The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Kristol: The Paxton Nightmare Is Costing Republicans Big Time

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

Not only did the lamest of October surprises blow up in the faces of Ken Paxton and the rightwing loons desperate to get Talarico on something, Greg Abbott is now in a tight race with his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa. And all the money pouring in to prop up Paxton could be better spent on Senate races in Alaska and Kansas. This would be a great time for the Democratic Governors Association to steer (a lot) more funding Hinojosa's way. Plus: Bill and Tim share their long shots, POTUS can't quit showing how much he's in the tank for Putin, MBS is finding out the hard way how the Trump family treats their business partners, don't be distracted by DHS's clownish authoritarianism in raiding Ilhan Omar's home, and the Iranian family that Tim has been advocating for is still in the Dilley detention center. Bill Kristol joins Tim Miller.show notes: Will Sommer and Andrew on MAGA's Talarico breakdown Bill in "Morning Shots" on thinking beyond the midterms Bill's "Bulwark on Sunday" with Ron Brownstein Brendan on the Trump superfan running in upstate New York Blake Gendebien's campaign site (NY-21) Gina Hinojosa's campaign Tim's piece on Maryam Tahmasebi and her family October Surprise: The Bulwark is 30% off Bulwark LIVE in Atlanta on Oct. 20 Closing Song: MJ Lenderman - “She’s Leaving You” The Bulwark store Get 15% off OneSkin with the code BULWARK at https://www.oneskin.co/BULWARK#oneskinpod

Hello and welcome to the Bullwark Daily. I'm your host Tim Miller. It is Monday. So we're here with editor at large Bill Crystal who did not spend the weekend at a mental health facility in Warren County, Ohio, as far as I know. You never know, Tim. I like, you know, what happens in Warren, Ohio stays in Warren, Ohio, you know? Yeah. I mean, look, I don't want to, you know, say anything to hurt the feelings of our friends that we met in Dayton and we loved everybody that was out there supporting.

but if I was having a mental health crisis, I don't know about like exurban rural Ohio is the place that I would go. You know, for me, at least I would want somewhere where there's some vitamin D, you know, maybe some palm trees, but who knows? For people who don't understand the jokes that I'm making right now, the MAGA right was all a flutter over the weekend.

They thought they had James Telerica. They thought they had them pegged. It was over. They had their silver bullet, their October surprise. Although, the Bullerick has a deal right now. If you go to the Borg.com slash surprise, we have an October surprise deal for you as well if you want to become a Borg Plus member.

But they thought they had their October surprise. They had evidence that James Telerico had left the campaign trail and was in a padded room somewhere in Ohio. Their evidence for this that they had. It might have began even with an old friend of mine, strangely, who features in my book, Why We Did It, Caroline Ren. She was posting a lot about this or looking she saw a private plane took off from Austin and flew to a tiny airport in Ohio, 20 minutes from the Lindner Center,

a inpatient mental health treatment facility. The Lindner Center is the same facility that Talrico's friend, Lina Hidalgo, a liberal judge in Texas, had spent seven weeks there, apparently three years ago. So that's what they had. A plane went from Texas to a small airport near the center. Then these two guys, Nick Sorder and Ryan Amaker, they called the center several times. They pretended to be Tala Rico's cousin. It seems like they broke some laws. I'm not a lawyer,

but they seems like they broke some laws. And they shared a short audio clip that seemed to show somebody saying that Tala Rico had checked out earlier that evening. This was on Saturday. And this hat, now everybody was on board. You know, Rick Grinnell, the former interim national security advisor, the New York Post, you know, the Turning Point USA guys, everybody started saying, they got them. They got them. Tala Rico was in the center. The problem was that we don't really know exactly what was happening on that call,

but hours later, the Lindner Center put out of St. St. Tarrico is never there. Our own Will Sumner and Andrew Egger got the full six minutes of the phone call where the woman on the other end of the line keeps saying that he's not there over and over again. It seems like maybe she was just trying to get these weirdos off the phone. I don't know. The timeline also didn't work out. James Alrico on Saturday could not have been released from a mental health facility in Ohio

because he was on stage with Casey Musgraves in Austin. The whole thing is extremely bizarre, and I think, well, it speaks to the desperation of where the Ken Paxton campaign is and also just like how easy it is to move totally fake nonsense around the right media. I guess Elon Musk retweeted three times that you found this very interesting

or maybe just retweeted it, I don't know, is that one of his interesting kind of things for this. So that gives it a lot of, attention. It was ridiculous. It flared up for several hours on Sunday, and I guess it's now flared away, and Andrew and Will have done excellent reporting on it and how that happened. For me, one question is, so it does say a lot about the right wing ecosystems, has a lot about the desperation on the MAGA right about what's happening in three weeks. Do we think, I mean, Caroline Red is not a nobody, though. She was involved in January 6th. Do we know yet if the Pakistan

campaign was it wasn't involved, Republican officials in Texas, Republican officials nationally? I feel Like, that's sort of the one additional shoe that could drop. Do we think they were just innocently doing this little thing that was happening? No. No. I mean, they were obviously, I think, pushing it behind the scenes. I mean, the Paxton people, this is not the most professional crew down there, and it's a Motley crew. I mean, one of them, there was a side controversy over the weekend about one of the Paxton advisors calling Cornyn the C word on Twitter.

And so, you know, and this is, I guess I'll just repeat, a motley crew, the Paxon. crowd. And yeah, I don't know. I mean, Caroline was a big fundraiser for Carrie Lake and for Trump for a while and is now independent. I'd have to go and look at the filings to see who is on the Paxton payroll at this point. But this is that that's the same group. I mean, Nricanelle was very much around, you know, the lake and master's posse in Arizona. I mean, you could go down a huge list of Republican kind of operatives and right wing media folks who are pushing this. Basically, you know, part of the of this is you get a small group of these kind of MAGA influencer types that are like trying to get attention. But as soon as that audio came out, you know, everybody kind of piled on it and tried to push it forward as if it was real story. And it was like the whole thing was kind of ridiculous from the start. You know, it's one of these things like, even if you just step back for one second, it's like, okay, well, it was a little strange. I guess I will say that Tall Rico, like, was off the campaign trail for like a week and wasn't doing videos or whatever. And there's

stuff you can do when you have the flu. I'm a wimp when it comes to sickness. You know, I'm down. But I, usually when I have, I've had some bad sicknesses since I've hosted the podcast. I come on here. I do the podcast for one hour and then I go lay down the rest of the day. Like, you can do an hour's worth of work. So it was a little confusing why he was so, so, but, but the idea that he had gone to Ohio, it was all so thin, you know, it was kind of like the, it's really the Jack Smith thing over again, right? Like, these guys are in their own bubbles and they want, they want, they want, they want, want to be able to get the bad guys so badly. It's kind of like, I guess Elon Omar, which we'll talk about in a little bit.

