Kirk Bado dissects the 2026 election chaos, where Texas’s Cornyn-Paxton runoff (May 26) and Crenshaw’s Trump-endorsement loss reshaped GOP dynamics, while Dallas County’s voting fiasco exposed partisan tensions. North Carolina’s $500M Senate race pits Cooper vs. Watley amid progressive attacks like Allman’s Iran-war stance, mirroring Iran’s own regime fragility—analyst Michael Rubin warns U.S. strikes spare leaders like Rouhani for negotiations but risk civil war by ignoring Revolutionary Guard arsenals. Meanwhile, Speaker Johnson’s House majority weakens as Hunt and Crenshaw exit, while Iran’s sudden attacks on Qatar/Oman defy past alliances, signaling deeper instability. [Automatically generated summary]
Politics and public policy from Washington, D.C. to across the country.
Coming up Thursday morning, we'll talk about U.S. and Israeli combat operations against Iran and congressional debate on an Iran war powers resolution.
First, with Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon and Ohio Democratic Congressman Greg Lansman.
Also, the Wall Street Journal's Lara Seligman will talk about the latest developments in the Iran conflict.
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Well, the first primaries of election 2026 are in the books.
Joining us to break down the results in Texas and North Carolina and Arkansas is Kirk Beto.
He's editor of National Journal's hotline political newsletter.
Kirk Beto, start with those marquee races in the Lone Star State.
Yeah, I think the first big picture takeaway I have from this tonight is that it was a bad night to be an incumbent.
Not only in the five races with endangered incumbents we were watching, the top of the marquee was the Senate race with Senator John Cornyn, all five of those are going to a runoff.
And if they're not going to a runoff, they lost like Dan Crenshaw.
He's the first incumbent to lose renomination so far this cycle.
And if this trend continues, he won't be the last.
Why did John Cordy want to go to a runoff?
What was that race setting up to look like?
He's trying to hold on to that seed against Ken Paxton.
Yeah, I think he, you know, it's kind of like in the NCAA tournament where you're a lower seed against a higher seed here almost, that you're playing for overtime here.
That's what John Cornyn was doing.
Now, it's going to be a longer overtime.
It's a 12-week runoff.
The runoff happens on May 26th, the day after Memorial Day.
Coming into this, not many polls had Cornyn up.
In fact, almost every poll that I saw leading up to this had Paxton leading him.
So playing for overtime here, keeping Paxton under 50%, and actually posting a stronger than expected showing.
I think there's only about a three percentage point difference between the two of them as we're sitting here the morning after.
You got to feel not great if you're Cornyn, but you did better than you expected here.
And then switch over to the Democratic Senate primary.
James Tallarico has been declared the winner by the Associated Press, and they've called the race, but Jasmine Crockett has not conceded.
Explain what her concerns are, especially in the Dallas voting precincts.
So her big concern, Jasmine Crockett's base of support was in black voters.
She ran up the score there.
And the problem that she sees right now is a controversy over voting precincts and voting centers in Dallas County, which is a sprawling district where the city of Dallas is, and it's a predominantly black district.
Now, the controversy is last night there was a series of, there was confusion over where about a couple hundred voters could actually cast their votes.
In a break from previous election cycles, Republicans had pushed a rule change that voters couldn't go and vote at these giant voting centers.
They had to go to assigned precincts.
That caused a lot of confusion with voters who are coming out on election day.
Now, there was an order that said that polls are going to remain open an extra two hours.
And if you were in that two-hour window, you could go vote.
Then the Texas Supreme Court intervened and said that those votes don't count, or they're going to be provisional ballots.
So it's a real messy situation right now in one of the biggest population centers in the state.
So does Jasmine Crockett have any recourse for her concerns, or is this essentially over at this point?
She's promised legal action.
Again, an AP call is not binding.
It's not a legal certification here.
So she could go in and challenge these results.
She probably will.
But Talrico's lead right now is, I believe, at about maybe six percentage points or so as we're sitting here.
The couple hundred votes that might be added to her total won't be enough to overcome James Talrico, running up the score in Hispanic communities, more rural communities, independents who crossed over.
He really had a kind of an overwhelming victory here.
