Colin Allred Discusses House Race and Turning Texas Blue

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2:22Ben Meiselas:Donald Trump and MAGA Mike Johnson are panicking over the news that 20 Republican Congress members may be resigning in the very near future. That was reported by Puck. But before that, we had heard rumblings and we reported on that. And then you heard from Punchbowl News that they were hearing it. And now this seems to be fairly imminent that this is going to be taking place. So Donald Trump was asked a pretty basic question during this bizarre press conference that he held. So what do you make of these 20 House Republicans or maybe more who are threatening to resign because they really can't stand you right now and they can't stand working in this loser House of Representatives run by Maggie Mike Johnson?

3:01Ben Meiselas:Trump just gets enraged and attacks the reporter. Here play this clip. And I just have a quick question. There's at least 20 House Republicans who have either said they're going to retire or not run again. And Democrats also. And Democrats. Why don't you mention them? How many Democrats are going to retire? How many Democrats? Well, that's what I was going to ask. Why don't you tell me the number of Democrats, too? Are you concerned about the narrow margins? No, I'm not concerned. I think we're going to do well. We will have the greatest economy. We're going to have the greatest economy in history.

3:37Ben Meiselas:How many Democrats are retiring? How come you only know the Republicans, but not the Democrats? Because I came prepared to ask you a question about... No, no, you're unprepared, because you should know the Democrats. You're totally unprepared. Can I ask a quick follow up? Who are you with? I'm with New York News Day and I also have a quick follow up. Wow. I mean, that's there was more bizarre moments where he attacked an ABC reporter during that. And this follows Trump going on a rampage in the morning, calling Marjorie Taylor Greene, Marjorie Trader Brown, after knowing that she was receiving death threats as a result of his comments.

4:09Ben Meiselas:And he said that Marjorie Trader Brown went on CBS and then he attacked the CBS coverage for her going on 60 Minutes. And on 60 Minutes, Marjorie Taylor Greene talked about how behind Donald Trump's back, all of these MAGAs make fun of him and mock him and really hate him and despise him, but pretend that they like him. Meanwhile, MAGA Mike Johnson still claims that things are going amazing. Here, play this clip. If we stay unified, there is absolutely nothing that we can't achieve. And we've already demonstrated that at this Congress. We've had one of the most productive Congresses in the history of the institution.

4:41Ben Meiselas:Do you need the president to get on the phone to some reluctant GOP members in the House and say, come on? So utterly pathetic. I want to bring in former Democratic Congress member Colin Allred, who just announced on Monday that he would be running for the newly created 33rd congressional district, which encompasses Dallas County in Texas. Now, Congress member Allred was first running for that Senate seat. It was clear it became incredibly overcrowded and noisy. And you put out a statement in light of all of these issues there that are happening. Your time was best spent running for the seat, which is in an area that you previously represented before a prior Senate run.

5:20Ben Meiselas:And, of course, we know that Trump and Abbott have been working very hard to rig these Texas maps with a gerrymander on top of a gerrymander that the Supreme Court apparently says is fine, despite a Trump-appointed judge saying it's an incredibly racist map at the district court level. But in any event, it's a long-winded way to say you've made an important announcement that you're running for the congressional seat that occupies Dallas County. Talk to us about your decision, then let's get into the vibe in Texas in general right now, because Trump is underwater there under the morning consult poll and some other major polls.

5:53Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about your decision first. Yeah, well, thank you so much for having me on. And, you know, listen, everything you said there is exactly right. in terms of what they've done as these congressional districts. And also in the Senate race, you know, looking at, you know, us potentially having to almost a guaranteed runoff election, because in Texas, if you don't get more than 50 % in the primary, you have to go to a runoff. You know, I felt like that was not in the best interest of the party or of the state. And, you know, for me, it was a personal decision because I've developed a relationship and, you know, a lot of trust with so many Texans around the state.

6:30people come up to me and tell me their kind of most intimate details of their personal lives and what they're going through and how they are hoping that somebody can help them. And I felt a responsibility to those folks to try and make sure that we have a unified party going into November and that I could best serve, you know, by looking at serving my hometown and the place where I was born and raised in Congress at a time when we're losing voices and we need even stronger voices and have our best players in the field. And so, you know, I completely disagree with with what Speaker Johnson said there.

6:59I think this is one of the worst House of Representatives in American history. I think that the fact that they were in session for about 10 days out of 120, it wouldn't even allow a newly elected member in Arizona to be sworn in because they were afraid of the Epstein files being released. It's just one indication you can take of how dysfunctional this Congress has been. We got to go in there. We got to shake it up. We got to fix it. We have to restore the fact that Congress is Article I of the Constitution. And I think the founders did that for a reason. They wanted it to be the center of our democracy, not to cede everything to the president and certainly not to this one.

7:32Ben Meiselas:Yeah, they went from Article One to Article None. And Mag and Mike Johnson acts like Congress isn't even a thing. And that's why Steve Bannon referred to it as the Duma in Russia, basically. And that's how it's been functioning under Mag and Mike Johnson. Now, you know, the state of Texas from a political perspective and the demographics, they're just about better than anybody. This This racist gerrymandered map as a Trump judge found it, though, was based on certain assumptions about Latino voters moving towards MAGA and Trump and certain other assumptions about the area. Now, from your perspective, when you were running at the statewide level, now your Dallas County is certainly a more blue area.

