August 10th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin, the Republicans were in the democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm. At what point must a female Senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Uh, happy to be joined today by Josh blank research director of the same project. Uh, good. Late morning after morning, Josh. Yeah. Thanks. Yes, it is. Well, there’s a lot on the agenda today in a lot of ways.

Um, , let’s start with local developments, I think, uh, you know, a, a couple of things interesting in the news on, on, uh, in Texas government and politics. Uh, and then we’ll move on to the re eruption of Donald Trump in the news. Yes. I mean, it was a, it was a shallow eruption in the sense that he’s never far from the, yeah, I was the surface, but nonetheless, we’ll get to that in a sec.

Um, uh, but yesterday, uh, an announcement, uh, late yesterday that there would be, they were scheduling a gubernatorial debate between Greg Abbot and be O’Rourke. The details seemed to be moving a little bit. I mean, some of the basics are in place. I think the not entirely confirmed. For the, the one debate that they’re scheduled as of now is September 22nd, not surprisingly at university of Texas RGV in Edinburg.

Interesting decision, but there’s been a lot of focus on the border area. Yeah. You know, an easy thing for them probably, you know, probably among the easier things for them to decide on. Well say, well, I say, I say that until proven wrong.

One of the easier things probably for both sides to agree to. Yeah.

Right. That’s what I mean. Yeah. Yeah.

Showing my age, maybe, um, you know, a lot of the familiar response here to what seems to me to. Fair. What, what should be a, a pretty familiar political play right now? That is, uh, the Abbott camp is, is sort of trying to dig in on just doing one debate. The O’Rourke camp wants more debates.

I mean, I think you were mentioning more town halls. I think they want

three town halls.

Yeah. You know, more, you know, and even, you know, and I like that. Cause even calling this a debate is kind of yeah. Silly to you. Dig up. Another thing Uhhuh, it’s gonna say comes up every time. Right? They’re not really debates per se.

So, you know, and I think you had said you had read in some of the coverage and I don’t think I saw this on the stuff I read, but that, that, uh, governor Abbott’s political consultant, Dave Carney was saying, well, we might. Consider more left the door open a little bit. I think that’s, you know, as we were saying before, the podcast probably pretty unlikely unless something really fundamentally changes in this

race.

Yeah. I mean, I think even his response was a fair amount of posturing in a way that I think, you know, political professional does that sort of sets up well, whatever we decide it’s because we’re in an advantageous position. So why would we do anything? And ultimately. Right. You know, the underlying strategy here.

I mean, there’s no reason for Abbott with the lead that he has to give her work more time to there for there to be, you know, the possibility of, you know, unscripted questions or even, you know, more pointed questions from town hall members. And so, you know, right. I mean, if you’re Abbott, you wanna follow the trajectory and, you know, and, but, but I mean, to your point, I think there is this sort of, you know, this happens all the time and it’s always surprising me, but whenever an election comes around, it’s like it’s as if the last election or two elections ago never even happened.

Yeah. In some cases. And like, and this is the point, I mean, if, and I think also. Clearly in the covers, you kinda like, this is a pretty long tradition in Texas politics, the Friday night singular debates.

Yeah. I mean, what, you know, I, I would probably modify it’s like, you know, the, there’s a divide between. I mean the, the, the coverage, you know, within this, you know, usually the first day or two days yeah.

Of the announcement of a debate like this, it swings back and forth from a certain tone of, yeah. This is like, we should consider this news in isolation. And then frankly, you know, older, more experienced reporters or our commentators go, oh no, this has happened before. And yeah. You know, so there’s like, Well, and I think, you know, you know, and I, and I, you know, the key points here kind of, you know, the first time this happened, as I recall back in the mid two thousands, when Perry was governor and running for reelection was, oh, they’re doing it on a Friday night of football season.

And everybody thinks, you know, that sort of masquerades is, you know, oh, I know Texas, you know, right. High school football night. Nobody’s gonna watch, I. And then yeah, the, the arguing over how many, and as you say, I mean, campaigns make decisions on this, the comparative advantage

and both are, you know, I mean, and ultimately like, you know, ultimately Abbott doesn’t need to agree to, to any more debates than he wants to.

And, you know, I think he’s shown what he wants to do. And for O’Rourke at the same time, there’s an advantage. Just saying, look, he doesn’t want to debate me. Right, which is one of, and making kind of hay out of the fact that, you know, this is a big state, all these things. And, you know, and so both sides have an advantage to play here and they’re playing it and, you know, we’re kind of paying attention to it this week, but, you know,

and that, and that’s, you know, I mean, I think that the point about not wanting to appear, like they don’t want a debate is why Carney is kind of, you know, publicly hedging, but not in a big public way.

