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

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

This is not a close call, Bush 43: Follow your vice president's lead and say you're voting for Kamala. Meanwhile, stay alarmed that this is a close race, and don't forget that JD cares more about guns than kids. Plus, after 12 years of Ted Cruz not caring about his state, have Texans had enough? Tim Miller spoke with Rep. Colin Allred at TribFest in Austin, and Bill Kristol joined for a political news roundup. show notes Tim on Kamala's new "Best People" ad featuring ex-Trump appointees

Hello and welcome to the Bollard 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 of debate preview. The whole thing just gets me nervous. I'm on MSNBC all weekend. They're like, Tim, what's she going to say? I don't know what the hell to I know. Hopefully, she's strong and stands up to him. 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 double header. 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, you know, 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, i've actually a three-minute rant and 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 though other people are taking them out of context or not, because to me, it's the next sentence that'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 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, the 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 and there 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 they 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 like the kids leave like the kids all leave and some of them walk home like me and my friend did with his kid some of them have car pickup some of them some of them have carpool so 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 this. 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? There's a kid that goes to this school that wants to, what did he say, make headlines and find a soft target. 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 like the whole thing is fucking insulting it's insulting to our intelligence to say that

this is a 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 say, I don't give a fuck about the school shootings. I 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 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 going to 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 the problem. The parent is the problem and the laws are 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 theater, could have gone to the mall, 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 J.D. 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. Well, that's something that's happening in our schools, crazy in our country. So, 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 Kristol. 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 in that cumulative, these matter. It'd be good to get a few more people, obviously, the John Kellys and George W. Bushes of the world, the Chris Christie's who ran for president this year and said he couldn't support Trump. But the good news about Dick Cheney is I got a fair

number of people in Austin and Dallas saying, if you had told me 20 years ago I'd be here agreeing with Phil Crystal 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 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 bullwork 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. 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. 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 to, well, what about George W. Bush? 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 Washington Post story or one of them, about how W is 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 is that 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 new 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 kind of weigh in on Donald Trump's tariff policy or start to go on the Nicole Wallace panel with me. That's not the request. The request is just to say that.

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. I 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 and McCain didn't really get along, but remember McCain met with him at the White the white house in 2008 i assume i don't have a specific memory of this that bush supported the rodney ryan ticket so fine he's you normally support republicans this time you should support a democrat just support the harris walsh ticket what's so hard yeah or senators he does fundraisers for senators

right so 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 matters 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 to me, they're like, are we sure it wouldn't hurt for W to come after her? And I don't, I, 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. I, 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, 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 bullish and so forth or from from 15 years ago, 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 this 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 as too progressive. Only 32% saw Trump as 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 harassed 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 in 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 almost 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 him 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 apologists and J.D. Vance. Fine, everyone, they're all fine with Tucker Carlson. 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 for the country. But both the voters and the conservative elites, it's not as if conservative elites, despite Cheney and all, and a couple of others are deserting Trump either.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page is where it was. I think 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 it strikes me as problematic i do wonder like so on the one hand it's natural among all of us in the anti-democracy movement to like get nervous and get, you know, a little underwear and a bunch when you see bad polls like this. But one thing that we had been talking about over the last couple of weeks is that there's a little bit of overconfidence, like this is a close race, right? And 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 and pushed her to shove. That 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, you know, is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't know.

But then there's like the Simon Rosenberg theory of the case where like 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 he, oh no, you got to convey the impression

of victory. And that was even, that's why 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, 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. Harry Fischer called me. This has been noted in Austin. It's very bad for you to have said this, you know. And I happen 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, there's a little bit of rallying to the underdog at times. And it's happened 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 that you know that it will keep people focused right

quick aside on carl rove al gore 53 and a half ge George Bush 41 in California in 2000. So they lost that but ended up losing that by 12 points. And Carl was with us in Austin this weekend and would not reveal his private ballot. So I've asked him to come on to the Borg podcast to discuss what we'll be. We'll be just counting our chickens because that's sure to happen any day now. Support for today's episode comes from my pals at one skin do you have a little bit too much fun this summer this labor day it's no secret that the uv rays can take a toll on our skin leaving it dry tired and less vibrant if you want to hit the undo button on uv induced aging say hello to one skin your secret weapon against the sun's toll on your skin

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Age healthy with one skin. The 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. Went to the Audubon Park.

Came home. Turned on the football game. Had a little delivery. And the YouTube TV NFL these these 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 like uh criminals that have been let out and economic stuff in a way like the media discussion about the race is like a lot about trump and maybe a

little balance 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 whitford many many other people and i don't mean to minimize her distinctive virtues and maybe also limitations, but analytically, the headline is Trump.

