The long wait is over. Evan, the Texas take is back. Did you have a good Thanksgiving? I did. It was really, really relaxing. Is that because you did not visit your parents for the first time? On a holiday like this. Is that true? I think that has something to do with it. Yes. Okay. All right. Bad son. Bad son. The take is back. And I want to explain that before we start the show.
Because I'm going to get a lot of questions about this. Before we start, I want to say that this episode does not include a discussion of the Texas House Speaker's race because it's such a fast-developing situation. 12 hours, and I'm talking to you all on Friday afternoon. Over the last 12 hours or so, it has changed minute to minute. And so...
I don't want to give people information in the show that's going to be old news by the time they hear it. So we will talk about it in depth during a future show. And in the meantime, we're going to focus on some other things. So if you want to know the latest on the speaker's race, go to quorumreport.com. That's quorumreport.com or just follow me at Scott Braddock on Twitter. Now, you know what else is back? You know what other show is back, Evan? It's Jeff Berg is litigious, right? Awesome.
On this week's show, Jeff is going to get into crypto recovery once again. He's really on a mission about this, and he's going to explain why it takes longer than anybody would like to get their money back when somebody gets scammed this way. People get taken in by these scammers, and they understand –
want their money back yesterday but these people and i don't think this is an overstatement these people are sociopathic animals but they're not idiots they do a really good job of hiding what they're doing when they're you know stealing people's money this way so fighting them
in a way that gives victims the best shot at recovery. It takes a lot of work, it takes time, and there's a whole lot to it. Jeff's going to get into that on the show, and you can check it out at bergpc.com slash podcast. That's B-E-R-G-P-C.com. slash podcast. All right. Are we ready to get back into the Texas take? Let's do this thing. Let's go. Trump says he loves Texas, but does he?
Welcome to The Texas Take, the number one political 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 get the inside story on what's up in Texas politics at QuorumReport.com. Jeremy.
We're back. We're back. Everybody's going to be really excited now to look at their podcast feed and see that, guess what? We are back. Two weeks without the show, it's like withdrawal for some people. And I get that. Took that time to take a break, stuff ourselves with Thanksgiving meals that were amazing. It's not the worst thing in the world, Jeremy, that pretty much all men's pants come in a stretchy version now. Because I did not shy away on Thanksgiving. Did you have a good holiday?
Yeah, I'm going to pay for it, right? I probably added like five pounds in one week. But hey, once my kids started to be able to bake and cook and stuff, it's like it just ruined me. It's a game changer. Well, like you said, when you reach our... our age. Losing weight is the toughest thing. So I'll be back to my, back to my walks. That doesn't mean that I won't be smoking a cigar when I'm walking the neighborhood. What should we start with here? How about the fact that Trump
isn't really picking Texans for his cabinet, even though he says he loves the place, Jeremy, right? I mean, you have been at events with Trump where he has said that verbatim. I mean, here he was in Dallas. I like Texas. They like me somehow. works together and here he was in houston i love texas and it's big and strong and the people are big and strong too so i thought you'd like to hear that so despite saying all that jeremy
I keep getting the question from folks like, why isn't he picking Ken Paxton for anything? Why isn't he picking Dan Patrick for anything or Sid Miller or any of these other people who would bill themselves as Trump's person in Texas or Trump's person? Well, he finally got around to appointing a couple of folks with deep Texas roots, including Scott Turner as HUD secretary who served in the first Trump administration and Brooke Rollins who …
has no real history with the, I will say this, with Scott Turner, he does have some history in working on the issues surrounding HUD, right? He worked in and around that with the former HUD secretary under the first Trump administration, but Brooke Rollins. who comes from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and more recently she's been doing this – what is it, the Texas – or not Texas – the America First Institute. I always think of Texas First. She's over there at the –
America First Institute. Is that what it's called? It's basically the Trump think tank, right? She's been over there, and she's now going to be the ag secretary. She's the nominee for the president-elect. Yeah. What makes it so strange is like we thought –
Texans were going to be all over this, right? It's like, not that Trump obviously has other priorities out there, but I assume some more Texans would be breaking through. But ultimately, we've seen he's made about 70 appointments right now to his cabinet. into places within his White House that won't need any sort of Senate confirmation. But of those 70, it's a huge amount of Floridians in the mix, right? He's really kind of showing his favoritism for anybody for Florida.
