Bill Kristol and Colin Allred: What's So Hard about This, Pres. Bush?

Hello and welcome to the Bullard Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller.
It is going to

be a big week. We've got the debate tomorrow night.
We'll have a full debate preview for

you on tomorrow's show. I can only do one day a debate preview.
The whole thing just

gets me nervous. I'm on MSNBC all weekend.
They're like, Tim, what's she say? I don't know what the hell I know. Hopefully, she's strong and stands up to him.
The most insightful pre-debate insight I've heard is from my colleague Sarah Longwell during our live shows over the weekend where she pointed out that Trump is kind of the stand-in for Putin for people with her. And people are watching to see if she has it, has the leadership ability to do it, has the toughness to do it.
I think that's right. I think that that is her main job.
In addition to introducing herself, we'll have a full preview for you tomorrow. Today, we have a doubleheader.
In the last segment, I interviewed Colin Allred in Texas, who's running against Ted Cruz. I thought it was a really thoughtful interview.
He was relaxed. So we did some Ted Cruz talk.
We did some football talk, did some joking, but also got into a lot of policy issues as well. Coming up here in a minute, we're going to have Bill Kristol and a bridge version of Bill Kristol Monday.
But before we get to both, I have a rant. I need to get off my chest.
And I was looking at the week schedule here, and I didn't see where we were going to be able to fit it in. And so we're just going to do it right now.
Just you and me, Monday morning, talking about school shootings, because I asked Congressman Allred about this in the last segment. And it was a J.D.
Vance quote about the school shooting in Georgia. And when you're interviewing a congressman running for senator, it doesn't really call for me to interrupt him and say, that was a good answer, but I've actually a three-minute rant that I want to throw in right on top of this.
And so I'm saving it just for you all right now. But the question was about what JD said.
He said, I don't like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you've realized that our schools are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools. And there was this kind of meta media conversation around this phrase, fact of life, and whether that was offensive or not, that JD said that he doesn't like that this is a fact of life.
And I don't really have strong feelings about that debate and whether the other people are taking him out of context or not, because to me, it's the next sentence, it's the bad one. But if you are a psycho, and you want to make headlines, you've realized that our schools are soft targets, and we've got to bolster security at our schools.
I don't really know if JD believes this, or if this is just like insulting to everybody, this notion that somebody that is running for the vice presidency of the United States thinks that the right thing to do in the face of this epidemic of school shootings that only happens in this country like the thing is that we need to get more security at our schools like i guess so i'm for additional school security but like the notion that this is the solution to this or that this is even an important part of the solution is fucking insulting and ridiculous. Because unless we're turning the schools into maximum security prisons, unless we're creating a public school TSA system, which would cost like half the defense budget because there are orders of magnitude more schools in this country than there are airports.

So unless that's the plan where we're doing one in one out, you know, you got to buzz people in like the gate closes.

Well, there's some schools that have this.

Okay.

I mean, like you're doing that at every school in the country.

Then, as we all know, other things will become soft targets, right? Like there'll be soccer games or basketball games or school picnics or school functions. But that I guess is JD Vance's solution that we're going to have maximum security prisons where people come one in one out.
I don't exactly know how we're going to pay for that. I don't think that that's a serious proposal that he really thinks that we should do because it's not something that's going to be put into place, you know, are all kinds of practical reasons that we all know i think about my high school in colorado it has probably 20 entrances right like what are you going to build the great wall of china around it as i picture it i one time tweeted out a picture of my high school from above to somebody that was talking about school security and said what is your what's your plan on securing a campus such as this when we were in dallas i went to meet one of my college besties and we did school pickup together before the show and we went there and it was right after the school shooting and they go to a fancy school in suburban dallas and they have a security guard and you know you got to check in to get into the school all the basic stuff but at dismissal what happens that the kids leave like the kids all leave and some of them walk home like my and my friend did with his kid some of them have car pickup some of them some of them have carpool some multiples of them are running out together i was just sitting there watching this you know like you don't want to have these horrible nightmares in your mind when you're doing your school pickup with your buddy.
But I was just watching all this. I'm like, what is the plan here for securing this situation? Like if there's a kid that goes to this school that wants to, what did he say, make headlines and find a soft target, like they're going to be able to figure out that they can just do it at dismissal or at pickup or at, again, a sporting event.
The whole thing is fucking insulting.

It's insulting to our intelligence to say that this is the solution and it's callous and it's callous and the reality is i almost would prefer not almost i would prefer if jd vance would just say i don't give a fuck about the school shootings. don't care i don't think that we can do anything about it i care more about ensuring that 20 year olds have unfettered access to assault rifles and bullets than i care about this i care more about like my don't tread on me flag and the fact that we're not going to be a country where we have gun buybacks or where we have requirements about how you store your weapon.

I care more about fetishization of this weapon than I do about these deaths.

At least that's honest.

At least that's honest.

Don't fucking spit on me and tell me that you care about these kids and that your solution is we need fencing around every school it's ridiculous it's not true it's not the answer we all know what the answer is you don't want to do it jd vance you're not interested in doing it and so you're happy to just do russian roulette with kids lives at schools like that's where you've landed on this because you care more about the guns I mean we look at the situation in Georgia and the dad thank God is going to be held accountable for this it seems like at least he's gonna have to go to trial and it's like the FBI came to this house and warned him that his kid was making threats and he still gave his kid a gun as a present like the security at the school is problem. The parent is the problem and the laws of the problem.
And what the limitations on what that FBI agent could do is the problem because that kid, if his school was the most secure school that we have in the entire country, it wouldn't have fucking mattered. Could have gone to a different school.
Could have gone to the mall. Could have gone to the movie could have gone to the movie theater could have gone to wherever i'm sick of it and i will not allow these things to go by where people that want totally unfettered rights to weaponry to like gaslight us into thinking that there's some other solution than the one that is obvious that is my rant about jd vance i had another rant which maybe we'll do later this week, about Donald Trump.
I don't know if you see this, seeking out school hallucinations. Donald Trump was talking, I think, for the second or third time now about how little Johnny can go to school, get operated on, get a sex change operation, and then come out the other side as a woman.
That's something that's happening in our schools, crazy in our country. like these guys live in a totally fabricated hallucination.
And rather than actually deal with the real problems that we have in this country, that's where they're going to live. We're not going to try to live there here on this podcast.
So with that, I'm not going to be talking about that with our next guest, your Monday favorite. He is the editor at large here at the Bulwark.
It's Bill Crystal. Hey,, Bill.
It was good to hang in Texas this weekend. It was excellent.
You know, I really enjoyed both Dallas and Austin. And I enjoyed our panel.
And I really enjoyed the people there. You know, the Bulwark crowd was a good crowd.
We do have a good crowd. Bulwark America is healthy.
The rest of America, not so sure. I agree.
Particularly in the South, you know, red state Bulwark America is good. We have the liberals that were just desperate to have a cold glass of water with us.
And, you know, the ex-bushies who are equally appalled by us. So it was nice to see everybody.
Thanks for coming out. Speaking of ex-bushies who are appalled by what's happening in the world, we talked about Liz Cheney last week.
But since our last podcast, she with Mark Leibovich in Austin with us said that her father, Dick Cheney, would also be supporting Kamala Harris. He put out a statement about how Trump is the greatest threat in the history of the Republic.
A couple of days after that, or maybe a day after that, W said he wasn't going to say anything. What are your thoughts on Dick Cheney? Does it matter? Does it have any import? Does it just make you feel nice on the inside yeah the latter certainly i'm not sure i think cumulatively these matter it would be good to get a few more people obviously the john kelly's and george w bushers of the world chris christie's who ran for president this year and said he couldn't support trump but um the good the good news about dick cheney is i got a fair number of people in austin and dallas saying you know if you had told me 20 years ago I'd be here agreeing with Bill Kristol or we'd be together on the same side, I just couldn't have believed.
And I feel like Dick Cheney gives me a lot of cover on that because if they couldn't believe they would be with me, they really, really, really can't believe they're with Dick Cheney. I'm just like a moderate, mild kind of adjustment for them compared to Dick Cheney you know that's true i can i do want the dick cheney and aoc joint ad for kamala harris the thing about the cheney statement that to me is important is he's in two sentences summing up what liz is saying right like this is not about policy right that the race is not about policy that this is about the threat of donald trump the greatest threat that he sees and that is something that obviously all of us here at the bulwark agree with wholeheartedly and like that is the flabbergasting and frustrating part about all this to me it's just like this shouldn't be a hard call like when you read dick cheney's statement it's like this isn't a hard call i like this other guy tried to overturn the democracy he's this grave threat let's just beat him this one time america can survive and then we'll move on to fighting about all the things that all the democrats hate about dick cheney in 2028 right like that seems like a totally rational thing and the fact that it's so few of them and it's two in one family that are actually saying this is i think kind of part of what's frustrating about this whole thing.
Yeah, I was struck, I think you probably were too, how many people correctly pivoted quickly in our conversations there in Austin from Dick Cheney has done this too. Well, what about George W.
Bush or what about all the others? And it's a very fair question. And it's unclear what the answer is as to why they are avoiding saying what they truly believe.
And it would be helpful for more of them to say, I think. Yeah.
And they put out, there was like a six bylined, I forget if it was a Washington Post story or one of them, about how W's not saying anything. And I was like, why did it take six reporters to shake this tree loose? But this is the thing that's just frustrating with the W situation.
I i get it i get it w did not like that his predecessors were commenting on what he was doing when he was in there he said that when he left the oval office he was going to let those that followed him do the job and that it wasn't beneficial for him to be weighing in and nitpicking and the news cycles.

