Okay, what are the Democrats doing? No, seriously, what are they doing? Welcome. to The Texas Take, the number one politics podcast in the great state. 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 QuorumReport.com. So many people this week, Jeremy.
are either genuinely upset or they're pretending to be angry. And there's a mix of both on this. I realize that it's nuanced. There's all this anger that's either real... or just sort of feigned outrage about what a Dallas Congresswoman said about Greg Abbott. Listen to this. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. Now, that controversy.
Got me thinking about this. And we'll talk more about what she said. But it got me to thinking, Jeremy, about this. Who is the leader of the Democratic Party? It seems that nobody knows. What's their message? It seems that it's unsettled, right? And, you know, how are they getting it out there? How's that happening? So we'll talk about all of that. But can I just start with the fact that it is the opening weekend of baseball in America. That puts me in the best mood possible, Jeremy.
And you know what really gets me going? Is that the Astros won over the New York Mets on opening day. I am absolutely elated. And I'm starting with it because, look, baseball is a time-honored tradition. The center of percussion in a bat is in the joy zone. The joy zone becomes iron hard and rings with a musical click when it meets the ball. Ted grooves the handle with a bottle. This produces hand security. For at contact, his bat has generated rocket speed.
To solidify the barrel, the bat is boned. A well-boned bat will not check or break in hot weather. The crowd sits tense. The fans are frozen to their seats. And there goes the ball. It's a three-run homer. Biggest moment in the baseball career. Heal, Alonzo, the polar bear.
Pitching is an exact science representing 60 to 75% of a team's strength. The Tigers. Tarek Skubal comes at you with force. Has been one of the mainstays in the pennant drive. With the fastest ball since Walter Johnson. 1-0-2 in his final pitch. Today. Today. I'm the greatest of all time. Number 50! Only one man stands alone! Nostalgia drips from the storied rafters. Freddie Freeman channeling his inner Kirk Gibson!
Old stars have found new fame. Now Soto, for the first time, has a bet. But baseball fans in the eastern metropolis will tell you this is his hometown. This one out to left center. Going, going, it is gone. Soto has homered in his first bat as a New York Met. A fitting finish to a fabulous batting career. That's making your mark quickly. Wow. Baseball is a rookie.
His experience no bigger than the lump in his throat as he begins fulfillment of his dream. Houston Astros beat the Mets 3-1 on opening day. Jeremy, and it couldn't be a better start now. I'm saying that, of course, when they're 1-0. But we'll see how this goes. You remember how last season started?
Not good. Then suddenly we were in the playoff hunt, right? And thinking about, you know, seasons gone by and the fact that to this day, when people ask about the Houston Astros first world championship. in which they were accused of cheating, what are the reactions from the fans? I'll give you a toned down version. They would say, F y'all.
We don't care about what you have to say about that. And in fact, I would say I would bang on the trash can myself if that would get us into another World Series. That's where I'm at on that. I always dreamt about being, and we'll get to politics. I always dreamt about being the stadium announcer at, what is it called now? Dykin Park? The Icebox?
There were some people this week saying, no, I'll never call it that. I'll only ever call it the juice box, Minute Maid Part. They want to be originalists about it. But if you're going to do that, Jeremy, what would you call it? You would call it Enron Field, right? Yeah, let's go Enron. I was there when it was Enron Field, you know, when I was working in radio at KTRH 740 in Houston.
I did get to know Milo Hamilton a little bit, you know, the legendary play-by-play guy for the Houston Astros. And he would do the Astro line show, the post-game show from the KTRH studios. And I had the illustrious position. of News Anchor overnight, which meant I did the news updates from 1130 p.m.
until 4 30 in the morning. So as he was wrapping up the show after, after baseball games, I would show up at the studio and sometimes, but he was elderly by then, of course, and I'd walk him out to his car to make sure he got out there safely and everything like that. And, and man, I just, I think about. The fun of broadcasting a baseball game, right? And you think about the great Astros players over the years, Jeremy, you were mentioning some of them.
Yeah, I can hear him talking, reading out the lineup. I'm sitting there listening to these games back when I was a kid, right? Yeah. Hearing like, you know, starting in right field, Jose Cruz, Jugar, you know, Dickie Thawne, you know. Batting second. Got Rusty Stahl playing over at first base today.
Like all the day hearing J.R. Richard throwing those fastballs and having him give us all. Yeah, yeah. This is the time of year. Like, all right, there's a lot of politics going on. Of course. I don't care if you're left, right, independent. Catch yourself a little ball. game you know take a little break from the politics and then get back at it
Well, another reason I'm bringing this up is because Jeremy is reporting from Houston today, and he's planning to at least try to get over to the ballpark this evening to watch the Astros in Game 2 against the Mets. But Jeremy, why? are you in southeast texas well it's because there was this big rally in fort band county last night
So you had Beto O'Rourke and who was the other guy there? Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. Is he from Minnesota? Yes, Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. Minnesota Governor Tim Walls. I get him mixed up with some other people. But he was there trying to fire up the crowd. And this goes right to this question about what's going to get Democrats excited and who's going to lead the resistance during this Trump administration. You were tweeting about it this week, and we've talked about it a lot.
Between us, we've talked about it, and we have had a lot of questions, Jeremy, about what's going on with the Democrats. So let's really talk about it. Who is leading the charge? And again, like I said, who are the leaders? What is the message?
How is it getting out there? And what Walls was telling the crowd is something that really runs counter to the idea that Democrats need to be more moderate to win elections. Our strength is our diversity. We've been talking about this for years as a country of immigrants. them define the issue on immigration, we let them define the issue on DEI, and we let them define what woke is.
