The Texan Podcast - Trump x Elon on X, Quiet Skies, First Impressions of Tim Walz: SMSS Ep. 6

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

This episode on Send Me Some Stuff, Brad and Cameron start off strong discussing the resurrection of Donald Trump's Twitter/X account and the live discussion of Donald Trump and Elon Musk on X. They also discuss a former presidential candidate on a "quiet skies" list, their first impressions of Harris VP pick, Tim Walz, and the most recent interview with the Uvalde Police chief regarding the tragic school shooting of 2022.Tune in to this episode of Send Me Some Stuff to get the best deep dive in all things Texas Politics and horse memes.

This is your blank canvas. Go for it. Let's do it. Alright, we're ready. Three, two, one. Hello and welcome in to Send Me Some Stuff, episode number six. My name is Cameron Abrams. I, a reporter here at the Texan, and I am joined today, once again, our esteemed senior reporter, Brad Johnson. Mr. Johnson, how's it going? Your intro there reminded me of whenever we were in class, and I'm giving a speech or something, and my friends are just making faces at me, trying to get me to break in front of the class.

And it worked many times. I wasn't able to hang on there. But we got a jam-packed episode today. We do. Lots of stuff to talk about. It's our half-dozen installation. You know, I wasn't even thinking of that. Soon we'll be at a baker's dozen yeah but we're going

to talk trump elon conversation we're going to talk the uvalde police chief gave a the former uvalde police chief gave an interview to cnn we'll talk a little bit about that Vallejo challenging for the Texas 15th district seat we'll talk VP picks we'll do a little DNC preview and maybe we'll touch on this interesting story I came across involving Tulsi Gabbard and a program that has placed her on a watch list very interesting but before we start there's two things we need to talk about number one there has been a viral chocolate chip muffin recipe this was all the rage during the olympics, I didn't know about this until we just sat down to talk about how are we going to lead up the podcast. And you're like, how about the chocolate muffin?

I'm like, what is this chocolate muffin? Well, I do a quick Google search. You type in Olympic Village into Google. Very first answer is chocolate muffin. So I'll read here from, I don't even know this is from abc abc affiliate in australia the olympics may be over but the online popularity of a chocolate muffin from the athlete village lives on one of the surprise stars of the paris olympics at least on social media was a decadent chocolate muffin served in the cafeteria inside the Olympic Village. Started to gain traction online when self-titled Olympic Village Muffin Man, Norwegian swimmer Heinrich Christensen posted a series of TikTok videos capturing his devotion to the sweet treat.

You said you've seen some of these videos. Is the chocolate muffin that is featured in these videos as delicious as they're making it out to be? Because I have not seen these videos. I don't know, but I was going to make a Shrek joke about, do you know the

muffin man, but you already beat me to stating who the muffin man is. um i mean it looks really good i would love to try that and frankly i i would jump into a pool full of these chocolate muffins and spend a lot of time there that would be great sounds like a dream but alas i don't think that exists. Favorite flavor of muffin? Chocolate chip. Chocolate chip?

Just regular chocolate chip, followed by blueberry. Blueberry? I'm going with lemon poppy seed. Oh, that's a good option. Lemon poppy seed, number one for me. Okay, but you had another thing you wanted to lead off with. Oh, yes. Another viral picture. Let's say, what is this another thing you wanted to lead off with. Oh, yes. Another viral picture.

Let's say, what is this viral thing you came across? There is a new movie coming out starring a really popular film star right now and one who is trying to make a comeback. The popular one is Florence Pugh. She's been in all kinds of stuff recently, including Oppenheimer. It's the one that I last saw her in. And then one of the Spider-Men of the last 20 years, Andrew Garfield. And they have a new movie coming out called We Live in Time.

It looks like a rom-com or just a romantic movie i don't okay and what is catching everyone's eye here is the movie poster for this or at least the first teaser image it's got this you know beautiful couple on a merry-go-round, laughing and having a good time. But right next to them, in the foreground, is this tweaked-out horse. Tweaked-out. It looks like it's tweaking. It's a derpy-looking horse. It's the derpiest horse I've ever seen. I'll say, when I was scrolling on Twitter today, I came across this picture.

And this was at the same time everyone's been freaking out about the Grok update where you can do images, generate images. Is that why everyone's posting all this stuff? Yeah. So I thought as I was scrolling, oh, someone made an AI image and it just popped out this crazy looking horse. It's hilarious. Yeah, and of course everyone's taking it and running with it as a meme. There's someone in the comments who did a face swap with Florence Pugh and the horse. So she's down on the horse's body, and the horse's body is up on hers.

The horse's head is up on hers with Andrew Garfield nuzzling its neck. Oh, my gosh. This is just who everyone needs. Whatever creative thing you're coming up with, movie, video game, just a painting, anything. Yeah. just a painting anything yeah if you're gonna mass produce it you need someone in the vicinity of the decision making process to just pump the brakes on this or just maybe that's not although maybe they're getting the attention they wanted out of this that's okay so maybe this was done intentionally could be it could drive or it's just dumb luck yeah i think that's

more like it but i want i now that you bring that up i want it to be that this was done intentionally they were they have the entire film crew they have the actors the director at this carousel and they're like we need to take a photo for content so we can promote. And I want someone to be like, you know what? That derpy looking horse, that's going to be the one. That's going to drive people. You know what it reminds me of? I want it to be intentional.

It reminds me of images of Halloween costumes from the early 1900s that are just freaky. And not intentionally. Yeah. They're supposed to be like a mouse. But because of how primitive the materials they used were, it looks like a tweaked out Chuck E. Cheese mouse. It looks like something from a horror movie.

