Democratic Strategy and Midterm Outlook

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All about a sociopath who manages to manipulate people to wreak havoc, felt very sort of apt actually for this moment that we're living in. I like him. He's in these uh Tom Clancy movies, right? He's in the Jack Ryan movies. Jack Ryan movies, yeah. But it felt very weirdly appropriate for our moment. Crazy people doing crazy things , Anthony. Well, I mean, but generally insanity leads to ambition, I think. And then when you get the ambition, then you go you go unhinged. What are we talking about? Today we're talking about the stunning win of Trump -backed Ken Paxton in the Republican primary in Texas. It's just made that state one of the most important Senate races to watch in the midterms. And we're going to be asking the question: is Trump sabotaging his own party's chances of success in the elections. But first, there is some breaking news just as we're recording, which is that there are reports of a deal that Trump now needs to approve between the Iranians and the Americans. This is according to Axios and their reporting. It's a memorandum of understanding. Trump apparently wants a few days to look at it and decide whether he's going to agree to it. But the broad outlines are that it commits to a ceasefire for 60 days. We don't have all the details, but we assume that that means the Straits would be open during that 60 days to traffic. And it would also launch negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.me I mean, effectively this pushes all of the difficult issues. Iran's nuclear program, the proxies, the missiles down the road. There's no indication from the reporting so far on what it means in terms of money for Iran,, uh whether this means that there's going to be unfrozen assets or reparations or sanctions relief. Apparently, the Iranians, according to American sources, have signed off on it. But look, if it hasn't dealt with the nuclear program until it's actually dealt with the nuclear program . Yes, this is a memorandum of understanding about a deal to make a deal effectively. This is not the big deal to end Iran's nuclear program that President Trump has been promising. We gotta talk about this loyalty situation with Donald Trump, right? Do you wanna start with that cabinet meeting, Anthony? You couldn't make this up. How do these grown men, and they are by now mostly men, because most of the women have gone, how do these grown men sit around the table and keep telling our dear leader how magnificent he is and how he is the only one who could have made the economy that no Americans think is booming, boom, the war that is going badly, go so well. It's Orwellian stuff. It's all tied together, but I would just encourage people if they really have an interest in this stuff, talking about unwell, go to the transcript and listen to Trump talk about the reflecting pool. Ten minutes. He spent nearly 10 minutes. The laying down of the skyscraper. And I took the transcript because I was flying back from Hong Kong last night and I tried to read through the transcript twice. How did that go? It didn't go well. I mean, so he's either got dementia. Psychologists, but I'm just saying if you read the transcript, you're like, okay, this is not a well guy. He turns 80 next month. I I have parents who are elderly. You've had parents who are elderly. We see that their cognitive functions diminish a bit, right? It happens with older people. Trump is finding it increasingly hard to even talk about Iran or sell the deal or sell the attacks. He knows that this rinse and repeat cycle that we're in of if you don't do this, then we're going to bomb you to smithereens, doesn't work anymore. And I think he knows that we know it. He knows that he certainly knows that Iran knows it. He knows that Iran knows then we 're not going to attack them again. But he's in this weird situation where I do think he wants a deal. I think he wants out of this and he would like to be able to say, okay, that's done. Let's get back to the reflecting pool. Let's get back to the 250th anniversary. Let's get back to me and my legacy. Um, and this, okay, has not been the greatest thing, and he would like a deal. But just as he kind of is so transpar ent and he's been around for so long. The hawks in the Republican Party know how to get to him. And the way they get to him, Anthony, is the O-word. They accuse him of being like Barack Obama. And that freaks him out. So he gets close to a deal. You've got Mike Pompeo, Lindsey Graham, now even Ted Cruz, saying this deal is worse than the Obama deal. And what does he do? He pulls back. And what's weird about this is Trump is so impervious to Republican criticism, to any criticism, really. But on this one, I've heard inside the White House, he actually doesn't