substack. Head to staytuned.substack.com to watch live streams, get updates about new podcast episodes, and more. That’s staytuned.substack.com.

Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The Executive Producer is Tamara Sepper. The Supervising Producer is Jake Kaplan. The Associate Producer is Claudia Hernández. The Audio and Video Producer is Nat Weiner. The Senior Audio Producer is Matthew Billy, and the Marketing Manager is Liana Greenway. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host, Preet Bharara. As always, Stay Tuned.