The MeidasTouch Podcast - Colin Allred Discusses House Race and Turning Texas Blue

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on Donald Trump panicking over the report that 20 Republican House Members are about to quit and Trump is lashing out against reporters for asking him about it and Meiselas interviews former Democratic Congressman Colin Allred who withdrew his Senate candidacy to announce his run for the Texas Congressional Seat in Dallas County. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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19 plus to wager. Ontario only, please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConX Ontario at 1866-531-260 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Donald Trump and Magamike Johnson are panicking over the news that 20 Republican Congress members may be resigning in the very near future. That was reported by Puck, but before that, we had heard rumblings and we reported on that. And then you heard from Punchball News that they were hearing it.

And now this seems to be fairly imminent that this is going to be taking place. So Donald Trump was asked a pretty basic question during this bizarre press conference that he held. So what do you make of these 20 House Republicans or maybe more who are threatening to resign? Because they really can't stand you right now. And they can't stand working in this loser house of representatives run by Maga Mike Johnson. And Trump just gets enraged and attacks the reporter here, play this clip. And I just have a quick question. There's at least 20 House Republicans who have either said they're going to retire or not run again.

And Democrats also. And Democrats. Right. But why don't you mention them? How many Democrats are going to retire? How many Democrats? Well, that's what I was going to ask. But why don't you tell me the number of Democrats, too?

You tell me about the narrow margins. And Congresswoman and police the parties among them. We will have the greatest economy. Blakeman, who you know as well, is considering letting for government. We're going to have the greatest economy in history. How many Democrats are retiring? How come you only know the Republicans, but not the Democrats? Because I can't prepare to ask you a question about it.

No, no, you're unprepared because you should know the Democrats. You're totally unprepared. Go ahead. Well, can I ask a quick follow-up about, who you will? I'm with New York Newsday, and I also have a quick follow-up. Wow, I mean, that's, there was more bizarre moments where he attacked an ABC reporter during that. And this follows Trump going on. a rampage in the morning calling Marjorie Taylor Green, Marjorie Trader Brown, after knowing

that she was receiving death threats as a result of his comments. And he said that Marjorie Trader Brown went on CBS and then he attacked the CBS coverage for her going on 60 minutes. And on 60 minutes, Marjorie Taylor Green talked about how behind Donald Trump's back, all of these Magas make fun of him and mock him and really hate him and despise him, but pretend that they like him. Meanwhile, Maga Mike Johnson still claims that things are going amazing. Here, play this clip.

If we stay unified, there is absolutely nothing that we can't achieve, but we've already demonstrated that at this Congress. We've had one of the most productive congresses in the history of the institution. Do you need the president to get on the phone to some reluctant GOP members in the House and say, come on? So utterly pathetic. I want to bring in former Democratic Congress member Colin Alred, who just announced on Monday that he would be running for the newly created 33rd Congressional District, which encompasses

is Dallas County in Texas. Now, Congress member Allred was first running for that Senate seat. It was clear it became incredibly overcrowded and noisy, and you put out a statement. In light of all of these issues there that were happening, your time was best spent running for the seat, which is in an area that you previously represented before a prior Senate run. And of course, we know that Trump and Abbott have been working very hard to rig these Texas maps with a gerrymander on top of a gerrymander that the Supreme Court apparently says is fine, despite a Trump appointed judge saying

it's an incredibly racist map at the district court level. But in any event, it's a long-winded way to say you've made an important announcement that you're running for the congressional seat that occupies Dallas County. Talk to us about your decision. Then let's get into the vibe in Texas in general right now because Trump is underwater there

under the morning consult poll and some other major polls. Let's talk about your decision first. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on. And you know, listen, everything you said there is exactly right. in terms of what they've done as these congressional districts. And also in the Senate race, you know, looking at, you know, that's potentially having to almost a guaranteed runoff election, because in Texas, if you don't get more than 50% in the primary,

you have to go to a runoff, you know, I felt like that was not in the best interest of the party or of the state. And, you know, for me, it was a personal decision because I've developed a relationship and, you know, a lot of trust with so many Texans around the state, people come up to me and tell me their kind of most intimate details of their personal lives and what they're going through and how they are hoping that somebody can help them. And I felt a responsibility to those folks to try and make sure that we have a unified party going into November.

And that I could best serve by looking at serving my hometown and the place where I was born and raised in Congress at a time when we're losing voices and we need even stronger voices and have our best players in the field. And so, you know, I completely disagree with what Speaker Johnson said there. I think this is one of the worst House of Representatives in American history. I think that the fact that they were in session for about 10 days out of 120, it wouldn't even allow a newly elected member in Arizona to be sworn in because they were afraid of the Epstein files being released. It's just one indication you can take of how dysfunctional this Congress has been.

We've got to go in there. We got to shake it up. We've got to fix it. We have to restore the fact. Congress is Article 1 in the Constitution. And I think the founders did that for a reason. They wanted it to be the center of our democracy, not to see it, everything to the president and certainly not to this one. Yeah, they went from Article 1 to Article

None and Maga Mike Johnson acts like Congress isn't even a thing. And it's why Steve Bannon refer to it as the Duma in Russia, basically. And that's how it's been functioning under Maga Mike Johnson. Now, you know the state of Texas from a political perspective and the demographics there just about better than anybody. This racist gerrymandered map as a Trump judge found it, though, was based on certain assumptions about Latino voters moving towards MAGA and Trump and certain other assumptions about the area. Now, from your perspective, when you were running at the statewide level, now your Dallas County is certainly a more blue area, but a lot of these assumptions about the state of Texas, I think are, we're seeing movement, but you're on the ground.

