- Your comments and thoughts on Elon Musk.

- [David] Another local resident.

(attendees applauding) He's not here, is he?

- Ish.

Ish.

Yeah.

What do you think?

- Listen, an incomparable genius in some ways, you know, as an entrepreneur, you know, as an entrepreneurial engineer, as a kind of big thinker in some major areas.

Not necessarily the guy I want to be king of the world, which seems to be his aspiration at this point.

I think it's very, very dangerous.

I mean, one of the many, many ways in which we're seeing hammer blows to sort of the guardrails of our democracy is that people who have really, really, you know, deep and expensive relationships with the federal government as contractors, you know, are now, you know, deciding policy.

I don't want Elon Musk sitting in the White House telling the president what we should do.

Elon Musk is in and of himself a special interest.

And our problem is we have too much influence from special interests and not enough focus on the interests of everyday people in their lives.

So I don't want, you know, I don't want a guy who is a union busting kind of, or a union-preventing guy who is bottom-line oriented.

It's fine in his company if he wants to do that.

I wish he would be better to his workers, but it's fine if he wants to do that.

But I don't want that.

I certainly don't want him making foreign policy and pronouncements.

I mean, he's also, by the way, now very active in Europe promoting right-wing populist parties.

- AfD gave that speech the other day about the AfD party, right?

- Yes, in Germany, and trying to take down the prime minister of Britain on behalf of Nigel Farage.

- The reporting on Elon Musk's involvement in the administration, you take that seriously.

You think he is that actively involved?

- I do, you know, well, everybody says, "Well, it'll never last, 'cause there can only be one star in Trump's world.

And it's not Elon."

And Elon, clearly, I mean, they both have trouble with boundaries.

I mean, honestly, it's a whole cadre of disruptors, and the government could use some disrupting.

The difference is Do you disrupt it to make it better and more responsive to people?

Or are you kind of nihilists on the theory that, you know, you knock the government out and then it's every man for himself.

And we billionaires will do pretty well in that environment, you know?

So, you know, you can only have one main guy.

And how long Elon Musk is gonna have an office on the second floor of the White House I don't know.

But all I know is this: when I left the White House, I had two small businesses.

And I had to sell them in the weeks before I became senior advisor to the president to avoid even the appearance of conflicts of interest.

That feels like a gauzy sort of sepia-colored memory when we had those kinds of...

But they were there for a reason and I understood them, you know?

Now, you know- - Not the same.

- It's not the same.

- Okay, sir.

- Thank you very much for your insights.

What I wanted to ask you about is, 10, 20 years ago, I, like probably most people here, cheered a lot of the changes that were made in the delegate selection processes in the parties that made things more democratic.

And now I'm starting to hear speculation that that may have, the backroom stuff may have had an important stabilizing influence.

And we may be predisposed to radical divisive candidates from both parties because of those changes.

What are your thoughts?

- Well, you know, it's interesting you say 20 years ago, it was really 50 years ago that we made those changes.

Time flies when you're having fun.

But it was 1972, after the '68 convention in my hometown of Chicago when people recoiled from Mayor Daley and the bosses and then so on.

You know, the bosses didn't do too badly, honestly.

Had Bobby Kennedy lived, I think Daley would've swung the nomination to him.

He tried, by the way, not widely publicized, but he tried in the last hours before the convention to get Ted Kennedy to run.

And Ted Kennedy said no.

And so he grudgingly swung the Illinois delegation behind Hubert Humphrey.

But there was, the party bosses, you know, they had their narrow interest, but they also had some sense of what it took to govern.

And they were practical.

You know, so there was something lost there.

I can't complain completely about the nominating process that we have, 'cause I worked for Barack Obama and it worked out pretty well for us.

- [Evan] In the old days, he would not have been the nominee.

- He would not have been.

He would not have been.

And we had two years to travel this country, all 50 states.

You know, we had this primary with Hillary Clinton that went 50 states.

And he developed a relationship with people in all those states.

