Breaking News from Pod Save America - Trump and Republicans STUNNED After MAJOR Election Defeat

Episode Date: February 3, 2026

Democrats pull off a shocking Texas special election upset with a historic swing against Trump’s GOP. Alex Wagner and Dan Pfeiffer explain why this race has Republicans on edge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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for giving me the deal. Additional Terms, Conditions, and Restrictions, Welcome to a special rapid response installment of runaway country with the great and inimitable Dan Fifer. Dan, thank you for taking some time out of your, I'm sure, very busy schedule to talk to me about the degradation of our democracy. I always have time to talk to you about anything, including the degradation of our democracy. Including and especially. I start with, I wanted to say like the head scratcher, but it's not a head scratcher. It's literally like the most predictable thing in the world that does not diminish the terror. The, the terror.

terrifying nature of it, which is Donald Trump on a podcast with his former employee, Dan Bongino, everyone in that administration, or everyone associated with that administration, I guess, as a podcast, declared yesterday that he wants to nationalize elections, have the federal government run elections in at least 15 states. This is the sound. These people were brought to our country to vote, and they vote illegally. And the, you know, amazing that the Republicans aren't tougher on it. The Republicans should say, we want to, to take over. We should take over the voting in at least many 15 places. The Republicans ought to nationalize the voting. We have states that are so crooked and the county votes.

We have states that I won that show I didn't win. Now, you play the sound. Okay. Dan, what did you think when you heard that? So I had two conflicting thoughts. One is our president is a deranged lunatic who is deeply afraid of what is going to happen in November and would like to use every ounce of federal power to prevent any measure of political accountability for what's been happening in this country. And the second thing is, is he really doesn't understand how our elections are run and doesn't really understand that nationalizing elections is not an actual thing. And this is always, I think there are very real ways in which Trump can interfere with our

elections and we should talk about those. But one thing he cannot do is cancel the elections or now. nationalize them. Our elections are run by states. Most of the state, many of the states where the House and Senate will be decided, have Democratic governors or Democratic secretaries of state. They are the ones who administer the elections. They are the ones who decide how many polling places there are. They decide the method of counting the votes. They certify the election results. And so Trump really does have absent a invading the United States with the military or ICE, which I actually do not think he can do. He doesn't really have the ability to stop Americans

from voting. There are things we can do to make it harder for them to vote and to not seat the people elected, but that's different than naturalizing the election or canceling the elections. It just, I also feel like it's foolish for him to suggest it because he was handed a defeat of sorts from like, for example, Indiana, when he basically tried to fuck up the congressional maps ahead of 2026 and certain red states said, yeah, maybe not so much, man, maybe not so much. I mean, obviously Texas complied with his whims and his wishes. But the reality is that he did that the campaign itself did not succeed. And if red states aren't going to succeed on that campaign, one has a hard time imagining

that they will hand over their election systems to that. Yeah, I don't even know what the, I actually don't even know what that would mean. Like how would the, you know, how would the federal government administer the elections? Like, how would that be different? Are they going to be, you know, they don't have the voting machines? Like there's, there's sort of, it's like it is a, it's an idea without an actual plan of what to do. Now, like I said, there are things they can do, like for example, all of a sudden, ICE can start showing up in heavily Latino precincts in Texas, for instance, when around election, you know,

around election time, or outside of early voting places and early voting states with large Latino populations, you can use the federal government to so disinformation about who can vote, where to vote, how to vote. You can scare people by saying that we're going to, we're going to come in afterwards and look at who voted and we're going to, you know, investigate you for whatever. Like, there are things you can do that can affect things on the margins and in close races. The margins are where things are decided. But it is different than canceling the election, national election, taking it over some world where Christy Gnome, who I guess it would be in charge of be running our elections. I wonder if you think it's hard to get into the twisted dark hole that is Trump's mind.

But I wonder when you looked at the results of the special election in Texas for a state Senate seat. where a Democrat, Taylor Remitt, flipped a seat. In a district, Trump won by 17 points. He won the Democrat won by 14 points over the Republican Lee Wamsganskans, no relation to Tom Wamsgans from succession. First of all, I love talking to you about elections, especially the main Senate race, but we're not going to talk about on this. Not today.

Democrats are, I think, quietly optimistic, or maybe not even that. quietly optimistic about flipping the house. When you see results like the ones we saw in Texas, how much stock do you put in them? And how much do you think that's a motivated for Trump deciding like, you know, 48 hours later or 24 hours later? You know what? Maybe we don't need to actually have free and fair elections. Maybe the federal government should take over. So let's start with the second question. I think Trump is probably more motivated by his crazy belief that he actually won the 2020 election than he is fear of the 2026 election because that one was about him and everything's about him and his head. Here's how I think about that election in Texas.

