Jasmine Crockett lights up Texas Senate race: Texas wants ‘a fighter’

Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. Saturday, September 26th, join MS Now Live in Texas for our biggest event yet. with Rachel Maddo, Chen Saki, Michael Steele, and more for a day of powerful conversations and timely insights in a crucial state for the midterms. Democracies heal and advance themselves by engaging everybody where they are. Plus exclusive community experiences. MS now live together in Texas. September 26th. Get tickets today at MS. dot now slash together. Tonight on All In. Do you believe that that second strike was necessary? Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat. The Secretary of Defense faces heat in Congress. What the hell is going on in the Caribbean? Tonight, Norm Eisen on his new call for investigation into Trump's lethal strikes, then. What grade you would give? A plus. A plus. Yeah, A plus, plus, plus, plus. The president visits a resort casino to Trump's flame your economic pain. The tariffs are making them rich. It's going to be unity to see. Plus, Cheryl and Eiffel on the high-stakes election fight in Supreme Court, Jasmine Crockett joins me live on her bid to become the next Democratic senator in Texas. Somebody said the other day she's one of the leaders of the party. I said you've got to be kidding. All in starts right now.

Good evening from New York. I'm Chris Hayes. Something interesting is happening right now, Capitol Hill. A few leaders of both parties are doing their jobs, taking small but important new steps to check the power of Donald Trump, to demand accountability for what looks to many experts like the flat-out murder of dozens of people on the high seas with U.S. military might, ordered by U.S. commanders, effectuated by U.S. service members. The top Republicans and Democrats on the Senate and House Armed Services Committee held classified meetings today with this man, Admiral Alvin Halsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command, days before he's set to retire and leave that post. Now, Halsey wasn't even a year into this role at Southcom, which is obviously incredibly prestigious. You spend your entire career working towards a commander role like this. It's responsible for U.S. operations in Central and South America, where, of course, all these strikes are taking place. And when he announced his retirement in October, suddenly, without warning, it was a job he was expected to hold until 2027. And in more than 37 years, Halsey served as a helicopter pilot and commander of some of the Navy's newest warships. There have been no issues with his leadership. But last week, two Pentagon officials told the Wall Street Journal that Pete Hegseth asked Admiral Alvin Halsey to step down, a de facto ouster that was the culmination of months of discord between Pete Hegseth and the officer. Discord that came to a head after Halsey had initial concerns about, yes, legality of lethal strikes on alleged drugboats in the Caribbean, according to two former officials aware of the discussion. Now the Armed Services Committees in both chambers have opened investigations into the first of those strikes back in September. That, of course, the one that we've been covering on this program, the one that killed 11 alleged drug runners off Venezuela, including two men who survived the military's initial attack on their boat and were struck again. Republicans are increasingly breaking ranks with Trump, the Trump White House on this, something we haven't really seen them do until recently. I mean, we first started to see it in this term for the first time happening last month with, of course, that vote to release the Epstein files. And it wasn't a ton of Republicans, but enough, and then there was a flood. Well, now we have a second issue where what the White House is doing. lawlessly killing anyone they say as a, quote, narco-terrorist, maybe engaging in just obvious and manifest war crime with that second strike on helpless shipwrecked men, that this is just a bridge too far for some congressional Republicans. And so what's really striking about this in some ways is how banal it all is, how normal, which is that they're just actually starting to do the basics. of what would recognizably happen in a normal government and normal Congress and not just acting like Donald Trump's staff.

