Disaster for Trump as Red State GOP Rejects Him; He's Lost All Control

25 Sep 2026 · 19 min · 7 chapters

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In short

The episode argues that MAGA Republicans in Texas are rejecting Donald Trump’s preferred candidate, indicted/corrupt Attorney General Ken Paxton, and that Paxton’s Senate run is collapsing. Guests discuss Paxton’s securities-fraud indictment, FBI investigation for misuse of office to help donor Nate Paul, Texas Senate impeachment, affair admitted during impeachment, State Bar misconduct suit, alleged federal ethics/disclosure violations (including seven homes with no reported income), and theft of a $1,000 courthouse pen. They claim Paxton survives by culture-war messaging (abortion, immigration, transgender issues) while hypocrisy and personal misconduct persist. Notable examples include Paxton being endorsed by Trump and Paxton firing whistleblower David Maxwell (a Texas Ranger Hall of Fame inductee) after Maxwell reported corruption; Maxwell now backs James Talarico.

Guests

Josh (a criminal defense attorney) and another host (Jennifer).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

The Corruption of Ken Paxton

1:05 to 6:10

An in-depth discussion about Ken Paxton's legal troubles and his standing in the GOP.

“about the MAGA Republican Party, a party full of criminals run by a convicted felon and 77 million people think, yeah, he's my guy.”

The Culture Wars and Voter Behavior

6:40 to 12:20

Exploring how culture war issues influence Texas voters and their support for criminals.

“But, you know, I think it must kind of be.”

Courage Against Corruption

12:20 to 14:00

A discussion on the fallout from Ken Paxton's actions and the emerging support for his opponent.

“Well, I would say the LGBTQ plus community has a positive impact.”

Ranger Maxwell's Testimony and Political Support

14:00 to 14:31

Listen to Ranger Maxwell discuss his experience with Ken Paxton and support for James Tallarico.

“Ranger Maxwell testified in Ken Paxton's impeachment trial.”

Voting Issues in Texas and the Role of Governor Abbott

14:31 to 16:39

Exploration of voting complications in Texas and criticism of Governor Abbott's actions.

“Things are pretty dire in Texas when you got these Republicans coming out and doing that.”

Challenges of the Texas Electorate

16:39 to 17:10

Discussion on the problems with the Texas electorate and the influence of Republicans.

“But we also have to point out this is the electorate that continually elects Ted fucking Cruz.”

Support for Tallarico and Conclusion Remarks

17:10 to 17:31

Final thoughts on supporting James Tallarico and humorous remarks on Ken Paxton's personal life.

“If you don't like your government, vote to change it.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

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1:00Welcome, welcome. Let's talk about the party of crime and disorder. Of course, I'm talking about the MAGA Republican Party, a party full of criminals run by a convicted felon and 77 million people think, yeah, he's my guy. One of those guys is Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton is a huge MAGA thumper. Despite Trump calling him ugly on the campaign trail the last month, which doesn't surprise me much, Ken Paxton can't get enough of it because all these Republican men and love to be humiliated by Donald Trump and some weird kink, some weird shit going on there. But Ken Paxton's corruption includes that he was indicted for securities fraud.

1:39Pop this up, here's his mugshot. Josh, how many candidates have mugshots now besides the president? Quite a bit, and there's a new fad that they're going through, they smile. Shots, that's kind of a new thing for him. And the FBI investigated him for misusing his office to help his friend and donor, Nate Paul, who was under federal investigation. He was impeached by the Texas Senate. He admitted to an affair with a former Senate aide, and it came out during his impeachment trial that he'd asked Nate Paul to hire the woman so she could move to Austin. The State Bar of Texas sued Paxton for professional misconduct in 2022.

2:21In 2025, his wife State Senator Angela Paxton filed for divorce on biblical grounds. Pop up this tweet. Today after 38 years of marriage, I filed for divorce on biblical grounds. Here at IHIP News, we call that I'm filing for divorce based on he fucked around and I found out. She calls it biblical grounds and we call it the fuck around find out. Let me finish with his rap sheet. He stole a thousand dollar pen from a courthouse, which that's some weird shit. And there's a new report. It looks like he violated federal ethics law and his financial disclosures. He reported owning seven homes, but said he earned no income from them.

3:07But most of them are actually rented out. He's repeatedly failed to disclose his assets or investments since at least 2008. Josh here is a Kremble defense attorney. um josh that's quite the little rap sheet considering he's running for united states senate under that umbrella this he wants to be a united states senator this is the best we got let me give you just a one sentence a response as to how his candidacy is going over in the state of texas john cornyn has endorsed talarico and will not vote for ken paxton so what does that tell you And we all know John Cornyn. You know where this guy lands on everything.