It's like, you know, who was his AG pick? It was a Floridian. His second AG pick after the first one flamed out, a Floridian. His Secretary of State pick? A Floridian. DA pick? Well, you get it. Floridian and Floridian and Floridian. But on the Texas front, we've got three people that he's now picked at this point. Remember John Ratcliffe, the former congressman from North Texas? He's been...
appointed to be a CIA director. We have Scott Turner, who, remember, he was a state rep, you know, from Dallas area. He was there for, you know, was it from 2013 to 2017? He served there. by the way was one of those people who challenged you know Joe Strauss for the speakership at one point. But he's in there. And then Brooke Rollins is interesting. Brooke Rollins, like you mentioned, she was with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. And it's interesting where she's from.
She's from Glen Rose, Texas, which is a really small community. But she's from a high school that also produced Dan Campbell. the head football coach for the Detroit Lions, they went to the same high school. Not at the same time. She was a little bit ahead of him. So she's from Glen Rose, which is also known as kind of one of the prohibition. capitals of Texas. During Prohibition period, people would skate out of DFW and get their liquor.
out in the woods of Glen Rose. I think it was called the Whiskey Woods of the capital of Texas, which is kind of like – so she's from this little town that has a great backstory and history. But as James Osborne at the Houston Chronicle, he points out – in a story that we have up now, she doesn't really have a lot of background in agricultural policy, so to speak. She's been around Texas Public Policy Foundation, which did some stuff on ag policy in terms of questioning.
subsidies and programs to support farmers. And so you kind of wonder if that will become part of the ultimate message for her that she'll help carry on. Will she use that position? to echo some of the stuff that TPPF was working on, which went after farm programs. But we're already getting – like in James' story, he kind of points out that already Brooke Rollins' team is saying, no, no, no.
That was just one thing. It wasn't her report. She wasn't saying she wanted to get rid of farm subsidies or crop supports or anything like that. But that's going to be an interesting watch is you see this Texas woman with little – public policy arena expertise on agriculture thrust into a world where we're not only dealing with some on the right, like the Heritage Foundation, want to cut these price supports.
Plus, you have Trump wanting to do these tariffs on other countries like Mexico and Canada, which produce so much agriculture for us, and our agriculture goes overseas. You can see the pressure that's going to be in this position. So this USDA... is going to be far more important for Texas.
going forward, you know, look, she was in the running to be the White House Chief of Staff, and she did not get that. This is kind of a consolation prize, but it has potential being very dangerous to where we go forward. But why would she be for...
cutting farm subsidies. Let me help people understand this. Because she was at a right-wing think tank, it's because they have a donor that thinks that that's what ought to happen. Look, Brooke Rollins and grifters like Brooke Rollins, what they do is they're salespeople. and there's the grifters this is a person who would go out and sell whatever policy the donors want
to that think tank. You know, the way that they operate at the Texas Public Policy Foundation is it's sort of a shady operation. They've got all these people who donate to them. And those people want to see certain policies implemented. And then these think tanks, you know, they write white papers or they write them in reverse. Whereas the donor wants a certain outcome, right? And then they have these.
quote unquote academics of people who kind of pass themselves off as academics who write these research papers that work backward to get to the result that the donor wants. So that could be big oil and gas. That could be just someone who doesn't agree with.
What they say is handouts for farmers or for anybody else, for welfare recipients or whatever it is. It was somebody like Rollins. You know, when she was working in Texas, most of her political currency came from the fact that she was in the Rick Perry orbit.
Right. She was like she would have been if Rick Perry would be in an event, she might be like the plus one or the person who shows up later at the event looking for a name tag. But there's not one on the table. And the person behind the table says, oh, we'll make you a name tag.
And with Trump, it's kind of the same. She's in the Trump orbit, right? And so what was – I mean at the America First Institute – Jeremy, correct me if I'm wrong, but basically the America First Institute is just a quote-unquote think tank to promote things that Trump wants the government.
Right. So I agree. So when it was Rick Perry time for her, she would agree with Rick Perry. And when it's Trump time for her, she agrees with Trump and she always agrees with Trump. And so so let me make this point. What's her qualification to be at the U.S. Department of Agriculture? It's that she loves Trump. That's the same as Pete Hegseth being nominated to run the Pentagon.