And I totally agree with that in principle.

But again, we're in this situation where it's not a fucking close call.

It's not a close call. And people are not asking for W to come out and, you know, kind of weigh in on Donald Trump's tariff policy or, you know, start to, you know, go on the Nicole Wallace panel with me.

Like, that's not the request.

Like, the request is just to say that. Like, it's not a close call.
I disagree with Kamala and things, but the other guy tried a coup. We need to move on from this.
The four perilous horsemen of the apocalypse I always talk about have Donald Trump at the head of all four, and it's time to just vote for Kamala and move on. Why is that hard? That's the thing that's frustrating.
guess it's hard because she's a democrat incidentally i think they all including w supported subsequent candidates from their own parties it's not as if former presidents don't support the next nominee of their party or the nominee after that bush mccain didn't really get along but remember mccain met with him in the white house in 2008 i assume i don't have a specific memory of this that bush supported the robbie ryan ticket so fine he's normally supports republicans this time you should support a democrat just support the harris waltz ticket what's so hard yeah or senators he does fundraisers for senators right it's like the mcmaster thing it's like oh i'm not political well yeah you are actually you're not that political right you don't comment that much but you know you have fundraisers for Republican senators and people you know so again just put out one statement come on W I'm you know I don't even know if it really mad does it even matter I guess would it even help there's some libs that sometimes I see on Twitter like respond to me they're like are we sure it wouldn't hurt for W to come after her? And I don't, you know, I think it would help. But for me, it's more just like, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
This is not a close fucking call. Just say it.
It's almost more about personal satisfaction, which is maybe probably not the most important thing facing us. It's true.
You're nodding. You're nodding.
Would it help? It would help. I think it would help a little.
I think cumulatively, no one of these may be but i think if you're on the fence a little bit you haven't been paying attention or either you're on the fence and you have your sophisticated stupid wall street journal editorial page reasons for oh i can't be for harris this might say you know what i should be cast the vote or if you're really someone who's not paying attention but you may vaguely admire bush and so forth from 15 years whatever it was, 20 years ago, you might sort of say, okay, you know what, I think I'll vote for Harris. So yeah, I think it could push a few people over.
Part of the reason you sense the agita in my voice is there's a New York Times poll over the weekend titled, Trump leads Kamala Harris 48-47. That's the national poll.
Some numbers have jumped out for me. Trump was 97-2 among his 2020 voters.
He was leading among people that did not vote in 2020, 49-40. 47% saw Harris is too progressive.
Only 32% saw Trump is too conservative. People see Trump as a change candidate.
Numbers among young voters are bad, which you could look both ways. Maybe it's a bad poll sample, or maybe that's trouble.
So anyway, what's your level of agita with the New York Times poll over the weekend? Well, I mean, it sort of fits into a general level of agita, which is, you know, even the better polls have Harris up one or two, basically. I mean, one or two are a little bigger than that.
And the state polls are all plus one or even basically at every state yeah cbs let me just throw in there let me just throw in there cbs right now has kamala plus one in michigan plus two in wisconsin tied in pennsylvania um over the weekend this is the same poll or some other way so minus one in georgia and arizona or something like that so yeah so it's a dead even race basically i mean this is all so much within the margin of error. It's foolish to almost, you know, to overanalyze, as I think we've discussed before.
But it is upsetting that after everything, Trump has as much support, maybe slightly more support, than he had in 2020 or 2016. We saw him as president for four years.
We saw January 6th. We've seen what he has said about what he will do in a second term, and he's pretty clear about that.
We've seen the real radicalization of his movement in a way, doing things now and legitimizing and normalizing things now that even in 2020, even in 2020, border two, I would say, didn't happen to Tucker Carlson with the Nazi apologist and J.D. Vance, fine.
Everyone, they're all fine with Tucker Carlson. or there's a little bit of a pushback not too much honestly though things have gotten worse and trump's numbers have gotten slightly better that strikes me as slightly problematic in terms of the country but both the voters and the conservative elites it's not as if conservative elites despite cheney and all and a couple others are deserting trump either the wall street journal editorial page is where it was i think some people some of them were a little more pro-trump don't you think than they were maybe four years ago i don't know i feel like yeah that also strikes me as uh that strikes me as problematic i do wonder like so on the one hand it's natural among all of us that enter democracy movement to like get nervous and get you know a little underwear in a bunch when you see bad polls like this but one thing that we had been talking about over the last couple weeks is that there's a little bit of overconfidence like this is a close race right and i i do believe that it hurt hillary that people thought she was inevitable in the end i think it hurt turnout and i think it hurt among some swing voters that didn't like her, that probably would have picked her, push come to shove.
It hurt among some Bernie voters, I think. I think it hurt among a couple different groups.
So an acceptance that this is a close race, is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't know.
But then there's the Simon Rosenberg theory of the case where these things are self-fulfilling, and you want to feel like you're winning because winners go for winners. I don't know.
Where do you fall on that? No, I'm on the first one of that. You want people to be alarmed.
And I think the Simon Rosenberg theory, which is also the Karl Rove theory, he was always insistent that Bush was winning. It was great in 2000.
And he really had, I talked to him once about it. I said, it's a little crazy, honestly, what you're saying.
And, oh no, you got to convey the impression of victory. And that was even, that's went to california a week out because he was so confident that he could afford to go fight people forget this right he spent two days flying to california and back to fight for california and i remember saying i they hated me for saying this honestly i said this i think it was quoted in the washington post on that weekend saying i think they've furthered away their lead they could lose oh no you're crazy arry feischer called this has been noted in Austin this very bad for you to have said this you know and uh happened to be right in this case so no I'm not on the side I think voters actually don't like the kind of front running you know celebratory stuff they kind of almost as a little bit of rallying to the underdog at times and it's happened in race after race right you've been in some the Gore got votes at the end when he was behind and being counted out in 2000 i think this has happened in other cases so and i think it's you're right about hillary so i'm i'm for being alarmed good same so that's your silver lining when you see a bad poll but you know that it will keep people focused quick aside on carl ruff al gore 53 and a half george bush 41 in california in 2000 so they lost that but end up losing that by 12 points and uh carl uh when was with us in austin this weekend and would not reveal his private ballot so i've asked him to come on to the board podcast to discuss what we'll be we'll be just counting our chickens because that's sure to happen any day now the uh ads imbalance i wanted to talk to you about not imbalance maybe it's just interesting so i had a little bit of time for football over the weekend been churning out content and i took like 18 hours with my child who went to the audubon park came home turned on the football game had a little delivery and you know the the youtube tv nfl these days you got the four box and so you get to see the commercials though also in the days, you got the four box.

And so you get to see the commercials, though, also in the four box in all the different markets.

The Kamala commercials are Kamala talking about economic opportunity.

And the Trump commercials are about Kamala and how she's terrible. And immigration, and there's criminals that have been let out and economic stuff.