And he became a better candidate, and I think was a better president because of the experience of having run.

So, you know, I'm torn on this.

I still would, this summer I was missing the old system.

I think that the party may have nominated a different candidate if they had convened as party leaders, you know?

Maybe not, but I would've liked to have seen what the possibilities were.

And I say that respectfully, 'cause I respect the vice president and the jobs that she did.

- Could you have imagined the party picking somebody other than the incumbent vice president, who not incidentally happened to be a Black woman?

I mean, that would've seemed to so many people in the party like a total slap in the face.

- Well, and beyond that, the delegates, there were the Biden-Harris delegates.

The DNC would've been, I think- - [Evan] And she had access to the money they raised jointly, as opposed to a new candidate who would not have had access to it.

- Yeah, and, you know, this was why I felt like what the party really needed was a primary.

And she may have emerged from the primary.

- Might have.

- But she may have been a stronger candidate as well had she emerged from the primaries.

I think that this point is overdone, that, well, the radicals will take over the nominating process, at least on the Democratic side.

You know, Joe Biden was not the most liberal candidate or progressive candidate in 2020.

Barack Obama was not the most progressive candidate in 2008.

Bill Clinton was not the most progressive candidate in 1992.

Certainly Jimmy Carter wasn't.

So that process hasn't necessarily yielded the most left-wing candidate.

But, you know, so I'm not worried about that.

I would actually think, you know, like I said, this year what I missed was a primary, not that we shouldn't have had one.

- Thank you.

- Can we go over here to the student and then come over to here?

Okay.

Come on.

- Hey, how are you?

- Doing good, sir.

- Are you a student at UT?

- I am, that entire side of the crowd is- - Hey, hey, you guys.

Look at that.

(attendees applauding) this will sound extraordinarily patronizing before you ask your question, but you know, what I did when I left the White House was rather than going back to consulting, I started the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago.

And the reason that I did that was partly because I knew I would never find a candidate like Obama.

And so I would be frustrated.

But the second and more important, I mean, I just thought I was done.

I really wanted to move on from it.

But every day when I came to that campaign headquarters, I was inspired by the young people who were the heart and soul of that campaign, both campaigns, really.

And I wanted to be somewhere where I could be inspired by young people, and, you know, hopefully lend them and bring other people who could lend the value of our experience.

But everybody I bring to the Institute of Politics, and we have fellows and speakers and all kinds of things going on there, every person I bring leaves saying, "Man, I came to inspire them and they inspired me."

So if you ask me what gives me hope about the future, they give me hope about the future.

They give me hope about the future.

(attendees applauding) - [Evan] Love that.

Right.

- You guys aren't intimidated by all of this technology.

And you may be smart enough to figure out what to do about it in such a way.

Well, alright, maybe some of your classmates, okay?

(attendees laughing) - Go ahead.

- What do you got?

- Yes, sir.

Wanted to thank you for coming out here to Austin tonight.

For fear of returning us and entrenching us back into this discussion of special interests, back at Trump's inauguration, only a week ago, tech CEOs like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, they had better seats for it than Trump's family.

And I wanted to get your opinion on this.

As we enter into an administration where, of course, Trump's not gonna get another term, hopefully, where- - So the Constitution suggests that.

- Yeah, suggestions.

(attendees laughing) - In a world where, in an America where oligarchy is becoming more entrenched, not just a suggestion from the sidelines, but actually entrenched and codified, do you think America's gonna be able to recover even after this administration?

- Well, that's TBD of course.

But I really, I wrote a book now almost 10 years ago, I guess, called "Believer," which was a memoir.

And it was about- - Last time you were here.

- It was about my life in journalism and politics.

And it was called, believe it or not, because I believed in any one particular person, but because I believed in this democracy.

And I still believe in it.

But ultimately, democracy relies on the resilience of people and institutions, and people's ability to challenge institutions to live up to their obligation.

And they're being pressure-tested right now.

There is no doubt about it.