It’s a way of trying to shape coverage. Right. Et cetera, et cetera. Um, you know, and look, I, you know, one. You know, on the football thing. I, and, you know, look almost everything to be said about this has been said, which is why I don’t wanna, we have to flag it. We should flag it. But it’s a very different media environment than the first time that yeah.

You know, the incumbent tried to, you know, deflect the tension from the debate by having it on a Friday night during high school football season, you know, in streaming world. You know, it’s not as if anybody who wants to see this, isn’t gonna see it. You know, I’m not trying to, and there’ll be tons of, you know, coverage of this in other ways.

And I still, I think it

comes out on the wall and not to show, you know, not to show, show my ass here, but I mean, ultimately I think the fact that it’s on a Friday night period, Is the bigger effect than the fact that it’s on Friday night during col like high school football season. Yeah. I mean, cause ultimately it’s just like, you know, I mean, look, I follow this for a living.

Do you think I wanna sit down on Friday night and watch this debate? I don’t absolutely not, but I will. Okay.

Well, but again, probably, you know, I mean, no, I will.

I, I will, but I mean, but this is, but this is the whole thing. I mean, so I, you know, it kind of is what it is. I mean, generally speaking and like, you know, in the media, you know, we know in politics, when do you dump stuff, you wanna dump you dump it on Friday nights.

Yeah. And so, but you’re right. I mean, ultimately at the same time, this isn’t like, this is gonna be like people aren’t gonna have a chance to watch as they don’t want to. It’s not like the campaigns, aren’t gonna repackage moments from this and. Put it in ads and put it in web ads. It’s not like there won’t be tons of coverage of it.

So,

yeah. And, and we’ve talked about this, even, even that Friday thing, I think doesn’t hold quite as much as you well, yeah, because you, cause people still do it, but it doesn’t work as well as they used to.

And you know, far, fewer than every adult Texan or every registered voter is gonna be watching this debate regardless of what night it is.

Yeah. Whenever they

have it. So, so another, another local story I wanted to flag that we, I, I think came up a little, you know, came up last week, but has been unfolding in an interesting way. And that’s the. the ongoing attention to the Abbott. Administration’s. Tactic of PO policy , uh, offering bus rides to migrants that are, you know, essentially, you know, awaiting hearings to other parts of the country, particularly, I mean, to Washington, DC, and now, and then late last week, they expanded it to New York and there’s been an ongoing kind of running fight for a couple of weeks now, between, you know, in public between Abbott and the mayors of.

New York and, and Washington DC. Mm-hmm you know, and then this week, you know, there’s more public fighting. Uh, the mayor, the relatively new mayor of New York, Eric Adams now saying that he wants the bus volunteers to Texas to campaign against the Abbot. Now, you know, that’s a pretty. Gestural right. You know, kind of move, but it really underlines the degree to which, you know, this busing thing is something that the, the Abbott campaign is hanging on.

You know, it was built a big applause line at the CPAC meeting in Dallas. Uh, last Abbott spoke last Thursday, right after we did the previous co uh, podcast. Mm-hmm um, People that dunno what I’m talking about. That’s the conservative political action conference, which is put on by the American conservative union.

I think that sch slaps group, um, met in Dallas, Trump spoke will return to that in a minute, but governor Abbott did an onstage appearance, kind of an interview with some folks there in which, you know, the big applause line he got was when he mentioned the busing. You know, his busing thing and a couple of, you know, other things related to immigration and border security.

So, you know, this is, you know, such a, the busing effort is such a non policy. And so such a purely political gesture. Mm-hmm . Uh, you know, I, I think it does point to a lot of things that we talk a lot about on this podcast, obviously, you know, the SNTs of, of immigration and border security to, to Abbott’s voting base, you know, their desire to, you know, to keep, to be talking about that and to have press coverage of that, other than other things that are not breaking the Abbot administration and the Abbott campaign’s way, like evolved in, uh, uh, Uh, abortion, et cetera, other things that are contenders from a democratic perspective, mm-hmm, , you know, but it’s also really, I mean, I, you know, the, the purely gestural nature of this is really pretty striking because there’s really, I mean, and I don’t think the, the governor has really even, or his defenders have even tried.

Yeah. It’s one of those things that reminds me. Uh, you’re gonna laugh at this. Okay. It reminds me of maybe if I, if I know the records, Oliver north testifying, before the Iran Contra committee Uhhuh and them trying to, you know, and the, the committee members in the Senate, trying to hold his feet to the fire and him saying, well, you know, when we realized we could sell these weapons to the Iranians and then pay and then use that money to help fund the contrast.

Yeah. It was kind of a neat idea. right. Yeah. There’s a certain kind of. Brazen like, yeah. In that case it was, well, yeah, it was illegal, but who cares? Well, and I think in this, it’s kind of, you know, this is such a, you know, yeah. This is, you know, purely a. , you know, you know, a mischievous gesture that’s causing other problem.

