The News Items Podcast
John Ellis talks with interesting people doing important work. Some you've heard of. Some you haven't. All of them are worth listening to, at some length.
The News Items Podcast
Episode 15: Jeff Greenfield
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California's primaries may be local elections, but Jeff Greenfield argues they're offering an early glimpse of the political battles that could define the next presidential cycle. Joining John Ellis, the veteran political analyst breaks down the chaotic races for governor and mayor of Los Angeles, the surprising rise of reality-TV candidate Spencer Pratt, and why vast campaign spending isn't always enough to buy momentum. The conversation then widens to the national landscape, from the emerging Democratic field, to the Republican succession fight that could follow Donald Trump. Along the way, Greenfield and Ellis explore why figures like Rahm Emanuel and Gina Raimondo may be better positioned than conventional wisdom suggests. The episode closes with a deep dive into artificial intelligence as a political issue. As Silicon Valley leaders openly discuss building a "machine god," Greenfield and Ellis examine whether public anxiety over AI could become the defining fault line of the 2028 election.
Hosted by John Ellis
Hello, and welcome back to the News Items Podcast. Our guest today is Jeff Greenfield. Jeff is an award-winning television journalist and author focusing on politics, media, and culture. In the course of his career, he served as a senior political correspondent for CBS News, a senior analyst for CNN, and a political and media analyst for ABC News. He's also authored or co-authored 13 books and written for Time Magazine, The New York Times, the LA Times, National Lampoon. Okay, National Lampoon, that's a good one. Harper's Magazine and Slate, among other publications. Jeff, thank you very much for doing this today.
SPEAKER_00A pleasure to be here. I very much have been following you, and I'm glad I'm now on with you.
SPEAKER_01So you live in California, and there's a ton of interest in Tuesday, the upcoming Tuesday primary in California. And I think the first thing we need you to do is to explain to us what a jungle primary is and how it works.
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, we don't call it that anymore. But uh in fact, both the California gubernatorial race and the Los Angeles mayor's race are all in or what they used to call jungle primaries. It means that the that you don't run with a party. No matter what party you are, you are in the same primary. And if no one gets 50 percent in in California and in LA, the top two finishers go to a runoff in November. And that's a situation we're almost certainly going to face after Tuesday. Neither in the governor's race nor the mayor's race is there a single candidate with over fifty percent of the vote.
SPEAKER_01Let's talk about the governor's race first. Governor Newsom is term-limited and presumably running for president. And we have, I think, eight candidates that have some semblance of a chance to make it to the runoff, if you will. What's the status of the race so far?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell Well, it there was a real concern among Democrats that with only two Republicans running of any reasonable sta you know presence, and six major Democrats, that when the votes were counted, the top two finishers would both be Republicans and the Democrats would be shut out in November. That does not look like what's going to happen. What we have here is six relatively indistinguishable, if not undistinguished, Democrats, because neither Senator Padilla nor war former Vice President Catherine Harris chose to run. And you've got two Republicans, the major one of whom, Steve Hilton, is a actually a recent or last 12 years immigrant from England where he was a prominent conservative political activist. The polls now suggest that Steve Hilton will finish first, and then right behind him, Xavier Basera, who was everything. He was a cabinet member, he was a House member, he was California Attorney General. And the third figure in the race is Tom Steyer, a multibillionaire who having spent a few hundred million dollars trying to run for president, is now spending at least two hundred million dollars trying to run for governor. You cannot turn on the television set without seeing his ads. If you go on social media, you see social influencers who he is paying. But if you had to make a bet, you would say that Becerra and Steve Hilton will wind up on the ballot November, and given California, that's almost a certainty that uh Becerra will win. I think it's interesting to note that had there been a different kind of Republican, that California used to produce a more moderate Republican in the in the spirit of uh anyone from uh former Governor Pete Wilson to Arnold Schwarzenegger, there might have been different, because there's a lot of dissatisfaction in California with every issues racing from housing to homelessness to the tax burden to a high-speed rail system that that is something out of Rube Goldberg, only his machine worked. But given given the way California has been for the last several decades, whoever the Democrat is will win. And the one the one thing that uh had seemed a different possibility was that two Democrats would get on the ballot, Piserra and Steyer. But it as I said, it now looks otherwise. And so I think that's going to end not with a bang but a whimper.
