What is not working for the Republicans?

Well, I mean, look, I want to be very careful because we're still waiting for the final results.

I have been very public in my disagreements with Attorney General Paxson.

I think that when you look at the two issues that voters were highlighting, their own economic situation, affordability, housing, health care, fuel, energy, those things, food, And then corruption.

Those were the two main issues.

And Republicans were not speaking to those issues in a way that motivated people to believe that they could trust institutions, trust their government, and believe that that government was going to deliver a government that was going to make sure they could afford their lives, live their lives the way they want to.

I'm just being honest.

You

oh good to see you uh how are you how are you feeling

Well, I got to tell you, it's not a bad thing to not be on the ballot this year.

But as an American, and as somebody who has so many good friends in this world, in the Congress, and obviously in the administration, and watching what's happening, I've been paying a lot of close attention.

I've been going all over the state of Texas.

I've been campaigning.

I went to Pennsylvania to campaign for Scott Perry.

I'm going to be out at the polls in just a little bit to try to turn people out in Hayes County.

All you have to do is watch the actions and watch the words in the actions before somebody was running and you know who they are.

How are you feeling?

Well, I got to tell you, it's not a bad thing to not be on the ballot this year.

But as an American, and as somebody who has so many good friends in this world, in the Congress, and obviously in the administration, and watching what's happening, I I've been paying a lot of close attention.

I've been going all over the state of Texas.

I've been campaigning.

I went to Pennsylvania to campaign for Scott Perry.

I'm going to be out at the polls just a little bit to try to turn people out in Hayes County.

Why should they go out and vote?

What's your reaction to it?

it's clearly a product of a broken education system that's been frankly corrupting the youth of america for now generations uh decades and uh you know we we've got to make sure that we're uh as i've said repeatedly in this election meeting voters where they are and figuring out how to move them and bring them to where we know uh we need to take the country for everyone's benefit, and particularly our kids and grandkids.

And what I mean by that is, I've heard a lot of my colleagues kind of running campaigns focused on why, for example, James Tallarico would be horrible for Texas.

True enough, and I've said it too.

Or why certain Democrat socialist candidates would be horrific and take the country down the wrong road.

Agreed, also a good point to make.

But I think we need to be focusing on what we know works.

What would you say to the people in Michigan right now who are seriously considered casting a vote for El-Said?

What's your reaction to it?

it's clearly a product of a broken education system that's been uh frankly corrupting the youth of america for now generations uh decades and uh you know we we've got to make sure that we're uh as i've said repeatedly in this election meeting voters where they are and figuring out how to move them and bring them to where we know uh we need to take the country for everyone's benefit, and particularly our kids and grandkids.

And what I mean by that is, you know, I've heard a lot of my colleagues, you know, kind of running campaigns focused on why, for example, James Tallarico would be horrible for Texas.

True enough.

And I've said it too.

Or why certain Democrat socialist candidates would be horrific and take the country down the wrong road.

Agreed.

What would you say to the people in Michigan right now who are seriously considered casting a vote for El-Saeed?

What's your reaction to it?

it's clearly a product of a broken education system that's been uh frankly corrupting the youth of america for now generations uh decades and uh you know we we've got to make sure that we're uh as i've said repeatedly in this election meeting voters where they are and figuring out how to move them and bring them to where we know uh we need to take the country for everyone's benefit, and particularly our kids and grandkids.

And what I mean by that is, you know, I've heard a lot of my colleagues, you know, kind of running campaigns focused on why, for example, James Tallarico would be horrible for Texas.

True enough.

And I've said it too.

Or why certain Democrat socialist candidates would be horrific and take the country down the wrong road.

Agreed.

What would you say to the people in Michigan right now who are seriously considered casting a vote for El-Saeed?

What did you think of that?

Well, Caitlin, great to be on with you.

And I mean, look, this entire conversation, the entire intro is not directed at you.

It's directed at politicians.

None of it has anything to do with what the American people care about right now.

You can point at whatever fingers you want to, but they're concerned about the things that Republicans are doing well, securing the border of the United States, getting tax rates low, reducing mandatory spending, doing a lot of the things they wanted us to do and making our military stronger and so forth.

But they're also frustrated about diesel prices, gas prices, home prices, food prices.

But if you're a voter and you're saying, well, look, we've seen two years of Republicans in control of everything in Washington, and right now it's still costing me more at the grocery store and at the gas pump, why should they elect Republicans on Tuesday?

Do you get the feeling that the flavor of the news and analysis is designed to, or at the least, is having the effect of sending Republican voters the message that, oh, you've already lost and it's a blue wave year? It feels kind of like a psyop.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's right.

I think that's typical.

I think that's what the media tends to do.

It's also just a part of the environment right now.

And polling is so difficult to predict.

It's very hard to understand where the heartbeat is right now from a polling perspective.

How do you feel that's working for these states where he's showing up?

What's your reaction?

Well, I, I wish polls made, uh, the, the, the case for elections because if so, I would be the attorney general nominee for Texas.

I was up in the polls [laughs] heading into the primary, and I lost.

So my point of sharing that is just that, look, I don't put a lot of stock in polls.