We got ourselves in this mess because we weren't bold enough to stand up and say, you damn right we're proud of these policies. We're going to put them in and we're going to execute them. Now O'Rourke sounded similar telling the crowd there that the pragmatic approach of U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to work with Republicans at this point in history is the wrong way. to go about things. Now the crowd there seemed to like it, Jeremy. Tell us about the event.
Yeah, it was huge. It's like I was kind of surprised at the numbers that showed up. You had better work relying on that old network he's developed over those statewide runs for office. He put out the call. He ended up with thousands of people.
in a driving rainstorm on a Thursday night at the fairgrounds, you know, and if you've been to one of those pavilions out in Fort Benton County, they're pretty large. You know, the crowd was really fired up and, you know, getting into it. And it was, you know, I think what was important about it was, you know.
And I talked to both Walls and Beto O'Rourke about this. There's so many voices that are trying to figure out who's going to be the voice of the resistance, right? Like you mentioned, I've been talking about this in the newsletter for a couple weeks now. Like, who's it going to be?
going to raise their hand who's going to like you know go after this and one of the points i'm i'm making a story that i have out now uh over at houston chronicle.com is about how like you know with joe biden kamal harris kind of retreating and kind of just
letting everybody else kind of do it it's kind of left this vacuum of like who wants to be who wants to be the next leader of the party and it's clearly everybody like there's so many people who want to be out there others are trying to hold their fire and like
See guys like Fetterman up in Pennsylvania who's kind of been voting more with Republicans. And you heard Beto in that clip taking a shot at Schumer for not doing more to fight the Republicans in Congress. So, yeah, Democrats are all over on this play. issue about who's going to be the voice going forward, who can make the case clearly. Remember, it was in 2018, two years after Trump's first term. That's when we had the rise of people like Beto O'Rourke originally.
Stacey Abrams out in Georgia. It kind of sets something off. I keep looking for who are going to be the new voices that kind of rise up this time. Who is the new Stacey Abrams? Who is the new betto o'rourke yeah no offense to those folks but there's going to be a new person who takes over at some point we just may not know who that is yet
well and isn't this fundamentally because the democrats did not have a real primary i mean they were roundly criticized you know by some democrats and of course all of the republicans um for just sort of reinstalling biden but then taking him out of the running suddenly and trying to just you know force and i'll say it this way i'll get some notes about it but just try to force Kamala Harris as the leader of the party, you know, forced that on everybody. And that just didn't work out.
in any way, shape, or form. We saw a collapse of the Democratic Party, both here in Texas and nationally, after they'd made some gains here in Texas over the last decade. Now, you had talked to Beto. and to walls and you had a fundamental question for governor walls um and i'll just i'll just have evan play this uh go ahead why the hell are y'all here yeah well i'm here because i said uh
the party needs to obviously you saw the polling numbers in some of this and and we need to the people are screaming uh i said i called it a primal scream of do something about this um what are the democrats doing when they see elon musk gutting these programs what are they doing when they see these things that they know
make a difference like the Department of Education. And one of the outlets is allowing people to speak. And these Republican Congress members who are just going right along with this, they should be the ones asking the questions or stopping it. So I started doing this. Beto about this, and he's got his group that does incredible voter registration, and we decided to come here. And I love this, as Beto said this.
I spent that whole entire campaign in seven states. We as Democrats are going to have to think differently about this. That is a short-term strategy, and it obviously didn't work. Go ahead, Jeremy. Yeah, if you look at where they were in Fort Bend County, it's really interesting, too. So that's a county. back in 2020, that Joe Biden ended up winning by 11 percentage points, right? That's when the county looked so incredibly blue. This last time around, Kamala Harris won it by 1.7%.
Look, she still won, but you can see the erosion not just in swing states but in swing counties and red states as well. It's like it's that erosion. You can kind of see that negotiation happening. Does a guy like Bernie Sanders –
Sanders and AOC, do they bring this place like this back onto the right spot? They'll tell you that we got to get people fired up and energized again. Because one of the things that happened, if you look at those numbers closely in Fort Bend County, what happened where there was 15,000 people who voted for Joe Biden who didn't vote.
You know, for Kamala Harris, 15,000 lost Democratic votes. You know, what happened to those people? And you can see Walls is, you know, he's this is part of like a statewide thing he's doing. Of course, he's done these up in Minnesota since the election, but he's also.
to hit Nebraska they're going out to Ohio and they clearly pick Fort Bend County because of this like you know it's blue but not so blue uh you know it has some republican liens in it obviously and they're trying to address like what it is like You know, they want to make the case that Democratic Party and policies are good for working class people, even if we haven't been able to make that case clearly in the past.
Yeah, and it's such an important area. I mean, you talk about a real battleground that was – it was won by Hillary Clinton. The numbers were added to by Biden, and it is the most – it has been the most ethnically diverse country. in the United States, right outside of Houston. And for all the talk about the change in the Valley shifting toward the Republican Party, Democrats have...
problems, you know, even in those areas where the voters are not necessarily more socially conservative. You know, looking at, I mean, they are in the valley. And if you look, if you look at the counties along the Rio Grande in that area, those are
folks who have been maybe traditionally voting for democrats but are more socially conservative and if they lived in other parts of the state they might have been voting republican already um you know if you hadn't had the you know long history of voting for democrats down there um but fort bend is a real battle
ground. It's been going back and forth for a little while at this point, but I can remember a time when that was just the lily white suburbs that always voted for Republicans. That's just not the case anymore. And if they're losing that many votes in a place like Fort Bend. It really helps you to understand. It's very instructive about what's going on across the whole country, because get this, Fort Bend looks like the whole country.