like it. O triggers him. The O trigger has its effect, and so he pulls back from the deal. 100% true, Caddy, and I'll just add to that because in the first term, a cabinet member that I'm close to, uh wouldn't be fair to him to give his name, but a cabinet member I'm close to once said to me, uh we got to get him to make a decision. We say, Mr. President, these are two your choices, choice A and choice B. Oh, by the way, Barack Obama would choose choice A. And he would go, choice B. And that's what they did to him. They set him up like that. And so everything you're saying , I know for 100% certainty is true. I mean Trump thinks he's the masked manipulator, but actually he is so manipulable. He gets triggered by the big O, man. But Caddy, when you look at the market , and I'm a market participant all day, the market is telling you that the peace deal is already signed. The market is already Brent Crude down 5%, the market is uh ripping through new records, uh inflation expectations are actually going down. You know, there's supply shock temporary, or famously what Powell once said transitory. Over the course of the weekend, the White House was pushing the idea that there was a deal. But actually, if you look at the words coming out of Iran right now, and there's some very good FT has got some very good inside reporting on this that's worth people reading, there's a huge amount of division in Iran and actually a lot of pushback from the hardliners against the negotiators. So you've got an ultra conservative group, the Pedari group, which doesn't want any negotiations on either the nuclear programs and they want control over the strait and they want to insist on reparations. They've criticized Galabaf, who is the guy who has been doing the negotiation for going beyond his mandate. They've also in the past criticized him of corruption. They know that he's been making money for himself. So I think there is still this question about where the power is in Iran. I mean, the closest we are is to a deal to start talking about a deal. If Trump is happy to walk away from this with no deal on Iran's nuclear program , which obviously wouldn't go down well in the region, but just to reopen theits Stra, probably in exchange for some kind of sanctions relief or reparations or unfrozen assets, he can get that . But that trifecta of Republicans, hawks, made it pretty clear last weekend that they're not gonna let him get away with that. I don't think he's gonna settle for that. I don't see a deal anytime soon. And that's what's mystifying is why is the market. I mean, I get that people trade vol atility. That's what they've been doing right up until now. But you're right. There now seems to be something a bit different this week, which is a long-term expectation that inflation is coming down, oil prices are coming down, and what just because there are alternative routes out of the Straits of Hormuz? Because a few ships are making it through? What's the calculation there from the oil markets? Why do the oil markets seem to have decided we can live without the Straits of Hormuz when I'm speaking to oil trans Yeah. Listen, I I I've said that. I've said that I, you know, we're gonna run if we keep this up, we're gonna deplete our our reserves. Uh they'll leak out a little bit more if they have to to try to control price, try to get people through the summer. But by the midterms, you're gonna be you're gonna be really a lot of pressure. This this whole the market will have gotten things wrong. But what I what I'd like you to address though, Caddy, is my view of the situation is that Iran is likely to open the strait a little to avoid economic and diplomatic isolation. But I also feel like they want to preserve their leverage. And I think they want there to be some ambiguity and they want some psychological control over the Gulf shifting, particularly as it relates to our partners in the Gulf , you know, on the on the Saudi peninsula side of the Gulf. And so I g I guess what I'm saying is uh this is a nightmare. This is not a and Trump is I guess d back to the delusional stuff about the reflecting pools and stuff like that. What Trump is saying is not happening on the ground. And there's no there's no incentive for Iran to do what Trump is saying. Oh, we're just gonna reopen the strait and there'll be no economic reparations for us and you can you can pound on our country and we're fine with it. And we'll give up our nuclear program. No. I mean quite the opposite. They're gonna try and go for a nuclear weapon, I'm sure, as soon as this is we got through this stage. I mean look, the Iranians are working on a forty-seven year time process. Trump is was bored after 47 days and wanted to get back to his legacy. And the American people don't like paying high gas prices. So you've got different time