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- [00:05]
Tony Ortiz
Is the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians the revival of an ancient conflict recorded in the Bible. The nation of Israel is a resurrected nation. What if there was going to be a resurrection of another people, an enemy people of Israel? The Dragon's Prophecy. Watch it now or buy the DVD at thedragonsprophecyfilm.com.
- [00:30]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Hi everyone, I'm Danielle D' Souza Gill and I am Dinesh's daughter. I will also be guest hosting for him today. I am the author of two books, why God? An Intelligent Discussion on the Relevance of Faith and the Choice the Abortion Divide in America. Today we have a lot to talk about. We're going to be talking about everything from radical Democrats to moderate Democrats. We're going to talk about the future of the Democrat Party. We're also going to speak with Tony Ortiz. He is from Current Revolt and we're going to talk all about some Texas politics. Give you some pulse going on there because there's a lot going on. So we will dive into these things. But we're going to start by talking about the Democrats at large. This is the Dinesh d' Souza podcast.
- [01:27]
Tony Ortiz
America needs this voice. The times are crazy. In a time of confusion, division and lies. We need a brave voice of reason, understanding and truth. This is the Dinesh d' Souza podcast.
- [01:45]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
You know things aren't going well in the land of the Democrats when the Democrats themselves can not agree or message on a strategy. After a series of off year election wins in deeply blue states and districts that they were expected to hold anyway. Dems touted the results as a referendum on the first half year of Trump's second term. The New York Times breathlessly hailed the loud rebuke of Donald Trump's first year back in office. The Times continued. A year ago he won the White House on promises to fix the economy. Yesterday his party's losses showed the high political price that a party in power can pay when voters are still feeling squeezed. Let me guess. Their message is Trump is finished. It's over for Trump. A cursory search for the number of times mainstream media outlets such as cnn, the New York Times, the Washington Post have predicted that Trump's political career is over. Shows the media has forecast Trump's end probably hundreds of times since he announced his candidacy in 2016 and of course has absolutely triumphed in all of his wild success. So you and I know that this is just absolutely ridiculous and no one really believes any of this that the left writes anymore. But I'm only interested in it because the Democrats read this stuff, and they think it might be real, and they just want to believe it's true. Maybe even so, that is one portent of doom about every two and a half months. So none of this is that unusual for the Democrats. They are flailing around looking for some kind of line of argument, some way that they can respond to the politics of the day, which is, of course, not in their favor. Along with a number of other outlets, the New York Times also touted the rise of Zoran Mamdani as the new advent of a new wave of leftist politicians unafraid to openly push socialism front and center on the Democrat platform. So, yes, by all means, Democrats make the rejected movements of history, your party's future. What could possibly go wrong? So there are many on the left who are saying, you know what? Let's lean into socialism. Let's all be like Mom Donnie. Let's all be like aoc. That's going to go really well. Of course, we have to remember both AOC and Mamdani are in New York, and they're in the bluest, bluest of the blue places in the entire country. So the fact that nationally the Democrats were considering going in that direction, I think really shows how out of touch they are with the rest of America and with the country and just normal people. Normal people are not radical socialists like Mom Donnie and aoc. Normal people do not live in the places that they live, and normal people do not find that stuff out appealing honestly. So I think that they're going to really suffer if they lean in that direction. Now, maybe it's fun for them to talk about Mom Donnie and AOC because they help turn out the most radical part of the Democrat base. So I do see why they shoot for that. However, having them as kind of the main Democrat in the party, having them leading the party, I don't really think that's gonna. That's gonna go anywhere, certainly, to win a national race. Mamdani patted himself on the back in his victory speech when he won as mayor of New York City, at least in the initial primary, where he claimed he not only beat the right, but also the old left that's been greedily crutching, clutching the scepter of party power in the iron grip of its bony claw. No one has pointed out that the defining characteristic of the American left has traditionally been a staunch refusal to admit to any mistakes, to acknowledge any widespread unpopularity of their causes. Instead, they would rather double down, gaslight you and just put them in their politically precarious situation in the first place by just continuing to put their heads down. So in this respect, Mamdani is not a breath of fresh air. He knows how to pivot and knows how to kind of control the messaging, so to speak, because the left is very good at that. But he actually is kind of a continuation of the party status quo. He is from a very elite background. He, you know, rub shoulders with all the famous leftists. They all are the elite part of New York. They claim that they're in the socialism and they're all about the common man and all this, but they're really not. Mom. Donnie is just like all of the other Democrats who are pretty much just focused