As I said, I disagree with Trump deeply on lots of different policy issues, but it's the destruction of all sources of accountability that I find most disconcerting.

And I want to throw Evan a shout-out here.

I mean, one of the things we ought to be worried about is the persistent effort to sideline and discredit journalism in this country.

Because one of the important elements of accountability are journalists who shine a bright light in dark corners.

Now, Donald Trump was, I think, as he often is, he was very candid with Leslie Stahl, it was in a sidebar after he got elected in 2016 and before he took office, and she said, "Why are you always picking on the media?"

He said, "Because I don't want them to believe you when you say bad things about me."

And he's been incredibly successful at that.

And meanwhile, the business model of legacy media is blowing up.

Evan's busy trying to help develop and support alternative media organizations in states.

And there are some really good ones.

You know, we have Block Club Chicago.

- It's fantastic.

- Bridge Michigan is another I'm very familiar with, doing good work.

But they are just one source of accountability.

The inspector generals who Trump fired the other night, that was set up after Watergate.

- Against federal law, by the way, right?

He was supposed to give Congress 30-days notice.

- Yeah, I saw Lindsey Graham acknowledge that on one of the other shows.

- Well, the emails, when he fired them, the email said fired immediately.

That was the tell right there.

- Well, Lindsey Graham said, "Yeah, it's probably illegal, but, you know."

So, you know, the Justice Department, these firings in the Justice Department that continue through this day, you know, there were really, really...

When I was in the... sorry, I'm giving you a very long answer.

But it's therapeutic for me, so I appreciate it.

(attendees laughing) When I was in the White House, I could not talk to the Attorney General unless the Attorney General called me and asked to talk to me.

The only time I ever saw the FBI director was when he'd come in and brief the president after some horrific event.

And I didn't want to talk to the FBI director.

All of that communication was handled through the White House counsel.

And that was standard operating procedure established after Watergate because of the way Richard Nixon perverted the Justice Department to his own political ends.

All of that is being blown up in the first days of this administration.

And the danger, and this goes to your question, the danger we all have to confront is that when norms are blown up, they're very hard to reassemble.

Often what happens is the next president then says, "Well, this is the established norm."

And so it's gonna take someone of great strength and wisdom, and the American people saying, "No, no, no, no.

This is too far.

We've gone too far."

And will it happen?

I don't know.

But I will tell you this, democracy was always a very audacious experiment.

You go back, you guys who study history, you still study history, right?

(attendees laughing) And you read the Founding Fathers and the debates about the establishment of our democracy, and they understood, people are imperfect.

The reason they set up three branches of government is they didn't want to entrust any one person with too much power.

But they understood, this may not work.

And it is still an experiment and is still not certain unless we the people demand it.

And so, you know, this falls on all of us, young people and the young at heart of which I am increasingly one.

And I don't know the answer to that, but it's really worth fighting for.

I'll leave you this thought.

I had dinner the other night in New York with a friend of mine named David Pressman.

He was the ambassador to Hungary.

He just came back, interestingly, a married gay man with two children in Hungary, where a homophobia has now become state policy there.

So he had a very, you know, interesting relationship with Viktor Orban, who has been a role model for Trump.

And the first thing that Orban did was he had his oligarch friends buy up all the news media, major news media outlets, hand them to foundations that Orban then appointed the people to run.

And that was the end of independent media in Hungary, which was a huge step forward toward the kind of autocracy, you know, democracy in form only that we have now.

We've gotta be vigilant.

We've gotta be vigilant.

Right now Trump has thrown hundreds of executive orders, and he's got so many balls in the air that it's hard to follow them all.

But we need to follow them all.

And we can't let any of them drop without a fight when it comes to preserving, you know, the sort of mechanisms of democracy and accountability.

So I can't promise you, I can't promise you.

I can promise you that if you guys and if all of us walk away and accept this as the new normal, then no, it won't survive.

So hope you can sleep tonight.

- Yeah.

(attendees laughing) - I'll try.

