Valuetainment - May 16, 2026


＂$10.9 Million In DARK Money＂ - Texas AG TORCHES The Swamp Protecting John Cornyn

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
John Donald Trump John Cornyn Barack Obama George W. Bush Joe Biden James Tallarico Ted Cruz George Washington James Salary Newt Gingrich Hillary Clinton Sam Houston Troy Nels John Thune Rick Perry Karl Rove John Doe No Schwarzman Tuscaneiro Sanders and 7 more
＂China Is The ENEMY＂ - Ken Paxton DEFENDS Texas' AI Data Center EXPLOSION ＂Xi Jinping Is MAGA＂ - The Most SHOCKING Moments From Trump's HISTORIC China Summit

Episode Stats


Length

20 minutes

Words per minute

196.16

Word count

4,012

Sentence count

311

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

3

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Candidate Beto O'Rourke talks about his campaign and why he's running against John Cornyn in the Democratic primary for the Senate seat currently held by Sen. Cornyn. He also talks about why he thinks Cornyn should go down in history as one of the most nasty primary candidates.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
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00:00:30 You are currently in one of the nastiest races out there.
00:00:33 They're calling it the nastiest Senate race, primary, in the history of Texas.
00:00:37 You're going against the current sitting Senator John Cornyn, who has been there since, I think, 2002.
00:00:44 And he's been in politics for 40-plus years, 42, 43 years.
00:00:48 So he's been a senator for 24 years.
00:00:50 You're going up against him.
00:00:52 The numbers that I look at here on the race is he is raised 17 times you have raised.
00:00:59 based on the money that you look at everywhere.
00:01:03 They're bragging about it, right, that they've raised 17 times you.
00:01:06 And then whoever wins between the two of you will be facing James Tallarico,
00:01:11 which yesterday Barack Obama was there helping him campaign with him, right?
00:01:15 And we know Tallarico first quarter raised, I don't know, 27 million bucks,
00:01:19 I think three times what Cornyn raised in the first quarter
00:01:22 and 12 times what you raised in the first quarter.
00:01:25 And the plus minus is the market says that if you face him, he's up eight.
00:01:32 But if Cornyn, yeah, he's up eight.
00:01:34 But if Cornyn faces him, he's up seven, which means it's a tight race between you and John Cornyn.
00:01:41 So where is it at now?
00:01:43 The nasty ads are everywhere.
00:01:45 Everybody in the world is seeing it.
00:01:47 Where is it at now?
00:01:47 What is the biggest difference?
00:01:49 If you were to make the case to Americans watching this, what is the biggest difference between Senator John Cornyn,
00:01:54 who's sitting there right now versus yourself.
00:01:57 So John's running for a fifth term,
00:01:59 which would be 30 years in the Senate,
00:02:00 which no one's ever done in Texas history.
00:02:04 Since we've become part of the union in 1845,
00:02:06 Sam Houston had this seat.
00:02:08 No one's running for five terms.
00:02:11 It's time for a chance.
00:02:12 This guy, I've been traveling since April the 8th
00:02:15 when I announced a year or two months ago.
00:02:18 And I've asked every single person,
00:02:20 every single meeting,
00:02:21 whether it's one person or thousands,
00:02:22 Can you name one good accomplishment of John Cornyn, not just in his 24 years in the Senate, but let's take the whole 42 years where he's been Attorney General, he's been on the Supreme Court, he's been a district judge.
00:02:33 Give me one good thing, one good accomplishment.
00:02:36 And guess what?
00:02:37 No one has ever been able to answer that question.
00:02:39 On the other hand, I've told people, John can take the two weeks.
00:02:43 Pick any two weeks I've been Attorney General other than the weeks of Christmas and Thanksgiving.
00:02:48 And I will have accomplished more for the state of Texas in two weeks.
00:02:52 any two weeks than he's done in 42 years and that is that's the problem that's why you see
00:02:58 john cornyn campaign the way he is he that's why he needs so much money from dc that's why he has
00:03:03 to be so nasty he doesn't have anything to campaign on other than his made-up positions
00:03:09 that he somehow loves trauma and somehow it's for the border wall all the stuff that he's been
00:03:13 against his whole career and part of my mission is to educate people i don't have the same amount
00:03:17 money because the rules are rigged
00:03:19 for incumbents
00:03:21 and against challengers, so I'm
00:03:23 very limited on what I'm allowed to raise.
00:03:25 Incumbents have basically unlimited
00:03:27 fundraising, so that's why you can raise so much more
00:03:29 money, and they go to donors all over
00:03:31 the country and tell them they're going to use it
00:03:33 against Democrats, and then they spend it against people like me.