It's interesting to me to see that in action because it's illustrative of just how flatly absent it's been, right? I mean, consider this. So on Sunday, the House and Senate leadership, the Republican leadership, released the text of their annual defense policy bill, which means the Republicans wrote it, right? Congressional Republicans wrote it. It authorized nearly a trillion dollars in military spending, and this is one of those big must-pass bills, and it comes up and it authorizes the entire defense budget, right? Well, lawmakers added language in that bill demanding the Pentagon handover unedited video of the strikes against drug cartels and threatening to withhold a quarter, just a quarter, but a quarter of Pete Hegseth's travel budget if it does it. Now, that's the power of the purse, and they're using it. The bill would also require the Pentagon to provide the orders behind each attack. Again, that's bipartisan legislation authored by Republicans to get answers to the administration on this question. That's on top of bipartisan investigations and interviews with key military officials. So at this point, it's pretty clear. Top Republicans, at least the ones who are sort of most invested in this issue on those committees of jurisdiction, the House and the Senate, they're not just falling in line with Trump in this one. They're not just sort of knee-jerk saying he can do whatever he wants. And you got to ask, where exactly is the president of all this? The answer is all over the place. Depends on what time of day and when you ask him. Last week, when he was asked if he would release the full video of the first boat strike, or at least the second strikes in that boat, including the killing of the last two men as they apparently kind of floated in a capsized boat in the Caribbean, here's what he said. Mr. President, you release video of that first boat strike on September 2nd, but not the second video. Will you release video of that strike so that the American people can see for themselves what happened? I don't know what they have, but whatever they have, we'd certainly release. Again, we all heard that, right? That's the president. We'd certainly release. Whatever we have, we'd certainly release. This week, Trump said something completely different, and he got typically very nasty about it. Mr. President, you said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2nd off the coast of Venezuela. Secretary Pete Hegseth announced... I didn't say that. You said that. I didn't say that. This is ABC fake news. You said that you would have no problem releasing the full video. Okay, well, Secretary He said that. Whatever He said that he wants to do is okay with me. Are you admitted to releasing the full video? Didn't I just tell you that? You said that it was not the most obnoxious reporter in the whole place. Let me just tell you are an obnoxious... A terrible, actually a terrible reporter. And it's always the same thing with you. Notice how he does that more and more, always with women reporters, right? Cool guy. And he had another interview yesterday. He pushed the entire thing off on his underlings. Should he testify, Pete Hegseth, under oath before Congress, about that controversial second strike on the alleged drug boat on October? I don't care every day. He can if he wants. I don't care. Do you think he should? I don't care. I would say do it if you want. Do you believe that that second strike was necessary? Well, it looked like they were trying to turn back over the boat, but I don't get involved in that. That's up to them. Oh, you don't get involved in? You don't care? You just work here? You just punching in? Is that how it works, Mr. President?

Unitary executive and all that? Well, today, members of the gang of eight in Congress, that's the leadership of both houses and the folks who are on the intelligence committees, called in Trump's defense secretary to explain these both strikes. Democrats like Chuck Schumer called that briefing very unsatisfying, perhaps not surprising. But the chorus of voices demanding answers is growing on the left and the right, and not just in Congress. Today, three legal groups, including the ACLU, filed suit against the Department of Justice, asking a judge to order the release of the secret memo by department lawyers that gave Trump a rationale for those attacks. That's in addition to an ethics complaint filed with the DOJ today by former ethics advisors for President's Obama, Clinton, and Bush. They're calling an investigation to whether the department's lawyers violated their professional responsibilities when they wrote that memo. Norm Eisen is one of those three former White House ethics advisors calling for investigation into whether the Trump administration contorted the law to justify those strikes, and he joined me now. Norm, tell me about this ethics complaint. What are you trying to get the Department of Justice to review and look at? Chris, in this terrible story about the boat strikes on civilians, One element that has been missed hasn't gotten enough attention is the legal advice that has been given by the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice. We haven't seen the reported 50-page memo, but there has been a media discussion of its contents. saying that these strikes are legal. We think that if the memo is as reported, that that is so beyond the pale that it raises serious questions under the ethics rules. Lawyers are not allowed to counsel or facilitate conduct, for example, that they know to be criminal. And experts across the political spectrum have said, killing civilians in international waters is not justified by international or U.S. law. And so that's why we joined together at the Democracy Defenders Fund with... The ethics advisor, Richard Painter for George W. Bush, Ginny Cantor, the ethics advisor, Clinton, myself, Obama's ethics advisor, to say we must have an investigation of this and fast because people are continuing to be killed. Yeah, the legal regime here is interesting. You mentioned some of the bipartisan sort of cross-ideological criticism outrage over this.