SPEAKER_01I'm interested in that Tom Steyr, having spent all this money, seems stuck where he is. I mean, well, the theory is that if you have vast amounts of money and you can buy vast amounts of media, you move up, you don't stay flat. And is there a reason that Steyr's had such such a hard time gaining traction, as they say?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well, I'll make two points. California is a place where you can spend a lot of money and not do well. Meg Whitman, you might remember her, ran for governor in 2010 and basically carpet bombed the state with money, and Jerry Brown beat her quite handily. I I think what has happened is that that the California Democrats, having been spooked by the idea that they might not make the ballot, have have gone to the safest candidate. Piserra is like a he's polenta, he's vanilla. There is absolutely nothing you can say. You watch him in a debate and you try to it's like you know, it's like you kind of got a grip on Jell O. There's nothing substantive or tough there. He is the reverse of that. But I think basically the California Democrats said, We really don't want to risk being shut out. Well once there was a favorite at one point, uh Swalwell, but he got booted out of the race and then out of Congress in a sexual scandal. And I think that it was a flight to safety. It's you almost could think of it like in 2020 when Democrats said, you know, Joe Biden's not that bad, and and we don't really know anybody else. Let's all go to him. Now they haven't all gone to Bissera. It's still going to be a fractured primary, but that's my bet that he will wind up as the Democrat and there will be a really uninteresting campaign. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01I was surprised that Kamala Harris didn't run for governor. It seemed perfectly set up for her, given the rebellious.
SPEAKER_00Well, think about so, John. The last failed democra uh the last failed presidential candidate who tried to run for governor of California was Richard Dixon in 1962, and he got clobbered. And I also am not sure that if she had presidential ambitions, that the governorship of California is the right place to to retreat to, as opposed to just holding her ground for the next few years and seeing what happens. But she certainly was that would have been the odds on favorite to win that race. And the fact that she didn't, along with Senator Petty, is what threw this into this kind of who are we voting for now? I mean, the the this Katie Porter, a former congresswoman who was burned by some unfortunate video. There's a former mayor of Los Angeles, but he was mayor, I don't know, twelve years ago. And so as I say, I wish I could give you a compelling, holy smokes story about what's going on in the governor's race, but as I said, I think it's a retreat, it's a reversion to the norm or a retreat to safety. And I also have a hunch, and that that's all this is, that at some point people got annoyed by all the sire commercials, that there actually was a negative impact from it, you know, because they really reinforced the the the notion that here's a guy with a whole lot of money and he and he wants to do something else with his life, and he couldn't get to be president, so he'll try governor.
SPEAKER_01Right. I I was uh at Fox News when Rupert picked Steve Hilton out of obscurity and gave him a I think it was a Saturday, maybe Sunday night television show. Um and I can't imagine that uh you know did much to improve his standing with you know California voters.
