The Texan Podcast - The Aftermath of the Attempted Assassination: SMSS Ep. 5

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

This episode on Send Me Some Stuff, Brad and Cameron talk about first reactions and where they were when they heard the news about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Plus some predictions for the DNC to come later this year.Want to send Brad and Cameron some stuff to discuss on the next episode? Email [e-mail]****Be sure to subscribe to The Texan for full access: https://thetexan.news/subscribe/

Inertia is powerful in politics and sticking to the status quo is generally something people want to do. You don't want to rock the boat, especially, you know, the devil you know is better than the devil you don't, right? But after the assassination attempt and the odds of Trump winning and running away with this, let's say that's legit, right? Right? Do Democrats want to waste someone on their bench in a four-month campaign that is likely going to fail no matter what? Or do they just let this guy finish the race and then put him out to pasture? I don't know.

Hello, and welcome in to Send Me Some Stuff. My name is Cameron Abrams. I'm a reporter here at The Texan. I'm joined today with our senior reporter, Brad Johnson. And this is our second recording of episode number five. Are you sure we got the number right i i'm pretty sure we have we do know this is the second recording though that's for sure yeah this is our redo or our version two but i mean the first one was pretty good the first one was really good it's just stuff

happened lots of stuff happened yes big things happened um We recorded the first version of this podcast before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and him picking J.D. Vance as his vice presidential nominee. So we thought we'd come back, record another episode so we can really highlight these two big events that are really moving and shaking American politics right now. And I think we're going to release the other one to subscribers at some point in some fashion. So you won't miss discussion of the puckle gun. The puckle gun. If you're going to tune in for any episode of Send Me Some Stuff, you're going to want to tune in for that. It's about the only one that's not out of date now. Right. But let's just jump into it because over the weekend, we're recording this July 16th, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. Tell us, Brad, where were you? What were you doing when you got the news that this was happening? I was in a Mexican restaurant in New Braunfels after having spent the last

five hours on the river floating. Okay. When I saw it, I happened to see it pretty quickly. Yeah, it was shocking. It was first, what the heck is happening? Yeah. Is it what it looks like? Yeah. Once you find out it is, then you're thinking, who did this? What is the former president all right? You see him get up and move, but you don't know until after the fact

that other than getting a piece of his ear blown off, he's totally okay. Yeah. But it was wild to see. It was wild. Where were you at? I was in Houston visiting my brother and my dad. We had just gotten done playing putt-putt. We were playing mini golf. I had gotten back to my brother and my dad we had just gotten done playing putt-putt we were playing mini golf i'd gone back to my brother's apartment and we're all just sort of hanging out because it was hot

and humid in houston so we thought we'd get inside for a bit and i'm just scrolling on my phone and i see a video and i'm like whoa what is this Because the video I saw was him, Donald Trump, grabbing his ear and pulling it down. And then him getting tired. I was like, whoa, what is going on? So I sent it to my brother. And we're like going back and forth, like what is going on? And then my phone just starts blowing up. You know, Slack messages, text messages, everyone just trying to piece together what is actually going on is this

is this really happening and the fallout we'll just give people a bit of a behind the scenes look of what happens in a newsroom when breaking news something like this happens so immediately all of us get into our slack channel together, and we're messaging back and forth, trying to see if we are understanding the situation as it's going down, seeing if we're all on the same page. And once we sort of confirmed through, whether it be mainstream outlets or individual pundits on X, where a lot of people were sort of hashing out the details of what was going on, we decided we need to put a breaking news story out. So when we decided to put out this breaking news story,

it was me, you, Matt Stringer, and Mackenzie DeLulo, our senior editor. We were all in a Google Doc together, going through all the information, trying to piece together what is valid information, what is something, things we can confirm. And we got it up relatively quickly, probably within 30 minutes, 45 minutes of the initial reporting. So it was a team effort. But to provide some details for people, what we know so far, sort of the series of events, is the rally that took place was in Butler, Pennsylvania, which is roughly 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. And when Donald Trump took the stage, he was there for just around six minutes speaking. And then

all of a sudden, you hear three shots ring out. Short pause, five more shots ring out, and you see, like I mentioned at the top, Trump grabs his ear, pulls his hand down, he sees blood, puts his hand back to his ear, and he's tackled to the ground. And as he's being lifted up off the stage, raises his fist, yells, fight, fight, fight to the crowd, ushered off the stage. And that's where we were sort of left for a while before we were trying to piece things together. As we started to gain more information, things were coming rapidly. There was lots of information being speculated about on the mainstream media we saw some headlines talking about loud noises or bangs and then once but on X people knew pretty quickly that it was gunfire