on themselves and they want to be the hero. Mom. That is one thing I think Mom Donnie really likes. He likes being the center of attention. His mother was into film, so. So I think he kind of sees himself as an actor and wants to be cool and wants to be, you know, followed around with cameras and so on. So his victory speech shows him to be a man whose entire worldview comes from the mind controlling apparatchiks who ensure no one ever sees fault within the current party. For decades, the left has been making a show of destroying the old as it pretends to usher in the new. If you want a true break with the old guard who've been shepherding the Democrat Party into oblivion, the only good example would be to look at maybe someone who actually goes against the mold sometimes, like John Federman. He, along with a few other Democrat senators, signed ODD to approve the continuing resolution and thus reopened the government, thereby ending the longest government shutdown in the nation's history. Fetterman said he, you know, he wants to put his constituents before party loyalty. And this move incensed some typical Democrat politicians and supporters who saw no problem with using American SNAP beneficiaries as collateral in their cutthroat negotiations over the CR. Lots of people balked when Trump called the January 6 detainees hostages during the Biden administration. But that's exactly what these same Democrats were doing to America's dependents in the name of funneling taxpayer money to support illegal immigrants who shouldn't be eligible for those benefits anyways. It is another case of the Democrats failing to learn their lesson. They got called out on their hostage taking before, but as soon as the CR came around, they went right back to their vile political tactics of deliberately hurting Americans. So by now, Democrats have made national hostage taking a part of their daily routine. It fits somewhere between the breakfast cocktail and a session in the afternoon. A Spiderman and Others have pointed out that pain the party was causing the American citizens was reason enough to end the shutdown. The fact that Democrats claim to care so much about these people that, let's say snap goes to and then does this to them really shows that they they don't believe anything that they say. After the government reopened, the Dems didn't apologize to their constituents and instead took to the airwaves to make their displeasure known. Neither Democrats nor any of their media lackeys seem to remember the Americans who were hurt by the shutdown. They all just bellowed about how much smarter it would have been to keep the government shutdown going until Republicans gave them what they wanted. To the credit of these couple Democrat senators, they saw this tactic as an abhorrent perversion of the duty of a politician to represent their constituents. They followed their oath. They decided, hey, it's time for people to get back to work. In other words, they did do the right thing. And of course this means the party put a fatwa on them, metaphorically, especially on Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, whose outspokenness against the party's more extreme and bizarre policies has not gone unnoticed. The first person to swing at Fetterman was Sunny Hostin of the few who accused Fetterman of blowing the Democrats advantages won by the recent election. Hostin barks, as you mentioned, Democrats had big wins last week, so you had momentum. Why give in now? Why bring a butter knife to a gunfight? Are you willing to gamble that the GOP will negotiate on health care in good faith once the government reopens? Because if that gamble is wrong, half a million Pennsylvanians you represent, their health care costs will skyrocket if you're wrong. Implicit in Austin's hypothetical scenario regarding health care costs skyrocketing is the assumption that Democrats have not been lying about that probable outcome from the start. From all the data that we can see in the shutdown drama, it's the Democrats who don't care what happens to their voters, including their health care. I suspect Poston's real anger is over the fact that Fetterman treated Democrat fear mongering as just more hot air. For his part, Fetterman did an excellent job channeling Sydney Sweeney and calmly responded, quote, 42 million Americans now are not sure where their next meal is going to come from. And because we vote like that, or people that haven't been paid for five weeks now, and that kind of chaos. So those workers borrow more than half a billion dollars from their credit union just to pay their bills. That's right by calmly battling inside the Democrat Party, going against these crazy talking points. Fetterman was the one who came away looking like the more rational and the more compassionate of the two of them. He definitely won that argument. But then came the cry of one Katie Couric, who also was determined to make Fetterman pay for his party apostasy. But even as her outrage mounted, the former morning News star could barely scratch Fetterman's knees. Such was her moral stature. Her podcast interview can only be described as a series of botched gotcha attempts as she tried again and again to get Fetterman to acquiesce to the kind of extremist insanity that passes for rational thought on the left. Many of these attempts focused on getting Fetterman to agree that the recently assassinated Charlie Kirk had had it coming because he used mean words. Quote, I think some people might say Charlie Kirk's rhetoric was extreme. You know, I think that's the conversation that happened. People condemned political violence, but they also felt a great deal of discomfort with his language suggesting that these kinds of words lead to violence. I don't know. I'm just kind of sharing my observations and I saw the conversations unfold to which Fetterman nodded and