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cussing everybody out. Welcome to The Texas Take, the number one politics podcast in the great state for eight years running. I'm Scott Braddock, and he's Jeremy Wallace. His work, of course, is at HoustonChronicle.com, and you can find the inside story on Texas politics at Quorum Report. Last show of the year, Jeremy. Are you all ready? Oh, yeah. Ready to...
Buckle this one up. He is already ready to go. I could see it. I could see it on your face. I think you're ready to just get out of here for the next two weeks. We've got Christmas on the way. We've already gotten through Thanksgiving. You shouldn't talk about politics.
in the house with the family during these holidays. Although, although I was told, and this was one of my favorite jokes that I heard this year, if you go ahead and bring up politics at Thanksgiving, you're doing yourself a favor because then you know who to not get a gift for. at christmas because y'all are going to fight the whole time about trump about the democrats about whatever's going on there's a meltdown happening in washington we'll start there
Before we get to our meltdowns here in Texas, because some of our Texas people are key players in what's happening in D.C. right now. And Jeremy, it's just a tradition at this point for them to have just a knockdown, drag out fight about government spending. Weather shut down the government during December as we head into a new year. What is this bill that is falling apart? This is what, let's back up just a second. This is a bill that Trump wants that would spend a lot more money.
If anybody ever thought that Trump was a fiscal conservative, he certainly didn't campaign that way or govern that way when he was president. It's a very different Republican Party. And listen, I think that Laura Ingram on Fox News Channel, she kind of nailed it. I mean, I'm not always her biggest fan.
But she kind of nailed it when she said this is just what they do every December up there. She was talking to their Capitol Hill correspondent, Chad Pergram, and she said that, you know, for his job. This is what he does in December is watch them all melt down about the same things every single year. I've been watching you, Chad. This is kind of the Super Bowl for you every pre-Christmas. It seems like this is what we're always doing. What is the very latest that you can tell us?
Well, they just defeated this bill, which was the new interim spending plan that House Speaker Mike Johnson put out. It would have funded the government for three months. President-elect Trump was behind this. It had $110 billion in disaster aid. needed two-thirds to pass, and they weren't even close to getting that. I mean, there were a significant number of Republicans who voted no. In fact, it didn't even get a majority had they done it under the regular process here. And remember, Jeremy,
A couple shows ago, we had talked about the idea that when Trump says jump, a lot of these Republicans from Texas will say, how high? And I had questioned that at the time. I had said, listen, not all Republicans from Texas. And we're seeing an example of that. Now, there still is within the Texas GOP sort of the old school thinking, Republican thinking, I would call it Republican classic thinking about spending, which is government ought to be smaller.
instead of bigger. And some of those folks are really going to war with Trump over this. Yeah, it's crazy in a world which like the political climate says don't upset Donald Trump over anything. That's where you have a guy like Chip Roy who got elected. you know, to Congress, at least in his mindset with this mandate to cut spending. Right. And so anytime these spending issues come up where they're trying to increase the debt, like he gets mad, like, and there's a little bit of like, you know.
to his core type thing that happens with Chip Roy when these things happen. So here he is positioned against Donald Trump and, you know, Elon Musk, who killed the previous funding bill that was going to pass, right? They killed this thing. replaced it with a different bill that Chip Roy just doesn't like this replacement. He doesn't think it does anything that these guys are trying to sell it as being.
Right. And so what was Trump saying about him? You were looking at some of the social media stuff that he was putting out and he's calling him a failure at politics. He doesn't know what he's doing, that sort of stuff. Oh, boy. Yeah, there were a couple of doozies last night. You know, one, it's like the very unpopular congressman from Texas, Chip Roy, is getting in the way as usual. And then later, he chips late. You know, that was much longer than that. But then he went after.
after him again later. So Chip Roy is another ambitious guy with no talent. I hope somebody in the great state of Texas will... go after chip in a primary you can just see how like this relationship like like for some reason you know chip roy and donald trump just don't always get along but roy insists he's not picking fights with i mean he actually agrees with him on some conceptual
ideas, but just not this. So Roy was asked about those comments from Trump. He was asked by some reporters in the halls of the Capitol. And Roy, he tried to just keep on walking. You've worked there before, Jeremy. He tried to just keep walking. and just get on the elevator to get away from the reporters. That's the classic move. That's what they do. But in this exchange, you'll hear one of the reporters read to Congressman Roy a longer version of what Trump had said, and then you'll hear his...
Trump is saying you're getting in the way of a Republican victory for cheap publicity. What's your reaction to that? I've been able to read. All we're doing is trying to talk about how to get a deal done so we can actually.
Cut spending. Do you like to talk to him to smooth things over? I don't even know what we're talking about. I've got to look at whatever was put out there. He said weak and effective people like Chip have been dismissed as utterly unknowledgeable as to the ways of politics and as to making America great again. put America first and go for victory. We're working right now on how to actually cut spending, which is what the voters sent me to Washington to do. So that's what we're working on.
When that reporter read those comments from Trump to him, you should have seen his face. He starts to sort of laugh when Trump had said that he's someone who doesn't understand how politics works and all of that. And then he gets angry looking and the anger continued. on the floor of the house here's congressman roy on the floor he's making his case against this bill he's saying here's why i'm voting no and he is jeremy you can hear it he is livid with his fellow republicans who are just
going along to get along with Trump. We are going to increase the debt ceiling, not just $4 trillion. That's false. We have spent $4.7 trillion in additional debt in the last 19 months. We're going to increase the debt by $5 trillion. That's what's going to happen right here by Republicans, increasing the debt $5 trillion.
What are you doing in the same bill? $110 billion unpaid for. Because you never have any ounce of self-respect to go out and campaign saying you're going to balance the budget. And then you come in here and pass $110 billion unpaid for. Jeremy, I'm sure you saw where Elon Musk had tweeted out a picture of what the bill looked like before a lot of people started talking about this. And then afterward, it was a much bigger stack of pages. And then it turned into a smaller stack of pages.
It still spends a whole lot of money. Roy was saying that you're a bunch of... He didn't say that they're... idiots but he said a few other things he's basically suggesting that they are complete morons to think that just because there are fewer pages in the bill that it would spend much less money right and so so here's how he addressed that on the floor to take this bill yesterday and
congratulate yourself because it's shorter in pages, but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine. And that's it precisely what Republicans are doing. I am absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go forward to the American people and say, you think this is fiscally responsible.
It is absolutely ridiculous. Go ahead, Jeremy. Yeah. And a really key point to this is like, like you said, it was a slimmed down version of it. But what was added to the thing was increasing the debt ceiling that would allow Trump to spend what. he wants over these next two years without having to worry about that debt ceiling hitting you know which is like again you know think about what that means trump is saying he wants to help cut
But first he wants you to give $5 trillion of additional spending to go above and beyond what the deficit is. It's really kind of an amazing kind of a rigmarole they're trying to get us into, right? Trying to figure out a way – to quote Reckless Kelly, it's a wicked twisted road for darn sure to kind of cut the government when first you have to say, I'm going to –
you know, increase the debt so much more, and I don't want to have to worry about it. You see where Chip Roy, who that was that whole fight over what got Kevin McCarthy ousted in the first place, right? It was a debate over the debt ceiling. Trump doesn't want to have another one of these, but instead...