Interesting, Jeff Blake today, who is, of course, former Republican Senator and ambassador, saying the administration is resisted releasing full video of these incidents citing national security. The more plausible concern is political moral. It knows what the public reaction to be. Once confronted with the footage, most Americans would question not only the legality operation, but the instinct behind it. For you, question, do you believe both videos and that OLC memo itself should be released immediately? Absolutely. There's precedent. to provide the legal reasoning for these kinds of strikes, far less controversial ones than this. And that video crystallizes the issue because based on the reports we have, Chris, you can see that it's the killing of civilians. We're not in a non-international armed conflict, even if we were. That's the terminology that the government is using that purports to allow this. But that refers to things like organized, sustained, armed terrorist activity, not sporadic. drug cartel activity. That's a law enforcement problem. Chris, even if we were in that kind of an armed conflict, you're not allowed to kill civilians. But because we're not, experts across the political spectrum from all administrations, irrespective of party, are saying, hey, either way, this is murder. We must see that video footage. We must get this memo. And we must investigate this legal advice that is kind of providing a golden shield for those involved. I've been wanting to ask this question of someone who has some experience in government lawyering, and you have quite a bit. If the Venezuelan government or another government blew up a boat of Americans, say a dozen of them, 10 miles off Long Island, and they said they were running drugs. How would the U.S. government understand that? Would we be okay with that? Would we say, well, if you say so? Chris, in fact, what you would see is the same kind of condemnation, the same demands for action, and the same concern that depending on the facts, it appears to be out and out murder. So I think it's so important, as you noted, to see that, however, preliminary and cautious, members of the president's own party are now breaking with the corruption represented by the Epstein files, and frankly, the corruption of the rule of law and human decency represented by...

what experts say is the murder of civilians by our armed forces. No wonder, Admiral Halsey, the outgoing head of Southcom, is reported to have said he doesn't want to participate because those who participate in this can be held personally liable. And the lawyers who give the advice can also face legal. professional discipline for doing that, lose their licenses. All right, Norman Eisen. Thanks for your time. Thanks, Chris. Coming up as the pain from Trump's economy grows, the president hits a resort casino to tell you why that's not actually true. That's next. Watch Disclosure Day at Home Now with exclusive bonus features. If you found out we weren't alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you? Would that frighten you? Well, now the truth belongs to 7 billion people in an original event film directed by Steven Spielberg from a screenplay by David Kep starring Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, and Coleman Domingo. Find Disclosure Day on major digital platforms now with no subscription required, also in theaters. For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics. From the field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story. Connect with Jacob Soberoff. Weekends at 10 a.m. Eastern on MS. Now.

