Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune Trip Cast for
Speaker 1: March tenth, twenty twenty six. My name is Matthew Watkins,
Speaker 1: editor in chief of the Texas Tribune, and I am
Speaker 1: joined as usual by Eleanor Klibanoff, Lawn, politics reporter for
Speaker 1: the Tribune. Hello, Eleanor, thanks.
Speaker 2: For having me, and thanks for getting the title right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wrote it down.
Speaker 2: That's good. That's good.
Speaker 1: Yes, I of course missed last week's podcast. I was
Speaker 1: in beautiful Providence, Rhode Island, where there were three feet
Speaker 1: was three feet of snow on the ground, and I
Speaker 1: missed it so much I heard I'm so jealous of
Speaker 1: y'all talking about the election results and particularly Ken Paxton
Speaker 1: and John Cornyn that I demanded that we do it
Speaker 1: again this week.
Speaker 2: We love it.
Speaker 3: Honestly, we could not have fit even one more person
Speaker 3: on this stage. Certainly we had no more room for
Speaker 3: one more man, so we were maxed out.
Speaker 2: So what it kicked you off? Anyway?
Speaker 1: All right? Well, well, very good, and so joining us
Speaker 1: to discuss this is friend of the podcast, Mark Davis,
Speaker 1: who is host of his self titled show on six
Speaker 1: sixty am The Answer in Dallas, Fort Worth and a
Speaker 1: frequent interviewer of Texas's top Republican officials. Mark, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you guys, pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1: It's a fun time, I think, to be in talk
Speaker 1: radio in Texas.
Speaker 4: To say the least, I mean, this was this was
Speaker 4: all set up. This was frontloaded to be an amazing season,
Speaker 4: no matter what I mean. It always is at primary times,
Speaker 4: and it always is, especially in Republican territory of primary times,
Speaker 4: with blood on the walls and all these bitter feuds
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, everybody makes nice afterwards. We
Speaker 4: all unite to beat the Democrats, just as the Democrats
Speaker 4: unite to beat us. At least that's the way it's
Speaker 4: supposed to go. But wow, there might be some intervening
Speaker 4: passions that make this, if possible, even more interesting.
Speaker 1: Indeed, so let me just go through a quick recap.
Speaker 1: I'm sure all of our listeners know this, but let's
Speaker 1: talk about how we got to where we are right
Speaker 1: now in this Cornyn Paxton race. Cornan shocks me at
Speaker 1: least and maybe some other people by emerging from election
Speaker 1: night as the top vote recipient forty one point seven
Speaker 1: percent to Paxton's forty point seven percent, Mark, I will
Speaker 1: ask you in a little bit whether that surprised you
Speaker 1: or not. And then, of course, James Tallerco wins the
Speaker 1: Democratic nomination decisively. The next day, Donald Trump declares he's
Speaker 1: very much not worried about Tallerico, who is obviously going
Speaker 1: to lose, but still says he'll be endorsing in the
Speaker 1: race and for the good of the party, the other
Speaker 1: candidate must drop out. Everyone sort of assumes that that
Speaker 1: means he's going to endorse Cornan Paxton, asked about this,
Speaker 1: declares he's not leaving the race, and then the next day, Thursday,
Speaker 1: says he'd consider dropping out of the race, but only
Speaker 1: if the Senate passes the Save Act, which would require
Speaker 1: national voter ID. Flash forward to now, and really, we
Speaker 1: haven't had much progress on this story. No endorsement, no
Speaker 1: Save Act, no one dropping out of the race. So Mark,
Speaker 1: tell me take let's take a journey into the mind
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump right now? What is he thinking? What's
Speaker 1: what's what's his move right now? Why is he making
Speaker 1: the moves he has already made.
Speaker 4: At any given moment, if the president does something he
Speaker 4: thinks it's advantageous to his agenda. I mean, that's not
Speaker 4: a shocker. That's why every politician does any given thing.
Speaker 4: The President has a capacity for being so transactional, I
Speaker 4: guess is the frequently used term that he can seem
Speaker 4: to shift on the fly, just as a real estate
Speaker 4: deal might be. If something looks advantageous one day, it
Speaker 4: might not be so advantageous the next, which is what
Speaker 4: gets you from what looked like a continued stance of
Speaker 4: no endorsement, which I have considered to be an act
Speaker 4: of genius on his part, because as soon as he
Speaker 4: endorses anybody corn or Paxton, the first thing he's going
Speaker 4: to do is enormously alienate and inflame roughly half of
Speaker 4: his Texas base. What wisdom could there possibly be in
Speaker 4: doing that? So, in exploring what that motivation might be,
Speaker 4: to go chronologically to the first thing you said, was
Speaker 4: their surprise in cornn finishing as he did for me. No,
Speaker 4: but it's not because I'm such a genius. It's because
Speaker 4: I considered almost anything to be possible, from the MAGA
Speaker 4: fueled grassroots red meat conservatism of Paxton giving him a
Speaker 4: five point lead to the absolutely unshakable incumbent power of
Speaker 4: Cornan giving him a five or six point lead, anything
Speaker 4: was truly possible. So for them to wind up in
Speaker 4: a relative dead heat and get thrown into the cauldron
Speaker 4: of hell that is the because of Wesley Hunt's bizarre
Speaker 4: decision to run. That was all the list of things
Speaker 4: that could have happened. So, to finish my overly long answer,
Speaker 4: what is Trump thinking right now? I can understand that
Speaker 4: he does not cherish the notion of a long, expensive
Speaker 4: blood on the Walls primary going all the way to
Speaker 4: May twenty sixth, which may afterward leave nerves rubbed so
Speaker 4: raw that the losing side is loath to come back
Speaker 4: to the polls on November third, even if it's to
Speaker 4: stop James Tallerico. I think that is a fear worth assessing.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I've been kind of wondering
Speaker 1: about is what really changed on primary night? Right because
Speaker 1: I think we all kind of knew whether or not
Speaker 1: we thought that Cornyn was going to be the front
Speaker 1: runner after primary night, we all hat a pretty good
Speaker 1: sense going into that night that it was going to
Speaker 1: be Corny and Packson in a runoff. We already knew.
Speaker 1: We have lots of evidence to look at that those
Speaker 1: two guys really don't like each other, and we're going
Speaker 1: to be lobbing bombs at each other through that entire runoff.