He's kind of positioned this, you know, depending on how this gets worked out over these next couple hours, it's like this thing, you know, could shut down the government and actually start the Trump presidency. through a government shutdown. That can't possibly be what Donald Trump and Elon Musk want to happen, right? Right. Well, this is, I mean...
It's one of those things that we've started to talk about, these complex situations in this way. It can be hard to explain all of it, but in some ways it's not that hard to understand. Trump just wants a free hand to be able to spend more money when he comes into office. That's what's happening with all of this. And for McCarthy to have been ousted over spending and all of that and be ousted by some of the people who are the most loyal to Donald Trump.
By the way, I mean, Matt Gaetz was right in the middle of all of that and then ends up being the AG pick by Trump who had to withdraw. So there's a lot of irony there. It's these folks just do whatever they want to. You know that it's one of my first rules of politics is people just do whatever they want. You would think, I mean, there was a time when that wasn't true. There was a time when, you know, with some exceptions, these folks would adhere to certain principles.
Now it's about the guy. Instead of the ideas, it's about the guy. They're just loyal to Trump. Trump is telling them what to do, even if it doesn't match up with anything they did before or what he did before. But the situation may be different and he wants to.
you know, dictate to Republicans that they should be able to spend as much as they want when he comes into office to the point. And this is also strange to the point that Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the most progressive liberal members of the U.S. Senate. came out and said on social media in the last couple of days, I agree with President-elect Trump. We should be able to basically spend as much as we want.
Yeah, there shouldn't be any debt ceiling whatsoever. One of the things that's kind of really been bugging me is I see Elon Musk particularly tweeting out all this stuff about how a government shutdown may not be so bad.
The government shutdown won't affect a lot of people in a lot of ways, but it will affect military families who live paycheck to paycheck. You know, yeah, it's like those are the people who are going to get it because they won't get paid. Those soldiers still have to report for duty. So think.
of all those people in Colleen, you know, who are going to be going to Fort Cavazos thing, but all those people down in San Antonio at Joint Base San Antonio, they still have to report for duty, but they won't get paid. They could go through the holidays here without any paychecks.
coming to them for... who knows how long right that's the impact of her government shutdown it's like there's nothing they can do yeah you know i keep seeing them put out stuff like oh the military will still be on duty it's like yeah they'll be on duty but unpaid like Those soldiers have families too, you know. It's like – so anybody who tells you that a government shutdown doesn't affect –
too much. Like they clearly don't know anybody in the military and they sure as hell don't know anybody in the military who lives paycheck to paycheck. Well, we'll continue to watch this. But the people who are twisting themselves into pretzels at this moment, as we record on Friday afternoon, if they can figure out some way to keep things going.
I think then I'm almost certain that they will. Then it all just amounts to theater. So there are so many people and you're right to say there are potential very real consequences for, you know, some of the folks who are absolutely not. as blessed in life as someone like Elon Musk. But this is something that I think most...
Americans just price in now, right? At the end of the year, that in Washington, they're going to do this. And the markets price this in. I mean, there was a point, remember when Ted Cruz, years ago, He gave that long speech about the Affordable Care Act, and they acted like it was a filibuster, but it wasn't really. It was just that the Senate majority leader said, yeah, he can talk all night if he wants to. But he was doing all of this theater in Washington, threatening government shutdowns.
downs over, you know, not repealing the ACA and all of that, and caused a real economic issue in the country, because folks thought that that was really going to happen and, and basically, you know, extended a recession by doing that. It seems to me that you now have a business community and a climate in the United States that just prices in the fact that our government in so many ways and in the same instances each year just looks completely dysfunctional. At every level.
Yeah, and one thing that's weird about this one, it's like, you know, this is clear, like, you know, this is not going to shock anybody listening to this, but Trump does not seem to be a student of history, or student of many things, but certainly not of history. It's like, you know, just, you know, he should let whatever...
happens just do its thing and then he can clean up the mess at the end and look like the hero that's kind of how FDR handled the transition from Herbert Hoover it's like there was the complaint during the Hoover years was that FDR wasn't giving them any
signals of what he wanted to do to go in and so hoover was left trying to fix the government and the you know the depression at the time without any indication from fdr how to kind of help right fdr like nope it's your problem you broke it you get to keep it
Trump should take that same kind of thing and just leave it all to Biden. But instead, he blows up the budget bill that would have kept the government going. He now has ownership of it. In spite of J.D. Vance going around, see the Democrats shut it down. No, no, it literally is.
Trump, who shut down that budget deal, forced this vote on this other... bill that they didn't have the votes for they take the loss on he's mad at chip roy when it's actually trump who did all of it so now trump potentially goes into this next term with all of this hanging over him you know going into the you know
start off, there's a lot of goodwill that obviously he's not going to have going into this thing. If he starts off this year with the military not being paid for potentially 30 days, really? It's like that, I don't know, but I can't handle a paycheck if I don't get paid for 30 days. I know that. It's like, and I just can't imagine what those families, you know, again, in places like Colleen and Joint Base San Antonio, what you do when you're.
sitting around the kitchen table going, okay, we don't have any money coming in. How do we get the kids to daycare? How do we get groceries in this place? What do we do next? Those people pay for these decisions. made on the floor of Congress. And that drives me crazy. What a Christmas gift for them. So this is sort of a theme here in the show, is MAGA world, Trump specifically, and then the MAGA.
of grifters being really upset with some of our congressmen from Texas. You just heard about this fight that Trump's having with Chip Roy. And then I saw where Representative Dan Crenshaw from Houston. is also in the crosshairs of some of these folks. And of course, he's gotten crossways with them before. There was an accusation.
that as part of all this budget talk in Washington that Crenshaw is over there trying to push for some kind of a pay increase for members of Congress. He denied that, and I'll get into what he said specifically about it in just a bit. But he was also... asked recently about stock trading.
by members of Congress. Now, you saw where there were the accusations of insider trading by former Speaker Pelosi and some of the very lucrative deals that had been made by some members of Congress that had some folks asking, well, did they know things before?
for everybody else, which would be a problem. And so folks have said, well, why do we even allow members of Congress to trade stocks at all when they might be able to get some of this info before the rest of the trading public? When Crenshaw was asked about this, On a show called The Free Press, he said he really didn't give a damn about it, that he basically doesn't have enough money to really be trading stock anyway. And he doesn't know why it's an issue at all, really.
He was very, let me put it this way. He was very dismissive of the question to the point where the hosts on the show were just kind of laughing at the fact that they had even asked him about it. This is like number 1000 on my priority list of things to care about. This is one of those stupid.
things that I've been dragged through the mud on. You know how much fucking money I've ever had in the stock market? About $20,000. And I've been dragged through the mud on this as if there's some insider trading. I had to send a letter to Fox News. a threatening letter from my lawyers, threatening them with defamation because Jesse Waters had basically insinuated that I was insider trading.
