Time for a Recalibration?

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Welcome to the Texas Take. I'm your host Jeremy Wallace and what a broken moment we are living under, right? I think everyone is really trying to process everything we are seeing in Minneapolis. Look, we're gonna get into the debate between Jasmine Crock and James Telrico and I'll have the latest on John Corner and his challengers.

And I'll have a little bit on the big election that you should be watching in Houston. It could change a lot of things in Washington DC. I'll have both Amanda Edwards and Christian Menefee coming on the show. Plus you're gonna hear from Column Miss Joy suing again. She'll explain why Al Green is so mad at us, both of us. But first, we just can't ignore everything that's going on in Minnesota. Like we have to address some of this, right?

Look, I fully understand the stated mission up there, right? I think there are a lot of people who are legitimately worried about deporting these violent gang members and monsters like those who took Jocelyn Nungry, that little Houston girl that was murdered a couple of years ago.

But is this really still that same mission? That little five year old boy with the brown skin being led away by ice? And how about the ten shots fired into the back of a protest who had already been disarmed? Is that still the same mission? Hm. I don't know. I I've been talking to some, you know, black Texans who lived through the nineteen fifties and sixties.

When they hear the government calling protesters outside agitators and quote domestic terrorists, it doesn't take them long to start telling you about lunch counters and bus boycotts and how they were once. you know, the subjects of those types of comments. Is that really the image Trump and the White House really want? Where legal citizens are dying and children being led away?

Ooh. And and look at what's happening to local police officers. You sh you should talk to some legitimate cops out there. I've been talking to some of them and they will tell you these federal agents aren't doing them any favor. They are eroding the public trust that law enforcement really needs to do their jobs, at least the ones who stick around and live in our communities. Remember, local police officers, they live with us. They live among us.

These federal agents can just go away. But it's not just that, you know, they are eroding the public trust, but they're also being very sloppy in how they're doing it. Firing ten shots at a man that another officer is engaged with who isn't even armed, is completely endangering the other officers. If those guys had done that at the Houston PD or the San Antonio Police Department, they'd be headed for some serious disciplinary hearings and probably a desk job.

Don't take my word for it. Check out the statement the National Police Chiefs Association sent out earlier this week. They really push the White House to reassess what is happening uh with ICE in federal agents as they try to do these immigration uh roundups. They point out that ICE and Border Patrol are making their jobs harder.

Remember when ICE and Border Patrol leave, these men and women are in the local communities are still gonna have to be there and they're gonna need some public trust to do the jobs they do. If you talk to any good legitimate cops out there, they will tell you they really need, you know, public trust to do the job that they do.

And maybe as confusing as anything in all of this was what Christy Gnome said about Alex Prey. Obviously he had a gun in a holster. In a holster, that's a really important point. On him. He was legally carrying the weapon. You know, and he had permits for it at that protest. Here's what Gnome said. that shows up with a gun and ammunition rather than a sign. This is a violent riot when you have someone showing up with weapons um and are using them to assault law enforcement officers.

You are already seeing gun rights groups tapping the brakes on that one, right? And the NRA certainly doesn't like the the tone that was starting to happen around that. They didn't directly respond to Gnome. Specifically, but they posted a warning about quote making generalizations and demonizing law abiding citizens.

Just having a gun at a political rally shouldn't be a crime, at least from what I understand. If y'all had ever been to a political rally of any sort that Republicans have in Texas, they regularly have people who are open carrying weapons. Remember, Texas is a constitutional carry state, meaning anyone can carry a gun in public without a permit. There's no exception in the law for going to a rally.

You know, whether it be a Black Lives Matter rally or a pro Ukrainian rally, you get the point. You can show up to any protest. expressing your first amendment rights with your gun, which is a second amendment right. But under Gnome's theory that she put out in that statement, it feels like those people might be in jeopardy, even in a place like Texas. Put all this together and it's easy to see why some of Trump's universe is a little bit worried about what they're seeing.

If you listen to Joe Rogan's podcast at all, you know, remember he's based in Austin. He's really been hammering on this. What Ice is doing, like shooting that lady seems kinda crazy. You know, like grabbing people that happen to be American citizens and dragging them out onto the snow and asking them for their papers. That seems kind of crazy too. And did you hear what Governor Greg Abbott said on the Mark Davis show up in DFW?

