We're prisoners of the moment.

The width and breadth of this victory actually gives Democrats more cushion to not fall into that trap.

Because if it was a narrow majority, you could get held hostage by one constituency.

by the extreme socialists or the DSA or all that.

But because they have such a massive majority in the House, no one entity can hijack the entire agenda, hijack the floor.

I'm not going to vote for this unless you do A, B, and C, which is what we've seen Republicans have to navigate for years now is these narrow margins where the extremes hold Kevin McCarthy hostage or Mike Johnson hostage.

That's not going to happen to Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.

And of course, the president is adamant about that being under the microscope.

Are we being respectful enough in these sort of big, broad strokes about how local each of these races

are? In some cases, but again, you alluded to this earlier with Michigan.

All of these races on some level have become nationalized and are part of a broader conversation that's happening.

With Syed, it's about the future direction of the Democratic Party.

With Texas and Tallarico and Paxson, it's, you know, does the Trump drag effect all the way down to Texas and flip seats that are in play that were plus 15 two years ago for Donald Trump that now look like they might swing back to the Democratic Party? The Latino vote calvary leaving the Republican Party, coming back to the Democratic Party, that yo-yoing that we're seeing, like there's so many interconnected dynamics at play.

Not one narrative is right.

Not one narrative is wrong.

It doesn't drive up any new Democrats.

Boy, that's that's often a really toxic political mix, isn't it?

Yeah.

I mean, you contrast and Democrats have done a really deliberate job of doing this on the campaign trail.

It's something they need to continue doing when they take back power, which is drawing the line of, well, you're asked to pay more for gas.

Well, you're asked to pay more for the cost of borrowing.

You're asked to pay more for rent or your mortgage is going up and your utilities are going up.

These guys are making millions and billions of dollars.

Yeah,

It is not a good sign.

Well, and, and listen, this, this is the NFL, folks.

This is an amateur hour.

This isn't improv night, uh, you know, around the corner at the local bar.

Uh, this is, you know, this job from this podium can dictate if markets go up or down, if military offensives and, and, and counter-offenses are, are, are being deployed and, and developed.

Uh, you know, with g- grave responsibility comes from that.

This is the podium in which we announce, you know, casualties of war or hostage situations or, you know, uh, economic turmoil, li- lives lost, you know, mass shootings, school shootings.

This has

been the endgame.

You've been saying it.

This has been the endgame.

We've talked about it for well over a year now.

The endgame has always been when it comes to this election.

And we'll see the same thing play out in 2028.

This president wants to demand the outcome he wants, and he will do anything he can to get it.

And that is what the American people need to do.

Well, that's been the danger of the normalization of the big lie within the Republican presidency.

party, and it has empowered and enabled those in office to try to carry out that mission.

Here in Texas, we're seeing it every day.

Tarrant County, one of the largest counties here, third largest county, the Board of Supervisors, three votes, that's all it took to wipe out 90 election polling places that were there in 2022 that will not be there for this election.

They just did that the other week.

We just had this situation with the voter registrations where More than 100,000 voter registrations are up in the air right now because there was some sort of glitch or data error or or confusion in how to administer it.

Republican back when the

Will that work?

Uh, if you're a Democrat, you're saying, "Yes.

Please put Donald Trump on every stage in every battleground district next to every candidate that's on the frontline map." That will help Democrats at this point, because again, it's a historically unpopular president at this point in the midterms.

It does remind me of '06.

That's the first election I worked.

That's what brought me to Washington, and we had a race where we were offered the White House, the President to come campaign for us.

The President was so unpopular at the time, we actually said, "No, please don't do that.

Mm-hmm

Salazar understands the optics in a largely Cuban-American, Venezuelan-American community of having people that at one point came to the U.S. legally suddenly deemed illegal and then

deported.

Right.

I mean, I can tell you as someone who's worked on many campaigns, Republican campaigns, actually, you don't do something like this unless your internal numbers tell you you have a big problem standing with this president at this time on that issue.

Her numbers have got to tell her she needs to retreat from the president.

She needs to do a complete 180.

And it's not an easy thing to do.

correct me if i'm wrong kurt but i guess the answer to what democrats would run on is we wouldn't have gone into this war when there wasn't a clear and urgent present danger

to me on TV.

Yeah, pretty much.

And it ended up being on the front page of the San Diego Union Tribune the next day with my picture and all of that.

And that was kind of my first brush with politics and media.

And then shortly after I graduated high school that summer, a state lawmaker happened to host a fundraiser at a restaurant I was working at.

I started talking with the chief of staff, who I didn't know was the chief of staff.

I just thought it was just some guy.

–

Kurt, should Americans get behind this?

No.

Again, a couple of things can be true at the same time.

We can have a trade imbalance with Canada that we have every right to try to rectify and bring more parity and equality to that dynamic.

And I don't have a problem with that in general, but things don't happen in a vacuum.

And one of the problems and one of the signals that this action is sending to other partners in the world is this is a bad place to do business right now.

We are seeing this dynamic play out with the Koreas.