If you had to grade the Trump economy at this point in the term, what would you give it? B minus charitably? Worse? Maybe better? I don't know. Okay. Now, what grade do you think Donald Trump would give himself? I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home. And I wonder what grade you would give your economy. A plus. A plus. Yeah, A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus. Is that five pluses? Trump, of course, is desperately trying to revive his economic standing with voters, but the country's just not having it. And so he's going back on the road. In the last hour, he did his first rally since early July. He did it at the Mount Airy Casino Resort in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania to tell everyone just how great things are right now. They say, oh, he doesn't realize prices. Prices are coming down very substantially. But they have a new word. You know, they always have a hoax. The new word is affordability. So they look at the camera and they say, this election is all about affordability. But in the real world, his approval on the economy is down to a dismal 36% in a recent gallopole. The self-inflicted economic struggles stumbling from his latest trade war with China have him grasping for anything he can use to soften the blow. And so, guess what he's doing? He's going to bail out the farmers the same way he did back in 2018. We're not reprinting the same article. Those are seven years apart, all the way down to the exact same. $12 billion bailout package. John Tester is the former Democratic Senator from Montana. He's also a third-generation farmer who still runs his family farm. He joins me now. Senator, few things in politics that I've covered have so symmetrically and neatly. sort of reenacted themselves beat for beat, move for counter move, that Donald Trump picking a trade fight with China, China dropping all its purchase of U.S. agricultural imports, chiefly soybeans, Donald Trump then having to kind of turn tail and find a face-seeming deal and ending with a solution of mailing checks to farmers as opposed to allowing them to farm their product. What do you think about this version of it? Some would call it socialism, Chris. The truth is that we did see the same thing in the previous administration, where prices at the farm gate were incredibly low. The only thing that's different with this one is in the first administration, he didn't give $20 billion to one of our economies, to another country, Argentina, to undercut our own economy, which is what they did. This is, what can I compare it to? An arsonist coming to a house and setting it on fire, and then the same arsonist shows up in a fire truck and says, I'm here to help.

The bottom line is, I don't care if you call affordability or the economy or inflation, but on the farm today, the price we're getting for our products is incredibly low because of the tariffs. And the inputs that we have to buy to grow those crops and to harvest those crops are incredibly high because of the tariffs. And are we appreciative of the money that the American taxpayer is going to... of us, probably a debt, more debt on our kids? Well, sure, because there's going to be a lot of folks go broke. And I don't think some of these checks can be big enough to offset the impacts that these tariffs have had in rural America. And, Chris, if you combine that with what the big, beautiful bill did on health care, and especially as that bill is going to impact rural America, it's almost like there's a war against rural America with this administration. Well, let me ask about the politics of this because it did occur to me as I was going back and reading about all this the first time around, which again, the scale of it was a bit smaller, like the trade world with China was a bit more targeted, their drop in purchases wasn't quite as dramatic as this time around. This is all happening at larger scales. You know, you can make the argument that it worked for him politically the first time around, right? I mean, you know. People got checks. That sort of helped tied him over. He won rural America by enormous margins. He won it in 2020. He won it by even bigger margins in 2024. And so, like, people seem fine with it in the end. Well, look, this could work again. I can tell you that most of the folks that I know that are in production agriculture. want to get their check from the marketplace. They don't want to get it from the federal government. They're concerned about the debt that this country's carrying right now. They're concerned about what this president has done to... traditional buyers of our product. We raise more grain and cattle in this country than we can consume. We need those foreign markets. Those foreign markets have been pushed away, and it's going to be hard to get them back. And the $12 billion is a band-aid, and what we need is we need a fix. We need a long-term fix if we're going to have family farms in this country continue. If not, there will be more consolidation. There will be fewer people living in rural America, and our food security will be put at risk. So this is really... important stuff. And as I talk as a farmer about the impacts in rural America, this really does impact everybody. And it's bad policy. You know, farmers deal with drought and they deal with disease. They deal with bugs. But I'm telling you what, nobody ever planned on these kind of policies coming forth that really has driven our prices really, really to rock bottom levels. We're seeing a lot of polling sort of all saying the same thing on the economy. It's one of the kind of, I would say, strongest signals right now in the data we have of public opinion. I thought this was interesting. Just asking people in the most recent political poll, who's more responsible for the economy? Fully or mainly Joe Biden, 29%, fully or mainly Donald Trump, asked about who you trust to manage the economy. Democrats and Republicans are now even. Democrats have pulled even with Republicans. They were behind.