Yes. Like, oh, look at my sweet little daughter dressed up as a mouse. It's like, no, that's a monster. Yeah, or they have the dad standing there and all the kids are just standing there just happy-go-lucky with this horror scene behind them yeah that's what this horse reminds me of but oh well um yeah some fun stuff to start off with but let's get into some of the news here. I think the biggest thing over the past week has been this Trump-Elon conversation. There was lots of anticipation for it. Did you manage to get in and listen to it? I did manage to get in.

What was so funny is, like I said, there was a lot of anticipation. Trump back on X and him and Elon, like an intimate sort of thing. And so I'm listening to it for like 20 minutes and then I get a phone call and it's my dad. And he's like, hey, buddy, what are you doing? I'm like listening to Trump, Elon right now. And they're having a conversation. He's like, oh, that's's cool can you like pause it and listen to it later I'm like okay sure well because I just think that's representative

of like the average person you know like we're inside the political machine yeah you know paying attention to the stuff and people who are online this hyping this up being a big deal but just for the normal person they're like oh that you can listen to it later like it's like telling you pause the video game yeah when you're playing online yeah so i just thought that was that was funny but um the lead-up to this conversation before we actually get into the substance of what they talked about uh the lead lead up to the conversation was very interesting as well because there was two things that happened. There was the, I think it was some European Union oversight committeeight Committee or whatever, they have different free speech laws over there than they do here in America, obviously.

Ours are much better. And so they wrote a letter to Elon essentially threatening him if certain things were going to be said in this conversation, like warning him like, oh, you could get fined or penalties could be levied. As other countries doing it? Yes. Yeah, well, and, you know, you've got to think, like, Elon, X is not just an American company.

It's a global company. So there's different rules on X in these different countries. Imagine trying to follow all that patchwork of laws. But he had a very interesting response to that, something I can't utter on a podcast. People can probably go find it for themselves and check it out. But a very funny response from Elon to that letter. But then another interesting wrinkle to this was the Washington Post during a press conference with Kareem Jean-Pierre.

I'll read from a Fox News article that highlighted this exchange between Jean-Pierre and this Washington Post reporter where the Post reporter says, what role does the White House or the president have in sort of stopping that or stopping the spread of that or sort of intervening in that, talking about the conversation? He continues saying some of that was about campaign misinformation. But, you know, it's a wider thing, right? Really putting pressure and asking if the White House is going to intervene in any way did you take that as the reporter wanting asking a question that they wanted a certain answer to or wanted to wanted to push the administration towards or do you think they were just asking the question whether the administration thought they should do something and asked it poorly, clumsily? It could be a clumsily asked question for sure. But I think we're, look,

we're in an age now where we've stopped giving the benefit of the doubt many times to mainstream outlets, right? So there's a reason why the Texans started up. There's a reason why independent journalism is thriving and mainstream and corporate media entities are really dwindling. So I don't know. I don't want to act like I can read the mind of this guy, but just to take it at face value, it's just an interesting question to ask. Like, would the current sitting president intervene in some sort of way into a conversation with a potential candidate and someone who owns a private business? Well, one thing that I will say about it, and I agree,

like I don't know what the exact intention was behind asking this question, but it tells you the priors this person is operating from. That's right. I wouldn't think at all when having a discussion about this Trump-Elon space, my gut reaction would not be, hey, can you shut this down? I don't think, I don't know if many people would have that. It'd be more of, well, is what they're saying on this true? Yeah. You have any rebuttal to what they're saying? You know, they're saying a lot of bad stuff about you. Do you want to, you and your boss, do you want to reply to that? Right. But no, it's, is there any way you can shut this down? It just, like, that's a weird starting point. And, you know, that we talked before about how a lot of the press,

and certainly not all of the press, but a lot of the press wants to be activists. Right. They don't want to be reporters. You know, this is, it seems like this is an example of that or at least kind of a condition of that larger problem. Yeah. And there was another thing that happened before where the space was delayed 40 minutes because of a DDDOS attack on X. I don't know how true it is. Do we believe that? I don't know how true. Do we believe that?

I don't know how true it is. Again, I've seen reporting from people that have sources from inside of X that said it wasn't real. Will we ever know the truth? I don't know. You saw something similar with the DeSantis space, right? Yeah. There were problems with that too.

There was delays and stuff. I mean, when you have a million people on a on a space you're gonna have technical problems right it's just gonna be a thing yeah so all that to set up the conversation we haven't even gotten to the substance yet um i thought one of the funnier um lines from Trump was when he said, illegal immigration saved my life. When Elon was talking to him about the attempted assassination attempt, Trump was sort of walking everyone through what happened and talking about how he turned his head.

Oh, because he was talking about the chart? About the chart, about the chart. And he says, illegal immigration saved my life, which got a good laugh from Elon during that exchange. Another interesting exchange was when Elon was asking Trump about his relationship with other foreign leaders. And he was talking about how, oh, he has a good relationship with Putin, with Xi of China, with Kim Jong-un.

And he was like, I'll read here from what Trump said. He said, they're at the top of their game. They're tough, they're smart, they're vicious, and they're going to protect their country. Whether they love their country, they probably do. They probably do. It's just a different form of love. But they're going to protect their country.

But these are tough people at the top of their game. Just before getting into the substance of the conversation some of the things that i just said was the moment of trump coming back to x this conversation with elon was the hype surrounding it warranted um will trump more on X, if he ends up posting more often, is that going to have an effect on the voting public? What's your thoughts around just the overarching theme of Trump being on X again? Well, you know, I don't think it'll affect much electorally. You know, there's only a certain amount of people on Twitter even. Sorry, I'm not calling it X.