The AP has it at over seven percentage points at this point.
If you're James Tallarico, and let's say he does end up winning this when all is said and done and the official results are in, who does James Tallarico want to run against in Texas come the fall?
John Cornyn or Ken Paxton?
He wants Ken Paxton.
He absolutely wants Ken Patson.
Ken Paxton is the controversial attorney general there who has a lot of professional and personal baggage that Talrico can run against.
Plus, Republicans are doing the dirty work for him right now.
This is the most expensive primary on record.
$122 million were spent on advertisements alone on the Democratic and Republican side.
And a lion's share of those money was spent against Ken Paxton.
About $70 million worth was spent opposing Ken Paxton.
So he's already got this little bit of a softer image right now amongst voters.
And Talrico is going to raise money hand over fist here if Patson's the nominee.
Does Donald Trump finally get involved in this race on the Republican side on the primary as it goes to a runoff?
Well that's the $122 million question here of how what role does he play here?
I think Cornyn can probably start making a better case because of his overperformance here that you need me to win here.
You need me to keep your Senate majority.
If Patson's the nominee, he puts it in play.
And you kind of saw that in both Patsy and Cornyn's victory speeches last night.
They were to an audience of two people, to Donald Trump, who they were reaffirming their loyalty to.
Ken Patston talked about being there on Trump's election launch in 2024.
Cornyn talked about how important it was for him to win that nomination to help Trump serve out the next two terms to make sure his agenda doesn't stall in the Senate.
And also Wesley Hunt.
They were trying to make appeals to Wesley Hunt's supporters to get his endorsement because he finished with about 13.5 or so percent, about 14%.
If any one of those two were able to capture those voters, that would put them over the line in the runoff.
And John Cornyn currently ahead in vote counts at 41.9% to Ken Paxton's 40.7%.
Wesley Hunt, you had it at 13.5 percent.
Of course, in Texas, it takes 50 plus one plus one vote to win the nomination.
You mentioned some of the down ballot races.
What else are the takeaways from Texas, especially in Tony Gonzalez's race in Texas' 23rd district, the congressman getting a lot of attention, negative attention on Capitol Hill for his personal issues up here?
Exactly.
And he's really dug in there.
He said he's not going to resign.
He said he's not going to walk away here.
I wonder if the results last night make him change his mind at all.
It's kind of like the situation with Representative Van Taylor from a few years ago, who had a bombshell revelation of an affair the weekend before the primary.
He got drawn into a runoff and then decided instead of going through a 12-week re-litigation of his record, he decided to drop out.
Tony Gonzalez has given us no indication he will do that because he still has Trump did not withdraw his endorsement.
Neither did the NRCC.
And I think that's kind of my big takeaway here is that Trump is still the golden ticket for Republicans.
If you look at the one member who did lose re-nomination, Dan Crenshaw, that's the one member in the entire Texas delegation that Trump did not endorse, and he ended up losing pretty handedly.
Before we move on to North Carolina, I want to invite viewers to call in.
We've got about 20 minutes here to talk about last night's primaries, the first primaries of the 2026 midterms.
Especially want to hear from you if you live in Texas and North Carolina and Arkansas, where these primaries took place.
202748-8,000 for Democrats, 202-748, 8,001 for Republicans.
Independents, 202748, 8,002.
Go to North Carolina, the Tar Hill State.
That Senate race expected to be one of the key races of the 2026 cycle.
Absolutely.
It's one of the four toss-up races, and it's key for Democrats if they want any hope of retaking the Senate here.
Now, this primary was not nearly as bitter or expensive at all as it was in Texas.
It was kind of decided when both the Republican and the Democrat jumped in.
Former Democratic Governor Roy Cooper sailed through the primary here on the Democratic side.
On the Republican side, former RNC chair Michael Watley, who is also the former chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Republican Party, went right through.
And with how easy this was, it's going to be so much more difficult now that we're in a general election footing.
I talked to some strategists on both sides of the aisle who think the price tag for this race alone is going to top half a billion dollars with how much money is going to be spent in here.
We're off to the races now.
And this is a key race for Democrats and Republicans heading to November.
Were there down ballot House races in North Carolina that you were watching last night?
So there were two that I was watching in North Carolina.