replied, yeah, I agree. I mean, I think we agree that we probably didn't agree with much of what he said. And I'm sure we both agree that you shouldn't shoot people and you shouldn't execute them in public. Boom. Fetterman showed the way forward for the Democrat Party. Continue believing any kind of crazy you want, but that doesn't mean you have to get violent over reasonable, just differences of opinion. And for that thoroughly rational and uncontroversial opinion, people on the left now see him as a right wing politician. They see him more to the right than to the left, which is unfortunate because the Democratic Party needs more Fetterman and less Mamdani just for the sake of the country. I don't even, you know, some people say, let's have them all go, Mom Donnie, because then they're all going to lose and then we win. So that's true. I agree. I think that Mamdani is not palpable to the country, but I also care about the country, and I don't want us to have a ton of, you know, radical leftist young people who are looking up to someone like Mom Donnie. And I don't want to have our politicians just be completely and utterly deranged. So I want to encourage more, more Democrat politicians to go the road of of Fetterman here because we need. We need some return to sanity, and it'll just make the country better. For those who see Mamdani as a break with the party establishment past, you have to ask yourself, what would Mom Donnie have done had he been in Fetterman's place? Well, I think it's obvious that Mamdani would have marched in lockstep with the Democrat old guard. So how is he exactly a break with the establishment? He isn't. He is going to do the bidding of the Democrats every single time. And Fetterman is really the one who is stepping out and breaking, you could say, with the establishment. Mamdani is not something at all new for the left. He's just packaged differently. He's packaged cool. He's packaged as, you know, young socialism. But he's really just like Nancy Pelosi, for example, who will just stick with her party on every single thing. There's nothing new there. We see that Mamdani is similar to Schumer and that they're both wistful for the glory days of Soviet supremacy. They're both the type who confuse breadlines for compassion and gulags for sympathy. Both of their ideologies are going to lead to the same kind of socialism. But it's just like Democrats to confuse style for substance. After all, their biggest complaint about Trump this past decade has had less to do with his policies and whether or not they work and more to do with them. Just disliking Trump, just disliking Republicans just saying anything that Republicans say, we're just going to try to stop. So now establishment Dems think that if they just package failed policies in a young, you know, cool guy like Mom Donnie that people won't notice that these are actually just the same old policies of the Democrats, which have not worked, and socialism has never worked anywhere. But they say, hey, if we make it look new, we can try it again. They found the way to once again avoid introspection and own up to their faults. Mom Donnie isn't the only Democrat of this ilk. AOC and Ilhan Omar are both trailblazers, trailblazers in this movement of Democrats who refuse to use common sense. They have both. Both ditched actual legislative chops for superficial Personas. It's your ideal kind of new Democrat politician, the squad, as they say. You get notoriety off of your crazy views and. And you never have to actually deliver on any of the left's insane promises. After all, it is hard to keep promises like free bus rides for everyone. Government run grocery stores, the government buying up housing, forcing people to pay higher taxes because they're white. Those are the kinds of promises that Mamdani made in the run up to his election. And for the most part, he can't really fulfill any of them. Immediately after his ascension to the high throne of mayor of New York, he shamelessly took to the streets and asked the voters to fund all his free stuff. So his plan is to provide stuff for free, but only so long as someone else pays for it. So in other words, it's not free. Could there be any finer distillation of the Democratic Party than that? What's funny about Mamdani's election is the extent to which the left oscillates between elevating and belittling him. While the Times touted his election as the dawn of a new era and the toppling of the elite, it was New York Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul who told the Big Apple's golden boy that she wasn't going to funnel $700 million into the city to pay for free buses. Hochul likely has her own presidential aspirations. She doesn't want to be seen by the more right leaning New Yorkers who live outside the city as the person who helped to hasten Mamdani's destruction of New York when it comes to rent freezes. Another Mamdani promise. That's not exactly something a near mayor can do can do. In order to do that, he needs to successfully see the city's rent guidelines board with enough die hard socialists willing to follow through with his goals. Should he succeed, the result will be of course, disaster. According to the daily economy, the immediate effect of freezing rents below their market price price in the Big Apple will be to reduce the incentive for investments in expanding housing supply. Laws such as parking space requirements, single family zoning, density limits already artificially restrict opportunities in major cities like New York. They drastically increase the costs and risks of new construction or the conversion of commercial properties into residential housing. Reducing the price that landlords can charge tenants to justify these onerous costs will only compound the problem, further disincentivizing investment. Freezing rents below their market price can also be expected