3:51So I think that's a preview of what's going on in the state of Texas. I've always marveled at the fact that this guy's not in prison. It's pretty amazing. He was indicted in 2015 by a federal grand jury. Those charges were pending for nine years until, guess what? Donald Trump gets elected to a second term and DOJ dismisses those. I think he gets some kind of restitution and community service. And as you pointed out, there's another corruption probe that was dismissed in 2025 by Donald Trump's Department of Justice. And keep in mind, Donald Trump has endorsed this criminal. So you have one criminal endorsing another criminal.

4:37What's odd about this is that Donald Trump is the convicted felon, not Ken Paxton. That's the real fucking head scratcher here. How did that happen? Right. Yeah. So another thing, too, you talked about this impeachment. The Texas House impeached him. He wasn't convicted by the Senate, but he was convicted or he was impeached. And that was 121 to 23 vote. Do you know how many Republicans crossed the line to do that? Do you know how often that happens? I mean, this guy's in Ted Cruz category of being hated. But not just that. They're actually acting upon their dislike for him. There's tons of Republicans.

5:19that hate this guy. So if you can out corrupt your own party to where they hate you, the Republican Party, that means you're doing a lot of awful bad shit because the Republicans is you and I talk about day in and day out there. They're corrupt themselves. So you're taking it to a whole nother level. It's amazing in this day and age that that's a nominee. me, just like I think about Donald Trump, to be the president of the United States, all the brilliant minds in our country, all the things that could be done, that's who we get. In the state of Texas, you have to be thinking, do I want this man as my senator?

5:58You've seen a preview of this guy for the past 15, 20 years play out. You know what he's like. Is this what you want? Is this consistent with your idea of family Christian values? Who says Halloween only lasts one day. With Wayfair, one night of Halloween becomes a whole season at home. From larger-than-life yard decor and moody lighting to festive accents for every room in the house, Wayfair has what you need to make Halloween feel like magic all in one place. Because the best Halloween memories aren't made in just one night. They're made all season long. Shop Halloween decor now at Wayfair.com.

6:34That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Way fair, every style, every home. But, you know, I think it must kind of be. Must be. I think that that taps into there is a part of our electorate and that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, when she called them a basket of deplorables and Joe Biden called them trash. That's true. This is representative of the Texas electorate. There are a lot of people in Texas. I mean, Trump won Texas handily both times, all three times that he ran for president. This is a cancer, particularly in Bible Belt states, where you have these morally bankrupt men that Christians signal to the electorate that there are these big Christians and women shouldn't get abortions and white men are in charge.

7:27You're best when we handle business, ladies. Let us handle it. And there's a lot, millions of people that believe this shit that would rather have a criminal in power than have a decent person in power. And I think that's a real reflection of that part of the culture. And I liken it to the fact that probably, I'll liken it to this. My mother, my whole life, my mother is an atheist. My whole life, she would say, Jennifer, the bigger the Christian, the bigger the secrets. and a lot of people in this evangelical Christian movement in Texas this megachurch culture they their megachurch pastors are fleecing them and are probably doing poppers with you know hookers either gay or heterosexual in bathrooms on the weekend and then Sunday it's you know tongue talk and praise Jesus and in their own marriages because nobody is ever able to work through what accountability means.

8:24Evangelical Christianity misses a huge step that's super important in society and as a human being, the accountability part. You fuck up, then there's an accountability process that you go through, and then you earn forgiveness. In evangelical Christianity, it's Saturday night, paupers pulling trains with people that aren't your spouse, Sunday morning forgiveness, rinse and repeat. And so Donald Trump, this is a man who has fucked up his whole life. And he has been forgiven and forgiven and forgiven and forgiven with zero accountability. And so they see in these candidates that fuck up, they don't want them to face accountability, because then they would have to face something personally that they're incapable of doing with and that their religion hasn't given them the tools.

9:13Like, you know, if you're an evangelical Christian, Josh, you could, you know, leave here, go pick a bunch of fights in the park across the street, and really injure people, hospitalized them, go to church on Sunday and say, I really fucked up, God, please forgive me. And it's forgiven, it's over. You don't have to do any therapeutic work to talk about what's wrong. And that's fundamentally why all this culture keeps electing all of these dipshits. And Angela Paxton divorcing him for biblical reasons, It's just the hypocrisy. I've always said that right before I die, I want to get saved. Not because I'm a Christian.

9:53I don't believe in any of that shit, but just get a little bit of an insurance policy. That means I can live my whole life full of debauchery and acting out and being a heathen and doing all the bad, crazy shit. Then I can just go get saved and all of it is washed away. And just in case I get to go to heaven. it i don't want to get saved because i don't want to be with these people that's true well it's a better option way better i do not want to be with lion ted cruz ken paxton and all of these other fucking freaks all the mega churchers the 77 million triple trumpers count me out i will never get saved beazel bub horns let's go baby because i ain't going up there.