Trump and his people around him seem to think it's a messaging thing. And if he goes to beautiful Mount Dairy Lodge in the Poconos, he can, with an affordability sign, they can kind of message their way out of this? Can they? Do you think that's going to be effective? Look, I mean, I think every time folks go to the store, whether they're buying food or buying a house, it doesn't matter, they're seeing prices go up, up, up, up. And I think you can say one thing, but when people are experiencing another, that's going to be the impact. You know, elections of economy stupid is what they've been about for a long, long time. And I'm telling you that... Costs continue to go up. Groceries continue to go up. Everything continues to go up. You know, this is, this is, it's really, it's a situation where I think every family's in this situation. I think small business are in this situation. And that's kind of, you know, I'll be very thankful if the government cuts a check to farmers. But the truth is, what about those Main Street businesses that were impacted by kids? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Why are they any different than I am? We're both small businesses. I mean, the bottom line is this. I'm not opposed to tariffs, but the president has implemented these tariffs has really ruined the economy of this country. When the president took over, the economy of this country was the best in the world. Was there inflation? Yep, there was. And the president ran on reducing that inflation, and he has done nothing to reduce the inflation in this country. And that's just not me talking. That's a fact. Go to the store. Former Senator John Tester of Montana. Thank you so much for spending some time with us tonight. Thanks, Chris. Still ahead, the Supreme Court's latest steps to give this man as much power as possible. Next.

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in an attempt to knock out what are essentially the last remaining federal campaign finance regulations we have left in this country. Basically, the plaintiffs here want to lift all caps on how much party committees can directly spend on races. It would be something akin to Citizens United 2.0, just sort of complete reins off. Republicans believe this case, which was first brought by Vice President JD Vance when he was a Senate candidate, is going to be one of several rulings from this court to help them ahead of the midterms. In fact, the Trump Department of Justice isn't even offering a defense of the current rules before the court. Instead, the court had to reach in and appoint a lawyer. They also allowed experts like Mark Elias backed by the DNC to join the case. It's unclear how the court will rule, but if the court does strike down the regulations, it would be the latest step by this 6-3 Trump majority to put their thumb on the scale for billionaire money in politics and, frankly, Republicans ahead of the next November. I mean, remember, last week, in a temporary ruling, they struck down the lower court's finding, clearing the way for Texas to use, at least for now, it's blatantly racially gerrymandered pro-Republican maps in these upcoming midterms. Sherilyn Eiffel is a founding director of the 14th Amendment Center for Law and Democracy at Howard University. Previously, the president and director counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She has a new piece about the 14th Amendment titled, Is It Too Late? And she joins me now. Sharon, since I ended that on the Texas case, I want to start with that. We had a lower court do some real fact finding, and they found that basically these were unconstitutional and unlawful. In fact, they were explicitly racially gerrymandered. in contravention of this Supreme Court's own jurisprudence on what's permissible, the Supreme Court came in and one of their unsigned, you know, docket, shadow docket ruling said, eh, it's fine for now. What do you make of that? What do I make of it? Well, first of all, it's obviously incredibly consequential, Chris. We have the 2026 elections coming up. But we have, as you alluded to, this incredibly detailed district court factual set of findings. The court conducted hearings, heard from witnesses, saw exhibits. and in a 160-page opinion, made clear that this was, in fact, a racial gerrymander. It's interesting because there's no question that the goal was to get a partisan advantage. Remember, this is the re- redistricting of the Texas congressional seats, called for by Trump, who called the governor of Texas and said, we need five more seats. kind of hearkening back to, we need 11,000 more votes. This is his attempt to insulate the House next year. So there's no question that the ultimate goal was to establish partisan gain. And of course, the Supreme Court years ago said they can't do anything about partisan gerrymandering. So that was what allowed Trump to do it.