You know, they're willing to grab one to anything that even feels like it might have a kernel of a truth. And, you know, I just, they don't have the best people. And it was the old Watergate line? Like, these guys aren't very smart. Like, they just don't. And it's like, okay. And if you thought about it for two seconds, it was like, who cares of Jack Smith was

at the Hawks game? It's like, okay, who cares? Like, there's one plane. Like, what does that tell us? Like, it tells us nothing. Like, they didn't actually have anything. any of these situations? I mean, I guess maybe though they've learned that they don't pay a price, or so far,

maybe this is changing. They haven't paid a price for this, right? I mean, the actual, an actual promoter of Pizza Gate is about to become the press secretary to the president of the United States. Now, we know it's, you know, we are kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel by now in Mago World, and I think that's an instance of that. But still, you know, it's not as if these people are being blackballed from well-paying jobs and allegedly what once were prestigious jobs.

and consultancy, consultant contracts or being booted off, God knows, you know, social media or anything, or being disciplined even for it any way. So I guess that's maybe emboldened the wall to just try anything. Honestly, I forget not having any consequence. Like, being the person that creates, like, fake controversies has been a boon in Maga World. I mean, like, there's that moron Nick Shirley, you know, that was trolling around Minnesota, around the time that we're there. He's become famous.

I mean, Elon, he become famous by pushing the sorts of stuff. And, yeah, I mean, maybe there's some consequence of, like, you care about being on Susan Collins staff at Center Appropriations or something. You know, there might be a handful of, like, serious jobs left, but not too many. Think about the guy. I'm going off memory here. So he was a speechwriter that then went on to DeSantis's campaign and put out the video that had the son-in-rod, which was, you know, this kind of obscure Nazi symbol,

but then was running, was pushing this kind of white nationalist stuff to a bunch of, yeah, kind of like fake Twitter accounts. He gets fired from the Dysantus campaign and ends up getting hired by Eric Schmidt, who does the Jack Smith nonsense, and pushed a lot of Eric Schmidt's blood and soil messaging in his speeches. And now he's working for Marco. He's in the State Department. So, like, even the serious jobs, like you, if you, if you,

you are the type of person that is like sticking your finger in the eye of the left, it's actually benefits you to be conspiratorial, controversial, a little racist. Unfortunately, I just think that's where we're at. Totally. The radicalness of the Trump's second term, I feel like maybe we haven't quite done justice to that. You know, we like you and me, I think maybe we have, but the world, even our world hasn't quite done justice to just how far it's gone and how pervasive it is. there's another guy in the State Department, right, who got fired, if I'm not mistaken,

from the White House Speech Writing Office in 2018 or something, because he was such a white racist, you know, great replacement theory kind of guy. And now he's got some acting assistant secretary of state thing in the State Department. That guy Beatty, I think his name is. Yeah, Darren Beattie. I try not to follow these guys too closely. Yeah, no, Darren Biddy and Nate Hockman.

They both are very prominent now for Marco. For the other people, if you ask some people on the CNN panels, they'd be like, oh, this is the reasonable one in the administration. And it's like he's the one hiring them. Right, right. No, absolutely. And these are, you know, State Department, Defense Department, not stuck in some third-rate agency somewhere that doesn't matter, right?

Look at the people around Hexeth. They have real lunatics who were blackballed in the Trump First Term, and who were they right back in there at pretty high levels in defense, encouraging the executions, the live streaming of the execution, et cetera. I mean, it's bad. It's bad. And I hope there's a price to be paid. There will be a price to be paid this November.

you're just going to see if Talarico, do you think this penetrated far enough in Texas to actually change the race at all to give to lock it up for Talarico or is it just where it was before, which is him with a pretty good lead but not not locked up. Probably where it was before. I mean, you know, maybe it has a motivating factor, you know, continue. Like this is the sort of thing that's silly enough that kind of breaks through a little bit in the way that typical stuff does. And I was interested in this clip, remote with the weekend when you're asking the extent to the Paxton campaign pushing it. I mean, Paxton himself was pushing it. he's on Fox. And I want to play a clip of the Fox and Friends host asking Paxton about Tal RICO's debate challenge. Well, no, look, we've been working on that for months with him.

And, of course, we can never quite work out the details because he always wants something we can't do. So the reality is the big story is the fact that he was missing from the campaign trail. I know he'd love to change the topic to debates. Tel Rico posted that video with this statement. Here are the details. literally any time, any place, any network. So this is, like, Paxson is not really capable of taking advantage this, right? I mean, he's scared of Tala Rico, doesn't want to debate him, is in his safe space on Fox and Friends weekend, you know, trying to advance, you know, rumors and conspiracies about, like, what Tala Rico is doing when he had the flu. And instead, like, even on Fox, he gets the tables turned on him.

Yeah, I guess that campaign is going to suck up a couple hundred million. of Republican money. And I think Paxon really is going to lose. And I think Abbott may lose as well. And that's another couple hundred billion dollars. So that's pretty good. That worked out pretty well, I think, maybe. I don't want to prematurely declare any victories here, but that may have worked out pretty

well. Yeah. I discussed this on a part of a week or two ago. I think it was Laxia Jane. So others have been discussed this in social media. Like the Paxon thing might be such a nightmare that ends up costing them, Kansas or Alaska or something. Because, like, that was money that could have been spent in a state to short.

up a Republican who is like not just an insane, incompetent, corrupt buffoon like Ken Paxton, who even has longtime Republicans opposing him. So look, y'all, homeownership can be a bear. There's always something going wrong, you know. And I'm not just talking about the leaky faucets, but could be a gutter, could be a water pump. You know, we had some issues recently that are, we'll just call them New Orleans-based issues, all right? When you live below sea, level and have this kind of humidity. Sometimes the houses suffer the consequences. I don't know how to fix anything. And so what we did was we were able to turn to our new friends at HomeServe. HomeServe is like a subscription for your house. For as little as $4.99 a month, they've got your back.