Speaker 1: We knew that it was going to be like a
Speaker 1: you know that it's going to be a pretty tough
Speaker 1: election cycle for Republicans. That's generally what happens in the
Speaker 1: midterms for the party that holds the White House. So
Speaker 1: what changed between March second and March fourth that all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Trump, who had taken the position of
Speaker 1: I'm saying out of this, is now all of a
Speaker 1: sudden like I got to get in on this.
Speaker 4: I think on March second, if you had asked President
Speaker 4: Trump what you might do and what you want to do,
Speaker 4: he would think he would say, let me see how
Speaker 4: the vote goes, because if either Packs nor cornyin or
Speaker 4: obviously if somebody had won outright, then we're done here.
Speaker 4: I mean. And by the way, I mean, it's not
Speaker 4: like it was thirty something, thirty something, twenty something. Both
Speaker 4: of them were in the forties, the low forties. Nobody
Speaker 4: came that close. But it's not like either Cornin or
Speaker 4: Paxton winning outright would have been so otherworldly crazy. And
Speaker 4: I think the President wanted to see if maybe that happened,
Speaker 4: so we could be spared this entire, this entire drama.
Speaker 4: Seeing them finish neck and neck as they did, you
Speaker 4: might think that would leave the President in a mood
Speaker 4: to continue to stay out of it, which again I
Speaker 4: hope he still will and I kind of think he
Speaker 4: still We'll see about that. Well, listen that corn and endorsement,
Speaker 4: which looked definite until it instantly wasn't. And now and look,
Speaker 4: let's not go crazy. There are some who are floating
Speaker 4: the notion possibly of a Packson endorsement, what with with
Speaker 4: Ken's maneuvering with regard to to save act. More on
Speaker 4: that in a moment, But I think the president is
Speaker 4: now possibly examining and this may all change by the
Speaker 4: time everybody sees this point time. So there's ultimate accountability
Speaker 4: on tape, there's wisdom and Trump staying out of it.
Speaker 4: And even if he does go ahead and endorse Corn,
Speaker 4: it as a reward for loyal service during this Trump
Speaker 4: two point zero term, that could backfire because there are
Speaker 4: packs The voice of a couple of million Paxton voters
Speaker 4: will say something like, mister President, we love you, We
Speaker 4: thank God every day that you won. We're going to
Speaker 4: make up our own minds on this one. Thank you.
Speaker 3: I do think, I mean, I think part of this
Speaker 3: is that Trump didn't want to get into a situation
Speaker 3: like with you know, Sid Miller, where you endorse too
Speaker 3: late and then you know people have already cast their
Speaker 3: early votes and it sort of blows up in your face.
Speaker 3: I think perhaps President Trump did not do as much
Speaker 3: advanced planning as we did of realizing that the early
Speaker 3: vote starts so early here and that people are you know,
Speaker 3: have made up their minds or even just cast their
Speaker 3: vote thinking that there wouldn't be an endorsement.
Speaker 2: I do think the fact.
Speaker 3: That he I was just that he was saying, you know,
Speaker 3: whoever I don't endure has to drop out is a
Speaker 3: sign that there's not a clear you know, he's not
Speaker 3: confident that his endorsement necessarily could win this, because you know,
Speaker 3: he doesn'tant to endorse someone and then have them lose.
Speaker 3: So he's saying, you know, I'll give you my endorsement,
Speaker 3: but you got to go if you don't get.
Speaker 4: It, which is of course a ridiculous thing to ask.
Speaker 4: There is no universe in which either of those things
Speaker 4: was going to happen. Cornan was obviously not going to
Speaker 4: step out. And here's my hot take of fresh for you,
Speaker 4: no charge. Patson's not going anywhere. You phrased it with
Speaker 4: exact precision. This is just my gut. But he said,
Speaker 4: Notice he did not say that if the Save Act passes,
Speaker 4: I will get out. He said I'll consider getting out.
Speaker 4: So here's you know, channeling Ken. I've known him for
Speaker 4: a long time. This is just speculation, but I think
Speaker 4: it's in foreign speculation. He will consider it for about
Speaker 4: five minutes, and in those five minutes, what he will
Speaker 4: con is what has happened. And the bottom line is
Speaker 4: if the say back has passed and bears Trump's signature,
Speaker 4: Ken Paxton can say I did that, and I'm not
Speaker 4: even a senator yet. Yeah, So imagine the kind of
Speaker 4: influence that I can wield if you make me a senator.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think you know, when Trump put out that
Speaker 1: truth social post where he said all these things, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people, you know, immediately assumed packs
Speaker 1: I mean, cornan endorsement is coming. And the two reasons
Speaker 1: for that are a because as soon as people started
Speaker 1: to see the results that tell Rico was going to win,
Speaker 1: really before tell Rico had even been declared by most
Speaker 1: media the winner. There was talk among well informed people
Speaker 1: about this just huge push that's going to happen among
Speaker 1: you know, leadership in the Senate, leadership maybe within the
Speaker 1: Republican Party nationally and maybe even in Texas to try
Speaker 1: to push for a Cornan endorsement because of a feeling
Speaker 1: that Sackston is much more vulnerable to defeat in the
Speaker 1: general election than Cornyn is. We can I actually want
Speaker 1: to discuss whether we believe that to actually be true
Speaker 1: here in a little bit, but we will. But the
Speaker 1: other thing was essentially, why would Corny Why would Trump
Speaker 1: need to say that the person he doesn't endorse needs
Speaker 1: to drop out if he was going to endorse Paxton?
Speaker 1: Because I feel like the conventional wisdom here is that
Speaker 1: if Trump endorses Paxston, it's game over, right, and if
Speaker 1: Trump endorses Cornyn, then maybe it's a bit more of
Speaker 1: a race. Do you agree with that assessment?
Speaker 4: I do. But there is a poetic, classic simplicity if
Speaker 4: you're President Trump and saying I'm endorsing this guy, the
Speaker 4: other guy should get out, rather than taking another sixty
Speaker 4: seconds and a few more syllables to say, well, if
Speaker 4: it's one way the other guy should get out. But
Speaker 4: if it's this guy, there's probably not as much need.
Speaker 4: It seems like a very trumpy thing to do, to say, Look,
Speaker 4: once I anoint somebody, the other guy stands no chance
Speaker 4: and should probably go ahead and hit the road for
Speaker 4: private life. It just seems like the simpler of the
Speaker 4: two messages.