He doesn't have the experience he would need to run an organization like that. But he loves Trump. And there's one more thing. And this has been The Reporting. about Trump's thinking on all this, not just that the person loves Trump, but also that they look good on TV while they're loving Trump, right? So here was... Brooke Rollins on Fox Business Channel talking to Larry Kudlow about the choice of Linda McMahon to run.
the department of education today is a great day for america a great day for president trump and a great day for reclaiming this country out of the hands of the socialists frankly that are trying to destroy everything linda mcmahon i know larry you and i and Chris all worked hand in glove with her in the last White House. She was often, she would be characterized as President Trump's favorite cabinet secretary, not to start a war amongst family, but truly remarkable, built one of the most.
amazing businesses in American history WWE and for the last almost four years has been building the America First Policy Institute she's remarkable and there's no one better Sycophant. That's another word for it. Sycophant. Whatever Trump wants is perfect. Whoever he picks is perfect. It doesn't matter what their qualifications are. It doesn't matter that this person wants to dismantle the department that they have been appointed to.
Remember, Governor Perry, the agency that he couldn't remember that he wanted to eliminate is the one he was nominated by Trump to run. There's a pattern of this, Jeremy. It doesn't just apply to the Texans either.
Well, and what's different about Brooke Rollins is, like, compared to the other Texans that I ran down the list of, you know, the positions they're getting, you know, you think of somebody like Ratcliffe, who, again, had been a mayor, had served in Congress. You think about Turner that we talked about earlier. He was a state rep. So he had an elected background. Brooke Rollins, we don't have any of that. We don't have any sense of where –
where she leans on important policy issues that are going to affect USDA. And look, and I know a lot of people think Texas is this big urban place now, but we still have a major, massive agricultural industry that relies on...
on agricultural industries around the world. You know, it's like, and so we have a lot kind of interplayed there. And so I'm just saying this is somebody we don't have a lot of information on. How is she going to run this department? Like we got a sense a little bit about...
Cliff's character and kind of how he might run something, and Turner and what he has to say about urban development and housing. We kind of can kind of build off of what they're doing. Brooke Rollins is more of an open book. We went through everything she did at...
TPPF, and what James Osborne found was just this one piece of policy that they kind of worked on and advocated for. It never went anywhere. The legislature never acted on anything they were promoting. But the problem for... people to understand going forward for, for Brooke Rollins particularly is like just the side, the scope of this agency and its potential cause, you know, man, you get the wrong policy.
at USDA, and you hurt a lot of people in Texas, right? And so that's going to be really kind of interesting to watch to see how she kind of takes this message and takes this Trump fandom. And how does that turn into policy? What does that look like? Is she going to be against farm subsidies? There's this world where there's some people on the right who have not been around agriculture who think, well, it's the market.
It's been warped because of all these subsidies. It's favoring one group over the other. Remember, they're picking winners and losers. Corn's getting these subsidies. Soybean guys are getting this. There are people who are paid not to work their fields. It's like all that is true. speaks to the complexity of agriculture. Other nations have massive...
government support for their agricultural interest. We don't have that. And so it kind of creates this, like, you can't have this perfect libertarian world that Republicans sometimes want to find where there are no subsidies for any product. Well, that just can't happen because otherwise...
You're going to put our farmers out of business. They will be completely overwhelmed. We will get cheap Mexican produce over American produce every day of the week if we don't have some sort of subsidies to kind of – Right. And one other point that has to be made about this, and one of my very conservative friends from West Texas, from the Lubbock area, has made this point time and time again when we talk about farm subsidies and what our country does for farmers and the...
The sort of the partnership between farmers and the government. It's a national security issue. If you don't have your own sources of food and everything shuts down, if you can't get – food from Mexico, can't get food from China, can't get food from wherever, and you're not producing it at home, it's a serious national security issue. And I hear this from – this is not some –
you know, liberal thing, some liberal criticism of Brooke Rollins or what they've done at TPPF. This is conservatives who would say, these are the same, by the way, these are the same people. who run around saying that we should be very concerned about foreign interests buying our farmland.
