Bulwark Takes - Talarico’s Texas Surge Should Terrify Republicans

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Tim Miller joins Katy Tur on MS NOW for his take on Trump’s growing disconnect with voters on the economy and affordability—and why his billionaire bubble may be making that problem worse. Tim breaks down new polling showing a dramatic swing toward Democrat James Talarico in key Texas districts and explains why the Texas Senate race is increasingly within Democrats’ reach. Plus, Trump plans to use his massive super PAC war chest to promote himself ahead of the midterms and that could backfire on Republicans.Visit https://upwork.com right now and post your job for free.Watch The Moment with Katy Tur on MS NOW: https://www.ms.now/katy-tur-reports

Hey, everybody. It's Tim Miller from the bulwark. Subscribe to the feed. We finally get some momentum. We'll get up to 2 million. You know, there are these crazy mega YouTube that have 2 million. And so help us spread the good news. I was on with Katie Turr earlier today. And we were discussing this disconnect between Trump and the voters.

A lot of the voters that voted for him in 24 on the matter of the economy and affordability and how to touch he is. And, you know, Katie and I kind of regent. yelled each other with thinking back to 2016 and the way that Trump bubbled himself and how he's kind of gotten more and more out of touch over the last decade. And with this crazy story that we discuss a little bit about how Trump wants to use the money that his super PACs have raised to run ads about how great his accomplishments are instead of running ads to help Republicans in the midterms. So God willing that happens.

We analyze that a bit. And then we get into kind of how the Democrats are doing, you know, some toots and boots on that front, if you will. and one thing I mentioned is a Texas Senate race and since I've got off the air we have a new poll out well kind of we have a series of three polls somebody who's polling the Texas house races

and if you look at the Tala Rico number in some of these house districts it paints a pretty good picture for him as far as lectibility is concerned see let's look at these districts it's three districts that are all going to be very important

in the house races you have, and they all are very heavily Latino districts. You have Texas 15, which is Bobby Polito's district. I've interviewed Bobby on here. Huge fan of his Tihana music singer. Really good for the district. The plus him winning as the district, but Republicans held. Then we have Henry Quayar.

It was like the one Hispanic moderate Democrat who had held on. You got him winning. And then you have Gonzalez and Flores and Texas 34 with Gonzalez, Democrat up by three. So you have the Democrats in the in the House race winning in all those places. If you combined all three of those districts together and then you looked at the Senate number, Tala Rico is winning by eight in those three districts over Ken Paxton. Same districts in 2024, the same poll had Cruz up by nine over Colin Allred. He ends up winning by nine. So that's a 17 point swing from this poll two years ago to now. And then you had Trump

beating Kamala in those districts by numbers ranging from 10 to 18. And then you have Tel Rico winning by single digits. So again, huge, huge swing, particularly in the, with Hispanic Latino voters down there in Texas. And if you look at each of the districts themselves, just really quick, 15, Tel Rico is plus eight, cruise one by nine. In Texas, 28, Tel Rico is plus 10, cruise one just barely by less than a percent. And then in 34, Tala Rico is up a less than a percent. cruise one by two.

So it's a 13 point swing, a 10 point swing, and a 17 point swing, respectively. That's enough to win. That's a path to win to be obvious about it. And Tell Rico has a good message. He's benefiting from Trump's rake stepping, which we're about to talk about on the economy. He's benefiting from just the heinous treatment of immigrants to this country, particularly Latino immigrants. and I think that that is causing a backlash in that community that Trump had been gaining with in 2024. And I think it's a look,

Hillary's going to have to work. And they're going to throw the book at him, you know, to try to make him into, you know, the woke communist Sharia law, whatever. They're going to do everything. Long way to go to November. They're kind of in these key places. these inflection points, Talarico's showing the growth that you need.

He's got to do it also in the more suburban districts, continue to run up the numbers there. Got work to do with black voters in Texas. Got to make sure the turnout there is high. Jasma Crack is not helping with that to her embarrassment, really. And then, you know, got to make sure that taxes not running up the numbers, not getting Bashar Assad numbers out there. in rural Texas. So a lot of work to do about like in these key districts,

Talarico's on path to victory. And Katie asked me about this on the show. And stick around. We talk about a little bit more. Subscribe to the feed, please. This message is sponsored by Upwork. One thing I've learned from working in media is that you can't do everything yourself. I've tried. It sucks. I failed. There's a point where you have to recognize what you're good at and then find people who are experts at things that you're not good at. That's where Upwork comes in. Upwork gives you fast. access to highly skilled freelance professionals who can help fill critical skill gaps, who can launch projects faster, and who can give your team the expertise that it needs without committing

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sir, would $25 million be appropriate? I said, I'll take it. In April, according to the Wall Street Journal, he hosted his biggest campaign donors. Some even got special tours of the Oval Office. According to the journal, one of his donors, who was given, even given the president, solid gold, stood up and called him

the greatest president in my lifetime. I suppose they feel like their investments have paid off. They're getting what they paid for. A different story, though, for Trump supporters who invested, in many cases, a lot of their money, their own personal money, along with their votes in Donald Trump. We saw him install a new helipad on the White House. He's building a new ballroom in the White House.