SPEAKER_00He has been the best debater, because everybody else is is doing tap dances around a whole lot of issues. And you know, you for the billionaire tax be on the ballot in November, the Democrats are split. They all seem to have signed on to try to continue this high-speed rail, which as I'm a fan of high-speed rail, I've ridden it you know from Japan to Paris. But this system was supposed to be done ten years ago, connecting LA to San Francisco, and maybe by 2030 it will connect Mercer to Bakersfield, which is what millions of Californians have been dreaming of. And Hilton's guy said, no. He is also, by the way, the only time I can recall where a political debate in America has taken place where one participant has a very clear British accent.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um but I I think he's actually I think he's actually impressed. But it once again, he is he is not a Pete Wilson, Earl Warren, Arnold Schwarzenegger Republican. And I think that label alone is go is just it's it's a bridge too far in the current California political system. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Drilling down, uh a big race that's attracted a lot of attention is the LA mayor's race. The incumbent Karen Bass is up for re-election. It appears that the race is tied, at least according to the last LA Times poll I saw. What what's the status of that race?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell This race has the potential, and I have to underline potential to be, as opposed to the governor's race, a real eye-opener, or whatever the proper expression is. You have three significant candidates. You have Mayor Karen Bass, who won very handily four years ago, but whose reputation was really battered by the by the Palisades fire and the fact that she was out of the country when it happened. It turned out there were some real failures of planning. And so she's really taken. And on top of that, we have a homeless situation in Los Angeles, which is really unavoidable, literally, if you if you go down several streets. She's so she's in trouble. She was challenged sort of on the left by a councilwoman, uh Raman. I never pronounce her Nithya Raman. But the other candidate in the race is Steve is Spencer Pratt, who is a reality TV star known from the hills, and was it kind of entered the race people thought it was almost like it's a stun. Maybe he's going to make a video. But this is a situation where the dissatisfaction with with Mayor Bass is such that an out-of-the-box person like Pratt, who also, by the way, performed very well in the debate, so much so that his opponents chose to not debate him anymore, has emerged as a contender. The most recent poll is they're within the three candidates are within three points of each other, you know, 26, 25, 22. And so now the question is which of the the two of these three are going to make the runoff? And the and the permutations are fascinating. Maybe it's the the two Democrats. Pratt, who has sort of been endorsed by Trump, which was not a help for Pratt given to Los Angeles. Yeah. It might be the mayor against Pratt, and it might be the city councilwoman, uh Raman against Pratt. And the one thing that I really want to underscore is that one of the things that has benefited Pratt is a series of videos. He not made by his campaign, but by an outsider who has produced some of the most inventive, shockingly effective videos that I have ever seen. And I used to do this for a living before I became a virgin journalist. I mean, he it it's so it's so different. He has one ad where a woman is being wiggled into an emergency room, and the mother and the doctor are frightened because she's for Pratt. And how did this happen? We, you know, and the doctor prescribes six doses of NPR and five doses of the New York Times every day. And you have another ad where these very upscale women, which is not Pratt's necessarily uh you know, key constituency, at a health club or tennis club or something, some upscale club, confess to each other, almost like they you know that they're gonna vote for Spencer Pratt. It would be foolhardy to say that if Pratt makes the runoff, you know, he could win in November because again, he's a re he's a Republican, he kind of identifies with MAGO, or they identify with him, and that that could be too far. But I want to, if I may, this gives me a chance to offer you something I thought I stumbled on almost ten years ago. It's like a it's Greenfield's precepts or whatever it is. I came up with the notion that if you have a dissatisfied electorate and they are told they can do something they didn't know they could do, that in itself is a powerful asset. And California is kind of the leading fact. You know, back uh decades ago, they realized we could pass a proposition to limit our property taxes, and Prop 13 passed two to one. They they realized we could take we could take justices of the Supreme Court that we think are too liberal and get them off the bench. And three of them, including the Chief Justice, I think it was in 1986, were removed by vote. And then they said, wait, we could recall the governor and replace him with an actor. California had never recalled, it's in the it's been a rule for decades, they'd never done it. They kicked out Gray Davis and put in Old Schwarzenegger. And if you want a national example of that, Donald Trump's not a bad one. So before I I understand what the polls are going to say, I would not bet the house or even a you know a portion of it, but it would not surprise me if Spencer Pratt turns out to be when on election day more formidable than the poll show. You know, again, don't take that to the bank, don't even take it to a loan shark. But there's something that was something going on in those ads that I that really hit me as a, as I said, as a participant in that dark heart and then as a viewer. Whoever's doing these ads, I think his name is is I don't even know his name because he's going under a pseudonym. It's something like like Parmesan is his real name, or maybe his fake name. But uh but you can't see the ads on TV, but you can they're all over social media and YouTube, and they are they are quite striking.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Powell One of the rules in in our earlier days of political analysis and reporting was that what happens in California will eventually happen across the country. Are there initiative and referenda that sort of presage developments uh in the United States, or is it just the billionaire's tax?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell Well the the billionaire's tax is far and away the the you know but every year in California there are there are dozens and dozens of referenda and propositions because it's a system that Hiram Johnson uh instituted back 120 years ago when he was a pressure, and it's been completely taken over by the pros. You pay people to gather signatures. If you have a particular special interest, you buy enough signatures to get on the ballot. Sometimes you put things on the ballot in effect to extort concessions from the legislature. But it but the billionaire tax is one that I think could really have impact elsewhere, because there is this feeling, particularly among Democrats on the more popular side, that that inequality and wealth concentration is the key issue of our time. Jonathan Shait wrote an interesting piece a few days ago, I think in in uh The Atlantic saying that that the Democrats are being misled by this. That that's not what people care about mostly. But but wealth inequality, concentration of wealth, the rise of the billionaires has produced a tremendous amount of energy on the left. And and in fact in New York, there's uh in the city, they're seeking to impose a luxury tax on second homes owned by very, very rich people. And uh I'm yeah, I I suspect this is not the end of this. But but it's interesting, uh John, to note that among the people running for California governor, among Democrats, there's n there's a complete disagreement. Some people say this is this is because the tax will only go to one element, I think it's uh health, it shortchanges everybody else. And other people say it's the it's the one way we can get more money into a system that perennially is in need of money. So that's the one that I think you know has national eggs.