You've heard this over and over again. And some of that comes from a really ugly place with a lot of people who have, I think, intentions that are terrible and in some cases racist. But here's a reality. If a country can't grow its own food, it's in a lot. of trouble. And the fact that growing that food right now isn't profitable, that's not a reason to not do it.
Well, and one thing to kind of note on this, I put this on social media earlier in the week, but Brooke Rollins is the first Texan to ever lead USDA potentially. It's like, you know, since 1845. This has really been a position a lot of time for the Midwesterners. It's like this has been given to – if you were a former Iowa governor or senator, you clearly had first dibs on this job. Nebraska, all those – every now and then a Californian or a Georgian would –
slip into the mix. But this is going to be the first time a Texan's ever been in play here. And you wonder what that's going to mean. We have a different kind of agriculture world than other places. We're obviously more of a ranching, cotton. type of universe than corn and soybeans. We have those, of course, but not to the degree that you're going to find in those Midwestern places. Those farming...
priorities and needs are very different from ours. And the question is, how is Brooke Rollins and her team going to adjust to all that? Will they adjust to it, or will this be a sign by Trump that I am going to dismantle? Some of those subsidies that go to places like Iowa and Missouri. Yeah, absolutely. And I mentioned Hegseth, by the way, as the SecDef nominee.
Headline this afternoon says that, you know, as his nominations already in trouble, that Trump apparently is not really working the phones with senators to try to save him. This was a report from ABC. And I. I'm going to get grief, I know, from some of our more liberal listeners because I take pride in it. We have liberal and conservative listeners. We have Republicans and Democrats who listen. Almost every member of the legislature and certainly every journalist in Texas.
waits in eager anticipation for the show each week. That's why they were all so pissed off, Jeremy, when we were gone. But I know some liberals won't like this. Well, I'm going to give Big John, John Cornyn, some credit for the way some of this is going.
Remember what happened while we were gone and the Matt Gaetz nomination was withdrawn? And it was made pretty clear through all the national reporting that Big John had a key role in that, that when the meetings were held on Capitol Hill… And Matt Gaetz, who's this, as you have already described, you don't have to do it again, as he was this nominee from hell.
for Trump's incoming administration. He was just a nightmare with all of the different accusations coming out against him and the potential of that report coming out from the Ethics Committee in Washington, from the House Ethics Committee and all that. And Cornyn had made it clear.
that senators would want to see what the House had been looking into, even though Gates had resigned his seat in the House in what looked like a bid to just make sure that report never came out. And it was made clear by Cornyn that he sat down.
with Gaetz and just said, look, guess what? I don't know exactly how he said it, but he probably said it like, guess what, son? This is going to be rough water for you. They're going to hear everything about you and what has been said about you and whatever evidence the house has, that's all going to come out.
And so what do you know? After that meeting, Gates withdrew. So the point we were making a couple shows ago is – or on the last show, excuse me, is that not every Republican is just going to do everything Trump says. You know, like that. And Big John is already showing that kind of independence. He was asked this week about Hegseth.
And all of the accusations against him of sexual misconduct and being drunk on the job and all this other stuff. Did you see this report, Jeremy, that Hegseth told – and he's a weekend Fox News guy, a veteran and everything. There are all these accusations that he's drunk on the job and he's just not doing things the way he should and all sorts of misconduct accusations and all this. And Hegseth told a senator apparently that if they make him the Pentagon chief.
That he just won't drink on the job, that he was making that assurance to senators. Some of the same people who spent the last year criticizing Speaker Dade Phelan as drunk Dade, I don't see any of those people tweeting anything like that about. Pete Hegseth. But Cornyn was asked about Hegseth, and these reporters wanted to know...
Is this nomination going to fly through or what's going to happen here? And here's the way Cornyn answered that. This was the exchange with one of the reporters in Washington. Are you comfortable that he used the right man for the job? I'm going to let the process.
work itself out i've known pete for a number of years and uh so we'll i haven't uh had a chance to talk to him since he was nominated but we'll let the process work itself out jeremy you know how it's often said that you have to trust the process Right. Increasingly, there are those who would say, does the process know that we're trusting it? That's one. And two, to trust the process, you also have to trust the people in the process to honor.