It’s, you know, it’s almost at the level of, of a prank. Yeah. With real human costs to the people, you know, you’re sh you know, you’re literally using these migrants and using people and causing policy problems for other people. Uh, that’s. Feel pretty brazen . Yeah. Well, but dunno what else to call, I mean, call it a lot.

I could come up with another, a lot of other things to call it, but it really underlines, like, you know, just the latitude. The administration and the Abbott campaign team feels in pursuing this, you know, this kind of agenda in terms of the intersection of I’m gonna say the intersections of policy and politics, but the policy piece is sort of an empty

set.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, like your analogy, it, it probably does sound like a neat idea in the short run and that it does accomplish something. The question is to me, you know, what does it look like in the long run? I mean, they could, you know, if they decide that there eventually become some kind of a, a broader cost to this, it’s easy enough for them to stop.

But, you know, in the short term, I think the politics of this look pretty good for Abbott, to be honest, because really what do you have? You have, you know, Mayors from overwhelmingly democratic and generally kind of liberal cities. Yeah. Basically saying, you know, we don’t wanna deal with your problem. And AB it says.

Right. Exactly. No, I get it. And so, I mean, no, I know you get, I’m just saying, so, I mean, I think in the short term, you know, I, I think the, the politics of kind the sniping that’s going on, you know, probably plays pretty well for AB I think it plays well with this as voters. I think it plays well with, you know, let’s say the, the cable news set, like I think it’s a good space for him to be in and probably, you know, and I’ve said this before, you know, I don’t.

Setting this aside, we’re not gonna talk about this, but like, you know, whether or not Abbott wants to run for president. I mean, I think one of the advantages that he has had over in setting aside Trump for a second, but one of the advantages that he maintains over DeSantis is that we, you know, Texas does have a 1200 mile border with Mexico and he can directly do things in the immigration space that, that DeSantis can at the same time, because it’s such a, you know, a Vaus stunt.

Really? Yeah. You know, the question becomes to my mind, you know, Do you know, I think especially locally, do people look at this and see it as that eventually, right. And that’s not that, you know, the state you we’ve been talking about, the state keeps saying more and more money on border security. And eventually, you know, it’s sort of like, we’re kind of getting to the point of like blank check territory for how much the state is gonna spend on this stuff.

But I mean, just like everything else. You know, if, if we were spending 800 million, you know, five years or seven years ago, right. And it was this terrible, terrible problem. And now here we are seven years later and we’re spending 4 billion and it’s this terrible, terrible problem. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for even Texans who are, you know, pretty conservative about, you know, their view on immigration as some way to say, Hey, what are we getting for this money?

Right. And if, part of what the most visible. Manifestation of that is well we’re busing migrants to New York city on a free bus trip. You know, it just doesn’t, I just don’t think it looks great in the long run.

Yeah. There’s a certain amount of shiny object to this that, yeah. You know, you, you know, you’re picking a big city

don’t I don’t hold that strongly, but I do think, you know, I’m not sure that, you know, again, the neat idea in the moment isn’t, you know, in the end, something that they’re gonna kind of walk back from and not walk away.

I can walk back from it. Just, just walk away from when it becomes less. Valuable. Right. And in terms

of thinking about what, you know, a response would be to this, I mean, you know, there has been a fig leaf of a policy justification, which is, you know, and, and the other governors said this directly, that, you know, the migrants that are being held in the region are overwhelming local services, local.

You know, resources. And so he say, so we’re shipping out, you know, they’re shipping, you know what, 40, 50, 60 people at a time busloads of people there haven’t been, you know, a thousand buses or anything like this. So, I mean, just to have, but I think you’re right. I mean, it, you know, this is, you know, there’s a shallow politics to this, but I mean, I think the other thing about this, and this is a good transition to our next topic is that shallow politics.

It

might. Yeah, it might work. I mean, I would just say no work

in the short term until you move on to the next thing. Yeah.

And I would say, you know, I don’t wanna, like, I don’t wanna, you know, I don’t know, I don’t wanna mischaracterize this and again, I don’t even call it a busing policy, you know, but I think there is something of a danger of treating an issue that you unequivocally treat and your voters treat is so serious and so important.

Like a. Yeah. And that’s the only, I mean, you know, there’s just a certain, there’s a certain

well, you know, but I think, I think the way that you’re talking about it, you know, I mean, look, there’s a, you know, it’s, it’s an open question. What the threshold, like a prank rather, I mean, yeah, right. What the threshold is gonna be.