You know, Republicans in the state gerrymandered and redrew the districts.
So there's only one lone swing district, and that's Don Davis' seat up in northern North Carolina.
He's a Democrat.
It's now a seat that Trump won by about 13 points.
So Republicans are going to be favored heading into November on this one.
Lori Butthout, who jumped in at the last minute, I believe the week before filing deadline, she was the 2024 nominee.
She said that she wasn't going to run again.
She changed her mind, jumped in, and barely scraped by in the Republican primary there with about maybe three or so percentage points lead.
That's going to be a real blockbuster race because she has the ability to sell fundraise.
Don Davis has the ability to raise a lot of money as well.
So we'll be keeping a close eye on that race.
But the big one that I was watching was in North Carolina IV, where Valerie Fouchy, Democrat, was facing off a density justice Democrat endorsed progressive challenger Anita Allman.
And right now, that race is within a percentage point.
There's still no AP race call.
The representative has declared victory.
Alam said that she is going to request a recount under North Carolina law.
Anything within a percentage point automatically goes into a recount.
This could have real big impacts throughout the rest of the primary season because this is kind of laid bare the divisions within the Democratic Party.
And these first primaries have also laid bare the redistricting battles that have taken place heading into election 2026.
Who has it worked out better for so far?
Redistricting Battles Unfold00:15:54
Well, so far, we're kind of in a mixed bag right now.
You know, when this redistricting arms race started this past summer with Trump putting pressure on Texas Republicans to redraw their seats, I thought that Republicans were just going to run roughshod over it.
There were more states that they could conceivably draw more safer seats for their party.
Democrats didn't necessarily have the same amount of states to do that.
But I've been proven wrong time and time again here.
But if you look at what happened in California, where Davin Newsom strong-armed the state legislature to redraw about five seats in favor of Democrats, there was a court order in Utah that netted Democrats one safe seat.
Republicans in Indiana and Kansas turned down pressure from the White House to redraw their seats.
Now Virginia is going through a process right now where they could have a map that's conceivably 10 Democrats to one Republican.
As we sit here right now, I think it's a little bit of a draw.
But if Virginia goes through, Democrats are going to have an advantage on just how many more safe seats that they can draw heading into November.
You want to talk politics?
You want to talk elections?
Kirk Beto, a good guy to do it with.
Phone lines are open, and we'll hear from you until about the top of the hour.
That's when we're expecting the Secretary of Defense, Pete Hexet, to come out with the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Dan Kane.
The general Kane is going to be talking about combat operations in Iran.
We're going to go there as soon as they do come out.
But until then, your phone calls and we start in the Lone Star State.
David is in Irving, Texas, line for Democrats.
David, did you vote yesterday?
Actually, I did early voting, John.
But I was working the polls yesterday, and it was quite a day.
Do you have a lot of turnout on election day?
Was there a lot of lines on your polling plays where you were working?
Actually, there were not a lot of lines.
There may have been, but the problem is the information in the voting machines was sending the voters to the wrong precincts.
We got complaints because once we register a voter, we take the license and we see where they're supposed to vote.
The information that we gave the voters sent them to the wrong polling place.
So later in the night, we get a message that the Democratic voters were going to stay open until 9.
The polls actually closed at 7, but the Democrats were going to be able to vote until 9.
I was working on the Republican side.
And then that's when the chaos at Mayhem began because the Republicans would come in and they were upset, you know, threatening that they're going to call.
And a couple of people got cursed out.
It was a pretty intense situation last night.
David, how many years, how many other elections have you worked the polls for?
This was my first one, my very first one, and probably my last.
Why did you decide to do it this year?
Well, you know, I'm retired.
I didn't have anything to do.
I got an email that said they needed workers.
I said, why not?
I didn't have anything else to do.
But people are very intense and angry about voting.
I never knew.
So you don't think this went well in Texas yesterday?
I don't think it went well at all.
The information in the, we had like iPads, and the iPad would tell us to direct the voter to the right precinct, which was bad information.
But in the early voting, we could vote anywhere in Dallas County.
We just walk out our door, find a polling center in Dallas County, and vote.
So people would, it was just absolute, just confusion.