Mark Davis is one of the you know biggest conservative radio guys in Texas still and look when he got talking like this, it certainly caught my attention. law enforcement officers uh in the country. I s they are law enforcement officers. And so w the they being the White House need to recalibrate on what needs to be done uh to make sure that

Uh that respect is going to be reinstilled. Uh and that's that's not an easy task, especially under the the current circumstances, but I I know that they're working on a game plan. uh to to make sure that they are going to uh let's say uh recalibrate and maybe work from a different direction uh to ensure that they get back to what they wanted to do to begin with.

and that is to uh remove people from the country who are here illegally, who were allowed in and by Joe Biden, and especially those who pose the most danger, uh, and uh uh go about their job in in a l s more structured way. Uh to make sure that they are gonna be able to remove these people uh w without causing all the kinds of problems and fighting in communities that they are experiencing right now.

I had one reader of the Texas Tech newsletter who really doesn't like Abbott at all. He wrote me and said, quote, I finally see something that Abbott said that I can mostly agree with. Man, the idea of recalibration is really a good way to put it, right? He's not saying back away or stop doing it. He's just saying it like there needs to be a recalibration. Trump seems to be getting that message too.

The idea that he's sending Bordersar Tom Hom into Minnesota to kinda help uh refocus what agents are doing there is probably a big move, right? You know, he's not pulling everybody out to give the Democrats some victory up in Minnesota to say they beat back, you know, Trump. I again I think this is that recalibration. The polls show why Trump might be reacting.

A new Reuters poll released earlier this week showed thirty nine percent approve of how Trump is handling immigration. Y'all that is a low number. Compare that to when Trump first took office. That number was over fifty percent approval. That's a crazy drop in just a year.

It's the center of everything Trump the Trump presidencies have been, right? Like he's been the tough on border guy, the immigration guy, the guy who is gonna bring sanity to our immigration system. But what we're seeing in Minneapolis

None of that looks like sanity, right? Again, we understand I think a lot of people Even if you don't agree with Trump, the idea of going and get the people who have committed murders or rapes or any violent crime, getting them arrested and out of this country probably didn't seem like a terrible idea, right? But if the legacy becomes, you know, the the pepper spraying of protesters in shooting people in the back without a gun.

Uh, the little boy being escorted away by ICE agents. None of these are images, I'm sure, that are sitting well with Trump.

And look y'all, there's another huge Texas angle to this whole thing. The little five year old boy that agents took out of Minneapolis, guess where they sent him? Yep. Texas. Dilly, Texas, to be exact. That's down in South Texas. That's where US Representative Joaquin Castro on Wednesday led a delegation to meet with the boy and his father. I went down to San Antonio to hear Castro talk about what happened there. Here's what he had to say after that meeting.

And this afternoon myself And Jasmine Crockett, Congresswoman from Dallas, along with members of our staff, had a chance to go inspect the Dilly Detention Center in Dilly, Texas, and visit with Liam Ramos and his father, as well as hundreds of other detainees. Liam Ramos should be released immediately. Met with he and his father for about thirty minutes, uh how that meeting went.

We sat in what was the courtroom. Uh you can see from the picture that I posted that he was lying in his father's arms. His father said that Liam has been very depressed since he's been at Dilly. That he hasn't been eating well. Uh I was concerned with you see how he appears in that photo with uh his energy. He seemed lethargic. Um he said his father said that Liam has been sleeping a lot, that he's been out

And here's what Jasmine Crockett had to say. She also was on that uh delegation trip to Dilly, and here's what she had to say about the whole thing. Imagine being a free willed loving kiddo. And all of a sudden, one day, you're thrown on a plane, you're sent 1500 miles away from home, and you don't understand what's going on. All you know is that your friends are gone, you have one set of pants. One shirt

Your dad washes your pants and your shirt out every single day and then hangs it by a unit to try to dry it overnight. You don't have your mom who is currently four months pregnant. With your sibling. And frankly, at this point in time, you've gotten depressed to the extent that you've stopped eating. This is the story of Liam. The sad reality of what we found when we went to Dilli was that Liam was

Liam was not the only one. You have so many mothers in this facility. They didn't care about themselves. I'm gonna be perfectly honest. They were concerned about their children. We heard the same story over and over and over about how they were depressed.