that caused those those sounds and for Trump to start bleeding from his ear. Eventually, they identified the 20-year-old shooter who they identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. And what we eventually found out is there was one person who was actually killed in the attempted assassination, an attendee of the rally named Corey Comprator. And there was two other individuals that were injured, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. So there was serious life loss, serious injuries because of this. And it appears as of right now, Trump is okay, but there's still lots of speculation about the how, the why, the what actually happened, how the pre-screening of the event venue was carried out,

the actual protection of Donald Trump as the attempted assassination was taking place, the response afterwards, the investigation. There's lots of questions continuing to circulate. I'll stop talking. I'll let you respond. Any thoughts on anything I just mentioned in sort of laying out the situation? Well, when it first happened, you know, you saw a lot of discussion about the popping noises and what that was. Was it in fact gunfire? It was in fact gunfire. I think police found an AR-15 alongside the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator, Matthew Crooks, is that his name? And he had crawled up onto the roof of a building adjacent to kind of the open grass area where Trump was speaking,

where the rally was being held. Then you started to see reports from people on social media about, well, we saw this guy climbing up or he had been run into in a field beforehand with a rifle in his arm. A later report said that there was an on-duty police officer that climbed up there and inadvertently confronted him. And then when Crooks pointed his rifle at the cop, the cop retreated down, and then Crooks turned and started firing.

I mean, overall, the biggest, I guess, takeaway is how close Donald Trump was to getting killed. You know, like the bullet, you can see, there's a picture. The most amazing thing to come out of this were the pictures of this moment. Right. Whether it was Trump on the ground with blood streaming down the side of his face, amidst a bunch of Secret Service agents huddled over him or him standing up and, you know, the photo that's probably going to be on every mail piece from now until the election of him trying to, the Secret Service members trying to drag him away and him turning the crowd and

putting his fist up in the air and yelling fight fight fight with the american flag yeah background yeah then you have you have the photo of the actual bullet yeah captured in flying by his head by his head yeah um and in the end the bullet pierced his ear so it was you know a fraction of an inch yeah from hitting him in his head and probably killing him um i mean it first of all he is you know lucky to be alive and the fallout that would have caused it would have been disastrous yeah thank god we don't have to deal with that both on the personal front of he's alive still you know you don't wish death on anybody but also the turmoil that that would have caused yeah the political and societal

turmoil yeah the chaos that would have ensued and it The political and societal turmoil. Yeah. The chaos that would have ensued. And it's still going to cause chaos and turmoil, just not as much as it would have. Right. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners have seen a lot of the pictures that you just mentioned. I've also seen diagrams of, you know, Trump's head, where if he hadn't have turned just slightly where the bullet

would have hit him but there was a huge screen behind him with a graph and he just subtly turns his head and just that is the moment where the shot was fired and it just barely missed him from killing him. And just a really wild situation. Just the viewing public, the interested public, lawmakers, is the Secret Service, and their surveying of the venue, their response to the attempted assassination. We've seen House members, most explicitly House Speaker Mike Johnson, has said Congress will investigate the Secret Service response. And in the days following, we have seen quite a bit more information coming out. You mentioned some of it about how a police officer actually ascended up the side of the building,

encountered this individual, and then was shaken to the point where he did not engage with the subject. And before that, there were apparently individuals trying to warn officials about the guy climbing up or crawling across the roof. Yeah, there's been lots of... Because of our digital media age, people always carrying a cell phone in their pocket. And these Trump rallies are really a place where people go to record the event. So there's been lots of cell phone footage of this would-be assassin in the moments leading up to his actions that day. And like you mentioned, there's been videos coming out of encounters with this guy 30 minutes before the events took place. So it'll be interesting to see.

There's been lots of speculation about the why Trump got himself or the secret service got themselves in a situation like this that'll come out in invest in the investigations hopefully so we can have a clear picture of the the failing surrounding uh the attempted assassination but it's just very interesting the fact someone came so close to assassinating Donald Trump. Because, you know, 150 yards away, someone was able to get up on a rooftop with a gun and fire shots. Well, it's still a – it's not an easy shot, first of all, especially with an AR. And, you know, there were – Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller was there, and he said – he told the reporter afterwards that it was quieter, it was more muffled. The noise was – so I think it's a.22.

Well, it wasn't a a 22 as far as i understand um but you know the reason it sounded quieter was because it was further away now it's not like he's shooting from a mile which you couldn't do with an ar right um but it's still a pretty long shot and i don't know whether it's there were a lot of reports about how the um the attempted um assassin was kicked out of his high school's rifle club because he was a bad shot and so i don't know if it him narrowly missing Trump is an example of him being a bad shot or that he came that close from 150 yards away being a head shot to him being a good shot. I don't know.