Speaker 3: And it's so trumpy, And I think to say, you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do the behind the scenes machinations
Speaker 3: of you know, let's say you endorse Cornyn, you go
Speaker 3: to Paxton's camp, you say, you know, we're here's what
Speaker 3: I'm asking of you. You just say it on true
Speaker 3: social and assume that people will sort of do what
Speaker 3: you're asking of them. I think I will also say, like,
Speaker 3: I think obviously Cornyn right now probably very anxiously awaiting
Speaker 3: news on this. I think for both Trump and Paxton,
Speaker 3: this is kind of I mean, for Trump, I have
Speaker 3: to imagine you're like everybody is courting me right now.
Speaker 3: I mean, this is the plot of you know, every
Speaker 3: romance novel and the history of time. Right two people
Speaker 3: want you and and they both are like willing to
Speaker 3: do anything, and then you know, you have to eventually
Speaker 3: choose one, and that's where it gets boring.
Speaker 2: But but you don't.
Speaker 4: But you don't, I mean because your analogy is park
Speaker 4: and he is the most popular girl at the day. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 4: But but he was playing this so brilliantly and may
Speaker 4: return to the comforting genius what more, And it's not untrumpy.
Speaker 4: It would be very trumpy to say I like both
Speaker 4: of these. When Wesley Hunt was in there for no
Speaker 4: earthly reason, he said, I like all three guys because
Speaker 4: there's a reason to like all three guys. And there
Speaker 4: was just such wisdom and inner peace. If they're even
Speaker 4: such a thing as possible in this race to have
Speaker 4: a president who's respected by voters, for all the remaining
Speaker 4: candidates to say, look, I'm going to let Texans decide,
Speaker 4: and if President Trump rediscovers the value of that, to say,
Speaker 4: you know what, no matter how this works out, I'm
Speaker 4: going to have an ally in the Senate. Let's let
Speaker 4: Texans decide. I'd like to think there's still a non
Speaker 4: zero chance of that happened.
Speaker 1: I would just like to say if Susan Combe's former
Speaker 1: Texas politician and romance novelists would like to write that novel.
Speaker 2: It's a publicity right there. Yeah, yeah, the first Texas.
Speaker 3: But I mean also Paxton, I think is playing this
Speaker 3: very well in that he probably the longer this goes
Speaker 3: without an endorsement, it's sort of with this common wisdom
Speaker 3: that Cornyn is going to get the nod. The longer
Speaker 3: Trump doesn't endorse, the more it's sort of a nod
Speaker 3: to Paxton, right of, like well maybe I'm considering maybe,
Speaker 3: And he gets to post stuff on social media like, well,
Speaker 3: perhaps I can be the king maker of the Save Act,
Speaker 3: which is, as you said, eventual ammunition of you know,
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm sort of I'm playing three D
Speaker 3: chess and I'm not even in the Senate yet.
Speaker 4: Completely right, Because the Cornan endorsement, I mean that that
Speaker 4: writing was on the wall in sharpie from some people.
Speaker 4: I was getting text after text it's coming now. Some
Speaker 4: of it was wishful think coming from Cornan supporters, but
Speaker 4: for others it was those who either ambivalund or actually
Speaker 4: Ken supporters who kind of went get whatever mood this
Speaker 4: gave them. It's like, boy, it really really looks like
Speaker 4: a Cornan endorsement mere hours away. Then when it suddenly
Speaker 4: was not clearly there was a reason for that. There
Speaker 4: would have been a reason for it to happen. There
Speaker 4: was an obvious reason why it did not, And the
Speaker 4: only possible reason for it not to happen is Trump
Speaker 4: had second thoughts about endorsing Cornyn, which is an absolute
Speaker 4: great news cycle for Paxton. Now, the news cycles are
Speaker 4: going to come thick and fast now, and what happens
Speaker 4: today or tomorrow or the next could reshuffle everything. But
Speaker 4: for this hiccup of time, you have it exactly right.
Speaker 1: So Texas election Code says that you can, if you
Speaker 1: were at make a runoff, you can drop off and
Speaker 1: remove yourself from the ballot by three days after the canvas.
Speaker 1: The canvas has to happen March fifteenth, So we're talking
Speaker 1: about really a March eighteenth deadline for an endorsement and
Speaker 1: for someone to drop off.
Speaker 2: And I have to imagine Donald Trump has that circled
Speaker 2: in red.
Speaker 3: There's no world in which he's gonna, you know, not
Speaker 3: factor that.
Speaker 2: My goodness, it's the Texas election Code.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, So let's.
Speaker 4: Again, and there's two things true at the same time.
Speaker 4: Number one, very useful information on the Texas election Code.
Speaker 4: Number two completely irrelevant because no one is going youwhere
Speaker 4: On May twenty six, Cornyn will be there, Paxton will
Speaker 4: be there, and the following morning one of them will
Speaker 4: no longer be there.
Speaker 1: All right, So okay, so I want to drill into this.
Speaker 1: You are certain that there's nothing that Trump could do
Speaker 1: to get Ken Paxton out of this race, including okay,
Speaker 1: because my my fan fiction scenario here is, oh, here
Speaker 1: we go is Trump appoints Paxton to some confirmable position
Speaker 1: at which point what I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Appoints him to because live listen, I because now I've
Speaker 4: played this game for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, in fact, let's let's fill in the blanks. Hey,
Speaker 4: he fires Pam Bonding and makes him a jorney general.
Speaker 4: Ken Paxton appears to be there. There must be some
Speaker 4: golden take. Well, it's called a track record, an enviable
Speaker 4: track record that his fan base absolutely loves. That fan
Speaker 4: base does not extend to the United States Congress. Can
Speaker 4: anybody imagine a world in which it's a good idea
Speaker 4: for Ken Paxton to go through confirmation hearings? Right? Please?
Speaker 4: So he's not going to be named, there's no ambassadorship,
Speaker 4: there's nothing, you know, you know, ambassador to the Moon.
Speaker 4: There's there's nothing that is as big a prize as
Speaker 4: the US Senate seat that he keeps. So there is
Speaker 4: no stop that can be thrown, no side offer. It's
Speaker 4: not that it's not but you describe something that happens
Speaker 4: all the time. It's a completely worthy plot line, but
Speaker 4: not in this case. It's not.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, but but what you're taking away from
Speaker 1: me is the decision that Cornyan would have to make
Speaker 1: about whether to confirm, vote to confirm Ken Paxton ory
Speaker 1: too clear up his his Senate seat, you know, despite
Speaker 1: having for the last two years calling him basically the
Speaker 1: worst person on earth.