SPEAKER_01Aaron Ross Powell, Jr. So I have a theory that AI is going to be the major political issue in the 2028 presidential campaign. And there was a piece by Cade Metz of the New York Times that was uh published this week in which he interviewed some of the intellectual elite uh in Silicon Valley, and they argued that uh essentially God had failed, but AI would deliver cures for disease and feeding the hungry and so on and so forth. And there's a particular quote which I'm gonna read. He writes, AI has started to crack math problems that humans struggled with for decades, and it will soon cure diseases in the same way, said Jeremy Nixon, who's one of these uh Silicon Valley intellectuals. Quote, practically speaking, it will achieve the outcomes that many religions claim their deities would be able to achieve, he said. This is an increasingly common belief among researchers in Silicon Valley. They insist they are on their way to building a more powerful species or even a new god. Quote, people are matter-of-factly saying that they are looking to build a machine god, said Ryan Krishnan, the chief executive of Val's AI, a San Francisco company that tracks the performance of the latest AI technologies. They are not saying that ironically or in jest. They are saying it as a matter of fact. I whoever the PR guy is for these tech bros needs to rein them in because it seems to me that that sets off a uh a reaction of enormous size. Is that do you share this view that AI is going to be the major issue of the 2028 election or one of the major issues?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Powell I think you're quite right about that, but it raises a c at least one issue, which is I cannot think in the past of any issue that had that has the potential to be this significant that is so totally understood by the vast majority of people. And I include myself as one of them. You know, the idea of of what AI can do. I've I don't know how many pieces I've read about this, I don't know how many television pieces I've seen about this, but this argument that this new creation is going to make life, you know, paradise on earth, or it's going to wipe out human existence, if I can quote a bit of poetry, it's going to be fought on a darkling plane, you know, where ignorant armies clash by night, because I think the I politicians in general, John, are horrible about any technology. I remember when the Internet was new and watching some congressional hearings about this, and it was total illiteracy. You know, I mean Strom Thurman, who was a little old, said that the Internet's a series of tubes, right? You know, that's a real quote. He was on the other hand ninety-nine years old. But if if if the internet threw the p the political system for a loop, how do you regulate it? You know, how free should it be? What do you ban? What is the argument, assuming that it your instinct is right, how do you think the argument's gonna go as a political issue? How much regulation, how much freedom, how do we get a handle on it? I mean, try to project, John, how that might even go in twenty twenty-eight. Who's arguing what?
SPEAKER_01Well, the argument would be that that you have to, quote, put guardrails around it, end quote, and then you would have to have some very smart people figure out what those guardrails might be. I'm not sure that a candidate looking to get elected to, you know, the Senate in, I don't pick your state, Minnesota, let's say, in a close race, if he or she were to say, look, these people think the machine is God, I will stand up to them and do everything I can to defeat them. That's a message that's going to play in the evangelical community for sure, and the Catholic community for sure, and the Jewish community for sure. You know, new Fox News poll out today says 80% of Americans believe that it is an urgent matter that guardrails be put around AI. And I I told a story the other day I did an interview with Josh Tarangle, who's written a book called AI for Good, which is a bunch of stories about people who are using AI to do great things. And he'd just gotten off the book tour, and I said to him, So how did the book tour go? And he said, Well, I learned one thing. And I said, What's that? And he said, Everybody hates AI.