People, they would say, I've been voting here for years.
Well, it changed this year, and I had no idea why it changed.
I was just a messenger, and people got really hostile about it.
David, thanks for talking about your experience in Texas last night.
Your takeaways.
I could have talked to David for hours about that situation.
I mean, he's on the front lines of this incredible controversy here where he's talking about they had the bad information, that voters were upset, that there was a divide between the Democratic information, Republican information, because the Democrats were the ones that sued to keep the polls open.
The Republicans did not.
I mean, that was a whole mess last night.
We just had a first-hand account of it.
Let's go to Tom in Norton, Massachusetts, line for Democrats.
Tom, what's your takeaways from last night's primaries?
Hey, so I'm all the way here in Massachusetts.
I mean, I guess I don't have the best eye into everything that Texas voters are thinking, obviously, but just watching Tallerico take this win, I guess I'd like to say that I think that the politics are moving more towards a Just wanting to have something that people are fighting for.
Where Tallarico, he seems to have a whole lot of ideas where it's, you know, like he wants to tax the rich, you know.
Just he wants to ban congressional stock trading, all sorts of ideas.
Is fighting for?
And Jasmine Crockett, it seems like she was just fighting against Trump.
And I guess I just think it's interesting that people are actually kind of voting that way.
And I think it might be a referendum on kind of her stance where she's a little too soft on Israel as well.
So I'm just curious what you guys think about that.
It's Tom and Massachusetts, Kirk Beta.
Agree?
Tom says, you know, he's from Massachusetts, doesn't really have an eye into Texas voters, but I thought that was a pretty good succinct way to look at this where the substance of what James Tallrico and Jasmine Crockett's support isn't all that different, but the style is.
If you look back at how she launched that campaign on the day before the filing deadline, it was all kind of centered on opposing Trump and her front and center.
The first launch ad that she had was 30 seconds of Trump criticize audio of Trump criticizing her with her slowly panning toward the camera.
James Tallarico, on the other hand, was running a more modern campaign that other Democrats, I think, are going to emulate.
It was a mix of traditional, we're going to spend a lot on TV, we're going to get volunteers out there, but also embracing new media, embracing social media platforms, going on Joe Rogan, going on these more online-centric platforms here to get his message out.
And I think that really resonated with a lot of voters other than the almost self-centric campaign that Jasmine Crockett was running.
So you talk about how expensive these elections are going to be come 2026, and Texas is going to be a focus now.
Is James Tallarico going to be able to raise the money needed?
Does he have the national profile to do it?
And on the Republican side, how much money does another 12-week runoff burn through for Republicans?
That's money that isn't there to fight James Tallarico or if Jasmine Crockett somehow succeeds in this legal challenge, whoever the Democrat is, come November.
Right.
So what we're looking at here is whatever Democrat comes through is going to be an underdog here.
The big question right now is if it's Paxton, outside groups are going to have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help him get across the line here on the Republican side.
All that money, every single dollar spent in Texas supporting Ken Paxton is a dollar not going to be spent helping John Houstead in Ohio or Mike Rogers in Michigan or whatever Republican comes out of Georgia to face John Ossoff.
It's going to be a black hole of money for the Republican side in a race that they should not have to spend this much money in.
On the flip side of that, James Tallarico has already shown a real knack for fundraising.
He's had a little bit more of a national profile, especially after that dust up with CBS and Stephen Colbert.
He raised $2 million, I believe, in the 24 hours after that first went out.
He outspent Jasmine Crockett by about six to one here.
He's going to have the money.
It's just whether or not he can break through all the Republican money coming in, helping whoever the Republican nominee is eventually going to be.
About 10 minutes left with Kirk Beto.
It is the National Journal's hotline newsletter.
If you want to sign up for it, a great place to stay on top of what's happening in politics.
And he's taking your calls for about another nine minutes or so.
So go ahead and get your calls in.
Phone lines for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
I didn't want to shortchange the natural state.
Was there anything you were watching in Arkansas last night?
We were watching a few judge elections there.
There's not a whole lot of competitive elections at the federal level, but we were watching a few Supreme Court races there.
The Democrats were out running the top of the ticket by wide margins there.