I think there’s just enough. It pushes just enough buttons. Yeah. To probably, you know, if they were doing it in a vacuum, but they’re able to pivot to, Hey, we’re doing other things as well. Now none of those things seem all are also, I mean, the other piece of this is that it’s a, you know, not to talk so much about now not to speak so directly to the series of the problem, but it’s, it’s doing something in a context of, as we’ve said on here, a lot of times a problem that is proven over a long period of time to be intractable.

Right. And so, you know, almost doing anything. It, it almost, it almost distracts from the intractability of the problem. Maybe now there’s a certain action for action shake here on top of the prank level. But

yeah, I mean, the only thing I’d just add is, you know, I think, you know, on an issue that Republicans have such an advantage on, I don’t think, you know, you wanna play too long in being seen is Unser.

Right. Right. And that’s the only, you know, I think, yeah, there’s such an advantage where, you know, I think a lot of people in Texas, you know, would. A lot of almost all Republicans, a lot of independents and not, you know, insignificant share of Democrats. If they were just voting on the immigration issue are going to vote for the Republican, whoever they are, because there’s so little trust in the Democrats.

But if you start to turn it into a prank or you start to mismanage that, and as the funds go up, there’s more scrutiny, more attention. You know, ultimately I think you do create more exposure for yourself. I don’t think it’s determinative. I don’t think a bunch of people are gonna walk away and say, you know what?

Right. Forget this. But I do think, you know, you do, you do create some, you know, some potential costs. I think the

implication for that is, you know, you go a couple of rounds with this and then move on. Yeah. I would think so. Right. Yeah. But again, you know, that, that tactic of doing something that would seem to be, you know, prankish and not serious, but then moving on.

Has been proven successful by some people, some prominent cases in the political system recently, the land in Texas , which leads us to the big national political story of the week, which is, you know, the Monday FBI search of parts of Donald Trump, Mar Lago property. And we’re, we’re learning more, you know, I mean, this just happened Monday.

Yeah. It didn’t really even break until Monday afternoon while the search had been underway for several hours, broken by a reporter in Florida. And then. Sort of transmitted more broadly by Trump himself as he, you know, in Trumpian fashion, tried to kind of define the story with a mm-hmm a tweet that talked about this as, you know, tyrannical and, you know, unfair.

And they broke open my safe and you know, I’m being persecuted, et cetera. Right. You know, and, and to anticipate, you know, a, a broader theme here, because like, we’re gonna talk more about implications than the thing itself. The thing itself is, you know, being beat to death without a whole lot of information, You know, there’s more Trump news as we record this on Wednesday morning, that’s just breaking.

Um, and that is that Trump has taken the fifth in his testimony, uh, in New York on business and the whole other legal matter that has to do with. With his financial practices and, and valuations of property, valuations

of property has represented to

investors and others. And that’s been going on for quite some time.

And, uh, you know, he was forced to testify in this after trying to evade that, um, you know, but on the, uh, you know, but going back then to the, the fallout from this FBI, this FBI search at Marla, it. You know, it dominated, it’s it dominated and is dominating the news and is, you know, leading to all kinds of fallout and, and teasing out of the implications.

I think, you know, one of the things you have to notice is that, you know, thinking about one of the things that we’ve talked about a lot here, I think it even came up. Last week mm-hmm . Um, you know, in terms of where you know, where Trump is in the Republican universe, where Republican attitudes are towards Trump.

I mean, it was a Testament to just how differently partisans see Trump and see the world. And. You know what the reflexes still are, particularly among G P of Republican elected officials and to be fair Democrats,

you know, and last week we were reacting to basically sort of this, you know, the, the, after some primaries, you know, the, the coverage is really focused on this sort of refracted view of Trump, Trump power in the party, which is like, oh, you know, how successful is he in putting this thumb on the scales?

And these primaries. But here we something’s like much more

direct. Right. Right. And, and we saw, you know, and we got, and, and we got, I think we backed into a measure of that. Yeah. Right. I mean, the response among many G O P leaders was fact was very fast. Right. Uh, on, on Monday, on Monday night and then into Tuesday, you know, in a way that re appeared whether it was, or wasn’t almost reflexive.

I mean, there wasn’t a lot of evidence that it took that it took a. Most Republican leaders, a lot of time to do the math. Yeah. Right. I mean, including people that are, you know, have been emerging tentatively to some degree in recent months as potential rivals to Trump for the, for the nomination in 24. So, you know, you top that list with Florida, governor Ron DeSantis, who, you know, within hours of the operation was slamming the quote unquote raid in his home state.

As, you know, quote another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the, the regime’s political opponents. Now, you know, a lot of, you know, a lot of language in that that really, you know, we saw repeat again and again, right.

Right. Yeah. I mean, we saw, you know, in addition to Ronda Sanders, obviously, if we looked to Texas, uh, you know, we saw people like Ted Cruz wrote, you know, several tweets comparing the Biden administration to the Nixon administration.