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year. Go to home serve.com slash bulwark to find the plan that's right for you. That's homeserve.com slash bulwark for 50% less. Savings compared to renewal price, void in Florida. To your point about the Texas Gov race, I don't talk about that. And I want to talk about it in the context of our long shots every week. We've been discussing some long shots we like because the environment keeps getting better and better for the Democrats. Last week I discussed Kentucky 6, Zach Dembo, which is in Lexington, and I am not going to talk about anything else that is happening in Lexington recently besides that campaign. So Zach Dembo, I think looking good, and the Republicans are now putting money into that race, Kentucky 6.

I was announced after we discussed this last week. I also Colorado 5, Colorado Springs, I mentioned. You have mentioned the Idaho Senate race where I had someone from Idaho come up to me last week. week and be like, I really appreciated what you said about the Idaho Senate race making play. And I was like, to be clear, it was Bill that said the Idaho Senate race was in play. But thank you. It's getting out there. It's getting out there. The Idahoans saw this. South Carolina and Florida Senate, you also mentioned as well last week. Okay. For this week, I want to talk about the Texas governor's race, Gina Hinojosa. I do still think, I wouldn't

call this a long shot anymore, but I think she's still the underdog as we sit here today, October 12th. The fact that a Democrat, you know, like her, all respect her, we had at our live event. She seems like a good person. I have some friends that live in the school district. She kind of got a lot of attention for, you know, her work and some of the controversies around funding around schools there in Texas. And I have a friend there who's like a very middle of the road person, not that political, who's like really impressed with her around this, you know, education issue. So it seems an impressive person, but wasn't like, the top recruit for Texas Democrats to run in this race.

I think that there was kind of a sense of this was going to be a really uphill battle. Now all of a sudden she's run a really good campaign. Paxton is dragging the whole ticket down. Abbott is struggling. Polls show her, you know, pretty much kind of close to where Beto was in 2018 in that Senate race, you know, down one, two, three, four points. So in play. And I just got to say, like, this is very,

it's winnable. The crazy things happen in wave years. We've discussed that a bunch over the last few months. I think that the electorate is going to be very Democratic-friendly in Texas this time. You've had this huge flip among Hispanic voters. We're talking about that more this week. But just kind of the makeup of the electorate who's going to turn out. I think it's going to be very beneficial to her.

There's this side controversy that Andy Bashir has caught up in where the Democratic Governors Association has not put any money. into this race, like maybe a million dollars or something like that. We put more money into the Oregon governor race and the main governor's race. And it's just, I don't understand it. This is sort of this inner DC thing that I try not to usually talk about in this podcast, but I kind of bubbled up into the public. There was frustration on the Democratic side.

And the DGA, Bashir and his team, I put out that, like, you know, basically saying, well, you know, that race is just due to, we got it. We don't want to take resources away from these other races. I look at this and it's like, who cares about the Oregon governor's race? Like, no offense. I've had a couple of messages from people in Oregon that wanted me to talk about this race. But like, if Tina Kotech is doing that bad of a job as governor that she's going to lose a deep blue state in a Democratic wave year, well, then maybe the Oregon Democratic Party needed a little turnover.

I mean, like there's going to be huge majorities in the Oregon House and Senate. It's not like some Republicans going to be able to go in there and do anything crazy. It's just in the grand scheme of things doesn't matter. that much. A Democrat winning Texas would have massive policy implications, real life implications for people that live in Texas. We've been like, you know, particularly low-income people, people that are struggling that have been screwed over by the Abbott regime that doesn't care about them at all. It would have huge democracy implications as we think, look ahead to redistricting 2030, like a bunch of other stuff, psychological implications on the Republicans to have lost Texas,

political. Anyway, I think the Democrats should be going all in on the Texas governor's race right now. out. And if you throw in whatever, 10, 20 million in that race and they still lose, it's still, I think, a better spent than trying to shore up Oregon. Look, anti-incumbency is part of what's happening in this wave year, and that is hurting some Democratic incumbents who may have just, you know, accumulated various grievances against them. That may be the case in Oregon. I imagine she's going to win anyway. As you say, if she loses, as she loses, that's the Democratic legislature and what's going to happen. Maine, she's up by 10 points to Democrats. So that's really ridiculous. Now, maybe they think it'll

help the Senate candidate, Jackson, I don't know. I totally agree with you, though. The implications of winning the governorship in Texas, either Texas or Florida. And if you want Texas and Ohio, which I think is totally doable at this point, you're changing American politics for the next four years, right? I mean, you're changing the map. You're changing if you hold on in 2030, you're changing redistricting. But just in terms of as you say, you're in gerrymandering, you're kind un-jerrymandering. Right. But in terms of, right, the actual effects that if you think in those States could be in play in 28, right? And then you've got a Democratic governor. But just the actual effects of people's lives, I agree. Texas has been such a leader, and this is why why Abbott isn't doing

very well in Sillian pushing every crazed Republican, you know, agenda item, you know, way down to the kind of, let's let, you know, make it difficult for women who are having, you know, a miscarriage to get medical help and that kind of craziness, that it would make a big difference, I think, for them to be, for that to change at that level. And so, yeah, I totally agree with you. Generally, they're still being a little too cautious. It might be easy to say. And obviously, it could all backfire. We could be wrong. And they could end up not spending enough in some states that look okay. And then they lose them by a point. But that just doesn't feel to me where we are. And a lot of time in these situations, look, I remember this from back in my day when I, you know,

wanted money for a candidate that we had. And we'd have some donor that would give money an earmarket to, so who knows. Maybe some rich guy in Oregon or Maine has sent this money to the DGA and they've earmarked it for those races. But even still then, it's, what I would have liked to have seen from Bashir is to come out and say, yeah, we want to send more money in Texas. Bring us, you know, come on, let's do it. Send us money. Paddle to the medal. Well, it's not too late.