Jesse Waters is one of the evening hosts over there on Fox. Now, Crenshaw said that that's not true at all. He hasn't been doing anything that you could even call insider trading. He said that there are some conservative activists and media figures like Waters who want to make.
it nearly impossible for a person who is not independently wealthy to serve in Congress. Sure. Yeah. Why not? Don't let us trade stocks. How about, how about, we'll just keep whipping ourselves. How about we don't make any money either? How about like, just cut our paychecks.
We haven't gotten a pay raise since 2008, even a COLA increase. So yeah, no, actually, no, yeah, this is a great idea. Let's make Congress a place where only the millionaires can actually afford to do the job. This is a wonderful idea. Let's just keep doing that. He said a version of something that you say all the time, Jeremy, which is people want easy solutions to complex problems. They want an easy button. All my problems will be solved if there's no stock trading.
All my problems will be solved if there's term limits. Yeah. But if you think about any of these things for five whole minutes, you know, you might quickly come to a different conclusion. Now, again, what I vote for. Yeah, sure. Who cares? Who cares?
It doesn't matter to me because I don't have any fucking money to put in the stock market. Now, that's entertaining, but I'm not sure how smart it is for a sitting member of Congress to basically say to people, yeah, I don't fucking care what you think about how I make my money or a sitting member to say. We don't make enough money. It's not smart politics, right? I mean, you can't say to the masses, oh, by the way, as lawmakers, we don't make enough money.
There's not going to be any sympathy for you. In fact, maybe there should be. I'll say it because I'm not running for anything and I don't care about that. For the people who are in office. in the legislature here where they don't make any money. And it's basically set up for only independently wealthy people or retired folks to be able to be in the legislature. You get a lot of people who have what I would call a trust fund baby mentality about things they've never really been.
responsible for anything in their life, and then they're going to tell you how to live your life. That's what you get a lot of when you don't pay lawmakers anything, right? Not all of the members, of course. I'm talking about a lot of people who are my friends, but you do get some of that. You'll get somebody who... is you look up how they made their money, Jeremy, and it says they're a landowner. So they've got ranches that probably have, and you find out they do have.
oil and gas production all over their property and it's been in their family for five generations and of course this person who can remain nameless, but I'll just say he looks like a Jared Kushner starter set, always wants to dictate how everybody should live their life. There are some people listening to this who will know exactly.
who I'm talking about. You get a lot of that. But, but, but let me get further into what Crenshaw said here where, and I, so I can, I'm making these points to say, I can, I can agree with a lot of what he's saying. It's the way he's saying it that is really screwing things up for him, I think. So did you see that he also got crossways with these folks about a pay raise for members? And this has to do with the. Tucker Carlson crowd that has hated him. Was it, was it Tucker?
who originally called him Eyepatch McCain. That's correct. Right. It's so disrespectful to somebody who could have died and has this terrible injury, lost his eye as a result of serving his country in combat. injury. And to even understand the joke at all, you have to know a lot of stuff. Number one, you have to know that Crenshaw lost his eye and wears an eye patch. You also have to know who John McCain is, which is starting to be history now.
because he hasn't been around for a little while, Jeremy. But McCain, of course, you know, somebody who was a conservative Republican, but known as a maverick, someone who got crossways with Trump. Remember when Trump... you know, was making fun of John McCain, not just for being a veteran, but for being a prisoner of war, that's the kind of thing that previously would have ended the political career of the person who had made fun of the prisoner of war. But instead...
And Trump's supporters didn't care about that. So here you have these folks calling Crenshaw eyepatch McCain, which is so unbelievable. On some level, I can see why he's cussing these people out. It's a very emotional response. That, you know, that he's giving to all this stuff. There's one of these, I guess I'll call him a Tucker Carlson flunky. This guy, Nick Sorter, or Sorter, however you say his name. This guy.
accused Crenshaw of trying to, quote, get his way with pay increases for members of Congress. This is what this guy, Nick Sorter, put out on social media. He says, this guy is responsible for loads of the garbage we see being thrown into these spending bills. It's all for his own benefit. Now, Crenshaw...
Crenshaw could just not – he could choose to just not respond to that because in his estimation, he says that that's nonsense. It's not true. But I'm going to read to you what he put – what Crenshaw wrote on social media. Cover your ears, dear listeners, if you can't handle it or just push fast forward for the next 15 seconds. I'm going to read it verbatim. Do you think I've done enough warning on that, Evan? Give me the thumbs up. Okay. All right.
Here's what Crenshaw said. And I think this is a tweet he deleted, but of course the internet is forever. He said, quote, to this guy, after Sorter said that, you know, you're doing this all for your own benefit. Crenshaw says, quote, yeah, or maybe you're a... fucking lying piece of shit because I'm not even on the yes list for the whip team. Never have been. But hey, whatever gets you pathetic bottom feeders, you're clickbait. Fucking incels. Close quote. Now.
I think that is going a little far, maybe a lot far for someone who is seeking public office. And this is why you have so many of these folks. who will continue to pick at him, Jeremy, because him doing that, this is my, I don't even think this is a criticism. I'm just, I'm just observing this. Him doing that will make them do it more. If they think they can get that reaction out of him.
then they're going to continue to do this all the way through his next election cycle, which of course will be two years from now.
Yeah, there's a common theme between Crenshaw and Chip Roy. I'm not saying they're the best of friends or anything like that. That's for sure. But one thing that they both have that is in common is that they will say stuff and call out... you know garbage from other republicans when they see it they don't have that filter that says oh i'll just kiss you know tucker carlson's butt on this long enough or say the things that make elon musk happy so i can
go along to get along. They're not those guys. Those are the guys, you know, they are still telling you the honest truth, kind of John McCain-ish, right? You know, they're Republicans, they're conservatives, but they're willing to tell you that this bill is full of garbage or what have you.
And it's worth pointing out that it's crazy the accusations they're making on Crenshaw. I don't say that just in defense of Crenshaw. Here's a back way to defend him. But he's nowhere close to the power levels to be able to dictate what's in. this compromise deal right like he is like in fact leadership rejected him from being the homemade security chairman he has no chairmanship like he has very little ability to
put a pay raise or take a pay raise out of the bill, whether he wanted to or not. It's like, so... That already on his face is ludicrous, right? He doesn't have that authority. And I want to go back to something you kind of hit on. The one thing, look, people lose their lunch when they see, oh, members of Congress make $174,000 a year. Wow. That's so much more than me or my neighbors or whatever. But remember, they have to have two households.