I mean, it's interesting what you mentioned, that there is so little information about this individual, Thomas Matthew Crooks. You said he was apparently kicked out of his high school rival club. He appeared as an extra in a BlackRock video. Is that legit? I saw that on Twitter and I hadn't. Yeah. And so, but he doesn't have like this huge social media footprint is what I'm getting at. You know, a 20-year-old kid, you would think, oh, he's on X, he's on Instagram, Facebook, whatever it may be. But as of right now, there's not a whole lot of information about him.

And I know the FBI and federal government, they have his cell phone, they're conducting an investigation. But I know a lot of people who try and follow situations like this or the news, they do it themselves, go on X, they find people they trust that dig into these certain things. But I do that as well. But right now there's just not a whole lot of information about this guy. He was 20, right? Yeah. And then the Secret Services counter-sniper team killed him.

Right. After he got off, it was like five to eight shots, roughly. So, you know, they did their job in that regard. Did they do their job on the front end? That's a different question entirely. We'll find out. Maybe. The guy's dead, so there's a limit to what you can find out given that circumstance.

But, you know, maybe they'll, congressional investigators or the FBI or anybody will figure out what happened that led to this. How did that happen? But, you know, the bad stuff happens in life. And things go wrong, people make mistakes, and even though they're the Secret Service, they're still viable for screwing up. And it certainly looks like there was a screw-up that happened here. And I guess I'll go back to what I was going to say a bit ago

and got off track, but the reason we had to re-record this, not only just that this happened, but because we talked about political assassinations. We did. And we talked about how in the last century they were a lot more common and effective than they have been so far in this century. And there's a lot of reasons for that, even despite having better weaponry. There's a reason the AR-15 is the most popular hunting rifle

in the United States. It's effective and it's accurate and it doesn't kick like a mule. So even with that um yeah this guy was less effective than take the other example we talked about in japan the guy who made a homemade homemade pipe pistol yeah whatever you would call that and killed shinzo abe the former president. He wasn't the president anymore, but he was running for president, right, at the time? I think it was some sort of congressional parliamentary. He was running for office. Yeah.

But that was, you take that example and even include how close we were to that happening here, and it still doesn't compare to last century you know there was franz ferdinand who got assassinated yeah that sparked uh world war one you talk about that and redacted um obviously jfk his brother rfk whose son is now running for president, who's, I'm sure, you know, he wasn't affected by this, or at least firsthand. But, you know, that's having a figure like that almost assassinated has got to hit him some way in that regard. Yeah, and you mentioned Redacted. I get into some of the larger implications of this attempted assassination on Trump. People can check that out on Redacted. But I also mentioned there was attempts on the lives of Republicans at their congressional baseball game.

Yep. And even in that, nobody died. No one died. So we're re-recording. But my point still stands, but it's, you know, it's a lot more prevalent now that this happened. Yeah. And that doesn't mean, you know,

if that bullet had been half an inch to the left. We'd be in a much different situation politically, socially, culturally. It would have set off a chain reaction of events that no one would really be able to predict. Something that we saw in 1911. Was that when Franz Ferdinand was assassinated? 1914. Was it? Okay.

I am getting my... I could be wrong. This is why we have fact checkers. I think the war had been going on. Nope, you're right. I'm wrong. 1914 in Cerro Bejo. Anyway, that's the kind of chain reaction that could happen in a situation like this.

It wouldn't bear out the same way. We probably wouldn't end up in a world war from it directly, but a profound impact on the direction of the country and the world had that happened. Yeah, and I think what is interesting to mention too is in the days following the attempted assassination, there could have been wide-scale riots, protests, whatever it may be, by folks on the right, and we didn't see any of that. Everyone in the crowd, everyone watching really did remain calm, and we're still trying to figure

out what happened. Hopefully, we get more information after these congressional investigations take place, after the FBI investigation takes place. But I think everyone's left wondering, how did this happen? How did the Secret Service allow someone to get onto a roof that close to the former president? And we're just going to have to wait to find that out. And I think another big question is trying to understand the motives of this individual. Usually, we would be able to find stuff like this out, but because the perpetrator doesn't have a social media footprint, doesn't have an online footprint. We can't really do that ourselves. It's really going to, all that sort of falls on the FBI in terms of what they can ascertain, parse out from the cell phone that they've acquired. And hopefully,

we get the full details of that. Well, and then, you know there there aren't going to be any massive uh cervejo like implications because trump didn't die right but there are going to be political ramifications for this we're already seeing it. You know, after it happened, we saw the swing state odds for Trump in, I think it was like eight states, jump significantly. Right. Reaching new highs. Now, these are betting odds. It's not polling. We haven't seen any polling yet. Maybe by the time this goes out, there will be some. But in the immediate aftermath, you can't do polling that fast. But we did see the betting odds jump and in four states reached record highs for him. And we saw people online that might have been reticent to publicly pledge support to Donald Trump, come out fully endorsing him, whether it be someone like Elon Musk or Bill Aukman, fully coming out and endorsing Trump following the events that occurred.