imperatives there and time pressure points there. And however much Trump wants to say this is over, I think the curious thing is the degree to which the market seem to be agreeing with Trump that this is over. And yet there's the long-term prospect, well, Iran has now discovered that it can afflict a enormous amount of damage by closing the Strait of Hormuz, so even if it opens it next week, what's to stop it reshutting it again? It would take American military presence. So we're gonna have a mil American military for ces parked in the Gulf for what, the next five years, just in case Iran decides it is in a weak position or is getting threatened and wants to shut the strait again? It it you know, Caddy, it number one, it's so well said, but number two, just for the Americans that listen to our show, the Europeans already know this, but for the Americans listen to our show, let me give you a news flash, okay? Turn off Fox News for a second and recognize that this is a 5,000-year culture in Persia, and you're at war with them, and if they have to eat dirt, they're going to eat dirt. I want to read you these numbers and tell me if the American citizens would tolerate this. You have 40 to 50 percent food inflation on all basic items, rice, chicken, cooking oil, medicine, imported goods. Okay. You have certain staples since the war started, have gone up 200 % . Okay, youth unemployment has skyrocketed, and the real has been devastated. And yet these people are locked in. Well, this is cause it's an autocratic state. So would the Americans be locked in? No, but that's the difference between a democracy and autocracy. The Iranians hate this. They've been suffering for years financially. Uh sanctions have really hurt them. Now, of course, on top of this, they have the insecurity of the bombing starts again. They may lose their kid in a school or their neighbor could be killed or their parent could be killed. But they have no recourse. And the idea that Netanyahu was pumping into Trump's ear that the Iranian people would rise up and overthrow the regime, that is the one thing I think we've all realized with certainty over the last three months is that's not going to happen. They're far too oppressed. They don't have weapons. At the moment, they're terrified and keeping their heads down and just trying to make it through the next day, which means that the Iranian regime has absolutely no interest in responding to public opinion. They don't need to. They the Iranian regime doesn't have a problem with public opinion, unlike Ken Paxton, who is going to have to run with a population that is pissed off about gas prices. Okay, so they finally bring somebody into the White House that's a State Department veteran of Middle Eastern Affairs. They have some left. Wow. I didn't know. And they go to Trump. They go to Trump. There's one Persian speaker left in the in the State Department, maybe. However embarrassing this is, I I want you to address my hypothetical. The the one Persian speaking diplomat goes to the president and says, Listen, you know, we've stopped the shooting. That's good. Uh, we have to figure out a way to reopen the Hormuz stray without humiliation on either side. Uh you gotta give them some trade sanctions relief, which is gonna cause you to get some JCPOA, Obama light, flack, but you're going to have to deal with it. Uh, you're going to have to, unfortunately, Mr. President, separate the nuclear issue from the other economic issues. And then whether you like it or not, I'm gonna help you prepare your victory speech. But guess what? The mullahs are gonna have their victory speech too. Because this is the only way we're gonna get these tensions down. And so, Mr. President, the peace is only gonna come first through full on de escal ation without any real trust . Go. What would Trump say to all that? Don't have any money going on pallets. I can't accept that because Obama had that. So I don't want any money, cash on pallets going via Switzerland and then into Tehran. Otherwise , let's just call it a win. I think he's t I think he's tempted to do that. And and you know what? It's the world's problem. If Iran develops a nuclear weapon, he's not gonna be around. He's eighty next month. So that you know NATO NATO has talked about having a military operation in the strait if they can't get it open, right? You've heard that. Yeah. So so that's where Trump's going with this. And and if it's a year from now, will there be tolls? Will the Iranian government be charging access tolls to tankers and other material coming through the strait? As we sit at the moment, I think that's still a strong possibility. I don't know that the Gulf states can tolerate it. So me too. But if you you watch certain programming here in America, it's rah-rah and Trump is the guy and he's gonna prevent