SPEAKER_00Well, you saw the stories, hadn't you, about at the uh the commencement speakers? Yes. A couple of them who explained about the brave new world coming in and were almost booed off the off the podium.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So I don't think you n I don't think you need, you know, a detailed, you know, eight-point plan on how to how to regulate or control AI. I think the way it will play out is us against them. And they, meaning the people, basically the tech bros, if you want to you know reduce it to the cliche, will have too much power, uh, they will have too much influence, they already have too much money. And uh be it right or left, it seems to me, will say enough is enough. You gotta do you know make this work for us and not for you. And I think that'll be a powerful message. I really do. Aaron Powell, Jr.
SPEAKER_00But given the fact that the tech bros have already decided that they have to play in politics and have a fair amount of resources, by which I mean several billion dollars, to play at least. Can you and I think they've had some impact on the White House, and it it's what seems now a friendlier approach to AI, I think. Looks like that. So do you imagine that there will be other people saying we we must not pass this chance to have this wonderful new device do great things for us? Yes, we need to regulate it, but don't strangle the baby in the crib. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01That's gonna be the counter-argument, right? Um I mean the interesting thing is if you went back to the early part of 2024, you would say 80 per I mean, Gina Raimondo was the commerce secretary. She was probably the person in the Biden administration who was most fluent, if you will, in the AI issues and AI regulation issues and so on and so forth. She spent a lot of time in the valley talking to people. They seemed to be buying into what she was selling. And then Biden collapsed in the in the debate. Jill thought he was having a stroke, and the, you know, the tech community turned on a dime and they knew their client, and and so they knew what their client wanted was money. Uh so they arrived with boatloads of it and took over the Trump administration. I mean, David Sachs runs AI policy. He has investments in 300 startups in Silicon Valley, I believe the number is. And, you know, Mark Andreessen is, you know, all in with the Trump administration. He's seen all of the major tech CEOs and so on and so forth attending events, contributing to Trump causes, and they've just completely captured the Trump administration, which offers an opportunity for the Democrats. It seems to me, to say, you know, there Trump is in the tank with the tech bros. The tech bros are not in the tank with you, and we're here, we're gonna do everything we can to slow this down to or to stop them.
SPEAKER_00Trevor Burrus, Jr. And I think it's also worth putting on the table some signs. I don't know if it's a backlash, but it's interesting to me that it's some of the people who were present at the creation of AI have now become people warning of its dangers. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And I think I just saw a story where some some institutions, some companies, have decided that AI, as opposed to helping them with efficiency, they are replacing it with human beings because it costs more to drive their work with AI than with humans. So that may be the source of some kind of political dialogue as we get into 2028. But as they say, it's almost a source of potential black humor to imagine conventional politicians debating the finer points of AI. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. No, and my theory is that Jaina Raimondo actually has a shot at being the Democratic presidential nominee in 2028. She's the only person who amongst all of the people who can speak who can speak intelligently about the issue.
SPEAKER_00You know, that every once in a while really because I think Trump at the point was uh you could bet at Ladbrook's, you know, something like 500 to 1 again is Tim Winning. Uh but I didn't have the guts to follow my convictions. But maybe you ought to take a trip to London or go on Polly Market.
SPEAKER_01I'm sure that the Raumundo case would would be a very I'm gonna get 10,000 to one on that one. That's what I mean.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I met uh I met her c uh some time ago when she was transitioning from the governorship to to her cabinet role. She's very impressive. So I I you know you you got a good candidate there, John.
SPEAKER_01Well, we'll see. I mean uh I uh I I don't even I'm not even sure she's gonna run, but the but if there is a a democratic politician who can meet uh the issue, and if I'm right it's the major issue of twenty twenty-eight, then her chances are improved significantly. So we'll see. I'm not I'm not betting. Well, you can you're not betting any money on it.