I'm not doing it, Cameron. Return to tradition. And so, you know, like your dad called and didn't give a hoot about it. So I think that's probably, that stands for most people. But, you know, one thing that hurt Trump during the last administration and leading into the election, this was a reason that a lot of people didn't want to vote for him, was the tweets.

And, you know, obviously those on the right have used that sardonically as, but the mean tweets, well, why would you get rid of a successful administration economically because of mean tweets? On the other side, you have people who are very just sick and tired of the constant drama associated with his tweets and with the media coverage of it. So maybe that signals a return to that, and that did hurt him probably. That was also part of his rise. He made his own media, both on TV stations and through Twitter.

Yeah, and I think what's been interesting about Trump not being on X as well is when he's on Truth Social, you know, positions or ideas out there on social media. But just the fact that it's on a separate platform where X is really where journalists hang out, where reporters hang out. Oh, yeah. It's its own echo chamber. Yeah, just where that little bit of separation because Trump posts a lot on Truth. Yeah, I have his notifications on and my phone's buzzing constantly with it and so um and they're not and it's not always federal policy issues it's like him beefing with some local guy in georgia some local lawmaker so um it'll be interesting if he has truth for some stuff and

then x for more just campaign stuff i don't know but um yeah i i thought the conversation just by the fact that there was a million people or a million and a half at one point, concurrent viewers. I think that shows there's a hunger for this sort of personal interaction with politicians, especially at the federal level. One thing I want to add on, not related to that, but related to the quote you read about foreign policy, the acknowledgment that these other, or the assertion that whether it's right or wrong, that these other world leaders love their countries, and they're

looking, trying to look out for their best, or what they think is the best interest. And that's a very realpolitik viewpoint on foreign policy. And, you know, obviously that breaks heavily with the more ideological good versus evil view that, you know, a lot of people view, let's say, World War II in context of. That's probably the bright neon sign example of a good versus evil fight, at least as close as you can get it in this world. Then you look at like World War I and that was probably the best testament to a real politic viewpoint.

You know, these entangling alliances and one tiny spark lights the fuse that lights the match, that lights the fuse that caused the entire world to explode. But Trump is clearly laying out that real politic viewpoint. I think we've known that for a while, you know, his willingness to meet with Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Putin in Russia.

His belief that, oh, we can just negotiate a peace in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Maybe that's true. There's also a case that that's not the case. At least for a settlement that will be acceptable to both sides, apply that also to the Israel-Palestine conflict at the moment with Hamas. And he believes, I mean, this is his whole shtick, right? He can negotiate anything as long as he's in the room making it happen. Right.

I don't know about, especially take the Israel-Palestine one. That's been going on for thousands of years, that just general conflict in the Middle East. I don't know if there's negotiating that down, at least for a permanent settlement. You might be able to nip the edges. But also the Ukraine-Russia one, that's about conquest. Putin wants land. Does negotiation include giving him the land he wants? Well, that's not going to be something the Ukrainians and most of the rest of the Europeans want.

So I was struck by that quote of his, and really that's the best explanation I've heard so far of Trump's foreign policy views. And it's pretty telling, I think. Yeah. Yeah. And without getting into an entire foreign policy conversation, we have those enough in the office where we all have our individual ideas of a best course of action and what is precipitating certain things. But we won't get into that here. But back on one of the comments that Trump made relating to Vladimir Putin, when he was talking about the aggression from Russia,

he was saying, I got along with Putin very well. He respected me. He added that he often spoke with Putin about Ukraine, described it as the apple of Putin's eye. Trump further claimed that he had warned Putin against taking action, saying, quote, I told him, don't do it. You can't do it, Vladimir. You know, that's just emblematic, again, of sort of Trump style, like very personable, kind of just acting like he's talking with any person off the street. Yet he's talking with Elon Musk or he's talking about a conversation that he had with another foreign leader. It's not always going to be as polished as people might want out of a politician. I think it's one of the things that led to him winning the election initially is even though he's a billionaire, Manhattan, real estate mogul, people can relate to how he talks and how he sort of positioned himself, too, as an outsider of the party establishment. So just very interesting conversation. Anything else that you want to mention that you thought was interesting?

I mean, it was fascinating to see just how many people jumped on this thing. But even so, it was at 1.2 million I saw, the most I saw. Okay. And that's what, like, how many people voted in the last election? Biden got 81 million, and Trump got 79, 78, something like that. Yeah, so that's a tiny fraction of the voting population. And that's even if all those people are registered to vote and vote. So, yeah, it's significant.

But let's, I think, let's keep it in perspective here. The vast majority of American voters did not listen to that and will never listen to that. Yeah. They're going to be swung more by tv ads and mail pieces and or knockers door knockers or their friend or trusted neighbor who says who they ask who are they voting for or they won't be swayed at all on it right they already know who they're voting for yeah and it's not changing yeah but um let's move on to something else, something you sent me.

I think it would be interesting if we talk a little bit about the former Uvalde police chief who had a conversation with CNN. I listened to the video and they said that they had over an hour long conversation. Yet the video that I watched was only nine minutes nine and a half minutes or something um but some very interesting things uh came out i'll just read a little bit and i'll let you add uh this is um well what's his full name i have arnado here what's his first name do you remember pete arredondo i believe arredredondo. He said, I've been scapegoated. This is him. I've been scapegoated from the very beginning. And he went on to say, if you look at the body cam footage, there was no hesitation. There was no hesitation in myself and the first

handful of officers that went in there and went straight into the hot zone, as you may call it, and took fire. And this is, again, from the CNN article. They comment here, despite being cast as the incident commander, Ardenado. Ardenado. Ardenado, sorry about that. Said the state police should have set up a command post outside and taken control.