About how they weren't eating, about how children were throwing up. This is terrible what is happening. And I really don't know what it's going to take for there to be a wake up call in this country, but I am here to tell you that we are supposed to be better than this.

Look, you know, uh who knows what's gonna happen from here. By the end of the week I I don't know what's gonna have happened with Christy Dome and others, but I think it's safe to say she's on very thin ice right now and Tom Homan going, you know, to Minneapolis is probably a signal that Trump is losing a little confidence with her. Let's keep an eye on that and we'll get back to that as things develop, of course.

Now let's get back to what I thought the show was really gonna be about this. We're gonna take you up to Georgetown, Texas, where we saw the first debate between Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico. After months of campaigning, would one of these two candidates really start pulling away from the other?

John Murritz and I were both up there live and we can attest that no single issue really defined this debate. Instead it really became a continuation of this debate over what kind of style is going to help a Democrat finally break through in November. Here's James Tallarico with his opening remarks. On the West side I learned that the real fight in this country is not left versus right, it's top versus bottom.

We will not win this race in November with the same old politics of division. Billionaires want us looking left and right at each other so we're not looking up at them. And here's Jasmine Crockett talking about what kind of fighter she thinks uh is needed for the moment. I think that I will do the edgy things, the things that the political um consultants will never tell you to do.

Because right now people are hurting. This isn't about games. It's not about politics as usual. It's not about who sounds as clean as possible. It is about tapping into the rawness of this moment. And right now, to be perfectly honest, if we're gonna win and keep our country, we're gonna need somebody who can file bills but also knows how to be a street fighter. And so that is my response. Well, John, thanks for joining me on the Texas Take Again and help sort this all out for us.

You know, uh you were at that same debate with me. Did you get a sense that anybody really won this, you know, debate? Did anybody you know get anything close to w uh not even a knockout blow, but d even a solid jab. This debate was kind of an introduction to the uh uh t to those just tuning in. And so what we saw was them basically, you know, leaning uh into the uh the talking points and the uh proposals

and uh the issues that each wants to highlight. You mentioned the Street Fighter. We all know about James Talerico and, you know, Love Thy Neighbor and all of that. Interestingly enough, um the the debate sponsor was the FLCIO, which endorses candidates. They didn't see a winner either, because they took a pass on debating. Also, interestingly enough, both Talerico and Crockett are s uh sort of famous for their ability to go viral.

Neither gave us anything to go viral that was new uh th in in this debate. The format tees it up, but it just didn't happen. Yeah, it kinda almost felt like you know, not to keep throwing boxing analogies around there, but

It kinda felt like, you know, the the early rounds of some big heavyweight fight we've all been waiting for, right? You know, where it's like they're just kind of feeling each other out, you know, you know, nobody's gonna really hurt each other in this first round. They just kinda see what everybody looks like and then You know, we'll save the uh the fireworks for later.

Yeah, th i i like I say, it it was it was very much, you know, uh w what's the the old thing with doctors say first do no harm. I don't think either gave the um the Republican ad makers a little bit of a, you know, fifteen second, thirty second clip that can come back to haunt uh whoever turns out to be the nominee in November. They tried it with uh

you know, the the moderators asking, you know, would you support defund ICE? And neither of them use that phrase because they no doubt remembered defund the police and how that just was um was toxic to mainstream voters for the Democrats a cycle ago. Yeah, it's a good point too. So this was like the first chance for a lot of voters to really probably see these people in action, at least on the same stage.

You know, like Jasmine Crockett is a little bit, you know, known just from all her cable television appearances and things like that over the last couple of years. I think Telurico is a little bit more of an unknown. You know, a lot of people have if you haven't been on, you know, social media, you may still be trying to catch up with who this guy is. And I thought like I think you pointed out that like You know, he he was basically presenting who he is to a whole new audience.

