Transcript: Trump Midterm Tirade Accidentally Reveals Key GOP Weakness

As Trump’s monologue about his Texas midterm convention exposes a problem for the GOP, a Democratic operative argues that his collapse in South Texas is a real tell about what’s coming.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 2 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

This week, word leaked that the GOP Senate candidate in Texas, Ken Paxton, privately said that Donald Trump’s midterm convention in Texas had hurt Republicans in the state. On Thursday, Trump was asked directly about this, and in a rambling monologue, he kept repeating that the convention had been a huge success and that he had won the state three times. Trump just cannot comprehend just how bad things have gotten for him there. And this inability to see his own standing clearly has itself become a major problem for Republicans.

So today we’re talking about Texas with Madison Andrus, a national official with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who’s focused on the region. We have new internal Democratic polling to share on what’s going on there. Madison, thanks for coming on.

Madison Andrus: Thanks for having me. I’m very excited to talk about, you know, all the movement that we are seeing down in South Texas. It’s truly great to see about a month out.

Sargent: It’s pretty remarkable. So the Times reported on this event where Paxton declared privately that after Trump’s convention, “everybody’s numbers dropped.” Paxton added, “right now, yeah, not good.” Now, Paxton’s campaign reacted very vehemently to this, saying it was a fake story.

Trump’s convention in Texas was on September 9 and 10. Did you guys see anything in the tracking data or in the internal polling that kind of showed how that was playing in a sort of moment-to-moment way?

Andrus: We are definitely seeing movement in the polling post this party in Dallas. You know, our DCCC internal polling from August showed Bobby Pulido beating Monica De La Cruz 49 to 43. And then just today we got new polling from the House Majority PAC that is showing Bobby Pulido up now double digits. So all of these things compounding are really leading to great momentum, and that is playing out in the data, and we’re seeing it every day.

Sargent: Yep. In fact, the House Majority PAC on Thursday found Bobby Pulido, the Democrat, leading Monica De La Cruz, the Republican, by 54 to 41. So that’s quite a significant movement. Whether that’s entirely from the convention is a little hard to say, but that really shows that something’s happening here, doesn’t it?

Andrus: Yeah, something is very much happening in South Texas, just across the board, and we are seeing great numbers. Not just in Texas 15, but, you know, our polling in Texas 34—we polled in September right before the convention, and our internals showed Congressman Vicente Gonzalez beating Eric Flores 47 to 40. You know, these are just incredible numbers for Democrats to be putting up.

And I want to point out that these are numbers that Democrats are still putting up after Republicans tried tooth and nail to rig the game at the eleventh hour with this insane mid-decade gerrymandering.

They did this because they thought that they were going to be able to lock up, you know, five, six seats for themselves, and that they wouldn’t have to fight in these seats. And now they’re losing. They are still losing after all of that. And they’re trying to pour millions of dollars into these races, and they’re not seeing a return on their investment, because they are just that unpopular.

Sargent: I want to come back to your internal polling a bit later. But first, Trump traveled to Texas for a rally on Thursday. And by the time you all listen to this, you will have probably heard something about that rally. But for now, on Thursday, Trump was asked a question by a reporter: if Paxton is privately saying you’re hurting Republicans there, why go to Texas for another rally? Here’s Trump’s answer.

Donald Trump (voiceover): Why go to Texas? Well, I’ll tell you what, we have to win this election. That convention—you were there—that convention was a tremendous success. It went up against the NFL, and as you know, they had twenty-four, I guess—it was, I said twenty-five yesterday, it was actually—they had twenty-four million views and we had a hundred and seven million views. In other words, we beat the NFL by four times. And maybe that was so for Ken, but I could tell you, we were there for a lot. First of all, I won Texas all three times. I won the Hispanic vote. I’m going because you have to thank these states that are with you a thousand percent.

Sargent: A couple things here. Note how Trump is very deeply preoccupied with thanking Texans for supporting him. I think that’s a really key tell. And same with him........

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