to cause a misallocation of apartments. Normally, major life events such as children moving out or an elderly person losing a spouse result in people moving to more affordable, smaller apartments. Artificially low rents encourage inefficient use of apartment space. The experience of rent control in Sweden offers a stark warning that even policies made under the best of intentions cannot avoid the consequences of ignoring the laws of supply and demand. Average waiting times for apartments have extended to an astounding nine years. What is it with socialists and their love of long lines and waiting periods up to a decade long for basic necessities? It's bad enough their policies result in endless lines for food, apartments, health care, even their housing. But who in their right mind celebrates such results as success? Mamdani's platform is so farcical, unrealistic that even the Atlantic is throwing cold water on the socialist blueprint for New York City. On November 6, the site put up a piece stating, quote, Mom Donnie's challenges are steep, particularly for a leader who has never run anything bigger than a five person subliman's office. Much as he might enjoy lashing out at the city's billionaires, this cohort controls businesses with tens of thousands of employees and fills city coffers with its taxes. If even a handful of extremely wealthy individuals leave, that means a lot less revenue for Mamdani's wish list, and it's almost guaranteed that people will flee New York. Given that Mamdani is still hell bent on his schemes when it comes to raising taxes on the wealthiest or just the white people, it's clear that those with the means won't stick around to become the economic scapegoat for a disgruntled rich kid with a chip on his shoulder about Jews, whites and everybody else. If you're not leaving for the taxes, then you probably want to escape New York because of the crime wave, which will most certainly result from his policies. According to and magazine, Mamdani's idea of replacing cops with social workers is a single step in his party's plan for normalizing crime. Mamdani's party, which is actually the Democratic Socialists of America and not the Democrat Party, is committed to collective liberation along with the goal to yes, defund the police by cutting budgets annually to zero. That's only a small sample of the jargon that is still to this day on the DSA's website and featured on their pamphlets, words so tainted with the errors of the past that reading them will magically summon the stench of patchouli to your room. According to a Facebook group for women of the Upper west side of Manhattan that claims 35,000 followers, people are already talking about fleeing the state for fear of their own personal safety. From bragging about appointing only women to his staff to wanting to defund the police, in many ways, Mamdani isn't taking the party forward, but backward. He's not advancing the left's agenda as Much as he's attempting to shock it back into life. America is tired of gender wars, dei, illegal immigration, climate fanaticism, and an endlessly expanding welfare state. That's what the previous election in 2024 should have made clear to the Democrats. But who needs to face reality when you can just refuse by giving Bernie Sanders platform a hipster makeover? That's the real lesson the Democrats have learned here. Witness the rise of the next person that the Democrats are turning to as a potentially young star. Jack Schlossberg, the 32 year old Kennedy grandson who's gunning for Jerry Nadler's seat. Schlossberg has the new shtick down. He goes on Instagram, he does something controversial, he's done a series of Nazi salutes, and then he gives a kind of, you know, smirk or he does some parroting as if he's a gay person. I don't know. I guess this is what people do on the Democrat side. This is kind of like their shtick. But he basically is the son of Caroline Kennedy, who served as ambassador to Japan and he attended both Yale and Harvard. So this is kind of what the Democrats are. This is what they decided to go with. They basically think, okay, you know what, he's a Kennedy. Maybe he's going to get us to the top as far as, you know, reviving some of that. I mean, there's a huge interest in the Kennedy family and the Kennedy dynasty and almost viewed as maybe like American royals. So some of the Democrats are like, you know what, we should go with this guy because he brings that back. And they will maybe be drawn to that because, because of his name as opposed to what he brings to the table. They're banking heavily on attitude and edge to make up for lack of kind of intelligence. They've convinced themselves that this is what worked in recent elections while ignoring how it ultimately failed them in the shutdown negotiations. But while they want to seem young and edgy, well, honestly, I don't really know if this is that edgy. But they're basically on the edge of defeat. The Democrats. They don't have a lot going for them. They don't have a lot of candidates on the bench. They don't have a lot that they can search for. And honestly, it's because they've divided their own party. They've divided their party to the point where they are not sure whether they should lean to the left. Should they go the socialist road? Should they have more people who are saying that they're socialist running or, or should they try to garner something old, try to bring back the Kennedys, try to go back to more classic Democrat party. But then of course, the unfortunate part is this guy is not really like the Kennedys. He's much more liberal, he's much more modern. And so he's actually more similar to the Democrats today than he is to jfk. So it's going to be interesting to see where the Democrats go. It'll be interesting to see if they keep going to the left or they decide to take their cues. And from Fetterman.