them from getting the first time we heard it. What did what did okay, let me just read you what Hegseth said yesterday. This was fantastic. This is Hegseth in that cabinet meeting that we began with. If you look at Washington and Lincoln, these are two men that faced monumental tasks and stood up in historic fashion and delivered for the American people. And when you step back and look at 47 years of what Iran waged war against us and our people, there's only one man over the course of both presidencies who had stood up and said they will never get a nuclear weapon again. Trump then went on to say he is out of central casting and he loves war . Hegeseth then, super weirdly, compared the Iran war to the reflecting pool. You're the only one that could do the Iran war and the reflecting pool. Everybody else has spoken about it, Mr. President, but you are the only one that is strong enough. I mean, that is what he's hearing from people around him, and that's what he's hearing, you're right, on Fox News, that no one else in forty-seven years had the courage to do this. What they are not hearing is this new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies that came out this week showing that US that America has used up so many missile interceptors, Patriots and THADs, that their stocks won't be replenished until 2029 because the factories can't build them fast enough. So we are looking at a position where we go back to the status quo ante, as it was on February the 26th when negotiations were on going around the nuclear program, because that's what this is going to be, a long negotiation. The Obama team took 20 months to negotiate the JCPOA. It's not going to be quicker than that. We're going to have a long negotiation about the nuclear program. They reopen the Strait of Hormuz, but they probably get some kind of toll. They call it an environmental cost, but they get some kind of financial benefit from it. And in the meantime, it's cost America and the global economy what close to a trillion dollars people are reckoning for America at the moment in terms of economic cost. And we've depleted our interceptor and missile reserves. So I think that's a hard win to sell, but that's exactly what the little Persian diplomat dusting off his shoulders will walk in there and tell him that he's got a victory. Caddy it's exactly right and we haven't even brought up China 'cause to me I would shove it up Trump's you know what. I'd be like, hey man, I've got to p I gotta pay you some tolls for this oil. Okay, just so that everyone knows that you got control of things out over here. You know, and just slap Trump around. Uh, but he did something, Caddy, and there's no going back from it. He exposed a seam in the American military, spending a trillion dollars to service lobbyists and military contractors, we don't have the appropriate footprint for the modern warfare. You probably saw that the Ukrainians were doing war games up in Scandinavia and guess what happened? Boom boom bing bang everybody was dead on the NATO side and the Ukrainians were standing there saying guys you're just not ready for this stuff. Okay we we send a few drones in to kill all your signal transmission . Then we sent some kamikaze drones in that you weren't ready for, and you're all dead uh and we're still alive and you're spending trillions of dollars. What are you guys doing? See, so so Trump has opened up this portal now into this mass uh confusion and this lack of the the defense department cohesion and it's gonna really cost us catty as we go forward. And Dan Kane, the jet chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, knows this and is calling Ukraine the Silicon Valley of defense contracting at the moment. Okay, we'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. You know, Catty Alistair Campbell taught me how to use NordVPN on a train from Glasgow to London. I love this. product I want to be connected as soon as I sit down, but speed can come at a cost to security. Most of the time, cyber attacks are not Hollywood style. They're disguised as a fake link, a phishing email , or a public network that looks normal and NordVPN protects you from all of that. I didn't have my Nord VPNs switched on recently and I was the subject of a hacking attack. I got an email that I thought was legitimate. I opened it and now I'm very careful about having my NordVPN switched on. Using NordVPN helps protect my privacy and sensitive data, especially as we're often working on the move or using public Wi-Fi. 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They do the initial matching work for you based on your short questionnaire so you get straight to the part that really matters. You don't have to say yes to everything this summer. Find support in therapy. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp dot com slash trip US. That's better H E L P dot com slash T R I P US Welcome back to the Restless Politics US with me, Anthony Scaramucci and Katy Kay. Let's dive straight in and look at Texas. The Republicans could have won in a heartbeat without spending any money if they'd only nominated John Cornyn as their Republic an Senate candidate. But no. Donald Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, who is going to make it much harder for them, so has thereby been a little bit self-defeating. Why are they in this position? Because of Trump's emotions. Because Trump made it very clear. The only reason he wasn't supporting John Cornyn, who is a very good conservative, who has not done anything radical, like oppose any of Trump's policies. He has not voted to impeach Tr Donald ump in the way that some of the other senators were. The reason that he didn't endorse John Cornyn is because Trump said, quote, he was not supportive of me when times were tough, and he was very late in backing my 2024 presidential bid. That was it. That was the extent of Cornyn's crimes. He didn't back him quite early enough, and he wasn't quite supportive of him. Okay, I think it's important for everybody. Talk about the what he's doing, right? There's a deterrent in what he's trying to do, right? He's sending a signal, right? A whistle. And so what does he want from all of these people? He wants absolute loyalty. And why to him? Why? Because it has to be all about him. He wants to make sure that his family can make as much money as they want. He doesn't want anyone to oppose him legislatively, not that he really cares about legislation because he's not doing any more legislation. And he wants to be able to control the GOP and control the process in 2028. He wants total control of the party. And if he can have this aura of fear around the party that it's not even that you oppose me, but you just don't 100% support me, then look what I can do. And he has been phenomenally successful at that in the last few weeks. And I changed my mind a lot. And so if I want to release the Epstein files during the campaign, it turns out I'm in them and I don't want to release them . You got to move fast. You got to change with me. Okay. If I say I'm not for forever wars, but I want to get into a quagmire at the Strait of Hormuz, you got to go right with me. You got to be right in the side car with me at every turn of my motorcycle. And that's what he's doing. Now now the the thing about it that blows me away is you could say, oh, that's just pure on narcissism, and there is obviously an element of that, but no, it's more than that. This is about, hey guys, I'm here to aggrandize myself. Caddy, did you read in the Washington Post that he wants to put his face, a living president, on the two hundred and fifty dollar bill. So he wants a two hundred and fifty dollar bill from the Bureau of Ingraves. Washington Post showed the picture of the prototype of the of the b ill in celebration for the 250th anniversary of the country, but no one wants to go to the mall. He's got Millie Vanilli Caddy going to the mall to do the concert. What is he doing? of the major celebrities, all of the major people, the boss. Well, that was the case too at his inauguration. It's literally, hey guys, you better pay attention. I got two years left to grab as much as I possibly can. And what did he say at the cabinet meeting, Caddy? I don't care about the midterms. Hear him say it? Yeah, he said exactly that. We've been saying on this program for months now that he doesn't care about the midterm elections. He doesn't care about whether if the Democrats do manage to take the House, do manage to take the Senate, it could lead to a whole slew of problems for him. Legally, he'll just pardon himself on the way out. So he doesn't care about that. And I think it's important what you say, Anthony, that it's about a multitude of things. It's about legacy. He wants his name on everything. He really is gonna push ahead. You had a scathing editorial this week from the Wall Street Journal saying, is this really what you want your legacy to be? Making money for your friends, having an arc de trump, and having your name on the Kennedy Center and repainting the reflecting pool and having a new ballroom. I'm going to respond on behalf of Donald Trump as his former communications director. Yes. Yes, that's the East Wall Street Journal. That's exactly what I want. I don't care Well, he does care about his legacy. In his framing, his legacy is having his name on stuff and having buildings in his name and his family and his friends having money. Exactly. I want to hang out with my buddies and more lago. I want him to kiss my ass while I'm lining my pocket. Because you know, Putin's very rich and I know how he did it, and I would like to plunder for