The headline in the 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 being pro-democracy types want to talk about Trump, and we should,

and it's important to, but as an actual political tactics and 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 you know 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 i don't but and then i'm you know filling in the blanks on the policies i don't know does that really you know matter that much i don't know one thing that they'd be nervous of the weekends we're going to talk to a friend in pennsylvania who's seeing all he does is 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 is there such demand to buy ads you know on news adjacencies right because you it's more It's the best place to buy political ads, presumably, is the kind of people who watch local news, that they have to fill up the news. High school sports, you know,

big development. Just so they can sell our ads. It's going to make a lot of money off this campus. 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 voting for Harris. But he moves in broad circles and run into people who are either seeing actual news stories about this.

Some story about Haitians in Ohio. I followed this. 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 the negative ads are maybe a little more powerful than the positive ads. So I don't quarrel with, as a tactical matter, the Harrisris 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 it's 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. There are 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 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 uses the number. And Stephen Miller seems to have plans for camps to put them in, pending their being flown out of the country, I suppose. And now Trump says it's going to be bloody. And he says it with sort of relish, not with regret, I've got to say. So the whole thing is pretty astonishing. You know, I mean, 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 is, this is where I think your previous point is important maybe people need to make a bit of a point of this on tape maybe you know the extremism 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 from trump i'm a little 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 US citizens. If he's reelected 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 bit 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 this is an important frame like whatever actually happens his plan is two of the largest mass arrests in the country this bloody deportation we just talked about and vengeance against political foes. Lock him up was a bad thing in 2016. It's a lock her up rather, right? It was, 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 the, you 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 the, you know, journalists. 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? Or maybe the inverse. Anyway, so no, it's bad.'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 before right for president united states who is at 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 and this podcast world you get in these situations where trump is 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 sort 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. It's a 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? 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 Clojure's mom, cigarettes for me, I think. I don't want just to hearing you mention that. This is why we didn't spend the whole day. I can't do two podcasts doing debate preview. 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're 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? It is 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? Now listen, I mean, we've had 12 years of Ted Cruz. Ugh, feels longer. 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 them.

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, you know, 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'd say, well, listen, Senator, there's a lot that you could do.

But the first thing that would be required is to care. And, you know, 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. I'll 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 them on November 5th. This is going to sound like a joke question, kind of,

but it's a serious one, which is, you can't beat somebody without understanding what their appeal is. What is Ted Cruz's appeal? 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 tough question to ask me it is tough right um 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 yeah well listen you know i went to baylor uh you know i grew up around a lot of folks who uh you 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 would actually try and conserve, right? 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'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 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 certainly not his personality that's doing it speaking of real conservatives Liz Cheney yesterday was over here. I don't know. Did you guys 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. I was on the House floor with her on January 6th. I have my story of what happened that day.

I texted my wife at one point 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 and 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, you know, 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. Good to be, right. And, but on the sixth, you know, 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 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 bringing some Skittles down there.

She could have done that, and then she'd be speaker probably right now. 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, you know, maybe they should revere her. Maybe they should look to her as an example, you know, 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've 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. Yeah.

And how, in many ways, he felt like he was the keeper of the true flame of what that was, and it had a great funeral that in many ways was a repudiation 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, to 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 or 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 I think the coalition has some other things together W wrote about this in his memoir the four horsemen of peril

he wrote about Condie was talking about this on Fox the other day I was listening closely to see if she would say one important name she didn't I was like are you going to mention it? But the Four Horsemen were nativism, protectionism, isolationism, and populism. He said that 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 is 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 got 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, you know, what used to be the heart of the kind of the Republican Party. Old school, big hair, you know, big elephant

broaches. We can all picture it. Yeah, I think one of the most expensive zip codes in the country, you know, is in my district, Highland Park. And, you know, 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 the U.S.'s role in the world, or if you care about how we're seen, or if you care about 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 Crew. 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 at nudge. Just nudge a little bit. Because 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 uh but like some of the people in texas still have some concerns that like the aocs the world god lover are gonna like be very influenced over over policy in the next administration and kind of rationalizing their vote by talk 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 the backgrounds that I've been in, you're more focused on 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,

and so 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. Right? You know?

And that's a pretty decent rule of thumb. But, you know, the rule of thumb but you know well listen the rule of thumbs exists for a reason i disagree with having an inhumane approach for sure the southern border you have to have a secure one yeah and there is a difference and so to me uh you know having stunts like putting buoys in in the river with 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 the help of 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. I 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. So what does that mean? It means you think you're more important than Texas.

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. You know, 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, right? And you get your binoculars and you point things out. Okay, 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. And you know what we're replacing it with? Texas LNG. So it doesn't make any sense. It's a win-win. It's a win-win. And also, it's a better, cleaner fuel than coal or than some of the alternatives that we see popping up, particularly in Asia. We have to have a more realistic conversation around energy, that our energy mix is changing. In Texas, you cannot talk about taking away hundreds of thousands of jobs in the energy industry.