00:03:35 So that's the difference in funding.
00:03:37 The rules are rigged, and if you look at the last
00:03:39 40 years,
00:03:41 there's only been two that I know of,
00:03:43 two incumbents, senators, Senate and Democrat,
00:03:45 or Republicans, and lost.
00:03:47 And it's one was against the self-runner, and the other was in a convention state in Utah.
00:03:52 It just doesn't happen when they rig the rules.
00:03:54 But we're going to win this race, and I think in less than two weeks, we're going to see those results.
00:04:00 And they're going to be great.
00:04:00 You know, one of the things everybody's talking about is when and who the president's going to be endorsing,
00:04:09 because he hasn't said anything yet.
00:04:11 And Kalshi and other markets are saying that there may be a possibility he doesn't endorse anybody.
00:04:18 And he kind of sits this one out.
00:04:20 And so some people are questioning, saying, why wouldn't he do that?
00:04:22 Because in the past, you know, the president has had issues with Cornyn because of Cornyn's J6 position that he had, if I'm not mistaken.
00:04:32 Trump blasted Cornyn on Truth Social as weak, ineffective and very bad for the Republican Party.
00:04:38 This is right during the J6 time that that was taking place.
00:04:41 Then we saw Cornyn got booed at the 2022 Texas Republican State Convention over his gun bill,
00:04:47 which was controversial at the time when he took a certain position on voting bipartisan for the Safer Communities Act,
00:04:54 I believe it was, of Uvalde in 2022.
00:04:57 And then, you know, some of the study voted for on Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, the aid,
00:05:02 and you frame it more as wasting money abroad while Texas suffers.
00:05:05 So your position is a different position.
00:05:07 But if that's the case, is there a possibility that the president may come out and endorse you over Cornyn or just sit this one out?
00:05:15 Look, I don't want to ever predict what President Trump's going to do.
00:05:18 All I can tell you is I've been a supporter of his board since he ran in 2016.
00:05:24 Of course, Donald Trump's not supported by John Cornyn in 2016.
00:05:28 And then in 2024, he said that Trump's time has passed.
00:05:31 He insinuated that Donald Trump was guilty of crimes.
00:05:34 And I was, of course, at Mar-a-Lago, which is where I saw you last time.
00:05:38 I was there for his announcement.
00:05:39 There were only two politicians there.
00:05:41 Because remember, back then, everybody thought Sanders was the guy and Trump was in trouble
00:05:45 illegally.
00:05:46 But I showed up with Troy Nelson, the congressman from Texas, and there weren't other politicians
00:05:50 there.
00:05:50 So I stuck with Donald Trump.
00:05:52 I went to his trial.
00:05:53 I was the first one to show up at one of his trials.
00:05:55 And, of course, I was the one that followed the election challenges after he lost to Joe
00:06:00 Biden.
00:06:01 So I've been there with him from the beginning.
00:06:02 I can't predict what he's going to do.
00:06:04 All I can tell you is I'm a fan of Donald Trump,
00:06:07 and we've had a good relationship over the years.
00:06:09 Yeah, it's almost as if these personal attacks they're making at you
00:06:14 with your marriage, with all the stuff that's public,
00:06:19 because I think I had no idea your wife was also a state senator in Texas,
00:06:24 if I'm not mistaken.
00:06:25 That's pretty wild.
00:06:26 Both of you senators in the state of Texas, you're federal, she's state.
00:06:31 I mean, not federal, you're AG.
00:06:32 she's state senator and so they started attacking you and she's kind of sit this one out it's an
00:06:37 interesting thing on how you know sometimes marriage doesn't work out the president's been
00:06:40 through it a couple times so it's not like he uh doesn't know and so i i almost think i wonder if
00:06:45 these personal attacks that happen does it go against cornyn where cornyn sits there and says
00:06:52 hey who am i going to get i don't know how it's going to work out but how do you handle it yourself
00:06:56 you've been in this game for a while attacks are a normal thing you're a lawyer your skin has got
00:07:00 to be thick you know you're not going to be able to do what you do without having thick skin how
00:07:04 much thick skin do you need to have for you to run for a race like this knowing they're blasting 0.99
00:07:09 your personal life look i've never seen anybody as nasty as john corn it's pretty pathetic for 0.98
00:07:14 a sitting u.s senator who's been in office for 42 years but that's the line of attack you know 0.97
00:07:20 when i ran as incumbent for attorney general twice i talked about me and what i had accomplished i
00:07:25 talked about what i wanted to do i didn't even talk about my opponents john is so weak he doesn't