No, and I think going back to your earlier point, the lack of that primary, just think about what Democratic primaries have done in the past. It's like I'm old enough to remember 2007 where everybody was like, oh, it's obviously going to be Hillary Clinton.
running in 2008. She's going to be the presidential choice. Nobody saw this guy Barack Obama coming, right? But you see the primary process kind of developed a voice that became kind of a leader of the party. And I think that's kind of what you lose. out when you get this shotgun type election cycle where voters didn't get a chance to get to know either Kamala Harris or Tim Walz in the normal process.
We got two years of hearing their name, what they stand for, kind of getting more of their character, seeing them play catch in a snowy field in Iowa or whatever they do, right? You know, a pancake breakfast here, whatever. We didn't get any of that stuff. you know, with Kamala Harris and Tim Wallace's last time. I don't blame it all on them because they had the shortened cycle. Like, how do you win a presidential race starting in July?
You know, it's like, I don't know. I don't think, you know, you've heard me on the show a million times say, you got to start earlier. And it was kind of interesting in my conversation with Beto O'Rourke and Tim Walls. I'll have more of this, of course, in the paper and in the newsletter.
But one of the things that they were both talking about was we can't wait until the early voting of 2026 to start making our case to voters. The reason we're here now is because we want to start making the case now. We want to start having conversations.
with people in places like texas you know a year and a half out just talking about policy and what we need to do as a party hearing from them and to me like it's kind of that uh you know lucy from charlie brown you know like where you're just like the first sign of no
Knowing that you're on the road to recovery is knowing that you have a problem, right? Well, that is the football being pulled by Lucy. That is the ongoing story of the Democratic Party in Texas. Yeah, exactly. Every single time. Oh, we're so close. And then, nope. Well, at least in this case, again, I think better work has showed – at 2018 campaign, I will go to my grave and say the real lesson out of that was start early. Don't try to show up at the last minute in any election.
election. And what did they do in the presidential race? Kamala Harris shows up basically at the last minute. It's not her fault. Obviously, Biden kind of set that up to... go that way. But nonetheless, the fact that Tim Walz is here, you know, a year and a half out, you know, or you could say three and a half years out before the next presidential cycle.
Kind of makes sense. All right. So we talked about – we're going to keep with the baseball theme here. We talked about Walls. We talked about Beto. And now, batting third for the Democrats. is a guy named Greg Kassar, a congressman from Austin. Now, where was he, Jeremy? He was at a rally with Bernie Sanders and AOC. This was in Arizona. Correct. And he's there rallying the troops. And listen to how he does it.
There are those who say that politicians of conscience should just roll over and play dead. That's their words. And then there's those that say we should stand and fight. Anybody here think we should roll over and play dead? Anybody? No, no, roll over and play dead people over here, over there? Well, Bernie Sanders is here to stand and fight. AOC is here to stand and fight.
I hear some people are ready to stand and fight. He says they have to do that across issues if they're going to be successful. When they come from our public schools, we're not going to roll over and play dead. We're going to stand and fight.
When they come for our health care, we're not going to roll over and play dead. We're going to stand and fight. When they come for our veterans, we're not going to roll over and play dead. We're going to stand and fight. When they try to pass their tax cuts for billionaires... We're not rolling over and playing dead. We are going to stand and fight. So he's one to watch. I knew Kassar before he was even on Austin City Council. He was an activist and he's actually from.
from houston uh he moved to austin uh at some point and he he became very active with a group called the workers defense project the new york times at one point had described that group as look we don't have unions the way they do in other states so the new york times called it a union in spirit. And this guy, you could tell that what he was doing, the image he was going for was to look like Cesar Chavez out there.
leading these rallies, leading these protests at City Hall and elsewhere, trying to do just what the name of the group says, which is look out for workers' rights. We're talking about mainly construction workers, but mostly Hispanic workers that they were looking at.
for he makes his way on to city council and has a progressive voice there uh and then of course runs for congress and has basically throughout the entire time that he's been in politics been one of these what i would call you know progressive agitators and i don't think that he would disagree
with me saying it that way, because I do think that within the party, and they have to figure out who these pieces are, Jeremy, within the party, they have to have some folks that are more aggressive than they have to have some folks who are more pragmatic. That's always the case in both parties, by the way.
But you can think about it kind of like a chess game where if you're trying to beat the other side and you are playing chess and not checkers, which is the way it comes across a lot, right? If you're playing chess... On your side of the board, you have pieces that don't all move the same way, right? If he's a rook and he moves out straight across the board real fast to attack the other side, you might also have somebody who's more pragmatic, like a Chuck Schumer, who might be...
like your knight who kind of moves in a different way or slowly across the board, still attacking Republicans, but doing it in a way that's a little more cautious. And to be dominating the game, it's a game of chess that never ends, right? Sometimes, I'll just say, sometimes the blue...
side's winning. Sometimes the red side is winning. And it's a game of strategy. And you got to know how to move all of those different pieces. You can't have it all just be one thing. Otherwise, you are just playing checkers and you're going to lose. Yeah, and one of the things that's benefiting Kassar is that clearly Bernie Sanders and AOC have taken a shine to him, right? They're bringing him on the tour. If you guys remember, last fall, we talked about how those three were traveling.
up and down I-35 during the campaign cycle down the stretch. So it was like Bernie, AOC, and Greg Kassar were there with Beto O'Rourke making the case. So you can see that Kassar, as much as so many people People campaigned as being the next AOC or trying to campaign with Bernie Sanders or wanting to be that next guy up. But in this case, Kassar is kind of proving, or at least it's been proven in this rally in Arizona, that Kassar really is in that network right now.
now he has a chance to really be kind of a leader within that group all of a sudden bernie and aoc might have a third wheel essentially helping them out here on this case you know and so it'll be interesting that's why you know he caught my attention look i've known about him for years
But this is to me to have him like you can see his comfortability is growing on that bigger national stage with each week at this point. And you can see, you know, the way he had that crowd responding to him in Arizona is like, OK.
knows how to do this now it's like you know it hasn't always been that way but you can tell he's getting smoother in his delivery and knowing how to kind of get into people there were people applauding him who had never heard of him before that rally you know out in arizona and so that's kind of the goal I bet they didn't know about him at Workers' Defense Project at the rally in – where was that? In Phoenix. So let's see. Who do we have next here in the lineup? All right.
