Transcript: Trump Erupts in Wild Panic as Tex. Senate Race Rattles GOP

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

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

In the Texas primaries on Tuesday, Democrat James Talarico triumphed, while on the GOP side, establishment Senator John Cornyn and MAGA whackjob Ken Paxton are headed for a runoff. This outcome caused Donald Trump to explode on Truth Social, where he announced he’ll soon make an endorsement designed to avert a protracted GOP bloodbath. For Democrats, Texas is like baseball—it keeps breaking your heart. Yet Republicans are clearly worried. Whatever is to be in this race, what’s happening there now is highly illuminating about this political moment, and we’re unraveling it all with Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, a veteran of Texas races. Sawyer, nice to have you on.

Sawyer Hackett: Great to be with you, Greg.

Sargent: So in the Democratic primary in Texas, state legislator James Talarico defeated Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. He’s openly religious. He talks about the need to reach out to moderates and independents and even Trump voters. He’s mild-mannered and genuinely seems to believe in his ability to persuade voters to cross over. Sawyer, can you sum up James Talarico for us?

Hackett: Yeah, I would say the best summary I could give would be he’s a progressive preacher who can throw a punch. He’s somebody who can level a blistering attack against Trump and Republicans in the Trump era while not shutting the door on voters who may disagree with him on a lot of issues.

He’s kind of exactly the kind of candidate that Democrats need to win in a state like Texas, where we do have to win over some of Trump’s voters to pull out a victory. He’s someone who can both excite the base and widen the tent. So I think Democrats are feeling pretty good about his nomination.

Sargent: Obviously it’s going to be tough because it’s Texas, but we’ll get to that. Meanwhile on the GOP side, Texas Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton both fell short of 50 percent due to a spoiler. They’re advancing to a runoff. Trump exploded on Truth Social over this. He said the GOP primary “MUST STOP NOW”—all caps, you know, when he’s angry he uses all caps. He added that Republicans have to totally focus on beating Talarico.

Then Trump said, “I will be making my endorsement soon and will be asking the candidate that I don’t endorse to immediately drop out of the race. We must win in November.” Sawyer, clearly Trump sees this primary as a threat to GOP chances of holding the seat. Reports suggest Trump will endorse Cornyn even though Paxton is the MAGA die-hard and has the support of Steve Bannon. Your thoughts on that?

Hackett: Yeah, it’s funny because you hear a lot, I think, on the Democratic side that the Democratic Party’s got its thumb on the scale—that it’s helping certain candidates and hurting other candidates. And here you have Trump essentially saying, I’m going to pick the nominee and the other candidate’s going to drop out before we even get to a runoff.

It is completely Trump’s party. He’s dictating the terms, he’s dictating the candidates, and he’s dictating the message. And frankly, that’s all toxic for Republicans and to Democrats’ benefit.

Sargent: Yeah, I would think so. And Republicans are clearly worried about the race. Two of the most hard-boiled GOP operatives, Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio—both Trump advisers—are working for Cornyn. Paxton has a trail of scandal. He’s been impeached by the GOP-controlled Texas House. His wife divorced him for biblical causes, on and on.

Cornyn himself has called on Trump to endorse, to settle this thing and get Paxton out of his hair. One Republican operative told The Atlantic that Democratic chances are much better against Paxton. Now, this is a hard race for Democrats. Do you think it is actually easier against Paxton than against Cornyn?

Hackett: I think definitely it’s easier against Paxton—just in terms of the kind of person he is, the kind of character he has. You see on the Republican side, frankly, a party that is deeply divided and unhappy. The sitting Republican senator, John Cornyn, who has served four six-year terms in the Senate for Texas, is now headed for a runoff with a far-right, criminally indicted, Republican-impeached fraudster and adulterer who has a toxic political agenda. I think the Talarico camp is kind of hoping and praying that he ends up on the top of that ticket, because I think every Democrat in the country would be excited about that matchup.

But frankly, I think even if Trump were to endorse Cornyn and push Paxton out of this race—probably for some sort of cabinet position—I still think the race is going to be extremely competitive for Talarico. Cornyn, I don’t think, is necessarily beloved across Texas. He has a better approval rating than Ken Paxton, but not that much better. He’s not necessarily known for having notched a whole bunch of accomplishments on behalf of the people of Texas. And frankly, I think Trump is the biggest factor in the general election—the most likely factor to determine how Democrats turn out and how excited Republicans are.

Sargent: Well, do you expect Paxton to drop out if Trump does endorse Cornyn, which could come as early as when people are listening to this?

Hackett: I mean, Paxton is a flunky. He is a Trump die-hard through and through. He is down at Mar-a-Lago every week kissing Trump’s ass. He has been kind of begging for Trump’s support throughout this primary process. And so I honestly do think that he’ll do whatever Trump asks of him. And I think if Trump does ask him to drop out of this race, there will be something waiting for Paxton on the other side of it, whether that’s an envelope of cash or a cabinet position.