Two, how did he do navigating those questions?

Right.

So we're trying to create problems by solving a problem that doesn't actually exist.

That's number one.

Number two, the only reason to try to do something that would impact turnout, and in the last midterm election in 2022, almost half the votes cast in th- in that election were by mail.

The only thing that this serves to do is to depress turnout.

The only reason why you would want to discourage participation in the democratic process is because you firmly believe that if the playing field is level, there's just not enough votes for you to win, so you're trying to sabotage the process.

And number three, the USPS is about the worst run entity in all of the federal government.

Why do you think he has more?

They should take the two vote-getters and do it again with the top two so that somebody gets 50% of the vote.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

I think that we need to have elections where a majority decides, not a plurality.

Um, a- and again, and I say that in, in the most nonpartisan way possible because I just think it's, it's a, it's a disservice to the electorate, uh, to have a scenario where whoever ends up winning really only gets a third of, of your primary's electorate vote.

Uh, the same could be said for what happened in Tennessee a, a couple months ago as well.

In the Republican primary, uh, for governor there was Marsha Blackburn, John Rose, and another Republican.

Uh, and, and the, the non-Marsha Blackburn vote exceeded 50%.

... you think she has got the juice to, uh, turn that seat red?

Uh, is that what we're seeing in the Democratic Party with this victory up in Michigan?

I think so.

Uh, it was one thing when we saw some of these, uh, you know, disagreements within the party contained to spaces like New York or California.

That's where you would expect it.

Uh, but once you get into a state like Michigan, uh, that, that is of such political importance that the Democratic Party just recently announced that Michigan was gonna be one of the earliest states in the primary calendar for the presidential election in twenty twenty-eight.

Once that, these fights bleed into those type of states with that level of prominence within the Democratic Party, uh, you know, that, that speaks volumes.

And it very much reminds me of what I got to witness up close and personal back when I was a Republican, when the Tea Party wave happened in two thousand and ten, and I was at the House Oversight Committee working for Darrell Issa.

Do you agree?

Yeah.

Yeah, just as Democrats were saying, nominating Ken Paxton over John Cornyn is creating a scenario where Republicans are going to have to spend more money to preserve Texas than they would have had it been the safer pick in Cornyn.

Democrats are not going through this in Michigan because if they...

Are Democrats really going to spend money in September and October? for Abdu'al Syed? Well, they're going to have to if they want to try to hold that seat, and that's the problem.

The money that goes into Michigan now under Syed, it would not have had to go there in the first place if they had gone with Stevens, who would have had an easy path.

As Scott just said, we have watched Mike Rogers lose to traditional Democrats a few times now statewide.

Why on earth would you, in a situation where you need to run the table to take the majority back, go the hardest route possible? Answer my question.

Is this, is Tallarico the model for Democrats?

And, you know, Michigan voters tend to be a little bit more center-right, if not firmly in the center on national security issues.

Yeah, Democrats, the lesson here is not just from years past and recent time.

Look at Republicans back in the Tea Party days.

When they ran people like Todd Akin, Kristi O'Donnell, people who were so far outside of the mainstream window of tolerance-

Right.

Yeah.

You know, th- they and them, th- those people never got a seat.

They never became United States senators, and Democrats lost races that they could have been competitive.

And I think in the end, uh, we will end up just controlling the whole thing.

The ceasefire over, and the US is officially back at war with Iran.

Following the third night of strikes on Iran, the administration quietly notified lawmakers military strikes have resumed, and that's not all.

The naval blockade is back on, effective tomorrow.

The president declares the USA will be, from this point forward, known as the guardian of the Hormuz Strait.

But it will come at a suggested cost, a 20% fee, or as the president calls it, a reimbursement.

And so what we've done is we are going to be reimbursed for protection.

Well, tonight Iran is showing no signs it will back down on the strait.

Do they respond? Do they, with this big vote coming up for Attorney General, do they?

I mean, I think we have seen them express tremendous concerns about Todd Blanch's nomination.

But again, I think it's one of those, we are now seeing these senators for the first time in a long time vote their actual conscience.

Maybe sometimes that aligns with the Donald Trump agenda, but sometimes it doesn't.

And I think the frustrating thing about someone like Lindsey Graham is that part of that vote your conscience part disappeared.

And maybe that was a pragmatic political decision, as certainly his defenders would say.

But I look at the Republican Party that I used to belong to back in the good old days when you were chairman of it.

Yeah, the one thing

Isn't that obvious? Like what?

I don't think that they – see, and that's the thing.

I don't think that they don't believe that.

I just think it's – I don't think it occurs to them to talk about it that way.

It has been really interesting for me as someone who worked for a long, long time as a Republican to now walk the world in the Democrat land and how completely divergent the thinking really is about politics, about people.

I think that – Democrats being cast as elitists who are out of touch with the average day.

I think that's totally true.