myself and my family and thank you guys for giving me four years off from the presidency to figure out exactly how to do this and to scare the living daylights out of everybody. So we're gonna do an an episode for our founding members, by the way , Anthony, on Trump's health. Yeah. And for that episode, I had a very interesting conversation this week with a doctor, and we'll we'll play that more when we run the series on Trump's health. But one of the things he points to is this idea that Trump is becoming more disinhibited. And people age in different ways, right? Uh you and I all know people in their eighties, we see the effects of aging. Sometimes they become incoherent, sometimes they become physically We're perfect. Yeah, exactly. I I I that's so I you know I'm absolutely perfect. I'm in I'm in denial, Caddy. Okay. I had a little bit less sleep than I'd like last night, so I'm perhaps less coherent than I might be, but I like to put that down to the less sleep rather than the aging. Although the one thing I hate about my iPhone, Caddy, when they say, Oh, this is a picture from five years ago. Yeah. And I'm looking at the picture and I'm looking at my waistline and I'm looking at the gels. Dudes, do not post those pictures. I'm living in denial, Caddy K. Terrible. There may be a little bit of denial going on in the Y Question for you. Does this now put Texas in play for the Democrats? I think this is a race. First of all, how much money, 130 million just for the primary? God knows how much this Texas Senate seat is going to cost them. It's going to be so ugly. Did you see the Twitter exchange between Stephen Miller and the DNC? So DNC posted something about Tallerico, James Talarico, the Democratic candidate, saying he's all fired up and ready to go in Texas. Right. Stephen Miller posts back, the Democrats have just nominated the first trans Senate candidate. He's not trans, he'll be defending that. He's talked about the fact that trans kids need sympathy and empathy. Yeah, the Democrats went back and called them. Here's the tweet. Shut up, you ugly fuck. That is from the DNC, the official account. Well, I mean, you know, Stephen Chung is saying that about Pompeo. I mean, it's got it's gotten bad. But Caddy, it's gonna surprise you, Caddy. But in Hong Kong, at the four seasons in the IFC , I found look at me. I found the Trump kill list, Caddy. Okay? Now I don't know why it was there, Caddy. You're finding interesting documents as you travel around. It's so good. There's three types of political kills, Kat. Yeah. All right. So let me read the three types, and then I'd like you to respond. Okay. So the type one is the active kill, and that would be the John Cornyn kill, where he just goes viciously after him, tweet after tweet , calling up all of his buddies, APAC people, whoever he needs, send a waterfall of money in there. Now, Tal Rico's 27 million to 2 million now on Paxon, and I'm sure he'll catch up because Trump has a disposal waterfall of money. Now that's the active kill. Let's go to the passive kill. Okay. This is the Crenshaw kill. Okay, so I just want to remind people what Trump did. On Crenshaw, he did not campaign against him. Fill us in a little bit on Crenshaw. Crenshaw is a libertarian. He's a wounded vet. He lost his eye in combat. And so people have maybe I' seveen him on the Bill Maher show or Morning Joe with an eye patch on. He voted for Donald Trump 99% of the time. He said a few things after the insurrection, primarily because he was running for his life, Cat. He was a little pissed off after the insurrection. And Trump got wind of it. Because how does Trump get wind of that? Somebody always takes an iPad out and says, Here, you know, when they want to light somebody up, you know, they connive and they say, here, Mr. Trump, take Mr. President, take a look at this Crenshaw remark. And so somebody did that. And so we had a passive kill here where he did not campaign against them. He simply declined to endorse them, okay, and this was the only Texas House Republican left off the list of dozens that he went to endorse. Okay. And so that was a uh omission, okay. That was a passive kill. And then the last kill , Caddy, is the serial kill. Okay. And so this is Trump as the serial political killer. And this is Massey and Cassidy. And now it's going to be Rand Paul and Warren Davidson and Brian Fitzpatrick and Lauren Boebert. And if you guys don't know who these people are, they're either in the House of Representatives or the Senate, and they're all conservatives, but none are conservative enough to have fallen in line for Donald Trump. And oh, by the way, newsflash caddy, Trump isn't a conservative. These people are. Trump is Trump. And so Rand Paul has criticized him a few times. He got disinvited from the Rose Garden patio. And Trump's gonna put his