Trump appointees, W. Bush appointees, Reagan appointees. I mean, the co-author of the infamous torture member ordered George W. Bush, who just recently found that Trump was denying people being deported due process. Across the ideological spectrum, these lower courts coming on and being like, no, this isn't right. For sure. And then the Supreme Court coming in sometimes signed and sometimes unsigned to be like, eh, seems fine to us. Yeah, I mean, you know, Elena Kagan says, you know, over a holiday weekend, but, you know, you have to balance that against a district court taking two weeks to have hearings and hearing, you know, scores of witnesses and seeing exhibits and hearing testimony and so on and so forth. This is a deep and sustained. investigation of what happened in this redistricting. And the Supreme Court, which now believes that it has the power not only to say what the law is, but to say what the facts are, decides that it can see the facts better. And that is not as a litigator. That's not how our system works. In fact, appellate court judges are supposed to be restrained. They can't even overturn the factual findings of lower courts if they would disagree with them. It has to be that some clear error was made. And it's clear that that standard. was not met in this Texas redistricting case. I want to ask you about something that happened tonight, which I thought was pretty interesting. Judge Amel Bovi, he is now a federal circuit appellate judge. He, of course, was the kind of number two at the Department of Justice. He was widely reported in almost all the reporting we had about the department to be kind of the president's kind of bagman, hatchet man. He is now a federal judge. And he is there in the third or fourth row at the president's rally tonight. It's not like some official event. It's a presidential rally. He's going off on partisan harangues, as you would imagine. He told us at MS Now that he was just a citizen coming to watch the president speak. You think it's appropriate for him to sit in the fourth row there? It's absolutely inappropriate. And he knows it's inappropriate, but they are all feeling quite heady with their impunity. And, you know, to be honest, the fish stinks from the head. If you have observed over the last six or seven years this Supreme Court scorn, you know, the bounds of ethics that actually bind many lower court judges, I think we're going to see more of this. We're going to see more misbehaving of this particular sort. But I think they feel, you know, it's almost as though Trump's impunity is covering all of the people who support him. We see it with Pam Bondi. We see it with Kristi Noem. You know, we see it with all of the, with Kash Patel, with Pete Hegseth, you know, they don't, they don't think war crimes apply to them. It's, it's as though they took the Supreme Court's decision saying that the president has this immunity and they have cloaked themselves in it. But the truth is, they are not covered by that immunity. And so time will tell whether these folks will be able to enjoy what they think is this lifetime immunity. Yeah, we should note that the first ever judicial impeachment, which was unsuccessful, Salmon Chase, was for accusations of him being essentially an overly partisan hack. Partisan, yes, yes. Last question for you is, how important is it for Democrats and others in kind of civil society to send the message to all these actors, whether they're commanders in the chain of command, whether the people, the Department of Justice, whether they're federal judges, whether they're corporations, that just because Trump has immunity doesn't mean that...

that that lasts in perpetuity or covers other people, whether that's civil, criminal, ethical, other means of holding people to account when and if we get through this. Now, you asked exactly the right question because, you know, there is no immunity for these other actors. And I think that it's really important for Congress. And here I mean the Democrats in Congress because Mike Johnson has decided that he works for Trump. that they use their powers, that they use their bully pulpits, that they use their investigatory power, that they use their disciplinary power, that we all do the same to hold these individuals accountable because they do not have impunity and they must be accountable. And I think firing that shot... across the bow when these actors step outside of what is appropriate, either ethically or legally, they must face some swift pushback, certainly from elected officials, but also from the people. We have powers, too. And I think it's very, very important to separate them out from this cloak of immunity that the Supreme Court decided to give to the president. All right, Cheryl and Eiffel, as always, learned so much from you. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you, Chris. Still to come just a day after she announced a run for U.S. Senate. I will speak to Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett about the political landscape in the Lone Star State. Next.