- [25:43]
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- [26:55]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
I am delighted to welcome our guest today, Tony Ortiz from Current Revolt. If you don't know Current Revolt, they follow all kinds of breaking news, especially within Texas politics. So we're going to be able to talk to Tony today about all kinds of things going on in Texas because there's a lot to talk about. So, Tony, thanks for joining us.
- [27:15]
Tony Ortiz
Thanks so much for having me.
- [27:17]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Well, so many breaking stories to talk about. Maybe we can start with the recent redistricting decision. I know this was such a huge blow basically for people who haven't been following. There was supposed to be kind of this change in the maps where we would get five seats who that would kind of shift to the Right. Shift to be more red seats, essentially picking up five new seats. And unfortunately, this decision has gone against. Against that. That. That has come out. I think this is probably going to get. Appeal to go to the Supreme Court. I think, you know, Ken. Ken Paxton, I'm sure will be on top of that. But was this kind of a surprise? Was anyone really, like, tracking or thinking this was something that would happen, or do you think this kind of just came up out of nowhere or what was kind of your. Your read on it when that came out?
- [28:11]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, it was kind of a surprise. Right, because the. There's two. There's two out of the three judges ruled against this redistricting, and one of the judges that ruled against this is Judge Jeffrey Brown, who was actually a Trump appointee. So that's incredibly surprising. But, yeah, it was ruled against two to one, with Judge Jerry Smith being the lone dissent vote against this. And he wrote a very scathing, absolutely brutal dissent about this. And he goes into the fact that he believes that Judge Brown is getting into, like, a political activism, and the only people benefiting from this are George Soros and Gavin Newsom. There's even a line in his dissent where he says if there were a Nobel Prize for fiction, Judge Brown's opinion would be a prime candidate. It's absolutely brutal. But we are seeing that they're already going to push this up to the Supreme Court to overrule or to stay the opinion.
- [29:10]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. And I mean, why do you think we see things like this happen? Because it seems like the Clinton appointees, certainly the Obama appointees, they pretty much are gonna be pretty solid based on what the research, I guess, was done on them. But, you know, this does happen sometimes. Trump appointees, they're a little bit different than what we thought they were. Maybe not as adhering to the Constitution as we thought. So why do you think that these things are happening?
- [29:39]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, you're 100% right. As much as, you know, Donald Trump, President Donald Trump has been a huge benefit for Americans. His opinions or his. His appointees for different positions have sometimes been very questioned and in a lot of cases have kind of backstabbed his agenda and what he's trying to push. So not really sure why this is happening. It makes me wonder if President Trump has maybe not the best people surrounding him as far as giving him advice or looking or reviewing some of his appointees. But I'll say this. The good news with this redistricting is that it's going to be pushed out to the Supreme Court. I spoke to Trey Trainor, who is running for actually Congressman Chip Roy's old spot. And he's telling me that the last time that Texas faced something like this or something similar to this was a while back, and it took 11 days for the Supreme Court to intervene. So we really do suspect that the same thing will happen here.
- [30:35]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Do you expect the Texas primaries to get pushed back? Do you expect this to affect any of the dates? Because I think that it's kind of coming up for the deadline, I guess, for people to file for these seats. What do you think?
- [30:48]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, the deadline's coming up here in December. I don't expect anything to get pushed back. I think that if the when the Supreme Court sees this and reviews it, that we'll see a stay. And like I mentioned that Trey Trainer had mentioned, it took about 11 days. And I suspect about the same thing will happen in this case. So we should see everything on track. This is just a bump in the road.
- [31:11]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Wow. Okay. Good to know. As far as some of the Texas kind of politics, some of the Texas races, the House, the Senate, what are you seeing here? Are you seeing there's like a move towards the conservative side? I know that the last cycle of races there were a lot of the kind of the Ken Paxton candidates versus the anti Paxton candidates. And I think we saw a big rise of kind of conservative grassroots patriots out there. But what are you kind of seeing it look like now? I mean, obviously Paxton's running for. For Senate now, and so, you know, things look a little bit different. But do you feel like they've been doing a lot of conservative things? I know that there was, you know, the date feeling stuff. But what's kind of your read on how things are going in the Texas state?