gun on him. And Ted Cruz is like this is gonna be really bad for us because we're gonna lose the Senate. Now I don't think they're gonna lose the Senate this time , but I think you know, going at the twenty-eight, this is could be really bad. You know what I mean? It's more possible now. I'd put by the way Lisa Mikkowski and Susan Collins on that serial kill list too. I think they're on that list as well because they've crossed him one too many times. But look, if you look at it, you've got North Carolina, Maine, Ohio, Alaska, guys. We're going to be talking about these states a lot more now, so it's worth us just mentioning them. And if it's a bad night for Republicans in early November, then you could probably put Texas, maybe even Iowa, on the table as well. And certainly Donald Trump endorsing Ken Paxton, who has , let's quickly run through what he has, a 2023 impeachment by a Republican-led Texas House, by the way, on bribery and corruption charges, a pretrial agreement over securities fraud charges, and a very recent ugly divorce in which his wife is alleging adultery. That is what Ken Paxton has to overcome. James Tallarica, it seems, just has to eat a lot of barbecue on camera, ideally, because he's gonna have to push back against the Republicans who are already painting him as too woke. I think one day Texas will elect again a statewide Democrat. They haven't done so since before James Tallerico was born. I've been told by people who are down there, look, it's going to happen, it'll seem impossible, a bit like revolutions until it does happen, and then it will seem inevitable. It will take a terrible Republican candidate and a really strong Democratic candidate to flip Texas and all of those wonderful electoral college votes that it has one day in the presidential column from Republican to Democrat, I'm not convinced Tallerico meets the standard. As you and I have discussed before, yes, he's a Christian who's been in seminary, who wears his faith on his sleeve. That goes down very well in Texas . He comes across as a very mild-mannered. He's actually pretty liberal. He's more on the populist economic wing. Mind you, Ken Paxton, hardly a conservative when it comes to business affairs, right? The business community, my understanding, Anthony, you'd know more about this than me. They don't like Ken Paxton at all because of all the lawsuits he's brought against big companies. They also think he's corrupt, but I guess this is my question for you, Caddy. Is corruption on the menu because Trump says it isn't. When people say, well, you're doing this and you're doing that, Trump's like, well, first of all, I can do it. And secondarily, people don't care. And is he right, Caddy? I think that he may be right. The Texas Republicans voted for Ken Paxton as attorney general as recently as twenty twenty two, after these issues had surfaced and the charges against him. So they were happy to vote for him. And I think we are living in a world. Look, okay, let me describe this situation to you. A candidate for high office is running, who has been impeached in the House but acquitted in the Senate and charged and has a mugshot and an ugly divorce , can they ever be elected to high office in America, Anthony? Right. Well the answer is of course sitting in the White House, but I also think Paxon, because of the machinery around him in the GOP world and the outside money that's going to descend into the campaign uh will also be a big deal. But Katie, can the Democrats I mean, uh first of all, who's running the Democratic Party? Does anybody know? I mean, is there any leadership? Is there this autopsy ? Catty, tell us a little bit about the 202 4 autopsy. Where when I was reading it, I had to breathe into like a brown paper lunch bag to stop myself from hyperventiling. So this is the autopsy that the Democrats put out r belatedly because they were meant to put it out earlier and then there was a big fuss about whether it was going to come out or not come out and the DNC put it out finally , but it doesn't really do the things that the Democrat s need to do, which is pin the blame for the twenty twenty four election loss on Joe Biden and the fact that he ran again. And it steers clear of all the difficult stuff that the Democrats needed to do. And in the process, the DNC also distanced itself from big chunks of it and said, actually, we don't agree with half of this anyway. The more interesting thing I thought, I don't know if you saw this, Anthony, you were flying, is what Jill Biden said about why she thinks the Democrats lost and what was happening to her husband in that terrible election debate. And she said she thought he was having a stroke on stage. Again, they're not giving the true picture because right after that debate, she went up on stage and said you did a great job. And