But the main action that we were focused on was in hotline was North Carolina and in Texas last night.
And then coming up next week, it's Mississippi, and the week after it's Illinois, and then there's a bit of a break for primaries until May.
So what are you watching for for the rest of this month?
The rest of this month, Mississippi kind of has a going to be chalk in there.
There's not really a whole lot of competitive primaries that we're watching there.
On a, you know, if the national environment continues to turn against Republicans, that Senate race might get a little bit more competitive.
So we're keeping an eye on that in Mississippi.
In Illinois, there's a bunch of House races that we're going to be keeping an eye on, and also the Senate race there to replace retiring Senator Dick Durbin.
So there's going to be a slew of open house races.
There's a few interesting dynamics there where some older Democrats, instead of going through a tough primary like Valerie Fouci is going through right now, decided to retire.
Safe open seats there that we're going to be watching.
Illinois is going to be pretty fun.
With this primary scheduled this year, is there a Super Tuesday?
I believe it's the first Tuesday in June where you're going to have California, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, and I believe South Dakota as well, if I remember correctly, all on that Tuesday night.
That is going to be a blockbuster night.
Like we had a lot of races that we're talking about here in Texas and North Carolina.
That's going to be nothing compared to Super Tuesday that first Tuesday in June.
This is William in Ohio, Democrat.
William, you are on with Kirk Beto.
Good morning, John.
This is the old, dumb, 90-year-old Hillbilly.
It's just a shame of what these elections come to.
It's all about money.
I doubt that there will even be a presidential election come January.
Say, it's just a shame.
I'm 90 years old.
I don't think I've got that much longer to go.
I hope to live to see his great make America go away.
He's well on his way.
It is just a shame that crooks, politicians, and government controls everything.
We don't have no government.
It's everything about money.
John, I'm glad that you were on this morning.
I've always enjoyed you, but I have no faith in our political system whatever.
Thank you, John.
That's William in Ohio.
These primaries last night coming four days after combat operations began against Iran.
Did that change any of the dynamics of any of these races?
Or if this goes on weeks or months, do you expect it to change the dynamics of any specific races?
I absolutely do think that if we were in a prolonged engagement over there, if this goes south for whatever reason, that this is 100% going to impact primary season and elections in November.
Last night, what we saw was this play out on a much smaller scale in that North Carolina 4 race, where Nita Alam cut an ad this weekend that went up on digital platforms and also aired Monday night during the Duke NC State game, where she criticized Valerie Fouchy for taking money from AIPAC, for not supporting, for not being vocal enough against President Trump and the war in Iran, for not pushing back enough, for supporting Israel too much.
That was kind of a warning shot across the bow here where other progressives running against more established Democrats could take that ad, copy and paste it over in their race, and I bet we're going to see that play out in a bunch of these other safe races.
If I'm someone like Steve Cohen, for example, down in Tennessee in the Memphis area, I'm looking at last night's results in North Carolina IV and the attacks that Nita Allman landed on Valerie Fouchy, and I'm nervous.
Talk about somebody who's been critical of Donald Trump, very publicly critical of Donald Trump.
Al Green, two years in a row at the president's joint address and then State of the Union address last week, getting himself ejected from the chamber, trying to criticize Donald Trump.
He was in a member-on-member primary last night.
Where is that headed at this point?
We're probably going to do a runoff there.
That's against, this is another one where redistricting played a big role.
After Republicans redrew the state, Christian Menifee, who won the special election about a month ago for the old Sylvester Turner seat, had to turn around again and run in this newly reconfigured Texas 18th that also had parts of Al Green's old district in it.
And where is that?
Houston area?
That's in the, yes, the Houston area, up northern Houston area, very safe Democratic seat.
And Christian Menefe had a little bit of an advantage going in because he's been running a campaign for so long.
This is a seat that's been open for over a year thanks to when Greg Abbott scheduled this special election.
But it wasn't enough to stop Al Green, who didn't do a whole lot of campaigning.
He didn't spend a whole lot of money, didn't raise a whole lot of money.
In fact, he wasn't down in Texas last night.
He was up here in Washington, but he still had over 40% of the vote.
What I'm going to think is very interesting to our caller earlier talking about money and politics is AI and crypto money has been coming into this race a lot against Al Green.