I will never allow that to happen. 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. Everybody knows it? Okay. I don't know. It was new to me. 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 kind of outside of this room, like, get that message to people that need to hear it? Well it well of course we just have to show up and

talk about it but also I mean this is the record that I've had yeah and so people don't have to you know past performance is the best predictor a future performance and so you know this is what I've done in Congress when we're taking up the inflation reduction Act you know some of the initial proposals in that we're 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'll 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? No, I'm sorry. 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, you know, if Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Kamala already 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 healthcare, 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 ah a historical 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. So I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of the Senate. I'm in the House right now.

It is purely operated on majority rules. If you're not in the majority, you have nothing. 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 going to be about 70 or 80 Republicans who want to keep the government open. But except for that, it's almost entirely majority ruled. The Senate doesn't operate that way,

and I don't want to see it become like the House yeah but the current filibuster doesn't work and so to me we do have to reform it with to fix it we to go back to the the original formulation for it and that is also why we will codify Roe v. Wade and make it a lot because you know 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 with two healthy pregnancies in Dallas in the last five years. I've got a five- and three-year-old, and I 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 a 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 doctor 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 sixth-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 are they going to enforce that? Are they going to pull Texas women over, ask them, what's the nature of your travel, ma'am? Can I inquire as to your condition? Or with this

bounty law that we have here, are they going to turn us all into 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 not who we are. And so the only way for us to fix this in Texas is to codify Roe

at the federal level. Yeah. The, 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 like kind of readopted this term freedom around this context. But the other thing, the other way that it is anti-traditional conservative, I mean, you know, when I was growing up, when I was a college Republican, we didn't like the damn trial lawyers. You want to try a civil trial? Yeah, we're going gonna sue everything like this whole notion like the incentives are so wrong yeah in a way that that anybody that's looking at this clearly from from a conservative perspective

should be able to see right where it's like where doctors there's all these horror stories coming out of texas where doctors conservative people 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. Or 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 like there have been all these stories that the incentives are forcing doctors to not give care that's even legal care. Like 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 fallopian 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. Yes. Right? Where it's like, oh, if you're aware. And 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. It's like even if you're pro-life, 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. One quick example of that. Lauren Miller, she's an 8th generation

Texan. I always laugh because I didn't know we had 8 generations of Texans. I met an 8th generation Texan. That goes back to Mexico.'t know we had eight generations of Texans. I met an eight generation Texan. I think it was back to Mexico. I met one in the valley the other day who said her family was in Mexico and then it became Texas since 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. And I've 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 have been forced to give 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-freicle. 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? Let me go to this state. Is he popular in here? There's got to be one. Is his sister go to this state. Is he popular in here? There's got to be one. There's got to be one. Is his sister in here or something?

Is his sister in here? 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 pretty disturbing. But we'll 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 mailing out voter registration forms. Travis, they're saying. And Travis as well? 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 verify whether or not you're eligible to vote in Texas. And all these other steps as well. It'll be checked against our DPS records, and then you'll be able to vote.

That's the voter registration process in Texas. And so our Attorney General was 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 that 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 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. 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 all this. Just as an aside, as a libertarian, parking tickets are kind of authoritarian. At times. I've got the cameras I don't like. It's a side of me. Hopefully, if we get over the authoritarian threat, we can go back to arguing about things like that. That's right.

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. All right. We've got to talk about one more tough one, and then we can maybe have a little fun. There's 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'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 pickup with my buddy's kid in your neighborhood yesterday when I was in Dallas. And I just did school pickup 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 to them, I don't know what I'll do. I don't know what I'll become. Like, 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 yeah they're always leaving out the third component right which is that too easy access to too lethal of weaponry yep right i'm a texan i know exactly who we are okay i went to camp grady spruce at possum kingdom lake okay if y'all want to know how country Texas I can get. When I was seven years old, we had a rifle range. I'm sorry, Possum Lake? Possum Kingdom. Possum Kingdom.