- [31:55]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, you're seeing a big swing towards you know, getting possibly make an attempt at getting rid of a lot of these what some people would call a moderate Republicans. Right. You've got Representative Steve Toth, who is. Was a House representative here in Texas and now he's running for Dan Crenshaw's Congressman Dan Crenshaw's spot. And Congressman Crenshaw last night faced some kind of a little bit of scandal. Punchbowl News reported that he was banned from international travel for a drinking incident involving a joke that offended somebody. And you know, Congressman Crenshaw put out a statement saying that this was fake news essentially. But there's a lot of lot of fighting going on and there's a lot of people that are seeing this wave of kind of Trump MAGA movement movement as an opportunity to go in and get rid of a lot of these kind of soft moderate Republicans throughout the state.
- [32:41]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Yeah. What do you think about where, maybe at least within Texas, where do you feel like the political kind of future is? Because I feel like before, I don't know, before even just recently, I would say, well, obviously America first, obviously it's gonna, we're going to move to the right and there's going to be more grassroots involvement and we're going to have, you know, these moderates, they're not going to win unless we don't really put up a good race or something. Maybe. But we're, we're going to, you know, kind of, we're, we're going to be more popular than the moderates. But I almost feel like now it's kind of moved to the right a lot in the sense that it's more of the right wing kind of America first people versus maybe the, I don't know, the white. White nationalists or something. Like it's, it's just even further. Do you feel like you see that come up in any kind of like, I think, I think someone maybe asked a question about it in the Ag forum that you covered, but do you see that at all or do you feel like, you know what? No, that's kind of just like Twitter world and real life Texas, it's kind of the same.
- [33:45]
Tony Ortiz
It's absolutely Twitter world. There's, you know, I speak and travel throughout Texas and talk to a lot of grassroots activists and voters in general. And this whole agenda of staying or trying that the left is trying to push, that like the right is becoming very white nationalist or racist or whatever the case may be, is limited to a very, very, very, very small percentage of goofy weirdos on the Internet. The majority of voters and activists don't subscribe to this train of thought. They're not interested in this, this more racial. Racism and racial play and things like that. It's just not something that voters are interested, especially right wing voters. In fact, the most of the, most of the racial agenda and pushing and things actually comes from the left. When you see with a lot of the way that they, the things that they vote for and what they push, it's not coming from Republicans.
- [34:36]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Yeah. And what's crazy is the left and in real life, like, they are the much more racist group, like conservative people in real life are not like that at all. And I almost feel like this whole. Yeah. Distraction online really just kind of gives the left credence to like, say, that Republicans are more racist when they actually aren't. But. Okay, maybe you can tell me a little bit about these kind of different races. What's kind of your polls? What was it like being at these different forums? Do you feel like you can kind of get any early signs of anything?
- [35:11]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah. So you've obviously got a big race coming up for in Congress with Ken Paxton kind of leading the crew as far as the grassroots support for Corn.
- [35:22]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
And spot for Senate.
- [35:22]
Tony Ortiz
Right? Yeah, for Senate. Sorry. And so there's three people in that race recording spot, obviously. Cornyn himself, Ken Paxton and Wesley Hunt. Polling is interesting. If you, if you listen to polling or if you believe polling, it's currently showing that Cornyn has the best chance not only in the primary, but also in the general election against the Democrats. So if you're somebody that believes polling, that's what the polling says. Right. As far as the replacement for Ken Paxton, because he's the Attorney General of Texas and he's been a phenomenal Attorney General, it's actually quite sad that he's decided to move away from that position. But there's several people that are up to take his spot. You've got Aaron Wrights, who's kind of the grassroots candidate. He's the one that a lot of the grassroots and the more stronger Right. Are supporting. You've got Senator Joan Huffman, who's very well experienced and she's currently a state senator. And then you've got Senator Mayes Middleton, who's also running, and he's phenomenal as well. Very well educated and very, very good at what he does, and he's also running for the spot. And then, of course, you've got Congressman Chip Roy, who's got the name id and polling for that spot is showing that Congressman Roy is currently beating the pack there.
- [36:37]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah, well, it's very exciting. I mean, I think it's going to be really cool to see all these play out. And I mean, what's cool to me is I feel like it's not like, you know, there's going to be, I don't know, I don't think someone's going to win for AG of Texas that's not going to be a strong person because in Texas we really need a very strong ag. And I think Ken Paxton set the bar for that. So I feel like we're going to get a very strong, strong person in that role.
- [37:06]
Tony Ortiz
You're 100, right? Yeah.