Not just the way that the rules are written, not just to honor that, but also to honor the way things have been done before. And when Trump was making nominations the first time around for his first administration. He was choosing a lot of people who had more specific subject matter expertise in the in the places that he was going to be putting them. Right. And the problem he ran into.
And the reason so many of them either were fired by him or left the administration was because what he really wanted was complete loyalty, whether they knew what they were talking about or not. This time around. The whole threshold has been really lowered for whether the person knows anything about what they would be doing in a very important job. And everything is about the loyalty. And that's why we saw these nominations like Gates. And now we're seeing Rollins.
And, you know, someone like Cornyn says, let's make sure that if someone, I mean, the bar is getting low here, but let's make sure that the person at least isn't a complete scumbag before we put them in an office like this. Well, and again, and particularly on – Defense Department. We just talked about agriculture being a big Texas industry. But remember, Texas is a mega military state, too. We got 15 military bases. We're typically first or second in total number of people stationed.
In the United States military, like at all our bases, it's like it's a huge employment place for us. So so who leads the Pentagon is a really big stinking deal for Texas. You know, so you can see Cornyn kind of wanting to make sure that. we have somebody in there that's going to be able to do this position. And I had to laugh. I don't know if you saw this earlier in the week, but Pete Hegesis had his mom. go on Fox News to say my son really is a good boy. It's like...
To me, that's never a good sign when you need to get your mom to verify that you're a good kid. People to speak for you, yeah. Which is almost kind of that thing like it's not news when it's – Dog bites man. It's when man bites dog. In this case, it's like, it's not news that your mom is backing you unless there's a reason for her not to back you. Right. It's news that she's the only one you can really get to go on TV and back you, right? Yeah.
Where are the other people? Yeah, I saw that interview, and I thought it just kind of illustrates the bigger problem. But again, I think you hit it with, as he's going for more loyal picks, he's going to make some misses. And you wonder if Hexas will join Matt Gaetz. on that list. He's clearly on a thin line. Who knows if he'll even make it through this next weekend as the nominee. He could easily back out because once he gets to the hearing, everything you've heard about the sexual assault.
cases around him. He's going to have to explain this in an open forum. This isn't going to be a quiet room. Susan Collins of Maine has already said, we need to have an open hearing to discuss all this, to make sure what we, again, this is somebody who's going to be leading the military. Like, look, the military certainly doesn't need somebody who has behavior issues at the top of it. It's like we could really –
pound people's hearts with the tragic stuff that has happened further down the chain of command. Absolutely. Think of, you know, what happened at Fort Cavazos. Yep. You know, it's like, you know, it's like the last thing this... country needs in the Pentagon is somebody who might turn a blind eye to the sexual assaults that already aren't being handled properly in this United States military. So you can see the pressure on that.
And so I'll be interested to see where this goes from here. I think Trump, you know, if more people like Cornyn start kind of raising concerns, that'll be really, you know, a good... indicator of where Hexa stands. Oh, and a side note, you know, like Matt Gaetz, we talked about Matt Gaetz got pushed out and Trump ended up going with Pam Bondi, the former Florida attorney general to be the next person. You music fans out there.
Pam Bondi was once at the same Cage the Elephant concert with me. So there you go. For the first time in American history, we're going to have a U.S. Attorney General who jams to Cage the Elephant. Well, there ain't no rest for the wicked. Oh, nice. Well said. Did you see how quick I was with that? Yeah, look at that. Like you knew it was coming almost. You know you're working with a washed-up disc jockey. All right. So people – look, I think the point about the –
sexual assaults and how they have been handled by military brass, it can't be underscored enough. And this is where a lot of people have to really need to step back. And think about whether you want someone who's just loyal to Trump or someone who is above question about something like that, right? That it's just that you would never.
I think in a million years that this person is not going to handle that fairly and handle it well. And as you said, tragic stories about all of that. And when you have an organization that big, which again, this guy has never. run anything, really anything. And this is one of the largest organizations, not just in the government, but on earth, the US military with bases all over the earth and certainly all over Texas, as you mentioned.
And just needs to be somebody who can handle this, has some experience with it. Here's something to think about. Even if it was a nice guy who had none of these accusations against him. But let's say... Just didn't have any experience running anything like this. That would still be a terrible pick for secretary of defense. That'd be awful. That would be enough for people. That should be enough for people to be outraged and especially conservatives.