10:37I've thought about that too. Okay. Paxton weathered these controversies and charges by playing up culture war bullshit, because that's all he has. Because this guy is a philanderer. He's a fake hypocritical Christian. He's a criminal. He's a crook. He stole a$1 ,000 pen. I mean, my God. I saw videos all over Instagram about a month ago. He's over on the tube in London playing grab ass with his mistress. And she's some big Christian. I think it was during year anniversary in paris yeah and she's you know she's some big christian that's got a biblical marriage and all these kids too and they're over there playing grab ass on the tube perfect um so he goes in on the uh immigration the abortion the transgender issues and all this and what i have to say to the electorate at large okay let's say that abortion is banned everywhere every single place you can do it and there's no birth control pills or any of that and then let's say that if somebody is transgender, they can't say it.

11:38You're just going to force them into a closet and deadbolt them. Let's say you get all of those things. Is gas lower? Do you have health care? Is your life working better? What does that fix? Because I want to remind everybody that transgender people, immigrants, women that need abortion care have kitchen table issues as well. None of these things solve any problems other than giving you something to distract and participate in the recreational cruelty that evangelical Christianity lives in. That's my take on all of those culture war issues. And I'm not aware of any trans issue that has any impact on the economy.

12:19Are you? Well, I would say the LGBTQ plus community has a positive impact. I mean, just think about, I mean, gay marriages. I mean, that has to be a huge boom. Right. But they use these, like you said, and we've talked about this forever. I mean, where we live, where it's poverty stricken in the rural parts of Oklahoma and all of these counties are voting predominantly Republican. I mean, and that's just like Texas, just like that. Why do they do that? Part of that, I think, is religion. Part of that are these three or four grab issues, social issues, fear mongering, race baiting. All of that's intertwined, I think, with the religious message and obviously not having the smartest electorate.

13:00I mean, you've got people that live in a small town that stay in that town, that they're not exposed to different things or educated about other things. And they watch Fox News and it happens day in, day out. All right. And then the former top aide, DePaxton, has now appeared in an ad for James Tallarico. David Maxwell is a lifelong Republican with an actual backbone. I mean, this is, I mean, the profile in courage, if I've ever seen one, was Paxton's, let's go ahead and play this commercial. This is Ken Paxton. And this is Ken Paxton firing an honest Texas Ranger. Here's what happened. David Maxwell spent five decades in law enforcement and was inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame.

13:46The best of the best. Let's just say he knows a bad guy when he sees one. So when he saw his boss, Ken Paxton, trading favors with a convicted felon, he had to speak up. He reported Ken Paxton to the FBI. And Ken Paxton fired him for it. Ranger Maxwell testified in Ken Paxton's impeachment trial. I told him that Nate Paul was a criminal. He was going to get himself indicted. Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party. But Ranger Maxwell isn't done speaking up against bad guys. My name is David Maxwell. Ken Paxton ended my five-day career because I blew the whistle on his corruption. I am supporting James Tallarico for the U.S.

14:28Senate. Vote for James Tallarico. He's one of the good guys. Inject that shit into my veins. That's delicious. Love it. Josh. Things are pretty dire in Texas when you got these Republicans coming out and doing that. I'd love to say that's a profile in courage, but I think it's more a testament of just how bad of a human being Ken Paxton really is. I mean, that's what this is about. I think the state of Texas is seeing this. I think this is playing out in real time as far as the polling and Tallarico's chances of winning. And that will be a huge win in the state of Texas if we get it. Well, here's the problem with that.

15:10So 1.3 million people have been there voting on the polls has been put into question. And a lot of people don't know that their names have been put in this kind of purgatory, if you will. Another thing is Governor Hot Wheels, Greg Abbott, he has closed down polling sites, making it to where when you go to vote, you're going to have to wait in line for hours upon hours upon hours. Because the situation with Governor Hot Wheels is he is a hypocrite of the highest order. A tree fell on him and he is now in a wheelchair, hence the nickname that everybody in the state calls him Governor Hot Wheels.

15:54And he was able to sue and receive money for damages to his life. He has since passed legislation that prevents people from doing exactly what he did. And Donald Trump can call Greg Abbott and say, I need for you to do this. I need for you to throw these ballots away. Remember the call in Georgia. I need 11 ,000 something something votes. And the Republicans in that state said no. They even recorded him and they whistle blew. Hot Wheels isn't going to do any of that. He will say, sir, yes, sir. Tell me what you need for me to do. And I will do it. I will do whatever you need for me to do to lie, cheat and steal this election.

16:39So Talarenko should win. But we also have to point out this is the electorate that continually elects Ted fucking Cruz. So that's a problem. I get it. I get it. And where we live, too, you just see it day in and day out. And, you know, and Texas is a lot like Oklahoma. You look around and if you don't like your life, how in the world are you blaming Democrats for it? I mean, there's Republican after Republican after Republican after Republican in all facets of government. And so think about that, Texans. If you don't like your government, vote to change it. Yeah, I completely agree. All right.

17:15Obviously, we endorse enthusiastically Mr. Tallarico. And I wish the former Mrs. Paxson the best of luck with her divorce on biblical grounds, a.k.a. the fuck around, find out divorce. All right. That's all we have. Everybody have a good one.

17:42Thank you.

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