One, let's begin with the caveat that relatively low turnout special elections are not predictive of presidential or midterm elections. If they were, Joe Biden would have been reelected president. Democrats crushed in special elections from in 2023 and early 2024 before, while Trump was winning in the polls and Biden eventually drops out and we lose the election. spoiler alert. But there are some things that make this one particularly interesting that I think is a very positive sign for Democrats. One, as you point out, there was a 31 point swing in Democrats' favor from the 2024 election. Two, usually when you have a result like this, it's because once I was caught napping, they just were so complacent.

They thought there was not a chance this could happen. That's sometimes why you see Democrats who are in like plus 58 Republican Trump seats in Montana or wherever. come within 12 points or something. You see this like four-bors. It's because no one, they're not investing any money. Democrats have this turn out advantage. That's not what happened here. Trump endorsed Wamskims, urges supporters to campaign for her, to for her. The party spent money. And this is not some like Red Island in a blue, in a sea of blue. Tarrant County is the heart and soul of the Republican Party in Texas. It is where sort of the beating heart, of MAGA in Texas.

It's where like growth in Tarrant County is part of the reasons why the Republicans made so many gains from in 2020 and 2024 in Texas while it had been trending blue in the previous two elections. And so this is like and the candidate was not a terrible candidate. Wamsams is a very well connected conservative activists in the community, has ties to all of the evangelical groups, the Tea Party groups, all the groups who turn out the vote there, who are the Republican machine, and they still got clobbered. And the last, as though there's two other, three or three other data points here I would give you.

One, this is a runoff election for election that happened in November. That election was plus five Republican. And so there was a thought like, oh, Demerick, you know, Remnick could get close in the runoff when it was one-on-one and he clobbered. So there's been a shift in overall political sentiment and Republican enthusiasm since November. That's a really important point. And what's important about it is you've got to think about everything else is happening in the country over the period of the last few weeks while this is happening. So that's one. Two, we are seeing an early data.

This is a huge district. It's bigger than even the turnout was relatively low. I think 94,000 people voted. It is, the district itself is bigger than congressional districts. It's a million people are in the state senate district. And it has several large pockets of Latino voters. Those precincts seem to move maybe as much it's. 50 points in the Democrats' direction.

And the third thing here is when you look at these, you... Turns out terrorizing the Latino communities all over the United States. Not a great election strategy. And then the third point here, and this is perhaps the most important is what you would imagine when you see a result like this is Republicans are disillusioned, complacent, didn't turn out Democrat, Democratic turnout was through the roof. That's actually not what happened here. Republicans actually outnumbered Republicans outnumbered Democrats by a significant margin.

Remnant won because he won basically every single independent who voted, it seems like, and a significant chunk of Republicans. That's the only way to get to a plus 14% margin. So this is not just a turnout exercise. This is a huge example of motivation. I'm sorry, a huge example of persuasion of Republicans and Independence, which is what we saw in Georgia, New Jersey, and Virginia in the midterms last year. So all of it adds up to a very, very concerning sign for Republicans. and it's particularly concerned about Republicans in Texas who drew their maps believing that Trump's 2024 gains with Latinos were enduring. And if these margins are to be believed, and I think this is a small sample size issue, but these are Hillary Clinton, 2016 Latino margins in Texas.

And Republicans are certainly not going to pick up anywhere near the five seats they thought they were going to pick up. And the whole thing could end up being a wash if you see Latino numbers like that in. November. It's just truly unbelievable that with those wins among that part of the population, his choice and decision was to go out, round up, terrorize, and strike fear in the hearts of the very same people who might have voted for him and actually made him president. Can I tell you why I think that happened? Because Trump and Steve, Trump in particular has confused border security and mass deportation on border security. And when you looked at focus groups of of Latino voters.

They were particularly upset about the chaos at the border, about all the people coming in, these people coming into the communities, people who did not wait in line, right? He just came right in. And they're now competing with them for jobs and everything else. That is different than sending masked agents to deport people who've been in this country for decades, who are married to American citizens, have American citizen children who are paying taxes and working. And I don't think Trump knew the difference.

Stephen Miller knew the difference. He used border security to get to interior to mass deportation. But when you, this is one of this was a huge frustration, Carlos Odeo of Eckie's research and I, whereas, you know, he was, he made this point a thousand times. I would amplify it every time he did is that they can't, the Kamala Harris campaign and Democrats writ large made this huge mistake to just simply allow Trump to isolate immigration on the border and just say how tough we are on the border without making a case about his mass deportation plans because that's exactly what happened.

Right. And like if you want to try to. persuade people, you've got to tell them what's really going to happen and not just play on their territory. Because border security is a Republican issue. It's the only issue where Trump's above watering right now. But mass deportation, immigration generally has been a democratic issue for a very long time. And when you get to that part of the question, path to citizenship, all of that, that is where our advantage has been for years and we just left it on the table. Well, I just have to say, for someone who didn't do a good job, I mean, Trump didn't explain the mass deportation piece of it.