And we saw Nikki Haley, his last opponent in the race, announce last minute that she would be speaking at the RNC and would be calling for unity behind Trump. And that's, to my knowledge, it's not something she's done yet. And if she had, it had been kind of, you know, passive. But now this is going to be a very active directive. And I saw someone who was there say on Twitter that i'm not calling it x sorry i'm not doing that um call saying that they've been to many rncs and this is the first one that they'd

seen republicans really seem united in anything. We just saw the massive intraparty trench war that happened in this state, and that's within the Republican Party, obviously. But that's been playing out for a while. You see it, how many votes did it take to elect a speaker because you have these different factions within Congress? Not just within Congress,

but within the Republican caucus in Congress feuding. But this, at least for now, seems to have really cemented

a kind of unity that you wouldn't, you can't get under normal circumstances. Yeah, and I've heard someone say this didn't clarify the stakes of this election, or it didn't raise the stakes of this election, it clarified things. And the fact that for a lot of people, Donald Trump was an existential threat to democracy. That's what he's been labeled.

He is a threat. He's literally Hitler is what people posted online, you know, mainstream. Or published in a magazine. Published in magazines and so um it sort of clarified for for some people how real politics really is now um you know we we we have been almost passive observers of things sometimes um you know lots of hyperbolic language thrown about. But when people like this guy is 20 years old who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump. His entire childhood and teenage years have been completely immersed in this hyper-politicized environment. And so we're seeing now what can happen when those conditions are created, and hopefully we can see a sort of changing of how politics might be conducted

or how things are portrayed. So if this is a time for unity or a time for people to get back to basics and focusing on policy discussions or policy disagreements rather than personality disagreements, I think that would be something good that could come out of this. But we're only a few days after um the attempted assassination and we'll see what happens but i mean regardless i think it's important for people to understand this election is is not the end of the world whichever way it goes and it's looking like it's going to go Donald Trump's way now, things can be bad without them being the worst thing ever.

And we are caught up in this constant frenzy of everything being the worst thing ever. The hyperbole is way out of hand. And this country literally fought a civil war. And maybe we were close to something like that, or at least skirmishes breaking out. We could have been one inch away from it. Maybe. We'll never know the counterfactual. But we have been in worse places than we are right now.

But because of how close it is to us, because it's the lives we're living instead of just distant history, the recency bias takes over. But things have been bad before and things have been worse than they are now. Just because one person you don't like wins an election doesn't mean the sky is falling. Chicken Little was right, ultimately, in the show, but it's not the case in real life. Like, this is just... The temperature has gotten way too hot. We saw it in the recent Texas races.

Right. But that's just a microcosm of the larger fight, the larger political fight in the country. And if anything, it's going to cause entropy to really take hold. It's the internal fighting in that manner. There's always going to cause entropy to really take hold. It's the internal fighting in that manner. There's always going to be fighting. There's always going to be differences of opinion in policy and worldview. But, like, these are your neighbors, whether you like them or not.

You're going to have to get along somehow. Right. And turn the temperature down so that you don't have more acts like this where really the significance is someone almost losing their life. And then someone losing their life. Someone actually did lose their life. Actually losing their life. Yeah. Unintentionally.

Right. It's just politics. Right. It's just, it's politics. Yeah. It's just politics. The sun is going to set and it's going to rise in the morning. It will be that way until, it's not going to happen when we're alive, you know? Like, whether you're religious or not, you know, whether it's the rapture happening or if it's just the sun exploding or whatever it is.