But he won't help with gas prices or help with us to live. That's just ridiculous. It's ridiculous. You have all this money and you don't want to support. Maybe I don't know what I'm trying to say. It's just, it's ridiculous. How does it make you feel that President Trump got $2 billion richer in his first year of his second term?

I think that's bull crap. I didn't get, I mean, could have split it with me and you, you know, but that's what happens, I guess. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer get poorer. David Graham of the Atlantic says it is because the president has. has lost touch with the people, all but abandoning the rally circuit where he once heard directly from his supporters.

Now he's insulated among billionaire buddies and supplican aides like Natalie Harp, who feed him a filtered version, vision of the world through rose-colored, gold-colored glasses, excuse me, that probably explains why he's waving off his plunging poll numbers and leaning into what he does best,

self-promotion. According to Ashley Parker, also of the Atlantic, he plans to make the midterms all about him, replete with millions of dollars worth of TV ads, blanketing the airways. There's a little bit of a silver lining here. I don't get to offer self-linings that much

when you invite me on, Katie, so I'm going to do one. Among all of the layers of corruption of this White House, one that I think has gotten less attention is that the administration really is shaking down corporations, individuals to donate to these super PACs, this MAGA, Inc., and say, okay, hey, if you're looking for a meeting or regulation, cut. One great way to do it, you know, is to go to a Trump-aligned lobbyist in D.C., and then they'll point you to the fundraiser for MAGA Inc. And there's always a little bit of this in Washington,

but they've really supercharged it. And as a result, you know, I've been talking to Democratic strategists in some of these key red states in particular, Senate states, the Iowa, Ohio's of the world, and they're nervous about the amount of money Trump has. And they're like, you know, look, these are still red states. You know, we've got good candidates. Josh Turrick or Sherrod Brown, and Tel Eureko, but we're worried they're going to use all that money to really come in here and drive up our negatives, too. And so, you know, they've got to be thrilled to hear that Trump is demanding that this money goes to, you know, spit on ads to show him talk about how great things are, which is probably

going to be a net negative, if anything, as far as TV ads are concerned with regards to kind of whether that helps the Republican candidates in the states, Ashley Hinson and Iowa, or John Hustead in Ohio. So I think this is like a little bit of corruption Godwry. What do they call it in the gerrymander, the dummymander? They thought that they were going to gerrymandered to help Republicans, but it ended up kind of backfiring. This might be a little bit of that, but in the fundraising side of things.

Tim, from those voters who were talking to Alex Tabit, I mean, Tabit raises how much money Donald Trump has made, and the answer is not, oh, good, great. that means this country's doing well. The answer is I'm not seeing that cash. He's not sharing it with me. I think that what Basil just laid out there, I think that was true about Trump in 2016 and 2020.

And in 2024, honestly. I do think this worked for him. People thought that, oh, you know, he knows how to make money. It's going to help me make money. And I think that helped him win in 2016. And then, you know, when they were annoyed about inflation in 2024, it helped him win in 2024. So I think that has worked for him.

The problem is people aren't feeling that now. They're not feeling like they're, things are getting better for them. You see this in every poll, you know, consumer confidence as low as it's been, feelings about the economy or low it's been, feelings about how he's handled it or low. And so then all of a sudden, like, his shtick really falls flat. And I've been kind of surprised myself, to be honest, in focus groups, ones that we do at the bulwark, and some other ones that I've seen from campaigns, where just like kind of swing

voters, kind of Biden to Trump voters, a lot of them do bring up on their own, like, hey, I'm struggling, and he seems like he cares about this ballroom, or the reflective pool or that, you know, enter one example of one of Trump's things. That does feel like it's broken through this time in a way that Trump's always been like this. But, you know, it didn't trickle down to voters. I don't think as clearly as it has in the last year. Well, it's interesting because a lot of, when you talk to voters, there's a fascinating tourism about the economy, that voters react emotionally about it often, that they will say, I hate the economy, Until the day the president that they like takes office,

and then they'll suddenly flip and they'll say, oh, I think the economy's doing great. So there is an emotional aspect to voters' perceptions of how well they're doing, how well the country is doing. We just put up on the screen Donald Trump's approval numbers. He's underwater on every issue right now, on prices and inflation, on health care, on foreign policy, government funding, social programs, trade, education, elections,