It's not too late. It's not too late. Bashir got on TV today or got on the phone today, really, honestly, until five big donors, you could raise $25 million for Texas. I agree with that. So I think that it's worth money going into Texas governor right now, Kentucky 6, which I mentioned. I should also mention the New York 21 race, our guy, Brendan Hartnett, is an article today. I've mentioned this race before, but another race could use an influx of cash. It's Stephanics old district.

The Democrat is Blake Jendebein, totally normal dairy farmer, mainstream Democratic candidate, good for the district. As opponent, Anthony Constantino said that Donald Trump and Roger Stone can control him, said that he'd be subordinate to Trump. When he has asked about the Iran, where he's like, Trump knows so much about Iran, but I don't know. I couldn't challenge him on that. Also has a rap album dedicated to Donald Trump. So, like, that is what who Republicans are putting up in this district in, you know, upstate New York. And anyway, we'll put a link to Brandon's article in there. But I think that's another one that could use some resources.

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onskin.com with code bulwark. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. Your long shots for this for this week on a turn. to bill. High bar to pass after Idaho and South Carolina Senate. I set the bar so high with Idaho, I'm now picking, you know, various, you know, sort of virtual safe races at this point. But, you know, just on the candidate thing, it is, I mean, this is sort of a scraping the bottom with a barrel thing from Aga World. We've had so many years of Trump that we're now getting

to the third tier Trumpy candidates in a lot of these places. And conversely, I would just say on the Democrats for all that I'm happy to criticize them. And I say this morning and morning shots that winning in 26 isn't enough, blah, blah, blah. Still, they have pretty good candidates. I've to say. If you look across the board at the Senate, the governor, the House races, you know, there are a couple I could, would have preferred others in primaries and stuff, but it's really a pretty impressive group and I think that's

true in a couple of these races too. Anyway. That's races for sure. I mean, say what you went about Elise Stefanik, and I've said about every bad thing that you can say about a person about her. I mean, she went to Harvard. She's read books. She knows what she's talking about. I mean, like the insidification from Elise DeFonick down to a rapper who says

that Trump can control him is pretty noteworthy. Yeah, no, absolutely. So in Virginia, well, so my long shots, which are not super long at this point, but still, Virginia, remember there was that redistricting, it got a Spanberger pushed it through. It considered some political costs, barely made it in the referendum after Texas had redistricted. The other way, the other way, the state, too, the thought in California and Virginia and other states, too, is you got to have a Democratic redistricting to counter the Republican illegitimate midterm, or at least unprecedented, the decade, I guess is the way to say it redistricting. So Spanagan pushed that through in Virginia. Then the court, somewhat weirdly, I've got to say, overturned it. And we're back to the districts we had drawn by a judge with nonpartisan advisors in 2020, I believe. So we're back to the districts that are 6-5 Democratic of Republican. It's a pretty evenly divided state.

So we're not competing in a redistricted area. We're competing in the same districts. And now it looks like Democrats are going to win, I think, Virginia won, Virginia 2. Virginia 2 is Virginia Beach. Virginia 1 is kind of suburban Richmond in central Virginia. they were districts that Spamberger won in her big 15-point victory in 2025. Polling suggests right now that the Democrats are in good shape there.

They have good candidates, actually. But now I hear and I gather that Virginia 5, which was minus Spamberger lost by 7. So Spangor won the state by 15 points. So we're already up at the, we're not at the 2024 levels. We're at 2025 levels here. Spamberger lost that by 7. A lot of Democrats I know think Perry Lello can win there in Charlottesville is at the heart of that district. and then a lot of Republican areas around Charlottesville,

maybe huge turnout in Charlottesville, I'm thinking. And then I think serious people think that Virginia 6, which Spanberger lost by 17 points, is in play as well. Kind of a real mega Republican, Ben Klein, a good Democratic candidate, Beth Macy, I think, is her name. Yeah. She wrote Dobsick, the book that turned into the TV show about, you know, kind of Appalachian, you know,

fentanyl abuse, prescription drug abuse. It's really TV show is great. Is it? It's good enough for me. Good to know. Okay. I do recommend dope sec if you're looking for a binge. I mean, it's not really uplifting. Yeah. No, but I should look at that. Maybe after the election.

Anyway, good for Beth Macy for running. You know, that is one thing that happens when you get Trump reelected and you see what happened those first six, nine months of 2025. A lot of people ran for Congress who might not otherwise have done so, you know? I mean, who are just like, this is intolerable. And so you do get a pretty good Democratic draw. You get some weak Republican candidates. It's interesting.

So Harris won Virginia by about five, six points in 2024, Spanberger by 15 points in 25. If it's a 10-point swing from the Biden-Harris numbers, which is what we now expect in the generic, that gets you to the Spanberger numbers. So I think Virginia one and two are safe. What's interesting to me is that people now think Virginia, at least, is going to do better for the Democratic House candidates than Spanberger was able to do in a very strong showing in 2025. If that's at all replicated elsewhere, now, A, we don't know if that will happen, Virginia, but if it does happen to some degree. and B, that's suggesting a really monster wave, at least some states, in maybe the purplish states, though, which Virginia is. I mean, Spanberger, after all, was replacing a Republican governor.

It wasn't like it and swept in a big Democratic legislature that had previously been very closely ballast. So anyway, I guess it makes me think some of these generic numbers are concealing a little erosion in blue states, New York, Oregon, as we were mentioning. But it might be that the swing is a little bigger in the swing-ish, purple light red states, you know. We're seeing that. As you mentioned, like,

kind of the anti-incumbent wave is piling on to kind of the anti-Trump wave. I think that's happening. So you're seeing, you know, in red states and purpleish red states more of a swing. The other thing is there's certain demographics. About this piece was interesting. I saw it of the weekend. If you looked at,

they were just looking at this one congressional district in New York. So, you know, there's going to be some noise when you, like, But it was a deep analysis at Tom Swazzi's district in New York. If you just looked at it based on income, it was a total inverse in how big the swing towards Democrats were. Right.