- So Steve, we have one and two and that's it?

- One more.

- One more.

One more.

- I mean, I got nothing to do, so you guys, it's up to you.

- Sir.

Yeah.

- Thank you so much for joining us tonight.

We really appreciate it.

- Yeah.

- There's a huge displacement of our population going on right now.

How does cities like Chicago, your old hometown, New York, how do they turn it around?

Or are you not optimistic about them turning it around?

- You're talking about just our loss of population?

- Well, and just all, it goes with the population, the business, all the things that are being lost in those kind of cities.

- No, I think that's a challenge.

And, you know, I love my city.

But, you know, there are certain things that we have to address.

We've got a permanent fiscal mess that is problematical.

We've got real problems in our school system that will drive families out of Chicago.

The fiscal problems I think have impacted on the business climate in the city.

So there again, I think, you know, I think the city has poor leadership now.

The city needs new leadership.

- [Evan] Not a fan of the mayor.

- No, and that would put me in keeping with 86% of the population, literally 86% of the population.

He has a 14% approval rating, which he's earned, in fairness.

So I think every state has to reinvent itself.

I mean, there are climatological reasons that may drive people back to the Midwest.

And there are other advantages that they have to market.

And, you know, I see the revival of cities like Detroit, and that makes me, that that's thrilling to see, a lot of work to go there.

But there is this outmigration.

There also is, honestly, a lot of people, there are people who, there are older people who are leaving for sunnier climes and more forgiving climes, although they're becoming more perilous.

They may not.

So I think you're raising a really good point.

Can I amend your question though?

Because we didn't talk at all about the deportation.

And one of the challenges for Trump is that he's promised to bring down costs.

Everything that he's doing threatens to raise them.

- Right.

- Depending on how deportation is handled, it's going to be, so a lot of these folks are working.

- Agriculture, hospitality, construction.

- Right.

- Right?

Three industries that would be unbelievably affected.

And when you think about, you know, food prices, about housing, you know, so there's that.

Obviously, tariffs, which, by the way, are not taxes on foreign countries.

- We pay those.

- We pay those tariffs ultimately as consumers with raised prices.

So, you know, I'm worried; if these things are carelessly done, that's gonna have a negative impact.

And it's gonna have a negative impact on some of these communities as well.

So I'm worried about it.

I'm not giving you a good answer as to what to do about it, other than that we need to improve in Chicago, we need to fix our broken public pension system, which is completely consuming everything.

We need to have a sensible leadership of the public schools.

I'll tell you what happened in Chicago, and I'm pro-labor and I love teachers.

I mean, I was a product of the New York City public schools when I grew up.

But the mayor who got elected was a longtime organizer for the teacher's union.

And they negotiated a contract or demanded a contract, and then he ordered the CEO of the schools to borrow, to pay for this new contract, which he wouldn't sign the contract and wouldn't borrow because the schools were already deeply in debt.

And now there's legal back and forth.

He fired the school board and hired a new school board and they fired the CEO, and now that's being litigated.

But if you're a parent and you're watching all of this and you're making a decision about whether to stay in Chicago or leave, that's gonna weigh heavily in your decision-making.

So, you know, we've gotta take care of our own business.

The city has tremendous assets, and I hope all of you visit it, especially in the summer.

But we could fritter away all our advantages if we don't take care of it.

- Good.

We're gonna do two more quickly.

Thank you for your question.

Let's go over here, and then finally over there.

Very quick.

- Thank you.

- Are you a student too?

- Yes, I am.

And my classmate stole my question, so hopefully this one will be just as good.

- [David] Maybe I'll answer it better this time.

(attendee laughs) - Early on in the election, I got the sense that, especially when Trump was posturing things like that he wanted to pull out of NATO, I got the sense that people were defending it by saying, "Well, that's just what he says.

He goes back on his word."

And yet Biden was hugely unpopular because he promised that he would help people that were left behind in the pandemic, and he wasn't able to do that.

