During Stephen Colbert’s interview with state Rep. James Talarico (D) — which was released on YouTube after CBS, according to Colbert, would not allow The Late Show to air it live over concerns the Trump administration’s Federal Communication Commission might come after the show — Talarico made it clear why he thought the Trump administration was targeting him and his campaign.
“I think that Donald Trump is worried that we’re about to flip Texas,” Talarico told Colbert when the late-night host asked him if he meant to “cause trouble” in the wake of the FCC opening an investigation into his appearance on another talkshow, The View. And in the wake of Talarico’s outright win against Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) in last night’s primary election, Trump is subtly revealing that Talarico’s cheeky predictions about the Trump administration’s concerns may not be too far off.
While Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) held a slight lead in Tuesday’s Republican primaries, the race — between Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) and Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-TX) — is headed to a runoff after none of the three secured 50 percent of the vote.
Trump had refused to endorse a candidate ahead of last night’s primary, despite ongoing pleading from Republican congressional leadership that he throw his support behind the incumbent. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday again urged Trump to back Cornyn, telling reporters it would be “enormously helpful” if Trump would weigh in.
“[If] Trump endorses early, it saves everybody a lot of money, and … 10 weeks of a spirited campaign on our side that keeps us from spending time focusing on the Democrats,” Thune said. The primary has already become the most expensive in U.S. history.
It appears Trump is keeping his mystery alive a bit longer. In a Truth Social post on Wednesday, Trump made it clear he doesn’t want Republicans wasting time and money on fighting each other when resources could be better used elsewhere: beating Talarico. He suggested that, some time in the near future, he will make an endorsement in the race, after which, he warned, the non-endorsed candidate had better drop out.
“My Endorsements within the Republican Party have been virtually insurmountable! It is such an honor to realize and say that almost everyone I Endorse WINS, and wins by a lot, especially in Texas!” he said. “I will be making my Endorsement soon, and will be asking the candidate that I don’t Endorse to immediately DROP OUT OF THE RACE! Is that fair? We must win in November!!! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
He is expected to endorse Cornyn, according to The Atlantic.
The logic lines up; most Republicans are in agreement that additional primary resources are better spent in the general. But the heavy hand from Trump the day after a primary — the outcome of which many speculated would serve as some sort of indictment on Republicans voters’ current appetite for MAGA as a whole — is revealing of perhaps deeper concerns about Texas’ fate now that Talarico is headed for the general election.
ICE Operation in Minnesota Hampered Legit Fraud Investigations
Both Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) and Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) complied with House Republicans’ efforts to drag them before the House Oversight Committee to publicly testify about fraud in the state — a topic with some grounding in reality but around which Trump, Republicans and right-wing influencers have manufactured hysteria, which the administration used as justification for its lethal immigration operation in Minneapolis.
Walz beat a familiar drum during his testimony, arguing, rightly, that the Trump administration has fixated on Minnesotans as the focal point of Trump’s retribution scheme against Democrats and Americans who vote for them.
“The people of Minnesota have been singled out and targeted for political retribution at an unparalleled scale,” Walz said. “We’re going to prosecute, as we have, every single person that’s involved in fraud, but we can’t do it alone.”
But Ellison made a compelling point during his testimony, when he argued that it was actually the Trump administration’s ICE raids in the state that have harmed ongoing investigations into social services fraud. Six federal prosecutors in Minnesota resigned over the Justice Department’s handling of the ICE surge, including its push to investigate the widow of Renee Good, an American citizen killed by an ICE agent earlier this year. One of those prosecutors was Joseph Thompson, a Trump appointee and top official in the U.S. attorney’s office there, who was overseeing a massive fraud investigation in the state prior to the ICE operation. Per the LA Times:
“Operation Metro Surge did nothing to address fraud in our state,” Ellison said. “It harmed our economy and it scarred our people and it dealt a devastating blow to fraud enforcement in Minnesota.”
Ellison noted the series of resignation of lawyers in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, leaving those who remain “drowning in immigration-related petitions” instead of prosecuting fraud. On Tuesday, the U.S. attorney for Minnesota appeared before a judge for a contempt hearing related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement not returning personal property of detainees.
‘A Feeling Based on Fact’
That’s the White House’s new explanation for why President Trump dragged the United States into war with Iran over the weekend. The Trump administration and Trump himself have been saying for days that there was some sort of imminent threat to the continental United States that justified our involvement in Iran. Multiple Democrats have said that the intelligence they’ve seen does not back up these claims.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters today that Trump’s decision was based on feelings.
“This decision to launch this operation was based on a cumulative effect of various direct threats that Iran posed to the United States of America, and the president’s feeling, based on fact, that Iran does pose an imminent, indirect threat to the United States of America,” she said.
This was “based on the fact that they are the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, based on the fact that they were rapidly and aggressively building up their ballistic missile program to give themselves immunity within their country, alongside their navy, so that inside their country they could continue to create nuclear weapons and nuclear bombs, which would of course pose a risk to Americans in the region and even Americans one day here at home,” she said.
Headline of the Day
Media Matters: Right-wing pundits want Trump to heal the MAGA rift over the Iran war via the mass deportation of American Muslims
In Case You Missed It
Texas primaries coverage:
Bloody Texas Primary Will Stretch into Runoff as John Cornyn Fights for His Political Life
Talarico Wins Texas Senate Primary as He Tries to Bridge-Build His Way to 30-Year Upset
Embattled Gonzales and Right-Wing YouTuber Set to Face Off in a Runoff
TPM Cafe: Inside Plastic Executives’ Late-20th-Century Campaign to Blame Consumers for Their Industry’s Waste
Sarah Posner: War With Iran? A Blood Moon on Purim? For Some Christian Influencers, That Can Mean Only One Thing: The End Times
Morning Memo: A Humiliating Reversal for the Sad-Sack Trump DOJ
Catch up on our live coverage here: Senate Will Vote on War Powers Resolution as Conflict Expands Without an Objective
New from Josh Kovensky, the latest piece in our ongoing series on the Trump administration’s efforts to treat dissent as terrorism: How a State Domestic Terrorism Law Has Boosted the White House’s Texas ‘Antifa’ Crackdown
Hunter Walker: Pseudoscientific Push to Frame Abortion as a ‘Water Quality’ Issue Rears Its Head in Iowa
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Republicans Are Laying the Groundwork to Blame Democrats for Iran’s Retaliatory Strikes
What We Are Reading
Texas Latinos turned out in massive numbers for Democrats
House Oversight panel votes to subpoena AG Pam Bondi in Epstein probe
Based on a feeling? You mean his feelings would be hurt if he didn’t join Israel and take all the credit?
“which would of course pose a risk to Americans in the region and even Americans one day here at home,” she said.”
One day ? Is that different from some day ? And when pray tell do you think that day might come ?
In the meantime Zorro is keeping his eyes on the skies for them pesky Iranians !
IS HE DEAD YET?!??
(this is my complete sentence)
Yes, his feelings, like he’s the fucking godhead.
W should never have been allowed to get away with that shit about ‘his gut,’ particularly after, President George W. Bush famously looked into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s eyes, stating he found him “straightforward and trustworthy” and got “a sense of his soul”. (Google machine response to prompt george bush looked in putin’s eyes )
Now, we’ve got a corrupt Prez’nent who’s made his subjective experience into a casus belli.
I’ve never seen a camel pass through the eye of a needle, but I have faith Paxton will drop out and endorse Cornyn if he doesn’t get Trump’s support.
(Maybe if there’s a massive heap of lucre involved.)