In a way, the media discussion about the race is like a lot about Trump and maybe a little balanced. It's a little bit about both.
But like the paid portion of this race is all about Kamala. Like Kamala introducing herself, Trump trying to hit Kamala.
So anyway, I'm just curious what you think about that. Yeah, it's interesting.
I mean, one way to put it is analytically, I think for us and really for the country i mean in truth the race is about trump i mean the issue is is donald trump going to have a second term as president or not and kamala is a perfectly acceptable alternative and so would be shapiro and polis and you know whitmer and many many other people and i don't mean to minimize her distinctive you know virtues and maybe also limitations but analytically the headline is trump the headline in history books will be trump wins or trump loses probably that doesn't mean that politically the most important thing couldn't be people's judgment of harris of kamala harris because everyone knows all about trump so there's a funny disconnect i think where we beingocracy types, want to talk about Trump, and we should, and it's important to, but as an actual political tactics or strategy matter, it's about Harris clearing a bar of likability and favorability and presidential, you know, character and toughness and so forth. And so it makes sense that they're both focused on Kamala.
The positive ads, I think, are pretty good. A little bland, a little generic, I would say, maybe.
I prefer a little more personal. I think the personal bio stuff is stronger than they think, but they have a lot of data that I don't.
And then I'm filling in the blanks on the policies. I don't know.
Does that really matter that much? I don't know. One thing that made me nervous over the weekend, is we got to talk to a friend in Pennsylvania who's does of course he watches football and it's like non-stop ads.
Someone told me this, they're extending the local news in some parts of Pennsylvania, I think other states, from like, I don't know, an hour to an hour and a half or something. In October there's such demand to buy ads on news adjacencies, right? It's the best place to buy a political ad, presumably,

some of the kind of people who watch local news,

that they have to fill up the news.

You know, like high school sports, you know, big development.

So just so they can sell our ads.

They're going to make a lot of money up. Cat-sucking tree in Harrisburg.

He said that his judgment was that there was damage being done in western pennsylvania on immigration with the negative ads and that he personally has run into people he's voted for harris but he moves into broad circles and uh blood into people who are either seeing actual news stories about this some story about haitians in ohio i've followed this that they're blowing away wildly out of proportion, maybe not even out of proportion, just inventing, maybe, I don't know. And then there are other stories, you know, all the immigration scare stories are being promoted on social media, and then the ads are promoting them as well.
So his concern is that the negative ads are maybe a little more powerful than the positive ads. So I don't quarrel with, as a tactical matter, the Harris campaign thinking their key task is to increase her favorable numbers.

Yeah, I agree.

I don't want to be sexist here, but I don't get, in the one positive ad you're seeing everywhere, she's in like a living room with flowers.

It's a feminine set.

I don't know.

I thought that the convention was very much like a prosecutorial set, which I liked.

And I don't know.

So anyway, it's just a thing. And the negatives, i don't think negative ads on trump really work at this point like people know trump but just what i don't like is is just that the air that people are breathing has negative kamala positive kamala and not a lot about him and i almost just want them to get negative trump stuff just to kind of bring a balance to it, less that it's going to be, you know, moving people.
But anyway, on the immigration front, Trump was in Mosney, Wisconsin over the weekend. And boy, I don't know, here he is talking about immigration.
And for some reason, he's talking about Colorado and Jared Polis. But let's take a listen.
They're radicals headed up by a radical governor in

Colorado that has no clue how to solve this influx of crime into his state. And by the way, Colorado is one state.
It's much worse in other states, but in Colorado, they've taken over. I mean, in Colorado, they're so brazen.
They're taking over sections of the state and, you know, getting them out will be a bloody story. Should have never been allowed to come into our country.
Nobody checked them. So on the one hand, we just have this hallucination that there are parts of Denver that have been taken over by migrant gangs, which I'm pretty sure is not happening.
I have a decent amount of on-the-ground sources in colorado there between friends and family but the line there that really struck me is um getting them out is going to be bloody and i do think that that is an underappreciated element when thinking about what trump has planned i mean at some point you do have to believe what he says and one of the things he said over and over and over is mass deportation they had signs printed up didn't they at the republican convention mass deportation and it's 10 or 15 million people he uses the number and steven miller seems to have plans for you know camps to put them in pending their you know being flown out of the country i suppose and now trump says it's going to be bloody and he says it was sort of relish not with regret i've got to say so the whole thing is pretty astonishing you know i mean it's it's one thing to think we should i don't know have tougher asylum policies at the border or just cut back on the numbers of immigrants i don't agree with that but people want to argue that but this is really another level and he just but it's it is this is where i think your previous point is important maybe people need to make a bit of a point of this on paid media.

The extremism of Trump.

There was that poll last week that I think we talked about maybe that CNN

that people do think Trump is more extreme than Harris,

and they don't like the extremism.

And bringing home the extremism of Trump, I'm a little worried that's kind of sliding away

and people aren't focused enough on that.

One more thing on this point.

You put out one of these crazy bleats the other day and i like the way that axios framed it up alex thompson wrote president trump is now proposing two of the largest ever federal arrests of people living in america including u.s citizens if he's re-elected adversaries and immigrants he gets into the immigrants part and then goes into the trump untrue social when i win the people that cheated will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law which will include long-term prison sentences legal exposure extends to lawyers political operatives donors illegal voters and corrupt election officials so i guess we're on the list there i mean i get how some of this is like people push it away because it's bluster a little they're like oh whatever he's not going to do this this is this is bluster but like from the the voters out there that have a libertarian streak these former republican voters i do think that is an important frame like whatever actually happens his plan is two of the largest mass arrests in the country there's bloody deportation we just talked about and vengeance against political fuzz. Lock her up was a bad thing in 2016.
It's a lock her up, rather, right? It's against the rule of law to be, you know, to say you're going to lock someone up without trials and due process and so forth. But to be fair, the crowd was kind of chanting it.
I don't know if Trump started it or the crowd started it. Trump sort of played along.
It was always understood to be a little bit, I don't know, you know, rhetorical, let's just say. Here he's going out of his way to threaten, you know, not one person who's, you know, famous and it's the same part of the campaign, but a whole bunch of people ranging from journalists to donors, quite specific, really.
He's kind of thought about this a lot, right? And I got to get the donors, I got to get the operatives, I got to get get the you know journalists they i've got different you know different parts of the government going after each of them and different camps maybe for us as opposed to some of the others do we get the same with the donors they probably get a nicer place you know i don't know which is or maybe the inverse anyway so no it's bad we're laughing about it but it's it's terrible it's unbelievable really when is it i mean has anyone ever said anything like this if you for president of the united states who is it all respectable no of course not of course not and it would not pass an acceptable bar and i do think you make an important point because sometimes particularly like the cable news in this podcast world you get in these situations where trump's in an interview and some clever reporter is like are you interested in arresting your political foes and he does the kind of like well we're gonna have to look into it and like you know and there's that thing right that happens right and then people are like trump leaves door open to arresting foes which is still bad right like that's still an easy question you say no but there it is a category difference from literally putting out a plan that's like here are all the people that I'm going to arrest and punish long-term prison sentences it's fucking horrible one sentence on the debate you have any deep thoughts or expectations for the debate tomorrow it's nerve-wracking same deep thought what are we going to do for this what are we going to do for the next 24 36 hours i mean do you have a plan for kind of handling the tuesday during this but you know election day is always the worst day right when you work on campaigns debate day is also a bad day and this is kind of important you know but maybe the only debate in a dead even race where people don't know one of the candidates well yikes pepto-bismol and uh close your ears mom cigarettes for me i think uh i don't want just hearing you mention that this is why we didn't spend the whole day. I can't do two podcasts doing debate preview.
In my stomach, I've got stomach pains just thinking about it. We'll do it tomorrow.
We'll do a debate preview tomorrow. We'll have some good people for you.
So everybody, stick with us. Up next, candidate for Senate in Texas, somebody that Bill is very bullish on.
Bill is the one bringing us anxiety on the presidential race, but optimism on Blue Texas.

It's Colin Allred running against Ted Cruz.