One, typically at a place that's not so easy to live in, like Houston, and also Washington, D.C. You have to have two places. You can't... like live in a hotel you can't afford that you actually have to get someplace and that's why like on capitol hill this it's still to this day there are flop houses up there for members of congress where they will all get together and get like a four bedroom
apartment where they can all stay for certain periods of time to get back because again 174 runs out really quick you know i covered members of congress from miami who again a very high rent place like how do you like run a home there and also one in Washington, D.C., again, a super expensive place. Think of those people coming from California and San Francisco. And, you know, it's like, how are you buying a house in both places? You're not. It's like, unless you're independently wealthy.
a retiree, you're not a normal person. You're not like an AOC coming up from a bartender and doing it. You can't afford that. So that's a long way to kind of put all that stuff together. But here's the thing. In Crenshaw's case, he just has a rough edge around him. This is a guy who just like he's going to say.
what he's going to say. Like, you know, in some degree, I give him a little bit of a, like, I've given him some, I've been on the receiving end. You've given him some way, right. Like, I haven't, I mean, we, you know, we're, you know. This is what happens. These people are trolling you all day long. You're on social media feeds where if you – I mean, it's ridiculous. On certain social media platforms like X, you can post a picture.
of a Christmas tree in Galveston and someone will reply that you must be a child molester. This is going on all day long because then maybe they don't agree with your politics. And after a while it gets to you. And I think something you said that, again, it's not necessarily a defense of the guy, but I think it's interesting.
that you might have someone who would be what I would call the modern version of a maverick, a John McCain, who, you know, people would say, like, McCain would never say anything like that. Yeah, but would he do that now? I don't know, right? I mean, people will say – I mean, think about Republican leaders in Texas. When people will say Speaker Joe Strauss never would have responded to those people the way that certain Republicans would now.
I ask this question in good faith. Do you know that he wouldn't now? Because all of the rules of engagement seem to be different. The way people talk to each other is different. Strauss was someone who's a very respected... texas house speaker but he wasn't governing at the during the era of donald trump the way that Dade Phelan has been putting up with over the last four years here and has been mercilessly attacked. To his credit, never really responded in kind the same way.
I mean, he suffered a lot of these same attacks. It took a lot of these attacks from the right wing the way Crenshaw is doing but didn't respond that way. And whoever the next speaker is. will be attacked mercilessly by these people. There was a time, Jeremy, when in the pages of Quorum Report, if we had a source at the Capitol who had said something was, quote, something was bullshit.
We wouldn't print it that way. We would put – we might use the quote, but we would put the asterisks in the word bullshit to make it – to soften it a little bit. I remember my publisher and I talking about that. We had a great quote from one of the old school lawmakers who had said, whatever this was is bullshit. And we thought, it's a good quote, but let's soften that a little bit. It doesn't even matter anymore.
I mean if I drop the F-bomb here on the show and you've heard people – you're going to hear more people drop it here in a little bit. It doesn't even faze anybody. You know, when we go and speak to different groups and we do the live version of this show, which we're available for, by the way, if anybody needs this coming up in 2025, I will often say at the beginning of our presentation that politics in this era.
needs to have a parental advisory, right? Because it's not just rough and tumble, it's gross. It's... dirty and you can't talk about it in a real way without covering these discussions which i'm sorry are offensive to a lot of people Yeah, it's unbelievable. Like, really, just even in the last, like, eight years, you just kind of see, like, go back to that 2016 presidential campaign. Remember, Marco Rubio and Donald Trump were fighting about, I guess, penis size at one point? Oh, yeah.
air during a national debate. With the public, it's like, again, as a parent, you sit there trying to figure out, what do I even say to address that to my kids at the time? You don't. Who were still young enough to like, what the hell are they talking about? It's like, ah.
Talk about foreign policy. So, of course, because Crenshaw has taken – let me say it this way. He's taken the bait, right? When he starts cussing these people out, he's taken the bait. And again, I get it. But because he's doing that – It is not even January of 2025, and you've already got people announcing they're going to run against him coming up in two years in the Republican primary here in Texas. And we have really become – I've started to say this.
Over the last few years, I really started to say a version of it, Jeremy, because of some of the right wing policies that have been adopted at the Texas Capitol. So much of our so much of what's happening in America. a lot of social policy emanating from the Texas Capitol and people seeing this all over the place on Fox News Channel and...
OANN and Newsmax and whatever else. They see that we are the true conservatives in Texas and that, as I have said over and over again, the election of consequence in this state is the Republican primary. So I started saying this. It's almost as if passing all those laws at the Texas Capitol is like putting up a big neon sign that says, if you are crazy or you are a grifter, you should move here and run for office, right?
And so this is happening. So you saw where this woman, I believe, I think this is accurate to say she's a serial loser candidate, Valentina Gomez, who I guess she ran for something in Missouri or somewhere that's not Texas. And that didn't work out when she ran. She's making noise about running against Crenshaw. She put out this video on social media. And she's the next person in this show to drop the F-bomb. Are you ready?
I'm running for Congress in Texas and I'm taking down a rhino and a dinosaur once and for all because Congress is full of crooks like Speaker Johnson who is just a little man with no balls that funds Ukraine and betrays the American people every chance. Hence he gets. And then Crenshaw, who is only good at betraying his fellow Navy SEALs. So why is she running and why is she running already? Here's the only reason why you should vote for me.
Because I don't give a fuck what all those bureaucrats in Washington D.C. think about me. I'm coming to Texas to speak the truth, cook the crooks, and save the children. Buckle up, Texas, because this ain't my first rodeo. You're supposed to have everything figured out by your second rodeo. Did you know that?
Jeremy, the first rodeo, it's okay. You might make some mistakes. But the second one, you need to be ready to go. So I'm not going to bore all of you with who Valentina Gomez is. That doesn't really matter. I want to stick to this point, which is this. The Texas... has become this magnet for these grifters do you remember this guy big dan rodeimer who ran for congress a few years back
It was the seat that Congressman Jake Elsey holds now, and it was the seat that came open after Congressman – who was it? Joe Barton retired. Right. Is it? Yeah, that's right. And Martin, you know, had been a powerful member from North Texas. And so there was this election that included how many people? It was one of those that had. 10 candidates, Republicans who are running and Rodheimer comes in and he had this commercial that went viral around the country where he's posing as a rodeo cowboy.
And he's writing a bull that a guy in the commercial says, we call that bull Nancy Pelosi because she's a beast. This is a parody of how people in Texas talk about... But listen, this was Big Dan Rodamer a few years ago. announcing his candidacy. I'm Big Dan Rudheimer. Texas has big problems. We need a big fighter to solve those problems. The Cognizant DC are ruining America. I know how to handle Nancy Pelosi and stop her bull.
and i'll put a boot right in her socialist platform well it looks like i already did because you can't see the video dear listener i'll just tell you he put his boot in some actual bullshit and then said, oh, look, I just put my boot right in Nancy Pelosi's agenda. That's very clever. Now, even the accent on the guy is just, it's completely fake. Everything about that is fake. The guy's not.
A cowboy. He probably didn't really ride that bull. It was noted by Stephen Colbert on his show on CBS that when you saw the bull riding happen in the commercial that you couldn't see. The top of the person who was on the bull is you usually, you know, when you're shooting video of a bull rider.
You don't usually include the whole cowboy. Is that how you know? Actually, they always show all of it because in a rodeo, you would see everything. You wouldn't just see the guy from the waist down and then a bull with the accent. It's completely made up. Here's the same guy when he was running for Congress in Nevada. Sometimes it's easy to lose track of what's really important. And for me, it's family. Now, you might be thinking to yourself.