Like the highest income had the smallest swing to Democrats and the lowest income at the largest. And I do think that if you add that on to, you know, the Hispanic vote swing, you know, and you kind of map that into certain locations where there is more low income, more Hispanic. these was places that Trump really overperformed in 2024 among kind of the lowest income and black and brown voters. And I just think that that's going to totally flip back this time. And so I do think that that, you know, certain places you're going to see that. And there's always this kind of discussion over like how much of the Trump thing was the economic anxiety side of it.

And, you know, it's always like there's a mix. There's a lot of cultural stuff. There's a lot of, you know, it's not just the economics. but the areas that are getting hit the hardest and the voters that are giving hit the hardest by inflation, I think we're going to see the biggest swings, which is at some level kind of obvious, but it's pretty interesting to see just how stark it was if you're just pulling out just the income. Yeah, and I think the white working class swing, Brownstein pointed out in the conversation I had with them yesterday, Ron did, is pretty massive, it looks like, from the polling in some of these key states. That was Trump's base, right? even the white evangelical working class, which is really, really Trump's base, there's some cracks, but certainly among the non-evangelical white working class, you're seeing real movement,

and that's making the difference that, you know, Democrats already doing pretty well with college educated and post-colle, you know, God knows graduate school and so forth. So at upper middle class people, I mean, one way to say it might be that when the economy was good or when people either felt Biden's economy was bad or back even in 2018, when they felt Trump's economy was decent, they can vote on their cultural grievances. But now, having done that, maybe they see that these grievances were a little ridiculous, but more importantly, they're actually paying a real price, right? And the gas prices really hits working class and poorer Americans so much more. Gas prices are not a progressive tax. You know, everyone's paying

this. In fact, if anything, I would suspect lower middle class, you know, Americans drive more, depend on driving more for jobs and so forth. A lot of upper middle class Americans. So it's a real tough hit on those voters, and they are peeling away from Trump, it seems. The other thing you mentioned, your Brownstein conversation, I have been, you know, so locked in on the midterms, and everyone's when I'll dabble in a little 2028 presidential talk. But, you know, I haven't looked at the 2028 Senate map. You need to be a real nerd, like Ron Brownstein, to start doing that. And I was intrigued by your conversation about how the interplay between the Democrats kind of running up the numbers. If you can get up to 50,

354 senators this time, or 52 even, what that means for 2028, whether a hypothetical Democratic president could have a Senate majority. And then obviously that has impact on confirmations and redistricting and a bunch of other stuff. Yeah, Ron makes the point that if Trump's numbers don't rally in the next two years and there's not much reason they should, Republicans should be favored to lose the White House in 28. For all the weaknesses of Democrats, there's not much historical president for a party to hold the White House, even if it's not the same candidate, to go to the voters at the end of the previous president's term and hold the White House if he's really unpopular. You look at Bush in 2008, Obama was a strong candidate. McCain, I think actually

was a pretty strong candidate. Wasn't that connected to Bush? Didn't matter. They weren't going to reelect a Republican after when Bush was at 32 percent. And the same is true in many other instances before going way, way back, incidentally. So if you, you know, if you leave the White House week, at the end of two terms, and Trump really is, well, it is the end of two terms, that already creates, you know, some odds for a Democratic president in 28. And winning the Senate by 52 plus, really 53 or 54, they're not going to lose the Senate if they go into 53 seats and a Democratic president wins at the top of the ticket and then I can lose the House either for that matter. So I think you're pretty much, if Democrats could win the Senate by more than 52 seats this time,

and if they can then help keep Trump snuppers down in 27, 28, you are increasing the odds of a Democratic trifecta in 2029, which is awfully important for like five million obvious reasons, like fixing our democracy, fixing economic distribution of income and wealth, you know, and about, you know, strengthening guardrails against authoritarianism, Supreme Court nominees, getting, you know, I mean, certainly the Democrats in the Senate at this time, Trump, Thomas and Alito won't retire, which they would incidentally. Don't you think if Republicans hang out to the Senate would both of them, would retire. And then, so that would get a younger replacement, whereas you could actually get a flip of

those seats on the Supreme Court in 2029 with a Democratic president and a Democratic Senate. So this is hopium. This is thinking too far ahead. No one should act on this. I want should focus on the next three weeks, et cetera, et cetera. But it is just analytically, I think, a pretty true statement and shows how important the Senate is. Too much talk still. I was on some call late last week. The House is where we have to focus, Bill. It's like, you're crazy. These House seats could flip right back. One Senate seat is worth like five houses at this point. And it's right, I mean, if the House is 225 or 235, it's a little nicer for Hackeem Jeffries. If it's 235, it really doesn't make much difference at all.

The Senate is 53 or 4 instead of 50 or 50, well, 50 isn't even winning it. Instead of 51 or even 52, that is a huge difference. No, and huge difference for maintaining it in 2028. So anyway, we'll keep on that. One other thing I want to get to other news items, but just another poll item, you know, like actual news, not just, you know, us punditing about the midterms. But I did, I found this poll interesting. Yeah, because there's a lot of conversation out there.

If you're on the YouTube, you're seeing a lot of conversation about some people that are really focused on what happened in October of 2024 and what the miss was there. But the reality is if you just looked at polls of 2024, most people thought that Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party were too far left. That's just a fact. That's just what people said in polls. There's a round of points in New York Times that's interesting. And that it asked voters if they thought that the candidate was too far left. So they named the candidate Paltola, Tura, Camelton, Jax, and Elsaad, Pappas, Cooper, et cetera. And then asked if the party was too far left.

And every state except for Michigan, it was over 50% of voters said the party was too far left. And in only Michigan and Texas, did they say the candidate was too far left at 40%. So there's just this huge delta, you know, between, you know, in Alaska. go only 36% said pill toll is too far left versus 53% say the party's too far left. Even else I had 43% two for left versus 48, pretty small delta bear. I just think that the way that the Democrats were able to distinguish their brand from the party is another thing that's helping them right now in the midterms. So, I mean, it's just right there in the data.