SPEAKER_00Um I think I would I would go to Logbooks and put slightly less money on uh as a real long shot of Rama Manuel. I was watching a video that he put together of a quote non-campaign video, a two-minute video from his trips. And he is the as far as I can tell, the only prospective candidate on the Democratic side who was just willing to face up to some of the things that commentators have been talking about. You know, the Democratic Party has to get real about how some of its policies have hindered growth, have really hurt the poor, that i its close alliance with the teachers' unions have not necessarily helped education. He's he talks about this in very blunt terms. And I think the what what you can call the field is nowhere near that. You know, when I look at the other possibilities, I think they're still tied into a kind of a democratic dialogue that does not permit you to say, okay, how come Mississippi has has had one of the most successful increases in reading scores of any state in the country when it spends a you know a pittance on education? What are they doing? I think Louisiana's another s another business too. Yep. What are they doing? And what do we learn from that? And if it means changing how we teach in a way that the you know establishment of the education world doesn't like, well, that's too bad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. I point out to you that uh my friend Joe Klein always points us out the largest single occupation of delegates of the Democratic Conventions over the last two years have been teachers. And the teachers' unions, you know, have a lot of clout, and taking them on would make what Bill Clinton did in 1992 by trying to kind of changing the dialogue very difficult. So so whatever else it is, Ram Emanuel is just very well worth listening to. And he has certainly curbed his use of the more colorful adjectives, verbs, and nouns that used to characterize his his conversation.
SPEAKER_01I think he's a very strong candidate. I I mean if I were betting on somebody, I wouldn't bet on him. I think you know, he's he Do Democrats need somebody at the top of the ticket who looks like he or she would leap across the table and rip your lungs out if if uh if if you thought they were you know uh if he or she were thought they were being disrespected or something. Ron projects strength, which is desperately needed on the Democratic side. I mean he's also very smart and obviously been around issues of governance a long time. He was chief of staff to the president of the United States. So he's been in the room, so to speak. And I think what's going to happen on the Democratic side is there are going to be a lot of people competing for the quote progressive vote. And the fact is that black women in the South basically make the choice uh in that sort of middle period between uh the I mean, using the old calendar, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, uh then takes you south. And if Rom can, you know, garner support amongst blacks in South Carolina, which is fifty-five percent of the primary electorate in South Carolina, you know, similar in Alabama, Mississippi, etc., then he's gonna be formidable. And I you know, I don't see the others as being particularly formidable, and I certainly don't see anybody owning the quote progressive vote, you know, immediately, if you will. I don't think there is a Bernie Sanders out there. Aaron Powell So what else do you see on the on the horizon here in the midterm elections? Are there are elections that you're particularly interested in or following closely or think are particularly important?
SPEAKER_00Aaron Ross Powell You know, there are six Senate seats where the Democrats have a a sh sh a shot at one level or another. I'm kind of I'm very interested just because I've always thought Sherrod Brown was a very strong figure in the Democratic Party. You know, your kind of guy, strong pro-labor, liberal, but not in the far reaches. Now he lost by three points in 2024, and I think he is a shot at at getting the seat back. I think Alaska is really interesting because, and you'll help me pronounce her name, because I think former Congressman is Peltola Peltola, I never get that right. Mary Peltola, she was the at-large Congressperson for a year. She's running for the Senate, I think actually has a shot. And I think there are there is at least one state where the Democrats, or two states where the Democrats could suffer what should not have been a loss. I think the the Michigan primary is looking like a uh dumpster fire. And the most kind of the most curious one, like if you were a novelist that wanted to write about a campaign, I think you'd want to really look at at Maine, because you know, you had this two this very popular governor who decided she was going to run for the Senate. She's 77 years old. And then this 41-year-old oyster man, Plantner, was so far ahead in the polls that she dropped out. And it now turns out that he has certain things in his past that are not looking so good. Certainly, not the tattoo, but certain comments that when he was young and foolish that that are coming back to haunt him. You could see the Democrats losing a Senate majority, even though they win four or five seats by losing two seats they should have held. And the one that everybody was going to be watching for obvious reasons is Texas. You could not two different kinds, you know. I am awed by by Paxton's ability to survive. He's like that character in the Monty Python play movie, and he loses his arms and his legs, and he's still standing.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_00Under indictment. I mean, just just take a step back. This is an indicted potential felon who twice wins a statewide election, who runs on moral values, and you know, his wife is divorcing him on quote biblical grounds, which I do not think means not obeying the Sabbath. His entire staff turned him in because he was he was protecting a campaign contributor, and he wins. And my you know, my feeling is by the way, Texas is one of those Lucy with the football states that the Democrats are. They always think we're going to turn Texas blue, and it never happens. In 2002, they had a dream ticket, they got clobbered. It just keeps happening. But uh and I have you seen, you may have seen already what the what the Republicans are doing to Tel Rico. Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Steve, deputy chief of the other way, says, well, he's trans.