- [37:08]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
A little bit about, like, the. The threat of Islam. I saw that Deborah Abbott recently kind of responded to this. Do you feel like there's any unified response from Republicans to these kind of Sharia law communities or do you feel like it's not really going to change much or what's kind of your read?
- [37:27]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah. So there's been a lot of eyes on the Epic City build out here in Texas. Epic City is a kind of a community that initially was pitched by these developers and these builders as being just for Muslims. Right. And it even said in their advertising, like you, they got to pick and choose who gets to come to this. And you have to meet a certain set of values, which they hinted a lot as being of the Islamic faith. A lot of eyes have been on this. The AG has been on this. Ken Paxton has been all over this and the governor of Texas as well as the surrounding county judges. It's gotten so bad for that community in the sense that the bad PR and the realization of what they're trying to do in the state that they've even rebranded so they've got a brand new name and, you know, you've got themselves now. I forget. I want to say it was something very generic. You'll have to forgive me. I don't even remember the name because it was something so generic. But they're very clearly trying to rebrand themselves to avoid this, this PR disaster. And obviously that's not going to work. But Governor Abbott has directed Attorney General Ken Paxton to kind of look into these communities and these groups that are enforcing Sharia law to see if this is really a concern that Texas face. The good news is that on my day to day, traveling across the state and talking to people, I don't see it as much of a huge threat. But I think this is one thing that Republicans in power see as like, we've got to nip this in the bud. We've got to prevent this from being an issue before it gets to that point.
- [38:53]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Yeah. What is your read when you're traveling state talking to people? I mean, we have so many different Texas congressional seats up. There's going to be tons of new. Tons of new people. Do you feel like when you see these different races? I mean, they're kind of. Texas is a very big state, so it's going to look different all over the state. But are you seeing any. Any patterns or are you kind of. Do you feel like it's too early to really say? I mean, I know the Texas primaries are very early compared to. Compared to the rest of the country.
- [39:19]
Tony Ortiz
But yeah, it's a bit early to say, say you know, we, with these new drawn lines, we do anticipate that Republicans can pick up, as you said, like about five more seats, which is great news. The Democrat districts were kind of made stronger, kind of as a sacrifice to make the red, the, the kind of purple districts more red. But you're seeing a lot of, you're still seeing an attempt by some Republicans to run in these, in these red spots, for example. You know, you've got, you've got, in one race, there's, the district's been redrawn and it's still like Democrat plus, like 23, 25. So it's almost impossible for a Republican to win there. But you're still seeing some Republican candidates make a very feeble attempt to try to take it. So it's kind of, kind of fun to watch and interesting to see how they're trying to raise money for a race that's impossible to win.
- [40:07]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Interesting. What do you think about the Texas Democrats? Maybe we can talk a little bit about that. Because, I mean, people can't believe it's like you got like Jasmine Crockett is in the Dallas area, you know where. The Dallas area. It's like she's so, you know, ideologically different. You have some, I think, two different Democrats competing for Sylvester C. Who had passed away in the Houston area. That's a deeply blue sea. So what's kind of the messaging, I guess, of Democrats in Texas? Maybe you can give us the, the Democrats. What are they thinking? We just kind of see it as, wow, crazy. But I don't know. What do you, what do you think?
- [40:48]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, if the Democrats were smart, they would realize that. They would come to the realization and accept that Texas is a red state with red voter, majority red voters. And a lot of their messaging, as you know, is very far left, the trans stuff, the racial stuff. And it's just too much for a lot of even mid, mid, mid, even moderate voters. It's become too much.
- [41:10]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
So.
- [41:10]
Tony Ortiz
But Democrats, a lot of them haven't really moved away from that messaging. If they were smart, they would kind of go a little bit more moderate in the middle and still be Democrat. And that could maybe pick them up some voters, but they haven't, they haven't accepted that. I think it's hard for them a lot to try to become more moderate because they've raised this very activist Democrat base to be very loud, very angry, very involved for very far left, communist, socialist, trans stuff. And if they're trying to become more moderate now, it'll upset their base. But Kind of the leaders pushing the agenda, and the Democrats right now are. They're key, like, superstars. Their new betos is like, James Talarico. He's running against John Cornyn, and he's got a. He's got a primary against Colin Allred, and he's. Talarico has kind of done a really great job for a Democrat of media runs. He was even on the Joe Rogan podcast, and he got a lot of.
- [42:06]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Oh, I'm Christian, but I'm Democrat, and all that stuff.