He goes on to say, quote, the guidance tells you the incident commander does not stand in the hallway and get shot at. Yeah, what was another interesting thing that you heard during this interview? Anything? Yeah, I mean, the entire thing was basically him, it was him giving his side of the story, of course. He felt like, like you said, in the first quote, he's been scapegoated. Almost immediately, he blames not just Texas DPS, but Steve McCraw, the head of DPS specifically, for the failures, saying he was actually the on-site commander. Of course, Arredondo was the school's police chief.

And so I've seen McCraw say previously that he was there first, first of all, and therefore he's the commander, the on-site, commander for the incident response. So it's just back and forth there. Arredondo is being charged with various counts, I think of child endangerment, I believe. I thought an interesting thing that came up during the interview as well, and you mentioned this as we were prepping, is they offered for him to comment on videos, body cam footage from the incident, from the shooting,

and he refused to. Yeah. I thought that was very interesting as well, just for the fact that if this was an interview opportunity for him to clear his name, because there was many instances in the videos that they showed in the interview that he didn't comment on where they questioned him about, oh, you said this, and then he would deny it during the interview.

But in the video, it sort of showed a different story. And so what's your thoughts on that so first of all you know there's there's two different aspects of this there's the pr thing which is what he's doing engaging this interview but then he's got the criminal charges right ending so like you got to approach this any it's to mention he had his lawyer. Yes, the lawyer was there. You've got to approach it as anything you say probably would be used against you in a court of law if it's admissible in court. So he's trying not to contradict himself on anything. And now the way he framed it in that response was it's too difficult for me to watch, and I'm not going to watch any videos.

I was there. I don't want to relive that, basically. Right. But specifically the thing the CNN reporter was asking him about, which was really shocking, to see they overlaid it at the same time, the video, with the audio and it was uh one of the students in the classroom calling the 911 dispatcher yes and saying she's well she's still alive and she's still in the room and the shooter is still in the room and there's a bunch of dead kids, but there's at least one that's still alive.

And at the same time, Arredondo is telling officers not to go in. Mm-hmm. We're going to stay in pat. Mm-hmm. that the reason they did that was to keep him in that room and contained. If nobody else is alive in there, then there's no point going in and risking other people dying or him getting into another classroom and causing problems. That was the position there. Now, if there's someone alive in there, which there was, that kind of throws it out the window.

Now, when you see the audio and the visual line up, you see the radio dispatcher calling in saying, I have someone on the phone, and she says she's in the classroom. Yeah. Well, you can also see and hear Erdando telling the officers around him to turn down the radio because it's loud and he's barking out orders, right? Right. So it's disrupting his ability to bark out orders. But that's pretty important information to have. Yeah. So, you know, he did not want to watch that.

They showed it anyway in this. It was really surreal. It was kind of shocking to see. You know, reports had been out of that before, but just to see it play out in this was pretty shocking. You know, if that's not criminal incompetence that's at least just regular incompetence and it it did not look well on him did not reflect well on him in that yeah and um

shootings like this are an unfortunate event in any circumstance and hopefully incidents like this and the failures that occur can prove to be an opportunity for better training and security practices to be put in place i know the Tech Sledge is really working hard on that as well. And they passed the Guardianship Act and increased security funding, increased security funding. So there is work being done to help prevent these sorts of events from taking place. So yeah, I just think very interesting, very revealing in one sense, and still lots of questions left that people are wondering. But let's move on to another story. Let's talk a little bit about the Tulsi Gabbard story here. I came across this the other day from Matt Taibbi,

who was speaking about this recent report that he came across from an organization called Undercover DC, undercover DC which had revealed that Tulsi Gabbard was actually placed on a list a watch list where TSA agents were monitoring her and then there was it's it's called the quiet skies program it like a no-fly list? Yeah, so the Quiet Skies program, TSA uses a subset of the silent partner rules to identify passengers for enhanced screening on subsequent domestic and outbound international flights.

And Undercover DC said Gabbard was initially placed on the list on July 23rd, and the trios of air marshals first began following her on flights on July 25th. And as Matt Taibbi would learn, surveillance was conducted on at least eight flights with different three marshal teams for each flight part of this quiet skies program that he this is reading from matt tabby's reporting quote literally surround people with human watchers there are quote potentially 15 or more tsa uniformed in plain clothes at a gate for such assignments so why would Tulsi Gabbard a former Democratic candidate for president she's been very outspoken since she ran about the Democratic establishment, the party system. She's been very much outspoken

in the anti-war movement over the past few years. Why would they need to place physical surveillance on someone like Tulsi Gabbard? Any thoughts? I mean, conspiracy thoughts or not? I mean, do we know for sure that this is confirmed? Tulsi Gabbard, yes, she's spoken about it. And I've seen a press release. Let me fact check myself before we get further so I can. Tim Burchett, six days ago, demands answers from TSA about Tulsi Gabbard on Quiet Sky's watch list.

He says in this press release, quote, I've been told Ms. Gabbard has been placed on the TSA watch list under a program known as Quiet Skies. I find this profoundly troubling for a number of reasons. He goes into some of what I just talked about and just he's requesting answers, demanding answers about this. So yeah i it's just another i i've written about this you're struggling not to go full tinfoil hat here i'm trying to because i've written quite a bit um in my redacted newsletters about their surveillance aspect of the federal government and this is you know we think about it mostly in an online digital aspect we've seen recently with compaction challenging and winning against Google that was tracking biometric markers, facial recognition of users.