At least who whoever i was really listening to this program. It's it's worth noting, you know, look, uh no no offense to the AFL CIO, but to have this thing, you know, going on during a winter storm uh where uh so many people were you know, basically at a grocery store or hunkering down, getting ready for the next couple of days and worrying about their power. I'm wondering how many of those like one million Democratic voters in the primary were really tuned into this thing. So it feels like uh

You know, the the the impact isn't great, but at least it gives an opportunity for both Crockett and Tal Rico to introduce themselves to whoever wasn't frozen stiff. Right. And a and the live stream was was captured and recorded. So there are opportunities to push that out. But, you know, a Saturday afternoon in w uh wintertime, uh obviously the the union had no idea we were gonna get that g gonna get that freezing weather.

But but still the y uh I don't think e everybody came to work on Monday, those who showed up in their office and started talking about it, you know, in the in the coffee break room as they were getting their day off the ground. Yeah, w and with all due respect to our friends Daniel Marin and uh Gromer Jeffers who were uh the moderators for this.

You know, I've been pushing both these cans sit down with me for debate here on the Texas take. Uh I hope we can still kind of get this thing worked out.

I'm dying to pose a few questions about how these two are prepared for dealing with what attacks may come. You know, it's like I just keep going back to like you know, that last election cycle where Democrats, not just here, not just Colin Allred, but Democrats nationwide just seem to struggle to deal with how are you gonna answer the attack when Republicans come at you with transgender issues, right?

And wha what are you going to say when they start coming at you on Israel and Gaza? What is your response going to be? Like can you present the kind of message that is going to be able to withstand that. I think that's the thing that probably hurt all red. I just felt like his answers were never quite clear enough to kinda help get him over that line. He kept trying different ways of doing it. And it's like I you know, I give him all the credit for trying.

But you know, maybe it's a bigger issue and I would have loved to have put, you know, both Talerico and Crockett online going, What are you going to do when Ken Paxton says you're trying to put boys and girls sports? What's your answer gonna be? Hopefully we'll get a chance to ask those questions. So if you're out there, if anybody from the Crockett Telarico camp are listening,

Come on, y'all. Get on the show. Let's, you know, has hash this thing out and have a really good spirited debate. And we'll even put it on all of our newspapers. uh in Hearst. We've already been talking about if we do get this interview, we'll put it on the Dallas Morning News, the Awesome American Statesman, the Beaumont Enterprise, you name it. We're gonna be everywhere, y'all. So uh

And time has taken away. Early voting starts uh on the seventeenth of February. Look at your calendar right now, and you'll see that it's less than three weeks out. If you want that exposure, act fast, as they say on the infomercial world.

And and a I like to freak people out and say, you know, there are actually people voting right now. Those absentee ballots are already on people's desks right now. They're going through those. So there's just no time, y'all. If you want to have an influence on that person who's about to vote.

Good time to get on the Texas take. I'll reserve space for y'all. Really. Well anyhow, John, thanks for being up there in Georgetown with me. I'm glad we both made it home alive. It was a much more treacherous ride home, uh, as I think both of us can attest than we had counted on. But uh thanks again for joining the program and we will talk to you uh and hopefully at a debate to be uh heard soon on the Texas Hague. Looking forward to the next encounter.

Now let's swing this back over to the Republican side. You know, obviously you guys know Wesley Hunt is uh one of the three candidates running for the US Senate. He's trying to take on John Cornyn, of course the incumbent, and attorney general Ken Paxton. Look, those other two guys are pretty well known. Uh, but man, I'm not sure if Wesley Hunt wants to be known for what he's starting to become known for.

And that is missing votes in Congress. Look it it gets a little wonky, you know, for most voters. I'm sure they're not paying super attention to this, but look, it caught House Speaker Mike Johnson's attention this week. You know, he actually had to almost chastise. Well, not quite that far, but he certainly wasn't happy with Hunt not being in DC for some votes.

Including one that was going to attempt to stop Donald Trump from being able to conduct military operations without congressional approval. Y'all, this was a much closer vote than Johnson wanted it to be. In fact, he just didn't have the vote. Johnson was clearly not happy. He told reporters, quote, this is uh about Wesley Hunt, and he told them, quote, I expected him to be here, so this was a surprise to me. We have effectively a one vote margin, so it doesn't make the job any easier.