now she's coming out and saying, actually I thought he was having a stroke and I was very afraid of him, which may be what the Democrats do. That was a bad look for her, you know, to me, I don't understand how we don't have a war room and we don't have a strategy, right? Well Ken Martin, who runs the DNC, may be a very nice guy, but I'm not sure that he's a fighter in the way that Rahm Emanuel would be. I don't know him, but I'm like, dude, you what what are you guys doing? You gotta get a war room and a strategy. You got to think like a Fox News producer. Okay, so I work there. What do they do? They say, okay, here's our idea today. We're gonna declare a war on Christmas. Wait, what? There's no war on Christmas. No, no, no. We're gonna declare a war on Christmas. We're gonna trigger all the old white people that are buying catheters from our commercials. Okay, we gotta we gotta do this. Uh we're gonna declare that this is woke or some kid uh transitioned and he's playing high school sports, right? The Democrats have no messaging. To me, I would have Paxson on every social media site wanted for corruption, impeachment , bribal, all the stuff that this guy has done and been convicted of. And I would be putting it out nationally and I'd be saying, hey, this is the party that Trump is running now. This is the gutter party that Trump is running. But they won't do that. They want to fight with each other. They're still, I guess, negotiating wokeism and all of this sort of stuff. I don't get it. But Donald Trump has created a huge seam of opportunity for them. They're spending money and they're picking weaker candidates. And you know, when they did weaker candidates like this in twenty-two, they lost caddy. Yeah. You know that. He wins in the primary, but he loses in the general election because it turns out that actually American voters are very sane and reasonable and rational and by and large they want to elect candidates who are viable. I'm not sure. I think Ken Paxton may get away with it in Texas, despite his chronic record of allegations of corruption and the ugly divorce that he's gone through. I don't know that Texas is quite there yet. One of the problems that James Tallarico has is that he doesn't have much name recognition. Ken Paxton has already released an ad, playing into all of the cultural stuff, right into the woke stuff, running clips of James Talarico saying that he loves trans children, that the southern border should be like our front porch with a giant welcome mat on it. That's the kind of thing that is going to cost him a lot. And if he can't define himself and push back against that very fast, then I think it's going to be a problem because that'll be most Texans who haven't heard of him and who haven't tuned into elections yet. Their first impression of Talarico will be that Ken Paxton ad saying that he's too woke. The other problem that Talarico has is that he's gonna have to really drive up black voter turnout. In 2018, that's how Beto O'Rourke nearly beat Ted Cruz, was because he got a lot of black people to go to the poll s in the cities like Houston and Dallas, and that's where he's gonna really have to focus. And it's gonna be something of a numbers game. But he's gonna have to make sure that he's not defined as a woke weirdo, which is what Paxton is trying to do. And I think it's easier for voters to latch on to an idea of a woke weirdo. He's been accused of being a vegan because he says he runs a non-meat campaign. And he said God is non-binary and there are six genders. It's going to be easy, I think, for Paxton to define Taller Rico of that more easy than to dive into the nitty-gritty of Paxton's corruption and securities fraud issue because that's super complicated. And anyway, okay, he was impeached, but then the Senate let him off. And hey, we have a president who is sitting there who was impeached twice, whose family has been accused of corruption themselves. And I guess if it's okay at the top, maybe it's okay for the Senate seat in Texas too. We'll have to see, Caddy. But I like Tal Rico, he's an articulate young man. Uh he's got money behind him, but I just this machinery that they've built. California will grind down the kid that's running against Karen Bass. And same thing will happen in Texas. It's gonna be a very interesting midterms, and we are going to be traveling around the country talking about the midterms. We have a live tour coming up in October to take your questions and talk about what we're seeing in the elections. It's going to be very timely because it's just before those midterm elec tions. Don't forget to grab your tickets. You can get them at the rest is politicsus.com or click the link in the episode description and you'll find out where we're going to be and when we'd love to see you there. See you next week.