All of my dear conservative friends who say that they honor and respect our military, and I know that they do. That's a heartfelt belief that people have. They love our military. You know, we talked to our friends in San Antonio, people at Fort Cavazos, like you mentioned, all of our military communities in Texas. You know, God and country, and they're all about it. And you want to put some guy who has no... fucking clue what he's doing and put him in charge no bad bad bad move go ahead jeremy
No, I was just going to say it's just like – I think as we go through this process, we've learned real quickly that this time around Trump wants these loyalists in place regardless of that experience to kind of be that – to shake up the swamp. I get it.
get what they want to do they want to shake up the usual thinking let's have you know completely out the box thinking as people who will be aggressive that's when when matt gates was put on you know you know initially out as the ag he you know here's a guy who's
under investigation for all kinds of stuff, right? And you're thinking he's going to be the guy leading it. But you can see why they want to shake things up. I get that. And I think there's a lot of Republicans and independents who would agree with that. But that shakeup can't be at the point.
point of making people uncomfortable on in the trenches like and literally the trenches in this case i just i just can't imagine the message it sends to uh you know, women soldiers, you know, at Fort Cavazos or down in Lackland, you know, what it says to them if now we put somebody in there who has this history of being inappropriate at the very bare minimum.
inappropriate around women. Absolutely. Here's one of the questions that I get every two years and I'm going to answer it succinctly and then I'm going to add something to it. One of the questions that people start Asking immediately in December at Jeremy. As soon as newspaper reporters and TV reporters and others start working on their legislative preview stories, my phone lights up.
And this is one of the questions. Is this the year that the legislature will legalize marijuana in Texas? Every two years. You could say it's an evergreen question. Did you like that? All right. Yep. So the answer is no, right? That's not going to happen. And in fact, everything's moving the opposite direction from that at this point. Some people might think that.
Donald Trump is going to be president. He has a little bit different policy view than a lot of Republicans on this. I was looking at an NPR report from last month right after the election. where they pointed out that the president-elect is expected to come to the White House with a laundry list of policies that he wants to change or reverse. But one area where he agrees with Joe Biden, the incumbent president, is on cannabis.
The President Biden's administration proposed removing marijuana from the list of Schedule I controlled substances and making it a Schedule III drug. And Trump may want to continue that. So he has a little bit different view, right? When he's been asked about this. He's not one of the tough-on-crime Republicans about it, right? But in Texas, our Republicans are a little different, even those who support Trump. Remember when –
Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller came out and said, hey, you know what? Maybe we should have medical marijuana. And he was being pushed in his election by the Democrat who was running against him about that. But he had originally said, you know, when we legalized hemp in the state.
He said, well, look, I think this is pretty close to a direct quote. He said, look, potheads, this doesn't mean you're about to be able to smoke weed in Texas. That's not about to happen. Now, I'm here to tell you that people smoke weed in Texas every day. As you know, Jeremy S. Wallace is a, I'm not saying weed aficionado. He is a Willie Nelson aficionado. Yeah.
And ain't nobody stopping Willie Nelson from smoking weed in Texas. Let me put it this way. Do you know anyone who wants to get weed in Texas and they can't get it? No, right? I mean, come on. So people kind of dance around all of this. Well, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said this week that Texas needs to go in the complete opposite direction of legalization and instead proactively pass a ban on any product that contains...
Here's part of a report from KVU television in Austin. After the sale of consumable hemp was legalized here in Texas in 2019, two other house bills tried to ban Delta 8, Delta 9 and other THC products, but both of these bills ended up dying in the legislature. Now in 2019, Texas lawmakers passed House Bill 1325 to strengthen agriculture in Texas. It was inside of that bill that allowed for the sale of consumable hemp products with no
more than 0.3% THC. But Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick said in the last few years, thousands of cannabis stores have been opening across the state. He claims these retailers have exploited that law and been selling products that contain three to four times the THC content that might be found in marijuana purchased from a drug dealer. Some of that is exaggerated. That's reporter Malia Masamoto.
on KVU television. She's not exaggerating, but what Patrick is saying is definitely exaggerated. And look, I have heard from people who say that if you go, here's the way one, and I would, this person would say that they are a self-proclaimed. Pothead. They would say, Scott, marijuana is legal in Texas. You go get the Delta 8, it's the same effect. Now, it's not exactly the same and I am not a weed connoisseur in any way, shape or form. There are some Republicans.