So I'm interested to see now that we're in this 12-week overtime period if they double down in that investment to defeat Aldreen.
Just explain to me, what's the connection, AI, crypto, Al Green?
Al Green has been a big critic of AI, wants to regulate it, has been critical and wants to regulate the crypto industry as well.
So I believe it's Fair Shake is the super PAT aligned with crypto, has spent a couple thousand dollars there.
And I bet they're going to double down on that investment here in this 12-week overtime.
So this was a member-on-member primary.
How many more of these member-on-member primaries are we looking at going forward in a time where there's been so much redistricting, unexpected redistricting this cycle?
We're going to have at least one more, and that's out in California, where I believe Ken Calvert is going to be running against Young Kim out on the, I believe that's in Orange County.
That's the only one I can think of right now off the top of my head.
We might have one in Utah as well.
There's an appeals process right now challenging the redrawn map there.
We're still trying to figure out what Burgess Owens, the Republican there, is going to do.
If he decides to run in any of the three other safe Republican seats, we could see more member-on-member primaries there.
But those are the only two that come to mind right now.
And then talk me through what happens over the next 12 weeks in Texas.
What is going to be the deciding factor here?
You mentioned Donald Trump and Wesley Hunt.
The runoffs of these primaries are usually a smaller contingent of people who come out and vote.
Who does that help when it comes to John Cornyn and Ken Paxton?
John, that's exactly right.
It's a smaller electorate, especially because it's coming after the Monday after Memorial Day.
And that usually tends to benefit the more conservative candidate, the more base-centric candidate, and that's Ken Paxton here.
What I'm really interested in is the biblical tone that this is taking.
Explain.
But you saw this last night where in John Cornyn's speech heading into the runoff, he said that Judgment Day is coming for Ken Paxton.
They talked about how with Ken Paxton's Judgment Day is coming, that in the Democrat side with James Tyrico, he centered a lot of his messaging on his background as an evangelical Sumerian, on the Republican attacks against him.
They have a clip going around talking about how during a state house meeting he said that God is non-binary.
Biblical Tone in Mid-East Politics00:04:49
You're going to see that play out in a lot of ads right now.
I think what we're going to see is a flood of money coming in.
And I have even one Democratic strategist talk to me about how James Tyrico could be like Moses and help lead Democrats out of the desert in Texas here.
So it's all taking on this very metaphysical, very biblical sense right now in Texas.
What does James Tallrico do over the next 12 weeks?
Is there anything he can do to influence who he's going to eventually be running against if it is him?
He raises money.
I think he is going to be hitting the fundraising circuit.
He's going to be taking a victory lap.
He's going to be very content to let SLF, the NRSC, other outside groups come in and really bruise up Ken Paxton.
And while they're all doing that, he's going to get on general election footing.
I'd be surprised if he did any sort of ad time, but it's all about banking in the war chest right now for what is going to be an expensive general election.
As we wait for this Pentagon press conference to begin, again, we're going to show you about five or seven minutes or so here on C-SPAN.
You can watch the full thing on C-SPAN too, but we're waiting for the Defense Secretary to come out and speak.
Kirk Beto is going to stay with us until that begins.
And a question from FizzGuy, one of our viewers, asking about James Tallarico.
I worry about Tallarico, that he may someday switch parties, the viewer says.
Though he has my support today, he seems the kind that could.
What are your thoughts on that?
I don't think a party switch is on the table for James Tallrico.
He is Democrat.
He's for Medicaid for all.
His policy positions are very Democratic.
And I think what this question is getting at is kind of the celebrity status that James Tallrico has, the appeal that he has to more independent voters, his ability to, the ability to communicate that he has.
I don't necessarily think a party switch is coming, especially after what's about to be a very bitter fight against Republicans here.
I don't see him switching sides or changing jerseys anytime soon.
Who was the last party switcher?
And I ask, because when things get this tight in terms of the numbers in the House specifically, you start to look at somebody who could possibly switch parties and change the entire dynamic of one of the chambers.
So when was the last time a party switched happened?
And is there anybody who's being targeted right now for a potential party?
We've had a few Democrats go independent here.