It's like, come on. This is just, just calm it down. Calm it down. Well, let's move to... Was that enough of a rant? Yeah, well, I think it summed up things quite nicely. And let's talk about things that have happened since the attempted assassination. We got some big news that during the RNC this week, Trump announced J.D. Vance would be his vice president. And it came down, really came down to three candidates and we talked about this in our

first recording uh of send me some stuff was it came down to vance who it ultimately went to but there was marco rubio and there was doug bergum who were also in the running. Those are the three main names, but Vance ended up on top. What's your sort of overall thoughts on him picking Vance in terms of what does this mean for the direction of the Republican Party as it stands now? Is this a change? Did he choose Vance for some particular reason that you might be able to articulate for us, what does it mean, Vance as VP? I think it's cementing the direction that Donald Trump wants to bring the party. He is the most policy-wise, I think, the most Trump-like of the options.

Maybe you could say Vivek, but he wasn't really in it. And it's – I think it's a fine pick politically. I don't think he's going to build any more – any bridges with the faction of the party that doesn't like him. But A, I don't think he really needs that now, given what just happened. Yeah, and I'll provide a little context for listeners for who Vance is. He is a senator from Ohio. There's been lots of digging into his past in the past couple days since the announcement. People, I'm sure, who are tuned into politics and Republican politics have seen some of

these videos and some of these posts from Vance that he was explicitly anti-Trump early in 2015-2016 when Trump first announced his presidency, but has since moved into the pro-Trump camp of the Republican Party. Vance is a former venture capitalist from Silicon Valley. He is from Ohio, but he went to Silicon Valley to be a venture capitalist he was he worked with someone like Peter Thiel who has had a lot of influence with funding libertarian Republican sort of cultural projects tech projects and Vance also he went to Yale Law School that's where he actually has a connection with Vivek. They both went to law school there.

And most people, the average individual who might not be all that tuned into politics and the minutia surrounding it, might have heard of J.D. Vance's name because he wrote the book, which was adapted into the Netflix movie, Hillbilly Elegy, which sort of tells his story of growing up in rural Appalachia and the sort of destitute childhood being raised by his grandmother, drug-addicted mother without a father. So he has an interesting background in the fact that from Appalachia, really poverty-stricken area, Yale Law School, venture capitalist, senator. So he sort of ties in a lot of different aspects of the this new direction of a republican party is that the sort of sense you're getting that he sort of gets all these boxes oh yeah and

he's he's definitely a new he's a different kind of republican he's part of this kind of insurgent wing of the party that, where they call themselves National Conservative or I don't know what other. Nationalist Populist. Nationalist Populist, yeah. They definitely have that stripe to it. He has that stripe to him. He won a very heated primary in Ohio in 2022 to replace Senator Rob Portman. And it was funny when they were announcing Vance after news had already broken, when they were announcing him on the screen at the RNC, all these Ohio figures go up and the lieutenant governor and all this stuff.

And I used to work in Ohio politics. I'm from Ohio, so I know all these people. And it's just I was having flashbacks to Nam watching it, especially knowing some of the inside baseball and what certain deals have been struck in the past with certain figures. It was an interesting interesting going down memory road there but he defeated it was a three four five six person primary for Republican primary for the seats he defeated Josh Mandel who was

run for Senate now multiple times but was the treasurer of Ohio. He defeated Matt Dolan, who is a legacy of the family that owns the Cleveland Indians, or now Guardians. Jane Timken, who was the Ohio Republican Party chair. So he won a hotly contested primary. And he wasn't really expected to win because he was new at this. This was the first thing he had run for. He had just been a pundit until that point,

especially a pundit that had the track record he had on Donald Trump. Now, it's also important to say there were many Republicans who would wish that it would be retconned into obscurity who held the same positions of Donald Trump that J.D. Vance did back then and have since changed their minds. But I think that's illustrative of something that's interesting and sort of this unity movement post attempted assassination, right? Is Vance is sort of emblematic of that. Is he was anti-Trump and then became pro-Trump in the following years of Trump being president. And in the RNC, like you mentioned, people are saying this is a time where a lot of people are trying to call for unity at the RNC.

And so having someone in the vice presidency who could be sort of a light for people who might not have been pro-Trump initially could become more pro-Trump by seeing someone like Vance actually be on the ticket? I don't think that's the case, no. I think it's nobody, no average person is going to remember the J.D. Vance opposed Trump back then. What they will see is his policies today. And I think he's very much of the Trumpian sect of the party on policy. You know, that includes being a lot more pro-labor union than the party has been in the past, being more anti-free trade.

More tech-focused. Tech-focused. Open source. Probably also, at least in a certain way, socially conservative, I would say. Not opposed to Social Security or other entitlements, rather than wanting to scrap them entirely, embrace them. He's been in favor of that. You mentioned Appalachia, his ties to Appalachia. He himself isn't from Appalachia.