Stick around. Hello and welcome to Bullard Podcast.
I'm your host, Tim Miller. Good to be with you.
My guest today is Congressman

Colin Allred from Texas. Hey, Congressman.
Hey, man. How's it going? We are here at the

Paramount Theater. We just learned Harry Houdini played here in 1916.
Houdini Miller. It's

been quite a trajectory. It's come quite down, yeah.
The wrong trajectory? Right. It's 9 a.m.
on a weekend in Austin, so we're moving a little slow here. Not me.
I behaved last night. So we'll start with an easy one for you.
Sure. You're running against Ted Cruz.
Ted Cruz, yay or nay? I mean, can we say hell no? Hell no? Listen, I mean, can we say hell no? Hell no. Now listen, I mean, we've had 12 years of Ted Cruz.
Oh, it feels longer. Yeah.
We've kind of seen this story play out. And, you know, listen, he's been an extremist, yes.
He's been all about himself, yes. He's been dangerous to our democracy, yes.
But the fundamental thing is he doesn't care about all 30 million Texans. That's how you can go to Cancun when the lights go out for all of us.
Because what else would you do, right? For any elected official, something like that happens. You know, you want to spring into action.
Ted wanted to see if there was a good deal at the Ritz-Carlton. And it's funny and it's not funny because Texans were dying.
And in Dallas, I was working with FEMA to try and bring down federal resources. We were working with our county to find buildings that had power on.
We called them warming centers. I mean, can you imagine needing a warming center in Texas, right? And there was so much to do.

I was volunteering at a local food bank because when the power goes out, the food goes out.

And for you to be able to just do that, but then come back and say, what was I

going to do? I couldn't hang electrical wires. I was like, well, listen, Senator, there's a lot

that you could do, but the first thing that would be required is to care.

And I'm a fourth generation Texan. I'm a fourth generation Texan.
My family's from Brownsville. My grandfather was a customs officer there.
I grew up in Dallas, raised by a single mom. I played football at Baylor.
Every time I came here to Austin, I let them win. That was my gift to UT.
Although my mom went to UT so I can say hook them horns and oh come on too and so I know who we are and we're not who Ted Cruz says we are otherwise my story wouldn't have been possible and so that's why we're going to beat him on November 5th this is going to sound like a joke question kind of but it's a serious one uh which is you can't beat somebody without understanding like what their appeal is and i what is ted cruz's appeal like what i had like what do people like about him and how can you win over at least some percentage of those people since he's won twice yeah i mean this is a this is a tough question to ask me. It is tough.
Right. I'm genuinely asking because it's a zero for me on every category.
Charisma, niceness, policy, I can't, I got nothing. But some people like it.
Yeah, well, listen, you know, I went to Baylor, you know, I grew up around a lot of folks who voted for George W. Bush, real conservatives who I respected.

And I think there was maybe a time when there was a thought that maybe he was a real conservative,

that you could actually, that would actually try and conserve, right?

Sure.

In the classic sense, and protect, and also grow the economy,

and do the conservative kind of actions that I think is, by and large, what we have seen in Texas for some time. He's not been that.
He's been a radical. He's been a radical who doesn't believe in the Constitution.
That's how you can be the architect in the Senate side of January 6th. He's a radical who, when we have common sense legislation that conservatives are saying, this is a good idea.
Like when we had the Chips and Science Act come up and John Cornyn is helping to push it through in the Senate, and I'm helping to push it through in the House, he votes against it. When we were talking about protecting and preserving our role in the world, I'm on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
We had funding coming up for Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and humanitarian aid for what was happening in Gaza and around the world. I voted for it.
John Cornyn voted for it. A small handful of radicals in the Senate voted against it, some on the far left and some on the extreme far right.
He was one of those. So you don't believe in standing up for Taiwan or Ukraine.
You don't believe in investing in our economy. You're not a traditional conservative.

So I think the idea is that

he might have once been that

I think has been disproven.

So whatever that appeal was, I think we know that's not true.

I hope so.

I don't know. It's certainly not

his personality that's doing it.

Speaking of real conservatives,

Liz Cheney

yesterday was over here. Did you go see that? She made a little bit of news.
She said she was going to be supporting you in the Senate race. What's kind of your reaction to that? Well, Liz is a patriot.
She really is. She's a friend of mine, but more importantly, I respect her.
And I respect her because what she has done is proof positive that there are folks who want to put their country over their party, over their personal ambitions. You know, I was on the House floor with her on January 6th.
I have my story of what happened that day. You know, I texted my wife at one point, you know, whatever happens, I love you.
She was seven months pregnant with our son Cameron and at home with our son Jordan, who wasn't yet two. You're the only former NFL linebacker in the room.
And there's a mob at the door. You're the first line of defense, baby.
Everybody's like, what you gonna do, Colin? So I took off my suit jacket, which is actually a violation of our house rules. And I thought I was gonna have to hold the door the president walks through to deliver the State of the Union.
And my colleagues were saying, I'm going to get behind you, Colin. I was like, okay, I guess I could, you know.
My job was to put people on the ground, but one at a time. Yeah, right.
But on the 6th, I saw the determination in her eyes, and she has been so consistent ever since. And I have tremendous respect for it, because to me she is a true conservative, and that means that she believes in the Constitution, she believes in the rule of law, she believes in accountability, and she knows that Ted Cruz is a threat to all of that.
And so that's why I'm honored to have her support, and I want everyone out there in Texas who feels like they are conservative, that they believe in those things, that they're a moderate, that they're somebody who feels like they don't see themselves reflected in this version of the Republican Party. They're welcome here.
They're welcome in our coalition. I want to have their support in this campaign, but also want to represent them in the Senate.
Yesterday on stage, one of your colleagues offered a different theory for why Liz was supporting you and

Kamala Harris. Dan Crenshaw

said that

Liz and Adam Kinzinger are putting

their feelings

above basic conservative policy.

He said that their feelings were hurt.

That Donald Trump has been mean to

them, and that was why...

That's Dan Crenshaw's

theory. What do you think about that?

I think folks should remember

Thank you. them, and that was why.
That's Dan Crenshaw's theory. What do you think about that? I think folks should remember that when I got to Congress, Liz was the chairwoman of the House Republican Caucus.
And even at that time, we knew Kevin McCarthy was really weak. It was thought that she was going to be speaker.
Yeah, right. And for her, the path all the way to January 6th was she had voted for Donald Trump in both elections.
She had not broken with him significantly. And on January 6th, she could have done what Kevin McCarthy did.
He gave one speech one day and said that the president bears responsibility for this and should be held accountable. And then a week later, he's taking a picture.
I'm like bringing some Skittles down there. Yeah.
She could have done that. And then she'd be speaker probably right now.
Yeah. Right? So she made this choice because she was standing on her principles.
And if that's something that's foreign to Dan or anyone else, then maybe they should follow her example instead of maybe you know, maybe they should revere her. Maybe they should look to her as an example instead of trying to mock her.
Because, you know, this is incredibly difficult. Yeah.
There is, Cheney was on a ticket running for president. There was another name on that ticket, you might remember.
You have a constituent, a couple of constituents in the Bush family, George and Laura.

We don't know how they voted, though I suspect how they might have voted in the past for you.

And I'm wondering, have you talked to him lately?

Yes.

Have you made a phone call?

Lately, no.

As you said, I represented him.

He called me after I got elected, and I let it go to voicemail.

And he left me a really funny voicemail.

He's like, Congressman.

He's like, it's George Bush.

You can do it.

Do the W.

Do the Will Ferrell.

And then I met with him, and we had a great meeting. And he was hilarious.
We laughed the entire time. I'm a big Rangers fan.
I don't know if there's any Rangers fans here. But I grew up going to Rangers games when they were basically letting you in for free because they were so bad.
And he had been a part owner of the Rangers, and we were talking about that. But also talking about what was going on in the Republican Party, and how, in many ways, he felt like he was the keeper of the true flame, of what that was, and that it was changing so much.
His dad had just died, and it had a great funeral that, in many ways, was a rep of some of these things, right, about service and putting country over self and a long career of being a public servant from serving in World War II to Congress, the CIA, the vice presidency, all the long career that his dad had. And I know that this is not what he wants for the Republican Party of the conservative movement.
And I think our coalition, as we've talked about backstage, is an interesting one. You know what I mean? And it's one that I think is pro-democracy fundamentally.
I think it's pro-constitution. And it believes in who we are and who we can be instead of trying to radically scrap all of this that we've done for the last 250 years.
Yeah, well, I think the coalition has some other things together. W wrote about this in his memoir.
There are these, the four horsemen of peril he wrote about. That's right.
Condi was talking about this on Fox the other day. Yeah.
I was listening closely to see if she would say one important name. She did.
At the end of it. Yeah, I was like, are you going to mention it? But the four horsemen were nativism, protectionism, isolationism, and populism.
He said that they all, if any of them were rearing their heads, it would bring peril to the country. Opposition to those things is another thing that the broad coalition has, right? And I just do wonder if there's a way to kind of leverage

that to speak to these

voters that you're going to need, these people that have been

Republicans their whole life.