We saw John Gordon explicitly, you know, endorse. I mean, he, he made clear that he was explicitly endorsing a tweet by minority minority leader, uh, Kevin McCarthy warning, uh, the attorney general me Garland to clear his schedule and to, you know, maintain his documents. Hearings, assuming the GOP wins control of the house, right.

McCarthy, we should add, you know, bucking for, to go back, pop back to the national of, you know, right. Really trying to make sure he protects his position and you know, what looks to be his opportunity to be the next

speaker. Right. Um, and that’s, you know, I should say it’s notable that, you know, how quick he was on that, given the fact that again, you know, The sort of most recent thing that, you know, I would say he’s been in the news for sort of his, his appearance in the January 6th hearings, you know, at, you know, again at the use of the committee making pretty negative statements about Trump’s actions around January 6th.

And so, you know, it’s, it’s not surprising, although yeah, he’s, he’s hedging himself, certainly. Uh, you know, Gover, you know, Abbott took a similar approach. He called it next level Dysonian and saying, quote, you know, this weaponizes power to squelch dissent.

Yeah. And there, there was some odd phrasing in that ed tweet and I don’t.

To into a textual analysis of a tweet in a, in a non-visual medium, but yeah, it’s worth looking at that tweet. I mean, that was one of the tweets that didn’t look entirely reflexive that looked like it was a little bit written by by committee, but, you know, and I, you know, and I think one thing that is, you know, real, you know, it’s very interesting just how quickly the hyperbolic response to this yeah.

Caught on among the right. And, and, and again, To be uniform about this, the barely concealed glee among Democrats. Right. And particularly, you know, kind of the MSNBC crowd, you know, kind of left cable left media about, or, you know, center left, I should say, you know, about this that’s, you know, very provocative and given how little we know probably, you know, pretty over the top for both sides, you know?

Yeah. Right. Um, now I, you know, I mean, again, I. Be careful about false equivalency. I mean, yeah. So the characterization on the right that this was, you know, a tyrannical raid is clearly not based in the facts of the situation, you know, there’s evidence of, or there seems to be evidence of, you know, The expectation that this was heavily vetted given justice department procedure.

Yeah. Uh, in the justice department, probably this has not been confirmed, but probably up to, and including the attorney general, right. This went before a judge, right. A judge issued the warrant. Right. You know, so this was, there was a lot of procedure behind this now where all adults one might look at procedure, find flaws in, in the procedure.

It happens, but this was. you know, somebody just deciding, okay. It’s time to go bust down. Well, right. Bust into Mar Lago and start and, and start rummaging through the place.

No, I mean, I think if anything, you know, based on both recent history and what we know about the policies of the FBI and the justice department, I mean, this was probably decision taken with a lot of reticence and a lot of vetting because ultimately, I mean, if you kind of take a step back and say, you know, does the FBI want to be doing this?

Absolutely not. Right. I mean, does the justice department want to be involved? In Donald Trump’s business or politics right now. Absolutely not. And truthfully, if you look at the fallout, I mean, like, you know, if you’ve imagine some really amazing cabal and it goes all the way up to Biden and Biden is, you know, is this really like, having the effect that you want it to have because ultimately he’s gal galvanizing the right behind

Trump.

Yeah. And I think that’s one of the, you know, I mean, you know, at, at, at the shallow level of just vine for attention, I mean, you know, Joe Biden was, you know, signing chips act yesterday and they’re, they’re trying to take some victory lapse and build some momentum after some pretty decent congressional wins and you know, slightly better economic, you know, there.

They’re getting a little, they’re coming out of a hard spot and trying to guide Biden media coverage. This is not really what

the Biden political team was not happy about this I’m sure. Right.

But anyway, um, but that’s, you know, not, yeah, but anyway, that’s neither here nor there for you, you know, for, you know, non fact based yeah, sure.

Approach to this, you know, however you parse all that out. Once again, all eyes in the politic in the American political world are on Trump, on his past, on his future. Right. You know, there, there’s a few things that I think unpack here. I mean, you know, most obviously this illustrates sort the umpteenth time, just how much gravity, Trump still exerts in the political universe.

You know, even at a time when we thought, you know, there were people theorizing that that might be receding a little bit.

Yeah. Or that, you know, other people may be moving. I mean, there’s sort. Interest in the last couple weeks, but other people maybe moving into the space a little bit, you know, occupying a little bit more, you know, Republicans might, and again,

people might have, you know, jumped a little, you know, might have been a little bit hasty hasty in that.

I mean, are, you know, and we’ve talked about that is favorability numbers in Texas, for example, are still pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I pretty good among

Republicans put it that way. Well, and that’s the thing I think, you know, there’s a sort of like, you know, on the one hand, you know, kind of. Continuous analysis of Trump’s impact on the current electoral cycle.