Trump is executing on his mass deportation plans. And there are so many mistakes that he's made along the way, but not least among them, was executing on mass deportations by using massed, untrained agents who were slaughtering American citizens. Yes. The worst for a possible version. It's the worst possible version of a terrible idea. I want to ask you one more thing before we go, Dan, which is, so as of this moment and Congress, though slow moving, can be a kinetic environment.

Johnson is trying to get approval in the House to decouple the spending piece. But that then would turn attention back to the Senate where negotiations have to happen over what kind of reforms can be laid on to this DHS funding bill, which is an open question, Dan. So it looks like, as we are recording this on Tuesday morning, that they are going to get to, they have decoupled and we'll get to a 10-day continued resolution forward. So they have 10 days to figure this out. And since Congress only works three days a week, that seems like it's going to be quite challenging. And maybe they can extend again. But the point you make about the narrow majority goes to the limits to what you can actually get through here. Right.

And, you know, in some ways, Democrats have already won a victory in that Kristinehom announced that ICE officers and CBP officers in all DHS law enforcement in Minnesota and eventually nationally will begin wearing body cams. That's hugely important because it will allow there to be some measure of accountability. for some of these for what happens. And you still need to get rid of the masks because... The masks are a big deal. Because the thing about the masks, I think people don't realize. It's like it is, it's not just that it gives off these sort of fascist vibes. It's that it prevents individuals from bringing complaints against individual officers,

which is how this works. And I will make it makes them entirely uncountable. I also think of the psychology, too, of them feeling invincible and protected and able to menace without repercussion. I think it's really big. They don't have a badge number. They can't be identified. And so you can do it and just say it's not me.

And if it's not on camera, you can really say it's not me. But I think they disassociate internally too. Like I really think it's like Superman putting on the cape. Only it's the inverse of Superman. It's the bad guy putting on the mask. And like you become a different person in that. We should have realistic expectations about what they can actually achieve here. Like we're not, if ICE will not be defunded here,

even if they were able to get all the ICE funding out of the this year's appropriations bill, ICE will still have enough money to operate for years. And even if the government were to, the DHS were to shut down, ICE has the money to keep doing what it's been doing. And Trump, we know Trump would move money around in the most illegal ways possible to keep it going because we had a 45 day government shutdown and ICE didn't take a breath. But looking, you know, I think the things that you want that are hard, but to be pushing for are body cams. So let's let's get that written into law. That can't just be Christy Noem's decision. Let's get that written into law. The fact that she's said it now is I think her getting ahead of. where the Republican Party probably is, which is so now she's not being forced to do it. She's, they have, this is a,

they get, she thinks they get credit for it. The next two things are very hard. Masks, right? A lot of Republicans are already against getting rid of masks, which is insane. Insane.

Because it's like the fear, their idea, the reasons why they say they can't have masks would apply to literally everyone doing anything. Right? Like cops. They're afraid they're going to get docs, but I will talk to,

I will tell you that I was on the ground in Minneapolis and activists are debting effectively docks by ICE agents. They're showing up at their house. They do facial recognition. They show up at their house. It's a complete inversion of reality. The next thing is warrants, like actual judicial warrants to get rid of this idea where ICE can give itself a warrant to go arrest someone.

And ICE is interpreting that as they can go in their home, which I imagine a court will hopefully one day rule is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And then the other thing I think is some level of regulation, transatlantic, transparency limits on the use of facial recognition technology and domestic. That may be too big a problem to take for this bill in this period of time. But I think what ICE is doing with facial recognition on American citizens, let alone, you know, as well as everyone else in this country who also have those same constitutional rights by being in this country, regardless of whether a citizen or not,

like this speaks the much larger problem we have is that our laws have not caught up with incredibly advanced technology. And when you have this administration mobbed up with Palantir and these other companies who are making billions of dollars selling this to the government, there is, like, there should be a real effort to try to rein that in in some way, shape, or form. But that probably extends beyond this bill. Yes, that's work to do another day or never in the case of this Congress. Well, Dan, we should have you back another day, but definitely not never. Anytime. Anytime. On these wonderful episodes that we call Rapid response videos for a runaway country and our YouTube channel. Dan Pfeiffer, you are a gentleman,

a scholar, one of my favorite political minds. Thank you for joining me to talk about the hell in which we all live in. Everybody go watch Dan on Patsy of America and subscribe to Polar Coaster and watch us talk about political experts react. And what else? Oh, your substack, message box. One of the first substacks I ever subscribed to. And that last but not least, subscribe to the runaway country YouTube. Why not? Most importantly, subscribe to the right now. Hit the subscribe button right now so that you can get content like this delivered to you directly. Can you be my co-host? Sure. Thank you, Dan Pfeiffer. All right. Thank you, Alex. Always a pleasure.

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