So how can those two things, Trump's predictability and the way people viewed Biden as hypocritic, exist at the same time?

And do you think that'll influence the way that people view candidates in the future and what they look for in presidential candidates?

Gee, I hope not.

I hope that we're not creating a market for mendacity.

I hope that we're not like rewarding that.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting, the people who defended Trump.

When you said to Trump, well, he's gonna, you know, take out vengeance on his enemies and this and that, they say, "Well, he didn't do it last time."

I mean, he tried.

And he stopped by people in the Justice Department and his own White House counsel and so on.

There's no one like that now.

And like a lot of what he said, "Project 2025?

I never heard of that.

What is that?

I have nothing to do with that."

Well, some of the principal authors are now in his cabinet, and he seems to be executing like from it.

So he obviously wasn't telling the truth then, you know?

In terms of Biden, look, I think he did a lot of things to help people through the pandemic.

And I think a lot of what he did was aimed at, I mean, when you think about the costs that people are bearing, costs like childcare, I just had a new grandson, my fourth grandchild, an incredible blessing.

And I was sitting at the table with my son and daughter-in-law, and I said, I have a two-and-a-half-year-old, little Isaac.

And I said, "Well, when Jenna goes back to work, is Isaac gonna go to the same daycare as Eli?

"Yes."

And I said, "And how much is that gonna cost?"

"Well, between them, $60,000."

And they're like, you know, she works in a school.

He's in a consulting business, but not, I mean, they're solidly middle class.

They do fine, but who can afford that?

And they're in a better position than most.

And Biden tried to do stuff about that.

So, you know, where he failed wasn't acknowledging what what he couldn't do.

And honestly, where he failed to be really straightforward about it was on the border stuff, which went on for three years before he took action on it.

And then he wasn't willing to really acknowledge any of that.

Those were mistakes.

But boy, I'll tell you what, I think that there are a lot of people who may be nostalgic for some of what Biden was offering.

If the fiscal plan that I'm hearing Trump and the Republicans promote comes into being, where, you know, we're gonna cut what people who are struggling need in order to help Elon Musk get richer, if that's possible.

- Well, we're gonna see, finally, if there's a too much to bear, right?

Like, is there a limit to how much people are willing to take.

- Well, they hired him for a reason, which was to improve their standing, their financial standing.

If he doesn't do that and we see another iteration of what we've seen where the rich get richer and everybody else pedals faster and faster just to get along, I think you're gonna see, you're gonna see a fury again.

- Thank you very much- - Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Good luck to you.

- Last one, hi.

- And are you a student?

- Yes.

(attendees laughing) Actually, - That's a good line.

- I tell my students that you are a student the entire part of your life, that you never stop learning.

- I like that.

(attendees applauding) - [David] You're absolutely right.

So you're a teacher.

- I'm a retired teacher.

I taught high school English, juniors and seniors, American Lit and British Lit.

- Well thank you for that.

- So, and I will tell them very quickly, you are very powerful.

My generation stopped the Vietnam War.

I marched till my legs fell off.

You will do the same for our democracy.

(attendees cheering) It's all about you.

(attendees applauding) - Look at that.

- At any rate, I'm concerned about BRICS.

And I'm wondering what Trump administration will do with their, you know, what kind of a relationship we'll have with BRICS, how that will affect our economy.

How do you see that?

- [David] Well, tell me your concern.

- I'm concerned that they will overpower us, that they will get so powerful that the rest of the world will go to them for loans.

- Will you explain to the room what BRICS is.

- BRICS is- - An acronym.

an organization that, and I'm not sure, it's been around for a while, I think I became aware of it last maybe in the middle of the summer sometime.

I have to remember: BRICS is Brazil, Russia, India, China, and I always forget the S. It's some African country.

I don't know- - Sudan.

- South Africa.

- South Africa.

- Yeah.

- [David] A couple of S's to choose from.

- They got all together and decided that they needed to, you know, form a block to take care of trade and whatever other interests may benefit them.