Batting forth for your Democratic Party as they try to figure out who's leading the damn thing is Dallas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. Now, she... I'm going to say... depending on your point of view here, she either stepped in it or, you know, she had a great viral moment. Now I would say based on her reaction,
to the reaction that maybe she thought she shouldn't have said what she said. Did you see that she sort of tried to walk back what she had said about Greg Abbott in a clumsy way? Yes. Evan, let's let people hear the whole thing here. She was speaking. an event for the human rights campaign. We in these hot ass Texas streets, honey. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now.
hot about him is that he is a hot ass mess honey now what she said to try to explain this i thought was really lame and full disclosure as is the case with lots of office holders from texas I do know her personally. And look, I knew Jasmine Crockett when she was just coming into the Texas House. She was first a state representative from Dallas County. And then she won the seat that was open after the retirement.
of Eddie Bernice Johnson, who, of course, also passed away more recently. And Congresswoman Johnson endorsed Crockett. She was the heir apparent. She's the one who she wanted. Now, EBJ, as she was known from Dallas County. was not this kind of flamethrower. She would have been one of the rook pieces in the chess game I was describing before, someone who really got things done for North Texas. She had powerful committee assignments in Washington and one of those real senior members from Texas.
really, you know, as they used to say. And it's almost become a bad word anymore in politics to say it, but she was one of those, it's almost like an epithet now, Jeremy, to say that she's somebody who brings home the bacon.
People talk about that now like it's something terrible. I mean, it's really hard for John Cornyn, who we're going to talk about, to say, look at all the things I did for Texas. It seems like the base of the Republican Party, who we will talk about the Republicans, seems like they don't care about that. What they want is...
What they want is the inverse of a Jasmine Crockett. They want somebody on the other side like a Ted Cruz or someone who talks a big game but doesn't really deliver that much. Now, with Crockett saying this, I'm going to say this. Of course, I don't condone anybody making fun of somebody in a wheelchair. But the reaction to it is what tells me a lot about where the parties are and where voters are and what our politics is like at this point. It seems, Jeremy, that...
If you agree with the person, then you think it's fine. If you agree with them across issues, if you're a fellow Democrat or fellow progressive, then you don't really care that much that she said that, or you think it's funny, or you think it's just fine.
Someone said to me, you know, what Crockett could have said to explain it. She could have said, maybe I shouldn't have said that, but let me tell you some things that Greg Abbott shouldn't have done. Right. She could have made that kind of argument. But as I think through this. It's not really that all Republicans or the base of the Republican Party is really upset with people making fun of those with disabilities. That can't be right.
Because if they really had a problem with that, they probably would have, you know, been upset with Donald Trump when he made fun of a disabled reporter. You got to see this guy. I don't know what I said. I don't remember. He was talking about a reporter who has a disability that. affects the way his arms look. And you had Trump on stage shaking his arms around, really mocking the guy in a very distasteful way. I'll say that. Okay, well, you know, so what?
is what a lot of Republicans would say, because that guy is a liberal reporter. He's part of the liberal media, so of course he should make fun of him. Well, what about when Trump made fun of a disabled Republican, John McCain? You remember the fact that McCain, after he was beaten mercilessly as a prisoner of war, couldn't raise his arms above his shoulders?
That was part of his wounds, part of his injuries. And so when he would put his hands up to give a thumbs up, his arms would just kind of lock as he brought them up to his shoulders. So here you have Trump making fun. of a POW, which before this, Jeremy, if you'd have asked me if somebody was running for president and they did that, they made fun of a disabled veteran, they probably would have had to cancel their campaign the next day. But you remember.
what uh what trump was able to get away with that year that was um i mean that was nine years ago listen he's not a war hero he's a war five and a half years he's a war hero because he was captured i like people that weren't captured okay i hate to tell you Do you agree with that? He's a war hero because he was captured.
Okay? And I believe perhaps he's a war hero, but right now he's said some very bad things about a lot of people. Now, you might think, okay, well, that was a while back, and this is a different deal because Greg Abbott is in a wheelchair. Well... I am old enough to remember, and this was only four or five years ago, that some Republican activists in Texas also made fun.
of Greg Abbott for being in a wheelchair. These are some of the guys who run something called Texas Scorecard. And you can ask, you might say, I don't even know what people might say, I don't even know what that is. John Cornyn, our senior senator, just did an interview with Texas Scorecard. So these people are very influential within Republican politics in this state. Two of the guys who worked there, Kerry Cheshire and Tony McDonald, were recording their podcast.
which has way fewer listeners. I don't think this particular podcast is even, I don't think they even do it anymore, Evan. But they made fun of Abbott during one of their recording sessions for being in a wheelchair. And there wasn't some big outcry from Texas Republicans about that. Do you remember this? I said Abbott wheel himself out there. I think we can go with that. I was a-okay with it.
and then within seconds you you demanded that he stand firm yeah it's just i literally like i feel like before there was a switch i could flip to avoid that And I'm just so frustrated with him that I've flipped it off. Well, it's true. He's such a revolting piece of shit. Now, that Republican activist, Kerry Cheshire, what he's saying is that he – here's what he's getting at. He's saying he always kind of wants to –
make fun of Abbott for being in a wheelchair, but he was able to keep himself from doing that previously. But at that point, Jeremy... In 2020, you remember what was happening? Cheshire and McDonald and other grassroots Republicans were very upset with Greg Abbott about something. Do you remember what it was?