His family lived in Appalachia. He grew up in Mid Appalachia. His family lived in Appalachia. He grew up in Middletown, Ohio, which is just north of Cincinnati. But he had close ties. He would go there all the time. Right. And he would see firsthand the poverty in Appalachia. And that's what got him the national profile. but I see it more of as Trump doubling down on the way he wants the party to be policy-wise or at least in terms of its ideology really

uh extinguishing the old guard's way of thinking on a lot of things that we've already seen it's been pushed out in a lot of respects. It's not gone entirely, and it won't be gone entirely. It'll still be there. Right. But I see it as Trump doubling down on the kind of administration he wants his second admin to be, rather than the one that was kind of a mishmash

of previous conservative orthodoxy and Trump priorities. And we're going to see a lot more populism in this ticket than we did in the previous one. vance if trump is elected president how involved vance as vice president will be in sort in sort of not just creating policy but enacting sort of some of those policy initiatives yeah and so how much leeway will you have on choosing cabinet positions and that'll be very interesting as well. There's one little wrinkle. I guess it depends on how the Republicans do if they take back the Senate, right? Right.

Well, that was something I was going to mention is there's a little wrinkle in here that with Vance relinquishing his Senate seat to be the vice president, that means the Ohio governor will appoint a new senator for that position. Lots of speculation on who that might be. Yeah, some names I've heard since I still have ties in those circles. Timken, who I mentioned, is one.

She obviously ran for Senate. Vivek has been mentioned. I think I'd be hard pressed to believe that DeWine would appoint Vivek. I know you would, you don't like that, but hey. Um, for people who don't know, I've been a big fan of Vivek for a while. Um, and then another one is Husted, who I mentioned kind of gave the introduction to

Vance when he was nominated and affirmed as the vice presidential nominee. I'm sure there are others, a couple congressmen, but Ohio used to be a purple state. It was the bellwether state for years for the presidential races. It was that and Florida back in George W. Bush era.

Well, it has since, especially after it started to gain the ground during the Tea Party, but especially after Trump, it is now red. The only Democrat elected statewide is Sherrod Brown, who was on the ballot this cycle, and he faces Bernie Moreno. But he's this kind of, Brown is this, he's not what you think of when you think of the modern Democratic Party, at least the loud ones, you know, like AOC, who very much is very much far left, or even Chuck Schumer.

Sherrod Brown is, you know, he's no, I would not call him a conservative Democrat, but he's definitely not, he's kind of populist. And so he has that flavor, that stripe to him. But he's the only one that can hold a statewide seat in Ohio. This is, this seat is going to stay red, provided they don't pick a dumpster fire candidate, whoever that is. So obviously, you know, that impacts Texas, both just generally with the votes in the Senate, but also with who the next majority leader is going to be, because Senator John Cornyn is running for that. Right. So we've seen this gradual shift, and it's largely due to Trump. That was the most immediate, abrupt shift in the partisan leaning of the state.

But it's firmly red now. And unless you have someone who's been entrenched in office for a long time, who has a certain kind of politics in the Democratic Party that frankly is just not the norm, Democrats have no shot. Mike DeWine won the governorship by 20 points last cycle. So that tells you where the state is. Well, we can talk just briefly a little bit about the RNC that is happening

this week. There's already been some interesting moments. Like we mentioned, J.D. Vance was vice president but we have also seen this sort of move to some of the speakers being part of this large umbrella that is now the Republican Party we've seen on the same stage the Teamsters president, and Amber Rose. So a very interesting mix of individuals. Who's Amber Rose, Cameron? She's like a model that dates rappers. But she has come out as being pro-Trump in recent weeks. So she was given a speaking uh spot at the rnc but um we still have i believe it's going to be on thursday uh today is tuesday so in a couple days

trump uh will get the official nomination from the rnc is there anything you've noticed about this rnc that is different? Anything that's caught your attention? Anything that is going to be coming up that you're going to be looking forward to? Well, it'll be interesting. Governor Abbott's speaking there, I think, Wednesday night. So it'll be interesting to see what he says. You know, obviously by the time this goes out, we will have seen that. How does he position himself with the new lodestar? It's not new, but it's kind of new. Lodestar of the GOP that's just the way Trump's going now,

now picking J.D. Vance. What's that look like in practice? It'll be interesting to see what he says there. Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson is also going to speak. How does he address the crowd? And he was a former Democrat who flipped. And that is going to be quite notable. It's no secret he's angling for higher office.