Speaker 3: But hey, I mean A to B Yeah, well, let mean, Mark,
Speaker 3: one thing you said that stood out to me that
Speaker 3: I do want to ask about, which is that you know,
Speaker 3: you're saying that President Trump, who is I mean just
Speaker 3: this extremely powerful figure in the Texas GOP, I mean
Speaker 3: the GOP nationally, that if he were to endorse Cornan,
Speaker 3: that there are people a subset of people who feel
Speaker 3: more strongly about Paxton than they do about Trump, or
Speaker 3: they would be more loyals to Paxton than Trump.
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course there are, and with good reason, because
Speaker 4: it would be so many things are kind of binary,
Speaker 4: switch on, switch off, all black hole white. Let's look
Speaker 4: at the emotional complexity for a Paxton supporter of Trump
Speaker 4: endorsing Cornet. Would that Paxton supporter then go, well, screw that,
Speaker 4: I'm done with Trump. Of course not. It would be
Speaker 4: a triangulation in which the Paxton supporting Texans would say,
Speaker 4: mister President, I've kind of said this more. We love you,
Speaker 4: we're glad you're there, we pray for you every day,
Speaker 4: but on this particular thing, sir, we respectfully are going
Speaker 4: to vote for Ken Paxton anyway. And it's for the
Speaker 4: same reasons that we support you and love you and
Speaker 4: cherish you and are glad you're there. The outsider, the fighter,
Speaker 4: the trailblazer, the rattler of establishment cages. It is the
Speaker 4: same list. The list of reasons why we love you
Speaker 4: is the list of reasons why we love Ken. So
Speaker 4: you go ahead and endorsed corn and all you want,
Speaker 4: and we'll be voting for Ken anyway.
Speaker 1: Thank you very All right, Well, let's let's consult the
Speaker 1: polls here. This is from Texas Public Opinion research released yesterday,
Speaker 1: March ninth. Admittedly, Texas Public Opinion Research is run by
Speaker 1: a Democrat.
Speaker 2: Luke Warford was popping off on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Yeah who and who? Who? You know was on the
Speaker 1: podcast a couple of weeks ago. So if you want
Speaker 1: to take this with a grain of salt, feel free
Speaker 1: to take it with a grain of salt. But here
Speaker 1: is what the poll said. Paxton leads Cornyan forty to
Speaker 1: forty one percent in a runoff. That's an eight point
Speaker 1: at vance with eleven percent undecided. If Trump were to
Speaker 1: endorse Cornyan, Paxon would still lead forty four percent to
Speaker 1: forty three percent. A Trump endorsement of Paxton would widen
Speaker 1: Paxton's lead from fifty eight percent to thirty two percent.
Speaker 1: The thing I wonder about here, though, is I don't
Speaker 1: think all Trump endorsements are created equally, right, Like, sometimes
Speaker 1: he fires off the truth social post and then you know,
Speaker 1: mispronounces the candidate's name at a speech, you know, and
Speaker 1: people can kind of credibly make the case like they
Speaker 1: don't know he doesn't even know who this guy is
Speaker 1: like this, you know, someone's in his ear, but it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually reflect the like true belief of.
Speaker 4: Trump.
Speaker 1: That would not be the situation here. And if he
Speaker 1: were to, you know, follow through on his push to
Speaker 1: have a Paxton in this scenario drop out. It would
Speaker 1: be a situation where Packson is openly defying Trump, something
Speaker 1: that Trump clearly doesn't like and often causes him to
Speaker 1: go on the attack. And so, you know, what this
Speaker 1: poll seems to be measuring is like, how do you
Speaker 1: vote if this is you know, if Trump endorses this way?
Speaker 1: But I think there's another question of like, how would
Speaker 1: you vote if one of the candidates is in like
Speaker 1: open warfare with the sitting president of the United States
Speaker 1: and standard bearer for the party. Maybe that creates a
Speaker 1: different situation.
Speaker 4: Okay that that would not happen. Let's do that. Okay,
Speaker 4: you just drawn it's just not going to happen. And
Speaker 4: then we'll go to the very interesting poll numbers, which
Speaker 4: I do take with a grain of salt, but it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean they are of no value. First of all,
Speaker 4: let's go to that hypothetical day where Trump endorses corn
Speaker 4: And and essentially invites or tells Ken to get out,
Speaker 4: at which point Ken respectfully declines to do that. At
Speaker 4: that point, you think Donald Trump is going to look
Speaker 4: at a man who has been a loyal order for
Speaker 4: more than a decade and go, you're terrible. I can't
Speaker 4: believe you disobeyed me. You're no longer a value to me.
Speaker 4: You're dead to me. Of course not. President Trump would
Speaker 4: understand completely, and there's a lot of political theater. He
Speaker 4: will know that there has been political theater in the
Speaker 4: very request being made. He would also know in his
Speaker 4: heart of hearts that there was no way Ken was
Speaker 4: actually going to do it, and there would be instant
Speaker 4: understanding and a shrug from Trump that goes, okay, hey
Speaker 4: I tried, and everybody would get on with their lives.
Speaker 4: Now to the poll numbers. I don't discount Democrat polls.
Speaker 4: I discount internal polls as being totally self serving. They
Speaker 4: always want to please the boss. A Democrat poll has
Speaker 4: a lot of has a lot of vested interest in
Speaker 4: stoking Packston enthusiasm because they think that Ken would be
Speaker 4: easier to beat, which may or may not be true.
Speaker 4: We'll get to that in a second. But even if
Speaker 4: the forty nine forty one is a little fat, and
Speaker 4: the fifty eight to thirty too is way fat, even
Speaker 4: if they're but a fraction of that, it still reveals
Speaker 4: what I think are some basically reliable things that right now,
Speaker 4: in a nutshell, Paxton has the advantage on May twenty
Speaker 4: sixth that is enjoyed by just about every grassroots friendly,
Speaker 4: more conservative combatant. Once it's runoff time, those are the
Speaker 4: voters that tend to have a higher likelihood of coming back.
Speaker 4: The Trump endorsement of Paxton would shut the door game over,
Speaker 4: We're done here. The Trump endorsement of Cornin has a
Speaker 4: much lesser effect for the reason I've just described. A
Speaker 4: Trump endorsement of Paxton is on brand. A Trump endorsement
Speaker 4: of Cornin would be a little curious for a lot
Speaker 4: of people to absorb and not as eagerly obeyed. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that's that.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I think that, Like again, I do just think that
Speaker 3: Paxton right now, I imagine that immediately upon Trump saying I'm
Speaker 3: going to endorse, another person has to drop out. There
Speaker 3: were there was back channeling where it was made clear
Speaker 3: that Paxson was not going to drop out, and you know,
Speaker 3: that suddenly makes it a lot less appealing for President
Speaker 3: Trump to endorse.