You might be asking me. You might be screaming out at your earbuds or at your stereo or at the speakers in your car. And you might be saying, Scott, there's no way that's really the same guy. Because I just heard the other guy talking. No, no. Listen. Listen to...
The end of that commercial. I'm Dan Rodimer, and I approve this message. Phony, phony, fake, phony. Everything is phony. The political positions are phony. The ideology is phony. The accent is phony. The clothes are phony. All of these people are the big. We have some of these people like – there's a guy named Shiloh Platt who came in and he was going to run against Dade Phelan in Beaumont years ago. And he announced for – to run against the speaker. He announced for Texas House.
And this guy, Shiloh Platt, he makes his announcement. And the very next day, he dropped out. Because it was reported within that 24 hours that he was someone who, you know, while he says he's a conservative guy, he's really on social media, you know, clicking like on every porn post that he can find. And he admitted in a little podcast.
that he does, a much lesser podcast. He had said, yeah, you know, all these people are trying to do these hit pieces on me and they accuse me of liking porn. And he says, well, yeah, I did do that. It was just so many of these people. who are just presenting themselves. It's like cosplay. It's political cosplay, Jeremy. They're just making up the character that they think that conservative Republican voters want to see and vote for, and they just pretend to be that person.
I had a political consultant recently tell me, and I thought this was really insightful, someone who's been doing television commercials, producing them for candidates for years. And you know how in these commercials, we've played many of them here on the show. People see them on their televisions. There's always scary music when the opponent is on screen. And then there's happy music when...
the candidate who paid for the commercial, when they're on screen, there's this happy music and their family is there and it just looks like everything's going to be all right. And my friend who's a consultant who makes these TV commercials, he said that his son... who's little. I think he's five or six. His son walked in the room while my friend is viewing one of these commercials that he made, Evan. And you'll appreciate this as a film guy.
The son walks in, little kid, and he's watching the commercial. And when the scary music is playing, the little kid said, that's a bad guy. And when the happy music was playing, the little kid said, that's a good guy. So you need to understand the point here is that voters are being treated like six-year-olds, right? That the messages you see in these campaigns are so simplified.
There's no nuance to it at all. It's just that this person's a good person, that person's a bad person, and that's all there is to it. That's how they're treating you, dear listener, during these campaigns when they're trying to get you to vote a certain way. Well, Scott, I have really bad news for you and a lot of the listeners out there about these grifters. So here's the problem. We added 560,000 people to our population this last year, according to the Census Bureau. That means...
Of that 560,000, there's probably, I'm just going to say 25% might be grifters that might be headed this way. That's more people added than any other state in the country. We're adding grifters at record numbers. So sadly, it's only going to add to these people who put on – I was taught this growing up in San Antonio. If you see a guy with a ridiculously stupid cowboy hat with a really super huge belt buckle, like you can wear both of them. But when they get dumb...
that's the guy who's really from New Jersey or Minnesota or someplace else, right? And they're just trying to play kind of the role of, oh, this is what you Texans are all like. It's like, so just be prepared. Like, you know, these population numbers make me nervous.
Every time I see them going up, it's like, oh, great. There's a lot. There's 560,000 people who come to Texas and are about to learn that, oh, this is what I need to do to fit in here. It's like, oh, no, please don't. Well, and increasingly, here's a reality here. I mean, you hear my... to rant about it, but a reality is that because of all those people who are moving in and you have to ask yourself, where are they moving to?
In so many cases, it is the Texas suburbs where we have this explosive population growth. And so increasingly as part of our reality politically in Texas, it just doesn't matter if the person is from here or not. Right. I mean, Troy Nails is not really from here. Right. I mean, there's a reason he speaks with a Midwest accent. Right. I mean, but he's.
well-liked by the people in Fort Bend County, and not to take away from his previous service, he was the sheriff there, and I think he mentioned to me he was a constable as well, but it worked when he was running for those offices.
It worked, right, that he came in and he's the conservative and he wasn't necessarily the Trump guy before, but now he is. But for so many of these people, it won't matter that the person is a, quote, carpetbagger. When is the, I mean, really, and I talked to an old school.
Republican the other day about this from East Texas, a friend of mine. And we were talking about the fact that I can't remember the last time that the carpetbagger attack worked in one of these races where somebody said, oh, look. Dan Patrick is from Maryland and he's a carpetbagger. Well, did that matter? No, it didn't. Right. And a lot of these candidates who are not from here increasingly just doesn't matter because so many people who live in Texas.
are not from here. You go to places like Sugar Land, Frisco, you know, places around Williamson County, and down around the suburban parts of, you know, the San Antonio metro, a lot of people who just aren't from Texas. That's not something that they care that much about. In fact, they got here thinking, a lot of them did, got here thinking that the cosplay version of the Texan is the real Texan instead of the other way around, like you're talking about when you were a kid in San Antonio.
Yeah, absolutely. And to circle back around to the beginning where we started, like Chip Roy, there's a guy from Bethesda, Maryland, who has become Mr. Texas Hill Country, right? He has a little bit more ties to Texas than some others. I'm not making...
fun of him. But we have a lot of that now. There was a time and place if you weren't born in Texas and you were trying to run for office, you had a hurdle ahead of you. But now you kind of look at it, it's just like, you know, I haven't done the math recently, but we have a sizable amount of our... congressional delegation who just either...
weren't raised here didn't grow up here it's like they just you know they became they came here to run for office sometimes uh in some cases but so you can kind of see it's just like look you know it's like it is what it is it's no longer a requirement that you must be
you know, a native Texan, or you even haven't grown up here. It's like, you could have just moved here. Look at Allen West. Remember when Allen West, you know, a guy who spent his whole life, you know, in Florida, you know, or Tennessee and Florida comes to Texas. After a couple of minutes in sight, you know what? I'm going to run for governor. You know, just like...
It was just kind of a weird setup, but nothing stopped him from doing it, and nobody held that against him. He lost, but it wasn't because, oh, he's really from Florida. It's like nobody voted against him because of that. Well, it... is increasingly going to be something that works. It works already for some of these candidates, and it's going to continue to be that way. The speaker's race is not heating up.
It's kind of simmering now. But I've got people asking me about it. I think it hit a crescendo a couple of weeks ago. And, of course, we talked at length about it on our last show. And people appreciated the fact that we went in-depth about that, Jeremy. I can tell you that. I got a lot of –
of great feedback about that. But one thing that I think people didn't understand about the way this race would play out is that, and I mentioned it before, but I didn't think people, or I don't think people really internalized what this would look like.
