The not-so-shadow president's largest Tesla plant is in Shanghai, but the People's Republic of China has the pink slip and can take it back at any time. Meanwhile, China—the world's largest automaker—is working hard to eat into our car industry, and Trump, who fooled enough voters that he was a successful business tycoon, is happily talking about killing subsidies in the critical EV market—except for Tesla of course. Plus, bartender AOC is the best AOC, Bezos is one of the biggest corporate welfare profiteers, and Michael Fanone recounts how he dressed down larping Proud Boy trolls. Mike Murphy and Michael Fanone join Tim Miller. show notes Mike's EV Politics Project Hacks on Tap podcast Evan Perez story on Kash's very DOGE demand for a remodeled FBI office
Chapter 1: Who are the guests on Mike Murphy's podcast episode?
Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. We're in carnival season. I'm in my James Carville rugby shirt. It's Muses Thursday. I'm delighted to be here today with a veteran Republican strategist, an OG Never Trumper. He worked for McCain, Schwarzenegger, Romney, Jeb. You might have heard of them.
He's co-host of Hacks on Tap and co-director of Center for the Political Future at USC. He also runs the EV Policy Project, an effort to end the partisan divide over electric vehicles. By now you've figured out it's Mike Murphy. What's going on, man? Hey, man. Good to see you, Tim. Good to see you. It's been too long. Yeah, yeah.
I also have a bonus segment for everybody in segment two, so stick around with Michael Fanone. It was going to be a YouTube-only thing, but Fanone was so good yesterday that the audio people got to hear it too. So stick around for Fanone. Because I know show business, I'm going to start with something here that both of us hate to admit and that the audience will hate to hear.
Does that sound like a good way to start the podcast? Yeah, yeah. Reach for the mute button, America. But... Did you watch any of the cabinet meeting, the four pay-per-view cabinet meeting yesterday? Did you catch any of it?
I watched about 20 seconds on video before I started thinking about, I started thinking very bad thoughts. I mean, seeing Elon, that man child bouncing around in his Nazi tank commander outfit in the cabinet room of the United States, it just, it snapped me. So I couldn't take any more.
All right, well, good. Maybe our listeners will like to hear your opinion because I was about to give a wrong thought, which was the substance was gross. We'll get into that. But boy, I thought the PR was pretty good yesterday. And I just think that Trump... Being in that room, it had kind of a question time British vibe. He was insulting J.D. Vance over in the cuck chair.
He was taking all the questions. He seemed like he was kind of in command of the topics. He didn't seem lost. Obviously, he says crazy stuff all the time. It's Trump. But, you know, you have wall-to-wall TV coverage. He's announcing things that I think are good. Again, substance aside, good marketing. Like, five million bucks if you want to come to the country.
We'll pay down the debt with five million dollar gold cards. Again, it's Huckster stuff. I just, I was like... it's hard to imagine Biden doing that. It's hard to imagine some of the other folks doing that. And like, you can, even though I find him just like you disgusting, I can only handle that 20 seconds.
Like it was a moment where I was like, I can see why people at least can be conned by this.
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Chapter 2: What is Elon Musk's influence on the EV market?
But it only gets harder from here. I heard a savvy former Ways and Means Republican lobbyist, the tax writing committee, in the House saying, well, now they got to decide between slashing Medicaid, which we've never been able to do because all the Pauls are afraid of it, or slashing the SALT tax they want to give back that he's promised, or making him eat his words on tax cuts.
It's going to be fun to watch. They're putting their hands into two disposals simultaneously.
Or just juicing the debt by $4.5 trillion, which takes us back to the Elon thing. Even the budget that they put through, right? Even with using, you know, kind of the mega Heritage Foundation money counters who are, you know, like throwing some stuff under the couch cushions.
Born optimists.
Even they say it's, I think, $865 billion is the debt increase over 10 years. The real number is $3 trillion, probably, maybe more. And just extending the tax cuts themselves are $4 trillion and then sort of deal out the cuts. And so it's like they don't even have a directional plan towards cutting the deficit or debt.
And so they're doing all these painful cuts in the name of cutting the deficit and then they're not going to do it.
And they're doing top lines that are incredibly hard. Even if you squeezed all the waste out of Medicaid, you probably can't get there. Right. You know, the real, the reality of it, it's like the old Dennis Miller joke about judges. There ought to be three verdicts now because crimes are so horrible, guilty, innocent, and you're shitting me.
And that's what this budget is, you know, or this budget framework, this non-binding aspiration. So, yeah, there's gravity in politics. It takes a while. And that's the point Carville was making in The New York Times today.
And I'm like three quarters where he is, which is, you know, there's nothing wrong Democrats in the short term with retreating into the step and let them over advance and starve over time. Because I think in the whole price eggs department, that could be what happens. You ought to loudly peck at them.
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