8:12Ben Meiselas:But a lot of these assumptions about the state of Texas, I think we're seeing movement, but you're on the ground. I mean, when we see that Trump's approval amongst the Latino communities falling now in the level of the 30s, when you were having these conversations with people on the trail and even now, are you noticing changes like that? What are you seeing, Congressman? Absolutely. No, I think there's a dramatic change going on. And I think a lot of folks, you know, in the last election and somebody was raised by a single mom and was a public school teacher who grew up struggling. I have some kind of empathy for folks who in the last election thought, hey, you know, maybe this guy really will make my costs go down.

8:51Maybe he really will mean what he says, that inflation is going to go away. But the problem is they were lied to. And I think on the flip side, they also know that they are seeing what's happening. working folks across Texas are aware that they're working harder and harder for less while these openly corrupt, you know, jackasses that they see on TV and on their phones are out there doing all kinds of stuff and are getting ahead. And to your point with the Latino community, you know, the last time I was in South Texas, and my family's from Brownsville, the very tip of Texas, I'd never felt a sense of fear like I felt when I was there, a fear around the immigration enforcement that was going on there, but also the impacts on the economy from the tariffs and that enforcement.

9:34I was at one flea market where the owner of it said that it was like COVID 2.0 for them, like the business impact of it. And so that all has to have an impact in the election. But our job is to make sure that it does and that we go to folks and say, you're right that this is a rigged system. And you're right to think even that maybe in the past, Democrats weren't fully talking enough about this, but we're going to talk about it now. And we're not just talking about small incremental changes. We want to do big, dramatic changes because we're in a big, dramatic moment that requires that. And that, to me, that kind of broadness of vision is what we have to bring to this to make sure that we take that feeling they have and turn it into votes.

10:14Ben Meiselas:Now, it's just so interesting because your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, our former colleagues, they always would say that they're state's rights and that they are you know, China hawks. And they'd come up with all of these framings, but they've thrown Taiwan under the bus. They've thrown Ukraine under the bus. They've agreed to tariffs against the world, which seemed to violate everything that they've said with Ronald Reagan and this and that. You know, it almost seems that Trump puts them through this humiliation ritual that they genuinely feel humiliated from what they talk about behind closed doors with Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, that they hate this guy, yet they've allowed this, you know, to use a phrase from Governor Newsom, this invasive species, Donald Trump, to like just run over the country.

11:03Ben Meiselas:It just must be a strange thing from your perspective to see some of your former colleagues just bend to the point of just becoming, I don't know, just tools of humiliation. Yeah, I have to say they also say that to me. Yeah, you know, I have a number of the folks I served with, especially in the Texas delegation, who will say when they're being honest, can you believe this guy? You know, and what I've always wondered is how they're able to remove their spines from their body and still walk around, you know, without that support. It's incredible to me. There is no scenario where I would feel this way about the so-called leader of our party and would just keep it to myself.

11:54And I really I understand that some of them are personally afraid. They think that there's that their families may be threatened and things like that. And Marjorie Taylor Greene has certainly talked has been speaking about that. But to be honest, when you enter public life and what you're trying to do, if you believe in public service, it can't be about you. And if it is just about you, then you'll end up doing things like this. You'll end up being OK with dropping all of your views and all of your values for someone else's values, because it wasn't all you really care about yourself. Right. And I think that's what we have to excise from our politics as much as we can.

12:29We'll never get rid of all of it. But if we can get a critical mass of folks who are more interested in public service than they are in themselves, then that will allow us to really get back on track. And I also mean that for the Republican Party as well. And I am constantly, I'm an optimist. And so I want to believe that at some point we may see some of that. I am shocked by what Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing right now. I never, never imagined that she would be out there denouncing the president and saying that her colleagues are all cowards, but she's doing it. And I think we should look at that and say, there's something there.

13:05There's something there that we can draw on. There's something there on the Epstein files release that we can say there's some resistance building there. And after certainly after we kick their butts in this midterm, we have to look at this and say, do you really want to spend your last two years just following a lame duck president? increasingly crazy views? Or do you want to actually be a representative for your community? And that with that, we may actually be able to get something done. And so that's what I think we have to hope for and try to make happen.

13:34Ben Meiselas:Let's talk about that before we go. Your message to our 6 million subscribers before we go, where can they learn more about your campaign? Yeah, I hope they'll go to Colin, allred.com, get involved with us. We have to make sure that we have incredibly strong voices from texas because we're going from having 13 democratic members of our delegation out of 38 which it should be higher than that we were already gerrymandered as you said to now maybe having only eight maybe nine um hopefully ten uh and we'll try and frustrate them in some of these districts they thought they were going to win but we are representing 30 million texans and we have to have strong voices i'll be representing you know the the community that I come from with if folks are willing to vote for me.

14:20And I need to make sure that we have really strong voices that will go into Congress with a defined idea of what they're going to do to clean it up and to also say to our own party, here's what we have to do to get back on track, particularly with working people. That's what I've been focused on in this campaign. I need folks help going forward.

14:36Ben Meiselas:Congressman Colin Allred announcing his race for Texas's 33rd. We appreciate you discussing it with us here on the Midas Touch Network. All right. Thanks for having me. Everybody hit subscribe. Let's get to that 6 million subscriber mark. Want to stay plugged in? Become a subscriber to our sub stack at MidasPlus.com. You'll get daily recaps from Ron Filipkowski, ad-free episodes of our podcast, and more exclusive content only available at MidasPlus.com.

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