Johnson's math problem here is real, y'all. It's like remember, you know, w we just had that death of a congressman out in California and Marjorie Taylor Green just resigned. So the 220 Republicans that are supposed to be there are down to 218. So you can see Johnson needs every vote he can to get this stuff through. He can't even have two Republicans defect on him on any vote. or they're in trouble. They're gonna lose at whatever vote they put up.

Hunt eventually did make it to DC for this vote, but the GOP had to take the unusual step of making sure he had a police escort from Dulles Airport to get to the Capitol just to be able to cast a boat. Now look, y'all, it's already not a great look to be missing votes in in Congress, but the timing is particularly bad. Corny's been hammering Hunt Hunt on this issue for months.

Pointing out how many votes he's missed in Congress and saying he's not doing the job for people in Houston, so why can we trust him in the United States Senate? My colleague James Osbourne noted that Hunt up to that vote had missed fifty five of fifty eight votes since mid December. Whew, it's definitely a problem timing wise, y'all. Remember, absentee ballots are out right now. People are already voting in this election.

And if this is the image they're getting of uh Wesley Hunt, a guy who is not getting to Congress and kinda upsetting even uh speaker Mike Johnson, again, Mike Johnson didn't call him out in the worst ways, but certainly was expecting him to be there for the vote. Anyhow, it feels like Wesley Hunt has given Cornyn a little bit more to work on going into this March third primary. Anyhow, we'll keep an eye on that and see where it goes.

By the way, that math problem that Mike Johnson has on Capitol Hill, it's about to get a little worse thanks to the people of Houston. On Saturday, the eighteenth Congressional District finally gets to vote for a replacement for the late Congressman Sylvester Turner, who died last March. Amanda Edwards and Christian Menafee finally get to square off on their final battle here to see who's going to go to Capitol Hill.

Not only will one of these two candidates give Democrats that extra vote when they on Capitol Hill, but you can see where Mike Johnson now can't afford to lose anybody. to, you know, campaigning or illnesses or whatever. Well anyhow, I wanted to make sure I caught up with both Amanda Edwards and Christian Mennevie headed into this election.

I talked to Amanda Edwards just outside of the Acres Home Multiservices Center, and here's what she said about, you know, running for this, you know, district and how important it is to get the seat filled. So I bet you can't guess who I voted for. I'm on the top of the ticket, y'all. So I'll give you a little tip. So um really excited to have had the opportunity to cast my vote. I am thrilled about finally

Finally having a moment where our district, this community, gets its voice back. And so thank you all for coming out, rain or shine. This 18th Congressional District will be served and will be able to participate in democracy again. Shortly thereafter I swung up over to the Tidwell neighborhood where I caught up with Christian Menifee. He was chatting up boaters in the parking lot as they were heading into the uh uh the polling site. And I you know here's what he had to say to me.

People have to know about having a voice in Congress, and they haven't had one uh for nearly a year. After the late Congressman Sylvester Turner passed away, the governor delayed this election. That means that when votes on SNAP benefits have happened, on access to Medicaid, on all these important things,

things there's been no voice in Washington DC for the folks in the 18th Congressional District. And I'll tell you, when I'm going to talk to people in the community, they're pissed off about it. Uh they recognize that this was intentional by the governor, and they're ready to see somebody in the seat. So it's so important that folks

Go out and cast their ballot. Uh as you can tell, we're in like pretty poor weather conditions right now. Uh but this is about making sure that people have a voice in Washington, D.C. Someone to vote for them, uh someone to to advocate for them, someone to take care of constituent services. I'm running to be that person. That person and people gotta go vote in order to make it happen. Remember, y'all, as of Saturday's election, it will have been three hundred and thirty one days.

since Sylvester Turner was here representing that area. Look, it's not a record, but certainly this vacancy has been opened far longer than most congressional seats over the last twenty years. In fact, the average is about half the amount of time that it's taken to fill this seat. Whoever wins this seat is going to get to represent the eighteenth Congressional District for the next year for sure. So it certainly changes the math for a while.