It's good. No, I hadn't noticed that in that poll. It really is striking when you look at the chart. And even in Texas, which is the second week as this, we're after Michigan, it's like 40, to the Tala Rico, 40% of the elector thinks Tala Rico is too far left. 50% think the Democratic Party is too far left. That's the difference between winning by three points and losing by

two points conceivably, right? I mean, and obviously in the other states, the gap is even bigger Nebraska and elsewhere. So yeah, no, I think it's a very striking. So they have not really succeeded in wrapping, you know, the... The trans ads are not working this time. It doesn't seem that, right? Yeah. And it's working

at getting their base to think that they're too far left, whether that be 36 to 43% of the electorate, but it was working in a broader than that in 2024 at Head in Kamla, and that's pretty noteworthy. All right, some new stuff

from over the weekend. Trump is, like, getting pretty desperate on the diesel front, in particular, in the cost of diesel. Obviously, he's hearing it, trying to think,

what can he do? And he turned to a couple of things. One, Trump, does a deal with Putin, talks to Putin, where America will import Russian diesel. This is interesting,

because they just signed the Lindsay Graham bill that said that they were going to sanction and tariff other countries that purchased energy from Russia. And now we're doing it. So it shows you how seriously Donald Trump took that bill that passed both houses of Congress and that the remaining seven Russia hawks and the Republican Party were trying to use to demonstrate the like, see, we're still tough on Russia, that we passed the Lindsey Graham bill. It's like, okay, well, Trump is going around it to now import Russian diesel to try to get

the diesel price down 10 more cents before the midterms. And then on top of doing the deal with Putin, Trump also called Mark Carney, apparently, and begged him like a dog for diesel from Canada, report this morning that Canada is going to maximize their diesel exports to America. You know, I don't want to understand. Like, there is this trade war has caused some economic suffering in Canada, but there was some views that maybe Carney was cutting off his nose to spite his face a little bit by going so hard at Trump.

And here we have another example of it working. Carney goes to the max in fighting Trump on the trade war. Trump gets us into a stupid Iran war and does other things that was rising the cost of diesel. Our biggest import from Canada is energy. And now Trump wants us to maximize that to try to get prices down. Another big win from Mark Carney. That's always good to see. Yeah, and Trump, and also a lot of this is just about narrative.

There's not enough Russian diesel that could come if any is going to come, honestly, which is very unclear. It's about the markets and trying to manipulate it. And manipulate American public opinion. And thus the claim, which is also false, that Zelensky's attacks, the Ukraine's attacks on Russian energy sources, is fundamentally changing world oil prices. What's changing world energy prices is the war in Iran. There's no question of matter.

Just look at the charts. This could be affecting it at the margin, but we're really talking an incredibly smaller delta than the war. So it's all an attempt to kind of shift blame. It also gets to indulge in his true views about Russia and Ukraine, which are totally pro-Pudin and totally answer. So let's get you. Yeah, he does, indeed.

Let's talk about laser like, because there's some other stuff with Russia and Ukraine over the weekend. Trump made his fourth try at an energy ceasefire. This was after doing the diesel deal with Putin. So he gets that done. And then he declares a ceasefire,

energy ceasefire. It seems like that ceasefire existed only in his mind. Right. A lot of the Ukrainians were like, I don't know what he's talking about. Maybe, you know, Steve Wickoff called his buddies in Russia. And they said, okay, and pulled the wool over his head for the 107th time since he was the point man on this.

But Russia continued their attacks on a heating and power plant in Kharkiv and infrastructure in Zabresia after Trump said that there was an energy ceasefire. There was a blackout in Kiev last night and more just horrifying images of, you know, in a sense in Ukraine dying after Russian attacks. There was Ukrainian counter attacks. They took out two of five data centers belonging to Russian tech giant Yandex, which is like the Russian Google. Just kind of an funny, interesting side plot there. It seems like it might have impacted the Russian bot farms because a lot of the traffic, like pro-Russia propaganda traffic was down over the weekend. Analysts were looking at. But the whole thing is exceedingly depressing.

And there's a little bit of a groundhog day element to this, which is like Trump pretending like he's doing something with a ceasefire. fire while Russia escalates. And the sucking up to Putin, we've sort of died now taking it for granted. Obviously, welcomed Putin with a red carpet a year ago in Alaska. I was with some Europe, speaking at a conference, a lot of younger Europeans Friday, and a chance to talk to a fair number of them after, you know, after the panel and all this. And I've forgotten, I mean, they are really horrified. Like, this is the news had broken pretty recently about Trump and Putin and all that.

Like in Europe, one reason they've gotten tougher and behaved pretty well, I've got to say, over the last several years, is they took seriously the notion that we, can't let Putin get away with this aggression. They've also experienced, obviously, his attacking Russian dissidents and exos in their countries, and they've paid more of a price that we have, actually, for the energy cutoffs after 2022. They're serious about the sanctions. They're serious about Putin. They're serious about what a world looks like in which Putin wins. And they still are kind of appalled by what Trump is doing. Where I said, away, we're now, I mean, I'm not criticizing anyone here. I'm this way. We were all taking it so much taken for granted that Trump's in the tank for

Putin that we don't even get, you know, we make fun of it a little bit. about, but we don't really get indignant. They were actually angry and indignant, which I give them, which is a good sign for them, and I give them credit for that. Well, I was aligned with the young Europeans that you met at a conference on Friday, because I got intignant over Tom Cotton. I figured it was somebody that I follow was like trolling Cotton and retweeted something that he sent in 2023 that I want to read to you.

If Russia laid down its arms, there would be peace. If Ukraine laid down its arms, there would be no Ukraine. The fastest way to achieve peace is for Biden to stop pussyfooting around and give Ukraine the weapons it needs to take back its territory. Then Putin will negotiate. That was Republican Senator Tom Cotton in 2023. Not a lot to disagree with there. Maybe a little harsher on Biden than I would have been. But the point about who is to blame for all this and how the war could end was exactly right.

It's Russia to blame. And if Russia laid down their arms, we'd have peace. That was right, that Tom Cotton said. So I saw that. And I was like, I wonder what's Tomcom been saying lately about Ukraine? Because I know he's been wimpier on it. But I just, I was like, maybe I've missed some stuff. You know, he puts out a little pressure releases, I don't see.

And so I went to look. I didn't see much. I went to his Twitter feed, search the word Ukraine. He hasn't sent a tweet about Ukraine since last September, like over a year. And so, you know, these guys just fucking pisses me off so much. Like these fake hawks, like during the Biden administration, talking like trying to take the moral high ground. And here we are.