What that is, who knows? There's been some speculation about him running for John Cornyn's seat in but if cornyn wins majority leader he's not going anywhere unless you know ken paxton primaries him and takes him out which also looks like a real possibility that that paxton tries that yeah um but you know it just kind of hit me that that and then vance vance's selection it we talked about this i think on a previous episode the temperament of the two parties are kind of the polls are kind of flipping where where the gop used to be the more ideological party and the democrats used to be the more coalitional party we're seeing that go in the reverse. We're seeing Republicans get more coalitional.

That's part of, you know, you mentioned the Teamster rep speaking to the body, something that never would have happened probably not four years ago, let alone eight or 12. That shows you a lot, I think. And the Republicans, rather than trying to be big tent on ideology, are trying to be big tent coalitionally. And that's forcing them to throw away previous orthodoxies they had, such as being quite anti-union and more pro-big business.

But that's not the case anymore. You want a Texas example, look at the right wing of the party really being opposed to Texans for lawsuit reform, which is all businesses, all big business funds that. And, you know, obviously TLR, you listen to Mackenzie and I's podcast from, I forget when, weeks ago, when we talked about the TLR fight and the primary and all this and what they used to be and where they are now and is there a difference. But overall, it's part of the same trend of we're seeing Republicans become more pro-blue-collar worker, or at least emphasizing blue-collar workers as a part of their coalition rather than large businesses. Lots of reasons for that. Just ideology changing, but also things happening that have caused that so well taking a step back and just viewing it as an electoral strategy um is this something that could bode well electorally not just at the presidential level but maybe congressional seats, Senate seats, or even state seats, state elected

positions. Is this more ideology coalition building? Do you think a fruitful electoral strategy? Is there some historical examples maybe you can think of that where this has worked or where this has not worked? Because we've seen it with, like you mentioned, the poll switching. Democrats used to be this way, and they were very successful. Do you think it will bode well for Republicans? Probably because there's more votes on the coalitional side, I think. And it's a big reason why Democrats controlled the presidency so much in the last century

and also, but even more so, controlled Congress far more than the Republicans did. But I think we're seeing it take Texas, look on the border. We're seeing Hispanics shift to Republicans. Now, they by no means are majority Republican, but we're seeing the shift happen. Trump's a big part of that too. But that's also coalition building. It's a different part of your coalition.

That's a part of the coalition for Democrats that had kept the state united democratically for centuries, and gradually Republicans started chipping away, and they finally are making some visible gains, South Texas is not going to flip this cycle. But it's getting closer and closer to being purple and competitive. And there are seats that Republicans own in South Texas. I see it playing out right there.

Yeah. And I think with what you mentioned just a bit ago, Governor Greg Abbott, he will be speaking at the RNC, what his speech will be in light of the J.D. Vance pick and this new burgeoning ideology of coalition building, Big Ten populism with the Republican Party. He has sort of been more of an economic populist here in Texas, like, for example, with the CHIPS Act, trying to recruit

and bring businesses, technology-focused businesses, into the state. Would you call that an economic populist, though? Well, by... Maybe in the policy, but not in the... He does it in the intent to bring business to the state. He's a very pro-business governor. Yes. He's not this, he's not pro-union.

No. Certainly not. No. He's not that far along the shift we're seeing in the Republican Party, but on the policy side, yes. But on the policy side, in terms of providing subsidies through different policy initiatives to bring businesses in to the state. I think that is very interesting. If he will lean on that

in his RNC speech, I'll be paying attention. Is there anything else going on during RNC that is noteworthy? Well, one of the thing I want to touch on with Abbott is the reason these speeches are notable or significant is because it's kind of an audition for the national stage for a lot of candidates who want to run for president. I forget which year, but Reagan did it a few cycles before he eventually won the presidency. Of course, he lost the primary in 76. When he got there, he gave the speech, let's all unite behind Ford. Didn't work out.

Ford lost. But that opened the door for him to run and win in 80. So does this, and obviously we won't know for years, but does this provide Abbott a springboard that he's looking for to make a national bid at some point? We know he's been waiting in the wings. It looks like he wants to be the longest-serving governor in Texas, provided the timeline adds up for that, even with him running for president in 28 if he does that. So he can accomplish both things there if he wants. That's one reason why he didn't run this time. The other reason was Trump.