00:07:30 have anything good to sell us. And he doesn't want to talk about his record because, as you said,
00:07:34 on the Second Amendment, he sided with Joe Biden. He sided with Joe Biden on bringing Afghan
00:07:39 refugees here without vetting them. He fought Donald Trump on the border wall. Of course,
00:07:44 he now claims he didn't, but I've got clips of him, you know, 30, 20 clips of him saying
00:07:48 he opposes the border wall. He fought for amnesty. He's been overseeing a budget deficit since he
00:07:53 got there from the time of George Washington until he got there, 6.2 trillion. What is it,
00:07:58 38, 39 short, it's hard to even keep track of. But he has not represented
00:08:02 Texas values. He has not fought for us. And I'm like, look, we've got a great
00:08:06 senator, Ted Cruz. Let's have two instead of just one that's basically canceling Ted Cruz
00:08:10 out. So it's a pretty easy argument for me to make. The problem is
00:08:13 he spends a lot of money lying about his record and lying about me. And the personal stuff,
00:08:18 look, you can say whatever you want. I've been attacked. I've gone through a lot of legal issues
00:08:22 just like Donald Trump. I've won all of those, but he brings them back up like
00:08:26 You know, he was a judge. He knows that you're you shouldn't be innocent until proven guilty.
00:08:30 And of course, they never prove me guilty, just like they never proved John Donald Trump guilty.
00:08:34 Because guess what? We didn't do it. When you're fighting, you get attacked.
00:08:38 And John never fights. So he never gets attacked.
00:08:41 Here's maybe a tough question to ask, but I wonder what you would say about this.
00:08:46 So I remember watching an interview when the president was running.
00:08:51 They went and sat down with Ivana and they spoke to Ivana.
00:08:54 And Ivana is President Trump's ex-wife, and we know the stories, Ivana, Marla, you know, leading to Melania now, very public.
00:09:02 The president handled it like a pro and moved on, and, you know, he's become a two-term president.
00:09:07 They were trying to get negative things to be said by Ivana about the president, and she said nothing negative.
00:09:14 If an interview was done today with Senator Angela, I believe, Paxton, what would she say about supporting you becoming the senator of state of Texas?
00:09:27 Look, I have no idea. We're in the middle of all of that right now.
00:09:31 So it's a sensitive time for me.
00:09:33 The reason I don't talk is that I have four amazing children, 33-year-old son, 31-year-old daughter, 29-year-old daughter, 27-year-old daughter.
00:09:43 and they're all they'll they have six grandchildren so my my goal is to protect them and so i don't
00:09:49 talk about it because i don't want to disparage anybody i want to keep that private because i
00:09:55 respect them and even if i have disagreements with um with with angela i don't want to air
00:10:02 any of that in public because i don't really want to damage her either so my goal is to protect
00:10:06 everybody and uh you know running for office is a difficult thing and if it really does come to
00:10:11 but down to personal things versus performance.
00:10:14 I mean, I don't know John Coren's marriage.
00:10:15 I don't know what really happens.
00:10:17 I don't know the real story.
00:10:19 I don't really even know the real story with Donald Trump.
00:10:21 I mean, we don't know what happens behind closed doors and personal relationships.
00:10:25 And just because maybe one person talks about it and another doesn't,
00:10:28 well, we may never know what the truth is.
00:10:30 And I think part of that is because people like me don't want to expose their children
00:10:35 and their grandchildren because once it's said, it's out there and the damage is done.
00:10:40 I would rather not win than do harm to any of my family.
00:10:45 I respect that.
00:10:47 Wow, that's a pretty powerful statement to be made.
00:10:48 You would rather not win than harm the relationship with your kids.
00:10:52 That says a lot about your character and the relationship with the kids.
00:10:55 I've got four kids as well.
00:10:56 I've got a lot of respect for that comment.
00:10:58 So endorsements, when I look at endorsements of who you've gotten
00:11:01 and who he's gotten, and I don't know what this means in a marketplace,
00:11:03 but nowadays people kind of want to know who endorsed too.
00:11:06 When I look at your list, I have CPAC.
00:11:08 I see Turning Point Action, which is pretty interesting that the TPUSA Turning Point Action has endorsed you.
00:11:16 We have Bannon and a few other people, okay, about 250 Texas leaders total.
00:11:21 When we look at him, we'll see Senate Majority Leader John Thune.
00:11:25 We see Governor Rick Perry.
00:11:27 We see Newt Gingrich.
00:11:28 We see AIPAC.
00:11:30 We see U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
00:11:33 And we even see somewhere where he gave, I think, $5,000.