Yeah, well, I mean, that's how I elected to Congress.

I was in a district that was a Republican

district. We had a 22-year

incumbent Republican to get there.

It was, in many ways,

if anybody knows, kind of North Dallas,

it was kind of the heart of

what used to be the heart of the Republican Party. Old school, big hair, big elephant brooches.
We can all picture it. I think one of the most expensive zip codes in the country was in my district, Highland Park.
And listen, that is the coalition that we've always built, and that's the one that I've served in Congress in terms of representing them. And that's the one we have to do here in the Senate.
But if you care about those things that you just mentioned, and particularly if you care about, you know, the U.S.'s role in the world, or if you care about, you know, how we're seen, or if you care about that this project of ours that we've never gotten perfectly,

but that we've been trying to perfect over time,

then to me, come on in, the water's fine.

You know what I mean?

I'm the most bipartisan Texan in Congress.

If you're looking for somebody who will work across the aisle, that's me.

If you're looking for somebody who will represent you and not embarrass you,

who won't pitch you against each other, that's what I want to do for our state. And we have the exact opposite in Tech Free.
Well, it sounds like you have W's number, which I don't. I only have Jeb's.
I'm working him too. But I don't know.
Maybe just give him a little buzz and be like, hey, Mr. President, will you put Laura on the line? Put Laura on the line.
That's right. Maybe we can get her a nudge.
Just nudge a little bit. I suspect that they're not going to be checking the box for Donald Trump.
But it'd be nice for them to share that with us. What else we got here? So these same voters that we're talking about, they do still have some concerns.
I mean, it's nice that Dick Cheney and AOC are voting for the same presidential candidate, but some of the people in Texas still have some concerns that AOC's the world, God love her, are going to be very influenced over policy in the next administration and kind of rationalizing their vote by focusing on policy. So as you kind of think about that, you said you've been the most bipartisan member.
Are there issues where you feel like there's elements of the Democratic Party that you dissent from? Yeah. Well, I'm somebody who never has approached things from a purely partisan perspective.
So that's part of the background that I come out of because I think when you're a football player and you've been in kind of the backgrounds that I've been in, you're more focused on results., results. And so, to me, I feel like I'm in a results-oriented business, which is that my job is to deliver for folks who are out there working hard.
And I imagine my mom, who taught for 27 years in public schools here in Texas, and she sometimes had to work a second job to make ends meet for us, and I think those folks are out there here in Texas every day, hoping that their elected officials are working as hard as they are. But then there are things that come up that you have to respond to.
And my family's from Brownsville. My grandfather joins the Customs Department in 1939.
Doing what? He was a customs agent at the Gateway Bridge in Brownsville, which is the bridge that crosses over into Mexico. and he served in the Navy in the Pacific in World War II.
That's where my mom and my aunt were born and raised. I spent a lot of my childhood in the valley visiting my grandmother there.
And so when you have a huge surge of migrants, we had a record number in December of 23. You have to identify that as a crisis and respond to it with smart policy, with resources, and you have to have that sense of urgency.
And I didn't see that for some time from my party. I felt like there was maybe an idea that, well, if it's being said on Fox News, it can't be true.
Right, yeah. And while- That's a pretty decent rule of thumb.
But, you know, rule of thumb exists for a reason. I disagree with having an inhumane approach to the southern border.
You have to have a secure one. And there is a difference.
And so to me, having stunts like putting buoys in the river with razor wire around it, that's not border security. That's just being cruel.
But what you can do is put real resources into it, have real personnel, real technology. And so I didn't see that.
And so I was very critical of the party. I was critical of the White House at the time.
But then when we had an effort that did come up finally, a bipartisan effort, with $20 billion for border security, that no state would have benefited more from than Texas for 1,500 new CPP personnel, 100 new immigration judges,

I think 1,400 administrative personnel for help with asylum,

over a billion dollars for cities like Brownsville

that have been impacted by this surge of migrants,

more money for technology to catch fentanyl.

And I was for it and said, let's go for it, let's do it. Right.
Put out a statement immediately. Ted Cruz said no.
And he said no. And he even openly said because he was worried that the impact it would have in November.
Yeah. So what does that mean? It means you think you're more important than Texas.
Right. Right.
Your election is more important than Texas. And I describe it as going down to South Texas, going down to the valley, and treating like you're on a safari, where you put on your outdoor clothes, you know.
That Lindsey Graham picture. Right, right.
He's wearing his border agent costume. Right, right.
You got the tags still hanging off, you know. Drinking a Chardonnay on the boat you want to look tough

and you get your binoculars and you point things out

oh there's problems

I see this, I see that

well then you go back to D.C. and do nothing about it

don't just point out problems, be a part of the solution

that's what folks in the valley expect

and here's where

I may upset some of my

democratic friends

we have to be much more realistic about energy. In Texas, we're an energy state.
We're the number one wind energy state in the country. We're number one solar.
We're number one in oil and gas. LNG in particular is an incredibly important part, not only of our economy, but also of our foreign policy,

of our national security.

So when the Biden administration puts a pause

on new LNG facilities and certificates,

that hurts our national security and the Texas economy.

So I wrote an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle

saying this was a bad idea.

Because you know what we're asking the Germans to do? What we're asking the Europeans to do? We're asking them to wean themselves off Russian gas. Right.
Because that's funding what they're doing in Ukraine. Yeah.
Right. And you know what we're replacing it with? Texas LNG.
Right. So it doesn't make any sense.
It's a win-win. Yeah.
And also it's a better, cleaner fuel than coal or than some of the alternatives that we see popping up, particularly in Asia. And so we have to have a more realistic conversation around energy, that our energy mix is changing, but we cannot, you know, in Texas, you cannot talk about, you know, taking away hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy industry.
And I will never allow that to happen. Yeah.
How do you get the folks that you need to hear your message on that? I mean, I was driving between Dallas and here yesterday. And, you know, this is one of these built only in Texas billboards.
It must have been 100 feet wide. I was like, Biden, Harris, letting the terrorists come in across the border.
We all know that billboard. Yeah, everybody knows.
Okay. I don't know.
It was new to me. We don't have any of those in New Orleans.

But, you know, that is out there in the water table. You know, like the Democrats just don't want to do anything about the border, that they're letting everybody come across, that they want to stop drilling.
Like, how do you, you know, kind of outside of this room, like get that message to people that need to hear it? Well, of course, we just have to show up and about it. But also, this is the record that I've had.
So people don't have to... Past performance is the best predictor of future performance.
And so this is what I've done in Congress. When we're taking up the Inflation Reduction Act, some of the initial proposals in that were going to be fairly punitive to Texas.
And so I and some of my Texas Democratic colleagues... Like what?

Well, it was like basically, instead of saying,

we want to incentivize you to capture all the methane,

if you don't, there would be these big penalties.

And that might sound fine.

Yeah.

But when you have a smaller producer,

those are the ones who have a hard time keeping up with the regulations.

The big guys can do it just fine.

Yeah.