Who would fall under the umbrella of libertarian leaning and in the category of the criminal justice reformers who would say that at least it should be decriminalized. that you shouldn't have to go to jail for it, that there's no excuse for people being locked up for low-level drug offenses, that that's ridiculous. It's a waste of everybody's money. It's bad public policy. When Trump...
And the president of Mexico got into it about the 25 percent tariffs that Trump is now threatening. And President Scheinbaum down in Mexico had said, well, what if we have our own tariffs at 25 percent? And guess what? I'm paraphrasing what she said, but she's basically saying like if y'all didn't have the worst drug policy in the whole world up in the United States, then this stuff wouldn't be coming out of Mexico, right? Because he's always talking about fentanyl and all that.
If you go to Tulsa, Oklahoma, these states that have quote-unquote legalized, you go to Tulsa where they have medical marijuana. And I'm here to tell you. But the people who have those medical marijuana cards, I asked one of them while I was there over the holiday, Jeremy, why did I go to Tulsa for part of my holiday? Because I wanted to check it out.
Of course. Why not? It was interesting. They have weed stores all over the place, which again, I don't care about that. I do care about this. They have a cigar bar in every neighborhood in Tulsa. We don't even have one of those. We have some lounges in Austin, but we don't have one cigar bar. A place where you could smoke a cigar and buy liquor from a bar.
Imagine this, Jeremy, two legal things you can do in the same establishment. I mean, it should be okay, but we don't have one in Austin, but in Tulsa, they have them everywhere. They had cool restaurants, bars, speakeasies and everything. But I was talking to a guy who had just come out of one of those weed stores and I said, so to get one of the cards that makes it legal for you to get it under the medical exception, what do you say to the doctor?
What's your condition? And the guy said, he goes, this is direct quote. He said, oh, it's bullshit. I just tell the doctor I can't sleep at night. And they give me the card and I can go get weed. And this happens all over. Okay. So the guy's not doing anything wrong. I mean, it qualifies under the law. So in some of these places where they have just straight up recreational marijuana, like in Nevada.
or Colorado, as long as you're above a certain age, I guess is at 21 in both those states. If you're above a certain age, just like with alcohol, you can just buy marijuana, take it home, smoke it, chew it. You know, do whatever. They've got all kinds of ways to do it. Right, Evan? He's going to act like he doesn't know. Evan's going to act like he doesn't know how they do marijuana in these different places.
Do they have legal marijuana in California where you are? Is it medical or straight up recreational? I don't know. I'm not familiar with the laws on that everywhere. It's recreational. Okay, so he can just go down right now. You're over 21, right? I have to ask you. He can go down there and get it. But here in Texas, I'm here to tell you.
That it's not just liberal places – Jeremy, this is the point I'm making here. It's not just liberal places like California where you could do that. You essentially can do it also in a very conservative place like Oklahoma. And in this – In this way, it's not a conservative or liberal thing to either have legalized pot or legalized casinos or any of that. This is about business interests. On the last show that we put out into the world.
We pointed out that the little governor, Dan Patrick, has been doing a little sidestep when it comes to casinos. But he's not doing that on pot at all, right? He's saying no, no THC products whatsoever. He wants to crack down. I don't know that the House is going to do the same thing on this. But Patrick says that he can probably get – and here's another point I'm going to make about Patrick. He says he can probably get Democrats and Republicans to vote for banning THC.
which he could also get Democrats and Republicans to vote for casinos if he wanted. He's the guy who runs the Senate, right? So he's making a policy prescription, and he said last week he's not trying to tell anybody how to live their life. But he is. He wants to tell people that they can't use any – I mean this is where to your point about the military, Jeremy, you have a lot of these folks who suffer PTSD, who suffer all kinds of conditions after they serve their country.