Yeah. Right. And that’s sort of its own thing relative to, you know, what his prospects are in 20, 24, you know, I think, and I think people are kind of, you know, they’re sort of treating them as the same. They’re not exactly the same thing, you know? I mean, some other things that I think kind of jump out from this.

Yeah. I mean, I said this to you before, but I mean, there’s a certain aspect to this where, you know, the way that we think about things, and if you listen to this, you kind of get a sense of this. It’s sort of like. In the immediate aftermath, there is sort of a question, like, what should I look at here? I mean, what, how do you contextualize this?

And, you know, you brought up one thing, I’ll bring up a couple, you know, one thing I’ll go back to you’d already mentioned is, you know, it certainly does illustrate either. And I don’t know which either the political calcula calculation, the lack of political calculation that was exerted, especially by Trump’s defenders.

When, so little is known about the underlying rationale for the search warrant. I mean, right now, I think as we’re recording this, there’s still this sort of question of like, look, you know, Trump’s lawyers have the search warrant, they could. Turn it over or, or make it public right. And let people know what this was actually about.

And they’re choosing not to at least currently. And I think, you know, if that’s the way that they proceed, I think that’s, you know, telling in some ways, but ultimately, you know, as we’ve kind of laid out, nobody who’s jumping to Trump’s defense doesn’t know that, like, you know what we’ve kind of talked about about the underlying context here about, you know, the vetting that would’ve to go into this.

So on the one hand, you know, there’s sort of, the, what’s amazing is lack of political Cal, you know, calculation without. Exactly what the FBI was doing. You know, the supporters are certainly taking a fairly clear risk that Trump did do something, you know, pretty problematic here, whether legally Trump supporters.

Yeah. Trump supporters, whether legally or politically, right. At the same time, there’s part of me that kind of has been watching this for you and think, well, I don’t know. Maybe this is very well politically calculated and it was easy because whatever ends up happening, it’s not really. In fact attitudes anyway, and we’ve kind of seed that to in, in our results about January 6th in our results about, you know, the, the outcome of the 20, 20 election.

And whenever there was an accurate outcome, ultimately nothing has shifted the underlying views as more and more information has come out amongst Republicans. So ultimately the whole, you know, I could shoot somebody in front of fifth avenue thing, you know, that just seems to be, have been proven more and more accurate.

Yeah. And so that may be very calculated.

No, I think that’s right. And I think that, um, yeah, I mean, at this. You know, and I get, you know, we should mention, and we haven’t that, you know, the prevailing, you know, sort of understanding of this that has been sort of semi unconfirmed by at least, uh, the Trump lawyers and some of the more recent coverage this morning was that this was related to the removal of official documents, records.

Some of which might have been, you know, could be classified, classified, and, and a potential security risk by the tr by Donald Trump. When he moved out of the white house and in, into Mar Lago, this is not, you know, the first we’ve heard of this, there have been meetings. Uh, and as it turns out, the justice department representatives, including counterintelligence, people had already met and reviewed some of the documents that they had in their possession.

So there’s not much question about that. And I think in a way that’s part of the rationale. Obvi, I, it seems to me for his legal team and legal slash political team, not releasing right. The warrant, just to spell that out, not releasing, not releasing the warrant because it enables his supporters to imagine that there’s a nefarious purpose instead of a legally laid out.

Yeah. I mean, once the, I mean, once, once we know what the justice, I mean, what the FBI removed more or less. I mean, ultimately it sounds to me like at a very basic level, it sounds to me. These were boxes of documents that are not his to possess. Right. And ultimately the government took them back. Yeah. I kind of at a basic level now, are they gonna go ahead and charge ’em with something, from what I understand, you know, under like the presidential, you know, the records act, you know, he could be charged with, you know, up to three years in prison.

Nobody says, I don’t think anybody really suspects that’s gonna happen. Right. With just respect to them like taking the records. But ultimately, I don’t think anybody could justifiably say that the government’s records that he took and kept in his basement at Malago are his to keep when they’re so clearly not.

Right. And yeah. And that’s. Just anyway

law, right? So, you know, just some other takeaways, right? I mean, you know, this sort of continues this widespread degradation of views towards just American institutions, but especially among I think the G P public and G P elites, right? This plays on negative attitudes towards the federal government.

It plays on ideas about a deep state that I think people are very, you know, especially, you know, elite are very, very clearly highlighting, uh, and increases, you know, negative attitudes towards the FBI actually, which, you know, you may recall already had pretty, uh, negative attitudes among Democrats.

Because of, you know, their actions going into the 2016 election and, and beyond. And so, you know, it’s it. On the one hand, you know, I wanna say, I always say this it’s, it’s play on attitudes that are already there and it’s inflaming them and it’s not like this is hard, but it’s something, this is why I think it also picked up so quickly is because this, when it sounds true to people, yeah.