I mean, he was obviously going to win from the outset. But that's why those speeches are significant. You have a national stage in front of the constituency that you're trying to get their votes, initially, the Republican Party. And you either got to establish yourself, take that jump and springboard into the ability to you know be one of the favorites next time or you're just gonna fade away yeah and abbott has no intent on fading away i don't think um it's kind of hard to when you're the texas governor right there's so much that happens here but yeah uh but yeah then you have johnson what does that push him into you know uh does he do does he audition well essentially at this spot um other than that i

don't know what what else are you watching with the the rnc uh just what you touched on. Um, I'm, for people listening, I haven't been involved in politics my entire life, or even through college or high school, I wasn't involved in politics. I, I only recently got into it around 2016. Um, not even because of Trump, but because I just became interested in it on my own. So experiencing something like the RNC, I don't have a huge background with that. And so hearing your perspective on the importance of these types of speeches is illuminating for me because I can just watch these and think, oh, this person was interesting or what is... You just think in relation to you and your brain. To me and my brain as in the moment sometimes without taking in this historical context

or the reasons why someone is chosen or why someone chooses to speak at these events. I think that's all very important. And I think that's really important for our listeners to understand is, like you just mentioned, these are essentially auditions for future positions in either the federal government or state elected positions. So that's something I'll be keeping my eye on now,

something our listeners, I think, should be keeping their eye on. But, yeah, is there anything else? I guess we should mention a bit the Biden situation. And just real quick, like, what the heck's going to happen? So, yeah, so amidst all the Trump, Vance, RNC, the Democrats are still dealing with, will Biden be their nominee? Because leading into this past weekend, lots of speculation if Biden was going to be replaced. He was pretty assertive in saying, I'm going to stay in this race. We've seen op-eds from someone that's very close to both Biden and Trump, someone named George Clooney, the famous actor, putting out an op-ed saying Biden should step down from running in 2024.

So we've seen elected officials in the Democratic Party angling behind the scenes, whether it be Kamala Harris, Gretchen Whitmer, Pete Buttigieg, who knows, Gavin Newsom. Lots of elected officials coming out saying Biden should step down. But like you just said, they are still dealing with this. And in the aftermath of the presidential debate that sort of sparked all of this, Biden has given interviews with George Stephanopoulos, which really didn't quiet the chatter. Yeah, could have been worse. But it could have been worse, but it didn't really provide a lot of confidence to people.

He has given an interview to Lester Holt, and we've seen some clips come out from that. Again, not showing, not portraying the confidence that people want to see in his ability to be mentally agile, let's say. So what else do you think should be added to what I just said there? Anything I missed? Well, you know, when we talked last in the podcast that will not be released but kind of released uh the question was obviously would he drop out and you know where i landed was probably not gonna especially the longer this happened this lasts because uh inertia is powerful in politics and sticking to the status quo is generally something people want to do you don't want to rock the boat especially you know the devil you know is better than devil

you don't right um but after the assassination attempt and the odds of trump winning and running away with this let's say that's legit right um do democrats want to waste someone on their bench in a four-month campaign that is likely going to fail no matter what or do they just let this guy finish the race and then put them out to pasture uh i don't know but well because what was interesting is prior to the assassination attempt there was lots of conversations about the speed run uh campaign almost a reality show style debate between candidates with celebrity hosts and town halls and all sorts of things. All before the DNC. All before the DNC convention.

Which happens mid-August, I believe. And I haven't seen a lot of chatter about that recently because of what you just mentioned, the large swings in these swing states in favor of Trump. I tend to feel the same way as you, that they're going to stick with Biden. I know there's been some reporting recently from sources, either in the White House or connected to the White House, saying they're relegating themselves to a defeat in 2024 that they're just going to ride with Biden yeah and I feel the same way they are going to going to stick with Biden I don't think they're going to waste like you just said a potential future candidate to a loss against Trump they're going to stick with Biden well Well, you know, basically either way this goes, maybe not if Trump loses,

but it looks like at the moment, either way this goes, because of how old both candidates are, that you're going to have two fresh candidates in 28. Yeah. And so maybe if the Democrats feel like this is lost a lost cause then let's just take our money go home and prepare for 28 i think that's a that's a reasonable gamble to make especially if trump does win democrats will

probably be on the front foot electorally in 28 when they're running against whoever wants to be his successor. Yeah, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting for sure. But anything you want to shout out before we end this episode? Check out the last episode of Smoke- room with me and mckenzie we talk about the money in this recent primary in texas and you wrote a really good piece in fourth reading about rfk's chances and how he his independent run is sort of similar to other third-party

candidates in the past yeah it was a interesting history. I'd say he's definitely more of a Ralph Nader than a Ross Perot. Right. At least the way polling is looking right now. But, yeah, and then I took a peek at your redacted this week. It talks a lot about basically what we talked about today. Yeah. If you want more esoteric knowledge about it, Cameron's got it for you. I got it for you guys.

He's got 50 CCs. You can inject right into your veins of it. Well, I just want to say thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this re-recording of Send Me Some Stuff, and we will check you guys out on the next episode.