Speaker 2: You know, if he can correct that. Now he's not
Speaker 2: the king maker. Paxton is the king maker.
Speaker 3: And that's a you know, at that point, I do
Speaker 3: think there's a to your point, mark, a very real
Speaker 3: world in which this all just sort of like floats away, and.
Speaker 2: All those pre rits we spend all that time on
Speaker 2: never get to see the light of day.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: It's devastating to me.
Speaker 4: We're done here, you know, and for just a minute.
Speaker 4: That's because before I forget it, because you guys are good,
Speaker 4: having done a number of avenues. Let us put under
Speaker 4: the microscope this notion that Cornyan is the stronger general
Speaker 4: election candidate. Tons of people were saying that most of
Speaker 4: them named John Cornyn, and most of them in his camp,
Speaker 4: which is a thoroughly understandable thing. And by the way,
Speaker 4: using normal Earth logic, that would kind of makes sense
Speaker 4: that the broader, the more moderate, the guy who maybe
Speaker 4: the occasional Democrat might vote for, would generally be the
Speaker 4: stronger general election candidate. I've often said I've remained confident
Speaker 4: that either Corner or Paxton would beat teller Eco. It
Speaker 4: may be that Cornyn would beat him by eight and
Speaker 4: Paxton would beat him by four, which leads some people
Speaker 4: to go, why risk another beto night America? What was
Speaker 4: that two and a half back in twenty eighteen. Nobody
Speaker 4: wants to revisit that again. But before we jump to
Speaker 4: what has been conventional wisdom about the type of candidate
Speaker 4: who's stronger in a general, this is no ordinary election.
Speaker 4: I cannot overstate to you the number of people who
Speaker 4: are Paxton supporters who will not vote for Cornin under
Speaker 4: any circumstance. Now I'm going to be arguing with those
Speaker 4: people from May twenty seventh to November third. I'll be
Speaker 4: the I'll be the great uniter. I'll try to be,
Speaker 4: and they are going to be people who are butt
Speaker 4: hurt on either side depending on whoever loses. But I
Speaker 4: think that the vanquished corn In people may be more
Speaker 4: likely to hold their noses and vote for Ken than
Speaker 4: some broadly dispirited Packston people will be. That they will
Speaker 4: have the line that says, art really you get go enjoy,
Speaker 4: Senator Talerico, see how that works out for you. That
Speaker 4: I will hate that, but I think that it will happen.
Speaker 4: And the only reason I weave that out is to
Speaker 4: say that that sentiment, which is appreciable, may even out
Speaker 4: or cancel out the usual logic that Cornin is the
Speaker 4: automatic stronger candidate November, he simply may not be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I sort of think back to the
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen presidential primaries when I think about this. Right
Speaker 1: and on the left, you had a lot of people
Speaker 1: and energy behind Bernie Sanders. You had people in the
Speaker 1: sort of establishment area freaking out about that and really
Speaker 1: trying to rally around Hillary Clinton. And on the right
Speaker 1: you have the people behind Donald Trump and the establishment
Speaker 1: people trying to rally around basically anyone else at various times,
Speaker 1: and the Democratic Party chose to go with the establishment,
Speaker 1: and the Republican Party chose to go with the non establishment,
Speaker 1: the people, and that ended up working out pretty well
Speaker 1: for the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: Right, absolutely right. And it's funny and characterizing that and
Speaker 4: taking us all, but we're all old enough to remember, Yeah,
Speaker 4: you made a really really valuable point there. If nobody
Speaker 4: puts me in a rubber room for saying there's a
Speaker 4: similarity between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders, I think you
Speaker 4: know what I'm talking about. It is the same kind
Speaker 4: of insurgent. We're tired of the status quo appeal, just
Speaker 4: in very very different ways. Bernie represented burn it down.
Speaker 4: The status quo is not working. I'm tired of the
Speaker 4: go along to get along, and Trump was the version
Speaker 4: of that on the Republican side, and we were smart
Speaker 4: enough to go with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So okay, let's pull up another left leaning poll
Speaker 1: here though, because this one also came out yesterday, Public
Speaker 1: Policy Polling New Senate poll pulled tall Rico against Paxton,
Speaker 1: pulled Tallerico against Cornan, Tallerco against Paxton, Tallerco forty seven percent,
Speaker 1: Paxton forty five percent, Tellerrico against Cornan forty four percent,
Speaker 1: Cornan forty three percent. So you're talking about a lead
Speaker 1: in each one. A two point margin against Paxton, a
Speaker 1: one point margin against Cornan. Now I see your face,
Speaker 1: So tell me why that is a ridiculous poll.
Speaker 4: No, No, I can only scoff so much. I can
Speaker 4: only scoff. There's a limit to my scoffing because I
Speaker 4: can't sit here in March and tell you that's not
Speaker 4: going to happen because of the factor that I've just
Speaker 4: described again, in a vacuum, there is no reason on
Speaker 4: God's earth for this seat to flip. None. There should
Speaker 4: be Republican unity. If I have breath in me, there
Speaker 4: will be Republican unity. But the only way that Tallerico
Speaker 4: becomes a senator is if Republican voters are stupid enough
Speaker 4: to hand it to him, if we are on our game,
Speaker 4: and if we can all get over ourselves and oh
Speaker 4: my guy lost, then this will not be all that close.
Speaker 4: It won't even be Beto. It'll be a good, healthy,
Speaker 4: five six seven percent win. But I can't promise that
Speaker 4: because if indeed there are people, look at the Senate
Speaker 4: District nine things where Lee Wanskanz lost to Taylor Rimett.
Speaker 4: She's gonna beat him in November, one presumes, because that
Speaker 4: the district will reflect itself once again. But there were dispirited,
Speaker 4: angry John Huffman supporters. Oh she didn't reach out to us,
Speaker 4: what are we twelve years old? And that grudge affected
Speaker 4: that race and suppressed her turnout. There will be a
Speaker 4: support rest of effect on the turnout for either corn
Speaker 4: un or Passion, But because there'll be people holding grudges
Speaker 4: who will not come out for the other guy, I
Speaker 4: hope it's not many, because if it's enough, then tall
Speaker 4: Rico wins. I pray, I hope. I ultimately don't think
Speaker 4: that'll I will tell you that will make this rice
Speaker 4: closer than it would otherwise have been.