immigration, deportation, crime, border, everything. Everything. He's underwater. And what is striking to me is especially the top line numbers on the economic stuff, Ashley, because that proves that Donald Trump's ability to manipulate people's emotions is no longer working. And it's not just what they're feeling right now in terms of costs. It's when they look to the future, they are not optimistic that things are going to get better for them. Why, Tim, don't you think he's gone out and rallied? Why is he lost his ability? Why is he refusing to go out and get in touch with the very people that he was so good at understanding the first time, the second time, and the third time around? Well, he's really old, and so I do think that's part of it. You know, traveling

at that age, you know, is tiring. 80, yeah, it's tough. I think on top of that, I don't know if this is as true now. Like, we'll see they're going to do the R&C midterm thing, which, again, I think probably hurts them more than helps them, outside of maybe Texas and engaging some voters there to turn out, since they're not really thrilled about the person of the top of their ticket in Texas on the Republican side.

But I think some of this was in the first year, to your point about him just being actually out of touch, I think he really just liked the fact that all the richest people in the world were coming up to suck up to him. And I think that he liked playing golf with Bryson DeCambeau. And I think that he liked, you know, that Elon was hanging out and having sleepovers in the White House. Like, I think that he was just having fun hanging out with the rich and famous and going to his golf clubs. And he didn't want him. I think that it was as simple as that in the first year.

And maybe that's starting to change a little bit. As a mother, what is it like living? with these economic conditions? It's hard. It makes me feel like I'm a horrible mother sometimes because I'm stressing about what I'm going to do or do I have enough money to put gas in or do I need to buy eggs and milk for my child or do I need to not go to work every day to make that money because gas prices are so expensive. And mind you, it could be my fault. I do working clearing, but still that's a 45 minute drive. We're putting 80 bucks in every three days, tops maybe. It's just it's, it's

It's hard to feel good when everything's just going downhill, I feel like. It's supposed to be going up. And sometimes, yes, it's up, and then all of a sudden it just goes down. And then we're always told, you know, this is going to change or I'm going to make this better. We're going to make this better. But where is it at? We're not seeing it at all. Do you think Democrats are reaching out effectively or are they battling their own demons?

I think it's a mixed bag. I think the one thing that Democrats are doing good is they're talking about affordability. I think some Democrats think that saying the word affordability is like an amulet that allows them to kind of check the box. And I think that they're going to have to go a little bit further than that. And I think that there's some who are doing that really well. Like we've mentioned Tala Rico. I think even the center left Democrats can learn a lot from Zoron. He doesn't talk about affordability like it's an academic exercise.

If you'd listen to his speeches and his content, he's usually giving, like, tangible examples of cab drivers, or all trucks, like people, you know, who are struggling and what he's going to do to help them, I think the Democrats could do a little bit better on that, and they could probably do a hair less infighting about random streamers as well. So, you know, there's a little room for drugs,

but they're doing pretty good. Tell me about the hairless infighting about random streamers. What does that mean? I just, you know, I mean, the Michigan Senate race, Abdul-Sayev, look, it's his job right now to go win over. Alyssa Slokkin won in 2024, the senator, more of a centrist, Democratic senator.

She won, Connell Harris, lost in the same ballot. Say that's got to go convince those voters, and he's got to also convince the kind of Bernie to Trump voters. These are the types of people that he needs to win over to get over the hump. And I think that there's a lot of fighting back and forth between him and, like, those Michigan congresswoman Hillary Shulton and others, you know, about whether he's too close to Hassan Piker, whether he's not distancing himself enough,

and they're fighting back and forth. And, you know, he was on Jesse Waters this week, kind of like arguing about, you know, trans youth gender reassignment surgery. I'm not sure how helpful that is. So, you know, there can be a little bit of more of an eye on the ball in some of these races. What happens if Texas turns for Tala Rica, right?

The latest polling out of Texas, we weren't able to get to it yesterday because of Dali Parton's death, shows Tala Rico, Tim, ahead of Paxton by, like four points. I think it's really winnable. You know, look, Ted Cruz, people talk about that Beto race. They're like, oh, you know, this is always the white whale. Democrats can't win it.

But Beto never was leading a single poll against Ted Cruz. He just had a lot of hype. And Beto ran a really great race. He lost by three points. And some viewers will struggle to believe this. But Ted Cruz's popularity at that time with Republican voters in Texas was pretty high. You know, he just lost the primary to Trump, but he finished in second place in that primary. this is a totally different situation.

Trump's way more unpopular. Ken Paxton is way more unpopular than Ted Cruz, and he's impeached by his own party, and Talarico's running a very strong race. I think it's very winnable, but it's going to be tough, like Ashley said, and these are the places, like, to win back the Senate, they've got to win in either Texas, Iowa, Alaska,

you know, these places that are pretty darn red. Kansas, they've got a good candidate in Kansas, Reverend, a pastor, Adam Hamilton. But those are the places they've got to win. But I think Texas, I think Texas is doable. I don't think that's out of pocket at all.