And we know cases of veterans who can benefit from some of these products that contain THC. Now, I don't doubt that the lieutenant governor has serious concerns about what some kids may be doing. I get that. Do you really go out of your way to punish every person who could benefit from this? And I saw some conservatives online reacting to Patrick's statement on this. And they were saying, why do you want to punish our veterans? Why do you want to punish other people?
who for them, it really is medicine. Yes, there are those people who want to do this recreationally and get high and have a good time. And I'm of the mind that if they want to do that, it's just like Willie Nelson. Do whatever you want, as long as you're not hurting anybody else. Fine. But then you do have people who are really suffering with different conditions, and this sort of catch-all way that Patrick's doing it ends up creating a situation where those people will be collateral damage.
Yeah, and that goes to the heart of all legislation, right? Anything you think of legally, it's like you want to kind of like, you know, if you want to give a benefit to somebody to be able to kind of use something, there's always concern that somebody might abuse the system. So how aggressive...
do you go against like, okay, this is going to be some kids going to try to figure out a way to get marijuana legally. So we're going to make sure nobody can use it at all. You know, that's kind of what this has come down to. And like we've talked about before on this show, it's like if you're... a veteran in another state right now, I'm just going to pick on some places like Florida, like you mentioned, Oklahoma, or if you're in Oregon, you can go and get medical marijuana to help.
you with your cancer treatments that was prescribed by a doctor. You can't do that in Texas. That's what's kind of amazing. You literally could have somebody legitimately struggling with cancer and unable to get anything to help them with their recovery other than... marijuana, but they can't get it in Texas. It's crazy that we send that person across state lines. We have got to send that person to Colorado to go get the treatment he needs. Again, we're talking a Vietnam veteran.
These are people in their 70s and 80s that instead of giving them... help, we're making them go to other places. And that was the thing that actually turned the tide in Florida, ultimately. Everybody was so worried about kids trying to use it to get high on marijuana or whatever. But what happened in Florida was that seniors finally...
kind of got together and said, look, we want this for arthritis. We want this. We want to make this. They're the ones who became the backbone of making sure it got passed. And so you had a lot of senior citizens who were going, wait a minute, I think this, like.
Like we all heard the like Nancy Reagan, don't just say no to all drugs type stuff. But there's a point where it's just like, but if this drug can help you, you know, overcome arthritis or PTSD or all kinds of other stuff without an opioid. Why wouldn't we think about it? Right. And, you know, as we were pointing out here, the liberal states like with Colorado at one point was more Republican, but it's been Democratic for a while. It's more liberal there in Colorado.
It's kind of more split in Nevada, right, where they still will elect Republicans or Democrats at the statewide level. Very liberal in California, of course. But conservative states, Oklahoma, Arkansas. And as you're pointing out now, I mean, there was a time when Florida was a swing state, always seen as more of a purple state. It was always deciding the presidential elections. But that's a Republican state now.
Yeah. And what are they doing? They're moving in this direction because it just makes sense. And so what Patrick is doing, I don't know if it's emotional for him. I think he's quick to anger lately for some reason. He's just mad at everybody, the whole world, which I don't even know why he's so mad at everybody. This is one of the most successful guys.
in texas and therefore america lighten up you know i mean give me a break this guy wields so much power and what does he do with it that's worth a damn I'm going to get some comments about that. All right. That'll do. I'm in the mood because guess what? Some people will view it this way, Jeremy. The fact that we're back in their podcast feeds, it's like a holiday miracle. We're moving toward...
Christmas and New Year's and on into 2025. So we'll have at least a couple more shows for you before the year concludes. And on the question of who is the Speaker of the House going to be in Texas, keep your eye on... QuorumReport.com. Jeremy's newsletter. You've got to check that out as well. He is always putting that out.
Every day except Sunday, I think. And you can check it out. Jeremy S. Wallace on Twitter. He's got the pinned post at the top of his Twitter page, his X page. That will give you the link to his newsletter. If you're into the intersection of politics, pop culture. and the law.
We've got another show for you. Jeff Berg is litigious coming back from the holiday as well this week. You want to check it out. Bergpc.com slash podcast. It's B-E-R-G-P-C.com slash podcast. That's the show where I'm the executive producer and Evan, young Evan. is making everything sound so perfect over there as well. You should be a subscriber at quorumreport.com and houstonchronicle.com. And we'll see you next time.