Speaker 1: You say, though, that it's not going to happen. I
Speaker 1: think you know you have a quarter century of history
Speaker 1: on your side for that. But the actions of Trump,
Speaker 1: the actions of other power brokers, and the Republican Party
Speaker 1: suggest that they are at least worried enough about this
Speaker 1: to be trying to do something, including you know, helping
Speaker 1: corn and spend seventy million dollars in the primary. I mean,
Speaker 1: there seems to be fear in the Republican Party of
Speaker 1: tall Rico.
Speaker 4: Well, the Bedo phenomenon showed that you're better. It's an
Speaker 4: old coaching analogy. Don't ever take anything for granted. Play
Speaker 4: like you're ten points behind on the road, no matter
Speaker 4: what the situation and the opponent. It is smart to
Speaker 4: campaign aggressively and raise money aggressively, no matter what. You'd
Speaker 4: rather do that and not have to than have to
Speaker 4: and not do it. Nobody wants to be caught napping again.
Speaker 4: If you want to take a moment on what happened
Speaker 4: in democrat Land, there is nothing like the ascendancy of
Speaker 4: James Tallerico to give me an appreciation for Jasmine Crockett.
Speaker 4: And I am not kidding Jasmine Crockett on her worst day,
Speaker 4: from a conservative standpoint, was just a fire hose of
Speaker 4: Democrat index cards. He's Hitler, orange man, bad, you know,
Speaker 4: stuff I've been used to every day. This is just
Speaker 4: purely a Republican perspective, which I could. There are some
Speaker 4: things I say that are just from me, other things
Speaker 4: that I take it at thirty thousand foot level to
Speaker 4: analyze what everybody's doing. But on Jasmin Crockett's worst day,
Speaker 4: she did not offend my sensibilities as deeply as James
Speaker 4: Tallerico going ahead and being for abortion, which he gets
Speaker 4: to do, being for opener borders, which he can do
Speaker 4: thinking they're six or twelve or thirty seven genders, which
Speaker 4: he can do. But his suggestion that Jesus agrees with
Speaker 4: him on these things is blasphemy. This is heresy of
Speaker 4: the highest order. Now it's vital that I say he
Speaker 4: ain't playing to me, I ain't voting for him. Will
Speaker 4: this be damaging to independence? And I'm going to tell
Speaker 4: you every day between that, I mean, there's good news
Speaker 4: and bad news. And having the Democrat race settled, they
Speaker 4: don't have to mess with with a runoff. But already
Speaker 4: Tallarico is getting absolutely torched from in conservative media for
Speaker 4: just oh, I don't want to hate my neighbor. Nobody's
Speaker 4: telling you to hate your neighbor, dude. The continuing smears
Speaker 4: of more conventional Bible believers, I mean, it is, it
Speaker 4: is crazy. It may well be that all of this
Speaker 4: that I've just described doesn't hurt him at all, because
Speaker 4: the definition of political damage is when it loses you
Speaker 4: support from people who supported you yesterday. Me flaming on
Speaker 4: tell Rico talking about his latest bs doesn't hurt him
Speaker 4: at all until and unless people who are willing to
Speaker 4: support him no longer are, and that remains a huge, huge.
Speaker 3: I mean, I do think tell Rico is you know,
Speaker 3: I think on election night, right, there was that sort
Speaker 3: of very common wisdom of, well, the Republicans are going
Speaker 3: to tear each other apart with this runoff, and he
Speaker 3: gets to just sort of, you know, save his pennies
Speaker 3: and save his attacks and all that, until the general
Speaker 3: and Republicans wasted no time in saying we can do
Speaker 3: two things at once. We can run a very competitive
Speaker 3: runoff and we can start flaming you. And I think
Speaker 3: probably if he in a fictional world where he and
Speaker 3: Jasmine Crockett were in some runoff for several more months,
Speaker 3: potentially would have saved him some of that, and it
Speaker 3: would have all started June first. But it was always
Speaker 3: going to be what it was going to be, which
Speaker 3: is that Republicans are going to try to chip away
Speaker 3: at his support among independents, among Hispanic.
Speaker 2: Voters, among religious voters. And you know, he's to your point.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of Democrats are not necessarily going
Speaker 3: to be turned off by some of that. I think
Speaker 3: his supporters are going to support him. It's these independence
Speaker 3: and particularly I think Hispanic voters that both sides are
Speaker 3: going to try to really court.
Speaker 1: To the It was very clear that there were some
Speaker 1: clips of things he said, you know, in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty to twenty twenty two range that were cued up
Speaker 1: for as soon as he became the nominee. And I
Speaker 1: think we'll be seeing those clips, you know, basically every
Speaker 1: day between now and November. And you know, we've seen this.
Speaker 1: We saw what happened in the Colin all read Ted Cruz,
Speaker 1: you know, where basically every advertisement was Colin all Red
Speaker 1: wants to you know, destroy women's sports and all these things.
Speaker 1: And I think again the conventional wisdom is that that
Speaker 1: had an impact, you know. I mean, you can also
Speaker 1: argue that he pulled closer to Cruz than you know,
Speaker 1: outperformed the Democratic at at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 1: So maybe that conventional rism could be wrong. But we
Speaker 1: are seeing the blueprint, and I think one of the
Speaker 1: key questions is to whether this is a competitive race
Speaker 1: or not will be how much does that stick on
Speaker 1: him and how much can he define himself as someone
Speaker 1: who up until relatively recently was still largely pretty unknown
Speaker 1: to the public.
Speaker 4: Correct, and that is what enables him to do something.
Speaker 4: It's probably time for me to give brother Taller Eico
Speaker 4: a little bit of credit for something that he's done.
Speaker 4: It's very smart. Is this whole notion of I'm a
Speaker 4: new kind of politician, I'm tired of the old divisive
Speaker 4: ways that this is wickedly genius for a couple of things.