We've seen recently with how he's challenged GM about how they were selling license plate information to third-party vendors. Is that correct? I think that along those lines. That sounds like the, yes, the state. And, of course, the algorithmic effects of our personal data being used on social media sites, it's not to get into the cameras that are placed all over city streets, and who knows what people are doing with that information. So surveillance is a big issue for a lot of people, but it's always been done in a way

that is removed from the physical aspect. I think this example is a step in the direction of now we're actually putting physical bodies following other people. Physical bodies, yeah. So just the surveillance aspect of the government and this being done to a high profile figure like Tulsi Gabbard, who else is on this list? I think that's another question. Like, who else are they following? You know, you look at the no-fly list, and this seems to be more deliberate, anybody can end up on a no-fly list. You might have the same name as a terrorist halfway across the world you've never heard of, and you'll end up on a no-fly list. It's a real problem.

It causes a lot of problems for regular people. This is a different thing entirely, obviously. Obviously, Gabbard has really changed her political positioning recently. I don't know if she's Republican now, but she's certainly not Democratic. I believe she declared herself independent or something like that. Also, she is now a resident of Texasxas oh she lives in leander yeah i believe leander nice uh just outside austin um i don't know i don't really have any any thoughts other than wow that would suck for her if it yeah i i just i i wanted to up. And it's not like a security thing for her, right? Yeah, I just wanted to bring this up because of the escalation in the tactics, the surveillance tactics.

I'll just read a little bit here again from this is Racket News. This is Matt Taibbi's news outlet that he runs. He says, quote, in the wake of 9-11 programs like the TSA's No Fly List and the multi-agency terrorist screening center regularly made the news as the focus of controversies with criticism often coming from Democrats. In an incident that sounds familiar but in fact underscores the expansion of the scope of such programs, the late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy was prevented from boarding planes on five occasions in 2004, apparently because a suspected terrorist was using Anthony Kennedy as an alias.

These programs symbolize the Bush-era reflex for wide-scale screening of mostly Muslim suspects and came to be frowned upon as racist. When a judge in 2019 finally declared the terrorist screening database unconstitutional, voices across the spectrum cheered, it's about time. So the precedents being set back with the 9-11 and the Patriot Act and things of that nature, just again, I'll mention bringing this to the attention of people, the escalation in this, just very interesting news story. I thought I'd bring it up on the podcast today to hear your thoughts. Let's move to the next story here, a more local

Texas-focused story with Michelle Vallejo. Yes. Why don't you lead us into this? What's going on? Sure. Michelle Vallejo is a candidate for the 15th congressional district. That is one of the three big South Texas congressional seats that most of the political world has their eyes on. She is facing Republican Monica de la Cruz. The district itself leans very slightly Republican, but based on our ratings, it's the most competitive congressional seat in the state. It's R52, I believe. And Vallejo ran against de la Cruz last time.

She's back again, has built up some name ID. Both DNC and the NRCC are going to, are targeting this. Both parties really want this seat. Republicans to keep it, obviously. Democrats to flip it. Democrats hold the other two seats, 28 and 34. But both of them are,

all three of them are in South Texas and therefore the border is a massive issue. It's a massive issue. It's a big issue across the entire state, but it's especially concentrated in these districts because they're in that area. So Vallejo, the Democrat, released an ad this week, I believe. And in it, she basically takes a very moderate position on the border, even looks like a

kind of Republican position on the border, saying that Congress needs to get it together, the administration needs to get it together. And I think it's called Get Serious. And in it she says, our community is being overwhelmed by the chaos of the border.

It's time to get serious. Yeah. What this tells me is it's not new, but the border runs everything in Texas as a political issue. And we saw that in the primaries. We saw these Republican House primaries, ostensibly about school choice, really get enveloped by the border issue. And you had Republicans bashing Republicans on immigration issues. So now we see Democrats realize they have a problem on this. They really do. It's clear up and down the ballot. This isn't New York where you can just shrug your shoulders at the border situation. They can't even either with the busing program.

Yeah, the busing program has made that pretty clear. So this ad really shows Democrats are trying to change it up on the border. They realize they have a political problem. And for them to win, they basically can't be using the Biden administration's border policies as their border plan. They have to adjust, at least in the political messaging. Even if it doesn't result in policy changes or proposals, they're at least shifting the way they talk about it. And as I'm fond of saying in this political coverage, Newton's third law applies to politics as well.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And I saw this afternoon a response to the ad. Daniela Diaz, she covers Congress for Politico, she said about the ad, this specific ad from Vallejo has infuriated local immigration advocacy groups in the RGV, so much so that Lupe, RGV's political arm, Lupe Votes, which endorsed Vallejo, might pull their endorsement over this ad. Wow.

That's pretty big. You know, I don't, all the people that over one ad over one ad wow yeah all you know all the people that would ever be swayed by loop by lupe um or lupe votes whatever they are they're not going to vote for de la cruz it's that's not the issue here. Right. But this endorsement could come with money. Right. And campaign help. If they're providing door knockers, that's pretty big.

So if that happens, that's going to be a loss for Vallejo. But she's walking this tightrope. It's a very tightrope that Democrats have to walk in regard to the border. Like you mentioned, the border is top of mind for everyone headed to the polls. It's been number one or number two over the past year. So is there a way you can see Democrats walking this line between border security and immigration? Because people think of it as the same thing when we talk about border issues, but they really are separate issues. Because there's one aspect of we need to secure the border. And that can mean anything from building a wall to increased personnel presence at the border. But then there's the immigration issue because it's not just illegal immigrants coming up through the southern border, it's also illegal immigrants being flown in through federal programs

or it's people coming over on H-1B visas. And so there's immigration is one thing, border security is another. Is there a way you can see a Democrat positioning themselves where they can sort of be a bit softer on the immigration issue, but strong on the border security. Like we need more people at the border, but I still encourage immigration, or I still think there needs to be pathways for anyone who wants to come, whether it be through federal programs, because we've seen legal challenges to that federal program that is flying people, Venezuelans, Haitians, other South American, Central American countries are being flown to the interior of the country. So they don't even have to go to the border. So is there a balance a Democrat can

find in those two issues? Well, I think we've seen the Biden administration try and find that. For example, did they reinstate the remain in Mexico? They at least flirted with it. So there was that. They did something with an executive order. I remember writing about this, helping be tougher, rather, on asylum claims. That's what I was going to mention. Trying to crack down on fraudulent asylum claims. That's right. So making it more stringent on what qualifies. You know, like there's a, to qualify for asylum, you have to be trying to escape. It's like political violence and, or threat.