Now, and I don't know if there may be five years in the making or whatever, but now they have 22 countries, and Spain just joined them.

And I thought, "Oh my Lord."

And there, I guess all the money that they have in GDP, that they have in their countries, combined, is more than Europe and the USA.

And that's what frightens me.

- I think that we are, you know, like I said earlier, I worry that he's enamored of the foreign policy of the 19th century, and economic policy for that matter.

But this idea that we can, you know, that we can kind of engage in mercantilism and wall ourselves off and basically bully and bludgeon the rest of the world into doing what we want is gonna...

This is, you know, like what happened with Colombia.

Colombia is, and I'm not, you know, I think they have a president who has his own political needs and thought the fight might be good for him, but Colombia's probably one of the more reliable allies in that region that we have.

And when you have fights like we had yesterday, you might win in the short run.

But, you know, China's a willing suitor for all of these countries.

And so the way you deal with the emerging challenge of China is to build strong alliances.

And if you don't believe in alliances, you are actually playing their game.

You are making it easier for them.

And that is a real concern.

And, you know, I don't, I mean, among many concerns they have, obviously, his adulation for autocrats is concerning.

You know, Trump really does, he believes that rules and laws and norms and institutions are for suckers.

And the world's kind of "The Hunger Games" and the strong take what they want and the weak fall away.

That's kind of how he sees the world.

That's how Putin sees the world.

That's how Xi sees the world.

And that's a very worrisome model.

You know, when Russia rolled into Ukraine, Trump at first called it genius, 'cause, well, if you can snatch another country, why wouldn't you?

- Yeah.

- You know.

And that is a hell of a roadmap for disaster.

I mean, then we're back to pre-World War II.

And so, I mean, I've got great worries about that.

And Marco Rubio, I think, understands all of this.

The question is how much influence and power - Does he have?

- will he have.

Interestingly, you know, he was sort of a McCain Republican.

And, you know, so how much influence he'll have, we'll see.

- We'll see.

- Yeah.

- On that upbeat note.

- Thank you so much.

- Well, can I give an upbeat note?

- Yes, go ahead.

Send us out with a benediction.

Something positive.

Go ahead.

(attendees laughing) - Well, I mean, when I travel around the world, I mean, not around the world, around the country and talk to people, whether, you know, even I have a place in rural Michigan, and my neighbors, a lot of 'em voted for Obama, most of 'em voted for Trump.

But, you know, they're good people, they're good neighbors.

They have the same concerns that I do about my family and my grandkids.

And a lot of 'em are scuffling to get along.

But if you were in a pinch, they'd be the first ones there and so on.

We spend a lot of time, and social media is partly responsible for that, dehumanizing each other.

And we kind of lose our sense of common humanity, but we have a common humanity.

And that also gives me hope, if we can find a way to lift that up.

You know, Karl Rove, you know, he and I became friends, and people say, "How did you become friends with Karl Rove?"

We became friends because I read his autobiography and I read about how he had lost his mother to suicide.

And I had lost my father to suicide.

And I picked up the phone and I called Karl, and we had never spoken.

We knew each other, we knew of each other.

And I said, "If you and I spent some time talking about suicide prevention, I bet you people would come and listen."

And we did.

And we started doing that.

And, you know, as we did that, we learned a lot of other things about each other.

I still think a lot of his ideas are nuts.

- Oh, but you'd take him today over a lot of other people.

- Yeah, I know.

(attendees laughing) But I don't like saying that out loud because I don't want to further destroy his career.

- [Evan] That's it.

That's it.

- But the point is, maybe this is less a source of hope than a plea.

Let us try and find our common humanity again, because we are fighting these forces that would take that away from us.

And that in the end really is a death knell for a healthy society and a flourishing democracy.

So you all seem like good-hearted people.

Let's figure out how we do that and start asking the right questions of each other.

- Good.

Go forth.

(attendees applauding) David Axelrod.

Give him a big hand.

Thank you.

Alright (claps).

That was great.