I saw this horrifying picture, this image, this woman, like holding her daughter's hand. They had been killed by a Russian drone attack. And she was like holding under child's hand. And I saw this picture of her in the rubble over the weekend. It's like Russia continues to kill people in Ukraine. They continue to do an offensive. The current president is essentially on their side, occasionally vacillates. And Tom Cotton, who's like a supposed.

that his whole brand was that he was this hawk. It's tough hawk and he did tough talk on Joe Biden when he like didn't give quite the right amount of weapons. Like says nothing, nothing. He doesn't have any courage, no, you know, no courage of his convictions, no hudspin, no willingness to stand up to Trump. It's just like nothing. You know, it's fake tough guy stuff when some woke professor shows up in front of a Senate panel. But besides that, he's just a total pussy. And, And it's like really, anyway, I was indignant. It really pissed me off. So there's no question there.

But that's just, those are my thoughts about Tom Cotton. Feel free to give the same energy, give to Biden to Donald Trump. And by the way, Haley Schaffner, Bill hasn't shouted her out as a long shot yet in the Senate, Arkansas Senate, but she's a good candidate. Good candidate. Pete, which check her out. Well, we have public polling. I mean, there was a cotton.

This is the, the Cotton campaign released a poll that was Cotton 50, I think, Schoffer, 39, there's some libertarian or something getting two or three percent. That's the actual Republican incumbent in a race where everyone expected to win by 30 points. We're releasing a poll to show, don't worry, I'm ahead, but he's ahead by 10 points. He's right at 50. Yeah. I mean, probably won't, you know, most likely won't lose. I don't think it's 100 percent, though. It's 90 percent probably that he'll win. If Arkansas is really, let's just normalize the race to 65, 45, 45, that's a 10-point margin, 56-44, what is that? I mean, the cotton one, I'd like to, I think it was unopposed almost in 2020 or something.

He went by much more than that in 2014. I remember that race where he defeated an incumbent Democrat. So if that's happening in Arkansas, what's happening in other states that aren't that far away? Cotton was unoppressed. He won 6633 over a libertarian. They didn't even have anybody in. In 2020, yeah. 2020, yeah.

Hallie Schaffner, shout out. All right. I want to talk about what's happening with Saudi, too. I get my bad JVL, you know. my bad wolf starts to appear anytime bad news happens in Saudi Arabia. And so I do want to, I don't want to modulate this. I'm not,

I'm not rooting for the Houthis. Okay, in case anyone accuses me of this, I want to have this on tape. I'm not rooting for them. But here's what's been happening in Saudi Arabia. Several people were killed or wounded in another likely Houthi attack on Riyadh's King College International Airport on Saturday.

It's the third strike in a week on the gateway to Saudi Arabia's capital. Early air attacks killed four people. People, flights were canceled and diverted, airport operations were suspended. Our Secretary of State, Marco Rubio sent out a strongly worded letter where he strongly condemned to the attack, which I'm sure Saudi appreciated. Trump is considering a response, he said. Riyadh hosts the World Petroleum Congress this week with CEOs from American companies. Some of them are reconsidering whether it's safe to go. The U.S. Embassy in Saudi Arabia on Monday urged American citizens to exercise extreme caution when using all major airports.

in the country. And this has spiraled totally out of control on Saudi Arabia. And it is all due to the war of choice that we started in Iran. And to the Saudis rather idiotic, you know, attacks on Yemen and on the Houthis for the last bunch of years and not to have too much sympathy with the Houthis. I'm with you on that. God, they'll end up being driven to be being pro-Houthi. We'll try to resist. We'll try to stop short. Let's stop short of that. No, I'm saying I feel this way. There is kind of a sense of tough titties. Right. And also a sense of Marco. did everything wrong of the last decade.

Right, right, and killing, obviously, people in his opinion. And then I see Rubio. He can't be bothered to condemn unbelievably bloodthirsty attacks on civilians in Ukraine. Does he now think of the war as a whole for the last two years since he became part of the Trump cabinet? But he condemns one attack on the airport in Riott. Fine, if you want to condemn that attack, I don't care. But maybe he can say a word, a word about the people who've been suffering in Ukraine. As Rubio, I know he's your man, you know, is he said a lot of it.

As you said a lot about Ukraine recently, you should do the search for him that you did for cotton, you know. Okay. Yeah, we'll get on that. I'll report back next week. See what Mark has been saying about Ukraine. He did give a big speech in Athens. Very thoughtful, really moving to see the Vecropolis in the background. Democracy is under threat in Europe.

Athens and Jerusalem, blah, blah, blah. He brought up how Europe's being invaded. They're culturally being invaded as well. Not by Russia, but by the migrants. The migrants are the enemies. He's really focused on nothing. the people like doing drone attacks in Germany, not the fucking fascist doing drone attacks in Germany.

Anyway, part of the reason why the Saudi Arabia thing is delicious, though, is like, you know, one thing I was just pondering over the weekend was whether MBS made a worst investment when he bought Phil Mickelson and the Gulf League or when he bought Jared Kushner. Because the purchase of Trump's son-in-law doesn't seem to be paying off that much.

I mean, you would think that you'd get something more than a strong condemnation after you've bought off the son-in-law. That doesn't seem to be working out for MBS. That's tough to see. It's hard to say. And who could have predicted that coming before? The Trump family has been so reliable

with business partners throughout their history, you know? Unbelievable. We'll keep an eye on that one. Good luck, MBS. I want to end with the news this morning, so this is developing. But I guess there was an immigration raid on Elon Omar's house.

this is from the Daily Mail. Daily Mail just keeps happening to be there every time the FBI raids and the Army of Trump. How does that happen? How does the Daily Mail on the New York Post just always happen to know the right place to be? They have great sources, Tim.

They really work it hard. You know, this is shoe leather reporting. You shouldn't make fun of that. They've got people really calling their sources in the FBI nonstop and really digging that stuff up, you know. Federal agents sleut on the Washington home of Ilhan Omar early on Monday in a criminal fraud probe

into how the Congresswoman got into America. I had a DHS Mullen said that the probe reached beyond her disputed 2009 marriage. There's been long accusations and claims

on the right that she married her brother to get him into the country. This is not about that. This is about other stuff and he warned that removal actions could follow if wrongdoing is proven.