Home to the Rachel Maddo Show. Morning Joe, the briefing with Jen Saki, and more voices you know and trust. MS Now is your source for news, opinion, and the world. Learn more at MS. Now. Texas Republicans are getting very, very nervous about what is shaping up to be a brutal and strange primary for U.S. Senate in their party. You see, Senator John Cornyn, right, who's served for over 20 years, is now facing a tough race for re-election. He's marred by low approval ratings, but crucially, he is fighting off a primary challenge, two of them, actually. One from the state's far-right Attorney General, Ken Paxton, and Republican Congressman Wesley Hunt. Now, on the Democratic side, a rising star in the party, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, has just thrown her hat in the ring, announcing her candidacy hours before the state's filing deadline yesterday. She will now face off against just one primary opponent, young charismatic state representative, James Talarico. That's after former Congressman Colin Allred, who ran in the last cycle, ended his Senate campaign yesterday to run for a new House seat instead. Joining us now is Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett of Texas. Congresswoman, it's good to have you on. This was, as far as I could tell, there was even reporting saying that you had kind of like twin forms filled out and twin cashiers checks about whether filing for the House or the Senate race. So this came down to the last second. Take me through what pushed you over. Yeah, so I'll tell you that I might have been telling a lot of people that I was closer to a yes than a no. But I was really concerned. Number one, I was concerned about Democratic unity. I talked a lot about the fact that I really wanted us to have a very strong ticket. And instead of kind of having our star power put into one race, I wanted to see if we could somehow make it to where you could have an option for governor. Say if you had nothing but state experience. See if we could have an option for, you know, Senate. See if we could have lieutenant governor, attorney general. And really give different parts of the state of Texas someone to vote for and be excited about. It's kind of hard to get around a state of 30 million people. We saw that Beto did it. He went to 254 counties, but Beto also literally worked himself into a sickness. He ended up being hospitalized more than once. And so I didn't feel like it made sense that we should just kind of have, you know, maybe one big, big, big kind of race. But hey, at the end of the day, I thought that once a... Supreme Court did what they did, that we absolutely needed to do something about getting the right person into the Senate. And it was interesting listening to your previous conversation. The oversight for the Senate, for the Supreme Court, it comes from the Senate. So those are the things that I was looking at, as well as my actual experience on the federal level, as well as being an attorney, and knowing that we need to change the Senate map if we're really going to get things like voting rights, if we're going to get reproductive access, if we're going to get health care, we've got to change what's happening in the Senate. So there's a bunch of stories today about how your entrance into the race is welcome news for John Cornyn. There's like anonymous quotes from a staffer saying like, we're thrilled. There was people citing the fact that the Senate campaign arm of the Republicans had commissioned a poll that showed you ahead in the primary, that they were essentially trying to kind of pull you into the race with the logic being that your perception and coding among Texas voters is as to anti-Trump.

or as too sort of polarizing to plausibly win a statewide election in a state that Democrats have, as we all know, not want a statewide election in like decades. What's your response to people will say, even people were sympathetic to you who are like, is this the person that could win like 8 to 10% of Republican voters necessary to win this race? So I actually disagree with the characterization that we have to get 8 to 10%. What we know is that in this last election, approximately 51% of eligible voters in Texas voted. What we've not had is someone that could energize our base. That is abysmal. We are always one of the lowest voter turnout states. When you look at when we ended up getting two Democratic senators in the state of Georgia, just know it was because they got their voter participation up. And so that's what we planned to do. What we were testing for was we wanted to know, can I excite people that normally don't vote? And the answer was simply yes. In addition to that, we look. at Beto's results because that is the best election for us to look to. It was a Trump, you know, a response type of election. And ultimately, we know that he won black and brown folk over overwhelmingly. And so am I in polling. So in the Raphael Warnock and Assoff examples, which do strike me as the closest model, right? In both those cases, it was a bit of both and though, right? They definitely juice turnout. And they definitely got... They got high levels of turnout, but they also did win crossover voters. I mean, there's a pretty significant slice, and particularly if you look at those precincts and those Atlanta suburbs, particularly. So it does seem like both of those are necessary, particularly when you're looking at the numbers that you're staring down in Texas, which is, again, numerically, it's like a tough, it's not an easy place to win. No, I think that you're absolutely right when you say that, but I think what we've got to look at is that when you look at, say, the district in Tennessee and the fact that Trump had won by... a little over 20 points, yet somehow it swung to a single digit race, then we know people that voted for Trump. Well, some of them are regretting those votes. We just saw an election today down in Miami where a Republican was outed, and we know that they hadn't been able to win in 30 years down in that area. We also know what happened in Mississippi, where they flipped two Senate seats. We also know what has happened in Georgia, where they were able to get two statewide seats. So here is the reality. I don't think anyone who is super in. love with Trump would ever vote for me or any other Democrat. That is just the reality. I think what it is is who is going to talk to people and make them understand that they will fight for them. That is why you have Zohran Mamdani Trump voters. That is why you have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Trump voters. That is why you had Obama Trump voters. Let me tell you something. Zohran Mamdani has not backed down whatsoever from his rhetoric against the president. In the Oval Office, he stood there and he said what he said about him being a fascist, yet he was able to win those voters. Democrats that believe the only way that you can win is by being soft and sounding like a Republican, that is not true. What people are looking for are people that are tough and are fighters and are going to fight for them. Fight for better health care. Fight for access to jobs. Fight for education. That is what they're looking for. And that's what it is that I have to offer.