Uh, what I do is I just try to look at where people are, and I've been out on the campaign trail trying to help out across Texas.

I was in Tyler last week with JD Vance.

And, uh, look, I, I've been, been very public.

Like, I, I, I hear y- you on, on the accomplishments you're talking about, but there's this other stuff that's making my life more difficult"?

Tell us a little bit about where that

stands.

So I think three or four years ago, I started giving floor speeches on the, what I would say then was about 51 million foreign born.

I think now I would say 53 million foreign born in the United States.

And, you know, none of us begrudge any individual from where they're from or their background, or we think that's great.

What we do care about are a couple of things.

One, are you coming here and are you on the social welfare state? Two, are you coming here and dramatically changing the culture of our country and undermining our Western values? So this is why I've been sounding the alarm.

What have you learned about that?

How are you combating that from a legislative perspective? Talk to us about the bills that you're a part of.

Well, I mean, right now we're still, I think, working through the legislative options, right, about what can we do to prevent, for example, federal funds from flowing to the mass adoption of and implementation of flock cameras and a collection of that data.

Obviously, you want to be able to put in place safeguards.

That's more of a state and local question on what access law enforcement can have, how they can use it, but federal authorities, too.

But we're already the horses are way, way out of the barn on this stuff.

Right.

The flock cameras up.

What are you hearing from folks here in Texas, in your district, as it relates to flock cameras and data centers? What is the sentiment locally?

I, I try not to give them too much latitude unless they're very entertaining, but they're really never right, are they? Remember the great red wave and all the red? They're, they're, they're so often wrong, aren't they?

They are.

And let's take a look.

I'm, I'm...

I'll be self-deprecating here, right? A, a week before our runoff election in May, we had polling, as did we believe my opponent, that showed me up about three points.

Um, that turned out to be demonstrably false.

We think we've kind of figured out why.

Mm-hmm

What's your reaction?

As you know, this is one of the bills that I led on in 2020.

I introduced a bill to ban congressional stock trading in all forms.

It was a pretty aggressive bill, and it was bipartisan.

It's taken five, six years to get even Republicans to finally move on it, but we did move on a bill that, while not perfect, would have actually fully banned the buying of stocks.

Now, I would have liked to ban it all, but banning the buying of stocks, plus putting more transparency on the selling, that would have been a really good bill.

We sent that over to the Senate, we attached voter ID to it, and Democrats blocked it today on a party line vote.

So why is Senator Cruz the one trying to change a system that is helping Texas athletics?

Right.

I, at the time when they were doing that, I said I thought that was unlawful.

It violated the very statutory black letter text of the statute that they're making up rule, which is supposed to be a case by case basis.

So I thought it was an unlawful release into the United States.

So you start with that.

Then you add to the fact, and by the way, the president has now come along, President Trump, and said, yeah, those are not valid.

And oh, by the way, particularly when you're talking about Venezuela and Cuba and Haiti and those that were not honoring that, I think, false policy of dumping all these people in the United States.

They just want them to vote, don't they? This isn't really about a DoorDash dad in Austin, is it?

What should Texans believe?

Well, I go back to the greatest advancements that humankind have known have come when we've freed people up to do the best with their God-given skills.

But the difference with this one, I think, is that it's moving so quickly that people don't know where it's going.

So like my colleague, I hear it.

It could be viewed as hyperbolic.

and in many ways it is.

Take for a second and step back.

you agree with that?

Can you explain the worldview of the president and first lady when she puts up that state dinner video, very fancy, but it's giving kind of like Nancy Reagan, White House, China vibes, and then President Trump talking about how there is no affordability crisis?

Well, Jay, good to be on.

And I'm never going to try to explain what someone else is thinking about on any particular issue.

But what I can tell you is what the people of Texas are telling me and people across the country.

I've been traveling around.

I was in Pennsylvania campaigning for my good friend Scott Perry just this last weekend.

And people are concerned, of course, about affordability, the president's right to raise it.

Do you understand why the pendulum swung that much?

So, like, are these the people who are actually going to be able to regulate AI?

Well, first of all, I want to be very clear to all those listeners.

I spoke at an event that was sort of left of center yesterday called Human First, and I was happy to do it.

I'm happy to go talk to people across the spectrum on this stuff.

I do believe in putting humans first, but humans first might mean a very strong and robust AI that is helping us cure cancer, as I talked about before, or making our lives better.

But no, I don't want a heavy-handed regulatory approach from Congress.

We mess things up, okay? Congress basically makes things worse, typically.

And so What are your reflections of Congress having spent a substantial amount of time there?

So, like, are these the people who are actually going to be able to regulate AI?

Well, first of all, I want to be very clear to all those listeners.

You know, I spoke at a, an event that was sort of left of center yesterday called Human First, and I was happy to do it.

I'm happy to go talk to people across the spectrum on this stuff.

I do believe in putting humans first, but humans first might mean a very strong and robust AI that is helping us cure cancer as I've talked about before or, or making our lives better.

But no, I don't want a heavy-handed regulatory approach from Congress.

We mess things up, okay? Congress basically [laughs] makes things worse typically.