Speaker 4: Number one, this notion that I am a peacemaker. I'm
Speaker 4: not divisive, of course you are. Everyone is divisive. If
Speaker 4: you say there are two genders, it's divisive to people
Speaker 4: who think there's twelve. You say there's twelve, it's divisive
Speaker 4: to people it is. I'm tired of being at war
Speaker 4: with my neighbor, well, you know, the Republican Texas, which
Speaker 4: I think is still a majority, would say to mister Tallerico,
Speaker 4: if you're wanting to open the border as much as
Speaker 4: you seem to be, we are going to go to
Speaker 4: war with you. If you want to trans our kids,
Speaker 4: we are going to go to war with you. So
Speaker 4: this notion that he's some ambivalent peacemaker is nonsense, but
Speaker 4: it's still very very smart for him to position himself
Speaker 4: as that, and in going after him. If I'm advising
Speaker 4: either corn or Paxton, I think I would probably spend
Speaker 4: less time on the stuff that I was just harping
Speaker 4: on a little bit ago, the heresy and the carrying
Speaker 4: around some curious Bible that says that God is ambivalent
Speaker 4: about abortion and other curious non existent passages. I would
Speaker 4: spend more time trying to explode the myth that he's
Speaker 4: all that new or all that different. I might ask
Speaker 4: the question, really, name one liberal view that James Tallerico
Speaker 4: does not hold one thing? Wait, give me one liberal
Speaker 4: view that brother Tallerco does not hold. And if you
Speaker 4: can't find one, or can't find many, then maybe it
Speaker 4: ain't that new Maybe he is Colin alright, maybe he
Speaker 4: is Mado, just in a different package, attempting to put
Speaker 4: biblical lipstick on the same old leftist pig.
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say to push back against that
Speaker 1: a little bit. I mean, there have been some people
Speaker 1: I saw something a Fox News clip today this morning
Speaker 1: of like he's too liberal, like he wouldn't even get
Speaker 1: elected in San Francisco, and yeah, and like, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I buy that. I mean I
Speaker 1: looked him up in the sort of like left to
Speaker 1: right rankings that Mark Jones puts out every year, and
Speaker 1: he's he's kind of like right in the middle of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. And I think you can credibly make
Speaker 1: an argument that that is far to the left of
Speaker 1: the Texas electorate. And I'm but I like the sort
Speaker 1: of painting him as like far to the left of
Speaker 1: Democrats feels not wholly supported by Evan here. And I
Speaker 1: do think that there is a difference in tone, if
Speaker 1: not in substance. Right the idea of like are is
Speaker 1: are we going to accuse our opponents of being evil
Speaker 1: and have the most aggressive, you know, divisive language possible,
Speaker 1: or are we going to you know, encircle it in
Speaker 1: a message of we disagree, but you know it's built
Speaker 1: in love. Is, I think, a different message than we've seen.
Speaker 4: So two things. Number one, you're totally right, there's not
Speaker 4: really that much. There's a lot of ven diagram overlap
Speaker 4: between what you said when I said, yeah, I don't
Speaker 4: suggest that that James Salery go is AOC or is
Speaker 4: Bernie Sanders. But it's sort of the degree of liberalism
Speaker 4: that he comes in with. When I said, name a
Speaker 4: liberal view that he does not hold. There's some that
Speaker 4: he holds, but he just doesn't beat them to the
Speaker 4: level that maybe the squad does. This notion of the
Speaker 4: nice guy that is packaging on steroids. Is it nice
Speaker 4: to smear Bible believing Texas Christians as being homophobic, transphobic,
Speaker 4: everybody phobic, not liking brown people. This is the oldest
Speaker 4: trick in the book that this oh so sweet, oh
Speaker 4: so nice, oh so mannerly mister taller Eco will use,
Speaker 4: and that is that anybody with a scriptural belief in
Speaker 4: two genders, a belief that we actually need borders, that
Speaker 4: we are essentially racist and hateful people, that's not nice.
Speaker 2: Well, I think this will be his the challenge he
Speaker 2: will face.
Speaker 3: I think probably realistically more so if he's facing Ken
Speaker 3: Paxton than John Cornyn, but probably no matter who he's facing,
Speaker 3: which is that when you're up against Jasmine Crockett, you're
Speaker 3: portraying yourself as I'm you know, the sort.
Speaker 2: Of more like more mannerly option.
Speaker 3: I'm more like, you know, I'm the bring everybody together,
Speaker 3: I'm the seminarian, I'm the pastor. I'm going to be
Speaker 3: sort of the like, you know, kind good neighbor guy,
Speaker 3: whereas Jasmine Crockett, it's the big fighter, you know, that
Speaker 3: energy when you're.
Speaker 2: Going up against the Republicans. I mean, does that change?
Speaker 3: Does he stick as loyally to this framework of you know,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be coming out swinging, you know,
Speaker 3: or does he try to move slightly more in the
Speaker 3: direction of Jasmine Crockett a little more fire.
Speaker 2: It'll be interesting to see.
Speaker 4: That is a great question. This is really the first
Speaker 4: time I've thought because because we're sort of turning pages
Speaker 4: that are down the road. If we're hanging out in
Speaker 4: Tallarico headquarters, what is the playbook of running against Cornan
Speaker 4: versus what is the playbook of running against passing? They
Speaker 4: differ in a couple of really key ways. Great question.
Speaker 4: If Tallarico is running against Cornan, he should know that
Speaker 4: there are a few Democrats who might be center left.
Speaker 4: Maybe they actually pay attention in Church easy, not really,
Speaker 4: And by that I mean there are a couple of
Speaker 4: Democrats who will vote for John Cornick, They just will
Speaker 4: are There are no Democrats that will vote for Kenn Paxton,
Speaker 4: which means that there is more cover for mister Tallerico
Speaker 4: to really go all in, to really go in hot
Speaker 4: and heavy, to go in as hot and heavy against
Speaker 4: Paxton as Paxton will go in hot and heavy against him.
Speaker 4: It is going to be If you think that the
Speaker 4: runoff to May twenty seven is going to be filled
Speaker 4: with a lot of fisticufs on the Republican side, you
Speaker 4: wait until you see Paxton versus tallar Eco, because that
Speaker 4: will be a hair match rage in the cage.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, I want to just before we let you go.
Speaker 1: I mean, you are someone who is in a lot
Speaker 1: of communication with the Republican grassroots, those voters. How is
Speaker 1: this Trump Cornyn Paxton drama playing out among them right now?
Speaker 1: What are people how are they responding to this dialogue?
Speaker 4: So far I am. I'm very lucky and blessed and
Speaker 4: fortunate that here I am as a pretty staunch Republican.