Will Summer, the false flag newsletter had written about a month ago about this about how there was pressure in the MAGA Internet The same people advancing the conspiracy theories about James Calerico in a padded room also wanted to see Elon Omar arrested. This was his article was September 14th.

Yeah, there was a revolt against Mark Wayne Mullen over this. So it seems like the Secretary of Homeland Security is very responsive to what right-wing weirdos on Twitter want them to do. Yeah, I'm not pro-Ilan Omar either. I think I set a contribution to some Democratic primary opponent of her two or a cycle or two ago, which didn't quite work out. respectable race. But this is, I mean, let's just have a raid three weeks before an election on the person who's become the kind of totem of, that's the right word, of democratic leftism and problematic Democratic member of Congress, I guess, one of the five, ten, most left wing, certainly. Also a Muslim and also wears the headscarf and all that. So that's good for the,

for playing that, you know, that card if they want to do that, well, I say if they want to do that, they are doing that, literally. As I understand it, and again, I've only just, was reading about it because it broke this morning. What the charge would be that her father, her late father, I don't know, said something false about her, I guess, or about himself in 1995 when he brought her here. So 30 years ago, there may or may not have been bad paperwork or misleading paperwork filed. She's lived here. She's her life.

She went to school here, obviously. She got elected to Congress here. And now that's urgent, urgent DHS deportation. You have to have a raise. too. You couldn't just, you know, look at the paperwork, right? You have to really get into the look at her. Call the lawyers, have a DHS lawyer. Literally, what are they finding in this rate? I mean, does she have papers that don't exist otherwise from 1995? I kind of doubt it. Did anyone ask her? You know, she's a member of Congress. Would you, so beyond the pale and so beyond belief. Well, the raid is for the

Maga Chuds. Yeah, totally. Like they're doing the raid. That's the Comey and the she shells again. You know, it's just like, if they can't actually, you know, use the courts to jail, imprisoned, or deport their foes, then they at least want to give the tabloids fodder to make it seem like they're doing it. And what's depressing about this is, I guess what shouldn't be that surprise about this at DHS,

but the strained raid was not done personally by Mark Wayne Mullen. I mean, they've got a whole bunch of people who feel, and I guess I'm just, well, some of the like doing it, of course, especially at ICE. But nonetheless, they feel they're obeying orders, and they were told there was a raid and they got some compliant, I suppose, judge to issue a warrant or something, or grand jury perhaps. And here they are. So the degree to which they are using the levers of the federal government and have loyalists in there or people who just feel like don't have any choice but to go along and they're being told it's legal by the local, by the whatever attorney they're consulting at that department, whatever Trump appointed or intimidated attorney they're consulting. So this is the danger, right? I mean, it's desperate. It's pathetic.

It's not going to ultimately stand up, but the degree to which they're using the levers of power to do this kind of thing is, I'm so stupid even to be saying it's this anymore. But if this were happening in another country, we would know exactly what's going on, right? Let's go raid the home of a member of the opposition party, the controversial member of the opposition party. Based on their dad's paperwork from 30 years ago. And the whole thing is preposterous. Yeah, but it is, it's ongoing. I should say the story that I have been writing about a bunch. about Miriam Thomas Seby and her family.

I continue to get emails from her. They're still in the internment camp in Texas, like a child. Like we're coming up on seven months now that we have a teenager and an internment camp in Texas, forget his that his dad wrote bad paperwork. This is about his grandmother's actions in Iran. Like, it's not even about immigration. It's not even about like the paperwork being wrong or anything like that. It is totally fabricated, like trumped-up bullshit that we're jailing a family over because, you know, Marco wanted the like Iranian rightists like to feel like he was like on their side doing their bidding.

Like it's a less famous version of this same thing. Like DHS is trying to appeal to the, you know, Maga Chuds on Twitter that want to see Elon Omar in jail because they hate Muslims. And, like, Marco wants to, you know, appeal to, you know, the advocates of Imran Khan and, like, that crowd that want him to do stuff. Like, this is just using the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, weaponizing it to appeal to political allies and go after and intimidate and, you know, imprison political foes. Like, that is what they're doing. and we would know exactly what to call it in another country because that's what it is. It's authoritarianism.

They've been pretty hackneyed at it as part of the reason why that it hasn't quite broken through to everybody. Like it's been pretty clownish, but in other authoritarian countries, it's clownish. A lot of people have suffered under clownish authoritarian attacks, right? I mean, you know, the fact that it's hamhanded, some of our friends take a little too much comfort.

It is better than it's hamheaded than that it's not. Sure. But they take a little too much comfort in that. An awful lot of people have suffered and died, honestly, and very ham-handed authoritarian regimes. And, well, we gave you too much opium at the top. Yeah.

We were talking about the Democratic. This started off as a very cheerful conversation with, you know, sweeping Virginia congressional districts and Texas governorships. Democratic trifecta in 2029. Exactly. You know, we had to bring you back to reality. If I could just be serious for 12 seconds.

I mean, that is the reality, right? On the one hand, there's a lot of hope because the public has, you know, seen what's happening and Trump is growing up in various ways. And the other hand, there's a lot of danger. And it is, I mean, I hate to be terrible what's happening with Elon Omar, but it's a good reminder of what they can do, not just for the next three weeks, but for two years when they're in power in the executive branch. And Democratic Congress can stop some of it, but executive branch is very, very powerful. So it's going to be a hell of a two years. Indeed it is.

That's Bill Crystal. We see them every Monday here on the board daily. Thanks for being with us. We try to give you everything. We give you a little uplift. We give you some fear. We give you some rage. Okay.

Because that's the world we're living in. We'll be back tomorrow. I don't know who we got tomorrow yet. We're going to find somebody good. Because it's always, it's bangers only from here until the election. All right, everybody. So stick around to tell your friends. We'll see you soon.

Bye. The Bullwark Daily is brought to you thanks to the work of lead producer Katie Cooper, Associate producer, Ansley Skipper. And with video editing by Dante de Chie. Chico and audio engineering and editing by Jason Brow.