It was the COVID restrictions, right? This is when they were upset with him for businesses shutting down around Texas and for there being mask mandates and all that sort of stuff. And so as I've thought through this. I think it has more to do – it's not so much Republican versus Democrat thing. It's just do you agree with the person or not, right? I mean when the base of the Republican Party was so angry with Abbott, you had some of them saying things like that.
About him. Now you have Jasmine Crockett saying things like that about him to get to the politics of this. Where did Abbott go? He went over to the base of the Republican Party more after that, right? After that next primary. when you had, as we mentioned on the last show, with Don Huffines and Alan West and Chad Prather and those people pushing him further to the right in his Republican primary, those people were able to make fun of Abbott.
and call him, quote, you heard it, a revolting piece of shit, and make fun of him for being in a wheelchair. They're in his party, though, and they were to the right of him, and he moved toward them. There was not some giant apology from the Texas scorecard people. He moved more toward them.
So Evan, let me hear what Crockett said again. And you tell me if that's better or worse than what those guys said about Greg Abbott. Y'all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. Right. I mean, if you had to compare the two. And again. It's not that one is good and one is bad, but there are gradations to this. There are certain ways that you could talk about people that would be better or worse. And I would say this, Jeremy.
We live in this constant 24-hour news cycle, and it's really more intense than that, right? Because it's not just that people have some big thing to say every hour. They have something to say every second. There was a time. There was a time when people could have a fight in politics and then not have another fight for a week, right? There was a time when things didn't move as quickly. Now, I may be sounding like the old gray beard now.
And that may be true, but it just speaks to the reality. I had mentioned previously that one of my guiding principles at the Texas Capitol is to forgive. And remember, well, when the person who originally said that said it, it was back in the day when those fights would happen maybe once every five days or once a week or once a month. Now people are having these nasty fights every...
Second of the day, everybody's trying to get a viral video. Everybody's trying to, you know, get the tweet that gets 5 million likes or whatever it is. And so we have this constant outrage environment, right? Everything's outrageous. But the thing is... If everything is an outrage, then nothing is an outrage, right? How can you be mad about this for longer than five seconds before the next thing comes along?
Yeah, and you can hear with, you know, Governor Abbott, like, you know, the way he talks about his being in the wheelchair is kind of part of his persona, right? You know, he's like, you know, this isn't like 1932 where everybody was, oh, don't take a picture of, you know, FDR.
in a wheelchair you know it's like you know you know greg abbott's campaigned on the fact that like he suffered this injury and he's overcome so much to get to where this is and so so he puts it out there in in a different kind of way so it's not quite like you know i know some people make it sound like oh you know and
both Crockett's case and, you know, the scorecard guys, it's like they're not making fun of something that people are trying to hide, right? You know, so there's this line that's out there that I think, you know, where is the right spot to hit? You know, it's like where...
can you criticize him where he can you not if he's using it as part of his story right you know you know generally speaking i think most of it's just like it's never good to make fun of anybody's appearance right nobody's regardless in politics i don't care if they're in a wheelchair what they
look like, what their hair is. Just talk about their policies and go after it. Well, I'll say neither you nor I are saying that it's okay. But there are certainly some other people who sure act like it's fine. And again, it's this constant outrage thing. People are always trying to get...
And this is what happens when you're trying to be edgy all the time. If you're trying to always own the libs or you're trying to insult the Republicans and conservatives all the time, there's always the chance that you go a little too far with it and you don't know what that's going to be.
Because you're always trying to push the envelope, push the envelope, push the envelope. As somebody who did broadcasting professionally for 20 years, I can remember a time when we had to maintain our employment. at a large media operation, Jeremy, once a year they would make us take a test about what's offensive, what's obscene, and all of that. And this was back in the days when Howard Stern was on the radio.
Rush Limbaugh was around. And the number one thing that any broadcaster had to do, if you were on the radio or television, it was preserve the license. The Federal Communications Commission was going to crack down on you, and you weren't even going to be able to broadcast if for some reason you lost your broadcast license. So you couldn't be too offensive. People might think it would be something about the First Amendment.
You know, really doing great journalism work or anything like that. If you're a disc jockey, something about being entertaining. No. The edict from companies like CBS and Clear Channel was that you had to protect the license, which I get it.
Because at that time, it's kind of going in the opposite direction of what I'm talking about now. And for whatever reason, as Americans, we can't find some balance, Jeremy, between that time when they were telling you, don't say anything that might offend anyone.
And now we're in this era where people are offended about everything, but people are also trying to say the most offensive things possible 24-7. They're saying it on platforms that are not broadcast platforms, so that doesn't really matter, right? People can say pretty much whatever they want. And I would say in general, that's a good thing in general. Right. But there are times when you go too far. And I would say for my friend.
Jasmine Crockett, she could have just said, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that. Now let me tell you some other things. And that's the other thing, as you know, and you might be about to go there, Jeremy. The other thing is none of these people feel like they can just say they're sorry about something they said because that would demonstrate some kind of weakness. You could just say... you know what, maybe I went too far with that.
But let's get back to real issues. Yeah, and I think that could apply to so much right now. It's like think of this whole controversy with the Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Imagine if they just said, oh, sorry.
we messed up here and it's like you know we won't do that again you know Crockett could just have said that too like oh I'm sorry I shouldn't have said that I just screwed that up I apologize and then go on but nobody can say that on anything anymore it's like I was lamenting it's just like
Can't anybody just take responsibility for taking a shot? Or is it a sign of weakness now? There's a point where you always had to own it. Any person in strategic communications or whatever they call it now, in crisis communications will tell you.
own the mistake so it doesn't last for a week or two. You know, it's like if you just say, oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that. I apologize. You might go two days and then things over. Otherwise, you just drag it on. So now Pete Hegseth is having to answer questions, you know. a week later about all the stuff that happened, right? You know, it's like, so there's kind of a lesson in this.