- [42:10]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, he faced a little scandal recently. A news organization had gone through his follows, his mutual follows on his Instagram, and he was following a lot of only fans, models, and professional escorts, and even had some dms back and forth with them. And now Talarico, as I'm aware, he's definitely not a married man. I believe he has a girlfriend. So there's really nothing bad here, essentially. But, you know, if you're. If you're this Democrat who props yourself up as a. As a pastor, as a Christian who believes in the Bible, maybe there's some questionable behavior there.
- [42:43]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah, definitely questionable. Yeah. Because he would go on Joe Rogan basically acting like he's the authority on Christian matters and all of this, and then he's doing that. So not too surprising, but. Okay, where do you see it as kind of, I guess, him versus Allred. Do you think they run all red again, or is all red kind of like, leading?
- [43:05]
Tony Ortiz
Right now, it looks like Talarico is performing the best. I just came back from Trip Fest, which is a big, like, kind of political festival in Austin that happens once a year and all around, and Talarico were there, and the. The vibes I got were that Democrats are more behind Talarico. Allred comes up off as just a very boring, very, like, just generic candidate. I think it's kind of funny. He puts out these videos, and it's always him, you know, kind of, like, sweaty, working out in front of his, like, bench press behind him in his garage. It's a very odd, very odd behavior to the point where, like, even Democrats have told me, like, this is very strange at political advertising. Talarico comes off as a little more likable, excitable, and he's definitely. Of the two, he definitely comes off as a little more intelligent. And so I think that Talarika will probably take that primary, and he will be up whoever, whether it's, you know, Cornyn, Hunter, Paxton.
- [43:59]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah.
- [44:00]
Tony Ortiz
In that race.
- [44:01]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. It's interesting because, I mean, you know, they already ran Allred, and he lost to Ted Cruz by even more margin than Bessel lost to Ted Cruz. So I don't know what chance he would even have of winning anything. But, okay, so that's on the Democrat side. And then as far as, I guess, just the Democrats, like the way that they work inside Texas, basically, their strategy has been to work with, like, the Republicans. I guess that's how they do it. I guess in the House, they think, oh, you know, we'll just kind of give the moderate Republicans, like, the edge or something. Is that kind of still their strategy?
- [44:37]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, and that will continue being their strategy. Right. Because they're my. The minority party. They have to work with the. Or convince the moderate Democrats or the moderate Republicans to kind of push some of their agenda. That's one of two ways I think they generally work. The second way being just to get in the way, either whether it's with redistricting or we've had things for stronger voter ID laws where they just kind of take off and they run away from their vote to prevent a quorum. These are the way the Democrats function in our state. In Texas, they either get in the way of votes or they try to pass their agenda through moderate Republicans. And I think that's probably the foreseeable way. Future for them.
- [45:18]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Yeah. And then do you see, basically, Governor Abbott, Dan Patrick, kind of being our governor, Lieutenant governor for a little while.
- [45:28]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah. Governor Abbott has always had presidential aspirations. I think that he's gonna continue to. He's got an incredible amount of money, astronomical amount of money in a war chest for running for whatever he wants. And so I think he'll continue to be governor as long as he wants to continue being governor. Whether or not this leads to, like, a presidential run is up in the air. You know, you've got a lot of potential candidates for, what is it, 2028 or. Yeah, 2028. So whether he'll make a run for that, we'll see. As far as Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, he's. He's a great lieutenant governor. He's got. We've gotten a lot done under his. Under his tenure, and I think he will continue to be lieutenant governor as long as his. His health persists. He's getting a little bit older and, you know, as, you know, as we get older, you know, we get more time, getting more tired. I'm ready to take a nap later on today after being up late. But he's getting older and, you know, he. I think he's. It's maybe going to be a struggle to keep up and run. So he's going to have to put somebody else to take his spot. And so we'll see. See. We'll see what happens there.
- [46:37]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Yeah. Wow. Well, that is fascinating. Well, Tony, thanks so much for being with us today and updating us on some of the Texas stuff.
- [46:46]
Tony Ortiz
Yeah, thanks so much for having me.
- [46:50]
Danielle D'Souza Gill
Well, that wraps up today's show. If you enjoyed the show, make sure to find me on social media. I'm Danielle d' Souza Gill on all the platforms. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, Rumble X, YouTube, Truth Social. And I really appreciate being here today. Dinesh will be with you guys next time. And I'll see you guys soon.
- [47:10]
Tony Ortiz
Subscribe to the Dinesh d' Souza podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify, or watch on Rumble, YouTube and SalemNow.com.