Yeah, I want to just, you mentioned this, so I want to bring it up. In Miami, Miami had a mayor election tonight. It was a runoff. That city has not had a Republican, has not had a Democrat. Democratic mayor, I think since the 1990s, nearly 30 years. The last election in 2021, the incumbent ran for a second term, and he won by like 75 to 15, essentially. So tonight, the Democrat ran, is going to win between 10 and 20 points. I mean, so there is something happening in the country right now. I want to play very quickly your ad that I thought was pretty interesting. This is the first ad I've seen from your very new campaign. Take a listen. She's a very low IQ person. Somebody said the other day she's one of the leaders of the party. I said you've got to be kidding. Now they're going to rely on Jasmine Crockett. Jasmine Crockett's going to bring them back. This is obviously a shot across the bow that this is going to be a campaign about Trump. Do you think that Trump is going to figure prominently this one way or the other? I think so. I think it's hard to say that he's not. I mean, when you see election wins like the one that you just referenced, obviously it's Trump's policies that are on the ballot. Right now, we have a senator that has decided that he won't fight for Texans, but instead he's decided that he will do whatever Trump tells him to do. We are one of the largest trade states in this country, in this nation. And unfortunately, we have somebody that will not go up against the president to protect our people that are doing trade. in Texas when it comes to the tariffs, or we can talk about the record-breaking number of farmers and ranchers that are filing for bankruptcy, and we do everything bigger in Texas, including agriculture, and he's not fighting for them. So I think right now it's just going to come down to the basis. Who's going to have your back? And the answer is Jasmine Crockett. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett, a new entry in that U.S. Senate race. We'll be right back.

Before he go, is Donald Trump's grip on his party slips. Not a huge amount, but you're seeing it, right? Many of the people who once aggressively supported him are warning about the threats they now face from their own former MAGA base. After President Trump called me a traitor, I got a pipe bomb threat on my house, and then I got several direct death threats on my son. On your son? On my son. On my son. This week on Wise Is This Happening Podcast, I spoke with the New Yorkers, Benjamin Netanyahu Wallace Wells, who just wrote this incredible piece of The New Yorker about basically political violence and division in this moment, how that violence has been kind of synonymous with the Trump era. Really, really edifying discussion. Check it out wherever you get your podcast. That does it for All In. You can catch us every weeknight at 8 o'clock on MS now. Don't forget to like us on Facebook. That's facebook.com slash all on with Chris. Hello, I'm Ozempic. And I'm other GLP ones, kind of like him. Hey, are you shaking a Maraca? No, I'm shaking the pill version of Ozempic, which no one should ever do except in ads like this. A nice disclaimer. Hey, thanks. Asked your doctor about which FDA approved uses of the Ozempic pen or pill may be right for you. Call 1833 Ozemp or visitozempic.com to view the medication guide and learn more about Ozempic somaglite tablets, 9 milligrams. And Ozempic somaglite injection, two milligrams. There's a pill version of Ozempik.