I think everybody should, even in your families, just learn to apologize for things you did wrong. It's a good thing. Well, some Democrats are going to say, well, she shouldn't have to apologize. Well, let me help you understand the situation. This allows Abbott to be the guy who gets to take the high road. So he goes on Fox News Channel, of course, and Sean Hannity asks him about what Crockett had said. And listen to Abbott's response.
He doesn't really talk much about what she said. He then gets to talk about a whole bunch of other things that he would like to put out there. Well, Sean is... It's another day and another disaster by the Democrats. The reality is they have no vision, no policy. They have nothing to sell but hate. And Americans are not buying it. It's one reason why.
Texas is going to remain red and why Republicans are going to continue to win elections across the country. The fact, Sean, is that Texas is actually in direct contrast to what she was talking about. Texas has ranked number one for the most new jobs in America over the past month, number one for the most new jobs over the past year, and for several years. Texas ranks number one for the most new economic development projects.
for 13 years in a row. CEOs who run businesses have ranked Texas the best state for doing business for 20 years in a row. And Texas is in the vanguard as it concerns the future of the United States, such as space exploration, such as artificial intelligence, such as semiconductors, as well as power generation. The bottom line is that Republican states like Texas...
are leading the way, and with comments like this by Democrats, we will just leave them in the dust in future elections. You know, part of the problem Democrats are having, and I don't know what their solution for this would be, But when it comes to all of these offensive comments – and you heard him. He didn't even talk about it at all. He talked about everything else that he wanted to talk about under the sun. On these offensive comments, the truth is that the base of the Republican Party –
Doesn't really care. You heard those grassroots Republicans in that recording that I played earlier saying much worse things about Greg Abbott when they didn't agree with him. But the base of the Democratic Party does care about being a fit, right? It's the quote unquote woke left. that is so upset about saying anything that might be insulting about anybody. But on the Republican side, the base of the Republican Party, the Trump supporters, they love all this stuff.
But they're not going to side with Democrats on everything. So Democrats are kind of in this box about this kind of thing. If you as a Democrat are insulting a Republican like Abbott, you are insulting a part of your base. It should be the disability rights folks, right, on the Democratic side. But on the Republican side, they eat it up. If a Republican said something ugly about a Democrat with a disability, the Republican base would eat. They would love it.
So just based on the numbers, you can't do that as a Democrat versus if you would do it as a Republican. Yeah, and just to continue on the baseball theme, it's like Crockett threw a bad pitch. Greg Abbott hit it solidly. It's like that's exactly what you should do in that situation. He has an opportunity there.
What are you going to do? It's like, of course he's going to take that chance. You heard him not say too much about the actual insult and give her more airtime. He just took it all and look at all this great stuff I'm doing, all you Republican listeners on Fox News. Like, remember everything?
that I just told you and kind of put that in your subconscious. You know, he just took advantage of it. And, you know, again, the baseball thing, good hitters take advantage of bad pitches and that's just a bad pitch. You can tell me whatever Jasmine Crockett says, but it was a bad throw.
Yeah. And so did you see that all over social media, I saw this mostly on Twitter, but on some other platforms as well. There were a bunch of different memes of Greg Abbott, you know, being portrayed as different characters. in comic books and movies, et cetera, different characters that are in wheelchairs. One of them is Professor X from The X-Men. And they had, Evan, they had, let's see if you can see this.
They had Greg Abbott as Professor X. Can you kind of see that? In the wheelchair, in the X-Men outfit and on social media. Abbott just sort of embraces the joke and he says, I got to add this to my resume that I'm Professor X. He says, I need that outfit. And to sort of twirl on his haters, he said, they see me rolling. They see me rolling, they hating, patrolling and trying to catch me riding dirty.
Do you think, Jeremy, there's any chance on planet Earth that Greg Abbott knows what the song is about? No. Unless George Strait does a cover of this tomorrow, you're probably not even going to know this exists. Yeah, so that's Chameleon Air. Playing a lot of Houston rap on the show this week. Chameleon Air and Riding Dirty, that's about the Houston Police Department and racially profiling people, right? The lyric is, they see me rolling.
Abbott's playing off of the fact that he's in the wheelchair, right? They see me rolling. What the guy in the song is saying is they see me rolling in his car. They see me rolling, they hating, and they're trying to catch me riding dirty, right? That's the lyric. So I thought I'd throw that the governor's way. Now, we've talked a lot about the Democrats here. The Republicans are going to have a fight.
As we mentioned, it looks like they're going to have one. We were speculating last week about whether Senator John Cornyn is really going to run for reelection. And I think there's obviously still time for him to change his mind. But Cornyn announced his reelection bid this week, and of course he did that.
by bear hugging president trump in president trump's first term he made america great the unemployment rate is at its lowest in 50 years markets are at all-time highs and gdp is growing and texas senator john cornyn had And of course, Cornyn's campaign featured praise from Trump himself. And we're especially grateful to your wonderful senators, John Cornyn and Ted Cruz. This is John Cornyn.
It's an honor to represent Texas in the U.S. Senate. In President Trump's first term, I was Republican whip, delivering the votes for his biggest wins. When I hear a man saying, I fought alongside President Trump. Of course, the music that I would put behind that is some rockin' guitar like that, Evan. Now, immediately, his potential rival in the primary, Attorney General Ken Paxton, tweeted this out.