It’s easy enough to mobilize

that. Well, and it’s, you know, I mean, it speaks to where we started to some degree a, which, you know, we were just talking about, which is that, you know, that degradation of views about American institutions is pretty far advanced. Yeah. I mean, when, to the extent that. You know, the, the quick reactions to Trump were not just about Trump mm-hmm , it was an anticipation of what the context of that response was gonna be.

You know, again, particularly among Trump supporters and, and. You know, the sort of burgeoning, you know, major, you know, sort of major, uh, major elements of the Republican electorate right now. Um, you know, and then I think it also, I mean, that feeds into this discussion that we’ve been having about political violence.

We’ve talked about that polling that we’ve done in here, you know, more than once. Um, and we have seen, you know, a lot of. In the last 24, 36 hours, you know, I mean, very, very quickly there were tweets and posts on, on right wing boards that have been now covered in the, in the press. And that have been all over the place about, you know, time to lock and load mm-hmm um, you know, the idea that this was basically an extra.

Judicial proceeding when it’s, which it clearly was not. Right. Right. And so I think, you know, we don’t have to, we’ve talked about it. It gets us, you know, it really keys into that and furthers that in a kind of vicious cycle, you know, you were talking about, you know, this, this is not new. These are preexisting attitudes, but we’re in a real vicious cycle about this right now.

And look, I mean, it underlines the degree to which. You know, that is a symptom of the larger problem here to my mind that, you know, Trump is a corrosive agent in American politics. And, you know, to the extent that that sounds partisan, I say that from an institutional view, not a, not a partisan point of view, I, you know, he’s cultivated a conspiracy minded response among both elites and voters alike.

I mean, I, you know, I think there’s been a, you know, I’ve been reading. Well, I’m not even gonna go there, but you know, you know, the response on rightwing radio and social media was, you know, a renewed parade of calls for civil war fighting the deep state, et cetera. And it’s, you know, I mean, you kind of mentioned the January 6th committee hearings.

I mean, we’ve just gone through some, you know, we’re, we’re going through a very painstaking process of unpacking the impact of that kind of rhetoric, those movements. And tapping into that is a means of mobilization by mainstream political figures. And you know, this is moving us. you know, backwards now, you know, Trump supporters will say that we have it all backwards.

Yeah. Right. That it’s the use of the police power of the state against the former president who is likely the preferred candidate of millions of voters. That’s violating democratic norms and processes. And, you know, look, I mean that political, you know, there’s a kernel of something in there that’s fair to consider.

Sure. But I think as you implied, I, or, you know, were kind of, yeah, you implied earlier. It’s naive to think that this was not part of the calculation. On the part of the justice department and the FBI, what, you know, you know, what the appearance was gonna be, and that this was gonna be the counter response, but they were kind of in a box on this, I suspect.

Well, and this is part of the sort of, you know, I mean, it’s sort of like a, you know, I don’t know a higher order or, or, you know, even more abstract degradation of, you know, not only, you know, institutions but norms, you know, it’s sort of. Well, I mean, and I kind of go back again. I’m not, I’m not ju I don’t know what’s in, in the boxes.

I don’t know anything about it. Right. Basically. I mean, what I, what I think is probably true is what I say, which is, you know, they’re most likely boxes that are full of documents owned by the federal government. Right. The basics of that, you know, just the, the federal government going back and taking these boxes back right in of itself, you say, okay, is that the, a good rationale to have rhetoric about a civil war, about telling people to, to lock and load about, you know, even, you know, more horrible and more direct, you know, uh, stuff online and then also elites, you know, really traipsing in rhetoric that touches on a lot of those themes.

When, again, as you point out. Basic watching the January 6th committee hearings, you know, like this. Matters, you know, and that’s the thing. It’s not as though we can say, oh, we don’t know what’s gonna happen. If people keep saying that, you know, well, the elections are, shammed the fed, you know, the, you can’t trust the police.

Can’t the federal go

trust is I legitimate. All these institutions are inherently corrupt

and broken and also, and also directly, and this is the thing and, you know, we need to fight. And that’s the thing. You go back to CPAC and you’re talking about, you know, a conference defined by this idea of like, you know, we’re TA you know, we.

In a battle. I mean, you know, Chris brought talks about playing on his breast plate every day. And Trump is talking about how great it is for right wing leaders. It’d be a big anyway, right wing right wing leaders, you know, who are executing drug dealers and how we need to get tougher and all this. Yeah.

It’s like, I mean, just, you know, as someone who’s kind of sitting here watches this stuff, you know, and just trying to be, you know, and best like. I think people need to be a little bit more

careful and you know, something I did, I, you know, in the mailer I sent out last week, um, and for people that aren’t on, that you can go to our website, we do a fairly regular mailing, you know, that sometimes touches on stuff in the podcast.