I kept telling folks this is the first speakers race in which you're going to see commercials, right? You're going to see television ads like the ones we were just talking about. And you'll see ads on digital media as well. And you have the Republican Party of Texas now.
blowing up chairman dustin burroughs they're claiming that he broke his promises that he had said that he was going to be a guy who aligns with the republican caucus and he would never team up with democrats and now they're accusing i mean this is straight out of Some comedy. The Republican Party of Texas is accusing Dustin Burroughs of being a rhino and a liberal and all of that. Listen to this commercial that they're running against him right now.
as he makes his bid for speaker dustin burrows made a promise i want to see the next republican speaker to be able to fully show that he has support of the majority of the members of the republican caucus but when republicans rejected his bid to be speaker Burroughs broke that promise. His own colleague said Burroughs stomped out of the room like a child because he didn't get his way. Another called Burroughs a liberal rhino who cut a deal with the Democrats.
And of course, you have some of the members of the Republican caucus taking credit for those quotes about Burroughs. I'm not going to say their names now because that would further be giving them. credit when they had said this apparently in a private meeting um republicans like cole hefner who are sticking with burroughs hefner is a representative from east texas and look hefner says he's not going to back away from his support just because of these attacks.
From certain groups, including the Republican Party of Texas. This is from a report on KETK television in East Texas. State Representative Cole Hefner says he is already facing backlash over his choice for Speaker of the House. He is adamant about. supporting Dustin Burroughs. He's from rural Texas where he understands water issues. He understands private property rights. We have David Cook, who is a moderate. He voted to ban fracking.
when he was mayor of Mansfield. Representative David Cooks from Mansfield has received the majority from the House GOP caucus, but Burroughs says he has enough support from both sides of the aisle. They sent me down there to do what I think is right and I think. I think Dustin Burroughs is the conservative leader we need, and that's what's right for House District 5.
And so that's where my vote will be going. The Texas GOP has threatened to center any Republican who does not vote for Cook and has sent text messages to lawmakers like East Texas Rep Cody Harris threatening to campaign against them. I don't I don't do threats. I don't respond to threats. I've got a rock solid conservative voting record. My record speaks for itself. These people are conservatives. Everyone we're talking about right now on the Republican side, these are all.
And I don't think we have to get into the weeds of the speakers race again on this show. There'll be more of it coming up here, Jeremy. If people want to hear the most comprehensive, in-depth, nuanced analysis of the situation. Go back to the last show. If you haven't listened to it yet, here's how the magic of podcasting works. You can hit pause right now on this show. Go listen to the entire last show and then just come right back here. And I'll wait for you for just a second. Ready?
Welcome back. So here we are. We're facing this question of whether the House will be more conservative than last session. And I have to tell you, I have had it with this. Jeremy, I've had it with this. I have appeared on multiple television and radio shows over the last few weeks where I get asked this question all the time, and it's from well-meaning people. I'm not mad at them.
But in our profession, we have to do better than this. It has been a long time since you could ask this question in a legit way and say, oh, is the election going to cause Texas government to be more conservative? It's been a long time since you could really ask that and then say, OK, well, maybe so, maybe not. No, we're talking conservative all the way. Everything is conservative at the Texas Capitol.
What isn't conservative up there? You've got Dan Patrick running the Senate. You had Dade Phelan running the House. Now, they didn't always get along, but these are very conservative people. As former Speaker Strauss used to say, if the House and Senate... Don't agree on something. That thing doesn't happen. And think about the things that did happen with Patrick and Phelan.
Running the House and Senate, very conservative stuff, right? So I was on Texas Public Radio in San Antonio the other day with my good friend David Martin Davies. He asked me about this and he says, look, is it going to be a more conservative session depending on who wins the speaker's race? And I, again, I'm not trying to lose it. And I love David Martin Davies. He's one of my favorite people in Texas media. But I'm trying to make this point forcefully and say that that's not the question.
So it's going to be conservative. This has more to do with who's in control, which political donors are in control. You have all of these people who are in the House or are in the consultant class who are trying to affect an outcome here. the political donors to different people want to be able to call the shots at the Capitol, right? And set the agenda.
It's going to be conservative no matter what. But some of these folks want different things to be addressed. And all of this is really about that. It's not possible for the Texas legislature to be much more conservative than it is now.
Right. When we say that a bunch of these Republicans in their primaries were defeated because they were moderate, they weren't. Those were all very conservative Republicans. What did they do to anger Greg Abbott? You know the answer. They voted against his position on school vouchers.
But on every other issue, these are very conservative. They voted with their districts. Well, let me put this out. The people who are coming in are not more conservative than those people who got defeated in their primaries. Every one of the people we're talking about who got beaten in a primary.
voted to ban abortion in the state with almost no exceptions, voted to approve an immigration crackdown that would allow local cops to march people back to Mexico if they suspect them of being undocumented immigrants. These are people who voted for people to, you know, openly carry handguns on their hips in Texas. These are not liberal or moderate members who lost their races. Right. They voted. They did vote their districts, as you said. But these are.
Going forward, the legislature is not going to be, quote, more conservative, no matter who the speaker is. And David and I did get to this point, Jeremy. It really has more to do with what I said before about certain donors calling the shots and also has to do. with how well the big three in leadership get along, right? It has to do with, will the person who's the speaker in the house kind of bow down and do whatever Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott want? Or maybe the person...
will get along better with Abbott than they do with Patrick or maybe vice versa. And, of course, Patrick's been trying to influence this whole situation. He has been blowing up Dade Phelan all year, and now he's promoting David Cook, who's running against Burroughs. You have those two candidates. You could still have another. other person emerge. I still think that's maybe the most likely scenario, but I'm not making any predictions.
I have no idea how this is going to turn out. And we still have just under a month before the legislative session opens. And you do have a lot of Republican members who are very nervous about the fact that, hey, they may have cast their lot with the wrong person.
You have some people who are supporting David Cook now who is the quote-unquote reformer candidate who has pledged to have no Democratic chairs and all of that. You have Burroughs who hasn't said that. He says it should be left up to the House of Representatives.
during its rules debate and figure out whether they're going to have chairs of the minority party. So you have, you know, that's part of a split between them. But you have a lot, you have some of those people who are in the cook camp, I think, who think they might get left behind if the boroughs group. is more able to elect a speaker, even if it's not Burroughs. And then you do have some of those members who are in the Burroughs camp. I know some of them.
Not all, but some of them are weak-kneed because they're already starting to get real nervous about the fact that all these attacks are coming their way because it's being portrayed to Republican voters. Again, that good guy, bad guy thing, it's being portrayed that they are, quote unquote, with the bad.
When again, it's a joke to call somebody like Burroughs, a moderate or a liberal or a rhino. I mean, that has nothing to do with reality, but as you and I both know, the truth is often the first. casualty in these campaigns. And right now, the speakers race is being run just like a Texas House race and in multiple districts with all of these different candidates being attacked.