It's the smaller ones who you then, if you're penalizing them, you might drive them out of business as opposed to incentivizing. And so that was the change in the policy that we fought for and that we got along with Joe Manchin in the Senate.
And that's the kind of thing where you can still move towards having much more climate-friendly policies. And the Inflation Reduction Act is going to reduce emissions by 40% by 2030.
So that's a big climate bill, but you can do it in a way where you're incentivizing the behavior you want as opposed to attacking or penalizing. All right.
I want to talk about one more kind of... Is this more policy than y'all thought it was going to be? Yeah, maybe.
We're going to do a little more policy, and then we're going to give you a little candy at the end. Don't you worry.
I know our job up here. It's nice.
It's sour and sweet. You've got to do the balance.
You've got to get both. But one of the hallucinations that they got over on Fox, talking about those guys, is that if Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Colin Allred gets in there, and there's 50 Democratic senators, they're going to kill the filibuster, they're going to pass the Green New Deal, they're going to socialize health care, they're going to expand the Supreme Court to 19 people.
I don't know. They're going to want that.
Is that realistic? The filibuster has to change because it's broken. And if you don't mind, Tim, I'm going to do a little history here.
Let's do it. Okay, so the history of the filibuster, as many Senate observers will know, was that it was used almost exclusively to block civil rights legislation, to block anti-lynching legislation.
I'm a civil rights lawyer by training. This is personal for me.
But it was used very sparingly. And it was a talking filibuster.
What did that mean? It meant that you would hold the floor and you'd speak. And so they'd have rounds of speakers.
And no other legislation could move while they were filibustering. And so that's how they would prevent a civil rights bill for so many decades from passing, even when there were enough technically votes to do it.
What it has morphed into now, though, is that it's applied to every single bill, and you have a dual track where you can filibuster a bill, but something still moves. And so this is actually ahistorical where we are now, which is that every vote is a 60-vote threshold.
And you're not having to stand and speak and explain why you're filibustering, right? You just say, I object. And then so what it actually I think has done has contributed to hyper-partisanship and has actually made the Senate less functional than going back to what the original formulation was.
Right? Yeah. So I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of the Senate.
I don't, I'm in the House right now. It is purely operated on majority rules.
If you're not in the majority, you have nothing. Right? And with very few exceptions, like the budget that we're going to hopefully pass at some point where we have to come over and do all the votes to get it passed.
Because there's only to be about, you know, 70 or 80 Republicans who want to keep the government open. But except for that, it's almost entirely a majority rule.
The Senate doesn't operate that way. And I don't want to see it become like the House.
But the current filibuster doesn't work. And so to me, we do have to reform it.
We have to fix it.

We have to go back to the original

formulation for it. And

that is also why we will codify Roe

v. Wade and make it to law.

So

because

we haven't talked about this yet,

Tim, but what's been happening here

in our state

is a tragedy.

My wife and I have been blessed here in our state is a tragedy.

My wife and I have been blessed with two healthy pregnancies in Dallas in the last five years.

I've got a five- and three-year-old.

I know you have a first grader.

You know, when you, I never met my father.

My birth certificate's in my mom's name and nothing else.

And so when you grow up the way I did, you go to every single ultrasound appointment, every genetic testing appointment, and you hold your breath because you don't know what they're going to say. They're like, oh, you did the little ultrasound.
They're like, oh, it's a boy. I'm like, I can't see anything.
I don't know what he's talking about. And all you want to hear is the doctors say, everything looks good.
But if you do hear the news that some Texans are going to hear today across our state, that there's a problem with the baby, or there's a problem with the pregnancy, the next thing you want to hear is, and here's the plan for how we're going to make sure you're okay. But in Texas, what women are hearing isn't that.
They're hearing, and there's nothing I can do to help you. You're either going to have to bear this or come back when you're sick enough, or you're going to have to leave our state.
And this is not who we are as Texans. There's one thing I know of us as a fourth generation Texans that we believe in freedom, and this is not it.
And so we have to restore Roe v. Wade to this country and to the 30 million Texans here who are living under this for people like Dr.
Austin Denard, who's my friend in Dallas. She's an OBGYN.
She's a wonderful person. Her husband is an OBGYN.
She's already a mom. And she noticed herself on the ultrasound that her baby's skull wasn't forming.
And Austin, who is just the best person, had to leave Texas I think she's a 6th generation Texan she's even longer than I am had to leave Texas to get the care she needs and come back and feel shame about what was going on we have cities and counties in the state saying we don't think you should be able to drive through the city or the county if you're going to use it to access an abortion how do they enforce that they'll pull texas women over ask them what's the nature of your travel ma'am yeah can i inquire your condition or with this bounty law that we have here they're going to turn us all into informants informants on each other yeah where it's you're looking over your neighbor's fence and saying i wonder what her condition is what's going on with her this is who we are. And so the only way for us to fix this in Texas is to codify Roe at the federal level.
The bounty law in particular, for me, I mean, I think it's been very brilliant as a marketing strategy, the way that the Harris campaign and you have kind of re-adopted

this term freedom around this context.

But the other thing,

the other way that it is

anti-traditional conservative,

I mean, when I was growing up,

when I was a college Republican,

we didn't like the damn trial lawyers.

You're going to trial, yeah.

Civil trial, right?

Yeah, we're going to sue everything.

This whole notion,

like the incentives are so wrong

in a way that anybody that's looking at this clearly from a conservative perspective should be able to see, right? Where it's like, where doctors, there are all these horror stories coming out of Texas where doctors, conservative people will say, well, technically they could have done that procedure, right? Like under the law. But like the doctors don't know, they aren't sure and they're fucking scared that they're going to get sued.
Or they're going to go to jail.

They'll go to jail, right? And so they're

like, well, I'll pass this. You go to

the hospital down the street.

And there have been all these stories

that come out that the incentives are

forcing doctors to

not give care that's even legal

care. That's scary, even if

you are pro-life. There's two Texas women

who recently filed a lawsuit to clarify this law who had ectopic pregnancies. Anybody who has been through having kids or, you know, an ectopic pregnancy is incredibly dangerous.
It is not a viable pregnancy. It forms in the thaloping tube.
And the only thing to do is to make sure that it doesn't become a rupture. And they were turned away by hospitals in Texas, in two different parts of Texas, two separate stories.
They were turned away. Or in one case, one of the women's doctors came with her to the hospital and demanded that they treat her.
And they were saying no. And I know who was saying no.
It was some lawyer up in headquarters saying, we don't want the liability of treating this woman. And so they were both turned away and they both had ruptures or had to have a fallopian tube removed.
And now their future fertility is at risk. This is outrageous.
And the other thing I'll say is that from a conservative perspective, turning Texans into monitors of each other is how authoritarian states operate. Yes.

Right?

That's one of the things they do. Right? Where it's like, oh, if you're aware.
In a lot of these cases, these are wanted babies. You know what I mean? A lot of these cases, these are women that want to have, or couples that want to have the children.
Yeah. It's like, even if you're pro-life, like, even if you're down the line pro-life and believe that life begins at conception, the law is fucked.
It's an authoritarian backwards law. So one quick example of that.
Lauren Miller, she's an eighth-generation Texan. I always laugh because I didn't know we had eight generations of Texans.
I met an eighth-generation Texan. I think it was about to Mexico.
I met one in the Valley the other day who said her family was in Mexico and then it became Texas, and she's an eight-generation Texan. She was already a mom, and she got pregnant with twins.
To your point about being pro-life, one of the babies wasn't going to make it, and it was killing the other one and her. At the hospital where I was born in Dallas, Presbyterian Hospital, her doctor threw up his hands and said, you have to leave the state right now.

And so as sick as she was, she went to Love Field and she flew out of the state and she got a procedure done

for 15 minutes, cost her $3,000.

And it saved the other twin.

Oh my God.

And I met that kid.

And it's because she got that procedure

that she was able to have that baby.

So you want to talk about being pro-life.

In Texas, that wouldn't have happened. And there are other Texas women who don't have $3,000 to go out of state, who that's going to happen to.
There are 26,000 Texas women who've been forced to get birth to their rapist child. This is according to the Houston Chronicle.
It's not my number. So to go back to your point, this is not pro-life.
This is deeply, deeply anti-freedom, and it's not a slogan. If we want to restore freedom, we have to restore this.
That's right. Speaking of authoritarian assholes, how do we like the Attorney General? Is he popular in here? There's got to be one.
Is his sister in here or something?

Is his sister? Somebody's got to

like him in here, right? Keeps getting

elected. There's a story

that I just, as an

out-of-stater, I just don't, it's like,

you know, it's hard to judge. It's like, again,

for me, the rule of thumb is if Ken Paxton is doing something

that seems shady, it's probably shady, but

why don't we talk, there are these raids on

Democratic activists,

Latino groups that were

registering voters, and it seems

Thank you. It seems shady.
It's probably shady. But why don't we talk? There are these raids on Democratic activists,

Latino groups that were registering voters,

and it seems pretty disturbing.