Right. And the interpretation of that has gradually, especially under the Biden administration, gotten broader. Yeah. especially under the Biden administration, gotten broader. Well, I think they have tried to pare that down because they realized, A, it's a losing political issue for them, and B, it's just causing a lot of problems and people are getting in that shouldn't be able to get in under law. You know, this isn't debating proposals. This is actual existing law. This isn't debating proposals. This is actual existing law. So there's that. Democrats, Colin Allred at the top of the ticket in Texas,

Vallejo, all the other Democrats have talked a lot about how Republicans are just pounding their chest on this issue and they're not actually offering any solutions. They pointed to, Allred did this, pointed to a border package. It was bipartisan negotiated between some Republicans in the Democratic caucus in the Senate, endorsed by the Biden administration,

and the House and other Republican senators like Cruz rejected it. And so they're pointing to that as an example. The Republicans just want gridlock. They just want to rage against the machine. They don't want to actually get anything done. Well, then Republicans counter and say, well, we had a border package well before this that we passed that the Democrats just spat on, basically. So both sides have their talking points in this. I'm curious to see how this political posturing changes

once we get into the next administration, whichever way that is, and what they actually try and do about this. You can't really trust much of anything said in a political campaign. You don't think Trump's going to deport every illegal immigrant? No, that's not happening. I think you can trust that they believe something's a problem, you know. But campaign promises are very thin most of the time, and especially on the border,

which has been a problem for decades, and neither side has been able to fix it. But it has continued to be a problem, and it's even gotten worse. So this Vallejo ad was very interesting to see. It'll be very interesting to see the fallout from it in Democratic circles. Does she lose a significant amount of support from these more progressive activist organizations on this issue? Or is it worth it because it wins her more voters?

Yeah, well, I think that's the question, is the base of Vallejo voters, are they going to be more progressive on the immigration issue or are they more representative of what polling has shown that immigration is a top issue? Doesn't matter your political affiliation. Yeah. Is there any indication in your mind which way the electorate in Texas 15 might lean? Do you think it's going to be the more progressive base of voters that are going to reject her proposal, or do you think it's always the people that actually show up, which is usually middle-aged, older people that go to the polls.

I think this is a smart political move. Okay. Whether it ultimately works, I don't know. But this is—they have done their polling. They know what their key demographics think about the border issue. And if that wasn't the case, if their important voter support were these progressive organizations, they would not be coming out.

Vallejo would not be coming out with this ad. He would not be changing messaging on the border. Allred would not be posturing on the border the way he is. But they are. Because this is a losing issue for them, and they're trying to stem the bleeding. Now, one thing I will add, Republicans have a similar problem on abortion. Now, that issue, if you look at priorities in polling, it has not reached that level of immigration, particularly in Texas. But the GOP's policy on abortion is not a particularly popular one among most of the electorate. Republican. Republican, yes, which is the

basically across the board ban with few exceptions like life of the mother. So I view these two issues as kind of mirror images of one another. Okay. And I wrote a piece on it a couple weeks ago on this, focusing on the Senate race. But Republicans are trying to ignore the abortion issue or really change their positioning. You look at Trump at the top of the ticket saying, you know, we got rid of Roe. That was great. Now we need to let the states decide.

Right. No nationwide abortion ban. None of that. Which it wouldn't pass in Congress anyway, even if Republicans locked up all three. At least I don't think it would. But you would, you see the same kind of shifted messaging on abortion among Republicans that you do from Democrats on immigration and the border. And both of them are losing issues for their respective sides, and they're trying to make them less important in the race. Who is successful on that? I don't know, but that's the trend here.

Yeah, it's very interesting. We talked on our weekly podcast about this, trying to court the middle, right? And so we're seeing this both from the left and the right on these mirroring issues that you say immigration and abortion. I just think it's very interesting. Is this more representative of a change in the general populace and how they view these issues? And is that trend here to stay or is it what it is a trend and things will revert back to um things the way people have viewed things in the past with immigration being a partisan issue and abortion being a partisan issue well you know attrition causes a lot of changes in behavior and this border issue has been going on.

It's been raging at its current level for a while. It's not getting better. It may not be getting worse at a rate as fast as it was three, four years ago, but it's not getting much better, and people are tired of it. And that's going to affect the way they vote. And so that's going to affect the areas politicians need to appeal to in order to get those voters. Well, I think that was a really good deep dive there

on that issue. Let's wrap up on the Democratic National Convention. We'll talk a little bit, too, about both vice presidential picks because especially Tim Walz has been in the news a lot since his selection by Kamala Harris to be his running mate. The DNC, I'll just bring this up here. It's planned for, what's the dates here um i don't have the dates in front of me where'd they go i think next weekend next week next week

yeah yeah but um you know kamala harris has already locked up the delegates, and they confirmed her in an online virtual nomination ceremony. So everything that happens at the DNC will essentially be ceremonial. Speeches from party leaders, her introduction, the announcement, and things like that. But I think what everyone is going to be looking for is what's going to happen outside the DNC. Is that where your mind goes? It's going to be another 1960, was it 4 or 8 that had the riots in Chicago at the DNC? It was 1968. 1968. And just a little background for that is there was quite a bit of rioting

and protesting that went on outside the convention in 1968. Arrests and the police getting involved, you know, tear gas being used. And since it was all on video, people were really captivated by what was going on. It was very heated. And what was interesting is I was actually digging into this because I thought I was going to mention some of this stuff in my most recent newsletter, but I did end up writing about the DNC. But in 1972, there was actually quite a bit of ruckus that went on inside of the convention because there was issues regarding contested votes by the delegations and yeah, lots of chaos at the DNC over in their history. But I think the big thing for this year, the reason why I mentioned it is because there is a split currently within the Democratic base that has to do with how the response by the federal government should be to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