We can't just – You're saying that we should just accept that? No,

And then you see it play out in real time with members like John Fetterman, who seemingly the only issue that he cares about on this earth is is israel being able to uh continue to engage in this uh war uh against uh iraq um i don't know kurt what what is the impact on i don't know what what is your perspective on this whole thing

Yeah, it's interesting because in their zeal to use the United States to carry their water, fund their war, try to instigate regime change in Iran, Israel has nuked its own political capital in the United States.

It wasn't that long ago that it was seen as a political negative for Democrats, particularly on the left, to be perceived as anti-Israel.

To be perceived as against APAC, that that would almost guarantee your political obituary if APAC decided to target your race and pour millions and millions of dollars against you.

And here we are not that much far removed from that period of time.

And it's the complete opposite.

Now, taking APAC money is seen as a political negative.

It's like beyond parodies.

Kurt, what's at stake here and what do you see is happening?

You know, it was just a few months ago, Mika, that the Postmaster General testified before Congress that the Post Office is dangerously underfunded, understaffed, almost incapable of performing its operations, that a year from now, it may have to stop delivering mail.

So it's surprising and shocking that the President of the United States would issue an executive order giving power to the Postal Service to determine who should be participating in mail-in voting, that we're in a situation that in order to comply with that executive order, the Postal Service is issuing guidances to states to say, turn over your voting roll data to us.

And if you don't, we will not deliver your mail-in ballots.

We will not deliver any of the election-related materials to comply with this executive order because this executive order carries penalties for postal workers, for employees, for workers if they illegally carry out election-related information without getting these states' information.

States are pushing back.

States are in court right now this summer trying to put a suspension on this executive order.

Is there a possibility of widespread disenfranchisement?

Where do you see this fitting into the narratives around affordability, around the war, around gas prices that Democrats, you as someone who's done communication on both sides of the aisle, know are going to be necessary to help people understand he is, as my friend and colleague Simone will say, he is not well.

Well, speaking as a Democrat, let me just say, I hope that every single Republican running on the midterms, every single swing district, please send Donald Trump there.

Please have him campaign for you.

I can't imagine what Mike Lawler is thinking as he's standing there at an event that's supposed to be for him and his campaign, if you will, watching this unfold.

It's because...

They don't have the answers when it comes to why we're in this war in Iran in the first place, what they're going to do to lower the cost of gas prices and oil, when the cost of shipping is going to go down, when the cost of living is going to become more accessible, when people are going to stop being asked to do more with us.

They don't know what to say.

from what he said he would do and what is actually happening.

I mean, what do you anticipate happening in in that vein? And how do you how if you were advising Democrats on this, what does the accountability agenda look like?

Well, one, if I were Democrats, I would form a select committee just to investigate all the financial dealings involving the first family government contracts, no bid contracts being handed out.

If you follow the money, that's where you're going to find vulnerability.

That's number one.

Number two, Congress needs to take a real look at actually increasing their ability to enforce their subpoenas, enforce their ability to get accountability.

Right now, we have a dynamic, and this is the flaw in our checks and balance system, where the executive branch could say, I'm not going to cooperate with you.

Congress will hold you in contempt.

To me, it's about the fact that congressional Republicans are are not allowing that to be like a deal breaker.

So that's 2021.

Fox is really upset about this.

Talking about a $250,000 painting.

This is a $24 million government contract that's been handed out.

And it's not the only one that they're going for.

There's a company called Powerus.

It's a drone company backed by Eric and Donald.

Keep those receipts because you're going to need to collect on all of this for that accountability.

Is it the fourth now? Yeah.

The, the, the fact the leader of the resistance, if you will, the largest concentration of Democrats in America live in California, all of those things.

Uh, and, and all the while you're engaging in this kind of behavior and, and as a, as a former staffer and as someone who saw firsthand...

You know, I'll never forget, Don, you know, like I tweeted, walking into the Rayburn office the first time in my life, it was July 5th, 2006, um, winning a special election to replace a congressman who had resigned and go- and, and later on would be incarcerated for scandal and watching that staff that was left behind servicing the constituents of the then 50th Congressional District California, turning over the keys to the office and s- and, and, and hearing their stories of how their livelihoods now were just blown up.

Their resume was tainted.

I, I, I realized, and again, I was in my early 20s back then, just how fragile our livelihoods are, how tied they are to these people and, and that our fortunes rise with theirs.

And then when they in- are engulfed in scandal, when they, when they, uh, have this type of thing happen, it, it, it has such a rippling effect on everyone.

What do you think?

How big a deal is this?

this?Uh, it's unprecedented, Don.

Um, and, and I don't use that word li- like ...

That's a word that gets thrown around a lot, uh, you know, in, in our profession and vocation, but I'm gonna tell you it's, it's unprecedented.

Consider this.

It was just the other week, by the way, that we had the attorney general before the House Judiciary Committee, as you recall, answering questions under oath, Epstein survivors behind her that she couldn't even turn around and face and acknowledge or apologize to.

So to just have had a situation where she was under oath for the Oversight Committee, controlled by a Republican majority, by the way, for, for Republicans to join with Democrats, and not just any Republican.

Was that helpful, Kurt?