SPEAKER_01I just put out a piece on from uh political news items and I I quoted Paxton's victory speech, which uh which was, you know, basically one slur after another on Tel Rico. The thing about that was so interesting about Texas was in in the first go-round, Cornan won with 900,000 plus votes, and Paxton finished second with 878,000 votes. In the runoff primary, Paxton added 7,000 votes to his total. So he got 885,000 votes and would have lost to Cornyn's had Cornyn held his 908,000 votes, Cornyn would have won the runoff primary. But in the runoff primary, Cornyn got 500,000 votes. So 400,000 Cornyn voters didn't show up for the runoff. And you know, my theory about Trump endorsing Paxton, you know, the White House polls like every minute of every day. So they knew Paxton was going to win, and people were impressing upon Trump that he should, you know, John Thune and others were saying to Trump, you gotta you gotta endorse Cornyn, you gotta endorse Corning, we need Corner, and so on and so forth. And Trump is like, I'm not gonna endorse a loser. I'm with Paxton. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
SPEAKER_00That's exactly right. Trump is very good at finding somebody who's running ahead and then saying, I pushed him over the top. And sometimes he did.
SPEAKER_01Trevor Burrus, Jr. But that one, I mean, those 400,000 as a as a metaphor, that's a real warning sign for Republicans. I know a lot of people in Texas, you know, sort of bushy Republicans who are like, I'm gonna abstain on the Senate race. I'm just not gonna vote. I can't stand Paxton. And when you think about the impeachment of Paxton, the vote to impeach him in the Republican-dominated state House, okay, was 121 to 23. 60 Republicans voted to impeach him. So it's not an insignificant number of people, you know, who might just say, you know what, I'm not gonna I'm not gonna pull the lever on that one, which is why Paxton is running the campaign that he's running, which is he's gay, he's trans, he's you know, he's you know, everything else.
SPEAKER_00It's not subtle. It's not subtle. Definitely not subtle. I was looking at some of those. I mean, they but they're I don't even want to share with you some of what they're putting out about you know Telarico, but it's not it's not he's a good and decent man, but I disagree with him. That's not this game is going. I'm trying to think the race that may have 28 implications is North Carolina, the Senate race. You've got a very popular Democratic governor, Roy Cooper, who is right now, I think, running well in the Senate. Now, I don't know if you go from the Senate to a freshman, you know, two years from a Senate freshman to a presidential candidate. Obama came close, but he's the kind of candidate that a lot of Democrats are thinking we need. You know, he's m he's centrist. He now he disagrees with some of the Democratic base on some cultural issues, but he's been very popular. And if he wins big, I think you're gonna see his name surface as a uh as a possible. I've and and but we're also in the in this time frame of the calendar where everybody gets to put a name in. So I'm reading that if if uh Senator Asaf of of Georgia wins pre-election big, you know, he's in the mix. But I uh again, you know, we can come back and talk about this in a in a year and laugh at who's been who has been mentioned and who has not, and we'll see how well our Ron Emmanuel the Emanuel Ramondo ticket, maybe we can bet a tri a trifecta or whatever they call it in a daily double. It's an interesting talk. I don't think it's exactly likely.
SPEAKER_01But if they want to bring it up, it's an exacta, which means the odds would be like a billion to one. So if we bet a dollar, it we'd be a billionaires, right?
SPEAKER_00I'll put my ticket tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01All right. Jeff, thank you very much for doing this today. We will do it again as we get closer to the real pleasure.
SPEAKER_00I mean, I really enjoy them as a as a spectator, so as a participant, it's you know, it's even more fun. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. And Dale, thank you for producing this, and we will turn it around and get it out before Tuesday's primary, and uh we'll see how well it holds up.