Day to day. And these third party groups are telling folks to call your state representative and tell them to vote this way. That has not quite happened before in the way that it's happening now. And look at the parallels with what we're seeing with the speaker in Congress too, right? You get the same thing kind of going on where it's like at what point does like, you know, the members, you know, would seemingly be in better position to have people.
you know, as speaker who are going to defend the authority and the independence of the house, right? But so much of this outside influence is meant to kind of make them go along with the others, right? In both cases, you can point, you know, one of the problems...
you know, like, you know, Dade Phelan was protecting his members, right? You know, and he took hits because of that, right? And Mike Johnson, you know, hasn't really kind of been in that position yet to really kind of do that, right? Like he's been, you know... He threw a lot of members under the bus when he scrapped this spending plan that was going to be a deal, and he kind of caved to Donald Trump. It's like, does the next House Speaker—
You know, if they get elected, are they expected to fall in line with whatever Dan Patrick and Greg Abbott want? Like what we're seeing with what Mike Johnson in Congress is doing, where he's just giving whatever. you know, Donald Trump and Elon Musk want him to do, he's going to put it up for a vote. You know, it's like, is that what they want?
Or do they want somebody who's going to defend the institution as an independent branch that's going to fight you tooth and nail for their own priorities? That is the heart of like government 101, right? What kind of leadership? You know, does actual members of the House want and which are they best served by? That's a lot to sort out. And what do we got, like 20 days for them to kind of figure this all out?
Good luck. Well, we'll continue to keep an eye on all this. It's simmering, as I said. There's a lot of member-to-member conversations going on right now. And I saw that David Cook... did send a letter to his colleagues asking if they could just have a ceasefire over the Christmas break, which this isn't a criticism of him, but I'll just observe that it's the side that's supporting him.
That's blowing people up with those advertisements like you heard from the Republican Party of Texas. So if there's a ceasefire to be had, maybe they could – his side could start the ceasefire by taking a break during the Christmas holiday. We'll see. Speaking of Republicans fighting with each other, there's a lot of it going on here.
This is like a Christmas gift to everybody, a Christmas gift of nonstop Republican on Republican political violence. Did you see that Attorney General Ken Paxton made a last-minute move last night, Thursday night? to prevent the death row inmate that we've been telling you about, Robert Roberson, from testifying before lawmakers today. They were planning to take his testimony at the Texas Capitol.
At lunchtime today at noon, they were going to have a hearing of the committee that's been looking into his case. This is the committee that we told you about where, you know, big celebrities like.
Dr. Phil and John Grisham and some other folks came in and have really taken an interest in this case. It's an East Texas murder case of a baby of this guy's daughter. He was accused of... killing her and part of the accusation had to do with what they call shaken baby syndrome and shaken baby syndrome is now said to be junk science dr phil was the one who had said that when he was going through the trial transcript as he was reading it
He stopped at about, what, 24 to 25 to 30 mentions of Shaken Baby, and he decided for himself that, yes, this is absolutely key to the case. And now it's been proven to be junk science. So there are a lot of questions about this. Chairman Joe Moody was asked earlier this week whether Roberson is going to be allowed to testify after his committee subpoenaed that testimony. And look. The real suggestion here is that the attorney general, Ken Paxton, was going to make some move to keep –
this testimony from happening. And he did make that filing last night. And it looks like the testimony may not happen at all. Here's what Moody said about it. There are people who have, you know, have at every turn tried to interfere in the legislature's ability to gain testimony that we that we that we need that we are asking for so do i anticipate that there'll be more of that between now and friday i do
right that subpoena was served personally on mr robertson if anybody is that tries to stand in the way of it i mean they really are you know they're flying in the face of pretty well settled law And again, nothing shocks me in this business anymore, but this is pretty straightforward. Now, he's a Democrat, but the Republican who has really been just sort of poking at Paxton on this.
is representative jeff leach who is another one of the chairman in the house and he says that paxton and all the rest are they're all against them and trying to get to the bottom of what happened with this conviction of this guy leach says that they're not going to shut up and they're not going to stop trying to figure out
what really happened here the attorney general's office can disagree with the legislature and can debate the legislature we welcome that but they cannot disregard the legislature They can't. And that's what's happening right now. And we are not going to allow that to stand without without a fight. As I mentioned, Paxton in a late night filing last night.
Jumped right in the middle of this to prevent the testimony, and it was about two weeks ago at a Texas Tribune event that Leach had predicted that that is exactly what Paxton would do. What the attorney general's office, I feel like, is doing right now is –
trying to delay as much as possible and not work with us on... They're basically ignoring the Supreme Court's order, knowing that... in a month or so when the new legislative session convenes our committee goes away because it does every session when the new new legislature convenes the existing committee and its jurisdiction and its power and anything it's done in the past is
gone and my belief is that the attorney general's office knows that and is trying to delay until the start of the next session um which is just you know horrifying and maddening to me you know it's um It was a long shot bid from the get-go by this committee to try to prevent the execution of this guy from East Texas. As I understand it, just about all of the...
legal remedies have run out there. This is what happens with these death penalty cases, right, Jeremy? And there's also a reason that the filings in those death penalty cases will happen on the eve of the execution, right? Because it's very often...
That they're trying to delay it while they try to work through some other legal issues, whatever they have left on the table. But this has gone up to the state Supreme Court. It's now been before the Court of Criminal Appeals. It went up to the United States Supreme Court.
U.S. Supreme Court said that there was only – they said that there were grave concerns. I had not seen something like this from the Supreme Court before in one of these cases. They had said there were grave concerns that they had about the claims of actual innocence. But they said that the only person who could do anything about it is Greg Abbott because he has the power to just stop the execution altogether as the governor.
Abbott has gone back and forth with this committee and said that they can't do this, that the committee can't delay an execution, but in practice that they did. Basically, the state Supreme Court said, well, they can't do it, but they got away with it this time because of the way that it played out.
It was ballsy for them to do it this way. But it does seem that the clock's being run out on this and the politics of the death penalty are changing in Texas, but there are some fundamentals that are not different.
from what I can remember from decades ago, which is you still have a lot of people, especially those who vote in Republican primaries, who would tell you, and again, that's the election of consequence for most of these folks, a lot of those voters would say that They support the death penalty no matter what, even if, and this has been shown in polling, Jeremy, even if you every once in a while execute an innocent person, they still support it anyway.
And that's a harsh reality, but that's the reality of our politics. And the way the system is set up is supposed to be such that even if a guilty person – goes free sometimes, that we would rather have that happen rather than punish somebody who was actually innocent. But this is still, when it comes to this stuff, it's like the Wild West.
Right. Hang him high on the Texas sky. If somebody gets crossways with the law, for the vast majority of those people who vote in those GOP primaries, they would say that the benefit of the doubt should be given to the police. to the prosecutors, to the ones who are going after the accused and not the other way around.
Yeah. And the moral of this story beyond the death penalty discussion, remember, like a lot of what's happening now is become a jurisdictional fight between like who has the power to do this stuff. Right. You mentioned it earlier. It's like, you know, Greg. Abbott says the only one who can stop an execution is him, you know, and he sees this as an infringement of the House and the legislature getting into his business. Right. And you heard, you know, Leach there talking about how he sees.
Ken Paxton obstructing the House. It's like, again, very much roles of government are being debated. on a big philosophical area, even beyond the actual human consequences of what this decision ultimately is, right? It's an amazing confluence of both like... the core fundamentals of what it means to execute a person who may not be guilty, or are they, right? You have that whole thing, but then it's like, what are the proper roles of government as structured by our constitution?