But yeah, it’s just kind of incredible to see how Republicans can point the finger at Democrats for putting their finger on the scale of these primaries, and then you just have Trump dictating: this is going to be our nominee, this is who we’re running, this is our message.

Sargent: Texas is the perennial heartbreaker for Democrats. Beto O’Rourke came within three points of Ted Cruz in 2018, then of course in 2024 it was substantially worse for Democrats. What is the path for Talarico? What has to happen in demographic terms?

Hackett: Yeah, I mean, I think the headline coming out of this primary cycle—beyond Talarico’s victory, beyond Paxton and Cornyn headed to this runoff—is kind of the winning Democratic coalition being reassembled, in part thanks to Trump pushing voters toward Democrats, whether that’s Latino voters who showed up big time yesterday for James Talarico, or Black voters who turned out strongly for Crockett in a lot of these key areas across Texas.

I think if Talarico is able to reassemble that winning coalition—if he’s able to keep Latino voters on board in the general election, which honestly I think will be dependent on Trump and how he presents his agenda for the next few months—but also if Talarico is able to make inroads and bring those Crockett voters into the fold of his coalition, if he’s able to keep that message that has been resonating in the suburban parts of the state outside of these big cities, among independent swing voters across Texas, of which there are very many. He has shown that he has the ability to assemble this coalition, but he’s going to have to maximize turnout among those key constituencies—Latino voters, Black voters, and I think young voters too.

I mean, we saw in this primary, in the early vote, that there were 400,000 new voters who had never cast a ballot in a Democratic primary. I think that’s in large part a reaction to the Trump presidency—a kind of protest vote against what people are seeing on their TVs and their phones every single day. Talarico has to channel all of that energy, and building and assembling and keeping that coalition is the important work of every nominee. But I think in Texas it’s the most important job. And I think Talarico, based on his message and his appeal, has shown that he has the ability to do it. It’s just dependent, I think, on a lot of events happening within the next eight months or so before this race shakes out.

Sargent: But just to boil this down—why is Texas so hard for Democrats to win? Why is the wall so high?

Hackett: Republicans have done a fantastic job of suppressing the vote in Texas, of keeping voters at home, of making it extremely difficult to vote in the state. And that’s why Texas, I think, today has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. Texas also has a lot of unaffiliated independent voters out there who have tended over the years to vote Republican. Those voters, I think, in large part make up areas in the suburbs outside of the major cities and in parts of rural Texas. Texas has a lot of counties, and Democrats have to compete in all of those counties if they want to win.

Democrats have not built the infrastructural support needed to compete in every county throughout Texas the way that Republicans have. I mean, they have 30 years of voter suppression and organization that have brought them to this point and kept Democrats out of power for 30 years. If Democrats want to win, they have to go everywhere. They have to compete everywhere. They have to maximize their voters. They have to divide Republican voters, and they have to win over the sizable number—15 percent or more—of unaffiliated independent voters that are often in the rural and suburban parts of Texas.

Sargent: These 15 percent of unaffiliated voters are basically Republican-leaning voters, and that’s one of the big hurdles here?

Hackett: They may have voted for Barack Obama and turned around and voted for Donald Trump. They’re unaffiliated—I don’t necessarily think that they’re center-right voters. They’re kind of right in the middle, but I do think that over the years they have tended to support the Republican Party in Texas. And I think in part that’s due to the lack of infrastructure, the lack of attention to these voters by the Democratic Party nationally.

Sargent: Yeah. And so one big thing that has to happen here is a major turnout surge for Democrats. And there’s something important that happened in the primaries. The total number of votes for Democrats in the primary was over 2.3 million. The total votes for Republicans in the primary was 2.16 million. Democrats got more than 150,000 more votes than Republicans did. That’s unusual in Texas, right? What do you take from that?

Hackett: It’s unusual. And what’s even more unusual is that both Democratic candidates in this race got more votes than either of the Republican candidates. Even Jasmine Crockett, who ultimately lost this race by a sizable percentage, received more votes in the Democratic primary than either of the Republican candidates in the Republican primary.

I think that’s in large part due to Trump. I think a lot of voters who cast ballots yesterday did so in protest against what they’re seeing on their phones and on their computers from Donald Trump.

That being said, both Democratic candidates showed that they can turn out voters in their own communities and their own geographic locations—but also the coalition that they build in terms of James Talarico turning out Latino voters and Jasmine Crockett turning out Black voters. Democrats are going to need both of those coalitions to win.

I think James Talarico knows that he’s going to need Jasmine Crockett’s voters to win. So I think the road ahead is going to be James working with Jasmine Crockett, working with Democrats across the state to maximize turnout among Black voters, among young voters, among Latino voters, while also driving a wedge between Republican voters—which is already a deeply divided and unhappy party right now.