But talk about that story.

So there's that, and there's also that he's suing and threatening to sue two of our biggest counties,

Bexar County and Harris County,

because they're mailing out voter registration forms.

Travis, they're saying.

And Travis as well? Is that... Okay, that was yesterday.
I was in the Hill Country yesterday. Okay.
And so let's get this straight, okay? The counties in Texas run the elections. So this is the government entity responsible for the election that's saying, here's a registration form that you can fill out and you can mail back and then we and the secretary of state's office will will verify whether or not you're eligible to vote in texas and all these other steps as well to be checked against our dps records uh and so and then you'll be able to vote that's the voter registration process in texas and so our attorney general is saying if you mail out these forms for them to send back in for us to verify, you're going to be getting non-citizens voting in Texas.
So is he saying that the government in Texas can't verify who's a citizen and who's not? Right. Right? But I think we all know what it actually is.
Don't want to be in charge of the government? Yeah, right. Exactly, right? It's like the Secretary of State's appointed by the governor.
But then also, your point about these raids on LULAC. LULAC is one of the oldest civil rights organizations in the country.
It is not new. And, you know, when you have armed men show up at 7 a.m.
or something to an 85-year-old's house and go through her underwear and make her stand around in her nightgown while you search her house and take her phone and her computers because she's trying to help seniors vote, we know exactly what you're doing. This is not about election integrity.
This is about voter intimidation, right? And what they want to do is send a message to Texans that voting is not for you. I tell folks all the time that we're a non-voting state, and as a voting rights lawyer, I know part of the reason why.

And part of it is this overlapping laws,

but also this sense that you could get in trouble.

I've tried to register voters before,

before I ever ran for office, and I never, by the way,

I never asked anybody who they were going to vote for.

I just wanted them to vote.

But I tried to register them, and I'd say, you know,

okay, here's the form, and they'd say, no, I don't want to.

I'd say, well, why not?

They'd say, well, I've got parking tickets.

Let's go. I just wanted them to vote.
But I tried to register them, and I'd say, you know, okay, here's the form.

And they'd say, no, I don't want to.

I'd say, well, why not?

They'd say, well, I've got parking tickets.

I'd say, well, you know, these systems don't interact, right?

But then you start to see these things happening in the news.

And if you're not, you know, if you're working hard and you're not following on this. Just as an aside, as a libertarian, parking tickets are kind of authoritarian.

A lot of times.

I've got the cameras I don't like.

We got rid of the cameras. Hopefully, if we get over the authoritarian threat, we can go back to arguing about things like that.
But, you know, if you're working hard and you're just seeing this stuff pop up on your news every now and then, and you don't really know what to make of it, you might think that. And think, listen, I don't want to get in any trouble.
Maybe voting is not for me. And that is exactly what they're trying to do.
And so this is what we have to do now in Texas is say they're trying to stop you why are they trying to stop you because your vote is powerful don't let them and that's what I think we're going to do applause alright we've got to talk about one more tough one and then we can can maybe have a little fun. There's a school shoot, another school shooting in Georgia earlier this week.
J.D. Vance, I don't know if you know him.
He's running for VP. Here's what he said about it.
I don't like that this is a fact of life, but if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you've realized that our schools are soft targets, and we have to, and we've got to bolster security at our schools. So that's a solution.
This is just going to be a fact of life, and the only answer is to bolster security at the schools. What do you think about that? You and I both have kids.
We do. Little ones.
We do. And I just did school pick up with my buddy's kid in your neighborhood yesterday when I was in Dallas and I was just thinking about it

the whole time watching all those little kids walking out of the school

after Uvalde

the morning after

I dropped my kids off at their

preschool in Dallas

and I watched my little one

waddle in

and my older one

was holding his teacher's hand as he walked in

and I was just thinking

if anything happens

Thank you. and my older one was holding his teacher's hand as he walked in, and I was just thinking, if anything happens to them, I don't know what I'll do.
I don't know what I'll become. My heart is outside of my chest right now, right? And every parent had the same look on their face that day.
And I refused, number one, to accept that this is how we have to live. But number two, after Uvalde, we did put hundreds of millions of dollars into school safety.
We passed a bill called the Safer Communities Act. It was the first time in 30 years we'd done anything to address gun violence at the federal level.
I voted for it. John Cornyn was the reason it passed in the United States Senate, to his credit.
Oh, man. Please clap for John Cornyn.
I can do that. I can do please clap jokes.
To his credit. And I'm probably not doing him any favors.
He was booed off the Republican stage after that. But to his credit, he did that.
We closed some important loopholes in the background check system. We increased scrutiny on purchases for folks under 21.

We had hundreds of millions of dollars

for school safety funding for

states to set up their own red flag laws, which Texas

has not done.

And so we've, and we also

had a bunch of money for mental health because

folks say often after

these shootings, this is a mental health crisis and

this is about school safety. Those two are both

true. They're always leaving out

the third component, which is

that you can get. When I was seven years old, we had a rifle rearrange.

I'm sorry, Possum Lake?

Possum Kingdom.

Possum Kingdom.

Don't sell it short. Okay.
Don't sell it short. All right.
I'm learning Texas culture right now. All right.
Okay. Don't sell it short.
It's a kingdom. I haven't met the king but we had a referee range where we were learning how to shoot 22s when I was 7 years old it wasn't until I left 7? yes you held a gun when you were 7? yes I don't know I'm out of my element I was in the Denver suburbs it wasn't until I left Texas and started hearing from folks that it's unusual in other states to give a gun to a 7 year old you know what it was about and I'm being serious it was about learning how to safely and responsibly handle a firearm that's the whole thing it was incredibly safe I know it was all very rote, and so there was no chance for any accidents.
It was very safe, and it was about learning how to do this safely and to have fun. That's the Texas culture that I believe in, one of responsible gun ownership.
One where this is part of our culture. Folks have a lot of firearms here in Texas.
That's good. That's fine.
Most of the folks I grew up with have small arsenals. You know what I mean? And that's fine.
But we have to be responsible with it. And this is where, when we come to things like what happened in Georgia, where having access to an AR, this is what happened with the father who's been charged.
And then we see

what happens. We have to

have laws in this country

that take and keep

these incredibly destructive weapons

out of the hands of folks who shouldn't have it.

Ted Cruz voted against that bill.

So Ted Cruz voted against the

Saver Communities Act. He seems to believe there's nothing

that we can do to help

save lives consistent with the Second Amendment.

I fundamentally disagree.

Our man,

my man, Beto,

got in a little trouble on this one.

I mean, say what you want,

but I do think that as you talk about this

balance, right, like how you win over Texas

voters, like how do you kind of think

about that challenge, right? Like this

idea that maybe, you know, sometimes

I'm going to go ahead and get it. But I do think that as you talk about this balance, right, like how you win over Texas voters, like how do you kind of think about that challenge, right? Like this idea that maybe, you know, sometimes, you know,

there are people in Texas that feel like the Democrats are going to, like,

you know, come and start confiscating their arsenals, you know?

Listen, you know, obviously there's some folks that if you're fetishizing

these things, then, you know, we're probably not going to have an open conversation. Right.
But I come across a lot of well-meaning Texans, and I do mean well-meaning, who will tell me, listen, this is important to me. This is a part of our culture.
This is a part of... I've taught my children how to hunt.
I think we should have the ability to have self-protection. No one's putting that in question.
When I'm in the United States Senate, I have nothing to worry about.

What we will do is make it harder for folks

that shouldn't have access to these high-powered rifles

to get access to them.

And that's what I think is consistent

with who we are as Texans and the Second Amendment.

So just to be clear,

so seven-year-olds,

should you be able to go into a Walmart

and purchase an AR-15 here?