Lots of stuff, right? You know, it's like how this gets played out again. You know, it's clearly it's going into next year. Absolutely. So we'll keep an eye on that as well. By then they may be debating something that they'll file that would be called the Robert Robertson Act as they try to figure out what to do in cases that might be similar going forward. All right. We are done.
with shows for this year. It's the last one. So we'll wrap up with sort of a Christmas gift for you. As if you didn't get enough of the Republicans fighting with each other. If that wasn't entertaining enough for you. Something about a Texas icon and actually two Texas icons. I caught this in your newsletter and it reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of trivia because as you know, Jeremy.
The place that you were writing about is where I'm from, Southeast Texas, right? And check this out. Ken's Five Television in San Antonio. I saw this report that there is... A new documentary coming out about Her Majesty, Selena. A new documentary all about Selena is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival.
30 years after the legendary Tejano singer's death. It's called Salina y los Dinos, and it promises to showcase never-before-seen footage from the family's personal archive. It will screen for the first time at the end of January as part of Sundance's U.S. documentary, Competition Slate. So I've asked people this question before, and it's such a random thing to ask. And when you tell people, they say, wait, what? Is that true?
Do you know what doctor delivered Selena when she was born? Do you have any idea, Evan? Evan, do you have any idea? And he probably forgot already, even though it's probably a question I asked him at one point just to mess with him. Because it's one of my favorite pieces of Texas trivia. No, Evan? See, no idea. Go ahead, Jeremy. Oh, of course. It's Congressman Ron Paul. Yes, that was my congressman growing up, Ron Paul. And...
You know, when I was listening to a discussion about Texas politics the other day, somebody was talking about, you know, the Lake Jackson area, which is kind of next door to where I'm from. They're over there in Rosoria County. I'm from Wharton County.
And one of the things about Congressman Paul, one of the reasons he was so beloved in the area, even though he had some of the most batshit crazy politics, is because he had delivered almost every baby in the area. So she was born in... lake jackson right not in corpus where she's everybody thinks of her as being from from corpus and of course that's where i'm thinking of the selena quintanilla pettus statue that is there yep i'm thinking of the selena uh mural
in Oak Cliff, in Dallas. These are all places where I've smoked cigars, by the way, adding to the historical nature. Historical scar smoking. Well, I mean, so I mentioned Corpus Christi. I mentioned Lake Jackson. I mentioned Dallas. If you want to see, if you, you know.
If you want to check out this documentary, I think that you should. But if you want to see Selena in all her glory, all you have to do is go on YouTube and in one of the cities I haven't mentioned yet, in Houston, and just search Selena. live at the Astrodome. You could have picked all kinds of songs, but this one, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. You got to do the whole thing.
What were you going to say, Jeremy? Yeah, I was going to say, so, you know, I'm looking forward to this documentary, Selena y los niños. For a really big reason because it promises to give us a little bit more of that background of her younger days and getting in. So that's where we might get a little bit more of that Lake Jackson period before she and the family ended up in Corpus Christi.
It's like that would be really kind of cool to kind of get a little bit more of that because I think that part of the story kind of gets lost sometimes. And think about when this is coming out. In 2025, this is going to be the 30th anniversary of her passing. To think it was 30 years ago, this woman, she'd be 53. Right now, it's like she was a young woman. And to think of what she was able to do culturally in this state in the 80s and 90s, they just changed the state.
It's like, you know, if you don't know any of her music, I suggest go find one song. You're going to find one song that like you're going to be able to get into. Right. You know, even if you don't, you know, speak Spanish, it's like you're going to find. groove. Everybody should have at least one Selena song they could go fall back on. Absolutely. There's your duty for this holiday break, y'all. If you do what I said on YouTube, if you just punch in...
Live at the Astrodome, you'll get a whole bunch of those songs. The one that we played isn't the only one. And as we wrap up here, I'm moved to think of the holiday season and Christmas. And how I hope that it's a great holiday for all of our listeners. And we've really enjoyed this year with you. It's been a little bit of a shit show, hasn't it? In so many ways.
Think about the primary season that we went through at the beginning of the year. Think about the general election, the sort of dud of a Senate race here. What happened with the... Reset of the Democratic ticket in the middle of the year, Biden getting off the ticket and Vice President Harris getting in there. All of the wild things that happened, the attempted assassination of Trump.
I'm leaving out so many things. Yeah, here's hoping both of us get tires for our cars, right? We wore our tires bald traveling this year. Traveled the whole state. covering what was going on from the Red to the Rio Grande, from Beaumont to El Paso. We were everywhere. Everywhere. Covering everything that happened in every major metro and all the small towns in between just about.
As I think about Christmas and as I think about people inevitably talking about all these crazy things that happen in politics while they're sitting around the table having dinner, I'm thinking about how families get along or don't get along. And I saw this in Texas Monthly this week. Did you see this? That Robert Earl Keene's mother does not like the song.
Merry Christmas from the family, which sort of underscores the point, Jeremy, that the whole song's about the family kind of not getting along. At our Christmas party We were drinking champagne Punching homemade eggnog Little sister brought her new boyfriend He was a Mexican We didn't know what to think of him You know, as a brand new disc jockey back in 1996, 1997, And then into 98 and 99, I was working at different country stations.
in the Brenham area, and then in Bryan College Station. And in the evenings, we would always do sort of a, each station had its own version of this, where they would do what we called At Aggie 96 in College Station, we called it the national music of Texas. So it would be stuff like Robert Earl Keane. It'd be stuff like Jack Ingram. It'd be stuff like...
Corey Morrow and all of that. And I remember playing that song that people would get offended by the part of some people, even in a place like Brenham, Washington or Brazos counties, even some folks would get offended about the line in that song about...
the sister bringing the boyfriend who was Mexican and the people not being sure about the guy, but the point was that they all liked him. You know, I mean, of all the dysfunction in this, in that family, that wasn't the issue, right? I don't even know. what R.E.K.'s mother, what her problem was with the song. I will say this. It's not everybody's cup of tea, even in those very conservative and country-ass areas where I was doing country radio. Not everybody could agree on that.
They might want to hear George Strait or Clint Black more than they wanted to hear Robert Roqueen. Even at that time, Jeremy, I could tell you that that was true. And the song is, it's kind of a mess. It's all over the place, right? I mean, it starts out with what you just heard, and then it moves into the whole thing about them taking pictures and everything. But I do...
I want to say that my favorite part of the song is the grocery list. In the middle of their celebration, it's all the stuff that they need to go buy from the convenience store. We need some ice and an extension cord. A can of bean dip and some dying rites. A box of tampons, some marmorals. Merry Christmas from the family.
That's going to do it. You should check out Jeremy's newsletter. If you haven't already, it's the pinned post on his X page. Jeremy S. Wallace is his handle. If you're into the intersection of politics, pop culture, and the law, check out Jeff Berg. is litigious on your favorite podcast app or just go to bergpc.com slash podcast. You should be a subscriber at quorumreport.com and houstonchronicle.com. We'll see you next time. he threw a breaker and the lights came on and we sang silent not all