I'm finding a sweet spot between calling it Twitter or X, Jeremy. I'm saying tweeted on X. How about that? There you go. All right. So here's what Paxton said in response to that commercial. He said, quote, Are you delusional, Senator Cornyn? You've constantly turned your back on Texans and President Trump, including trying to stop his campaign in 2024 by saying his time has passed him by. Texans won't believe your lies or forget how you've consistently...
worked to undermine this president. So Paxton, he still has time to figure out what he's doing. He told those news outlets last week, Jeremy, that he's going to take another couple of months to figure out whether he's going to run. That to me sounds like... He's in. Yeah, I'm not sure about that at this point. But what was funny to me, I actually tracked the number of times John Cornyn used the word Donald Trump in that ad. It was seven times he used Donald Trump in there.
About a minute, yeah. Yeah, in the first minute of that two-minute video, about half of it is pictures of Donald Trump. It is absolutely clear. It's like an exclamation point on what today's Republican Party is about. It's like you better get tucked in behind Trump no matter what.
You better be there. And that's where you can see both Cornyn and Paxton, if he's going to get in the race, are having to make this calculation. Is there enough room there to go after this? And the one point I keep making on this thing. is the one thing that's going in Cornyn's benefit is that if Paxton gets in this race and were to be the nominee, that's a lot more money national Republicans will have to put into the race in 2026.
money that isn't going to new hampshire where they have a pickup opportunity up there they're going to have to defend that seat and you don't want to get into that paxton doesn't have the same reputation as fundraising on his own and they will have to come in and
probably help him depending on who the democrat is obviously paxton has his own baggage to worry about so there's a lot to be played out there and i say that's going to be the one thing ultimately if paxton can raise 20 million dollars on his own like he said before that he needed you know that would put him in there right and the question is can he get to that number yeah you know i just it look i mean yes and no i mean and we talked about a lot last week so i won't belabor the point but
If Paxton is the Republican nominee, let's say he beats Cornyn by some miracle for Paxton. And I would say it would be a miracle. You made a really great point last week, Jeremy. Let me give you a little praise. Here you had Paxton. In his last primary for attorney general, he couldn't get over 50 in the primary, so he had to have a runoff against George P. Bush, right? So he's divisive within the Republican Party. I would say that among the base of the party, his –
popularity and his numbers have been boosted after the impeachment because he's seen as someone who's been persecuted by the establishment in Austin and all that. And you know what I think about that whole narrative, but it has improved his numbers with the Republicans, I would say. I had heard a lot of chatter since our last show that Paxton and Cornyn's folks are both trying to figure out which other candidates might get in the race who would naturally siphon votes from either.
Right. So some candidates might take some votes, you know, more from Paxton. Some would take some more votes from Cornyn. But if Paxton can get in a runoff with Cornyn. then I think Paxton wins. That's the high likelihood. I'll just give you the example for legislative races in Texas. Over the last three decades or so,
And we've reported this out before, Jeremy, the survival rate politically for an incumbent in a runoff in Texas is very low. We're talking six or seven percent, something like that. The other thing is that a lot of the money. that he might need if Paxton was the Republican nominee in Texas, a lot of it he can get right here in Texas, right? I mean, the Texas money guys will step up for whoever that person is. And then you have to look at...
who the Democratic nominee would be. You know, we saw after we said it right here on the show that Colin Allred was kind of making some calls and trying to figure out if he could run again. I saw that Allred and Cornyn were going back and forth on social media. Something about, you know, Allred is...
testing the waters for a Senate race. And Cornyn had tweeted at him. What did he say? He said something like, come and take it, Colin. And of course, then Allred shoots back at him and says something like, well, good luck in your primary, John. So they're already starting that kind of fun back and forth.
But I just – I kind of chuckle when I think that Democrats tend to think – I'm not chuckling at you on this one, Jeremy. I'm laughing at them. If they think that just because Paxton would be the nominee – that there's some shoe in to win a U S Senate seat in Texas. That's a law.
We're a long way from that. To your point, both sides would have to really put a lot of resources into it. Yeah, you just don't want to be – again, just thinking from a very strategic way on Capitol Hill, they don't want to be spending any time or anything.
energy worrying about the texas senate seat when they have a real chance to pick up that seat in new hampshire they want to be picking up these other seats they don't want to be messing with like you know just you know they'd be fine with cornyn living on whether that he's trump or not probably in a lot of ways, just don't cost us any money.
You know, if Paxton's begun, just don't cost us any money because we don't have time to be sending money to a TV ad in Houston when all hell is breaking loose up in New Hampshire or Michigan or wherever else. One other thing to mention here before we head out for the week and before Jeremy goes to the Astros game. The Texas House Doge Committee saw some just electrifying testimony this week.
Really wild, Jeremy. And I got a lot of text messages as this was happening. If I had to add up all of the experience. in and around the Texas Capitol that the people who were reacting, if I had to add up all of the years that these folks have been involved with Texas Capitol stuff, it would probably top 200 years.
For all the people who were saying that they have never seen anything like this before. All right. That's why I'm mentioning this here to you. This testimony in front of the Doge Committee, the Government Efficiency Committee, you know, they're looking for waste, fraud and abuse. the way that elon musk is supposed to be doing in washington with of course some um
I'll be charitable and say some mixed results for for Musk. But I'll read from quorum report dot com in explosive testimony during a committee on delivery of government efficiency hearing on Medicaid procurement and contracting. The chairman of the committee.
Gio Capriglione, who is a Republican from North Texas, revealed that one of the companies that has handled billions of dollars worth of Medicaid contracts in the state for years, Jeremy, a company called Superior Health, that they... have engaged in spying on some of their patients and legislators and even some journalists.