I'm thinking about Joe Manchin during his final year in office, Kirsten Sinema, as well in her final year in office.
In terms of who could potentially be on the bubble here, you always hear about Republicans giving overtures to John Fetterman to maybe go independent or switch parties because he's got such a streak of going against the National Party and being kind of a thorn in leadership side on the Democratic side.
I would also look to someone like Lisa Murkowski in Alaska as well.
We already know that she's definitely not a fan of Donald Trump.
She's really pushed out, pushed back against the party.
I think there's also a competitive Senate race up there right now where her friend Mary Peltola, a former Democratic House member, is running against Dan Sullivan.
I really think that if Peltola were to defeat Dan Sullivan, it's a lawn shot up in Alaska.
But Lisa Murkowski might think, you know, it might be better for me if I go more independent here and say that we're a party for Alaska, not just a party for Republicans.
I would keep an eye on that.
And if you are the Speaker of the House right now, are you concerned that any of these members who lost a primary might decide to leave Congress early and thus leave you a couple votes short when you really need them?
Oh, absolutely.
I think this is a giant concern.
And that's one of the reasons why Mike Johnson didn't push Tony Gonzalez out of Congress already.
I mean, if you look at the allegations that are out there, again, Tony Gonzalez is denying this.
There are calls from within the Republican conference for him to resign.
And meanwhile, Johnson stays on the sideline because he can't afford to lose the votes.
If I look at someone like Wesley Hunt, for example, who definitely hasn't had a sterling attendance record so far this Congress, there's no real incentive for him to come back to Washington now that he is basically lost the primary.
He could go down in Texas and be winded and dined by Paxon and Cornyn supporters vying for his endorsement here.
Tony Gonzalez, I think he's going to be campaigning pretty hard here.
He might come back up to Washington, but every time he comes up here, he's going to have us reporters with microphones in his face.
It's going to be pretty unpleasant for him.
I wouldn't be surprised if he starts missing votes as well.
Dan Crenshaw, what incentive does he have to come back up here?
Because he's a lame duck who never got Republican support as well.
All of it does is make a very already complicated math problem for Mike Johnson even worse.
Kirk Vado, it's always pleasant when you join us on the Washington Journal.
Supreme Leadership Controversy00:07:30
I know it was a long night last night.
We'll let you go.
And we're going to take viewers to the Pentagon.
On this fifth day of combat operations against Iran, we're joined by longtime Middle East analyst Michael Rubin.
He's with the American Enterprise Institute, the Middle East Forum.
Mr. Rubin, five days into this with the Ayatollah dead, as we try to get a sense of where this is going, what are you watching for here to see if the Iranian regime can survive this?
There's actually two things I'm watching right now.
We hear a lot of headlines about who has been killed inside Iran in American bombings or Israeli bombings, but it's as important who isn't being killed and whether they're simply on a B list for later or whether they're being left alive purposely because President Donald Trump has a Venezuela situation in mind.
And for example, former presidents Hassan Rouhani or Mohamed Khatami, the former national security or the current national security advisor, Ali Ladajani.
The other issue I'm looking at, and this comes from some of my experience in Iraq and also watching Libya over the ages.
In 2007, the Revolutionary Guard concluded that the biggest threat to their stability would be the Iranian people themselves.
So they put one Revolutionary Guard unit in each of the 32 provinces of Iran.
Now, I'd imagine that each of those units has its own arms depot.
And what I'm not seeing is planning to secure the arms spread across Iran.
We've had the situation in Iran.
Running by the regime?
By the regime.
I mean, for example, if the regime falls, how actually should the United States secure those arms depots to prevent different arms depots from falling into different people's hands, and then you have a civil war at play?
Come back to the first question.
Who's most likely to take over here as the United States looks for someone to perhaps negotiate with if there is a negotiated end to this conflict?
Well, Ali Ladajani, the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, he's had a background in the Revolutionary Guards.
He used to be the Deputy Minister of Labor Affairs.
He was an advisor to the late Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini.
He checks all the boxes.
I've actually met him in Baghdad before by accident, but he has a reputation for being more pragmatic, more of an intellectual, more reasonable, even though he's a hardliner.