But look y'all, they still have another race. This is crazy the way this is lining up for them. Whoever wins this election on Saturday gets the seat, but then immediately has to face off in a primary on March third. And not only do they potentially face whoever just, you know, lost this race on Saturday, but they also will have Al Green waiting for them.

He's the current congressman out of the ninth congressional district, but he's decided in order to stay in office, he's going to run for the now redrawn eighteenth congressional district that includes the areas that Menapee and Edwards are running for right now. That gets us to why Al Green is so mad with me and the Houston Chronicle and Joy Sewing, our columnist. Sewing wrote a piece about how Green really should step aside for the next generation of voters.

Well, Green did not like that at all. Here's a little of what Green had to say in response. I am Al Green, the unbought, unbossed, unafraid, liberated Democrat, a faithful fighter who finishes. I will not seek, nor will I accept, the endorsement of the Houston Chronicle. Wittingly or unwittingly, the Houston Chronicle is aiding and abetting Donald Trump's plan to silence my strong congressional advocacy. And vote for the people of the new combined eighteenth and ninth congressional districts.

The Chronicle should campaign against the government. Not against me. If you read this article, you would conclude that no one among the more than seven hundred thousand people in the new eighteenth congressional district supports me. The chronicle states we can't take another hit because The Chronicle is calling my potential death a hit. No one knows for whom the bell will toll next. The political ageism smearing divide and conquer establishment mouthpiece.

Houston Chronicle Needs new leadership. And that comes to why I brought Joy Swing back onto the Texas take. Okay, let's get into your article. Al Green is clearly calling this ageism, you're attacking him for his age. That's not what you were doing. No. Tell us that you're thinking about like w why did you write this piece and tell us a little bit what that said?

I think I'm echoing what so many people are saying out in the district, young and old. I've heard it time and time again. We lost Sheila Jacks Jackson Lee, then Sylvester Turner. we can't take another hit and I wrote that. Um and I think, you know, now people w are wanting a younger generation, not s necessarily because they're young. They have to be qualified, as you said, but they w are wanting someone who can who can fight the good fight and And being there for the long haul.

And and so that's what that's what I wrote about. And it was not ageism. Yeah. And there's a built in uh advantage that when you have incumbency, like people just know the name, right? And it's like And we we had this a little bit with Sheila Jackson only a few years ago. Y'all might remember she had a couple of young upstart. You know, who wanted to try to take her on. She hadn't been challenged in her primary a long time, and they brought up the question of, hey, we need the new generation.

But that I think goes right to what your column was about. It's like they were the new generation, but they weren't ready to really take over the mantle. you know, at that point, right? They didn't have that experience or that you know but in this case we have you know Christian Menifee and Amanda Edwards who really have you know they both have held elective office. You know, they both really know what's going on up there. And here's an interesting point. I just discovered this.

Amanda Edwards uh is forty four, which is the exact same age that Sheila Jackson Lee was elected to Congress back when she first won her first seat in Congress. So th you can see You know, she was the younger generation then. She was the fresh face for the eighteenth who could be there for a long time, build up seniority. That is like when you know the one piece in your column I thought about, at least from my vantage point, was

The only way to get things done in Congress is through s is through seniority. Uh particularly for Democrats. There are rules up there, if you haven't been there long enough, you don't get much power. So it takes forever to build that up. So when you have a Sheila Jackson, you pass away, Even though she was being replaced by Sylvester Turner, who we've all known forever. But he was starting at the bottom wrong. He had years ahead of him to be anywhere close to effective as she was.

and be able to get things in the budget, right? To get a bill through, to get President Trump to sign a Sheila Jackson Lee bill, right? Like she pulled all that stuff off. How do you do that as a new member of Congress? You have to build up that tenure over time period. And so as you look at Menafee and Edwards, does it feel like they, you know, they are worthy of the torch at this point to give one of them a shot?

to you know see what they can do and build that longevity. I think so. Absolutely. I mean, um Amanda Edwards has has run several times. She served on c city council and Christian Menifee, we know his record. as a county attorney in all the fights that he's been fighting. So I think they both bring their own their own experiences and their own advantages to the the role, whichever one I think we will be

Great to have either one of them. Yeah, and the last song it's like though look, Al Green has been somebody who's been in our papers a lot. He has really appreciated a lot of our coverage over the years. Clearly didn't appreciate this and says he's not gonna be communicating with us, he's not gonna be involving us and stuff. You know, look y'all, this just shows you I've told y'all this from the um the start.