Apparently. Now, there was some emails that the chairman was able to get his hands on in which it was confirmed. And usually, Jeremy, I would say that it was allegations that they were doing this. But the reason I'm not saying that is because the CEO of the company admitted to it when Chairman Capriglione asked him about this. Take a listen. I've given this committee a copy of an email that you sent to your private investigator.
But I don't think what any of us expected was for a health insurance company that is funded mostly by Texas taxpayer dollars, that they would hire a private investigator to follow a mom. whose child was being denied medical care, causing that child further damage, that this private investigator at the behest of you, Mr. Sanders,
went and started to do the background checks to find out what the former employment of a woman who was paralyzed from the neck down. So Mr. Sanders, have you ever tasked a private investigator firm to dig into the background and financial or personal records of any state government official or their wife? Yes we have done that but nothing
beyond what is publicly available. Jeremy, in any other setting like that, where the chairman had asked that, wouldn't you think that the person who is testifying would say some version of... I don't remember that. I don't recall that. I'm going to have to get back with you. Anything. Instead, he just says yes. So Republican Tony Tenderholt from Arlington.
was completely appalled by this. And he said that the documents that were presented to the committee were really unbelievable. I couldn't believe it. I had to lean over and ask him. I'm like, is this real? I'm not joking. I've been doing this 10 years. This is year number 11 for me. And when I looked at the folder, I thought it was a joke. It's emails with your name on it. And you investigated people that are on this dais for doing their job for Texans. Now this is something...
that, as I mentioned, people with long histories at the Capitol had never seen anything like it, Jeremy. But I will say this, you know, just as a good faith comment to the legislators. If it turned out that the insurance company had been spying on its patients and only its patients, would the lawmakers care as much about it as they do now, given the fact that...
It turns out they were also spying on the legislators, right? This is what has them really pissed. Now, I'd be pissed enough if you had an insurance company that was, instead of paying out the claim. For someone who really does need the help, instead of doing that, they're spending money on a PI to look into the mother of a kid with a disability. That's really disgusting. Now, it's something that I have noted over the years.
And I should probably talk more about this as we move forward. You know, it has been the tort reformers who have run things in Texas for many, many years, right? Those who would side with the insurance companies, the big business folks and all of that. But you now have. for the first time this has never happened before jeremy a trial lawyer is the speaker of the house and you have some very uh very conservative trial lawyers who are in the mix in the legislature
What are some of their names? Brian Hughes is a trial lawyer from East Texas. Briscoe Kane is a trial lawyer from Houston. Cain was especially worked up about this this week. He said it was completely outrageous. He told me it's completely outrageous that a company would be doing this. And there is the potential. We'll see that there. And I shouldn't say too much about this just yet.
because I'm going to learn as these emails make their way either to me or other journalists and come before this committee if they're going to talk more about it. I'll just say that there's probably a lot more to this that we're going to hear about, Jeremy. But in the meantime, the guy who said yes, they did.
Spy on legislators. That guy was fired by the CEO. He was fired by the company the next day. Oh, wow. After that testimony. So we'll put a pin in that for now, and we'll track where this goes. That was pretty unbelievable. Let's get to up and down of the week. Each and every weekday in his newsletter, which, by the way, you can find the link for.
It's Jeremy's pinned post to Jeremy S. Wallace on eggs. Each weekday, he does Up and Down of the Day. And on the show, we do Up and Down of the Week. What do you have this week for Up, Jeremy? Well, it should be Cam Smith, the new right fielder for the Astros, getting his first hit. But I'm going to hold back. I'll worry about that later on this evening. But I think the real up...
you know, for me, was Greg Abbott. And it had nothing to do with the Jasmine Crockett stuff. It's at that event you and I were at earlier in the week. We were over at the governor's office, and he had the House speaker with him yet again. you know, vowing to have the votes to do a school voucher thing. Now, look, that's no...
for sure going to happen, right? There's still many ways for this thing to fall apart. But I think he's the up because he has the House Speaker still with him halfway through the legislature saying he's going to have the votes. And that's something he hasn't had before. So I think that puts him in the up and gets him in a better position to actually get a school voucher proposal of some sort done by the end of the session.
Like you said, a lot of baseball left to play on that, and we'll track it as we go through this session, which, as you said, is mercifully about halfway over. In fact, as we record the show this afternoon... I will just make note of the fact that there are only 65 days, 22 hours, 46 minutes and seven seconds left before they have to adjourn for the end of the session. Yeah, and you know, every day I check the quorum report just to know how many days left I have.
You know, it's like, so there you go. Thank you. QuorumReport.com. We got the countdown there. Who's the down of the week? The down of the week. Look, okay, this is a little tough. Again, this is a stock market report. I'm not telling you they're down as people. It doesn't mean that it's a good or bad person. Exactly. It's who's winning and who's not. That's what it is. The down of the week is the LGBTQ community who was out at the Texas Capitol earlier this week. They had their big rally.
push for equity. And there they are, you know, they're out front in the Texas Capitol and five Democrats out of the 73 Democrats who were elected in that building came out to see them. Five. It shows. While they're still there trying to make their voices heard, there aren't many legislators who are even willing to open the door to step out and show their face out there.
It's like it tells you where the politics of it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning of the show. The Democratic Party doesn't know where it is right now, and they're not even sure they can go out front to people who are calling for rights for transgender people. You know, they're not sure they can do that right now. That would have been a slam dunk before, right? Yeah, exactly. You had five. That's it. Of 73.
All right. Check out Jeremy's newsletter. It's where you find the up and down of the day. You should be a subscriber at quorumreport.com and houstonchronicle.com. Go Strohs. We'll see you next time. I love you.