Speaker 4: Well pretty staunch Republican. There are people who are less
Speaker 4: staunch who are glad to be in touch with me,
Speaker 4: and they're actual Democrats. There are people who listen to
Speaker 4: the show and call me who think I'm wrong about
Speaker 4: absolutely everything, and I am blessed to hear from them
Speaker 4: and glad to have those conversations, because we don't have
Speaker 4: enough of those kind of conversations. So in navigating that,
Speaker 4: especially in mccornyan versus Paxton, the world as a Trump
Speaker 4: loving Republican and as a voter in this primary whose
Speaker 4: politics are a little bit closer to Kens than Cornyn's,
Speaker 4: let me add is to make that sentence even longer,
Speaker 4: if that's even possible, that I believe Cornin is over criticized.
Speaker 4: I think he has done a masterful job of portraying
Speaker 4: himself as a Trump ally during Trump two point zero,
Speaker 4: and I asked him directly, I said, Senator, everybody's concern
Speaker 4: is that when Trump's not president anymore and you're still there,
Speaker 4: that you're going to go back to being a Mitch
Speaker 4: mcconough clone, will you be as MAGA friendly when Trump's
Speaker 4: not there as you are now? And he said absolutely
Speaker 4: calls from people who say he's live, and I'm not
Speaker 4: prepared to say that. I don't know if I can
Speaker 4: totally believe it, because establishment clothes are hard to put
Speaker 4: in a second hand drawer. But I think I have
Speaker 4: a lot of good things to say about centertor Cornyn
Speaker 4: and his loyal service and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: But I probably lean and I probably present, I represent.
Speaker 4: I identify as more of a Paxton voter now, to
Speaker 4: answer your question, in taking questions, in establishing a landscape
Speaker 4: where everybody can come, bring me anything. The Cornyn camp,
Speaker 4: the cornn portion of Republican Texas, I think is more
Speaker 4: scared of losing than they are at Paxton winning. Obviously,
Speaker 4: they have bought into this notion that only Cornyn can win,
Speaker 4: and thus their vote for Cornyn is partly a show
Speaker 4: of support appreciation for everything that he has done. It's
Speaker 4: a show appreciation and support for everything that he has represented,
Speaker 4: but it's also a desire to keep the seat above
Speaker 4: all else, keep the seat. And the Paxton portion of
Speaker 4: Republican Texas is ready for change in the way that
Speaker 4: the Trump voters were ready for change in coming away
Speaker 4: from the establishment of the Republican Party. The Paxton vote
Speaker 4: is a vote for term limits, it's a vote for change.
Speaker 4: It's a vote for having somebody in that Senate seat
Speaker 4: who you don't have to wonder about. I had a
Speaker 4: caller say it was a really great call who said, Mark,
Speaker 4: I've heard you interview Senator Cornyn. It has made me
Speaker 4: like him more. It has made me it has given
Speaker 4: me a higher opinion of Cornan than the average Paxton
Speaker 4: voter has. But all other things being equal, once Trump
Speaker 4: is gone, I would hope that Senator Cornyn would continue
Speaker 4: to be as MAGA friendly as America first. But with
Speaker 4: Ken Paxton, I don't have to wonder, and that is
Speaker 4: the passion of the Paxton voter. So now we get
Speaker 4: to figure out which is the larger number, And I
Speaker 4: have no idea which it is. I know what the
Speaker 4: poll indicate, I know what past history indicates that it
Speaker 4: and listen, I recognize and stipulate that it is. It
Speaker 4: is an advantageous landscape for Ken. But what lies ahead
Speaker 4: is eleven weeks whatever of cornin and a ton of
Speaker 4: money identifying Ken as a loathsome human being that can't
Speaker 4: not have some effect? Will will? Will that be damaging
Speaker 4: to Ken in some way? Yes, it might be just
Speaker 4: a sliver that takes away one or two percentage points.
Speaker 4: It may be worse. I will tell you that if
Speaker 4: Ken is able to take this Save Act moment, this
Speaker 4: Save Act chapter and make that case I made more
Speaker 4: toward the beginning of our chat, or he's able to say, yeah,
Speaker 4: remember that, especially if it passes. Yeah, what's that Save
Speaker 4: Act thing? I did that, and I'm not even a
Speaker 4: senator yet, make me a senator and watch what happens.
Speaker 4: That is enough to subsume any corn and attack. It's
Speaker 4: enough to enable Ken to continue to overcome what is
Speaker 4: a steamer trunk full of oppo research on things from
Speaker 4: the relatively recent past. Is the most amazing example of that.
Speaker 4: In a word about that, A lot of people come
Speaker 4: after me, and I'm sure you've heard this. Hey, you
Speaker 4: Republicans are supposed to be about values. We would all
Speaker 4: like for our standard bearers to be choir boys and
Speaker 4: boy scouts and have completely blemish free backgrounds, and the
Speaker 4: wise philosopher Kings that's the ideal. It doesn't always happen
Speaker 4: ultimately in the modern era, and I mean modern going
Speaker 4: back fifty years. What the kind of president you will be,
Speaker 4: the kind of senator you will be, the kind of
Speaker 4: represent matters more than things in your personal past. And
Speaker 4: for people thinking that's just a wilful blindness from Republicans,
Speaker 4: I give you Bill Clinton, who engaged in sex acts
Speaker 4: in the actual oval office and went on to become
Speaker 4: a continuing respected elder statesman of the Democrat Party. It's
Speaker 4: not a Republican thing or a Democrat thing, It's a
Speaker 4: human thing. Probably more urgently now, what matters most of all.
Speaker 4: John Corny is going to be talking about character, character, character,
Speaker 4: and that's fine. I would be too if I were
Speaker 4: in his position. But the character that voters probably care
Speaker 4: about the most is promising to do things and actually
Speaker 4: doing them. Well.
Speaker 1: It's going to be an exciting few weeks looking forward
Speaker 1: to seeing how this plays out.
Speaker 4: I'm exhausted already. I'm totally kidding. That's totally satirical. It
Speaker 4: is energizing, and in fact, I think it's possible to
Speaker 4: overstate how exhausting and so much money I'm not worried
Speaker 4: about the money at all. I think that seemed to
Speaker 4: be a big Trump concern. Well, after this, you know,
Speaker 4: one hundreds of millions of dollars what like, there won't
Speaker 4: be any money left for Trumps, for Paxton versus Tellerico
Speaker 4: or Cornyn versus to We'll we'll find the money.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, it's time for us to get this up before
Speaker 1: any the truth socials.
Speaker 2: And the other friends changes completely.
Speaker 1: Change the situation. Thank you so much for joining us, Mark,
Speaker 1: thanks Eleanor, and thank you to our producers, Rob and Chris.
Speaker 1: We will talk to y'all next week.