I mean, when we see that Trump's approval amongst the Latino communities falling now in the level of the 30s when you were having these conversations with people on the trail and even now, are you noticing changes like that? What are you seeing, Congressman? Absolutely. No, I think there's a dramatic change going on. And I think a lot of folks, you know, in the last election, and as somebody was raised by a single mom and was a public school teacher and who grew up struggling, I have some kind of empathy for folks who in the last election thought, hey, you know, maybe this guy really will make my costs go down. Maybe he really will mean what he says, that inflation's going to go away. But the problem is they were lied to. And I think on the flip side, they also

know that. They are seeing what's happening. Working folks across Texas are aware that they're working harder and harder for less while these openly corrupt jackasses that they see on TV and on their phones are out there doing all kinds of stuff and are getting ahead. And to your point with the Latino community, you know, the last time I was in South Texas, and my family's from Brownsville, the very tip of Texas, sense of fear like I felt when I was there, a fear around the immigration enforcement that was going on there, but also the impacts on the economy from the tariffs and that enforcement. I was at one flea market where the owner of it said that it was like COVID 2.0 for them, like the business impact of it. And so that all has to have an impact in the election. But our job is to make sure

that it does and that we go to folks and say, you're right that this is a rig system. And you're right to think even that maybe in the past, Democrats weren't fully talking enough about this. But we're going to talk about it now. And we're not just talking about small incremental changes. We want to do big, dramatic changes because we're in a big, dramatic moment that requires that. And that, to me, that kind of broadness of vision is what we have to bring to this to make sure that we take that feeling they have and turn it into votes. You know, it's just so interesting because your colleagues on the other side of the aisle

or former colleagues, you know, they always would say that they're states' rights and that they are you know, China Hawks, and they'd come up with all of these framings, but they've thrown Taiwan under the bus. They've thrown Ukraine under the bus. They've agreed to tariffs against the world, which seemed to violate every thing that they've said with Ronald Reagan and this and that. You know, it just, it almost seems that Trump puts him through this humiliation ritual, that they genuinely feel humiliated from what they talk about behind closed doors with Marjorie, Taylor Green, and others that they hate this guy, yet they've allowed this, you know, to use a phrase from Governor Newsom, this invasive species, Donald Trump, to like just run over the country.

It's just, must be a strange thing from your perspective to see some of your former colleagues just bend to the point of just becoming, I don't know, just the tools of humiliation. Yeah, I have to say, they also say that to me. Yeah, you know, I have a number of the folks I served with, especially in the Texas delegation, who will say when they're being honest, keep, leave this guy, you know. And what I've always wondered is how they're able to remove their spines from their body and still walk around, you know, without that support. It's incredible to me. There is no scenario where I would feel this way about. you know, the so-called leader of our party and would just keep it to myself. And I really,

I understand that some of them are personally afraid. They think that there's, that their families may be threatened and things like that. And Marjor Taylor Green has certainly talked, has been speaking about that. But to be honest, when you enter public life and what you're trying to do, if you believe in public service, it can't be about you. And if it is just about you, then you'll end up doing things like this. You'll end up being okay with dropping all of your views and all of your values for someone else's values. Because it wasn't, all you really care about is yourself, right? And I think that's what we have to excise from our politics as much as we can.

We'll never get rid of all of it. But if we can get a critical mass of folks who are more interested in public service than they are in themselves, then that will allow us to really get back on track. And I also mean that for the Republican Party as well. And I am constantly, I'm an optimist, and so I want to believe. that at some point we may see some of that. I am shocked by what Marjorie Taylor Green is doing right now. I never, never imagine that she would be out there denouncing the president

and saying that her colleagues are all cowards, but she's doing it. And I think we should look at that and say, there's something there that we can draw. There's something there on the Epstein files release that we can say, there's some resistance building there. And certainly after we kick their butts in this midterm, we have to look at this and say, Do you really want to spend the last two years just following a lame duck president's increasingly crazy views?

Or do you want to actually be a representative for your community? And that with that, we may actually be able to get something done. And so that's what I think we have to hope for and try to make happen. Let's talk about that before we go. Your message to our 6 million subscribers before we go and where can they learn more about your campaign? Yeah, I hope they'll go to Colin Allred.com, get involved with us. We have to make sure that we have incredible strong voices from Texas because we're going from having 13 Democratic members of our delegation

out of 38, which it should be higher than that. We were already gerrymandered, as you said, to now maybe having only eight, maybe nine, hopefully 10, and we'll try and frustrate them in some of these districts they thought they were going to win. But we are representing 30 million Texans and we have to have strong voices. I'll be representing, you know, the community that I come from with if folks are willing to vote for me and i need to make sure that we have really strong voices that will go into congress with a defined idea of what they're going to do to clean it up and to also say to our own party here's what we have to do to get back on track particularly with working people that's what i've been in focused on in this campaign i need folks help going

forward congressman colin all red announcing his race for texas 3rd we appreciate you discussing it with us here on the midas touch network all right thanks for having me everybody hit subscribe let's get to that 6 million subscriber mark want to stay plugged in become a subscriber to our substack at midasplus.com you'll get daily recaps from ron philipkowski add free episodes of our podcasts and more exclusive content only available at midasplus.com