Texas is still red. But Ken Paxton is a scandal-plagued candidate standing on that stage only because Donald Trump put him there — and Trump knows it. With a forever war in Iran dragging on, home heating oil hitting six dollars a gallon in the northeast, and a barrel of crude at $105, Republicans are watching their own base turn on them. Paul Rieckhoff joins Katie Phang alongside The Atlantic’s Jonathan Lemire and Lincoln Project strategist Stuart Stevens to pull apart a Senate race Trump personally owns, the 1.7 million Texas veterans and 16% independents who could decide it, and the quiet administration debate about whether to launch another Iran strike before voters go to the polls.
This is a conversation about what happens when the MAGA machine runs out of road. Trump is on Truth Social clarifying that he did not, in fact, invite the bombing of San Diego and Los Angeles. His own governor in Texas keeps finding scheduling conflicts. His Nobel Peace Prize fantasy is colliding with the reality that he is the president of a new generation of forever wars. The panel digs into why both parties are failing to go directly at the war, why split-ticket voting could crack Texas open, and what desperate moves a cornered president might pull in the weeks before Election Day. No spin. No jersey. Just the no-BS read independents have been waiting for.
In this episode
- Why Ken Paxton’s corruption and infidelity — not his wardrobe — are what Texas voters actually can’t stomach
- Trump calling his own Senate candidate “a pain in the ass” on a rally stage, and why he owns this race completely
- The 1.7 million Texas veterans and 16% independent voters who could decide whether Texas tilts
- Stuart Stevens on the “cyclospora lettuce” theory of Trump’s politics: when you’re the problem, don’t double the dose
- Jonathan Lemire’s Atlantic scoop on the internal White House debate over striking Iran before the midterms
- $6 home heating oil in the northeast, $105 crude, and the gas-price revolt eating Republican candidates alive
- Governor Abbott’s suddenly very busy calendar every time Trump lands in Texas
- Trump’s Truth Social clarification that he was not inviting the enemy to bomb San Diego and Los Angeles
- Why pulling out of Iran is the only move that would actually move gas prices — and why Trump probably won’t do it
- The warning from Stevens and Rieckhoff: don’t trust the polls, because a cornered Trump will pull every lever he has