So do you anticipate there being any— Sorry, I saw a meme. Do you think there'll be riots going on outside the DNC this year, like kind of like 1968? Or do you think police presence is going to be ramped up? They have better crowd control measures. Do you think it's going to be pretty quiet? I don't think it'll be quiet, but I don't think we're going to see riots. There's got to be somewhere in between, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I think we'll see some problems crop up, but those snuffed out pretty quickly. What are these protesters even protesting, really? What are they going to be mad about? They got rid of Biden. They have a new energized— Well, they want a ceasefire between Israel. Well, it was interesting.

I saw a video of All Red at an event getting yelled at by one of these pro-Palestinian protesters. And that's probably something they're going to have to deal with for a while. And especially these more moderate members who either are explicitly pro-Israel or at least tentatively so, you know, they're going to have to contend with us and figure out a way to respond, lest they end up like Vallejo on this other issue, unrelated issue, losing support. But also, you know, these protesters, there's no satisfying them. That's true. There is no satisfying these people on any of their demands. First of all, because most of their demands are unreasonable and unattainable. And second of all, because they're just crackpots. They're crackpots. They are. And you know, they're right wing

crackpots too, all over the place. Totally. So they're just just we live in america there are a lot of crackpots cameron i i hear you there will always be a lot of crackpots there always have been a lot of crackpots and that's not going to change yeah but i think the dnc will go pretty smoothly there won't be any disruptions there's not a contested convention it'll be fine cam camilla harris will have her um you know 15 minutes 15 minute bump from the the convention that trump had and then got snuffed out pretty freaking quickly yeah with um with the the nomination swap from the democrats but yeah i think they'll get that and then we'll'll hit the home stretch of the campaign. We'll have everything set,

and the best candidate will win, which there's a lot of problems going on right now at the top of the ticket. Yeah. I saw reporting that Trump was considering firing his campaign managers because of the last three weeks that haven't been very good for him. Maybe something like that happens for the Democrats.

I don't know. This year has been just so nuts. It's been so nuts. But it makes for good commentary. It does. It makes for people who like following this stuff like us and for people who are listening to a podcast like this you know they like they like the chaos so uh let's talk a little bit though about what you just mentioned this media campaign um we saw it with kamala harris

you know there was this whole brat thing that was going on, the memification of her campaign and her persona. And we've seen something sort of similar after she selected Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. I wrote an extensive piece on Redacted this week about this phenomenon that we've been seeing where there's been media outlets positioning him as this simple folksy midwesterner and there's even been a there was a very interesting uh compilation of mainstream like news outlets uh sort of repeating this over and over and over again um where they were also calling the the kamala harris walls ticket joyful or they're bringing joy back to politics you know just very interesting very similar to what we saw in the lead up to the debate between Biden and Trump, where they're calling Biden sharp as a tack.

You know, like very, very precise language being used by a variety of different outlets. You would think they'd have an independent idea of how to characterize a candidate and they wouldn't be using the same words. But that's beside the point um do you know did you know much about tim wallace before he was selected i just heard his name i hadn't i knew nothing about him no i did not i don't know if i could even have told you who was the governor of minnesota before he was picked um you, it seems like he's a fine pick. Like, he's not going to hurt them too much, although it does seem like there's some scandals about his past, specifically with his service in the National Guard

and the way he's framed it, chiefly. Yeah. You know, it sounded like a piece i read this morning he was serving in i think italy in support of operation defending freedom or enduring freedom one of the two so he wasn't in a combat role um really even close to one but he was still over there yeah i'll read here from an article, the American Conservative. They wrote about it here. I'll read directly from the article.

Quote, Walt's enlisted in the Army National Guard at the age of 17. During the course of his service, he did not enter combat. Although he did deploy for six months to Italy, during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, by 2005 he had served for 24 years and achieved the rank of Commander Sergeant Major in the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery. In February of the same year, he filed paperwork to run for Congress in Minnesota, where he lived and worked as a geography teacher for Mikado High School. So there's been, the controversy you mentioned is about some of his comments he's made publicly,

whether it be in speeches, um, or in different campaign ads about, uh, some of his service, maybe embellishing it in some instances. So that's caught a lot of attraction online from, um, pundits, right-wing media sources have really grabbed onto that. Again, this is the vice presidency. This has been, and mostly since the founding of our country, a very obscure, isolated office. People didn't really give too much thought to it. But recently, I think... Aaron Burr shot the Secretary of the Treasury because he was so upset at being vice president. Well, I think the vice presidency has been thrust into the national spotlight,

especially with Mike Pence and the controversy over certifying the electorate. I'd say also how tight the Senate is and the potential for a tie-breaking vote but yes also that. Right so there's been more of a spotlight shown on it. Will in your mind the vice president whether it be Vance or Wallace will their selection have any effect on people going to the poll or do you think it all just comes down to Trump-Harris? I think it all comes down to Trump- trump harris and the main reason is that neither state that these two vice presidential candidates represent are up for grabs ohio's solidly republican and minnesota's solidly democratic it's not changing the margins might change but that doesn't matter.