Yeah.

Uh, but the idea that they wanna divorce, uh, immigration enforcement and border enforcement from Homeland Security, I'd like to get your reaction to that.

Well, I, I think it's foolish, uh, with all due respect.

Uh, they, um...

And by the way, what's interesting is Jeh Johnson would have looked like Attila the Hun in terms of border security compared to what happened under, uh, the Biden administration, uh, and the absurdity that we saw there.

And, um, you know, I, I think this is kind of that, that, uh, easy answer that the, I'm gonna call it the establishment broadly, Republican and Democrats, you know, just pivot to- And they say, "Oh, we're, we're a nation of immigrants.

You've got to let everybody in," and, you know, "You guys are being too harsh," and you're focusing on that versus, you know, you need to be collecting intelligence to ensure that we're gonna go stop, you know, some, uh, you know, terrorist event.

Well, look, we can walk and chew gum at the same time.

How dangerous is it, and is there a good panacea to it?

Why did you pick those words?

Well, first of all, let me give a little bit of credit to a few of my colleagues.

As always, it's often members of the House Freedom Caucus who have the courage to stand up.

My colleague Keith Self from Texas, he co-founded, along with me, the Sharia Free America Caucus and is one of the outspoken leaders on this, as are a number of my colleagues, friends like Eli Crane, others that go down the list.

But I have taken a specific and personal interest in this in trying to lay out what I believe is a war And it's a war that was declared by the other side.

And the phrasing that I try to use is you can't win a war if you don't acknowledge it exists.

And you just opened this segment with a clip that I could provide and you can find hundreds of.

What is your what's your take on this?

This has become a white hot issue, and it still seems like the Washington, DC Republicans don't understand how angry we are about legal and illegal immigration.

No, they don't understand it.

I mean, uh, m- many of Republicans have now moved to the right because we have all been tugging it that direction.

President Trump has and a lot of Americans have been making their voice heard.

But the average Republican in Washington doesn't understand that this goes to the heart of who we are.

Most Americans that I talk to, Texans, you know, and I just campaigned statewide, I fell a little short, but I know where everybody is in the state.

People here in the state of Texas, they don't recognize America anymore.

Nothing.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Um, but, uh, yeah.

So I, I think my response to those people would be that this is, you know, the time for, you know, debating whether or not the federal government should be involved in our elections and to what extent is, is kind of over, right? We have this involvement.

We have these laws on the books and if, if we're going to have election laws on the books, i- at the bare minimum, we should include actual proof of citizenship.

I, I think the...

So to go back to a claim that you'd made earlier from opponents of the SAVE Act and the Save America Act, that well, you know, it's already illegal to register to vote if you're a non-citizen.

Tell us the difference between Save America Act and Save America Act, budget reconciliation version, um, and what are the traps there, uh, with, with the changes in that policy?

And one of the, one of the things that you have recently said is that you need to codify Trump's border policies into law, and lo and behold, you said something, and apparently you have a bill for that.

Yeah, so this is actually one of the more important issues that is not being talked about, but I'm trying to change that.

We passed it two weeks ago through the House Judiciary Committee, a piece of legislation that I authored.

But to be clear, it wasn't my brainchild here.

I took a bill that we passed three years ago in the United States House, through the House, that we called H.R.2 back then, that I w- I did have a, a lot to do in creating that and was the brainchild behind trying to create the codification of border security to do what? Stop the abuse of asylum and parole, catch and release, the unaccompanied children that was horrifying for the better part of a decade plus that Biden was using and abusing to create a situation in which Jocelyn Dongrey was murdered, in which Laken Riley was murdered, in which tens of thousands of Americans died from fentanyl.

And we're sweeping that aside and we're saying, "Oh, great, Trump and, and Homan and Steven Miller and all the great Border Patrol and, and ICE people, they're stopping all this, and the flow has stopped at the border." Well, it's great.

That's nice.

That should be the sexiest thing right now about a politician.

So what do you want? If you could wave a wand and make the Senate do something, would it involve nuking the filibuster, making it part of a reconciliation package so it wouldn't need the 60 votes? What would you love to see happen?

Well, uh, when we've been on the show before talking about this, I- my preferred path back in the spring was to really truly enforce the talking filibuster, and here's why, Mark, and it's actually important.

You're a student of, of politics.

The Senate is actually an important cooling saucer, right? I, I believe that.

I'm a creature of the Senate.

I was chief of staff to Ted Cruz, as you know, and I believed it was important that Ted Cruz take the floor trying to stop the funding of Obamacare in 2014 because I knew it would drive up the price of healthcare.

We've been proven correct.

Absolutely.

Why do you think it was necessary? And, you know, from my perspective, it's like, well, you weren't going to do anything else anyway.

It's the only thing that the town responds to is what I call legislative violence.

Yeah.

Because otherwise, they're just going to do what they do.

It's they get in a room.

They tell you all the reasons we can't do something that's actually transformative or newsworthy or useful.

And then they go through the motions to pass some appropriations bill that spends more money or will move forward a bill like the housing bill.

What routes are available to those who want to see this election integrity