Sometimes other things just kind of rounds up, brings data to bear on, on recent events in Texas. But I mean, you know, all of those things you just described. have become pretty normalized. Yeah. I mean, to the extent to where, you know, DBAN can speak to CPAC mm-hmm and this is the Hungarian prime minister is kind of the avatar of, uh, you know, sort of reactionary, ethnic nationalism and authoritarianism within democratic systems, right in Europe and people, you know, kind of noted it and moved on.

Uh, nothing, you know,

nothing unusual here, right? Not even nothing to see here, nothing unusual here. Yeah.

Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Have a look and yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s who that is. Yeah. Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re remembering that, right. That isn’t guy, that’s that guy. So, you know, I mean, I think we’re. You know, we’re in a, all of this puts us in a bad place, you know, for all things we’re talking about, you know, back to the more mundane sort of factors of this, you know, before we take off.

I mean, I think that to bring it back to what’s going on in Texas, you know, the fact that governor Abbott, Senator Cornin, Senator Cruz reacted so quickly and in the way they did. , you know, really underlines how this is a national problem, but it is manifest in state politics and in governance, in the state and in the political environment in the state.

So, you know, these larger institutional problems of norms, problems of democratic practice are also our problems. Yeah. Um, Very much. And so we will, you know, we’ll continue to keep an eye on this, you know, it’ll be interesting to see how much, you know, how long people wanna ride this horse, as you say, you know, what else comes out?

You know, what else comes out around this? But, uh, you know, I mean, one thing I, unless somebody leaks it, I’m, I’m not. You know, I’ll be surprised if we, if we see the Trump folks releasing that warrant. Well,

and I, you know, the other thing is, you know, this seems like it’s gonna be another one. I mean, unfortunately, and again, and I think, you know, one of the things is like, is the normalization of this kind of stuff is problematic.

Yeah. I mean, I’m just gonna say, but like, you know, one of the things that would be nice, but almost very hard to imagine is the FBI or the justice department explaining in some kind of satisfying. What it was doing. Yeah. But ultimately that’s not really kind of the norm for these sorts of things.

No. And, and that’s where, you know, the, the, the political strategy on the part of Trump and his lawyers, I mean, are no doubt playing on that.

Yeah. They, they, as long as they don’t, they can’t find however they want. Right. I mean, you know, Merick Garland has made a, a point of saying that he is not going to sign off on or make the kind of public pronouncements that say Jim Comey did right. In a political context when he was headed the FBI. So I, you know, they have a structural that, that is an advantage that they have here.

And I expect them to continue to play that, you know, meanwhile, we will have these themes mobilized in the national consciousness and it will be interesting to see how, how they continue to play out. I mean, to tie it all together a little bit, you know, we were talking about, you know, what the Abbott campaign is latching onto to.

Try to keep attention away from areas where they are more vulnerable. Mm-hmm and. All things being equal. I think this probably helps them in that effort. I mean, it’s not anything they fits the bell engineered, but you know, they’ll certainly be happy to have some of the other things that have been in the headlines in the state, particularly, uh, uh, uh, the continuing fallout from Yalda.

And I should flag. I, I, we haven’t even mentioned this, you know, CNN did an hour long, special Sunday night on Uvalde that. very negative towards Abbott and in particular towards Steve Macraw. Mm. And you know, there hasn’t been, I haven’t seen much discussion of it and I don’t think it’s been made as of now, it hadn’t been made available on the internet.

Yeah. But, um, to be honest, I, they would be fair and feeling like it was a hit job. Okay. There was nothing factually incorrect that I detected in that. Yeah. But the emphasis on using TV conventions. Repeatedly showing the clip of Abbott’s first pronouncements about the police bravery. Yeah. And heading into the, the fire.

Um, a lot of, you know, fairly excruciating footage, uh, across the first couple of weeks of Steve McCraw and. The emerging sort of bla you know, how fairly early on, you know, they were blaming local authorities with little discussion of DPS. Um, you know, that is still just brewing out there. Yeah. And, you know, it’s, you know, the, you know, from a completely.

You know, tactical perspective. It’s, it’s no surprise that the Abbott campaign really wants to not be talking about this anymore. And that we’ll take anything not to. So with that, we’re a little over. Thanks for being here this morning. Uh, thanks to our excellent production team in the audio studio in the liberal arts dev studio at the university of Texas at Austin.

Uh, they are a, a terrific, uh, group of young folks. Thanks for listening. And remember, you can find all the data we’ve referenced today. Much, much more with Texas politics, project website, that’s Texas politics dot U texas.edu. And we’ll be back as soon as we can with another second reading podcast. The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.