All that matters is if you win the electoral votes of that state. Whereas Pennsylvania, Harris could have picked Josh Shapiro. Now, she would have had a whole bunch of other problems with that. Well, that comes back to the DNC convention issue with the protest because Josh Shapiro is Jewish, and if there was rumblings about her, or him rather, if she had selected Shapiro, there would have been uproar. Yeah, because of his position on Israel and the Hamas conflict. But overall, it's going to come down to the top two. You know, when you pick presidential candidate, vice presidential candidates and running mates, it can affect things at the margins and slightly more so

if that state they represent is up for grabs, but that's not the case. So it's going to come down to Trump and Harris. You know, one interesting thing I did read about walls, this is from one of my favorite authors kevin williamson of dispatch he's always very grumpy and and pointed in his analysis but this was an interesting read whether you agree with it or not but there are two things you need to know about minnesota politics one is that two-thirds of the state's population lives in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area. The second is that Minneapolis does have two-party politics, but the two parties are factions within the DFL. The progressives, the Democratic Party there, the progressives and the ultra-progressives. In parentheses, it's like the inverse of statewide politics in Texas,

where Republicans offer voters a choice between crazy right-wingers and rabid, carpet-chewing, monster-raving, loony right-wingers, and then wonder why all the cities are Democratic. Obviously, some will take issue with his assessment there, and he's also being hyperbolic yeah for effect but it's it is interesting you know here we can try and understand minnesota from texas as kind of an inverse yeah well and i think what's so interesting um about the walls pick two with um what it's with what's his name? Kevin Williamson.

Kevin Williamson pointed out is Walls has leaned more towards that ultra-progressive side in how he's administered the office. His policies are very progressive. Very progressive. So I think what will be interesting to see is but he also doesn't look it that's the other thing that's yeah yes that's he doesn't look like a one of these campus radicals no and i don't think he is a campus radical but his politics his politics at least represent that get close to it. Get close to it. But Harris, her issue is butting up against how Joe Biden has administered the office of the presidency. Not many people are happy with that, even before he withdrew from the 2024 campaign.

So she's fighting back against that. Will Harris lean on walls saying, if you like what he did in Minnesota, you can expect that to come to the White House? Or are they going to come up with a unique policy platform? We've yet to see that. I think they will. We've already seen Harris moderating on her positions. You know, she's no longer against fracking, or at least she says that. Whereas in 2020, she was very much against fracking.

You know, that's an attempt to try and get Pennsylvania, which heavily relies on that. So again, Walls is not going to impact this much at all. Maybe you get a bump if he performs well against Vance in the debate. The reverse might happen too but this is a this is a safer pick uh she went with walls to avoid the headache that would have brought that shapiro would have brought even if the payoff with shapiro was higher just very interesting that they went that way because i wouldn't say he was a safe pick just because if you're looking at it as just optics of what he looks like aesthetically then yes it's a safe pick

because well how do voters middle-aged white guy how many voters are actually going to hear what he says next to zero well if if they read the text and they'll know if they read the Texan, they'll know. If they read my newsletter. I don't think 140 million people voting across the country are going to read the Texan. That's the goal, Brad. But, yeah. Shoot for the moon, you land among the stars. Yeah. You know, if people just look at the aesthetics of the pick, then, yeah, it's a safe pick. But, Cameron, I think that's what most people do.

If people start digging into the policy, they'll say, say wow this guy is very progressive in a lot of his positions whether it be abortion or being a sanctuary city for child modification sexual modification or red flag laws or think about the 2020 riots in minneapolis was governor then. He oversaw that. And during 2020, he also had essentially a snitch line for people who are violating COVID policies that he had instituted. This going back to what we were talking about earlier

in the podcast about the surveillance thing. Like, again, I would hope people dig into the policy positions that's yet to be revealed well they will that's the task of the trump campaign is to highlight those things and we are seeing them struggling to adapt at the moment it might change because their whole campaign was built on biden is incompetent and unfit and mentally unstable well that's that's out the window now yeah and that's the biggest reason we've seen this they were so effective at that messaging they got them out but they got them out too early and now democrats have the wind behind their sails for the moment

maybe that changes but they need to come up with another strategy and i'm sure they have and they we've seen them try and hit him on being ultra progressive but they're also trying to hit him on the National Guard stuff. Yeah. But it is difficult to adjust on the fly, and I think the Trump campaign is realizing that because their entire campaign. I read a Tim Alberta column in The Atlantic with the two Trump campaign managers, and they were very confident that they were going to wipe the floor with Biden on this issue.

And they were right. They were so right that they got him to wipe the floor with Biden on this issue. And they were right. They were so right that they got him to drop out early. But now it's their job to figure out a winning strategy elsewhere, and it's difficult to do on the fly. Yeah. A lot of things yet to happen. Before we end the podcast, anything you want to shout out? Anything that people should keep their eye on? Just check out our newsletters. We put a lot of effort into them, and I liked yours this week, and I recommend that.

I thought mine was pretty good this week as well and got some good feedback. But, yeah, I think people are liking that new product. They're liking this. Yeah, I'll give a big shout-out to Daniel and his work on the 40. He announced that it's going to be his last edition. So thanks to Daniel for all his work. Mary-Lise has taken over that, and she'll do really well at that.

Yeah. Lots of good things happening. Elise has taken over that, and she'll do really well at that. And, yeah. Lots of good things happening. Well, thanks for tuning in, everyone. You can read all of our articles, our newsletters, listen to all of our podcasts on thetexan.news, and you can send us some stuff. Maybe we'll talk about it on the next episode.