It's hard for me to know the rules these days, but apparently teenagers can just buy ARs now in a lot of places. That's true, actually, unfortunately, and we have to change that.
The shooter in Uvalde, the murderer, murdered 19 children and two teachers. He couldn't buy a beer.
He couldn't buy a handgun. He could buy an AR.
He couldn't buy a SIG. He couldn't buy a ZIN.
Right. And so this is obviously absurd.
It's obviously absurd. And so we can change that.
But we have to have leaders in place who want to. Let's also talk to a little politic.
And so I had Beto in the pod a couple weeks ago. And I was asking about your race.
And challenges and the opportunities. And here was his feedback.
He said, I think he can win if he can raise and deploy enough money. We should see more of him, more unscripted moments, more connecting with people.
What do you think about that? How do you do it? How do you break through where he wasn't able to? Listen, we've got a great state. It's a massive state.
In the last month, we've done 50 stops in 22 cities. We also have to have the resources to make sure we can communicate in the biggest media markets in the country and also in places that are completely siloed from each other.
What happens in Houston, nobody knows about in Dallas, by and large. What happens in Austin is unknown in El Paso, right? Because the distances are so vast here.
And so it is a challenge in terms of, you know, making sure that you can get in front of everybody. But we're doing everything we possibly can to make sure we do that.
But also, we're making sure that folks know what Ted Cruz has not been doing. I want to make sure that folks know what I'll do and who I am, how I've served in Congress, how I've served in the Senate, but one thing that we have done and that I think will continue to do is show what Ted Cruz has not been doing over his time in the Senate, that he's trying to take away Social Security and Medicare, that he is singularly responsible for this abortion ban that we have in this state

because he put the judges on the district court,

the circuit court, and the Supreme Court. He backed

the state legislators in primaries often

who are more extreme to then

who are the ones who pass these laws at the state level.

He called for and cheered

the Dobbs decision. And actually

when he ran for president, he wanted to go further.

He wanted to have a personhood so-called amendment

that would ban things like IVF and certain forms of birth control. And so, you know, listen, we have to make sure the Texans know that as well.
And that fundamentally, the choice here is between the most bipartisan Texan in Congress who will care about all of us, who will represent all of us, who's served in a way that shows it's possible to bring folks together instead of pitting them against each other versus the most extreme senator in the country

who's been all about himself and who has

been podcasting more than you, Tim.

He's podcasting a lot.

I'm beating him in the rankings. I've been checking.

He had me for a little while.

We passed him. I don't know if the campaign distracted him

a little bit. Can you imagine, though, representing 30 million people

and then doing three to five

podcasts a week? It's a lot.

It's a lot. It's a lot of podcasting.
It's a lot of bloviating. What about the getting attention side of things? I don't know.
Putting on my old former Republican strategist hat. Republicans like to do those ads.
They've got the guns and they're shooting people and they're like, we're going to take out the ballot boxes. That was one I saw recently.
Maybe you should do some tackling drills. I'm going to be taking out Ken Paxton.
Fake Ken Paxton. I don't know.
Do you need to do any, do you need to steal anything from my old people to get any attention or anything? Okay. I'll take it out.
We're brainstorming. We're just brainstorming.
No bad ideas in a brainstorming. No bad ideas.
Let's throw it up against the wall. Last night I was watching the Eagles-Packers game with one of my friends from college, and he brought a mutual friend along.
He's one of these Joe Rogan-listenin' bros. There's a lot of conversation about this right now.
There's an unprecedented gender gap. There's always always been a gender gap, but unprecedented wide gender gap.
There's a group of young men out there that are not socially conservative, that don't want a Donald Trump autocracy, really. But culturally, they have felt disaggregated from the Democratic establishment, fairly or unfairly.
How do you get, it feels like those should be gettable folks for you. NFL

player, you're not scary.

Have you thought about that? No, I have.

It's actually interesting

because I'm raising two boys and

I think a lot about

where

masculinity is at the

moment, but also how do we

in the course of this campaign,

how do we reach these increasingly disaffected young men? And, you know, in a lot of ways, that was kind of, I wasn't disaffected, but I was in their shoes. You know, I was just trying to make it, you know, I was, when I went to law school at 28 years old, it was the first time in my adult life that I was not making my living off the sweat of my brow, I know what it's like to shower after work, not before it.
When you're podcasting like me and Ted Cruz, that's not really a problem. Maybe he gets sweaty podcasting, he's not really in fit, so it might be onerous for him, but it's not one of those jobs.
I was captain of the team at Baylor, and I think what comes with that is kind of an understanding and working around young men who are kind of feeling like, well, listen, do you care about me, though? Right. And I think that's fundamentally, a lot of what we talk about in politics can feel, I think, to young men like it's not about them them and so it's my job to make sure that they know that I'm gonna make sure that they have opportunities to take care of their families to get ahead that we want to put in place these ladders of opportunity that they can then take advantage of and it's up to them from there and that fundamentally I'm gonna care about them I wake up every day thinking about about what's best for them as opposed to what's best for me.
And that's the message that we have to make sure we break through on. But I do think coming from a single parent background, going to our public schools, playing sports here, and having made it in that regard, this is what a lot of young men that I come across, this is what they'd like to do or what they'd like the kids to be able to do.
And so there's a connection that we have to build there. Is there a way to get to, I mean, maybe you're already doing this, and I just haven't noticed it since I'm not a Texan.
But is there a way to get these guys through, I don't know, sports talk or other ways besides doing the traditional. Yeah.
And we've been doing some of that. And that's some of the stuff I really enjoy, actually, you know, because also it's not so political.
And listen, obviously I'm in office, I'm running for office. I'm actually just not a hyper partisan.
Like I'm not, I've never come at things that way. I'm not, I don't wake up in the morning and think, what's Team Blue doing today? You know process is not about politics at all times.
This morning, I was... You didn't have a little picture of Walter Mondale in your bedroom growing up, or any of the great Democratic leaders, Ann Richards.
Do you have an Ann Richards poster? I do have an Ann Richards poster. Ann kind of bridged the political-.
Yeah, my mom was a huge Ann Richards fan, and so was I. And Cecile Richards is a friend.
But, you know, listen, I woke up this morning, and all I wanted to figure out was what happened in the game last night, you know. And that's how a lot of people are.
And so those are the opportunities I appreciate. So what's the problem with the Cowboys? Things are ugly over there.
It seems like they're in shambles. The Texans are going to be good.
Texans are going to be good, I think. But the Cowboys are in shambles.
They had such a good year, and it's just all falling apart. Is Jerry, what's happening? Is Jerry blowing it? I don't know.
They won 12 games. I mean, you know, listen, they flamed out in the playoffs.

Yeah.

And that's been a consistent problem for them, not performing in the playoffs.

But they've got an incredibly talented team.

I think they're going to have a good year, actually.

You think they're going to have a good year?

But I just don't know what they'll do in the playoffs.

Yeah.

And so I think they're going to be okay.

They've got a lot of talent. But to me, the better team in Texas professionally is probably going to be the Texans.
I say that as somebody who the Texans were my division rival when I was in the NFL. I really did not like the Texans.
That was back when they were really good. Matt Schaub was a quarterback, Andre Johnson at receiver,

Aaron Foster at running back had kind of a triple attack there,

and they ran this really annoying stretch play

that was very hard for defenses to stop.

Anyway.

You ever get a good hit on Aaron Foster?

Aaron?

Probably.

I was more of the guy who came in and short yardage and goal line or somebody got hurt or special teams which is what they do before they go to the commercial got it that's how I made my career but I think they're going to be really good they've got a great young quarterback and they've got a really talented team and I played against their head coach actually who's a great guy we're out of time, thank you so much, INA, everybody. The big...
Go find somebody in your life. Go find somebody in your life that doesn't believe their vote counts in Texas because it does.
Texas can turn. This is possible.
I think that the apathy is a big problem in this state and I think that's the man that can do it. So good luck, Congressman Allred.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you, buddy. Enjoy.
Thank you all.

The honky-tonks in Texas were my natural second home Where you tip your hat to the ladies and the roads of San Antonio

Well, I grew up on music we call Western Swing

It don't matter who's in Austin

I'm not a fan of the world Well, I grew up on music we call Western Swing. It don't matter who's in Austin, Bob Wills is still the king.
I can still remember the way things were back then. In spite of all the hard times, I'd it all again Just to hear the Texas playboys and Tommy Duncan sing Makes me proud to be from Texas where Bob Wills is still the king If you ain't never been there then I guess you ain't been told That you just can't live in Texas unless you've got a lot of soul It's the home of Willie Nelson The home of Western Swing And he'll be the first to tell you Bob Wills is still the king

The Bulldog Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper

with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.