00:11:36 What is it?
00:11:36 Bush gave $5,000, the President Bush gave $5,000 to him, Karl Rove gave $15,000 to him,
00:11:43 Schwarzman gave a million, John Now gave $3.9 million, there's even a pack that we can't
00:11:49 even know who the money is in there, I think it's $10.8 million, $10.9 million that was
00:11:53 in that pack that was given as well.
00:11:55 So how much do you think endorsements impact at this phase of the game?
00:12:00 you know we all try to get him but the reality is you know there's one endorsement really matters
00:12:07 if the other ones don't matter that much i mean they're important texans i'm not discounting back
00:12:14 they're they're important but i think you know voters are looking at performance and they're
00:12:18 looking at always tell them don't look at the rhetoric look at the record and the performance
00:12:22 is not there which i'm important if you can tell me where it's at i'd love to i'd love to know
00:12:26 I even challenged him over the Save America Act and said, just pass that, just pass that.
00:12:31 It's the most important legislation that I know about in maybe the last several decades to protect our elections so that we can have fair elections and not lose this country over cheating all these Democratic states.
00:12:41 And yet I said, look, I'll consider dropping out if you will just pass the Save America Act.
00:12:45 Instead, John goes on vacation for three out of four last four weeks and leaves the most important bill that may decide the future of whether we have a free country and free and fair elections.
00:12:58 And he doesn't get it done.
00:13:00 And that's I was giving him one more chance after talking to 42 years.
00:13:04 Please deliver on something and deliver on this now.
00:13:08 And I consider it a good job.
00:13:09 And guess what?
00:13:10 They go on vacation.
00:13:11 He doesn't get it done, just like everything in the past with him.
00:13:15 And that's all I've asked for.
00:13:16 Deliver on things that matter to this country, and he has not done it.
00:13:22 Yeah, so how recent was this?
00:13:25 What's that?
00:13:26 How recent was this that he left for vacation?
00:13:28 Is this a recent event?
00:13:30 Yeah, like in the last month.
00:13:31 If you look at the last month, they've been on vacation two to three of those four weeks.
00:13:37 So, yeah, they had it for President Trump.
00:13:40 In the State of the Union, I was there.
00:13:41 I watched him say, this is the most important light I know.
00:13:44 And they did nothing with it.
00:13:46 And then I came out and said, you know what?
00:13:47 If they'll get something done, I'll consider getting out.
00:13:49 Because this is so important to the future of the country that it's more important than my race.
00:13:54 It's the most important thing they can pass.
00:13:57 And they can't get it done.
00:13:58 We have 53 Republicans, and we can't get it done with 53 Republicans.
00:14:01 But the House can get it done with less of a margin.
00:14:04 What is wrong with the Senate?
00:14:05 We need help.
00:14:05 We need somebody to go up there and fight.
00:14:07 So now let's go to the next phase.
00:14:09 Because the reality of it is, whoever wins between the two of you,
00:14:12 you guys are going against a formidable candidate that's got Obama campaigning for him.
00:14:16 This is a clip from yesterday of Obama visiting and helping Tallarico.
00:14:20 Is this it, Rob?
00:14:21 Go for it.
00:14:23 Can you put audio?
00:14:24 Good to see you.
00:14:25 Hey, people.
00:14:26 I hear the tacos here are okay.
00:14:27 They're amazing.
00:14:28 They're not bad.
00:14:28 That's the word on the street.
00:14:30 Lilia, this is your spot.
00:14:31 This is your joint.
00:14:32 So what I'm thinking is, got to get the street taco.
00:14:35 I need maybe like a holy moly.
00:14:37 I'll have a street taco.
00:14:38 No, I need.
00:14:39 I think I know your order.
00:14:40 Yeah, breakfast tacos.
00:14:41 Potato, egg and cheese.
00:14:42 That's right.
00:14:42 I come here a lot, so she does.
00:14:44 Oh, you got something there.
00:14:46 No, I'm teasing, I'm teasing.
00:14:48 This looks like a table of troublemakers right here.
00:14:51 Who's this cutie? 0.93
00:14:53 This is my baby niece, Jane. 0.98
00:14:54 Hey, you.
00:14:55 And what's my name?
00:14:58 That's me.
00:14:59 She's been saying Barack Obama, so she's almost got it.
00:15:02 Listen, that's better than us, dude.
00:15:04 That's a pretty good campaign video
00:15:08 When you're seeing on one end, you guys are going to have to go up against this guy who's got the biggest power player on the left already campaigning for him.
00:15:17 So whether it's you or whether it's Senator Cornyn, both of you guys have this guy ahead of you.
00:15:24 So when you see something like this with Tallarico, who do you think measures better against him, you or Senator Cornyn?