Sargent: Well, I want to flag something important about the Latino vote. A big thing happened here. Obviously, Trump made big inroads with Latinos in 2024. And since then, Trump seems to have basically lost whatever gains he made among them. Now we’re seeing that show up in these primaries, right? What did the primary voting in the Latino-heavy counties tell us?

Hackett: We don’t have a ton of exit polls from these primary races—I don’t think the news outlets conduct a lot of exit polls. But when we look at the county data, what you saw is that in the predominantly Latino counties of Texas, turnout was both high and strongly in favor of James Talarico.

In the I-35 corridor that runs from Laredo all the way past San Antonio—a very heavily Hispanic part of Texas—went for James Talarico. But you also saw in the five different rural majority-Latino counties in Texas, more votes were cast for the Democratic primary than for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election. That is a sign of electrifying turnout happening, I think, as a result of Donald Trump, but also as a result of these two kind of viral stars of the Democratic Party bringing their coalitions to bear in a primary.

Sargent: Well, these rural Texas Latinos are sort of their own demographic, right? Can you talk about who those people are?

Hackett: Yeah, Latino voters in Texas have a deep tradition in Texas politics. They tend to be more religious, I think, than Hispanics at a national level. They tend to be a little bit more conservative in terms of their values, not necessarily their politics.

These are communities that have tended to go Democratic by pretty wide margins over the years. Specifically, I’m thinking about the Rio Grande Valley—counties like Starr County, Cameron County, Hidalgo County. These are communities that when Democrats have lost big, they’ve lost big in those counties, as we saw in 2024. When we had that major attrition of Latino voters in Texas, it was predominantly along those communities on the border and up and down the I-35 corridor.

I think James Talarico showed that he can compete in those communities. I think his message of faith, speaking to the compassion and integrity of our state and speaking with moral clarity about who Trump is and what he represents—I think that does resonate in the Latino community.

I think he’s going to have to maximize those numbers big time in a general election. A primary is different than a general, we know that. But I think the level of enthusiasm we’re seeing in terms of the turnout and in terms of the support for Talarico across those counties shows that he has the ability to do that.

Sargent: So the basic formula, the basic path is: win over all those African American voters that won for Crockett, hold onto those big Latino gains in some of those rural Texas majority-Latino counties and elsewhere, and win a big chunk of those right-leaning independents, those Republican-leaning independents. And for that to happen, Trump’s approval has got to really keep tanking and he’s just got to keep being as disastrous as he has been. Just boil this down—what’s the route to winning and what’s the nightmare scenario? What goes wrong potentially?

Hackett: Yeah, I think you outlined it pretty well. We have to run up the numbers in these big cities—Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin. We have to have very wide margins in the general election in those communities. We have to run up the numbers in the predominantly Latino counties along the Rio Grande Valley and I-35 corridor. We have to compete in West Texas, in the panhandle, in the rural counties. We can’t just forgo those counties to Republicans.

When Beto came within three points in 2018, he did make a lot of inroads in those communities with those voters. I do think Talarico has a very similar skill set to Beto in that respect, and I think he can appeal to those communities.

And then you also have to win in the suburbs. I mean, these suburbs have been the target of the Democratic Party in these statewide races cycle after cycle. Sometimes I think we’ve tended to over-focus on the cities and ignore the suburbs. But I think those suburbs are really turning against Trump.

If you look at the communities surrounding Austin, surrounding Houston, surrounding San Antonio—those voters did strongly support James Talarico in this primary. So clearly he does have appeal in those communities. He doesn’t turn voters away. I don’t think voters view him as particularly partisan or necessarily in the tank of the Democratic Party. He can appeal to all these different constituencies, all these different communities, but it’s going to take a lot of work, a lot of money, and a lot of infrastructure. That has to start right now.

Sargent: And what can go wrong? What’s the nightmare scenario?

Hackett: I think the nightmare scenario is something happening at the national level that distracts attention from this race. I think if John Cornyn is able to pull away the primary victory and distance himself from Trump—if he is able to pull that out—I think that would be to his benefit. I don’t know that he’s going to be able to do that.

And I think if Talarico or the Democratic Party fails to make inroads with Latino voters, fails to solidify that support that he’s shown he has in this primary—if we’re not able to solidify that in the general, we cannot win in Texas. And I think there’s always just the X factor: something happening in the Supreme Court, something happening with the economy, something happening with these wars that Trump is waging around the globe. There are just a lot of X factors going into a general election.

That being said, I think Texans are pretty squarely focused on the issues that affect them—affordability, immigration. And I think James Talarico is speaking to the moment. That’s what these primaries are all about: who can speak to the moment as a candidate. And I think Talarico is doing that.

Sargent: Man, it’s going to be fascinating. Sawyer Hackett, thanks so much for that download. We really appreciate it, man. Appreciate the candor.

Hackett: Yeah, great to join you, Greg.