Don't sell it short. Don't sell it short. I'm learning Texas culture right now. Don't sell it short. It's a kingdom. I haven't met the king. We had a referee range where we were learning how to shoot.22s

when I was seven years old. It held on seven? Yeah. No. Yes. Really? Yes. You held a gun

when you were seven? Yes. Okay. I don't know, man. It wasn't until I left Texas. I'm out of my element. 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 seven-year-old. You know what it was about? 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's funny, but 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? That's fine. But we have to be responsible with it. This is where when we come to things like what happened in Georgia where having access to an AR,

you said 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 Safer 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, I'll say what you want. But I do think that as you talk about this balance, right, like how you over texas voters like how do you kind of think about that challenge right like this this idea that maybe you know sometimes uh you know there are people in texas that feel like the dem democrats are gonna like you know come and start confiscating their arsenals you know listen i you know i obviously there's some folks that if you're fetishizing is these things and you know that 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, you know, listen, this is, you know, it's important to me. This is a part of our culture. It's a part of, you know, 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. And 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. But he could buy a beer. He couldn't buy a handgun. But 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. Yeah. Right. And so we can change that. But we have to have leaders in place who want to. Amen. Let's also talk, do a little politic. And so when I had Beto in the pod a couple weeks ago,

and I was asking about your race and, you know, the challenges and the opportunities, and here was his feedback. He said, you know, 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?

Like, what's the, how do you do it? How do you break through where he wasn't able to? Yeah. Listen, this is a, we've got a great state. It's a, how do you do it? How do you break through where he wasn't able to? Yeah. Listen, this is a, we've got a great state. It's a massive state. In the last month, we've done 50 stops in 22 cities. And we also have to have the resources to make sure we can communicate in the biggest media markets in the country and also in markets, 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 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 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'll serve in the Senate. But one thing that we have done and

that I think we'll 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 than 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.

More than you. I'm beating him in the rankings. I've been checking. Is that right? He had me for a little while. We passed him. I don't know. Maybe 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. It is. Right you know. What about the getting attention side of things? I don't know you know I so putting on my old former Republican strategist hat you know Republicans like to do those ads so they got the guns and they're shooting people and they're like I'm gonna take we're gonna take out the you know we're gonna take out the the ballot boxes was one I saw recently. Maybe you should do some tackling drills.

Like, I'm going to be taking out Ken Paxton. They have a little fake Ken Paxton. I don't know. Is there... 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'll just brainstorm. We're brainstorming. We're just brainstorming. I told brainstorming. We're just brainstorming. No bad ideas in a brainstorm. No bad ideas. Let's throw stuff 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-listening bros. There's a lot of conversation about this right now. There's an unprecedented gender gap. There's. There's this huge, like an unprecedented gender gap. There's 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 like culturally they have felt disaggregated from the Democratic establishment, fairly or unfairly. How do you like like, get, it feels like those should be gettable folks for you. You know, NFL player, you're not scary,

you're not, you know, have you thought about that? No, I have. And, you know, it's actually interesting because, you know, I'm raising two boys and I think a lot about, you know, 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 in a lot of ways, that was kind of, I wasn't disaffected, but I was in their shoes. I was just trying to make it. 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 kind of feel like well listen do you care about me though and I think that's fundamentally a lot of what we talk about in politics

can feel to young men like it's not about them. And so it's my job to make sure that they know that I'm going to 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 going to care about them and wake up every day thinking 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, you know, coming from a single parent background, going to our public schools, you know, playing sports here, and having made it in that regard, this is what, you know,

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. Because also, it's not so political. Listen, obviously, I'm in office and I'm running for office. I'm actually just not a hyper-partisan. I've never come at things that way.

I don't wake up in the morning and think, what's Team Blue doing today? I don't... My thought 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 cultural divide a little bit. My mom was a huge Ann Richards fan, and so was I. Cecile Richards is a friend.

But listen, I woke up this morning and all I wanted to figure out was what happened in the game last night. That's how a lot of people are. Those are the opportunities I appreciate. What's the problem with the Cowboys? happened in the game last night you know um and that's how a lot of people are and so those are the those are the opportunities i appreciate uh so what's what's the problem with the cowboys like things are things are ugly over there it seems like they're in shambles the texans are gonna be good texans are gonna be good i think but the cowboys are in shambles they had such a

good year and it's just all falling apart it's just jerry what's what's happening it's jerry jerry blowing it i don't i it? They won 12 games. Listen, they flamed out in the playoffs. 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?

I just don't know what they'll do in the playoffs. I think they're going to be okay. 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, you know, they've got a lot of talent. But to me, the better team

in Texas professionally is probably going to be the Texans. And I say that as somebody who the Texans were my division rival when I was in the NFL. Oh, yeah.

And I really did not like the Texans. That was back when they were really good. And Matt Schaub was a quarterback. Andre Johnson at receiver. Aaron Foster at running back. They 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 Arian Foster? Arian? Probably. Yeah. 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 yeah so um that's how i made my career uh but i think they're gonna be really good they got a great young quarterback and they got a really talented team they're good and i played against their head coach actually who's a great guy we're're out of time. Thank you so much, INA, everybody. The big... 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, all right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, everybody. Enjoy. Thank you all. The honky-tonks in Texas were my natural second home Where you tip your hat to the ladies and the rose of San Antonio

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 live 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 Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper with audio engineering and editing by Jason Brown.