00:15:32 first of all i'm excited to see barack obama campaigning for him because barack obama never
00:15:38 did really well in texas if you look at his numbers they were not very good here so
00:15:42 look i hope that barack obama here is here every day campaigning for talarico and the answer to
00:15:47 your question is i have no doubt i'll do better i mean the polling is you can see polling where
00:15:52 sometimes i do a little better that the one you talked about he did one point better most polls
00:15:57 i've seen we do about the same but i really think i have a better chance of energizing voters
00:16:01 John Cornish doesn't have energy.
00:16:03 He doesn't campaign.
00:16:03 He doesn't even have the energy to stand up when he's at the State of the Union address every time with the other senators.
00:16:09 He just doesn't have the energy.
00:16:11 You can see it.
00:16:12 And in the last year and two months, I've been on the road everywhere.
00:16:16 He has shown up at two events, and otherwise, and those were both for the president.
00:16:21 And otherwise, I don't see him out campaigning.
00:16:24 He doesn't do grassroots events.
00:16:25 I will be out there working really hard to highlight the fact that James Tallarico is identified with Barack Obama and his policies.
00:16:34 Guess what? Once Texans know that and they know what Tallarico actually believes, very confident that he might do well in California.
00:16:43 He might be really great in Illinois or New York. Texas is not his place.
00:16:47 What do you think? Why is he such a big threat? I mean, he's been on podcasts. He did great with Rogan.
00:16:53 And he went on there. People started saying, we like this guy because maybe he's a Christian.
00:16:58 Maybe he's a center or left. We can trust a guy like this.
00:17:01 And he's smooth. He talks about his values.
00:17:04 He has a little bit of that Obama-esque energy to him as well.
00:17:07 Why is he such a big threat, Ken?
00:17:10 Look, this is about personality. It's not about actually what he believes.
00:17:15 Once we know what he believes, Texans care about what people believe.
00:17:18 Look, we are all drawn to people we like.
00:17:22 And I think that's the reason that Barack Obama was successful as president.
00:17:26 I think that's why Bill Clinton was.
00:17:27 I think that's why George Bush was.
00:17:29 People like him.
00:17:30 They like Donald Trump.
00:17:32 You have to have some personality.
00:17:33 I don't know James Salarito.
00:17:35 I know that, one, he's young and he has no accomplishments in the legislature to speak
00:17:40 of.
00:17:40 He has no accomplishments to run for this position.
00:17:43 And I know that his positions are very strange and they don't fit Texas values.
00:17:46 And just because he says he's a pastor, I would argue that his positions are very anti-Christian.
00:17:52 They're not. They don't. Once people understand it, just because he says something doesn't mean it is true.
00:17:59 Listen to what he actually says. It's very antithetical to being a Christian pastor.
00:18:05 It's very antithetical to the values of Texas. His values don't fit here at all. 0.87
00:18:09 Can you be specific? What values like what? Give me two two examples of what he said that doesn't match the Texas values.
00:18:16 Well, I mean, claiming that God is non-binary is a very strange thing.
00:18:20 That's a big one. 1.00
00:18:22 Claiming that somehow, I don't exactly know how I made this work,
00:18:26 but that Mary's the birth of Jesus, you're married,
00:18:29 so that we shouldn't be against abortion.
00:18:32 And that, you know, they asked him what he thinks about in his spare time,
00:18:35 and he said, I think about transgender children.
00:18:36 I think that's a very strange thing to say.
00:18:39 And I don't think it, it just kind of blows my mind
00:18:42 that that's actually what you think about.
00:18:44 And he actually did say that. That's a pretty wild clip. That's a pretty wild clip to say something like that. What do you think about free time? Do you think that? I mean, it's very strange. Is this it? Yeah, this is it. We saw this clip. Go ahead, Rob.
00:18:58 something that you love that's not family or friends?
00:19:04 I love, I'm just saying this because it's on my mind,
00:19:08 the trans children who showed up yesterday at the state capitol
00:19:12 to advocate for their humanity.
00:19:14 They shouldn't have to, but it was an inspiration to watch.
00:19:18 You don't think that's motivational?
00:19:20 That doesn't inspire you to get out of bed and say,
00:19:22 I want this guy as my senator in Texas?
00:19:25 Look, if Texas is ready for that, we're done.
00:19:29 We have gone progressive across the country.
00:19:32 We are done.
00:19:33 We are over.
00:19:34 We're done.
00:19:36 Yeah, we can't lose Texas.
00:19:38 So it'll be interesting to see what will happen with this fight.
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