I will bother everybody. It's like, you know, you guys are used to Republicans saying they're never gonna talk to me. Uh that here's evidence that they're Democrats who get mad too over the summer of recoveries. But again, we're just trying to call it like it is, right? You know, this is I think

in everybody's head going, why is Al Green doing Al Green, you'll remember, when he came out of some of those early hearings with me, he told me, and I think I played it for on the show, uh, he said he doesn't need to be in Congress anymore to still be affected.

He actually sounded like he was willing to step aside for the you know, if if it came to be that he did not have a district to run that would put him against people he didn't want to have to run against, right? And so he sounded like he was willing to take that road. But yet when push came to shove, he said, you know what? I see Christian Manafi, I see Amanda Edwards. You know, one of them is going to be in member of Congress.

And I'm still gonna try to take them out. And I j I just think at this point that there should be a mentoring or nurturing of a next generation because we need it. Like w you know, we we need the next generation of, you know, community servants who are politically minded and and fighting a good fight. We need that. Yeah. And there's no way to get that unless you have

Someone who is a veteran nurturing the next generation. Yep. And now it look, he's put him in the spot where Al Green's gotta win this race. If Al Green doesn't win this race and his career ends on this, that becomes what he's kind of almost known for. And I always get uh fearful when members of Congress who have fur served for twenty years, like he has a legacy. He kind of

He's built his little spot as being the guy who would be file impeachment papers and take on Trump and you know, you know, take his cane and go to the floor and raise this big stink about, you know, Medicaid or food stamps. Like you he had that r legacy, right? But if he goes into this race and his career ends losing to one of these two candidates What a different story we end up with. And I I wonder if that's where he wants to end up, you know, in his career as the guy who

try to stop the younger generation from coming in uh and starting. But anyhow, it's a long discussion that we're gonna have on based based on the press conference that he held last Friday while I was at a funeral um and I was receiving text messages about it.

I don't think he that's what he's thinking right now. Yeah, I haven't heard him that mad m uh at us. You know, like look, he's been mad before at some of the stuff. Like he's complained to me about something, but I've never heard him like this where he just really he just told he's cutting us off, y'all.

You may not ha hear Al Green. You may not hear Al Green the politician, but you know what? I'm still gonna play a little Al Green the musician. There you go. All right. Thanks a lot for joining the program, Joy. Thanks as always, and we will talk to you soon. Okay.

Y'all really unpacking this, understand how complicated this is. While Edwards and Menafee are battling for this election on Saturday, there are literally absentee ballots out. with them on the ballot with Al Green, all at the same time. You literally could vote for one of them in the primary uh for March third on your absentee ballot and then go to the polling place on Saturday.

and vote for one of them there. It's just it's really an unbelievable big mess for people in the eighteenth congressional district. And I hear the candidates struggling to try to explain to people, wait, why are we voting again? And why do we have to vote again right away? Anyhow, It's important, y'all, as I you know, for all the March 3rd primaries, not just in Houston, but statewide, remember Monday is a really big day. February 2nd is the deadline to register to vote.

If you know someone who isn't registered yet, get them to vote texas.gov immediately. You know, look, there are eighteen and a half a million of us who are already registered to vote. Use peer pressure. Tell them, hey, don't you want to join the rest of us? We're all cool kids. You really need to sign up if you want to be part of any of this fun on March third, right? All right, y'all.

This was a lot to get through. You know, thanks as always for listening to the Texas take. And I want to give a special shout shout out to the Road Women. That's the River Oaks area Democratic women who packed the house to hear me speak last week at their meeting. Man, I met a lot of great people there, and thanks to Roofy for inviting me to speak to the group. Well, let's close out with a little allegory. No, no, not the congressman, but I want to go back to that soul singer.

You know, you remember, oh man, he was just so good in the 70s. He now actually runs a church out in Memphis. Well anyhow, let's close out the show with him. And until next week, adios, y'all.