And I would imagine perhaps that the Trump administration would like to talk to him and maybe behind the scenes.
His daughter actually lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
He's close to his daughter, and that raises a lot of speculation about back channels.
The other person to keep an eye on is Mujtaba Khomeini, the 53-year-old son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khomeini.
He was basically his office director.
He knows where all the bodies are buried, where all the Swiss accounts or secret bank accounts are, and so forth.
Now, it's been reported he's been appointed the new Supreme Leader, but he doesn't have the religious credentials, and it appears that the Revolutionary Guard was the ones that basically ran roughshod over the qualifications in order to make sure he had this post.
Very quickly, here's the issue.
If the Revolutionary Guard commanders are being killed one by one, his support is disappearing as we speak, and therefore it's doubtful he's going to last.
Explain the position of the Supreme Leader, how one becomes a Supreme Leader.
Is it your understanding?
I mean, if you listen to Pete Hegset's press conference from started 40 minutes ago, it's still ongoing.
But he was implying that the Iranians were even scared to meet to be able to come together to keep the government functional at this point with U.S. having complete control of Iranian airspace.
Well, the Supreme Leader was a position that was established by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, and then Ali Khomeini was the second supreme leader who took over as a compromise candidate once Khomeini died.
Religiously, the position of Supreme Leader is almost as if it's the deputy of the Messiah on earth with ultimate authority over religious issues and over political issues.
Many Iranians, however, don't buy this, and so there's a lot of pushback.
Oftentimes, Iranians, when I lived in Iran in the Islamic Republic, they would describe my personal religion as a way of differentiating their beliefs from what the government was trying to impose upon them.
So how is that playing out right now in Iran in terms of the religious community?
What are you seeing?
Well, the important thing to understand about Shia, the Shiite Muslims of which they're the majority in Iran, they're also the majority in Iraq and a plurality in Lebanon, is that many Shiites don't particularly care for the religious philosophy that was imposed by force by Ayatollah Khomeini.
This is the reason why the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps exists, because it serves as the Supreme Leader's Praetorian Guard because he doesn't have the support of the Iranian people or Shia throughout the world.
You know, in Shiism, you're supposed to give sort of a religious donation each year called Khums.
And as an analyst, I'll look at who individual Shia give their khums to.
And that gives an indication of where their hearts are and where their minds are.
And what we find is most Iranians inside Iran give their khums to Ayatollah Sistani, who lives in Iraq and who's diametrically opposed in his philosophy to Ali Khomeini.
Explain Shia versus Sunni and how it's playing out in terms of Iran's neighbors in the region and the attacks that have happened on various Arab states in the area.
So the Prophet Muhammad received the revelations according to Muslims and started a religion.
But with time, you had an issue of both statecraft and succession because the Prophet Muhammad died in the year 632.
And so the big dispute between the Shia and the Sunni goes back to disputes as to who should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad.
Now, it's just not an issue of they disagreed at this moment in time and then they agreed later.
Because if you believe, like the disciples of Jesus, that someone was lying, then you ignore not only what he said, but you ignore everything his students say and delegitimize them.
So if you have a dispute where one person said this person should succeed Muhammad, that person should succeed Muhammad, another person said, then people disqualify each other through the generations, and that has led to a greater fissure.
Now, the important thing Americans need to understand is from an Iranian perspective, the Shia haven't broken away from Sunni Islam, even though that's how it's often taught.
They see themselves as the true Muslims, and they're trying to bring the Sunnis back on board.
This is one of the reasons why, even though we might say, hey, there's sectarian differences, the Sunni and the Shia can't work together, when you had the Muslim Brotherhood uprising after the Arab Spring in Egypt, the Iranians had no problem working with Muhammad Morsi, the president of Egypt at the time, because even though one was Shia, one was Sunni, they all looked together as Muslims.
So come back to the here and now.
Iran's Retaliatory Attacks00:00:26
How surprised were you by the volume of attacks against its Arab neighbors that Iran has launched since Saturday in retaliation?
I was very surprised, especially when they started attacking both Qatar and the Sultanate of Oman, because both those countries have not only mediated between the United States and Iran, but if truth be told, they probably sympathized a lot more with the Islamic Republic of Iran.